Carl Cederström > Quotes

“Versions of positive psychology engineered in business schools have been called into question, not just because they are based on shaky assumptions, but also because they appear to be harbingers of a vision of capitalism where exploitation and hierarchies are promoted as a common good.”
― Carl Cederström, The Wellness Syndrome

“Business schools have always had a complicated relationship to science, and have a long tradition of repackaging ideology as academic studies.”
― Carl Cederström, The Wellness Syndrome

“Obsessively tracking our wellness, while continuously finding new avenues of self-enhancement, leaves little room to live.”
― Carl Cederström, The Wellness Syndrome

“Oprah is one of the new prophets of capital precisely because she connects an individualistic self-help ethos with the logic of capital, in which the individual, as an obedient neoliberal agent, takes an active role in her own exploitation, meanwhile pretending as though these activities are perfectly attuned with her inner desire – as an expression of her own quest for authenticity.

But there is an interesting paradox at play here: while asked to turn the gaze inwards and discover one’s inner resources, the neoliberal agent is also asked to look outwards for places to sell and promote their resources. Living in the age of capital, we have infinite possibilities hidden inside us insofar as there are infinite possibilities of making them valuable by turning them into commodities.”
― Carl Cederström, The Happiness Fantasy

“In an attempt to convey their discontent, employees did something strange: exactly what they were told to do, following the formal rules to the letter. As a result, when the invisible wealth of informal engagement, knowledge sharing, and mutual aid was withdrawn, the office was brought to a halt. The implications of Blau’s study is clear: the formal corporate form actually obstructs the creation of wealth, and is thus completely reliant on an undercurrent of non-commercialized living labor, the very thing it cannot help but demolish as soon as it gets its anxious hands on it.”
― Carl Cederstrom, Dead Man Working

“Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?”
― Carl Cederström, The Wellness Syndrome

“Talent management is popular because it helps legitimize and normalize horrendously inflated pay cheques. ‘This “talent mind-set” is the new orthodoxy of American management,’ Malcolm Gladwell wrote more than a decade ago. ‘It is the intellectual justification for why such a high premium is placed on degrees from first-tier business schools, and why the compensation packages for top executives have become so lavish.’25 According to this line of thought, it is entirely acceptable that some people are rewarded inordinately while others are left empty handed.”
― Carl Cederström, The Wellness Syndrome

“Yet work remains in its Deleuzian ‘gaseous’ form, which is the exact opposite of play, fun, and real living. Therefore, the latter needs to be staged, manufactured, scripted and ultimately imitated in the office.”
― Carl Cederstrom, Dead Man Working

“When the economy of work infects one’s early morning dreams, spills over into booze-soaked weekends and reduces almost every social relation to a cold cash exchange, workers are the first to realize that life becomes evacuated, a perpetual living absence no matter how many smiley-faces dot the cubicle.”
― Carl Cederstrom, Dead Man Working

“The liberal communist, however, wishes us to believe that we can enjoy the selfish rewards of rampant profiteering and eat our cake too, basking in the euphoric afterglow that comes when one ‘cares for society’. We might call this blinding fantasy the ‘Bonofication’ of capitalist reality.”
― Carl Cederstrom, Dead Man Working

“A major aspect of liberation management is to harness the edgy and non-conformist energy of workers. Large firms, the advice says, ought to model their internal structures after the carnivalesque and joyous anarchism of May ‘68.”
― Carl Cederstrom, Dead Man Working

“More than a route towards personal liberation, the notion of a world without victims is central to the neoliberal fantasy, according to which all people have the same opportunities to become hAppy and successful regardless of their circumstances. It is a notion that is just as popular with right-wing politicians.”
― Carl Cederström, The Happiness Fantasy

“Entering the workforce is like entering the grave … From then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work.”
― Carl Cederstrom, Dead Man Working

“The question that is left unanswered here is what we should do when we have become more productive. How should we use the time that has now been freed up? The answer, it seems, is to find new ways to be even more productive.”
― Carl Cederström, The Wellness Syndrome