In one of his 1980 Dartmouth lectures, entitled "Subjectivity and Truth", Foucault remarks that g... more In one of his 1980 Dartmouth lectures, entitled "Subjectivity and Truth", Foucault remarks that governing people in a rational and effective way entails achieving a "subtle integration" or "versatile equilibrium" between technologies of coercion and technologies of the self. Whereas the first ones would be directed towards guiding the possible field of action and, to varying degrees, structuring the possible outcomes of people's actions, practices and behaviors, the latter would be intended to allow individuals to develop a number of operations on themselves that would enable their self-constitution as free subjects. Following Foucault's transition, around the time of Volume 1 of The History of Sexuality, to interrogating the way in which Western human sciences (and particularly sexuality) have developed around themselves a whole set of techniques for producing the truth about the subject, I will attempt to examine how the use of these techniques of power have, through its instruments and effects, resulted in modes of subjecting or governing the individual that disables him in the possibility of constituting appropriate self-technologies. Or, in other words, the paper will attempt to interrogate whether one human science such as sexuality, which should apparently allow the subject to develop a truthful discourse about himself, have not rather put into operation a series of power strategies that, to varying degrees, contribute to subjugate or coerce the individual. Seigal 2 Taking as a point of departure Foucault's analysis in Volume 1 of The History of Sexuality, on how the confessional method (re)-emerged, around the nineteenth century, side-byside with the elaboration of a science on sex, I will first examine how the confession, as a general injunction to verbalize the truth about oneself, can be understood against the larger backdrop of what I would call the hermeneutic-pastoral paradigm; namely, a technique of power that, having first arose in monastic settings in early Christianity, conceives the subject as a field of interpretive analysis and the soul or self as a reference-reality or originating element from which the truth about the subject. must be drawn. By looking, then, on how the confession technique, as a modality of the hermeneutic-pastoral paradigm, came forth again at the time in which the ageold inquiry into thoughts and pleasures achieved scientific status, I will draw my attention to the instruments-effects that such science of sex puts into operation, as a way of questioning whether this mode of verification or "truth-telling" about the subject and its pleasures, have not rather contributed to, both and at once, rationalize and strengthen the means for subjecting (coercing) the individual. In the last analysis, the inquiry at stake will intent to "put into crisis" (to use Roland Barthes' definition of "critique") the apparent self-evidence of the tripartite yoke of confession-truth-liberation to which, so it seems, the science of sex have latched onto to validate its discourse on the body and its pleasures.
Heidegger conceives his own attempt at translating Aristotle as a true hermeneutical project, who... more Heidegger conceives his own attempt at translating Aristotle as a true hermeneutical project, whose purpose would be aimed at effacing, as much as possible, the "proper force and weight of our language" 1 (whether German or English little matters, I believe, since he seems rather pointing at the modern philosophical language to which we have grown accustomed), in hopes of entering the arena of Greek thought and, hopefully so, of disappearing in it. By tracing back some of the cues for analysis that he has left, the attempt will be made at interrogating the (perhaps) hidden significance that such focused commentary on Book II of the Physics may have for a renewed understanding of Aristotle's ontological considerations. In particular, the present investigation will circle around the notion of movedness, which Heidegger translates from the
Within the larger context of the analyses on the relations between subjectivity and truth which d... more Within the larger context of the analyses on the relations between subjectivity and truth which defined the late stages of his work, Foucault begins to developed a new conceptual instruments to which he gives the name of "regimes of truth". If up to that point, his questioning on the ways in which power is exercised was shown in its interrelatedness to "systems of knowledge", now he will begin to interrogate power so as to examine what might it reveal about the kinds of relations that the subject have established and keep establishing with the truth. The notion of regimes of truth becomes, then, a means for questioning whether, and to what degree, could it be possible to speak of an apparatus of obligations, constrains and incentives that would result in modes of subjecting ourselves to the truths that we, in turn, decide to accept and recognize as such. Taking as our basis the idea of a mode of subjectivation that would take place as a result of procedures of truth-manifestation and truth-recognition, the present project will interrogate the way in which Kant's moral project can be shown to incorporate (or at any rate to be complemented by) certain elements that are external to the system of a priori demonstrations of the moral law, and whose effect would be that of obligating subjects to recognizing the law, and in such a way as to compel them to perceive themselves as the autonomous, legislating authors of its imperatives. In this sense, our current analysis will not necessarily follow Seigal 2 Foucault's description of the practices of the self, or the ethical work upon ourselves that are, according to him, part and parcel of every moral system. Rather than an attempt at evaluating the practices through which the Kantian subject would come to constitute itself as an autonomous being, and, as such, as the author of categorical imperatives (a project that would be somewhat analogous to the one which Foucault himself develops in the various volumes of The History of Sexuality), we would rather look at how the mechanism by which Kant compels us to perceive ourselves as such and such ethical beings (legislative and autonomous), cannot dispense with what I will call an "apparatus of sensibility", that is to say , a particular "regime of truth" or mode of subjecting ourselves to the recognition of the universality of the moral law.
Uploads
Drafts by Matías Seigal
Papers by Matías Seigal