Elusive adulthood and surplus life-time in Spain

Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork in Madrid, I argue that the growing redundancy of living labour power in the capitalist production process has translated, since the last decades of the 20th century, into surplus portions of the individual life-cycle. Capitalism’s promise of productivity, associated with adulthood, has shrunk to become a window of opportunity. Besides sheer luck, it takes protracted preparation to seize this opportunity and inordinate effort to retain it. Adulthood is the mystified representation of structural pressures on productive activity, as an elusive personal accomplishment whose curtailment is one’s own fault. Failure to realize it is further depoliticized as either a rejection of adulthood, or acceptance of besieged adulthood as a sign of maturity.