Classroom diversity, infinite potential and the Bildung of debt

The deployment of the humanities and social sciences in management education has by now become, if not common, then at least sufficiently frequent for it to constitute a ‘body of pedagogic interventions’ that takes place across business schools in different countries (see Sullivan, Ehrlich and Colby, this volume). The purpose of our chapter is to problematise the use of humanities in management education in the context of a number of phenomena underlying education within the contemporary business school, and in particular against the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of student debt. Debt already ‘weighs’ upon students as they enter the world of work, itself infused and changed by ‘the new spirit of capitalism’, which has brought with it, for example, the passionate body and the assertive bodily comportments as central to labour on account of this passion’s connection to creativity and excess; the eschewing of routines and the production of scenic emergence and unique character; and the shift from discipline to control, that is from the confined body to excessive and continuous modulation. These changes in the world of work, combined with the ubiquity of debt amongst individuals who hope to successfully function and build livelihoods within this world, have raised questions about which kind of subjectivity is deemed appropriate for such new labour market premises, and what role the business school can play in the formation of this subjectivity of an indebted, passionate, flexible worker.