scholarly journals Técnicas de si e clínica psi: um campo de estudos etnográficos / Techniques of the self and clinical psychology: a field for ethnographic studies

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 80-99
Author(s):  
Arthur Arruda Leal Ferreira ◽  
Natalia Barbosa Pereira ◽  
Bruno Foureaux Figueredo
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ethnographic Studies

O alvo deste trabalho é examinar os efeitos de subjetivação produzidos pelas práticas psi, notadamente as oriundas do campo clínico. Para tal tomaremos como ferramenta-chave o conceito de tecnologias ou técnicas de si, desenvolvido na última fase dos escritos de Michel Foucault, nos anos 1980. Tais tecnologias são analisáveis em componentes como substância, askesis, práticas de si, e teleologia. A partir destes componentes, Foucault estabelece alguns sistemas éticos específicos, dentre eles, a hermenêutica de si cristã, que seria fundamental para o surgimento dos saberes psi. Contudo, mais do que sugerir uma aplicação do conceito foucaultiano às práticas psicológicas, o campo de estudos da Antropologia da Ciência ou Epistemologia Política, como também é chamado, nos permite fazer um estudo das técnicas de si presentes nas práticas clínicas atuais. Para tal, seguimos com uma pesquisa de campo realizada com dispositivos psicológicos específicos, na Divisão de Psicologia Aplicada da UFRJ. Ao longo da pesquisa acompanhamos as distintas técnicas terapêuticas que são colocadas em prática neste espaço por estudantes do curso de psicologia sob orientação de profissionais mais experientes, sendo este estágio uma parte do processo de formação dos primeiros. Além de entrevista com estagiários, a pesquisa conta com outros recursos como entrevista a pacientes e supervisores e observação participante.

The entrepreneur of the self beyond Foucault’s neoliberal homo oeconomicus

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-511
Author(s):  
Tim Christiaens
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
The Self ◽  
Austrian School ◽  
Homo Oeconomicus ◽  
Austrian School Of Economics ◽  
Joseph Schumpeter

In his lectures on neoliberalism, Michel Foucault argues that neoliberalism produces subjects as ‘entrepreneurs of themselves’. He bases this claim on Gary Becker’s conception of the utility-maximizing agent who solely acts upon cost/benefit-calculations. Not all neoliberalized subjects, however, are encouraged to maximize their utility through mere calculation. This article argues that Foucault’s description of neoliberal subjectivity obscures a non-calculative, more audacious side to neoliberal subjectivity. Precarious workers in the creative industries, for example, are encouraged not merely to rationally manage their human capital, but also to take a leap of faith to acquire unpredictable successes. It is this latter risk-loving, extra-calculative side to neoliberal subjectivity that economists usually designate as ‘entrepreneurial’. By confronting Foucault with the theories of entrepreneurship of the Austrian School of Economics, Frank Knight, and Joseph Schumpeter, the Foucauldian analytical framework is enriched. Neoliberal subjectivation is not the monolithic promotion of utility-maximizing agents, but the generation of a multiplicity of modes for entrepreneurs to relate to oneself and the market.

scholarly journals Computer Gameplay and the Aesthetic Practices of the Self: Game Studies and the Late Work of Michel Foucault

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
The Self ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Practices Of The Self ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

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.

Redefining the Proxemics of the Mentorship

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Schreiner
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Learning Outcome ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Spatial Contiguity ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
Traditional Structures

The sociopolitical controversies on campus that have resulted in “safe spaces” have pressured traditional structures based on proxemics, such as the mentorship, to reinvent themselves or disappear. In the chapter, “proximity” itself is defined not in terms of spatial contiguity but as an attentional structure by which the mentee achieves an intimate understanding at a distance of the objective achievements in teaching and writing that distinguish her mentor and other role models and that provoke acts of creative mimesis and exegesis by the mentee. Inspired by the ancient Stoic practice of the “care of the self” as explicated by Michel Foucault, the crux of the redefined mentored relation is not inculcating knowledge but guiding the growth of the mentee's critical consciousness in preparation for a career and a life well-lived, befitting a noble spirit. Since the focus of the redefined mentored relation privileges distance and objective spirit (via the critical study of works) over personal interaction, the scholarly autonomy of the mentee is a noteworthy learning outcome.

Ethics of security: A genealogical introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-71
Author(s):  
Andrea Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Self ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Pierre Hadot

This article analyses the set of ethical questions underlying the emergence of the modern politics of security, as articulated, in particular, in the work of Thomas Hobbes. An ethic is here understood – in line with its ancient philosophical use and the interpretation advanced by authors such as Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot – as a domain of reflections and practices related to the cultivation and conversion of the self ( askēsis, metanoia). The article aims to demonstrate that, besides attending to the physical safety of the state and its citizens, modern apparatuses of security are also crucially implicated in the formation of their subjects as ethical and autonomous individuals. To substantiate this thesis, the article first illustrates how, since the first appearance of the term in the vocabulary of Western thought – and in Seneca’s work in particular – theories of security have been intimately tied to the cultivation of the self. It thus interprets Hobbes’s reflections on the subject as the upshot of a substantive, if implicit, re-articulation of Seneca’s ethic of security, by focusing on the two authors’ respective understandings of (a) autonomy, (b) the world, (c) ascesis, and (d) politics. Overall, it is suggested that the differences between the two authors testify to a wider political-historical shift: in modern regimes of governmentality, the ethical dimension of security no longer defines the rightful exercise of political power, but rather appears as an object of social and economic governance.

Het ‘niet-fascistische leven’: identiteit, subjectiviteit, verzet

2020 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Lars Cornelissen
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Practice ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Artistic Resistance

Abstract ‘Non-Fascist Living’: Identity, Subjectivity, ResistanceThis article explores a recent form of academic and artistic resistance to contemporary modalities of fascism. This form of resistance is premised upon the argument that fascism lodges itself in the deepest recesses of the self, manifesting as fascist desires and beliefs. As such, traces of fascism are present in everyone, including people who do not otherwise hold fascistic ideas. This position goes on to argue that any critic of fascism must accordingly identify and eradicate such traces inside her own subjectivity, by means of an ethics of ‘non-fascist living’. Critically examining the philosophical presuppositions of this position, the article asks what implicit conception of the subject and its relation to resistance is at work here. It brings this position into conversation with Michel Foucault, upon whose work it draws but whose understanding of resistance, it is argued, it reconceptualises. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this form of resistance for critical philosophical practice.

Endorsing the Self: Embodied Improvisation in Prison Arts Programs

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
Sarah Genta
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Psychological Control ◽  
Prison System ◽  
The Self ◽  
Arts Programs ◽  
Dance Improvisation ◽  
Creative Self ◽  
Unique Application

Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, outlines a historical shift from punishment as public spectacle to punishment as “the most hidden part of the penal process.” Examining the resultant changes, he recognizes the quieter, psychological control and bodily supervision that have replaced public torture in our system.I observe this control of incarcerated individuals and then correlate it with terms that Danielle Goldman uses to describe dance improvisation: continued confrontation with constraint(s). She advocates that the practice of freedom, through improvisation, is a “mode of making oneself ready for a range of ... situations,” and so is politically and socially powerful.Citing multiple prison arts programs, I conclude that embodied improvisation both theoretically and practically addresses forces of oppression and confinement within the prison system by offering moments of creative self-direction and non-hierarchal interaction. I render this unique application an ideal artistic and actionable response to the framework of captivity.

Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault.

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
James N. Porter ◽  
Luther H. Martin ◽  
Huck Gutman ◽  
Patrick H. Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Self ◽  
Technologies Of The Self
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