History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, Introduction

 

1.     What is the relationship between Ethics and Morality? Are the intertwined in some way?

2.     How does the selection we are reading today relate to Valerie’s project?

 

The task is excavating an account of techniques from this later work (as opposed to an emphasis on temporality in Volume 1 of HoS) that will propel an understanding of technology as a kind of activity. Situate Foucault as a different starting point for thinking about the philosophy of technology.

 

 

3.     What does Foucault mean by experience and what role does it play in Foucauldian genealogy?

 

4.     What does Foucault mean by material for stylization mean on 23-24?

5.     Relationship between philosophy and self-transformation (8-9) – one of the themes of Foucault’s late work. What part does this relationship play in Foucault genealogy?

6.     How are technologies of the self-taken up in philosophy of technology? What role might this account of philosophy (“to get free of oneself” 8) play in the uptake of Foucault in the philosophy of technology?

7.      A history of truth that is not a history of what might be true in the fields of learning or science? A history of truth that does not equal a history of what is true or false? “In the true”? What does this formulation mean for a history of truth?

8.     Page 4 – three axes – How do these three axes map onto the distinction he draws between morality as codes of behavior and morality as modes of subjectivization? Are all three axes/modality at play in studying both aspects of morality or is it just the last modality?

9.     What is the uptake of this work? Why hasn’t been as much close reading of this work?

 

 

These are interesting questions because Foucault, in a lot of his interviews, will make a lot of remarks about why he engages in genealogy. He says that it is about transforming himself. This point doesn’t seem to provide the depth of reception that the work in the 70s had. Is this tension others feel, or see? Perhaps self-transformation should not be interpreted individualistically.

 

Is he trying to sketch out a concept of self-transformation that is still situated in a world of others so that it is not entirely about the individual? Reference to codes on page 27

 

Page 8-9 – This discussion reminds of this idea in stoicism that selfishness is useful for the collective because selfishness can imply self-improvement/other good things. Is this idea inspired by the ancient world/ancient Greek thought? Self-transformation might begin with the individual, but the process doesn’t end there because the work is shared.

 

This concept could relate Foucault to the tradition of critical theory/Marxist thought because of the way it understands the unity between theory and practice. There is an interesting creative optic to this perspective/interpret this as a political transformation of both the individual writer and the individuals who receive/read the work. Is there a sense of transformation of the collective audiences who have picked up Foucault’s work?

 

There still is a sense of the individual, localized, singular. Subject is one way to do that work.

 

Is there political skepticism/cautiousness at work about the kinds of claims that aim to change the world? Instead, these systems can only be changed through self-transformation.

 

On what basis is Foucault appealing to this desire to change the way in which one thinks about themselves? He can’t appeal to an outside truth if there are nothing but games of truth.

 

How do we understand the relationship between problematization and practices? How do they connect to self-transformation? How could we map these questions onto other political theories/philosophies?

 

He is interested in both his own transformation, but also in the possibility of thinking differently. The book is enacting this process, but this is also his object of study. This seems to be a theme in his later work.  

 

 

I read a piece recently that was studying how to-do apps are an example of how technology can be tools of moral subjection. Are there less literal ways to think about the relationship between technology and self-transformation? Is there a bigger project of self-transformation than using a to-do app to remember to drink water (a thumbs up from the standard of morality).

 

On page 9 –

 

What is the nature of consciousness raising? There is a skepticism on this page about the vanguard philosopher. How does one free oneself from the self-conferred on them by society/class? How do we think about the project of collective consciousness raising separately from a vanguard intellectual? How do we think about self-transformation as coming from the inside rather than the outside? Foucault’s notion of “exiting out”. Back to the to-do apps, they are modes of subjectivization rather than tools of freedom – self-transformation as existing out from existing modes of subjectivity.

 

There is a contrast/distinction between thinking differently (self-transformation) and legitimating something already known. Isn’t the latter still a form of self-transformation? He has to mean something stronger than this. Wouldn’t consciousness raising always be a project of legitimating what he already knows? Can we unpack this contrast further?

 

It’s all Kant at the top of page 9 – defines philosophy as critique/self-reflexive critical activity, but then it doesn’t make the move of legitimating what is already known. But. Rather it tries to think differently (“free oneself from self-imposed tutelage”?) How can we think of ways in which new forms of authority/truth/thinking emerge? He doesn’t want legitimation because this is a process of reinforcement.

 

Part of the problem with the apps is because they don’t want to talk about techniques/they want to talk about technology. Usually when people talk about pragmatics/techniques of self, they talk about power/knowledge. If you miss this then you can’t get the full force of techniques.

 

Techniques/technologies distinction – Foucault is looking at specific practices to transforms one-self. Instead of relating this to technologies, the philosophy of technology turns to the technologies themselves (rather than activities). Part of the issue is that there is an inattention to history of technology/technique in the philosophy of technology.

 

Instead of just look at technologies or technological objects, methods should be extended to the analysis of activities. Broadened concept of technology to include activities. Is it broadening philosophy of technologies to techniques or bringing a Foucauldian style analysis to specific technologies?

 

In the late work, there are two things going on at once: a genealogical analysis of certain practices/positivities as well as these sudden moments of self-transformation. The book seems split between being in part a genealogy of ethics as well as Foucault’s Ethics. A Foucauldian theory on the apps we should build?

 

It is interesting that he mentions Philosophy as a Way of Life on page 8, which is a different vision from Kant, but perhaps it is related to techniques of the self. Interesting that he references the essay as a specific form of critical practice.

 

It is almost like he is doing both an archaeology and genealogy at the same time. Archaeology is a method and genealogy is a design (What is Enlightenment) Archaeology studies forms and genealogies studies transformation (I think I got transformation wrong her). Were these two modes as distinct for Foucault as they are for us? What is the relationship between the historical/genealogical/archaeological work and the experimental/self-transformation work? We can analytically parse these two types of work, but are they in actuality entangled? Maybe this two-sidedness might be a strategy for overcoming a form of morality as something contemplative unrooted in practice? Maybe we need this genealogical mode to avoid falling into an ethical moralism?

 

One thing that in the context of this discussion of transformation that might be relevant is this concept of experimentation. This concept is normatively ambivalent. Last page of What is Enlightenment – very useful quote about philosophy, life, and experimentation.

 

What would be Foucauldian analytics of techniques applied to technology? Or if a philosopher of technology wanted to take up a Foucauldian analytic, what would it look like? Is a call for a Dorrestijn kind of technical mediation? How does granular analysis of mundane objects apply to the kind activities we have been talking about? How micro can analysis of activities be? The materiality of certain activities might be more or less obvious depending on what you are studying/or activities can’t be separated from corresponding objects.

 

Value of empirically studying the behaviors? The moment of empirical verifiability for Foucault is in the present. Panopticon is an extreme case. It doesn’t matter whether panopticon style prisons were really built, but the panopticon discourse signals the emergence of practices in the present (the emergence of the possibility of a true way of speaking/practice). Empirical claim referring to human experience rather than empirical reality

 

So we have a working account of philosophy as an activity of self-transformation which possibly holds theory and practice

It seems like part of what F is interested in is how self-transformation is affected – how it is accomplished…and this is part of this story for F about techniques

F emphasizes the training, the skill, the material . . . he is not romanticizing techniques or technology in any way