Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:18:04 +1000 From: cameron duff <cameron.duff-AT-mailbox.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: "confused" At 08:05 18/10/1999 -0700, you wrote: >Hello, >I am on another list and the following "confusion" was written >about. >" I am very confused about a couple of issues, please help me! >First, I am confused that a therapist would read Foucault and decide to >talk about dominant discourses that oppress. Foucault also wrote about >technologies of self which open up new possibilities for living life and >being a person. Indeed, he called it an ethic of free choice through >which people continously produce themselves. So, how come, we don't hear >about this ethic of free choice? I'm so confused." >Laura > >Hi Laura! You're correct in identifying a deficiency in the secondary literature with respect of Foucault's later work on technologies of the self and an aesthetics of existence. It surprises me that there hasn't been a more enthusiatic exploration of the potential of an ethics of self-fashioning which seems at the very least to address the problem of resistance and transgression in ways that Foucault's earlier material perhaps does not. I'm not sure, however, that it's wise to think of Foucault's ethics as entirely voluntarist or volitional; a misapprehension implied by describing Foucault's ethics as an exercise in free choice. Whilst, of course the problem of self-fashioning suggests a practice whereby the self develops a relationship qua self in which the creation of alternative modes of experiencing subjectivity and the body is explored; however, the suggestion that such a practice is somehow outside of prevailing regimes of power and subjectivation is not something Foucault would have entertained. Practices of the self are not invented by the self (well very, very rarely!) but rather are suggested or perhaps even imposed upon the self by the cultural environment in which one finds oneself. So the extent to which such an exercise represents free deliberation or rational choice seems quite problematic. In this sense, modern practices of subjectivation will always imvolve a complex network of relations of power/knowledge and subjection, as well as the subject's own ethical practices which may or may not subvert existing power relations. Hence the need for careful genealogical inquiry which deploying the axes of truth, power and ethics, might allow the specific intellectual to begin making claims about the effects of certain practices and the political ramifications of existing identities and techniques of subjectivation. With respect of Foucault and therapy, I think Foucault would be very suspicious of a formal therapeutic practice that sought to incorporate some of his insights re self-fashioning whilst retaining the formal distiction between analyst and analysand. Too much power and not enough resistance! Perhaps an alternative is suggested by the development of a personal ethics understood as the setting of personal rules of conduct whereby the self must decide upon an ethical framework appropriate to one's experience without the mediation of experts and doctors. Anyhow, I've recently heard of a new publication (Adrenne S. Chambon, Allan Irving, Laura Epstein Reading Foucault for Social Work New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) that seems to address these issues in the context of occupational therapies etc. I've not had a chance to have a look at this yet but it might be of interest to you. One I have read is Greco, M. (1998) Illness as a Work of Thought. A Foucauldian Perspective on Psychosomatics. London, Routledge, November 1998. This is a fascinating work that takes on Butler and Foucault in order to interrogate the operations of power through the body as evinced in psychosomatic disorders. Out of left field but well worth a look! Anyway, I don't know if any of this is of any use, but you've raised some important issues which I'm sure others on the list will be eager to engage (hint hint!)... keep up the pressure! cameron duff U of Q Australia
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