Discourse Analysis of Stress in Postmodernity: The Precariousness of Labor, the Cult of Performance, and Production and Consumption

Abstract

It is proposed to investigate how the discourse on stress in postmodernity naturalizes factors that justify the precarization of labor, the cult of performance, and the capture of lifetime for production and consumption. The main objective is to understand how the discourse on the concept of stress in postmodernity is constructed in relation to work, the capture of lifetime for production and consumption. The method to be used is Discourse Analysis structured from Foucault's archaeology and genealogy, and the systematization of this method by Orlandi. This method is chosen because it is suitable for understanding the numerous discursive events, which, when analyzed as a unit, allow for reaching the space of discourse. As a result, it is expected to describe how stress in postmodernity is intrinsically related to the process of labor precarization, which has redirected life towards production and consumption as the most desired way of existence in postmodernity: "we only exist if we consume." This logic of existence has led to the shift from the modern disciplinary society to the postmodern society of performance and the autopanoptic, with stress being one of the indicators of development.