scholarly journals Ethico-political engagement and the self-constituting subject in Foucault

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lenka Ucnik
Keyword(s):  
Self Care ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Self ◽  
Personal Relationship ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
Practices Of The Self

Abstract Foucault is critical of the tendency to reduce all social and political problems according to predetermined ends and verifiable procedures. For Foucault, philosophical activity is a condition of possibility for the articulation of the question of the self. Inspired by his work on the desiring subject, Foucault begins to explore the ethical and political implications of self-care for modern day concerns. He presents an account of self-care that centres on developing an attitude that questions the personal relationship to truth, and puts to test those ideas and truths held most dearly. Processes of self-care evaluate the consistency between those truths a person regards as necessary and a person’s actions in the world. Interested in the ways in which people see themselves as subjects, Foucault directs his attention to the connection between systems of knowledge, power, and practices of the self. Crucial to Foucault’s process is the recognition that the self-subject is not given and does not have ontological precedence, and that subjectivity is transformable. By finding the lines and fractures in external and internal modes of objectification Foucault hopes to open up the space of freedom to bring about transformative events. The care of the self serves as a form of critique and resistance where it is both a way of living and acting in the world, and a critical response to a particular time and place.

scholarly journals To-Do Is to Be: Foucault, Levinas, and Technologically Mediated Subjectivation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Peter Bergen ◽  
Peter-Paul Verbeek
Keyword(s):  
Self Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Technological Mediation ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Technological Artifacts ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The World

AbstractThe theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” or ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actually support the process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design.

scholarly journals Care and the self: biotechnology, reproduction, and the good life

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart J Murray
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
The Self ◽  
Consumer Decision Making ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Self In Relation ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
The Face

This paper explores a novel philosophy of ethical care in the face of burgeoning biomedical technologies. I respond to a serious challenge facing traditional bioethics with its roots in analytic philosophy. The hallmarks of these traditional approaches are reason and autonomy, founded on a belief in the liberal humanist subject. In recent years, however, there have been mounting challenges to this view of human subjectivity, emerging from poststructuralist critiques, such as Michel Foucault's, but increasingly also as a result of advances in biotechnology itself. In the face of these developments, I argue that the theoretical relevance and practical application of mainstream bioethics is increasingly under strain. Traditionalists will undoubtedly resist. Together, professional philosopher-bioethicists, public health policymakers, and the global commercial healthcare industry tend to respond conservatively by shoring up the liberal humanist subject as the foundation for medical ethics and consumer decision-making, appealing to the familiar tropes of reason, autonomy, and freedom. I argue for a different approach to bioethics, and work towards a new way to conceive of ethical relations in healthcare – one that does not presume a sovereign subject as the basis of dignity, personhood or democracy. Instead, I am critical of the narrow instantiations of reason, autonomy, and freedom, which, more recently, have been co-opted by a troubling neo-liberal politics of the self. Thus, I am critical of current trends in medical ethics, often running in tandem with corporate-governmental models of efficiency, accountability, and so-called evidence-based best practices. As an example of such market-driven conceptions of subjectivity, I discuss the paradigm of "self-care." Self-care shores up the traditional view of the self as a free agent. In this sense, self-care is looked upon favourably by mainstream bioethics in its focus on autonomy, while healthcare policy endorses this model for ideological and economic reasons. To contrast this, I propose a different model of care together with a different model of selfhood. Here I develop and apply Foucault's late work on the "care of the self." In this understanding of "care," I suggest that we might work towards an ethical self that is more commensurable both with recent theoretical views on subjectivity and – more pressingly – with the challenges of emergent biotechnologies. I end this paper with a discussion on ethical parenthood, which offers a practical reading of the "care of the self" in relation to new reproductive technologies (NRTs).

scholarly journals Multiple Relationships of Nursing Care: the Emergence of Care "of the us"

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 895-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Aparecida Baggio ◽  
Alacoque Lorenzini Erdmann
Keyword(s):  
Self Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
University Hospital ◽  
Multiple Relationships ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The Us ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Nursing Professionals ◽  
Nursing Professional

The aim of this qualitative study was to comprehend the relationships of the care of the self, of care of the other, and of care "of the us" in the different dimensions of care, through an educational/reflexive/interpretative process with nursing professionals in a University Hospital, using the complexity perspective. The data were collected through workshops and submitted to content analysis. The following categories emerged: reflecting upon the meaning of care of the self, care of the other, and "of the us" for the "I - human being", and for the "I - nursing professional"; and reflecting and (re)constructing the meanings of the relationships of care for the self, care for the other, and care "for the us". The care "for the us" is an emerging theme, in construction, and impels a concern for the collective, as well as remits to the comprehension of the multiple and unending phenomenon of constant movement among the beings and between them and their environment, modifying, altering, and causing to be altered the networks of existent relationships.

scholarly journals From ‘Entrepreneur of the Self’ to ‘Care of the Self’: Neo-liberal Governmentality and Foucault’s Ethics

2011 ◽  
pp. 130-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dilts
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Human Capital Theory ◽  
Ethical Conduct ◽  
The Self ◽  
Artistic Development ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Capital Theory

In his 1979 lectures, Foucault took particular interest in the reconfiguration of quotidian practices under neo-liberal human capital theory, re-describing all persons as entrepreneurs of the self. By the early 1980s, Foucault had begun to articulate a theory of ethical conduct driven not by the logic of investment, but of artistic development and self-care. This article uses Foucault’s account of human capital as a basis to explore the meaning and limits of Foucault’s final published works and argues for two interrelated genealogical projects focused on the ethics of economic activity.

Data’s Intimacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 76-113
Author(s):  
Sun-ha Hong
Keyword(s):  
Internet Of Things ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Smart Machines ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
The Internet Of Things ◽  
Better Than

Today, machines observe, record, and sense the world—not just for us but also often instead of us and indifferently to our meaning. The intertwined problems of technological knowledge and (our) knowledge of technology manifest in the growing industry of smart machines, the Internet of Things, and other means for self-tracking. The automation of the care of the self is buoyed by a popular fantasy of data’s intimacy, of machines that know you better than yourself. Yet as the technology becomes normalized, the hacker ethic gives way to a market-driven shift in which more and more of “my” personal truth is colonized by machines (and the people behind the machines) that I cannot question.

Foucault Goes to Weight Watchers

Hypatia ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cressida J. Heyes
Keyword(s):  
Weight Loss ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Self Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Power Weight ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Weight Watchers

This article argues that commercial weight-loss organizations appropriate and debase the askeses—practices of care of the self—that Michel Foucault theorized, increasing members’ capacities at the same time as they encourage participation in ever-tightening webs of power. Weight Watchers, for example, claims to promote self-knowledge, cultivate new capacities and pleasures, foster self-care in face of gendered exploitation, and encourage wisdom and flexibility. The hupomnemata of these organizations thus use asketic language to conceal their implication in normalization.

scholarly journals A cutting critique: transforming ‘older’ through cosmetic surgery

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (8) ◽  
pp. 1356-1379 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIDGET GARNHAM
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Cosmetic Surgery ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Self Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Natural Ageing ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Active Resistance ◽  
Depth Interviews

ABSTRACTThis paper engages with a cultural politics of ‘older’. At the centre of this politics are essentialist discourses of corporeal ‘ageing’ that limit and stigmatise the subjective experience of ‘older’. Drawing together theoretical insights from Foucault's work on care of the self with data from in-depth interviews with ‘older’ people who have undergone cosmetic surgery and cosmetic surgery practitioners, this paper advances the proposition that cosmetic surgery can be re-imagined as an ethical practice of self-care. To critique the limitations imposed by ‘natural ageing’ through an ethic of ‘ageing gracefully’, the paper explores how older people who have undergone cosmetic surgery stylise the ethical experience of ‘older’ through active resistance of an ‘elderly’ identity. It argues that the practice of cosmetic surgery by ‘older’ people constitutes a cutting critique of the limits of ‘older’ and an experiment with the possibility of exceeding and ultimately transforming those limits.

scholarly journals The goal of education: spirituality or an intellectualism? An alternative to care of the self

2021 ◽  
Vol XII (2(35)) ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Hanna Stępniewska-Gębik
Keyword(s):  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Ethical Attitude ◽  
The World ◽  
Appropriate Practices ◽  
The Way

This article deals with the dilemma related to the purpose of upbringing. M. Foucault's concept of care of the self and J. Patočka's works allow us to ask questions about the goal of education. Is it to become an intellectual or a spiritual person? The possibility of such a distinction is embedded in the ethics of care of the self, an ancient tradition, which even nowadays, among others, thanks to P. Sloterdijk or Foucault himself, has become an important category. An ethical attitude towards the self opens the way to spirituality through a set of appropriate practices. It becomes the basis for relations with others and with the world.

The care of the self as a moral foundation of physiotherapy

2021 ◽  
pp. 147775092110618
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Pezdek
Keyword(s):  
Physical Therapists ◽  
Physical Therapist ◽  
Educational Interventions ◽  
Private Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Personal Hygiene ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
The World ◽  
Patient Relationships

The aim of this paper is to offer theoretical insights into the care of the self, which often initiates therapist-patient relationships in clinical practice. The reason is that when patients care about their health status, they are inclined to establish a therapeutic relationship with physical therapists. Hence, the care for self may bridge the world of the patient's private experiences and the world of the healthcare system together with its interventions, which is represented by the physical therapist In this framework, care means not only the patient's choice to undergo therapy but also his/her commitment to sustaining its effects in private life. This involves educational interventions by the physiotherapist who inscribes him/herself in his/her patients’ care of the self in order to alter their habits of physical exercise, diet, personal hygiene, body posture, etc. The argument in this paper is informed by the concepts of ethics developed by Michel Foucault and Richard Shusterman.

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