{"id":1385,"date":"2016-03-05T10:36:07","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T15:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/?p=1385"},"modified":"2018-08-11T16:49:46","modified_gmt":"2018-08-11T20:49:46","slug":"introduction-to-foucault-1013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2016\/03\/05\/introduction-to-foucault-1013\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus Velasco | Foucault 10\/13"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jes\u00fas R. Velasco<\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome to Foucault 10\/13!<\/p>\n

Today we are going to explore the productive intersection of two of Foucault\u2019s lines of inquiry. Here, on the one hand, this as yet untranslated book \u2013or rather, as we always try to highlight, a non-book, for this is a window into Foucault\u2019s thinking laboratory, the place where he tried ideas, concepts, research methods: Subjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In these twelve lectures, taught at the Coll\u00e8ge de France between January 7th<\/sup> and April 1st<\/sup> 1981, Foucault engages in one central question: what kind of experience can one have of oneself, what kind of \u201cfield of subjectivity\u201d can be opened up in front of oneself \u201cfrom the moment in which there is, as a matter of fact, historically, in front of him and in relation to him, a certain truth, a certain discourse of truth, and a certain obligation to link himself to this discourse of truth \u2013be it to accept it as true, be it to produce it himself as true.\u201d (28). This is, Foucault assures, a historical research: one cannot properly study this question without posing it historically, without addressing the transformation, the division, between the pagan moral \u2013which was considered, in 19th<\/sup> century philosophy, the image of the other, as well as \u201ca certain foundation of ourselves\u201d (42)\u2014and the category of judeo-christian moral. \u201cEvery moral reflection, no matter how general it may be, every moral question, even the most contemporary one, cannot avoid, I think, asking a historical question that is associated to it, that is like its own shadow: what happened during the first century of our era, during the shift from what we call a pagan ethics to a Christian moral.\u201d (21)<\/p>\n

He proposes, finally, to study \u201cWhat are the transformations in relation to what we call the \u2018sexual morality\u2019 and that we can identify between the period the historiography has called \u2018pagan\u2019 and the period that the historiography has called \u2018Christian\u2019, by pursuing those transformations in the \u2018arts of living.\u201d By examining these arts de vivre<\/em> (the arts of how to be, not only the arts de faire<\/em> that Michel de Certeau had studied in his publication of 1980), Foucault engages in a theorization of what he prefers not to call biotechniques<\/em> \u2013in spite of his linking them to the technai peri ton bion<\/em> –; he wants to study the technologies du soi<\/em>, commonly translated as technologies of the self<\/em>.<\/p>\n

According to him the \u201ctechnologies of the self… are, in all their practices, procedures that have been reflected upon and highly elaborated, systematized, and that can be taught to several individuals, so that they can, by managing their own lives, and through the control and transformation of their own self by themselves, reach a certain mode of life\u201d (37).<\/p>\n

These technologies of the self are the contact point between these lectures and the ones we have on the other hand. Edited by Fabienne Brion and our very own Bernard Harcourt, Mal-faire, dire vrai<\/em>, or Wrong-doing, Truth-telling<\/em>. This is a series of seven lectures that Foucault delivered in Louvain right after closing the books at the Coll\u00e8ge \u2013actually, the day after, from April 2nd<\/sup> to May 22nd<\/sup> of the same year of 1981. These lectures run along a genealogical line starting with the Lessons sur la Volont\u00e9 de Savoir<\/em> \u2013our Foucault 1\/13<\/a>–, and touching the seminar on Th\u00e9ories et institutions p\u00e9nales<\/em> (Foucault 2\/13<\/a>), the Brazilian lectures on \u201cTruth and Juridical Forms\u201d of 1973 (first published in Portuguese in 1974 as \u201c\u201cA verdade e as formas jur\u00eddicas\u201d, \u00a0the seminar On the Government of the Living<\/em> (Foucault 9\/13<\/a>), and the series of lectures delivered between 1980 and 1982 in Dartmouth, Berkeley, and Vermont.<\/p>\n

This other inquest on the technologies of the self lacks elephants and the idea morum<\/em> of married life and sexuality that stand for as documenta<\/em>; it lacks oneirocriticism<\/em> and the connection between sexual life and social life; it lacks mathesis<\/em> or teaching, melet\u00e9<\/em> or meditation, and askesis<\/em> as proper elements of the arts of living; it does lack the \u201cregime of aphrodisia<\/em>,\u201d as the main concept to explore desire and sexuality from the perspective of the sexual behaviors and pleasures, a concept from which to study the framework of contemporary European sexual morals; it lacks the readings of Plutarch, Xenophon, and Musonius Rufus; it also lacks the arts of living. Meanwhile this inquest abounds in agonistic combats between epic and tragic heroes, tests, ordeals, inquests, proof, torture, avowal, confession, penitence, penance, exomologesis<\/em>, and exagoreusis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Between the two lines of inquiry, however, they compose the conceptual map of a more complex cartography of the subject and its hermeneutics in two different lines: while the first series of lectures, on Subjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9<\/em> deal with discourses of truth, the second one on Wrong-doing, Truth-telling\u00a0<\/em>announces a more central interest in specific performances of the subject in those experiences that can open up a \u201cfield of subjectivity\u201d. Both projects, as many other of the labyrinthine lectures delivered throughout the years, delve into the questions that will vertebrate the unfinished project of the Histoire de la Sexualit\u00e9<\/em> \u2013whose final part, Les Aveux de la chair<\/em> still waits for publication.<\/p>\n

Our guests, today, will explore both projects, and will present some of the key questions on Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling<\/em> and Subjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t even dare introducing our speakers. Their own presence is enough introduction. But I would like to, at least, pronounce their names.<\/p>\n

Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Among her many publications, I would simply like to mention the book I bought and started reading yesterday, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly<\/em>, recently published by Harvard University Press. She has received numerous honors and awards in the USA, the UK, France, Germany, etc. Her work is, without the shadow of a doubt, one of the greatest intellectual productions of our time.<\/p>\n

Stathis Gourgouris, Professor of Classics, English, and Comparative Literature and Society, has served for six years as the director of the Institute of Comparative Literature and Society. Poet and swimmer, he is the author of Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece<\/em> (1996); Does Literature Think? Literature as Theory for an Antimythical Era<\/em> (2003); Lessons in Secular Criticism<\/em> (2013); and editor of Freud and Fundamentalism<\/em> (2010). He is currently completing work on two other book projects of secular criticism: The Perils of the One<\/em> and Nothing Sacred.<\/em> A collection of essays on poetics and politics, written in Greek over a period of 25 years, is forthcoming in 2016 with the title Contingent Disorders<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jes\u00fas R. Velasco Welcome to Foucault 10\/13! Today we are going to explore the productive intersection of two of Foucault\u2019s lines of inquiry. Here, on the one hand, this as yet untranslated book \u2013or rather, as we always try… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1644,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38975],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-10-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1644"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}