Neoliberalism, Success, and Other Happy Objects
8th session of CEFRES in-house seminar
Through the presentation of works in progress, CEFRES’s Seminar aims at raising and discussing issues about methods, approaches or concepts, in a multidisciplinary spirit, allowing everyone to confront her or his own perspectives with the research presented.
Location: CEFRES Library and online (to get the link, write to cefres[@]cefres.cz)
Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2026, 16:30
Language: English
Speaker: Michaela RUMPÍKOVÁ (CEFRES / Faculty of Arts, Charles University)
Discussant: Josef ŠEBEK (Charles University / CEFRES)
Abstract
This talk examines the ideological and aesthetic reconfiguration of Bildung within contemporary postfeminist and neoliberal contexts through the figures of “young girls” and their narratives of becoming. Rooted in the 19th century Western bourgeois culture, Bildung articulated the development of an autonomous subject through the interplay of interior growth and socialization (Moretti, Boes, Graham, Miller). The emergence of this genre, being closely linked to German idealism (Goethe, Hegel, Humboldt), correlates also with the development of ideal self-made and individualized subjectivity successufully integrated within burgeoning capitalist society (Esty, Redfield, Suleiman). Likewise, the 21st century has been increasingly reshaped by youth culture, market logics, normative ideals and affective economies of success and happiness (i.e, Berlant, Ahmed, Sedgwick, Probyn, Heather).
Engaging with critiques of post-feminism and late modernity (McRobbie, Gill & Schraff, Griffin, Negra), I argue that contemporary discourses of empowerment obscure new forms of control and objectification regarding girls’ formation. The promise that one “can become anything” functions as an ideological “grand” narrative, recounting a neoliberal fantasy that both produces and limits subjectivity, masking the persistence of structural inequalities (i.e., ability, class, sexuality, ethnicity).
Drawing on girlhood studies (Gonick, Harris, McRobbie, Negra, Driscoll), my talk situates “young girls” as a cultural construct and a regulatory ideal, produced through discursive and material practices, as well as a subject. The idea of “young girl” emerges as a serialized and reproducible figure aligned with the demands of consumption, visibility, and normative femininity (Tiqqun, Delvaux). As ideal symbol of late modernity, this figure has been shaped by what Preciado might describe as somatic and affective norms (i.e., beauty, heteronormativity, ability, and the injunction to be confident, successful, and happy). Therefore, since 1990s, girlhood, divided between the “can-do” and “at-risk” girlhoods (Harris, Gonick), has been conceptualized as a subjectivity that is at once flexible, resilient, self-made, and successful, yet also vulnerable and prone to failure.
In this paradoxical post-era, Bildung cannot guarantee “authentic” self-formation but instead stages a tension between individuation and standardization, placing the narratives of becoming somewhere-in-between grey zones. Personal narratives of Bildung, here composed of, yet non-exhaustive, Francophone corpus of what we might call “Forth Generation” (i.e., Delorme, Pille, Rinkel, Daas), interrogate representations of “French girlhood,” foregrounding identity formation as a series of shifting positions within specific socio-material conditions, while touching on subjective and lived experiences of this becoming. By pushing beyond the formal and ideological boundaries of the traditional Bildungsroman, we argue that the postfeminist Bildung reflects a broader dialectics, historically embedded within the genre itself: the ongoing conflict between self-formation and harmonious social integration. While the young girl is positioned as the emblem of freedom, choice, and possibility, she remains kept within systems that regulate and orients her desires, her body, and her future in a “good way” (Ahmed).
Please find the complete program of 2025–2026 seminar here.