Praxis Seminar with Juan Evaristo Valls Boix - The Joy of Missing Out: A Critique of Work in Neoliberal Society (Lisbon, May 12, 2026)

[praxis-cful]

Praxis Seminar 2025-2026 — Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy | Session 20

May 12, 2026, 17:15

Sala Mattos Romão (Department of Philosophy, Room C201.J) 

School of Arts and Humanities — University of Lisbon

The Joy of Missing Out: A Critique of Work in Neoliberal Society

Juan Evaristo Valls Boix (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Abstract

This lecture seeks to read the term JOMO, drawn from popular memetics, as a productive conceptual tool for naming the shifting sensibilities in our relation to work that have come to mark European societies over the past decade. If the affective economy that underpinned the neoliberal regime of labor was defined by stress and excitation, the 2008 subprime crisis and the 2020 pandemic crisis have generalized depression as the dominant form of social malaise. This reconfiguration of the psychospheric landscape inaugurates the possibility of a subjectivity other than that of the self-entrepreneur, opening a horizon for cultivating post-capitalist desire through anti-ambition and an affective detachment from work.

All our sessions are free and open to the public.

More information about this and other Praxis-CFUL events: https://cful.letras.ulisboa.pt/praxis/programme/praxis-seminar/

The Praxis Seminar is a weekly, in-person event organized by Praxis-CFUL, the Practical Philosophy Research Group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon. This event is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the project UID/00310/2025 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00310/2025).

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Praxis-CFUL

Practical Philosophy Research Group - Center of Philosophy, University of Lisbon

https://cful.letras.ulisboa.pt/praxis/

Alameda da Universidade

1600-214 Lisboa

Portugal