Homo Economicus Must Die: Towards a Figure of the Accumulated Being

Abstract

Chapter Seven makes the argument, like many others, that the dominant figures used to stand in for humans, such as Homo economicus and cultural dupe, are anthropological monsters. The chapter also sketches the problem of the figure of the inspirational meritocrat, which aligns with the rise of the happiness and wellness industries and with individual stories of heroically overcoming hardships in movies and media profiles. The Bourdieusian model of the reasonable accumulated being is then put forward as a way of overcoming the problems of those figures as it considers how affective affinities mediate everyday struggles and strategies that move beyond the rational, ideological and entrepreneurial.