scholarly journals Critical agency in education: a Foucauldian perspective

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Postma
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
The Self ◽  
Alternative Mode ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Educational Implications ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mode Of Being

While the neoliberal order is associated with the economy, government and globalisation, as a form of governmentality it effects a particular subjectivity. The subject is the terrain where the contest of control plays out. The subject is drawn into the seductive power of performativity which dictates its agency, desires and satisfactions and from which escape is difficult to imagine. Neoliberalism is particularly interested in an education which provides it with the much needed powers of production and consumption. This dependency of the neoliberal order on a particular kind of agential subjectivity is also its weakness because of the indeterminacy of the self. Within this openness of the human subject lies the possibility to be different and to escape any form of subjectification. Foucault’s account of the critical agent portrays a form of difference that opposes and transcends neoliberal ordering. Foucault finds the principle of practices of freedom in the Greco-Roman ethics of the care for the self. It is an ethics where the subject gains control of itself through the ascetic and reflective attention in relation to available ethical codes and with the guidance of a ‘master’. Such as strong sense of the self is the basis for personal and social transformation against neoliberal colonisation. The development of critical agency in education is subsequently investigated in the light of Foucault’s notions of agency and freedom. The contest of the subject is of particular importance to education interested in the development of critical agency. The critical agent is not only one who could identify and analyse regimes of power, but also one who could imagine different modes of being, and who could practice freedom in the enactment of an alternative mode of being. The educational implications are explored in relation to the role of the teacher and pedagogical processes.

scholarly journals Genealogy of Stories: Constraction of the Subject by Vanishing Images

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-184
Author(s):  
Mariia Ternovska
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Depressive Disorder ◽  
The Self ◽  
Alternative Mode ◽  
Private Correspondence ◽  
Public Recognition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mode Of Being ◽  
Lost Object ◽  
The Web

The article offers an essay on the genealogy of stories’ phenomenon from the self-eliminating pictures of private correspondence on Snapchat to “classic” public stories on Facebook and Instagram. Social media are usually associated with a space driven by the logic of the like economy or with the environment that nurtures a user to be a narcissistic subject. The survey proves stories to be an alternative mode of being online along with the way of depreciation of likes and other attributes of public recognition in the web (including comments and shares). In addition, the investigation points to the link between sensor technologies’ proliferation and a corresponding information structuring as a flow and stories’ emergence. The separate part of the article is devoted to analyzing the mechanisms of the stories’ subject structuring. Applying Lacanian distinction between Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real, the author demonstrates how stories force a user to identify with a lost object and, consequently, how mechanisms of stories automatically reproduce a structure of a depressive disorder.

Exploring the boundaries of rhetoric

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 793-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Bonet
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
The Self ◽  
History Of Rhetoric ◽  
Content Type ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Development ◽  
The Subject

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how the boundaries of rhetoric have excluded important theoretical and practical subjects and how these subjects are recuperated and extended since the twentieth century. Its purpose is to foster the awareness on emerging new trends of rhetoric. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on an interpretation of the history of rhetoric and on the construction of a conceptual framework of the rhetoric of judgment, which is introduced in this paper. Findings – On the subject of the extension of rhetoric from public speeches to any kinds of persuasive situations, the paper emphasizes some stimulating relationships between the theory of communication and rhetoric. On the exclusion and recuperation of the subject of rhetorical arguments, it presents the changing relationships between rhetoric and dialectics and emphasizes the role of rhetoric in scientific research. On the introduction of rhetoric of judgment and meanings it creates a conceptual framework based on a re-examination of the concept of judgment and the phenomenological foundations of the interpretative methods of social sciences by Alfred Schutz, relating them to symbolic interactionism and theories of the self. Originality/value – The study on the changing boundaries of rhetoric and the introduction of the rhetoric of judgment offers a new view on the present theoretical and practical development of rhetoric, which opens new subjects of research and new fields of applications.

scholarly journals The role of title and epigraph in the essay “The Vision of Mirza” by Joseph Addison

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-45
Author(s):  
Iurievna Makarova Liudmila
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Joseph Addison ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
The Subject

The object of this research is the essay “The Vision of Mirza” by Joseph Addison. The relevance of studying J. Addison's essay is substantiated by undue attention to his works in the Russian literary studies, as well as the need for tracing the dynamics in the genre of vision in the Age of Enlightenment. The subject of this research is the title and epigraph as parts of the work that determine its structure and artistic distinctness. Analysis is conducted on the images of the viewer, visionary hero, and his guide, chronotope of the essay and allusive links. The essay is based on the combination of systemic-structural, comparative-historical, and hermeneutic methods. The novelty consists in the fact that the comprehensive examination of the role of the title ensemble within the structure of the essay allows reconstructing the link of the essay with the traditions of the medieval genre of vision manifested in the traditional topic and consistent motifs, imagery system, space and time arrangement, and dialogical structure of the text. The author provides interpretation to the allusive links between J. Addison's essay and Greco-Roman mythology, epic poem “The Aeneid” by Virgil, and psalms from the New Testament, and “The Voyage of St. Brendan”. It is established that the dialogue set by the epigraph passes through the entire plotline of the essay and reveal the characters of its participants. The extensively presented Christian theme alongside the images from ancient mythology and Virgil’s texts are essential for the author to express the enlightening program.

Self and Self-Representation in the Long Twentieth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 295-316
Author(s):  
Christopher Peacocke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Person Concept

Six issues are salient in discussions of the first person since 1900: immunity to error through misidentification; the possibility of survival without survival of one’s body; the elusiveness of the self; the role of the first person attitudes in the explanation of action; the first person component in mental concepts; and the role of the first person simulation in explaining the actions of others. Since 1900, there have been accounts both of the nature of the first person concept, and accounts of the nature of subjects of experience. This paper discusses the achievements and limitations of these accounts in addressing the preceding six issues. These issues are also assessed against a wider range of possibilities, both for the first person and for the subject to which it refers, than are considered in this literature.

“A Trespass against the Whole Species”: Universal Crime and Sovereign Founding in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 560-585
Author(s):  
Sinja Graf
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Creation

This essay theorizes how the enforcement of universal norms contributes to the solidification of sovereign rule. It does so by analyzing John Locke’s argument for the founding of the commonwealth as it emerges from his notion of universal crime in the Second Treatise of Government. Previous studies of punishment in the state of nature have not accounted for Locke’s notion of universal crime which pivots on the role of mankind as the subject of natural law. I argue that the dilemmas specific to enforcing the natural law against “trespasses against the whole species” drive the founding of sovereign government. Reconstructing Locke’s argument on private property in light of universal criminality, the essay shows how the introduction of money in the state of nature destabilizes the normative relationship between the self and humanity. Accordingly, the failures of enforcing the natural law require the partitioning of mankind into separate peoples under distinct sovereign governments. This analysis theorizes the creation of sovereign rule as part of the political productivity of Locke’s notion of universal crime and reflects on an explicitly political, rather than normative, theory of “humanity.”

scholarly journals The Personal and the Private in the Piety of the Biblical Psalmist

Kairos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-66
Author(s):  
Danijel Berković ◽  
Dean Slavić
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
The Self ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Complementary Nature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Correlative Relationship

The work discusses a correlative relationship between the notions of the personal and the private in the context of biblical psalmist’s piety. Elements of anthropology (heart, soul, face) will obtain considerable importance, particularly the ideas of face and soul (פנה and נפש). These will be corresponding to the Greek idea of προσοπων (prosopon), person. The authors will insist on the distinction between the ideas of personal and private, but they will also recognize the interdependence of these ideas, in recognition that the individual and the societal, are both contributions in the building of the subject as the self. In Paul’s Hymn to Love (1 Cor. 13) the complementary nature between the personal and the private is evident. There we find both passive and active subject’s role claiming this double aspect of the human subject - personal and private. Discussion in this work follows long-term debates over the nature of the subject, its personality, and its privacy.

From Metapsychology to Magnetic Gnosis: An Esoteric Context for Interpreting Traumatic Modes of Transcendence in Sándor Ferenczi's Clinical Diary and Elizabeth Severn's The Discovery of the Self

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-323
Author(s):  
John Boyle
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
The Clinical Diary ◽  
Clinical Diary ◽  
Mutual Analysis ◽  
Academic Study

It has been argued that the essential themes in Sándor Ferenczi's Clinical Diary (1932) centre around three major axes (theoretical, technical and personal). This paper proposes a fourth: namely, an occult or esoteric axis. To make the case for its presence in the Clinical Diary, the article provides a brief introduction to the academic study of Western esotericism in order to more adequately situate its proximate fin de siècle occult precursors vis-à-vis psychoanalytic metapsychology. A brief account of Ferenczi's correspondence with Freud on the role of the occult in psychoanalysis is then provided. This constitutes the necessary context for embarking upon an investigation into the ‘psychognostic’ metapsychology co-developed during the course of Ferenczi's ‘mutual analysis’ with the so-called ‘evil genius’, Elizabeth Severn. By way of conclusion, James Grotstein's account of a ‘numinous and immanent psychoanalytic subject’ is highlighted as the locus for a synergistic rapprochement between pre-Freudian and contemporary psychoanalytic conceptualizations of the subject congruent with the ‘Orphic trajectory’ outlined in this paper.

Foucault and the Force of Power-Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gilliam
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Subject

Foucault’s position is initially developed through a productive misreading of their predecessors; presenting a parodied, misleading vision of French phenomenology as meaning-giving (sens) and using it as a theoretical springboard for his study of discourse, placing the human subject in immanent relations of production and signification. Such relations entail a Nietzschean conception of force, the development of which in Foucault’s thought allows him to account for the conditions under which phenomena are generated, or their ontogenesis. It is argued that this radicalises the decentring of the subject and directly leads to and informs Foucault’s later political engagements, wherein the self is placed in relations of transitive, unstable, virtual forces constituting actual formations of power, carried out by the formed or stratified relations which make up knowledge (as in formed matters or substances) and relating to extensive processes of organisation and strategy (i.e., bio-power). This, at its most basic, refers to the double-conditioning between the micro and the macro, as described earlier. Contra those who wish to read Foucault within a deeply Althusserian conjecture (i.e. Žižek and Laclau), the nature of this network must be understood according to the immanent logic of dispersion and disjunction underpinning discursive formations in Foucault’s earlier work, a logic heavily rooted in Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the fold and one that makes strategic possibilities and lines of flight (or lines of escape by which one can exercise a practice of freedom), synonymous with folding, by virtue of being the very excess or discontinuities of the network itself.

scholarly journals Michel Foucault et Paul Ricœur, vers un dialogue possible

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Castonguay
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The Self ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Strong Interest ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Il est désormais connu que Michel Foucault s’est intéressé à la fin de sa vie à l’ ”herméneutique du sujet.” Mais cette histoire de la constitution du sujet (ou de la subjectivité) fait étrangement l’économie d’une réflexion sur le rôle de la compréhension, alors que Foucault qualifie son travail d’ ”ontologie historique de nous-mêmes.” C'est sur ce point précis qu’est ici mis à l'épreuve le caractère médiateur de l’œuvre de Paul Ricœur, dont l’herméneutique du soi prend en charge une ontologie de la compréhension. Suite à ces considérations, la seconde partie de l’article cherche à démontrer que la théorie de l’agir de Ricœur peut favoriser le passage d’une reconnaissance de type objectale à une reconnaissance des capacités du sujet à se tenir pour responsable. Ce passage sera opéré directement sur le modèle d’analyse du “dernier Foucault,” c’est-à-dire son concept-clé de “processus de subjectivation.” In his later work, Michel Foucault manifested a strong interest for the “hermeneutics of the subject.” Yet this history of the constitution of the subject (or subjectivity) does without any reflection on the role of understanding, even though Foucault characterizes his project as a historical ontology of ourselves. The power of mediation emphasized in the work of Paul Ricœur may help us redefine an ontology of understanding through a hermeneutics of the self. Following this, the second part of the article aims to show that Ricœur’s theory of action can facilitate a transition from the recognition of the self, first described as “objectivation,” to a recognition of the subject’s capacity to be held responsible. This passage will draw on the model of analysis in the later Foucault, specifically, on his key concept of the subjectivation process.

scholarly journals Disciplinary Power and the Role of the Subject at a Nineteenth-Century Danish Asylum

PhaenEx ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
BJØRN HAMRE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Psychiatric Practice ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Pastoral Power ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

This article reports on the ways in which psychiatric practice and power were constituted in a Danish asylum at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The point of departure will be a complaint by a former patient questioning the practice at the asylum in 1829. In an analysis of this narrative the study draws upon Foucauldian concepts like disciplinary power, confession, pastoral power and subjectivation. I will argue that the critique of the patient provides us with an example of the way that disciplinary power works in the case of an informal indictment of the methods and practice at an asylum. A key issue is whether the critique is not itself a part of the self-legitimation of disciplinary power.

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