Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 00:17:31 +0100
From: Anders Legarth Schmidt <schmidt-AT-ruc.dk>
Subject: the will to know


Hi everyone,

I will try to follow up on this interesting topic of selfhelp.

I use Rose, Dean as well as Foucault in a project on what might be called
'the active society'. I'm exploring the techniques used towards unemployed
people to promote selfresponsible active individuals. First of all a lot of
these techniques are cources to qualify people to get into the jobmarket
again. They are all some sort of retraining, for example a computer course.
Secondly there are a lot of cources which could be grouped under self help:
'How to get to know your self better' , 'Do you lack self confidence' and
so on. I think they pretty much represent the view on the self in our
culture, almost quoting Rose: That the individual is to search for personal
fulfillment, to excercise choice, to find her true self and so on.

I find this argument very convincing and it seems as if our culture has 'a
will to know', following Foucault. We are colonizing our selves and the
world we live in through the techniques available. Even this list is an
example of that. A few days ago when the list have been quite for a week or
so, people start posting mail like 'anyone out there' and so on. It seems
we all have a will and obligation to know. My point is that the issue of
exploring and improving our selves isn't only visible through self help
litterature, though there it is very obvious. Consider by the way 'child
raring', 'education', 'permanent retraining'. Even by writing this mail I'm
exploring my self.

Best wishes

Anders Schmidt, Denmark, Europe.