Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault

By Michel Foucault

Book Overview

Shortly before his death in 1984, Michel Foucault spoke of an idea for a new book on "technologies of the self." He described it as "composed of different papers about the self. . . . about the role of reading and writing in constituting the self. . . . and so on." The book Foucault envisioned was based on a faculty seminar on "Technologies of the Self," originally presented at the University of Vermont in the fall of 1982. This volume is a partial record of that seminar.

In many ways, Foucault's project on the self was the logical conclusion to his historical inquiry over twenty-five years into insanity, deviancy, criminality, and sexuality. Because Foucault died before he completed the revisions of his seminar presentations, this volume includes a careful transcription instead...as a prolegomenon to that unfinished task.

Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic.

This volume was edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870235931
• ISBN13: 9780870235931
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A perfunctory work

I would have cared to hear more about Foucault's romances in the Ugrian mountains ranges, yet he still manages to capture the mind and imagnination of anyone who has lost a dog to the savagery of a freeway. Word of warning: have a box of tissues handy!

Interesting collection of essays on Foucault and the self.

"Technologies of the self" contains essays by Foucault-scholars and Foucault himself. It concentrates on Foucault's later works, where there is a shift of focus from the power/knowledge axis to the axis of ethics. This collection of should be of interest to anyone who are interested in Foucault's work on ethics and subjectivity. I found one essay particularly illuminating; "Foucault and the Liberal View of the Individual" by Alessandro - something.