Penny is probably referring to the specific epithet “care of self,” which was one of the main concerns of the postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault. In his late writings on neoliberalism, Foucault said that an overt concern with one’s individual body can be read as an assertion of a new ethics, one that is less concerned with relating to others (which is the classic definition of ethics), and more concerned with forming the perfect individual subject. You can see how this relates to a society dominated by messages that we invest and improve ourselves no matter the social context in which we move.

Interestingly, Foucault did not condemn this new ethos, and sometimes seemed to embrace it with a kind of Nietzschean mischief. This is one of the reasons why radical literary theorists are ambivalent about Foucault’s politics. Some people have called him an architect of late 20th century libertarianism.