The article seeks to contribute to governmentality studies by looking anew at the subjectivities posited by neoliberalism and especially by positive psychology. Focusing in particular on Sam Binkley’s critical work on this psychological sub-discipline, we offer a political analysis of the new ways of becoming a subject it proposes. For Binkley, positive psychology operates as a subjectivising vector by promoting a specific kind of work on oneself. His approach, we suggest, rests on a conception that relies on the classical disjunction between production and effort, on the one hand, and consumption and satisfaction, on the other. With references to Foucault, Marx, Becker, and Schultz’s conceptions of work and subjectivity, the article shows that positive psychology’s novelty is to enable a new happy subjective perspective from where happiness, rather than a long-term objective, is considered to be a precondition of work, a radical new form of human capital.

No abstract

RESUMENPropósito: Describir los resultados de los primeros 5 años de un programa de ingreso diferenciado de estudiantes destacados de nivel socioeconómico bajo a carreras de la salud de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Chile. Material y Método: Se incorporaron anualmente 10 a 20 alumnos de 3º y 4º Medio de escasos recursos por sus antecedentes académicos y psicosociales. Durante uno o dos años recibieron refuerzo en ramos científicos y habilidades para la vida, tutoría y orientación vocacional.Rindieron también la PAA/PSU. De los preseleccionados, se eligieron hasta 5 por año para ingresar a la Facultad de acuerdo a sus antecedentes académicos, vocacionales y condiciones psicosociales de adaptación. Cursaron las carreras con beca completa y otros apoyos económicos. A aquellos que no ingresaron se les facilitaron otras instancias de educación superior. Resultados: A la fecha, han participado 57 estudiantes, 43,9% mujeres y 56,1% hombres. Su promedio de notas de enseñanza media fue x = 6,1. 43,5% no tenía expectativas previas de ingresar a la universidad. Durante el apoyo inicial 41,1% evidenció déficit de hábitos y técnicas de estudio, 67,3% desorientación vocacional, 33,3% psicopatología y 38,6% conductas de riesgo. 15,8% desertó y 17,5% fue excluido. La deserción se debió principalmente a problemas vocacionales y stress, y la exclusión a mal rendimiento y psicopatología. 47,4% de los que finalizaron la etapa previa fue seleccionado para cursar carreras en la Facultad. Sus puntajes ponderados estuvieron bajo los mínimos para el ingreso regular. Su desempeño posterior fue en general satisfactorio. Conclusiones: El programa generó oportunidades de acceso a la universidad fuera de las expectativas de este grupo de jóvenes. Su realidad psicosocial dificultó su desempeño. El apoyo en esta área es muy importante en este tipo de programas. Su rendimiento en la Facultad fue satisfactorio a pesar de que no habrían sido admitidos por el proceso regular. Para generar real equidad en la educación universitaria es necesario ampliar los criterios de selección para estudiantes de escasos recursos.Palabras clave: Evaluación de programas y proyectos de salud, Educación, Criterios de admisión escolar, Apoyo a la formación profesional, Estudiantes del área de la salud, Pobreza, Población de bajos salarios. ARTÍCULOS ORIGINALES ABSTRACT EQUITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: EXPERIENCE FROM A SPECIAL PROGRAM FOR ADMISSION TO HEALTH CAREERSPurpose: To describe the results from the first 5 years of a differentiated admission program designed for outstanding students of low socioeconomic income admitted to health careers of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile. Materials and Methods: Annually, 10 to 20 low-incomestudents from 3rd and 4th years of secondary school entered the program in virtue of their academic and psychosocial background. For one or two years, they received extra support in scientific subjects and abilities for life, tutoring and vocational guidance. They also took the PAA/PUU (general post-secondary school te...

The following is a reply to Sam Binkley's (2018) critical commentary, "The Work of Happiness: A Response to De La Fabián and Stecher (2017)". In our paper, "Positive Psychology's Promise of Happiness: A New Form of Human Capital in Contemporary Neoliberal Governmentality" (De La Fabián & Stecher, 2017), we showed that the kind of transformative work on oneself fostered by positive psychology should be understood as a transcendence of the Calvinist work formula of deferred pleasure. Binkley argues that this is a reductionist hypothesis, which risks turning into a deterministic conception of the processes of subjectivation. We argue that while we share this concern, we do not believe that the Calvinist formula is the right one to call upon to avoid this problem. Our main hypothesis is that positive psychology has created a new game of truth, in which the normative frame of justification that used to give sense to any kind of selftransformative task has been radically changed.

This essay offers a critical history, in the Foucauldian sense, of the contemporary hegemony of resilience as a new risk-management technology. Its hypothesis is that resilience is a new way of conjoining biopolitics with thanatopolitics or sovereign power. If, for Roberto Esposito, the paradigm of immunization explained this deadly linkage, resilience refers to a different biopolitical matrix, one that can no longer be understood in Esposito's terms. While the paradigm of immunization is staked on securing biopolitical bodies, resilience is a strategy for enhancing life itself. This shift, from protecting bodies to protecting life, is related to resilience's biopolitical matrix, which mediates between the molecular fiction of life and an ecological eschatology. The essay concludes, in the first place, that the discourse of resilience entails a naturalization and a seeming depoliticization of precarious forms of life—which must learn not to resist but to adapt to precarity. And, secondly, this essay concludes that, in the context of resilience, the sovereign's old right to kill is no longer invoked in the name of epistemic uncertainty (fear of the unpredictability of the future) but of ontological uncertainty: fear of the annihilation of the conditions of existence for certain life-forms.