Asceticism/Askēsis: Foucault's Thinking Historical Subjectivity

Foucault Studies, 2022

While Foucault referred to Benjamin just once in his entire corpus, scholars have long noticed affinities between the two thinkers, mainly between their conceptions of history: their emphasis on discontinuity, their historiographical practices, and the role of archives in their work. This essay focuses, rather, on their practice of critique and, more specifically, on their conception of the relation of this practice to exercise or askesis. I examine the role of askesis as a self-transformative exercise in Foucault's late work and how this concept reverberates throughout his idea of critique as the exercise of an ethos demanding arduous work. Against this background, the role of exercise (Übung) in Benjamin's Origin of the German Traeurspiel, his interest in ascetic kinds of exercise or schooling, and its ties to critique are discerned. This comparison reveals significant similarities in Foucault's and Benjamin's conception of philosophy, as well as different emphases in their inheritance of the Kantian critical project: critique as an exercise of an attitude attentive to possibilities for transformation in the present vs. critique as involving an attitude-transforming exercise; critique as a modern ethos that needs to be reactivated vs. critique as propaedeutic, as a preparation for a modern tradition.

This volume comes as an published outcome of the Engaging Foucault international conference which was organized by the Group for Social Engagement Studies (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory) in December 2014. The main aim of the conference was to open space for a general discussion of the actuality of Foucault’s work. During the conference we had many opportunities to see just how much legacy of the French philosopher still remains rich and vibrant. But perhaps more importantly, the presentations that we heard – and now have an opportunity to read–also proved that contemporary interpretation of Foucault try to (re)emphasize practical applicability and political implications of his philosophical insights. These new tendencies in interpretation prove to be all the more important if we have in mind the conventional rendition of Foucauldian thought as being “nihilistic” and devoided of any social hope. In that sense, the authors of this volume tried to offer many ways in which we could (re)think “Foucauldian engagement.” Following his somewhat overlooked cues, they tried to combine theory “that has political meaning, utility and effectiveness” with the “involvement with the struggles taking place with the area in question”. Throughout the volume, in different connotations, we repeatedly hear the question of what we as theoreticians do, or should do. Do we play the role of prophetic intellectuals who think instead of others, prescribe objectives and means, and tell people what they should believe and ought to do? Or can we join in Foucault’s dream of an intellectual “who incessantly displaces herself, doesn’t know exactly where she is heading nor what she’ll think tomorrow because she is too attentive to the present”? This question is related to how we do things as well. Do we collaborate with practitioners, in order to modify the institutions and practices we theorize about, which also allows for the possibility of the thought itself being reshaped in this process?

Foucault Studies, 2018

Foucault Studies, 2005

The 'late' Foucault and his purported 'return to the subject' is a much discussed issue. Over the past twenty years, various suggestions have been made as to how to integrate Foucault's ethics into his oeuvre as a whole. This paper holds that there is a 'conceptual continuity', rather than a break, between Foucault's earlier works on normalizing power, and his later works on ethical self-constitution. On the basis of a conceptual framework, which is developed in Section II, a reading of two themes concerning certain practices of the self is offered in the following sections (namely, dietetics and spiritual guidance). The material, drawn from the recently published lecture series L'herméneutique du sujet as well as from other published works, is related back to Foucault's ideas on the process of 'subjectivation', in order to support the claim that 'fabrication' and 'self-constitution' are but two aspects of subjectivation. 1 The notion of "aesthetics of existence" refers to an understanding of ethics that derives from the philosophies of post-classical Greece and the Roman Empire, and these are the same sources that Foucault uses for his re-interpretation. The idea it refers to was called "ethics" in Antiquity, in the sense of a personal "ethos" (cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame (Indiana): University of Notre Dame Press, 2nd edition 1984), chap. 4) The idea of "Art", which is implied by the term "aesthetics", was always understood as an "imitation of life" in ancient philosophy (cf. Aristotle, Poetics, 1. 1447a). Hence, life itself cannot be interpreted as an "Art" in the sense of "aesthetics". The ancient notion of "tekhnê tou biou", i.e. the "art of living", bears a different use of the term, as in "the art of woodcarving", (cf. Julia Annas, "Virtue as a Skill," International Journal of Philosophical Studies 3 (1995): 227-243). While the idea behind it clearly derives from ancient foucault studies, No 2, pp. 75-96 embedded in, have given rise to the hypothesis of a "return of the subject" in Foucault's later philosophy. The "late Foucault" is probably one of the most widely discussed topics in research published on Foucault. A popular view on this late period holds that at some point in his oeuvre, Foucault turned away from analysing the power/knowledge mechanisms that fabricate subjects, and turned to analysing how subjects constitute themselves. 2 This view sometimes implies the idea that these notions, "constitution" and "fabrication", refer to two distinct phenomena. 3 In this paper, I will argue against this view. Instead of a "return of the subject", I will advocate the view that on the theme of subjectivity, we find a conceptual continuity traversing the whole of Foucault's oeuvre, rather than a rupture that separates the "early" from the "late" Foucault. Assuming we granted the idea that the "subject" in Foucault's later work is ontologically different from the one we find in his earlier work, we would have to assume that at the respective point in Foucault's oeuvre, there is some sort of turn or even rupture in his thinking. And this can in turn be evaluated either positively or negatively. Those that have criticised Foucault thought, the notion of "aesthetics of existence", which plays on the ambiguity of the word "art", is a Foucaldian term. Recently, another aspect of this notion has been pointed out by Joseph Tanke (cf. his "Cynical aesthetics: A theme from Michel Foucault's 1984 lectures at the Collège de France," Philosophy Today 46, 2 (2002): 170-184). Tanke reports Foucault's comparison of the way of life of the early Cynics to that of contemporary artists, pointing out that the forms of likening one's life to one's thinking involved in both of them are essentially the same. This is an idea that may also be implied to Foucault's notion of the "aesthetics" of existence. 2 Cf.

Foucault Studies

We are very pleased to open Foucault Studies No. 25 with the special issue entitled "Foucault and Philosophical Practice," guest edited by Sverre Raffnsøe (Copenhagen Business School) and Alain Beaulieu (Laurentian University). Foucault had a complex and ambivalent relationship with philosophy. Although he was originally trained in philosophy in Paris, many of his main sources, interlocutors, and followers are not philosophers per se. This contributes to making his oeuvre quite multidisciplinary, perhaps the most multidisciplinary since Marx. In the context of this special issue, nevertheless, it might also be worth recalling that Foucault had a number of significant philosophical relationships, while he also persisted in operating at the margins of philosophy proper. In 1949 Foucault graduated from École Normale Supérieure with a Diplôme d'études supérieures under the supervision of the German philosophy specialist Jean Hyppolite. Foucault's DES thesis was entitled La Constitution d'un transcendental dans La Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel. In 1961, in Sorbonne, he completed his main doctoral thesis (thèse principale), Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique under the supervision (rapporteur principal) of the philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem. He then completed his secondary thesis (thèse complémentaire), a translation and substantial commentary on Kant's 1798 work Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, under the supervision (rapporteur principal) of Jean Hyppolite. Both theses, which were required for Foucault's Doctorat d'État, were not orthodox philosophical works. 1 On the one hand, Folie et déraison includes a wide range of historical and archival material with which philosophers are not always familiar; and, on the other hand, in his secondary thesis Foucault was audacious enough to play Nietzsche against Kant before the former really started to be considered as a true philosopher in France. 2 Foucault's academic training also includes a licence in psychology in 1949 as well as a Diplôme de psychopathologie in 1952. In the early fifties, he toyed with the Marxists led by Althusser.

Engaging Foucault: Volume 1 This volume comes as an published outcome of the Engaging Foucault international conference which was organized by the Group for Social Engagement Studies (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory) in December 2014. The main aim of the conference was to open space for a general discussion of the actuality of Foucault’s work. During the conference we had many opportunities to see just how much legacy of the French philosopher still remains rich and vibrant. But perhaps more importantly, the presentations that we heard – and now have an opportunity to read–also proved that contemporary interpretation of Foucault try to (re)emphasize practical applicability and political implications of his philosophical insights. These new tendencies in interpretation prove to be all the more important if we have in mind the conventional rendition of Foucauldian thought as being “nihilistic” and devoided of any social hope. In that sense, the authors of this volume tried to offer many ways in which we could (re)think “Foucauldian engagement.” Following his somewhat overlooked cues, they tried to combine theory “that has political meaning, utility and effectiveness” with the “involvement with the struggles taking place with the area in question”.1 Throughout the volume, in different connotations, we repeatedly hear the question of what we as theoreticians do, or should do. Do we play the role of prophetic intellectuals who think instead of others, prescribe objectives and means, and tell people what they should believe and ought to do? Or can we join in Foucault’s dream of an intellectual “who incessantly displaces herself, doesn’t know exactly where she is heading nor what she’ll think tomorrow because she is too attentive to the present”?2 This question is related to how we do things as well. Do we collaborate with practitioners, in order to modify the institutions and practices we theorize about, which also allows for the possibility of the thought itself being reshaped in this process?3 In other words, the contributions in this volume suggest that (Foucauldian) social engagement should be about production of communities, however transient and mobile they are, and not about the production of foes. If we follow Foucault this is imperative not because of inherent belief in the goodness of the world or human nature. “What is good is something that comes through innovation. The good does not exist, like that, in an a-temporal sky, with people who would be like the Astrologers of the Good, whose job is to determine what is the favorable nature of the stars. The good is defined by us, it is practiced, it is invented. And this is a collective work.”4 1. Foucault, Questions on Geography, in Power/Knowledge, 64. 2. Foucault, Questions on Geography, in Power/Knowledge, 64. 3.What is called punishing, 384 4. In a sense I am a moralist, http://www.critical-theory.com/read-me-foucault-interview-in-a-sense-i-am-amoralist/ Edited by Adriana Zaharijevic, Igor Cvejić and Mark Losoncz

2009

This paper presents an overview of the methodological approach taken in a recently completed Foucauldian discourse analysis of physiotherapy practice. In keeping with other approaches common to postmodern research this paper resists the temptation to defi ne a proper or 'correct' interpretation of Foucault's methodological oeuvre; preferring instead to apply a range of Foucauldian propositions to examples drawn directly from the thesis. In the paper I elucidate on the blended archaeological and genealogical approach I took and unpack some of the key imperatives, principles and rules I grappled with in completing the thesis.

The idea of the bios as a material for an aesthetic piece of art... is something which fascinates me" Foucault ?elf-fashioning is the contemporary and attractive idea, largely in spired by Michel Foucault, that subjects are not found in the world but are invented, that they can take possession of their fabricated Uves by becoming their own authors, which is to say by applying their own agency to themselves and by giving shape to their Uves, thus affirming their (fictive, constructed, self fashioned) selves through what is, in essence, an aesthetic practice of self-making and sublimation. The body is one of the basic loci of this art of self-construction; the wiU to change is its instrument. And on the Foucauldian theory, the way forward to a new, daring, and postmodern form of subjectivity is by way of a return to what is held to be the classical model of self-production, the Greek and then Roman "art of Ufe" (techne tou biou), which is the art of "exercising a perfect mastery over oneself?in other words (which are Foucault's), an "aesthetics [and 'ascetics'] of existence," freely constructed within a system of relations of power that are enabUng and constraining at one and the same time. As this brief encapsulation ought to make plain, the promissory note of self-fashioning is a taU order indeed. It is also (I beUeve) a barely coherent concept that probably tries to explain too much aU at once: pagan and postmodern subjectivities; the contingency of aU of history; historical change, conceived as rupture (by claiming that contingency somehow releases subjects from necessity); the artfulness of identity (which leaves wide open the question of how to decide which kind or genre of art identity is meant to embody); the history of sexuaUty and the history of subjectivity (while often leaving uncertain which of these two histories is in focus at any given moment); and so on. I want to expose some of the vagaries of Foucault by making three points. First, Foucault's project of reclaiming subjecthood is ironicaUy indebted in various ways to the classical ideals of the modern EnUghtenment, which advocated its own form of self-fashioning or self-cultivation {Bildung and Selbstbildung) modeled on an equaUy unfocused and?let's be frank?aestheticized notion of "the Greeks."1 Second, Foucault's self-advertised and much celebrated a?gnment with Nietzsche (the French title of Volume One contains an overtly Nietzschean echo: La volont? de savoir, while subsequent essays and interviews bring out the connection even more explicitly)2 is paradoxical. Nietzsche would have been at Foucault (2001: 46) is unafraid to render u culture de sot' with "Selbstbildung," the motto of the German tradition: see Porter 2006. 2 See, for example, Foucault 1983: 237, and the whole ofthat essay ("On the Genealogy of Ethics"); and Foucault 1988b: 250-251: "I am fundamentally Nietzschean." 121 PHOENIX, VOL. 59 (2005) 2.

Educational Theory, 2000

Nancy Fraser has characterized Michel Foucault as a good lover, but not husband material. All too often Foucault is used as a celebrity one-night stand. He is good for whatever part of him suits the purpose of the project, but beyond the thrill of dropping his name, there sometimes is not an interest in the breadth of h s work. But, as we have learned through the AIDS crisis, promiscuity has its own ethical value and thus it is more useful to examine why and how Foucault's work helps educational theorists than to criticize them for not being as faithful to him as they ought. Although my review takes issue with the way Foucault is used, I do not want to suggest that educational theorists latch onto a trendy figure to spice up stukes undertaken for other purposes. The turn to Foucault appears to be part of a more general attempt to reevaluate and revise positions previously taken, and to resituate now potentially problematic concepts like "progress" and "autonomy" while still attempting to sort out better and worse forms of agency, power, and resistance. This self-evaluative impulse is clear in the four new books on Foucault and education covered in this essay: James Marshall's Michel Foucault: Personal Autonomy and Education; Sue Middleton's Disciplining Sexuality: Foucault, Life Histories, and Education; Thomas S . Popkewitz's Struggling for the Soul: The Politics of Schooling and the Construction of the Teacher; and Popkewitz and Marie Brennan's edited collection, Foucault's Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education.'