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 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 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.

ОЦІННО-МОТИВАЦІЙНИЙ КОМПОНЕНТ РЕФЛЕКСИВНОЇ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ ОСОБИСТОСТІ

1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 202-214
Author(s):  
Олена Савченко
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Cognitive Complexity ◽  
Basic Feature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Reflective Activity ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Life Tasks ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Favorable Conditions

У статті розглядається рефлексивна компетентність як інтегративне особистісне утворення, що формується в ході набуття суб’єктом рефлексивного досвіду при застосуванні різних форм рефлексивної активності, спрямованих на розв’язання визначених рефлексивних задач. У структурі рефлексивної компетентності оцінно-мотиваційний компонент виконує наступні функції: оцінку форм рефлексивної активності та її результатів, прогнозування можливих змін у процесі розв’язування проблемно-конфліктних ситуацій, визначення пріоритетних завдань подальшого розвитку себе як суб’єкта рефлексивної активності. На когнітивному рівні функціонує система критеріїв оцінювання власних форм рефлексивної активності, яка характеризується ступенем когнітивної складності, що відображає рівень диференціації та інтеграції системи. Функціонування оцінно-мотиваційного компонента на метакогнітивному рівні забезпечує система здібностей до прогнозування власної активності. Особистісний рівень представлений системою життєвих задач на саморозвиток, які стимулюють суб’єкта докладати зусилля щодо розвитку в себе певних якостей, формування певних вмінь та знань. Розрізненість елементів компонента є індикатором незавершеності процесу формування його внутрішньої структури, низький рівень інтеграції окремих складових не дозволяє системі ефективно компенсувати недорозвинені елементи. Найбільшу вагу у внутрішній структурі оцінно-мотиваційного компонента має показник сформованості системи здібностей до прогнозування власної активності, що підтверджує системотвірну функцію структур метакогнітивного рівня. In the article the reflective competence is seen as an integrative personal formation which develops in the process of acquiring of the reflective experience, when the subject is using various forms of the reflective activity for the solving of specific reflective tasks. In the structure of the reflective competence the value-motivational component performs such functions: an evaluation of forms of the reflective activity and its results, a prediction of the possible changes in the process of solving of the problem-conflict situations, a determining of the priorities for further development of himself as a subject of the reflective activity. The system of the criteria of an evaluating of the reflective activity`s forms functions on the cognitive level of the reflective competence. The level of the cognitive complexity is the basic feature of this system. The predictive abilities` system, that allows to form the expectations of the activity`s results, presents the value-motivational component on the metacognitive level. The system of the life tasks for the self-development, which stimulates the subject to make efforts to develop his own qualities, to form specific skills and knowledge, functions on the personal level. The fragmentation of the elements is an indicator of the incompleteness of the formation of the internal structure of the value-motivational component. The low level of integration of the separate elements does not allow effectively to compensate the functioning of the unformed elements of the system. The index of the formation of the abilities to predict his own activity has the greatest meaning in the internal structure of the value-motivational component. These data confirm the hypothesis about the system-forming function of the metacognitive structures that unite other structures. Thus the development of the predictive abilities will promote the increase of the abilities to the prediction of the others` behavior. An adequate assessment of other people significantly reduces the inconsistency of his own expectations and estimations of others. The development of the predictive abilities creates favorable conditions for the formation of the life tasks for the self-development to increase their value in the system of other tasks

Psychological barriers of the initial stage of professional activity of the self–employed

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Galkina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Case ◽  
Professional Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activity ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
Interpretive Phenomenology ◽  
Financial Responsibility ◽  
Psychological Barriers ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Subject

The problem of the study is that it is not sufficiently studied what psychological barriers people face at the initial stage of professional activity as self-employed. The aim of the study is to study the features of psychological barriers at the initial stage of professional activity of self-employed people. Research hypothesis: at the initial stage of professional activity as self-employed people face psychological barriers in the organizational and creative areas of entrepreneurial activity. The problem of psychological barriers was considered in their works by S. Rubinstein, N. Podymov, I. Pavlov, R. Shakurov and others. The article formulates particular definitions of the main concepts. Methodology: analysis of an individual case using interviews with processing in the framework of interpretive phenomenology. Respondent: female, 34 years old, self-employed as a psychologist for 1 year. Results: psychological barrier of accepting financial responsibility, barrier of adherence to a certain professional culture, barrier of competence in the profession. Certain psychological barriers can arise in connection with certain underlying medical conditions. The conclusions are that psychological barriers are a complex mental education, can be overcome in stages, and motivation of the subject is important for overcoming barriers.

A Comparison of Physiological Demand between Self-Propelled and Motorized Treadmill Exercise

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Todd Backes ◽  
Charlene Takacs
Keyword(s):  
Respiratory Exchange Ratio ◽  
Treadmill Exercise ◽  
Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
The Self ◽  
Mixing Chamber ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Computer Controlled

There are a wide range of options for individuals to choose from in order to engage in aerobic exercise; from outdoor running to computer controlled and self-propelled treadmills. Recently, self-propelled treadmills have increased in popularity and provide an alternative to a motorized treadmill. Twenty subjects (10 men, 10 women) ranging in age from 19-23 with a mean of 20.4 ± 0.8 SD were participants in this study. The subjects visited the laboratory on three occasions. The purpose of the first visit was to familiarize the subject with the self-propelled treadmill (Woodway Curve 3.0). The second visit, subjects were instructed to run on the self-propelled treadmill for 3km at a self-determined pace. Speed data were collected directly from the self-propelled treadmill. The third visit used speed data collected during the self-propelled treadmill run to create an identically paced 3km run for the subjects to perform on a motorized treadmill (COSMED T150). During both the second and third visit, oxygen consumption (VO2) and respiratory exchange ratio (R) data were collected with COSMED’s Quark cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) metabolic mixing chamber system. The VO2 mean value for the self-propelled treadmill (44.90 ± 1.65 SE ml/kg/min) was significantly greater than the motorized treadmill (34.38 ± 1.39 SE ml/kg/min). The mean R value for the self-propelled treadmill (0.91 ± 0.01 SE) was significantly greater than the motorized treadmill (0.86 ± 0.01 SE). Our study demonstrated that a 3km run on a self-propelled treadmill does elicit a greater physiological response than a 3km run at on a standard motorized treadmill. Self-propelled treadmills provide a mode of exercise that offers increased training loads and should be considered as an alternative to motorized treadmills.

Delving into Horror

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Perception Of Time ◽  
Definition Of

The springboard for this essay is the author’s encounter with the feeling of horror and her attempts to understand what place horror has in philosophy. The inquiry relies upon Leonid Lipavsky’s “Investigation of Horror” and on various textual plunges into the fanged and clawed (and possibly noumenal) abyss of Nick Land’s work. Various experiences of horror are examined in order to build something of a typology, while also distilling the elements characteristic of the experience of horror in general. The essay’s overall hypothesis is that horror arises from a disruption of the usual ways of determining the boundaries between external things and the self, and this leads to a distinction between three subtypes of horror. In the first subtype, horror begins with the indeterminacy at the boundaries of things, a confrontation with something that defeats attempts to define it and thereby calls into question the definition of the self. In the second subtype, horror springs from the inability to determine one’s own boundaries, a process opposed by the crushing determinacy of the world. In the third subtype, horror unfolds by means of a substitution of one determinacy by another which is unexpected and ungrounded. In all three subtypes of horror, the disturbance of determinacy deprives the subject, the thinking entity, of its customary foundation for thought, and even of an explanation of how that foundation was lost; at times this can lead to impairment of the perception of time and space. Understood this way, horror comes within a hair’s breadth of madness - and may well cross over into it.

scholarly journals Does Addiction Have A Subject?: Desire in Contemporary U.S. Culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaeyoon Park
Keyword(s):  
Behavior Therapy ◽  
Cognitive Behavior Therapy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cognitive Behavior ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Tracking Movement ◽  
Cultural Developments

AbstractThis paper traces the emergence of a new figure of the desiring subject in contemporary addiction science and in three other recent cultural developments: the rise of cognitive-behavior therapy, the self-tracking movement, and the dissemination of ratings. In each, the subject’s desire becomes newly figured as a response to objects rather than a manifestation of the soul, measured numerically rather than expressed in language and rendered impersonal rather than individualizing. Together, these developments suggest a shift in the dominant form of the desiring subject in contemporary U.S. culture, one that breaks with the subject-form that Foucault theorized five decades ago.

Madness, virtue, and ecology: A classical Indian approach to psychiatric disturbance

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512098224
Author(s):  
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Psychiatric Disturbance ◽  
Indian Medical ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Moral Relationship

The Caraka Saṃhitā (ca. first century BCE–third century CE), the first classical Indian medical compendium, covers a wide variety of pharmacological and therapeutic treatment, while also sketching out a philosophical anthropology of the human subject who is the patient of the physicians for whom this text was composed. In this article, I outline some of the relevant aspects of this anthropology – in particular, its understanding of ‘mind’ and other elements that constitute the subject – before exploring two ways in which it approaches ‘psychiatric’ disorder: one as ‘mental illness’ ( mānasa-roga), the other as ‘madness’ ( unmāda). I focus on two aspects of this approach. One concerns the moral relationship between the virtuous and the well life, or the moral and the medical dimensions of a patient’s subjectivity. The other is about the phenomenological relationship between the patient and the ecology within which the patient’s disturbance occurs. The aetiology of and responses to such disturbances helps us think more carefully about the very contours of subjectivity, about who we are and how we should understand ourselves. I locate this interpretation within a larger programme on the interpretation of the whole human being, which I have elsewhere called ‘ecological phenomenology’.

scholarly journals “I Am Not Good at Any of This.” Playing with Homoeroticism in The Arabian Nights

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 480
Author(s):  
Frank G. Bosman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Self ◽  
French Translation ◽  
The West ◽  
Arabian Nights ◽  
Safe Environment ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
And Gender

The story collection known in the West as The Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights, is famous, among other things, for its erotic playfulness. This eroticism was (and is) one of the key reasons for its continuous popularity after Antoine Galland’s French translation in 1704. The Arabian Nights includes, besides traditional, heterosexual acts, play, and desires, examples of homoerotic playfulness—even though we must tread lightly when using such Western concepts with an oriental text body such as this one. The homoerotic playfulness of The Arabian Nights is the subject of this article. By making use of a text-immanent analysis of two of the Nights’ stories—of Qamar and Budûr and of Alî Shâr and Zumurrud—the author of this article focuses on the reversal of common gender roles, acts of cross-dressing, and, of course, homoerotic play. He will argue that these stories provide a narrative safe environment in which the reader is encouraged to “experiment” with non-normative sexual and gender orientations, leaving the dominant status quo effectively and ultimately unchallenged, thus preventing the (self-proclaimed) defenders of that status quo from feeling threatened enough to actively counter-act the experiment.

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.

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