Berardi’s central idea is that contemporary capitalism no longer exploits only time, muscle or attention; it puts the soul to work. The soul here names the affective, linguistic, cognitive and libidinal energies through which people connect, desire, imagine, respond and cooperate. In industrial capitalism, alienation described the separation of workers from the product, process and meaning of labour. In cognitive capitalism, work colonizes subjectivity itself. The iconic idea is the working soul: capitalism mobilizes creativity, communication, mood, availability, empathy and psychic intensity as productive forces. This transforms autonomy into a paradox. The worker appears freer, more expressive and more self-realizing, yet that freedom becomes the very material of extraction. Berardi links this to speed, precarity, information overload, depression and panic. The social brain is asked to process flows that exceed its rhythms. Work becomes identity, and refusal becomes harder because labour is no longer only external discipline; it is internal investment. The book’s importance lies in shifting critique from factory exploitation to psychic capture. It shows that contemporary power governs through desire, acceleration, affect and compulsory self-expression.
URBANISM MEETS ART