Traditions of Yoga in Existential Posthuman Praxis

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-217
Author(s):  
Debashish Banerji
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Technologies Of The Self

This is a discussion of Francesca Ferrando’s book Philosophical Posthumanism, focusing in particular on three chapters, “Antihumanism and the Ubermensch,” “Technologies of the Self as Posthumanist (Re)Sources” and “Posthumanist Perspectivism.” It traces the origins and implications of the concepts at the center of these chapters from a posthumanist perspective. It then evaluates these implications from the viewpoint of a non-Western praxis, specifically the spiritual praxis of Indian yoga. For this, it elaborates briefly on some genealogies of yoga and discusses what an intersection of posthumanism and yoga may look like. It holds that such a consideration would enhance the concepts of the chapters in question in Ferrando’s text.

Back from the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Rottenberg
Keyword(s):  
Positive Affect ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ivy League ◽  
Younger Women ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Successful Career ◽  
Family Balance ◽  
The Future ◽  
Work Family

Chapter 4 examines two well-trafficked mommy blogs written by Ivy League–educated professional women with children. Reading these blogs as part of the larger neoliberal feminist turn, the chapter demonstrates how neoliberal feminism is currently interpellating middle-aged women differently from their younger counterparts. If younger women are exhorted to sequence their lives in order to ensure a happy work-family balance in the future, for older feminist subjects—those who already have children and a successful career—notions of happiness have expanded to include the normative demand to live in the present as fully and as positively as possible. The turn from a future-oriented perspective to “the here and now” reveals how different temporalities operate as part of the technologies of the self within contemporary neoliberal feminism. This chapter thus demonstrates how positive affect is the mode through which technologies of the self-direct subjects toward certain temporal horizons.

Drafted into a Foreign War?

Rhizomata ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-217
Author(s):  
Matthew Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Analytic Tradition ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rational Inquiry

Abstract This paper examines the central criticisms that come, broadly, from the modern, ‘analytic’ tradition, of Pierre Hadot’s idea of ancient philosophy as a way of life.: Firstly, ancient philosophy just did not or could not have involved anything like the ‘spiritual practices’ or ‘technologies of the self’, aiming at curing subjects’ unnecessary desires or bettering their lives, contra Hadot and Foucault et al. Secondly, any such metaphilosophical account of putative ‘philosophy’ must unacceptably downplay the role of ‘serious philosophical reasoning’ or ‘rigorous argument’ in philosophy. Thirdly, claims that ancient philosophy aimed at securing wisdom by a variety of means including but not restricted to rational inquiry are accordingly false also as historical claims about the ancient philosophers. Fourthly, to the extent that we must (despite (3)) admit that some ancient thinkers did engage in or recommend extra-cognitive forms of transformative practice, these thinkers were not true or ‘mainline’ philosophers. I contend that the historical claims (3) and (4) are highly contestable, risking erroneously projecting a later modern conception of philosophy back onto the past. Of the theoretical or metaphilosophical claims (1) and (2), I argue that the second claim, as framed here, points to real, hard questions that surround the conception(s) of philosophy as a way of life.

scholarly journals Alternative Forms of Spirituality and the Socialization of a Self-Enhancing Subjectivity: Features of the Post-Secular Religious Space in Contemporary Romania

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sorin Gog
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Development ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
The Self ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Religious Transformation ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Counselling Services ◽  
Distinctive Type ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Development Literature

AbstractMy paper focuses on the shift in religious values in post-socialist Romania and explores the emergence of alternative spiritual beliefs and practices among the younger generations socialized during the post-communist period. It analyses some of the changes that occurred in the wider traditional religious field and looks at the various spiritualized technologies of the self that produce a distinctive type of religious subjectivity and an immanent ethics of authenticity. By departing from the idea of an integrated religious community and from the relational understanding of religious transformation, the field of alternative spiritualities operates a radical break with traditional religion and emphasizes the possibility of spiritual self-realization and self-discovery. It is this process of the individualizing sacralization of the self that constitutes the object of various workshops, blogs, personal and spiritual development literature, courses, spiritual retreats and counselling services. My research looks at how innovative technologies of the self are developed within these spaces that emphasize creativity, wellbeing and a new understanding of subjective interiority that learns how to find in itself the resources it needs to live in a spiritualized ontology of the present.2

The Spiritualization of Politics and the Technologies of Resistant Body

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-211
Author(s):  
Ashjan Ajour
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Principal Tool ◽  
A Site

Abstract This article explores the body as a site of subjectivity production during a hunger strike in Occupied Palestine. It further explores the former political prisoners’ theory of subjectivity as it emerges through their praxis and philosophy of freedom. Although the body is the principal tool that the hunger strikers use, they don't consider it the decisive factor in attaining their goal. For that they build on the immaterial strength that develops with the deterioration of the body and from which they construct the concept of rouh (soul). This is expressed through the formation of contradictory binaries: body versus soul and body versus mind. The article shows that the hunger strike not only is a political strategy for liberation; it also moves into a spiritualization of the struggle. It uses and problematizes Foucault's “technologies of the self” to theorize the specific formation of subjectivity in the Palestinian hunger strike under colonial conditions, and it contributes to theories of subjectivation. The hunger strikers, in their interaction with the dispossession of the colonial power, invent technologies of resistance to transcend the colonial and carceral constraints on their freedom and create the capacity for the transformation from a submissive subject to a resistant one.

Flexible Eugenics: Technologies of the Self in the Age of Genetics

2008 ◽  
pp. 194-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen-Sue Taussig ◽  
Rayna Rapp ◽  
Deborah Heath
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Technologies Of The Self
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