Pamela Reif – the ideal subject of neoliberalism?

Haider, Silvia (author), Stögner, Karin (mentor)

This thesis examines Pamela Reif’s self-presentation on Instagram in the context of Foucault’s concept of technologies of the self and the entrepreneurial self. The aim is to expand this concept by incorporating the category of gender and to analyze Reif’s self-staging through gendered technologies of the self and a gendered entrepreneurial self. The study highlights the central role of media in processes of self-thematization and self-regulation, illustrating the shift from enforced surveillance to voluntary self-presentation. The body and affective life are subjected to optimization in order to construct an athletic, motivated, and happy self. While this self-optimization is framed in terms of freedom, it is deeply embedded in market-driven logics, where individual responsibility functions as depoliticization and a mechanism of personal blame. The thesis concludes that neoliberal subjectivation in the sense of the entrepreneurial self is inherently gendered. Even though the self-entrepreneur appears as a masculine norm, the postfeminist self can be conceptualized as an gendered ideal form of the entrepreneurial self.

• Language: German
• Keywords: entrepreneurial self, technologies of the self, gender, self-presentation (Instagram), neoliberal subjectivation
• Work type: Master's thesis/paper
• Typology: 2.09 - Master's Thesis
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Place of publishing: Ljubljana
• Publisher: S. Haider
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: 1 spletni vir (1 datoteka PDF (108 str.))
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-171232
• UDC: 159.923.2:077.5(043.2)
• COBISS.SI-ID: 253437443
• Publication date in RUL: 20.08.2025

Secondary language

• Language: English
• Title: Pamela Reif – idealni subjekt neoliberalizma? : magistrsko delo
• Keywords: podjetniški jaz, tehnologije sebstva, spol, samospoznavanje (Instagram), neoliberalna subjektivacija