Foucault's Technologies of the Self: Between Control and Creativity

References

• Michel Foucault and Rex Martin, “Truth, Power, Self: An Interview“, in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. H. Gutman, P. H. Hutton, L. H. Martin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), p.9. Hereafter this work will be cited as ‘Truth, Power, Self’.
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• Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1990), p.6.
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• Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 42. Hereafter this work will be cited as CS.
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• Discipline and Punish predates Foucault's explicit discussions of government, but it does consider how structures such as the Panopticon contribute to the formation of disciplinary subjectivity. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), passim. Hereafter this work will be cited as DP. Retrospectively Foucault also describes his research here as implicitly if not explicitly concerning the problem of government or the conduct of conduct in The Government of Self and Others, trans. G. Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 4. Hereafter this work will cited as GSO.
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• Nancy Luxon suggests that Foucault's late work is a response to the problem of articulating a mode of subjectivity not determined by relations of power, but she does not discuss how, if our relations with others inescapably involve relations of power, we might achieve this autonomy through our relations with others. Furthermore, her focus is on the constitution of an ethical subject and she does not explore how self-constitution might play an essential role in resisting and challenging existing power orders. See Nancy Luxon's “Ethics and Subjectivity: Practices of Self-Governance in the Late Lectures of Michel Foucault”, Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy, 3(2008), pp. 377–402. Edward MuGushin places emphasis on the philosophical problem of the concept of subjectivity and how the notion of transformation through the care of the self requires re-thinking what a subject is. His focus is on the deconstruction of the philosophical subject and not on the problem of resistance within the context of power relations, which I am engaging with here. See Edward MuGushin, “Foucault and the Problem of the Subject”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 5–6(2005), pp. 623–648. Frédéric Gros also emphasises that Foucault's late concern with practices of self-constitution is distinct from the earlier history of subjectivation. I in contrast am exploring how this latter work might help us respond to the earlier problematic. See Gros, “Le souci de soi chez Michel Foucault”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 31 5–6 (2005), pp. 697–708.
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• See C. Colwell, “The Retreat of the Subject in the Late Foucault“, Philosophy Today, 1(1994), pp. 56–69; Brenda Hofmeyr, “The Power Not to Be (What We Are): The Politics and Ethics of Self-Creation in Foucault”, Journal of Moral Philosophy: An International Journal of Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy, 2(2006), pp. 215–230; Alan Schrift, “Foucault: Genealogy, Power, and the Reconfiguration of the Subject” in Nietzsche's French Legacy: a Genealogy of Poststructuralism (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 34–58.
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• Kevin Thompson, “Forms of resistance: Foucault on tactical reversal and self-formation“, Continental Philosophy Review, 2(2003), pp. 113–138.
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• Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978), p.82. Hereafter this work will be cited as HS 1.
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• Colin Gordon, “Governmental Rationality: An Introduction“ in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, P. Miller eds., Foucault Effect (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), p.5.
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• John Protevi, “What does Foucault think is New about Neoliberalism?”, Pli; The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 21(2010), pp. 75–76.
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• Michel Foucault, “Governmentality“ in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, P. Miller eds., Foucault Effect, p.102.
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• Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self” in Technologies of the Self; A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. H. Gutman, P. H. Hutton, L. H. Martin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1988), p. 19. Hereafter TS.
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• Michel Foucault, “Subject and Powerw” in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and HermeneuticsGutman, eds. H. L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982), p. 221.
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• Kevin Thompson, “Forms of resistance: Foucault on tactical reversal and self-formation“, p.117.
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• Ibid., p.120.
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• Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982, trans. G. Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) p. 252. Hereafter HoS.
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• Michel Foucault, “The Ethics for the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom“ in Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984: Volume 1, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 292.
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• Kevin Thompson, “Forms of resistance: Foucault on tactical reversal and self-formation“, p.121.
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• Foucault, “Subject and Power“, p.208.
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• Michel Foucault, “Society Must be Defended“ in Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984: volume 1, p.59.
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• C. Colwell, “The Retreat of the Subject in the Late Foucault“, Philosophy Today, 1(1994), p. 65.
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• This point has been emphasised in opposition to the view that Foucault's late work represents a retreat to the self by, for example, Gros and Luxon. Gros counters accusations that Foucault's late philosophy is overly individualistic with the claim that: “care of the self is not a solitary activity that severs the individual who gives himself or herself over to it from the world, but rather constitutes on the contrary an intensified social relation.” Gros, “Le souci de soi chez Michel Foucault”, p. 701; Luxon, “Ethics and Subjectivity: Practices of Self-Governance in the Late Lectures of Michel Foucault”, Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy, 3(2008), 377–402.
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• Frédéric Gros, “Le souci de soi chez Michel Foucault“, p. 701.
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• Foucault, “Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom“, p. 291–2.
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• Ibid., p. 298.
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• Ibid.
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• Ibid., p. 292.
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• Alan Schrift, “Foucault: Genealogy, Power, and the Reconfiguration of the Subject“, in Nietzsche's French Legacy: a Genealogy of Poststructuralism, London: Routledge, 1995, p. 53.
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• Foucault, “Truth, Power, Self“, p.14.
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• Foucault, “Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom“, p. 291.
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• Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, eds. M. Clark and B. Leiter, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 4–5, (translation modified).
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• Paul Patton, “Foucault's Subject of Power” in The later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy Jeremy Moss, (London: Sage Publications, 1998), p. 71.
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• Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Seàn Hand, (London: Continuum, 2006), p.84.
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• Seneca, On Anger, III, 36 cited in CS, p.61.
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• Michel Foucault and Mark Blasius, “About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth“, Political Theory, 21, 1993: 198–226, p. 216.
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• Ibid., p. 218.
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• Ibid., p. 216.
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• Ibid., p. 222.
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• Ibid.
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• Foucault, “Concern for the Self as a Practice of Freedom“, p. 282.
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• Ibid.
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• Kevin Thompson, “Forms of resistance: Foucault on tactical reversal and self-formation“, p.114.
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