The Neoliberal Politics of Black Women's Self-Help: Sisters, Suggestions, and Systems

My research investigates the politics of producing and consuming black women's self-help (BWSH) books in a period of deepening social crisis. We are currently witnessing an increase in self-help books written by black women for black women. These books contain (hyper-)positive messages and instructions allegedly designed to help black women cope with interlocking challenges of classism, sexism, and racism. They encourage black women to take charge of our lives, indulge in self-care practices, and better manage our finances and relationships. With limited author diversity in the self-help industry, the upsurge in BWSH books seems indicative of a progressive culture. Yet, given the highly commercial nature of the publishing industry and its role in speculative capitalism, it is important to turn a critical eye to this recent development and explore the driving forces behind it. More so, it is crucial to establish whether this self-help subgenre offers social value, especially in relation to black women's emancipation which has been a foremost agenda for black feminists. Paired with an ethnographic data collection process involving publishing professionals, BWSH authors and BWSH readers as key participants, my research draws on social theory and black feminist thought as theoretical lenses for measuring the alignment, if any, between BWSH books and black feminist sensibilities.
I am particularly interested in uncovering the extent to which the production and consumption of BWSH books represent a site of both gendered labour and neoliberal subjectification in black women communities. By centring black women as subjects of capitalism, I analyse the roles of BWSH authors and BWSH readers in the labouring of self and femininity against a backdrop of neoliberal governance and capitalism. Scholars of postfeminism, such as Rosalind Gill and Angela McRobbie, argue that self-help content, targeting women especially, is a gendered 'technology of the self' - a term coined by Michel Foucault to explain systems of self-regulation whereby individuals impose certain behaviours or conditions upon themselves to transform themselves. By this logic, self-help books encourage a belabouring of the self to achieve goals or ideals. At the same time, the publishing industry relies on the labour of black women to write books that demand further labour from black women. Therefore, given the commodification of self-help and its embeddedness in a capitalist system, my research analyses BWSH books as a case study in which new techniques of racial capitalism manifest.
As reflected in my project's subtitle, I plan to research BWSH books with three main themes in mind: sisterhood, suggestions, and systems. Precisely, I seek to explore how neoliberalism and racial capitalism (as systems) interact with the cultivation of black sisterhood via the sharing and receiving of self-help advice. I am, in other words, concerned with the social life of BWSH books and possible tensions between both the production and consumption of these books and their emancipatory potential. This research will generate new insights into (contemporary) black feminism, racial capitalism, and the global cultural economy.