[Air-l] Re: foucault and selves

[Jeremy Crampton]

Ann, Steve, Geoff,

Many interesting comments. I'm intrigued by the interest this topic has generated. Some scattered responses:

Foucault and blogs as self-writing: yes.... the self-writing paper (which Jeremy H. mentioned), along with a lot of other techniques of the self material can be found in the Rabinow Essential Foucault Vol. 1. It also includes the annual course summaries, which are all going to be published in full in French and English.

The Greeks called self-writing "hupomnemata". Here is the definition on my Webpage:

Notebooks and reminders [and diaries] used in the practice of the self. F. differentiates the Greek use of these (in Stoic times at least) from the later Christian practice of confessional texts. On the contrary, says F., hupomnemata were used not to uncover the hidden self through disclosure and confession, but to record the already-said.
Self-Writing, in Essential F; Cours 1981-82 [corrections welcome!]

A good related Website (by Camille Duchene) is www.foucault.info because it focuses on parrhesia or frank speaking of the truth and also provides his 1983 lectures on these (now available as "Fearless speech", 2001, Semiotext[e]).

Finally, I would recommend Jeremy Carrette "Religion and culture" which collects a lot of Foucault's "spiritual" writing, esp. on Christianity. 

Ann: thank you for the constructive post. I should say that Foucault is interested in confession insofar as it has been constructed as an activity for producing the truth. This probably does not exhaust the topic and a historical analysis might show how that relationship changes and becomes more or less pronounced, as you indicate. I tend to think cyberspace might have revived it.

But I think your idea of the creation of the self as resistance to be quite provocative, and certainly a route worth pursuing (it is the theme of McWhorter's excellent book, Bodies and Pleasures). F. called this "the ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom" a bit of a mouthful, but with the essential elements of practice (askesis), ethics (as ethos) and freedom. You might also recall his famous saying "there is no power without resistance", ie power is not domination but productive. So the question is what are these practices of freedom?

thanks for the thoughts,

Jeremy C.