Exploring Selfhood in an Era of Computational Optimization

This thesis critiques “the self-optimization ideal,” which describes the social and cultural ideal of relentless self-improvement. The self-optimization ideal encompasses predominant beauty, bodily and lifestyle ideals that individuals, under neoliberal governmentality, are incentivized to strive for. Promoted and dispersed via everyday technologies, the subtle enforcement of the self-optimization ideal often goes unnoticed. My research aims to bring these things to the fore, asking: How can design unsettle the ideal of computational self-optimization upheld by neoliberalism? And, where does self-optimization begin to negatively impact perceptions of the self? Through critical design praxis, involving the construction of a parodic athleisure brand and product, I begin to answer these questions. Informed by feminist theory, as well as a historical analysis of the production, consumption and mediation of athleisure clothing, my research works to problematize and encourage critical thought around the self-optimization ideal, as well as the everyday technologies that promote it.