the soul and subjectivation

Hello,

Long time, no see. Deleuze and Guattari relate subjectivation to the paranoiac pole of capitalism, where subjects freed from the rigidity of the feudal social order are interpellated within a new social order reterritorialized around the Oedipal figure of the nuclear family. It's very evident in this context how desire produces reality in the way the Oedipal family is bound together as a concrete entity by libidinal investment ("the boss applied to the father"). I recently re-read Foucault's "The Body of the Condemned" with this interpretation of subjectivation somewhere in the back of my mind, and I had a question regarding the production of the soul as a political object by the disciplinary penal model. It is clear of course that the soul of the criminal as the object of judgment is produced, but to what extent is the criminal him/herself fashioned by this process? Obviously the production of the soul as a political object corresponds to and supports a system of disciplina!
ry power based on medical judgment/the panoptic gaze, but I guess what I'm asking is whether it is important that the criminal come to understand him/herself in terms of a soul, and if so, how does that happen? Is Foucault concerned with this question, or is he solely concerned with the way power/knowledge relations produce their subjects?

Good to be back
Nate
Brown '06


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