Queer Jurisprudence: Reparative Practice in International Law

Queer theory's commitments are radical and disruptive. They have operated to interrogate the definition and reinforcement of sexuality and gender categories, and to expose and problematize normalized relations of power and privilege in the institutional structures and systems in which we live and operate. Queer's deconstructive and anti-normative (or non-conformist) tendencies, however, can be antithetical to international LGBTQIA+ law reform projects. In much of queer scholarship, human rights activism is framed as reinforcing heteronormative structures of knowledge and power and promoting fixed ideas of monogamy, social reproductivity, and gender identity. In this essay, I work with the tension between queer theory and the law to frame the continued pursuit of human rights by LGBTQIA+ people as queer jurisprudence. I do so by drawing on the methodological tools provided by Eve Sedgwick's technique of reparative reading and Michel Foucault's ethics of care of the self to focus on the lived experience of LGBTQIA+ people. What emerges through the stories of LGBTQIA+ commitments to human rights and legal activism are not themes of naivety, compliance, or assimilation, as often charged, but ongoing efforts toward disruption, creativity, and hope.

Beyond biopolitics: the importance of the later work of Foucault to understand care practices of healthcare workers caring for undocumented migrants

Background Undocumented migrants experience multiple institutional and legal barriers when trying to access healthcare services. Due to such limitations, healthcare workers often experience ethical dilemmas when caring for undocumented migrants. This article aims to understand how individual healthcare workers who regularly take care of undocumented migrants deal with these dilemmas in practice. So far, the role of healthcare workers in this context has mainly been theorized through the lens of biopolitics, conceiving of healthcare workers as merely obedient instruments of humanitarian government or gatekeeping. Methods Based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations with healthcare workers in Belgium, we explore how they ascribe meaning, reflect upon and give shape to care practices in relation to undocumented migrants. We use Foucault’s later work on care of the self to interpret the accounts given by the healthcare workers. Results Healthcare workers in clinical roles exercise a certain degree of freedom in relation to the existing limitations to healthcare access of undocumented migrants. They developed techniques such as purposefully being inattentive to the undocumented status of the migrants. They also try to master their affective responses and transform their bodily attitude towards undocumented patients. They perform practical mental exercises to remind themselves of their role or position in the wider healthcare system and about their commitment to treat all patients equally. These techniques and exercises are inspired by colleagues who function as role models, inspiring them to relate in an ethical way to limitations in healthcare access. The developed care practices sometimes reproduce, sometimes transform the legal and institutional limitations to care for undocumented migrants. Conclusions The findings nuance the biopolitical analysis regarding the role of healthcare workers in healthcare delivery to undocumented migrants that has been dominant so far. Theoretically this article provides a reconceptualization of healthcare ethics as care of the self, an ethical practice that is somewhat independent of the traditional professional ethics. Trial Registration Medical ethics committee UZ Jette, Brussels, Belgium – Registration date: 18/05/2016 – Registration number: B.U.N. 143201628279.

The care of the self as a moral foundation of physiotherapy

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.

Care of the Self as a Practice of Resistance in Mental Health

When it comes to mental health, the medicalization of our everyday lives can diminish the autonomy that we hold over our health and care. Considering medicalization as an artefact through which power is exerted via biopolitics it is, however, possible to establish practices of resistance against it. Taking as starting point the testimonies of nine participants considered to be mentally ill, we reflect the relationship between subject and health-care system established through the care of the self as a practice of resistance when it comes to mental health.

Dream and the aesthetics of existence: Revisiting “Foucault’s ethical imagination”

For the later Foucault, as for the early Foucault, the dream represents a privileged disclosure of the ethics of the self, and the relation to truth. What, then, is the function of the dream in the ethics of the self? This article brings together Foucault’s early work on the dream and his late work on the care of the self to answer this question. Foucault’s archeologies and genealogies of power and discourse show how the modern disciplinary, bio-political, neo-liberal individual is constituted simultaneously as self-sovereign and as subject to governmental management. The dream awakens when the self-sovereign subject of modern power goes to sleep. The dream, then, problematizes and displaces the sovereign subject and opens the door to disruptive forms of experience, counter to modern power’s demand that we be always awake, productive, and in control of our thoughts and feelings.

Care of God as Care of the Self: Foucault, Gnosis, and Curation of the Divine Mirror in John of Morigny’s Ninth Vision

This article draws on Foucault’s understanding of “thought” as “freedom” and his description of “care of the self,” connecting these concepts with the account of a vision of Christ recorded by the fourteenth-century French monk, John of Morigny (fl 1300–1315). I argue that John’s account reflects “thought” as “freedom” very much in the Foucaldian sense, even as it defers to Christ as the authority to whom the monk vows obedience. In the first part of the article I outline ways in which Foucault’s thought both is and is not “theological.” Since Foucault draws on Christian models, and John’s visionary practice involves repentance and confession, it might seem to be almost a too-perfect prototype of the self-care Foucault was interested in; yet the results of the analysis are unexpected. The vision, is induced by John’s own unorthodox prayer practice, begins with Christ appearing in penitential garb and asking to confess his own sin to John of Morigny. I demonstrate that it is only possible to make sense of this vision by looking at the ways Christ acts as an intimate mirror of John’s self, reflecting the stance and penitential practice John must follow to reconcile himself with God.

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

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.