Oedipal fragments: Reconsidering the significance of Oedipus for James Bernauer and Michel Foucault

2021 ◽  
pp. 019145372110426
Author(s):  
Corey McCall

This essay reconstructs James Bernauer’s reading of Foucault’s critique of psychoanalysis in his essay “Oedipus, Freud, Foucault” in order to assess the role that Foucault’s critique of psychoanalysis and his reading of Oedipus play in Bernauer’s account of Foucault’s ethics. Along the way, it traces a shift in Foucault’s reading of Oedipus in terms of power and knowledge in Lectures on the Will to Know to rituals of truth or alethurgy in On the Government of the Living. Finally, based on this reading it argues that this shift is relevant for understanding Foucault’s turn toward ethics and practices of the self in his final writings.

Author(s):  
Feng Zhu

This paper aims to critically introduce the applicability of Foucault’s late work, on the practices of the self, to the scholarship of contemporary computer games. I argue that the gameplay tasks that we set ourselves, and the patterns of action that they produce, can be understood as a form of ‘work on the self’, and that this work is ambivalent between, on the one hand, an aesthetic transformation of the self – as articulated by Foucault in relation to the care or practices of the self – in which we break from the dominant subjectivities imposed upon us, and on the other, a closer tethering of ourselves through our own playful impulses, to a neoliberal subjectivity centred around instrumentally-driven selfimprovement. Game studies’ concern with the effects that computer games have on us stands to gain from an examination of Foucault’s late work for the purposes of analysing and disambiguating between the nature of the transformations at stake. Further, Foucault’s tripartite analysis of ‘power-knowledge-subject’, which might be applied here as ‘game-discourse-player’, foregrounds the imbrication of our gameplay practices – the extent to which they are due to us and the way in which our own volitions make us subject to power, which is particularly pertinent in the domain of play.


Author(s):  
Alan Ryan

This chapter examines some unanswered questions in John Stuart Mill's politics, especially with regards to bureaucracy, democracy, and liberty. These questions relate to what Mill thought about the bearing of the way India was governed on the way the United Kingdom should be governed; about the extent to which he had grown out of the anxiety about moral authority that permeated his essay “The Spirit of the Age”; and about the extent to which he felt that he had achieved a stable balance between a utilitarian concern with benevolent management and an “Athenian” concern with the self-assertive, self-critical, engaged, public-spirited, but independent-minded citizen. The chapter first considers Mill's views on the government of India and their implications for his ideas about empire, progress, and pluralism before discussing the issue of authority, along with his arguments in On Liberty.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-127
Author(s):  
Mike Gane

This review article considers two lecture courses by Michel Foucault (1972–73, 1979–80) and two books relating to the whole series of lectures (1970–84) by Stuart Elden. Foucault’s lecture courses can be divided into three phases, the first focused on the difference between sovereign and disciplinary power; the second on biopower, security, and liberalism; and the third on the government of the self and others. Foucault in 1976–79 altered his earlier frame by introducing the concept of governmentality and security dispositif and identified a missing, fourth type of power-governmentality called “socialism,” around which his concerns revolved for the remaining courses. Today there is a new Foucault effect, which has arisen around the courses on governmentality, neoliberalism, and biopower. The two courses by Foucault are situated in relation to the complete set of courses, and Elden’s books are welcomed critically as throwing light on the background to the lectures and Foucault’s main publications in this period but are problematic with respect to Foucault’s theoretical framework.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 67-94
Author(s):  
Igor Corrêa de Barros

Resumo: O presente trabalho tem como objetivo investigar as práticas do cristianismo primitivo, em especial a direção de consciência, à luz do curso Do governo dos vivos, do filósofo francês Michel Foucault. Para o autor, a enunciação do eu e a negação de si exigidas pela direção cristã estão no âmago de uma pluralidade de dispositivos que produzem a subjetividade do homem ocidental – um homem obediente e confidente. Foucault faz uma refinada análise a respeito das continuidades e descontinuidades entre a direção de consciência na filosofia estoica e nos monastérios, e aponta as práticas cristãs como um acontecimento capital para a história da subjetivação ocidental. Palavras-chave: Foucault; Cristianismo; Direção de consciência.   From Greek philosophy to Christian monasticism: the direction of consciousness from the perspective of Michel Foucault Abstract: This work aims to investigate the practices of primitive Christianity, especially the direction of conscience, encompassing On The Government of the Living, by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. According to the author, the enunciation of the self and self-denial required by Christian leadership are at the center of a plurality of devices that produce the subjectivity of the western man –obedient and confidant. Foucault analyses the continuation and discontinuation between the direction of conscience in Stoic philosophy and monasteries, and points out Christian practices as an important event in the history of western subjectivity. Keywords: Foucault; Christianity, direction of conscience.


Author(s):  
Victoria Ten

Korean ki suryŏn (氣修練 cultivation of body and mind using ki-life energy) is becoming more popular internationally. GiCheon (氣天), a particular type of ki suryŏn, is portrayed here as an alchemical practice of embodied knowledge. The term ‘technologies of the self’ (from Michel Foucault) means practices of the self, but here also includes technical tools, such as videos, DVDs, films, and websites. This paper will show how the visual iconography of DVDs advertising GiCheon reflect the values of their creators but also are instrumental for self-cultivation by subtly programming our ways of living, acting, feeling, and perceiving. And when the human body is represented on screen, as it is in ki suryŏn DVDs, then this programming intensifies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (14) ◽  
pp. 306
Author(s):  
Gabriela Menezes Jaquet

O objetivo deste artigo é, de forma geral, discutir a noção de acontecimento enquanto uma das principais categorias para a leitura da obra de Michel Foucault, o que nos permite, a partir de uma determinada operacionalização, compreender todo seu projeto como uma acontecimentalização da história. A fim de especificar este processo, estabelecemos o diagnóstico foucaultiano da Insurreição Iraniana como mote de nossa verificação do acontecimento, em que atentaremos para dois aspectos que convergem no nexo principal do événement: o “poder pastoral” e a “espiritualidade política” conduzindo às novas proposições teóricas sobre a formação do sujeito. Será, assim, a partir do grande eixo da subjetivação que desenvolveremos nossa hipótese de leitura, referente à economia da obra foucaultiana, no que diz respeito ao acento espiritual do poder pastoral e o episódio iraniano como estando já inseridos em um movimento que deveria tentar pensar, continuamente, um sujeito outro. Desta forma, tais temáticas, abarcando a questão de um governo dos outros, carregarão igualmente a necessidade conceitual do governo de si, desenvolvida por Foucault através do “cuidado de si” durante a década de 1980. Para percorrermos este caminho, de uma acontecimentalização do levante no Irã, abordaremos primeiramente o poder pastoral e as contra-condutas no contexto do curso proferido no Collège de France em 1978, Sécurité, territoire, population. Em seguida enfocaremos a noção de “espiritualidade política”, utilizada em sua análise sobre o Irã, a partir de um cruzamento conceitual advindo de estudo pontual de L’Herméneutique du sujet, curso de 1982, a fim de poder explicitar, ao final, como a própria metodologia de uma filosofia do acontecimento procura atingir seu principal alvo, o sujeito, ao pensá-lo enquanto processo, através de um questionamento singular: “como se tornar sujeito sem ser assujeitado?”. Abstract: The aim of this essay is to discuss the notion of event as one of the main categories for reading the work of Michel Foucault. In terms of the way it operates, the event allows us to understand Foucault’s entire project as an eventalization of history. In order to specify this process, we establish Foucault’s diagnosis of the Iranian Insurrection as a verification of the event, in which we attend to two aspects that converge in the main nexus of événement: “pastoral power” and “political spirituality”. Both of these lead to new theoretical propositions on the formation of subject. It is thus from the large axis of subjectivation that we develop our reading hypothesis. With reference to the economy of Foucault’s work, the spiritual tone of pastoral power and the Iranian episode are already inserted in a movement that should attempt to think continuously of an other subject. Such themes, by dealing with the question of a government of others, also bear the conceptual need of the government of self, developed by Foucault through the “care of the self” during the 1980s. To cover the path of an eventalization of the Iranian uprising, we first consider pastoral power and counter-conducts in the framework of the course given at the Collège de France in 1978: Security, Territory, Population. Then we focus on the notion of “political spirituality”, using Foucault’s analysis of Iran, from the conceptual crossing that emerges from the study of the Hermeneutic of the subject course given in 1982. Finally, we seek to explicate how the specific methodology of a philosophy of event aims to reach its main target, the subject, by thinking it as a process by means of a singular question: “how to become a subject without being subjected?”. Keywords: Event; Michel Foucault; Pastoral power; Subjectivation; Contemporary French Philosophy


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 59-88
Author(s):  
S.S. Horujy

Functions and forms, in which the verb is used in spiritual practices and practices related closely to them are analyzed systematically. The following classes of prac¬tices are considered: 1) Eastern-Orthodox hesychasm, 2) Hellenistic practices of the Self (practices of the Roman Stoicism, Cynism and Epicureanism) as they are interpreted by Michel Foucault, 3) Far-Eastern practices as they are represented in Zen-Buddhism. The problem of the sacred word in spiritual practice is discussed. A number of comparative observations and conclusions are obtained concerning, in particular, "hot" and "cool" practices and corresponding kinds of verbality, typolog¬ical distinctions of verbality in Eastern and Western anthropological practices, etc.


MELINTAS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-121
Author(s):  
Konrad Kebung

This article presents the thoughts of Michel Foucault, a cultural historian, philosopher, and intellectual, who brilliantly analyses the historical events of the past as creative criticisms for shaping human attitudes today. Through this historical analysis, Foucault examines the ways in which subjects were formed from classical times to the present. Foucault sees how this process takes a long time, starting from the subject as formed through various discourses to the subject as forming itself. To arrive at the latter, Foucault brings his readers to the classical Greco-Roman era to see how humans live their freedom and responsibilities. He also shows them various practices of the self through meditation and inner examination, as well as the practice of telling the truth (parrhesia) to oneself and to others. All this in the era was known as ethics and also seen as a practice of freedom. For Foucault, life must always be seen as a work of art that requires the attention of the artist from time to time in order to arrive at an art level considered useful and valuable to many people. Foucault calls this an aesthetic of existence, where life is not merely seen as something given, but also that must always be fought for creatively from day to day. Life must be seen as an unstable condition in which there are always cracks, therefore it has to be fixed from time to time. This is what Foucault calls a model of human existence.


2021 ◽  
pp. 019145372098786
Author(s):  
Tamara Caraus

The ancient Cynic Diogenes was the first to declare ‘I am a citizen of the world ( kosmopolitês)’ and the other Cynics followed him. In The Courage of the Truth, Michel Foucault analyses the Cynic mode of parrhēsia and living in truth, however, his text expands the cosmopolitical amplitude of Cynics since the Cynics’ true life contains an inherent cosmopolitan logic. Identifying the core of the Cynic true life in the care for the self that leads to the care for the others within the horizon of the possibility of another life and another world, Foucault shows how the Cynic establishes ‘an intense bond with the whole of humankind’, cares ‘for all mankind’ and for the whole world as a ‘functionary of humanity’ and, as ‘the scout of humanity’, the Cynic prefigures the future and exercises the ‘government of the universe’. This article argues that Foucault’s account on Cynics maps the very first moments of becoming cosmopolitan and offers an insightful perspective on the process of achieving a cosmopolitan subjectivity, a process displayed by different expressions of cosmopolitanism, and especially the ‘insurgent cosmopolitanism’ from the bottom up.


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