The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981--1982
... This perspective of exercise calls our attention when, in another moment of the study, we came across the philosophy of the care of self; the occupation with oneself discussed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. This imperative was addressed along with the history of occidental, antique philosophy, especially by the figure of Socrates in the 1 st and 2 nd centuries, which are considered the Golden Age of the care of the self, and in the 4 th and 5 th centuries, by the religious characters of Christianity [4]. ...
... The interpreted works compose the following themes: a) aikido: Morihei Ueshiba [12][13][14], Kisshomaru Ueshiba [15] and Moriteru Ueshiba [16]; b) care of the self: Foucault [4,17,18]. The topics constitute the structure of this paper: 1) The meanings of aikido; 2) The meanings of the care of the self; 3) The care of the self elements in aikido; 4) Physical education as an art of well living; 5) Conclusions. ...
... Regarding Foucault's [20,21] thought, we may face themes such as the conduct, the codes and law, the mode of one's behaviour, the self-techniques and the arts of existence [22]. The care of the self was investigated by Foucault in three periods: the Socratic-platonic, the Hellenistic and Roman in the 1 st and 2 nd centuries, and in the Christian precepts of the 4 th and 5 th centuries of our age [4], being imperatively incorporated into practices and philosophical, medical and even religious recommendations [4,17,18]. ...
Background and Study Aim: Aikido is considered a modern budo. Created in Japan around 1942, aikido has its origins in several martial arts and some religious aspects. In turn, the care of the self represents an antique spirituality composed by knowledge and practices that have been passed down through ages. Our study aims to reflect on elements of the care of the self in aikido philosophy, identifying contributions for physical education. This is a qualitative study with a hermeneutic approach based on Paul Ricoeur, which interprets some works by Morihei, Kisshomaru, Moriteru Ueshiba, and Michel Foucault. We identified notions of ki (vital energy), kotodama (the spiritual study of sounds), misogi (purification) and budo (path of self-improvement) in aikido, and in the care of the self, the formation of the ethical subject and their art of living. We identified elements of the care of the self in aikido, and finally, we perceive physical education as an art of well living through the spirituality notion built from the identified elements. We perceive this hermeneutic study as a possibility to identify the care of the self elements in aikido. Beyond this, the identified elements favour physical education socio-philosophical studies when we perceive them as a path, a lifestyle through the aesthetics of existence in the martial arts context, especially in the practice of budo, in the sense of considering it as an art of well living.
... Given that there is not one single way a subject molds a role, there will be different forms of subjectivity within a given context, different forms of professional subjectivity. In this paper, subjectivity points to the individual's ethical self-formation in relation to themselves, and what the individual takes to be the truth (Foucault, 2005(Foucault, , 2019. Using the Foucauldian interpretation of subjectivity is meaningful in a care professional context, since what is performed in the role is, alongside the results from years of explicit professional education and training, also disclosed in what seems to be an ethical way of treating the patient as an individual human being. ...
... Even if this paper concerns ReCos specifically, this could be applied to other professions dealing with how an "objective" professional function is enacted as a role by an active subject. Within a professional organization, there will always be different forms of subjectivity and different ways in which individuals form their ethical selves in relation to themselves through what is thought to be the truth (Foucault, 2005(Foucault, , 2019. This phenomenon needs to be discussed and taken seriously. ...
The study examines a new professional function, the rehabilitation coordinator, in Sweden's healthcare system. The rehabilitation coordinator acts as an inter-organizational facilitator in the return-to-work process. Using a Foucauldian perspective, the rehabilitation coordinator as a subject could be considered both as an objectified function shaped by governmental regulation and as a process by which the individual chooses how to perform the role. The rehabilitation coordinator must navigate between legislative regulations and adhere to their own professional ethics, resulting in varying forms of subjectivity. Metaphors used by rehabilitation coordinators provide insights into how individuals perceive their ethical responsibilities and how they approach interactions with patients and healthcare professionals. The paper underscores the ambiguity of the role and sheds light on how diverse considerations inherent in professional roles but also within the subject molds professional subjectivity in the Swedish healthcare system.
... Given that there is not one single way a subject molds a role, there will be different forms of subjectivity within a given context, different forms of professional subjectivity. In this paper, subjectivity points to the individual's ethical self-formation in relation to themselves, and what the individual takes to be the truth (Foucault, 2005(Foucault, , 2019. Using the Foucauldian interpretation of subjectivity is meaningful in a care professional context, since what is performed in the role is, alongside the results from years of explicit professional education and training, also disclosed in what seems to be an ethical way of treating the patient as an individual human being. ...
... Even if this paper concerns ReCos specifically, this could be applied to other professions dealing with how an "objective" professional function is enacted as a role by an active subject. Within a professional organization, there will always be different forms of subjectivity and different ways in which individuals form their ethical selves in relation to themselves through what is thought to be the truth (Foucault, 2005(Foucault, , 2019. This phenomenon needs to be discussed and taken seriously. ...
... Around 1980, Foucault started to explore the technologies of the self, focusing on the care of the self and the freedom with which subjects act and modify social rules. At this point in his work, Foucault questioned the possibilities of ethical autonomy and identified core values by which subjects constitute themself, despite the power relations that shape their contexts (Foucault 1982a(Foucault , 2005). The technologies of the self, according to Foucault, referred to the practices and techniques through which individuals constitute themselves as subjects of ethical and political knowledge (Foucault 1994(Foucault , 2010. ...
... Parrhesia unfolds from the relationship between power, truth, and the subject, particularly the relationship between subjectivity and truth (Foucault , 2005 and revolves around three axes: 'saying everything', where the individual has the legal or political right to speak up; 'truth-telling' (Foucault 2010, pp. 173ss), which is 'the discourse through which the weak assumes the risk of reproaching the strong for the injustice committed' (Foucault 2008c, p. 54); and 'frankness', or confessing something morally burdensome to the subject. ...
In this paper, we bring together Foucault's biography and oeuvre to explore key concepts that support the analysis of nurses' acts of resistance. Foucault reflected on the power relations taking place in health services, making his contribution especially useful for the analysis of resistance in this context. Over three decades, he proposed a nonnormative philosophy while concomitantly engaging in transgressive practices guided by values such as human rights and social justice. Hence, Foucault's philosophy and public activism are an apparent contradiction, but we argue that when analysed together they allow for a different understanding of his work. We describe the evolution of the concept of resistance in Foucault's work, supported by the approaches of Brent Picket (1996) and Miguel Morey (2013). Foucault started his work considering the idea of transgressiveness as it connects to being at the margins of society. He then spent considerable time elaborating the concept of power and identifying resistance strategies as forms of power exercise. In doing so, he considered that people engage with social change from multiple positions, including limited desire for change, fomenting reforms, or engaging in everyday revolutionary acts. As he further elaborated on power relations and defined resistance, Foucault asserted that resistance involves both repressive and productive dimensions of power, governance of biological life, state governance, and deliberate practices of illegalisms. Finally, Foucault shifted his attention to the freedom of ethical subjects, proposing the use of counter-conduct and counter-discourses to speak truth against oppression. Such framework offers a comprehensive lens for analysing nurses' acts of resistance within the complexities of the healthcare system and in society. In summary, Foucault's conceptual framework on resistance expands the role of nurses, to understand them not only as caregivers, but also as political agents capable of confronting and transforming oppressive institutional practices.
... Drawing on the basic tenets of Reader Response theory, this paper examines how readers become active participants in shaping the meaning of "Sweeney Among the Nightingales." Scholars such as Michel Foucault (2005), Roland Barthes (1975), Norman Holland (1975) and Stanley Fish (2003 among many others have emphasized that meaning is not something rigidly fixed in the text. Instead, it emerges through the reader's interaction with the text. ...
... Drawing from the insights of Foucault (2005) on how discourses are structured by underlying power dynamics, the paper will explore how the power relations between Sweeney and the women in the poem are hinted at through small, seemingly insignificant actions like the spilling of the coffee. The deliberate nature of this act, though not fully narrated, allows for a rich field of interpretation when viewed through a Foucauldian perspective. ...
T.S. Eliot’s poem “Sweeney among the Nightingales” is a short dramatic monologue that introduces Sweeney as rude and cruel character, in a setting where he interacts with several women referred to as ‘Nightingales’ in a brothel. Sweeney finds himself involved in a cunning plot in that brothel. He is seduced and given alcohol to impair his judgement. To thwart the conspiracy against him, he has to have a cup of coffee to help him remain awake. By having one of the women drop the cup of coffee, Eliot paves the way for unconventional reading of the text that focuses on the unmentioned spilled coffee in the poem. The unmentioned spilled coffee becomes more important than the cup of coffee dropped by the woman in the Spanish cape. For the absence of coffee at the end of Sweeney’s late night activities deters his sobriety; helps the conspirators to attain their goal, and further contributes to the theme(s) of the poem.
... The last century has been characterized by the birth of new discourses on the self and, according to the author, the high increase of diagnosis is due to the interiorization of a new idea of the self. This would not be possible without the introduction of technologies of the self (Foucault, 2005), such as psychotherapy, antidepressants, pharmaceutical therapies, assessment tests, and so on, that can also frame these types of problems inside of a medical frame. The medicalization of depression could not proceed without a cultural shift that would determine the condition itself as relevant to attention to understand nowadays life, and in the same way, the spread of the commonsense knowledge on depression comes from the newborn scientific knowledge behind that from the last two centuries. ...
... However, we can imagine that all issues considered, according to this theory, involve a loss, and they are experienced in a way in which we are not up to be ideal as we would like to be, regardless if these losses involve materialistic or nonmaterialistic conditions. In summary, Ehrenberg's theory aims to understand the cultural components of depression by examining discourses related to contemporary self-construction, identifying them as the seeds of psychosocial distress and perceiving a narrative substrate underlying individuals' life, democratically permeating through discursive devices and the dissemination of "technologies of the self" (Foucault, 2005), such as psychoanalysis and pharmacotherapy. ...
This thesis focuses on depression, examining its clinical representations, treatments, and determinants through a sociological lens, while incorporating concepts from psychiatry.
The first part analyses depression prevalence, utilizing data from various global and national sources to highlight its increased diagnosis and explore the term "epidemic." It critically evaluates whether this increase constitutes an actual epidemic, delving into the sociological explanations for the rise in depression, contrasting social change theories with diagnostic practice explanations. It argues that depression's depiction as a widespread issue is influenced by social, historical, and cultural contexts.
The second part presents an empirical investigation into depression as a sociological object, using qualitative methods like semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis in two healthcare settings in Milan, Italy. The study explores both professional and patient perspectives, examining representations of depression among mental health professionals and the social dynamics involved in depressive and anxiety disorders in patients. It also addresses the diagnostic and treatment practices concerning depression, considering the biopsychosocial model. The thesis contributes to understanding the complexity of depression and its treatment in the context of public healthcare systems.
... Confidence was a recurrent theme mentioned by participants in the interviews, with players often asserting that their confidence was inherent, an intrinsic part of their nature. This self-perception aligns with Foucault's (2005) concept of 'ethics', which he describes as 'the elaboration of a form of relation to self that enables an individual to fashion himself into a subject of ethical conduct' (p. 251). ...
Researchers have begun to focus on the esports player community and suggest that governments and industries take external means to address the difficulties of players. In contrast, this study investigated the subjectivity of professional players and technologies of the self in neoliberal esports. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with active and retired Chinese esports players, we found that esports players typically employ three self-technologies when facing challenges, namely practices of (fluctuating) confidence, (cruel) optimism and (limited) effort. These technologies construct players’ autonomy and legitimacy but can result in self-deception. We suggest that the self-technologies of esports players and the remote governance of China’s sports sector are two different perspectives on the same situation. Finally, we argue that exploring China’s esports industry can also promote understanding of the nature of Chinese neoliberalism.
... Este marco sugiere, volviendo a Foucault, que las tecnologías del sujeto tienen un fuerte componente ético (Foucault, 2006), que no necesariamente obedece al espíritu del capitalismo corporativo, como podría sugerir la crítica al neoliberalismo del mindfulness secular. De hecho, la literatura reciente sobre el movimiento climático y medioambiental ha enfatizado la articulación entre el ecologismo y las prácticas contemplativas, incluyendo mindfulness (Schmid y Taylor Aiken, 2021;Carvalho y Ferreira, 2022;Sauerborn, 2022). ...
El objetivo de este artículo es promover una reflexión sobre las articulaciones entre las tecnologías del sujeto, la política y la ontología, a partir del caso de las prácticas meditativas. En la lite-ratura crítica sobre la meditación, hay una tendencia a asociar tales prácticas con el neoliberalismo. El artículo pretende problematizar esa asociación mediante el desarrollo de un enfoque ontológico sensible a las dimensiones materiales, performativas, espaciales y afectivas de la meditación como tecnología del sujeto. Para opera-cionalizar el enfoque ontológico referido, el artículo analiza tres estudios de caso, empleando para ello observación participante y entrevistas semiestructuradas en Portugal, Inglaterra y Francia. Los casos de estudio son la meditación Vipassana en la tradición de S. N. Goenka, la meditación zen en el linaje de Thich Nhat Hanh yla forma en que la Red de Transición moviliza las prácticas de mind-fulness en el contexto de la llamada "transición interior. Palabras clave. Meditación; ontología; tecnologías del sujeto; Vipassana; Zen.
... Nietzsche (2006) was horrified by the emergence of a modern world without moral or value anchors. Michel Foucault (1997Foucault ( , 2005 argued for the need to balance between knowledge and spirituality. From his work, we can deduce that management training began in the ancient Greek academies. ...
This article discusses how problem-based learning combines with what I from Nietzsche call “becoming who you are”. It argues against thinking of problem-based learning merely as a method that integrates theory and practice. Using Foucault’s genealogy and Arendt’s notion of storytelling as theoretical anchor points, I suggest that problem-based learning is a personal process of self-formation with important political and ethical implications. Through Foucault and Arendt, I argue that problem-based learning is helpful in teaching people how to think. Problem-based learning provides an occasion for self-overcoming through understanding and work creatively with the world’s multiplicity. I discuss concrete implications of using history and storytelling in problem-based learning in my field, organization studies. In the last part, I discuss how storytelling can inspire writing differently about organizations.
... The process of transcribing and translating the narratives of Anangu educator Katrina Tjitayi (Tjitayi & Lewis, 2011;Tjitayi & Osborne, 2014) drew my attention to the richness and nuance of her application of kulini (listening) along with derivatives generated from the listening verb stem 'kuli' (Osborne, 2023). One Piranpa education leader agreed with Foucault (Foucault, 2001) in that beyond mere audiological exchange, ethical listening requires the application of methodological tools and "the subject is constituted by the act of listening, not separate from it" (Beard, 2009, p. 8 ...
In Australia, ‘remote’ education is often placed in a different category from ‘rural’ education. For the purpose of this chapter, we consider ‘remote’ to be a subset of a broader ‘rural’ description of geographically isolated areas that are distant from larger metropolitan centres. ‘Remote’ schools often cater for mining or agricultural communities and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Our concern here is with the latter group. We present three case studies of educational leadership based on research conducted in remote Aboriginal communities and homelands of the Northern Territory and South Australia. While there are some commonalities with educational leadership in rural towns and communities, different dynamics come in to play in places where the priorities for learning are sometimes quite different, and where language and culture differences experienced by non-local leaders present a challenge that are not present in predominantly ‘white’ rural towns. In our analysis of the three case studies, we synthesise the key features of rural educational leadership, and offer a summary of how ‘leadership’ might be defined differently in remote Aboriginal communities and homelands.
... Issar, 2021). Foucault (2005) forwards the notion of a 'fold' or contact point between technologies of domination and technologies of the self where power and subjectification meet. From Biesta's perspective, this purpose of subjectification becomes repressed within the contemporary neoliberal dispositif of learnification (Biesta, 2010), which overemphasises qualification, but it would be mistaken to believe processes affecting individual subjectivities are not occurring. ...
... In Anglophone political cultures, the stand-alone sovereign individual took hold, integrated with the emerging capitalist economy, as Weber realised. In the work of his final period which investigates the care of the self and self-formation, scattered across various texts, lectures, transcribed seminars and notes, Michel Foucault (2005Foucault ( , 2011Foucault ( , 2020Foucault ( , 2021) develops a novel explanation for the genesis of Euro-American individualism in the transition from Ancient Roman practices to Christianity. ...
Anglophone societies in which the sovereign individual is primary vis and vis social relations, and policy focuses on economic competition and consumption in education, find it hard to grasp non-pecuniary outcomes in higher education. These include the self-formation of students as persons and collective goods like knowledge, technological capability, social inclusion, political connectedness, tolerance and global understanding. While other cultures generate insights into non-pecuniary outcomes, the paper focuses critically on meanings of ‘public’ in English: (1) public as state, (2) public good as universal well-being, (3) public as inclusive-communicative as in ‘public opinion’, (4) public and private goods in economics. None of these meanings of ‘public’ enables the resolution of the non-pecuniary outcomes of higher education. The paper tackles four central questions. First, why is there an undue emphasis on the individual and individualised pecuniary benefits, vis a vis social relations, in Euro-American and especially Anglophone societies? Second, can these societies strengthen public or common goods by augmenting the state in higher education? Third, what other practices of public and common might advance non-pecuniary outcomes? Fourth, how to advance collective outcomes beyond the nation-state? The paper finds that while Anglophone public good is constrained by the state in capitalist society, higher education’s role in the production and distribution of common good through primarily local networks, while also pressuring central states to provide support, offers a promising way forward.
... Additionally, as part of the first phase in understanding the relevant concepts for a genealogical analysis, I also read widely on the various technologies of power, of the self, as well as their modes of rationalizations to compile a typography of these technologies, as outlined in Table 1 (Foucault, 1961(Foucault, /1989Foucault, 1975Foucault, /1977Foucault, 1984;Foucault, 1988;Foucault, 1997;Foucault, 2000;Foucault, 2005;Nietzsche, 1880Nietzsche, /2015Rauch van der Merwe, 2019;Rose, 1999). ...
Introduction/Frame: (Contextualization/Justification) Viewing curriculum as discourse can enable educators to identify how historical markers of discrimination are repeated. Historical markers are archaeologically embedded in the various dimensions of a curriculum and find expression in preferred ways of thinking, speaking, doing, and being. Such historical hypernorms are often maintained by practical rationalities, or technologies of power that reify their taken-for-granted legitimacy as ‘truth regimes’. Research Question/Objectives: This phase of the study aimed to critically explore and disclose how the (socio/politico-historically constructed) rules of knowledge-formation in a contemporary occupational therapy curriculum-as-discourse, are reproduced and maintained as truths at a university that historically supported apartheid in South Africa. Methodology: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) approach was used to systematically craft a genealogy analysis method from foundational Foucauldian theory. Adjacent, a lens of the ‘dimensions of the curriculum’ was employed: i.e., the formal, the informal, the hidden, and the negated curriculum. Various data sources were categorized accordingly, e.g., overarching policy documents; social events; timetables and prescribed texts; physical teaching spaces; espoused values, and underlying assumptions modelled during assessment in teaching and learning spaces. Results: Following the four rules of knowledge-formation that ensued from an archaeology analysis, the contemporary reification of the historical markers was problematised through various technologies of power and self, as well modes of reasoning. Examples are pervasive white demographics of both students and faculty reifying cognitive monopoly and mono-cultural epistemologies; the rationalization of highly ritualized (over)assessment of students suppressing adult-to-adult transactionalism in andragogy practices; the reproduction of mono-cultural epistemologies in clinical training operating in the hidden curriculum. Final considerations: Consciously dismantling the rationalising strategies for the continuation of discriminatory patterns of inclusion and exclusion in a curriculum, can open a space for critical dialogue, disruption, and reconfiguration of a curriculum-as-discourse towards social justice, and epistemic freedom in (higher) education.
... This notion has helped me to better conceptualize the commonalities and specific differences of these diverse fields and currents. It gave me a better understanding of what they have to offer their par- Foucault 2005. I would like to thank Jens Schlieter, Bastiaan van Rijn and Sarah Perez for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. ...
... With this theme of the care of the self, we have then, if you like, an early philosophical formulation, appearing clearly in the fifth century B.C. of a notion which permeates all Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman philosophy, as well as Christian 20 Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of The Subject: Lectures at The College De France, 1981-1982(2005 spirituality, up to the fourth and fifth century A.D. In short, with this notion of epimeleia heautou we have a body of work defining a way of being, a standpoint, forms of reflection, and practices which make it an extremely important phenomenon not just in the history of representations, notions, or theories, but in the history of subjectivity itself or, if you like, in the history of practices of subjectivity. 26 Furthermore, by ascertaining the notion of care of the self, we can see how this framework helps to culminate his critical aim. ...
Since 2016, the rise of post-truth politics has created a situation of democratic discontent in the west. While many scholars tend to regard post-truth politics as a threat to democratic order, I would like to propose that what we have been witnessing in this form of politics has been the transformation of the democratic ethos. By turning to Michel Foucault’s lecture on the true life of Diogenes of Sinope, delivered at College De France in 1984, I ascertain the framework for demonstrating how we can approach a new shape of democratic ethos in our era of post-truth politics. I argue that in Diogenes’s true life, Foucault saw the concrete life, which could liberate each individual from the constraints of their conventional lives by emphasizing the material conditions of all human bodies. Diogenes’s life could then be a form of self-emancipation since it not only showed how untrue the conventional life was but also released each individual from any conventions estranged from them. Relying on this point, I propose the notion of untruth as the new ground of our democratic lives. Though post-truth politics destroys the objective form of truth, the untruth—as its main element—can play a leading role in grounding our democratic ethos to the extent that it asserts our capability of self-emancipation.
... The parrhesiast is the one who makes the decision of "speaking freely;" 61 the one "who has the courage to risk telling the truth, and who risks this truth-telling in a pact with himself, 53 See "Tales of Murder," 208. 54 See "(P)rendre la parole," 21. 55 Michel Foucault, The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982-1983 (2010), 6. 56 Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-1982] (2005, 372. 57 Foucault, The Government of Self and Others,66. ...
This article intends to focus on some of the possibilities for analysis and reflection that emerge from the reading of I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, my brother: a 1973 text, edited by Foucault, which develops from the recognition of the potency inherent in the act of speech by the speechless. Pierre Rivière is in fact considered the one who, through but also beyond his terrible deed, has the (entirely political) ability to take the risk of “challenging power.” It is precisely by means of this act that he undertakes a process of desubjection and subjectivation, imposing disruptive and scandalous truths and discourses against other truths and discourses recognized as dominant and more authoritative. Pierre Rivière's Memoir cannot therefore be investigated as a confession; rather, it has to do with parrhēsia, anticipating many of the Foucauldian reflections on the subject, which would not be developed until several years later. Moreover, it does not really concern an isolated individual. The subject Rivière speaks of is one who not only rises up for his own part but also paves the way for the many without a part, thus outlining the possibilities of constructing a collective “we” that aims to conquer a political space. From here the question arises: “Who, in our present, might the Pierre Rivières be?” A question that has nothing to do with the tragic facts of the parricide but which allows us to explore what Pierre Rivière enables us to think and say today.
... This penitent 'care of the self' commenced with Socrates who deserved "being called The Sage" through reaching "the point of despising himself" (Montaigne 1993, 427), continued with the kynics' uncompromising self-humiliation, thereupon the early Christians' never-ending torment and punishing of their sinful selves, in order to reach modernity with Michel de Montaigne's persistent self-devaluation: "it seems to me that it would be hard for anyone to esteem himself less than I do" (Montaigne 1993, 722). Yet, however emancipating is this practice of a self-interrogating truth-telling and however bravely it counters the politically established techniques of controlling individuals -as Foucault has shown at length in his Subjectivity and Truth (Foucault 2017) and The Hermeneutics of the Subject (Foucault 2005) -it amounts to an act of Introduction: Co-implicated literatures 13 personal choice and courage that, on closer inspection, testifies to a social privilege: ...
... Regarding individual selves and subjectivities, it is safe to argue that an influential theoretical approach is Michel Foucault's perspective on the formation of the modern subject (Foucault 2005) and the classic Greek and Christian genealogies of the ethics and care of the self (Foucault 2017). The Foucauldian approach to the self-departs from studies of identities, at least in three respects. ...
The “multiple secularities” framework may be regarded as a recent ambitious contribution to the comparative analysis of secularisms across Western and non-Western societies. While I argue in this article for the “historicization” of secularities as proposed by the framework, I also point out the latter’s lack of empirical attention to the subjective dimension of historical secularities. More specifically, the article attempts to show the theoretical relevance of analyzing historical secularities in post-colonial societies from the perspective of the subjects and their complex selves. Through a genealogical analysis of the subjectivities of three influential positivist intellectuals in 19th-century Mexico, I argue that the analytical axes of the multiple secularities framework may be refined and broadened. I discuss how the framework’s search for local forms of “conceptual distinctions” should be complemented by the search for conceptual erasures and how the analysis of “semantic hybridity” should be broadened and include the analysis of experiential and emotional forms of hybridizations. I also argue that the analyses of historical secularities should account for “sacred-secular” hybrids, as well as more specific hybridizations, such as ecclesiological–secular and theological–secular transpositions.
... Attributes to determine identity can be categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, citizenship and socioeconomic status (Cover, 2016). Suggested by Foucault are steps for self-care which includes developing perceptions of the self (Foucault, 2001). ...
Publicamos la versión en español de este capítulo, un texto que apareció publicado originalmente en inglés como el capítulo cuatro de la siguiente referencia: Lemke, T. (2021). Material-Discursive Entanglements: Grasping the Concept of the Dispositive. En The Government of Things. Foucault and the New Materialisms. Nueva York: New York University Press. Agradecemos a la editorial y al autor que nos cedieron los derechos para la publicación y difusión de la versión en español.
This paper draws attention to Foucault’s 1981/82 lecture series on The Hermeneutics of the Self . These contain perhaps the only direct reference Foucault ever made to the topic of old age. In them, he observes how, in the first and second centuries of the Common Era, Greco-Roman philosophy shifted its emphasis from ‘knowing thyself’ to ‘becoming one’s self’. While these writers saw the practice of the arts of living as desirable at every stage of life, they considered them most effectively cultivated in later life, when the individual is least constrained by the subjectifications imposed by the world. Their focus upon the ‘arts of living’ was later replaced by what Foucault considererd a ‘rules of living’ approach, evident in the early Christian church teachings, and later by the institutions of the state. Foucault’s endorsement of the art of living in later life can in turn be contrasted with other modern thinkers who have perpetuated such ‘rules of living’ approaches. Set against Foucault’s support for an aesthetics of lifestyle, writers working largely within an ageing studies/gerontology framework have advocated what might be called a public health endorsed agenda to age actively or successfully or have prescribed other morally desirable pathways for older people to develop integrity, self-realisation and/or bodily transcendence. Foucault’s advocacy of an art of living in later life has been neglected by those using his work to emphasise the governance, rather than the freedoms of old age. Drawing attention to these overlooked lectures may help re-balance this view.
The article compares and analyses two approaches to the production of subjectivity — Foucauldian and Girardian — within the context of contemporary political philosophy and philosophical anthropology. These two theories—which are arguably dominant in their respective fields—are compared due to their shared focus on the role of power and violence in the formation of the subject. Both approaches acknowledge the importance of power in shaping the self, but they differ in their emphasis on specific aspects of this process. In the Foucauldian approach, power is seen as a pervasive and complex force that permeates all aspects of society, while in Girardian theory it is understood as a more localized and intentional form of domination. Despite these differences, both approaches share a common understanding that the subject is shaped through the application of power techniques, including the use of violence. However, each approach places a different emphasis on the role of these techniques in the formation of identity and agency. Thus, in Foucauldian thought, violence internalized and instrumentalized by power through its localization in institutions is external to the individual — who appears to be a passive recipient of subjectifying practices; this also reflects the “political capture of the body” by biopower as the infection of the individual by power and self-control, and, consequently, becoming a mediator of power oneself. In contrast, the Girardian perspective—in which mimesis is the primary condition for the formation and operation of society—asserts the supremacy of violence around which institutions form, due to which violence is only partially removed from the individual. Thus the role of being violence’s operator is imposed upon them — though in a depoliticized form not directly linked to power structures. Both theories of the reproduction of subjectivity, in one way or another, diagnose and describe the crisis of the individual. They therefore propose their own solutions for overcoming this crisis. However, they share the common understanding that subjectivity is rooted in the individual. As a result, the strategies proposed by Foucault and Girard, such as self-care practices and radical Christianity, which are not formed by external power, do not transcend power or mimesis.
This chapter anchors the third and last interconnected tenet in support of Emerson as a reading theorist: reading as a social and relational enterprise. Emerson’s ideas suggest that there is value in shared reading experiences among students, and these shared reading practices are seated in a practice of ethics that emphasizes the importance of sustaining healthy minds and bodies through reading transactions. Such caring for oneself discourages readers from self-indulgence and instead asks that readers see the health of others as of equal importance to their own. This social component to reading transactions is integral to Emersonian reading practices, and communicating to students that they are responsible to themselves as well as to each other can build trust in the literature classroom. When the social and relational aspect of reading is engaged during reading transactions, readers can be encouraged to make the shift from maintaining their self-health to recognizing not only their self-worth but that their lives are as meaningful as the literary works of art they study and to envision their own lives as works of art. This shift affords students the power to read creatively and communally, and it builds confidence in their abilities to grasp their roles as critical readers and compassionate community members.
Chapter 6, “The Parrhesiastic P(a)ct”, charts the consideration on the part of both Foucault and Lacan of an ethic of the ‘discursive act’ to highlight the ethico-political stakes that inform their work. I identify ‘freedom’ in Foucault and ‘polymorphous perversion’ in Lacan as key factors that define the ontological precarity—the shifting and uncertain context—in which ethics emerges. I argue that Foucault and Lacan both formulate an account of ethics centered on the act of speaking which does not suppose the fixity or rigidity of identity as its ground. I differentiate an ethics of speaking from an ethics of coincidence with oneself or one of confession and self-disclosure. Drawing on Lacan’s L schema, I explain how his concept of ‘full-speech’ and later account of the ethic of the well-spoken (bien-dire) is correlated with the implication of the speaking subject in the enjoyment that her symptom denounces. The discursive context in which speech introduces a critical interruption that modifies the speaker’s mode of being is equally explored in Foucault’s analysis of the ancient practice of parrhesia in which the speaker uses their free courage to demonstrate reflexivity toward their own position of enunciation. Chapter 6 provides a picture of psychoanalytic praxis as an act that transpires inside the frame of speech and depends on the position of the Analyst to maintain that frame.
Chapter 7, “Towards a New Erotics”, reflects on the juncture in which each thinker approaches the question of subjectivity not in terms of who we must be, but how we might live in the world without the supposition of a fundamental or unproblematic identity, or where it becomes the object of analysis. I examine erotic experience through the lens of an affective encounter, highlighting the Imaginary dimension in which the relationship between analyst and analysand unfolds in the analytic situation. Drawing on Seminar VIII: Transference (1960–62), I introduce Lacan’s claim that transference manifests itself as a love of knowledge, reflecting on how the Analyst embodies the address for love through an engagement with the Real. Shifting the discussion to Foucault’s analysis of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, I consider two erotic domains (‘care’ and ‘psychagogy’) in which philosophy is understood not as a form of knowledge dependent on the Master’s reason, but rather a certain style of discourse that aims at transforming both the speaker and the listener. Chapter 7 concludes with a reflection on my own subjective encounter with Lacan and Foucault as erotic thinkers and the way in which the eros of their thought can be linked to ethical experience.
This paper attempts to bring together a series of ideas/concepts from the work of Isabelle Stengers, Didier Debaise, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Anna Tsing and others in order to apply them to the notion ‘after progress,’ which has some bearing on the theme of this special issue on degrowth. As Savransky and Lundy (2022) argue, ‘the notion of “progress” is arguably the defining idea of modernity’. Whilst this idea of progress has been the object of criticism, its prevalence is still pervasive. But what would living after progress or following a degrowth agenda look like, particularly within contexts of educational policy and practice? After progress perhaps another education is possible. The paper takes on board this suggestion, and rather than viewing education in schools and elsewhere in terms of its current concerns in the West with individual achievement, competition, and standards, we see it as promoting diversity, conviviality, working, thinking, agreeing and disagreeing in common.
Can a person use dangerous substances and still take care oneself and be healthy? Is it right to give people directions and tools for using substances, which, in the worst case, could be lethal to them? This article provides empirical examples of practices and policies designed to offer those who inject drugs opportunities and methods for taking care of themselves and, thus, the chance to lead a more balanced life, in spite of it all. Images of problem drug use have traditionally been associated with despair and devastating marginalization. Harm-reduction policies, initiated in the 1980s to combat the spread of HIV and other blood-borne viruses among drug users, raised the issue of drug use in the context of health and healthcare, and gave users new ways to think about themselves. Critics refer to this development as "biopower, " in which drug users have become "docile bodies, " who are expected to follow safe injecting practices and other such procedures under the surveillance of healthcare professionals. However, the users themselves have been more positive and consider harm-reduction policies not only as life saving, but life altering. This article touches on different aspects of harm-reduction policies in the context of the Foucauldian discussion of "care of the self. " A somaesthetic framework is applied to understanding harm reduction as a set of practices in which helping drug users goes through their body and not through their will, as in traditional approaches to addiction. Focusing on the body provides users with new ways of thinking about their existence and relationships with themselves and others.
It is demonstrated that the contemporary sociocultural reality exhibits a dichotomy between the normative and the actual in addressing the issue of the security of personal privacy, the human right to privacy. Losses of private life, which are a tendency of modern social life, indicate increasingly rapid risks of alienation of privacy in social reality. It is emphasized that modern technologies can significantly violate the human right to privacy, penetrate into private spaces and individual aspects of private life, and alter the locus of privacy. It is argued that contemporary information and digital technologies, while ambivalently impacting the freedom and security of personal existence, radically narrow the boundaries of realizing the right to privacy, thereby problematizing the structures of human self-identity and generating vulnerability in personal life.
Undoubtedly, Ibn Sina is the most important philosopher in the Islamic world. Understanding his thought requires new readings that can enable us to comprehend and explain philosophy in the Islamic world more accurately. To this end, in the first step of this research, the concept of philosophy in Ibn Sina's view has been analyzed. This analysis is refined in the reading of the idea of philosophy as a way of life, whose architect is the French philosopher Pierre Hadot. Hadot's work on ancient philosophy challenged the understanding of that period by contemporary philosophers. It seems that such a reading can also be applied on the philosophy in the Islamic world. This can be better understood in light of the Muslim philosophers' view of happiness. To this end, by presenting a holistic view of Ibn Sina's thought, we will show that Ibn Sina's existential view is consistent with his philosophical system. It seems that such an explanation offers a more useful reading of Ibn Sina in Hadot's idea. Therefore, to achieve this goal, this research has attempted to briefly explain the importance of the question of what philosophy is among contemporary thinkers and then present a theory of philosophy as a way of life. In the following, an attempt has been made to examine the concept of philosophy in Ibn Sina's thought with the aforementioned idea and an analysis of the necessity of accepting Ibn Sina's holistic system.
Starting from the premise, recently shared by authors such as Jacques Derrida and Pierre Macherey (for whom a state of crisis is inherent to the university) that of the humanities constitute the specific terrain in which to propose new experiments, this article attempts to verify what is at stake in an approach to philosophy as a way of life, in the context of the current academic form. In doing so, following Hadot and Foucault, it describes philosophical spirituality, and conversion, as the determining elements of a philosophy connected to the practices of existence. Secondly, it shows how the criticisms of the philosophy linked to the state, of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bourdieu-as well as the criticisms of the philosophy linked to the neoliberal market-determine the urgency of thinking of a philosophy as spirituality within universities. In what terms, however, is it possible to practice this philosophy without changing the very forms of the contemporary county university? And how is it possible to change the contemporary university without giving philosophy the utopian place it deserves?
One of Foucault’s main objectives in the Hermeneutics of the Subject is to determine the extent to which the principle of the care of the self was key throughout the whole of Antiquity. Foucault attempts to trace the genealogy of this phenomenon because it constitutes one of the most fundamental moments in the historical and genealogical formation of the modern subject. According to Foucault, the fact that the Alcibiades presents a philosophical theory of the care of the self is what makes it a key moment in the philosophical history of such a concept. In Foucault’s view, ἑαυτόν (129b, 130e) does not correspond to any specific content of the self but to the intrinsic reflexivity the reflexive pronoun points to, the constitutive fact that the self is first and foremost a relation to itself rather than a substance. The association of the Alcibiades with three other Platonic dialogues (the Phaedo, the Symposium and the Republic) regarding the topic of the primacy of self-knowledge over self-care produces a change in Foucault’s understanding of the conception of the soul’s nature, namely from a conception of the soul as an activity to a conception of it as a substance. The difference in meaning between θεῖον and ὁ θεός (133c) allows the existence of these two different readings of the nature of the soul in the Alcibiades. Foucault, however, takes them as being one and the same.
Одна из главных задач Фуко в «Герменевтике субъекта» – определить, в какой степени принцип заботы о себе оставался ключевым на протяжении всей античности. Фуко стремится отследить генеалогию этого явления, поскольку оно составляет один из основополагающих моментов исторического и генеалогического формирования современного субъекта. Согласно Фуко, тот факт, что «Алкивиад» содержит философскую теорию заботы о себе, делает этот диалог ключевым моментом в философской истории данного понятия. Как полагает Фуко, ἑαυτόν (129b, 130e) соотносится не с каким-то определенным содержанием субъекта, но с внутренней возвратностью, на которую и указывает возвратное местоимение, с определяющим фактом того, что субъект есть прежде всего некое отношение к себе, а не какая-то субстанция. Сопоставлением «Алкивиада» с тремя другими платоновскими диалогами («Федоном», «Пиром» и «Государством») в отношении примата самопознания над самозаботой обусловлено изменение в понимании Фуко представления о природе души: от представления о душе как деятельности он переходит к представлению о душе как сущности. Семантическое различие между θεῖον и ὁ θεός (133c) допускает оба эти различающиеся прочтения природы души в «Алкивиаде». Фуко, однако, воспринимает их как одно и то же.
This chapter brings together a series of articles that explore the intricate relationship between space and knowledge production and consumption and, in the process, highlights the erasure of storied histories and philosophies of indigenous landscapes, and curates innovative, multicultural, inclusive, and eco-conscious pedagogical practices to reinhabit the educational landscapes of time.
Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) argues that the project of autonomy appears in only two societies throughout human history: ancient Greece and Western Europe. Is this true? The present study examines the case of the Iroquois Confederacy with the intention of testing Castoriadis’s argument. Using the debate between Castoriadis and the members of mauss as its starting point, it interprets historic Iroquois institutions with reference to what Castoriadis presents as the two inextricably linked conditions of an autonomous society: democracy and philosophy. Ultimately, the essay contends that while Castoriadis justifiably interprets the Iroquois Confederacy as heteronomous, the confederacy’s democratic institutions compel us to doubt the necessary connection he posits between democracy and philosophy. Iroquois society created a heteronomous democracy, a type of polity that Castoriadis’s theory of autonomy occludes.
The article describes such systemic anthropological characteristics of thinking as multidimensionality, projectivity, inclusion in life relationships, transtemporality, and nonlinearity. On the one hand, these characteristics are inconvenient phenomenological "anomalies" for the classical psychology of thinking. On the other hand, in the context of progressive anthropologization of psychological cognition and interdisciplinary discourse, they make it possible to study thinking in a more holistic and human context, as well as to establish new conceptual links between the psychology of thinking and the psychology of human existence. Thinking is a multidimensional and nonlinear act that simultaneously unfolds in several registers of one’s mentality, capturing a variety of temporal, active, and noetic aspects of one’s being. The projective function of thinking consists in overcoming event uncertainty, building a semantic markup of living space, and producing semantic orientations in the activity and existential dimensions of the living environment. The fact that thinking is part of one’s life relationships ensures the integrity and transtemporal continuity of one’s life world. According to the polyphonic principle of mental dynamics, the dialectic unity of its spatial-temporal and modal correlations unfolds at each moment of thinking.
In his text Subject and Power (1982), written two years before his death, Foucault stated that the central theme of his research was not "power" but the "subject." His lecture series Subjectivity and Truth (1980-1981) and The Hermeneutics of the Subject (1981-1982) also confirmed this emphasis, particularly as he considered the overarching problematic of these lectures to be "subjectivity and truth," demonstrating that the subject must become problematized in relation to truth. Finally, in the preface to The History of Sexuality (1984), eight years after the first volume was published, he provided a general outline of his intellectual trajectory and explained why he shifted toward "genealogy." Based on this introduction, the present article, after explaining how the subject relates to the network of power and truth, concludes that the method and approach to studying the subject are "genealogy and problematization." The domain of inquiry into the recognition and construction of the self as a subject is the history of the desiring human and, consequently, sexuality. In fact, the "techniques of the self" associated with the system of sexuality maintain the individual's constant relationship with themselves, which results in the continuous production of subjectivity. Therefore, by studying the history of these techniques, one can arrive at the history of subjectivity. However, this history only leads to the genealogy of the subject when we analyze the intersection of techniques of the self and domination, which is essentially the meaning of "governmentality"—the governance of behavior and the management of possibilities through various truth games. Thus, it is concluded that sexuality is not only an appropriate domain for genealogical study of the history of subjectivity and techniques of the self but also a rich field for understanding governmentality and the more complex ways in which power functions.
The subject of my analysis is a review of the public engagement of Sarajevo writer and intellectual, Ivan Lovrenović. I am primarily interested in his transition from engaged interventionism to explaining the milieu of postbellum Bosnia and Herzegovina, evident in his writings, and his self-reflection on his own particular engagement. Essential for my analysis is the moment of the author’s transition from a phase of active participation in the public debate regarding the form of the state, i.e., Bosnia and Herzegovina and its cultural community, to the position of an outsider by choice, i.e., withdrawing to the sphere of “good solitude”. This stage, however, does not mean resignation from the attitude of the committed intellectual and complete abandonment of activism for change within the social and political space. In my opinion, Lovrenović does not turn away from the world in which he lives, nor does he rid himself of a sense of responsibility. Rather, he gradually shifts from journalism towards literary fiction. The main interpretative material spurring the present analysis is Lovrenović’s Sizifova sreća [Sisyphus’s Happiness, 2018], which overall offers an interesting example of the revision of his public engagement, while a broader timeframe of my reflections covers the years 1994–2018.
Cilj ovoga rada je analizirati način na koji novi mediji u BiH posreduju ideologije i politike sjećanja do generacije mladih koji je nemaju individualna iskustva/sjećanja vezana za rat 1992.-1995. U radu su temeljem ankete ispitani stavovi mladih spram prošlosti, te identificirati najpopularniji web-portali i u njima selektirani sadržaji koji se tiču traumatičnih događaja iz ratnog perioda u BiH. Analizom konteksta u kome se koriste narativi vezani za prošlost nastojale su se identificirati ideološke matrice i obrasci putem kojih se kreira (novo)medijski diskurs, a posredno i diskurs mladih. Pretpostavka rada je da diskurs mladih spram ratne prošlosti u BiH po svojoj naravi korespondira naravi novih medija to jest da je fluidan, nepostojan i izvankontekstualan i kao takav nedovoljan da postane značajan kanal kreiranja kolektivnog pamćenja bez obzira na ideološki framing novomedijskih sadržaja.
Michel Foucault's essay 'The Subject and Power' has seen four decades. It is the most quoted of Foucault's shorter texts and exerts a persistent influence across the social sciences and humanities. The essay merges two main trajectories of Foucault's research in the 1970s: his gene-alogies of legal-disciplinary power and his studies of pastoral power and governance. This article connects these two trajectories to Althusser's thesis on the ideological state apparatuses, demonstrating affinities between Althusser's thesis and Foucault's diagnosis of the welfare state as a 'ma-trix' of individualising and totalising power. The article suggests that Foucault's essay straddles between two different concepts of subjectivation. First, one encounters the citizen 'internally sub-jugated' by disciplinary and pastoral power, whereas, at the end, we find a 'flat' subject of govern-ance; a form of power which intervenes only in the environment in which individuals make their rational, self-fashioning choices. The implication of Foucault's newfound concept of governance is a weakening of the link between subjectivation and the formation of the state, which also meant that the state's role in reproducing capitalism receded into the background of Foucauldian scholarship. Finally, the article suggests extending Foucault's analytical 'matrix' to current techniques of subjectivation associated with the advent of big data and artificial intelligence, which buttress the expansive technique of predictive profiling.
This article represents an attempt to draw attention to the practical ways in which you can teach students how to theorize in sociology; and it does so in the form of a personal memoir. By theorizing is approximately meant the actual and practical use of theory in the research process. The purpose of the course in theorizing that I have been teaching since 2010 is to complement traditional courses in theory, in which the students learn the content of theory but not how to use it in a practical way. The article describes how the course in theorizing that I teach is structured. A central message is that exercises represent a powerful method for teaching students how to theorize; and that these should preferably draw on empirical material that the students themselves collect. Given the current lack of literature on how to teach theorizing in sociology, it is hoped that this text can inspire other sociologists to start teaching courses on this topic.
The Western philosophy depicts during the 80s a process that I would qualify as an authentic performative turn that regards the human subject as nothing more than the "vector" of its series of exercises, foldings, repetitions. The recent work of P. Sloterdijk is located in this framework of "antropotechnics". I shall focus my attention on two of the texts where Sloterdijk is discussing Cioran. First, I shall do an assessment of the interpretation advanced by Sloterdijk of the notorious paragraph on "flesh" (Paleontology), a text by Cioran which seems at the same time phenomenological and anti-phenomenological, metaphysical and anti-metaphysical. Then, I shall discuss Sloterdijk"s understanding of Cioran"s self-writing as a sui generis asceticism involving a daily exercise in erasing any "infection" epicenter of firm belief and commitment, any kind of faith in the future or in oneself, adding that it is also a paradoxical testimony for the "miracle" of every living moment. This way, Cioran as an ascetic, "autopatographer" and "hunger artist" becomes a key figure in this gallery of the new "arts of living", an important link in the historical process of "the informalization of spirituality". He is the "anti-stoic" and pseudo-Buddhist master of demobilization, "the first master of not-getting-anywhere".
This chapter examines the historical context and evolution of teaching methods in Swedish teacher education. In doing so, it historicizes the ongoing debates about the quality of teacher education in Sweden and the perceived lack of instruction in teaching methods. Drawing on analysis of guidelines, government reports, recommendations, and curricula spanning from 1842 to the early 21st century, the chapter highlights changes in political reasoning about teaching, learning, and the organization of teacher education. The analysis reveals that teaching has been conceptualized in various ways throughout history. Early approaches viewed teaching as a technique for organizing and monitoring student progress. Later, teaching came to be seen as an art requiring not only good knowledge of the subject matter but also creativity and talent. With the subsequent “scientifiсation” of teacher training and its gradual incorporation into higher education in the late 1960s, the course on teaching methodology came to be perceived as normative, emphasizing reproducible skills and best practices. As a result, by the end of the 20th century, it was replaced by the course in Didaktik, which, instead of providing teacher students with ready-made methods, focuses on critical evaluation of teaching based on relevant research. This does not mean that the question of teaching methods has disappeared from Swedish teacher education programs. However, in the highly differentiated educational system, it is handled differently by different institutions.
This chapter introduces the ideas behind the book, the International Teacher Education Research Collective (ITERC), and key concepts that have been central to both ITERC's work and this book. The notion of discontent is integral, as all of the chapters in this volume touch upon notes of discomfort as regards current and hegemonic discourses of education, in particular the efficiency-driven and result-oriented discourses. The book has three primary aims, namely: to illustrate and critique the ethical, epistemological, and political discourses shaping teacher education; identify and unravel the entanglements of politics, knowledge, and ethics in teacher education in a range of international settings; and revitalize teacher education by proposing and exploring alternative modes of thought and practice. With inspiration from Giorgio Agamben's writing on “the contemporary” and the essay as a particular form of writing, this chapter frames the book as an example of collective writing that notes disconcerting developments in several different national contexts. Finally, the different contributions to the book are described shortly and set in relation to the overarching themes of the book.
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