Philanthromentality: celebrity parables as technologies of transfer

The way in which individualised acts of attention-seeking by celebrities become entertaining scripts of subjectivity for a population that is increasingly aware of an overall decline in well-being offers a lens into the ways in which excessive celebrity selves and their philanthropic temperance have become ascetic cues directed at the stability of a global governing regime. In this essay I argue that modern-day parables of philanthropic celebrities powerfully govern the oppositional impulse as they impart as sense of ‘benevolence’ in the form of an individualised disposition towards well-being and entitlement. I begin by considering how celebrated parables are continuous with previous governing practices aimed at the management of sense of well-being. I then observe the role of contemporary neoliberal parables of philanthromentality in the construction of a new asceticism of global capitalism, to which celebrities contribute. I conclude that these parables represent technologies of governing that operate through the celebration of a philanthropic ascetic that facilitates the continued suppression of imagination about alternatives.