Locating Winnicott within a broad landscape of critical scholarship that dissects work’s perils, Nathan Gerard's new book positions Winnicott as both a radical critic and creative advocate for building a different kind of work life—one that might make room for the presence of self.
By shuffling the discourse on neoliberal subjectivity to reclaim what Winnicott calls “unit status” of the separate self, Gerard differentiates Winnicott from the relational tradition by advocating for Winnicott’s non-relational aspects. Through such analysis, the book reveals how work and home have become two sides of the same impoverished coin, each contributing to a legitimately “bad environment” that perpetuates self-absence and annihilates one’s unique sense of “feeling real” and alive.