scholarly journals Politics and Ethic of Care of the Self in Albert Camus’s The Plague

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 240-255
Author(s):  
Mukesh Kumar Bairva
Keyword(s):  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Spiritual Discipline ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ethical Project ◽  
Speaking Truth To Power ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Albert Camus’ The Plague articulates a new aesthetic of existence that resists biopolitical normalization. It means cultivating one’s self and not attempting to discover an authentic and hidden self because it entails a continual process of becoming.  The sudden eruption of plague in Oran, signifies a rupture in history of its people as the “bored populace is consumed by commercial habits aimed at making money”. In The Plague, if some people become more self-centred and insensitive, characters such as Rieux, Rambert, Peneloux and Joseph Grand show concern for the suffering people and stand in solidarity with them. Their characterization as ordinary individuals who assume responsibility for others’ existence in times of disaster reflects Camus’ hermeneutic of care of the self as an ethical project.  Camus aptly asserts that “ordinary acts of courage and kindness are more helpful than the illusion of superheroes”. Deriving a cue from Foucault, Heidegger and Levinas, the paper attempts to explore how care of the self is intertwined with ethics and politics. It is argued that without spiritual discipline and caring for others, the ethical transformation of self cannot take place. It indicates fashioning of the self more freely and self-reflexively and thus speaking truth to power and sacrificing for others. The paper examines this poetics of self which shares an ethical relationship with truth, freedom and kindness.

scholarly journals A CONSTITUIÇÃO DO SUJEITO EM MICHEL FOUCAULT A PARTIR DA HISTÓRIA DA SEXUALIDADE

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 158
Author(s):  
Ketlin Kroetz ◽  
José Luis Schifino Ferraro
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Self ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Single Reading ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

RESUMOEste ensaio objetiva discutir o modo como Michel Foucault abordou a constituição do sujeito a partir de a História da Sexualidade em seus volumes (I) A vontade de saber, (II) O uso dos prazeres e (III) O cuidado de si. O trabalho utiliza aportes teóricos de autores que trabalham “com” o filósofo francês em torno dos processos de subjetivação. Sem querer fechar conclusões e/ou propor uma leitura unívoca sobre o tema, o texto que segue conduz o debate em torno da invenção do sujeito e dos distintos modos de constituir-se/devir-a-ser sujeito da experiência no interior dos estudos foucaultianos e seu entrecruzamento com a Educação.Palavras-chave: Constituição do sujeito. História da sexualidade. Michel Foucault.ABSTRACTThis essay aims to discuss how Michel Foucault approached the theme of the subject constitution from the History of Sexuality in its volumes (I) An Introduction, (II) the use of pleasure and (III) The care of the self. The work use a series of theoretical contributions from authors who works “with” the French philosopher around the subjectivation processes. Without any pretention of closing conclusions and/or propose a single reading about the theme, the following text lead us to the debate around the invention of the subject and the different ways to constitutes/becomes the subject of the experience in the field of the Foucauldian studies and its intersection with Education.Keywords: Subject constitution. History of sexuality. Michel Foucault.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

Selfing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hartigan
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Structure ◽  
The Self ◽  
Sexual History ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
History Of ◽  
Genetic Techniques ◽  
Mapping Populations ◽  
Initial Focus

Chapter Four goes inside the lab, examining the genetic techniques by which the razas de maíz are broken down into mapping populations—more manageable samples of genetic structure and material. The initial focus is on the technique of selfing plants and the recent sexual history of maize, using these as the basis for transposing “care of the self” to “care of the species.”

Unwieldy Desires

2021 ◽  
Vol 187 ◽  
pp. 96-98
Author(s):  
Rob Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Social Contagion ◽  
The Self ◽  
Uneven Distribution ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Model Of Care ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Feminist Ethic ◽  
History Of

Reading Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A History of My Brief Body and Lisa Robertson’s The Baudelaire Fractal against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, I suggest that a feminist ethic of care emerges from the authors writing of queer performativity. Against a neo-liberal model of care that individuates and isolates, Belcourt and Robertson offer theories of the self as historical and multiple. Following a brief close reading of their work, I argue that the overlapping crises of the present require a politics of decision. Precisely because caring for oneself as a protective gesture against social contagion does not scale up in the ways that the uneven distribution of life chances bears down on subjugated communities, Belcourt and Robertson suggest we must decide when to abandon the narrative enclosures of the self-as-isolation and embrace the radical exposures of collectivity.

scholarly journals Anarcheology and the Emergence of the Alethurgic Subject in Foucault’s On the Government of the Living

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Daniele Lorenzini
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
History Of Sexuality ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
Modern Subject ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government

On the Government of the Living plays a pivotal role in the evolution of Foucault’s thought because it constitutes a “laboratory” in which he forges the methodological and conceptual tools—such as the notions of anarcheology and alethurgy (or, better, what I call here the “alethurgic subject”)—necessary to carry on his study of governmentality independently from his History of Sexuality project. In this paper, I argue that Foucault’s projects of an anarcheology of the government of human beings through the manifestation of truth in the form of subjectivity and of a genealogy of the subject of desire, albeit essentially linked to one another, are conceptually autonomous. These projects are both part of a genealogy of the modern subject but should be treated independently insofar as it is the former, elaborated in On the Government of the Living, that provides us with the key to understanding Foucault’s interest in the care of the self and parrhesia as an integral part of his analyses of governmentality and the critical attitude from the late 1970s.

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