Biopolitics, media and self-help: secret or symptom?

Abstract

The relationship between media and biopolitics has been examined exhaustively, above all insofar as it concerns the world agenda-setting established by the information media. In this paper we present two complementary aspects. The first is a synthesis of the connection between media and the public representation of science, in which we identify one of the lines of contemporary subjectivity as that of the “somatic individual,” which is a result of our research funded by CNPq (Brazil). The second aspect, more subtle, is the complementary relationship between man as his own entrepreneur and the mediatic industry of self-help, particularly in its literary version.