Thank you Peter for that article, i haven't read it yet, i'll be sure to do so, it looks interesting.
Your account of the developing ideas of Foucault on 'technologies of the self', from an initially specific deployment in the context of Ancient Greek culture, to later, more generalizable manifestations, seems, at first glance, logical. However, as far as i can tell, the literary chronology goes the other way. Foucault first conceives the broad theoretical framework of this notion and then, it seems, goes on to use it more specifically in _THe Uses of Pleasure_. However, that said, things are confusing. The early stuff, the lectures at Dartmouth and short papers, are published later than _THe Care of Self_ though they proceed it chronologically. Foucault, it seems, was more eager to publish his conception of technologies of the self as crystallized in the history of sexuality series than as it was formulated, more broadly, elsewhere. Yet i'm not sure how far back the work Foucault under took in the 2nd volume of _The History of Sexuality_ goes. Can anyone fix an exact date that Foucault turned to the ancient greeks?
You argue that:
My own sense is that the technologies of the self are part
of Foucault's late focus on the subject, and represent his
intuition that there are self-to-self power relations which
can help persons adapt to or resist larger power structures.
However, i believe it should be asserted that these "self-to-self power relations" are always nested within larger power relations. And that 'technologies of the self' ,as Foucault is very clear in the "Hermeneutics of the Self", must be understood in terms of a constant interaction with those 'technologies of domination' which he analyzed so brilliantly in _Discipline and Punish_. Where does 'resistance' lie here? Well i believe that it is not in conceiving of 'technologies of the self' as autonomous instruments that invariably break-down established power networks, rather it is the realization that the self is historically and socially constructed through the interaction of a variety of historical technologies. Some may see this as constituting a claim that there is no freedom, that historical determinism rules, Foucault, it seems to me, would rather emphasize that this in fact means that the construction of order in the West is not a 'natural' and 'self-evident' truth, but belongs to the "exteriority of accidents".
"Every man must be a monk for his whole life." Max Weber.