Work as the contemporary limit of life: Capitalism, the death drive, and the lethal fantasy of "work-life balance'

This article introduces contemporary discourses of work-life balance' as a cultural fantasy revolving self-hood around employment and organizations. To do so, it draws on the Lacanian interpretation of the Freudian death drive' to highlight the importance of disequilibrium' for the construction of the subject and individual identification therein. More precisely, it reflects on the ways this structuring of self-hood associated with the impossible pursuit of equilibrium' maps out onto present desires for work-life balance' and its subsequent production of a regulated imbalanced' subject. It argues that individuals are maintained as subjects through their identification with and paradoxical enjoyment, or jouissance, from being imbalanced'. Consequently, capitalist work and organizations stand as the contemporary limit of life' through their fundamental role in producing and sustaining this imbalanced' subject in search of balance'. It is ironically in this longing to overcome this imbalance', to work to live', that individuals remain even more strongly a capitalist and organizational subject of desire'. They literally cannot go on subjectively living' without capitalist work.