Oedipal fragments: Reconsidering the significance of Oedipus for James Bernauer and Michel Foucault

This essay reconstructs James Bernauer’s reading of Foucault’s critique of psychoanalysis in his essay “Oedipus, Freud, Foucault” in order to assess the role that Foucault’s critique of psychoanalysis and his reading of Oedipus play in Bernauer’s account of Foucault’s ethics. Along the way, it traces a shift in Foucault’s reading of Oedipus in terms of power and knowledge in Lectures on the Will to Know to rituals of truth or alethurgy in On the Government of the Living. Finally, based on this reading it argues that this shift is relevant for understanding Foucault’s turn toward ethics and practices of the self in his final writings.

Possédés par l’image de soi. Les identités, les identifications et l’inconscient collectif sur les réseaux sociaux

"The stable identity, an invention of modernity, seems today to be shaken, giving way to multiple and even ephemeral identifications of which social networks form a remarkable catalog. Are we living in a time when we no longer know who we are? This article proposes setting in relation the practices of the self with the questions of the construction of identity, assuming as a condition of possibility the dissociation of the individual consciousness from the collective unconscious. The intention is to examine the question in the light of the contributions of Jung on archetypes and the collective unconscious and Delory-Momberger on the construction of the ego through life stories."

The anthropological practice as an impossible possibility

A contemporary man is now more and more recognizing the necessity of the anthropological practice of the art of being himself. The main sphere of the research conducted in social science and the humanities in the second half of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st centuries was dedicated to problematization, apology, assertion and exercises related to practices of the self. The topic of the anthropological practices (social, spiritual, psychological, somatic, and art practices) permeates the works by E. Fromm, L. Binswanger, P. Ricoeur, P. Hadot, M. de Certeau, M. Foucault, V. Bibikhin, Yu. Lotman, S. Averintsev, and S. Khoruzhy. Reaching the level of the anthropological practices is seen in this article as salvation from alienation, loneliness, and violence as a “second breath” for a better and more dignified life. However, together with the expansion of the topic of the anthropological practices, the comprehension of their multiplicity and multidimensionality we are faced with the arising problem of the impossibility of these practices, their fragility and excessiveness. The originality of this paper lies in the research of the problem of the impossible possibility of the anthropological practices, their fragility and excessiveness. Consequently, we can acknowledge that the problematics of the anthropological practices has an antinomic character and the “resolution” of the problems is possible within the bounds of an existential event on the edge between its possibility and impossibility. It’s also important to consider that the anthropological practices facilitate the self-renewal of the social, the transcendence of alienation, and the transformation of everything that is impersonal towards a man and fallen away from him. The social as the human can begin, be initiated, and realized but it cannot last forever, it is temporary, event-bound and situation-bound, and principally heteronomous.

Enseñanza y filosofía. Una mirada desde la perspectiva del aprender

the inquiry into teaching in philosophy entails two different questions, namely: What does it mean to teach? And, what is understood by “philosophy”? The first of these questions constitutes the starting point of this article – product of the research project Balance of the Ways of Teaching Philosophy in Colombia –, specifically regarding the topics of teaching as an area, and the task of teaching. However, the methodological potential of studying the task of teaching from the perspective of learning arose while enquiring into the notions of translation, “plagiarism”, repetition, and creation. What kind of relation brings together teaching with learning and learning with teaching? In other words: How much does learning require from teaching? How much learning can we find in teaching? Can teaching and learning be thought of independently from one another? What happens in a philosophy classroom? In short, what does it mean to think about the relation between philosophy and teaching from the perspective of learning? In this way, as can be observed, positing the question of teaching on the axis of learning situates the discussion within the sphere of experience, and of the exercise and practices of the self. This is a different dimension of teaching from that determined by emulation, explanation, and monologue.

АВТОБИОГРАФИЯ ДЛЯ МУЗЕЯ: ДИСКУРСИВНЫЕ ПРАКТИКИ ТОЖДЕСТВЕННОСТИ И САМОСТИ НАИВНОГО АВТОРА

The article is devoted to the study of discursive identity based on autobiographical texts written by Uralmashzavod employees in the 1970s. In her methodology the author draws on Michael Foucault’s theory of discourse and Paul Ricoeur’s idea of the bilateral nature of narrative identity. In an autobiographical discourse, identity practices construct the normative subjective position of official Soviet discourse. The practices of the self are considered in the aspect of confession and frankness. It is concluded that the subjective position in the discourse is simultaneously supported by the practices of identity, and shaken by the practices of the self.

Michel Foucault: Subjectivity and Ethics of the Self as Practice of Freedom

This article presents the thoughts of Michel Foucault, a cultural historian, philosopher, and intellectual, who brilliantly analyses the historical events of the past as creative criticisms for shaping human attitudes today. Through this historical analysis, Foucault examines the ways in which subjects were formed from classical times to the present. Foucault sees how this process takes a long time, starting from the subject as formed through various discourses to the subject as forming itself. To arrive at the latter, Foucault brings his readers to the classical Greco-Roman era to see how humans live their freedom and responsibilities. He also shows them various practices of the self through meditation and inner examination, as well as the practice of telling the truth (parrhesia) to oneself and to others. All this in the era was known as ethics and also seen as a practice of freedom. For Foucault, life must always be seen as a work of art that requires the attention of the artist from time to time in order to arrive at an art level considered useful and valuable to many people. Foucault calls this an aesthetic of existence, where life is not merely seen as something given, but also that must always be fought for creatively from day to day. Life must be seen as an unstable condition in which there are always cracks, therefore it has to be fixed from time to time. This is what Foucault calls a model of human existence.

Transforming the Self in Contemporary Korean Ki Suryŏn (氣修練)

Korean ki suryŏn (氣修練 cultivation of body and mind using ki-life energy) is becoming more popular internationally. GiCheon (氣天), a particular type of ki suryŏn, is portrayed here as an alchemical practice of embodied knowledge. The term ‘technologies of the self’ (from Michel Foucault) means practices of the self, but here also includes technical tools, such as videos, DVDs, films, and websites. This paper will show how the visual iconography of DVDs advertising GiCheon reflect the values of their creators but also are instrumental for self-cultivation by subtly programming our ways of living, acting, feeling, and perceiving. And when the human body is represented on screen, as it is in ki suryŏn DVDs, then this programming intensifies.

Computer Gameplay and the Aesthetic Practices of the Self: Game Studies and the Late Work of Michel Foucault

This paper aims to critically introduce the applicability of Foucault’s late work, on the practices of the self, to the scholarship of contemporary computer games. I argue that the gameplay tasks that we set ourselves, and the patterns of action that they produce, can be understood as a form of ‘work on the self’, and that this work is ambivalent between, on the one hand, an aesthetic transformation of the self – as articulated by Foucault in relation to the care or practices of the self – in which we break from the dominant subjectivities imposed upon us, and on the other, a closer tethering of ourselves through our own playful impulses, to a neoliberal subjectivity centred around instrumentally-driven selfimprovement. Game studies’ concern with the effects that computer games have on us stands to gain from an examination of Foucault’s late work for the purposes of analysing and disambiguating between the nature of the transformations at stake. Further, Foucault’s tripartite analysis of ‘power-knowledge-subject’, which might be applied here as ‘game-discourse-player’, foregrounds the imbrication of our gameplay practices – the extent to which they are due to us and the way in which our own volitions make us subject to power, which is particularly pertinent in the domain of play.