Abstract

The article analyses the boom of self-help discourses and their relationship with pedagogic discourses, with the purpose of marking the centrality of the individual in the practices of contemporaneous government. Two exercises are important in this analysis of an archaeological genealogical perspective: on the one hand, it comprehends the impact which self-help has in the life of its readers and practitioners, allowing the consolidation and broad diffusion of tools to guide one’s own life and define modes of being within the world; on the other hand, thinking that the techniques provided by self-help may proceed in a millenary tradition of practices intended for the government itself. The study of the series self-help—education—government allows some of the main elements of these discourses to be identified and shows the centrality of the notion of learning among them.