File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_1998/foucault.9804, message 23


From: Vunch <Vunch-AT-aol.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 10:56:24 EDT
Subject: Re: subject/self


In a message dated 98-04-17 07:56:15 EDT, you write:

<< "In the discourse of psychoanalytic psychotherapy the subject is a self
which is an object."   >>

I think you avoiding Foucault's emphasis on the power relation behind the
interpretation.  "Object relations" is a temr that is used by psychoanalysts
commonly to describe the relationships that a patient has, or anyone for that
matter.
The term is obviously deprecatory.  The discourse of psychoanalysis is always
over the head and behind the back of the "subject" and so we can hardly speak
of a subject anymore.  The idea of a subject connotes a sense of autonomy,
free will,
self-control, etc...  However, the language of psychoanalysis is decidedly
distorting, as is any power discourse.  If the self is an object, it can
hardly be a subject.

I applaud your intention to fuse the subject-object of our self, but I
disagree that what is going on in power relations is such a fusion, instead, I
feel that pure objectification
and its attendant oppressiveness is more the reality.  I have always read
Foucault as intimating the pervasiveness of strategic thinking and the uses of
power.

   

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