Hi everyone,
I'm just wondering if anyone would care to give me their perspective on this question that I recently and I think legimately posed?:
"the question that I meant to follow up with you is: if social practices, power relations and technologies of the self in creating docile bodies are constitutive of the contemporary individual according to Foucault (this is what I believe him to be saying?) then how can the individual decide to or take the initiative to resist said relations, practices and technologies? Of course Foucault might respond by saying well we can invariably reconstitute ourselves by actively changing or acting on our environment but that seems to presuppose an active body; a knowing self certain individual(not the Cartesian variety of course); who has the wherewithall to understand their predicament accurately; and, moreover, who has the means to influence said practices, relations and technologies. This seems to imply that we are more than just docile bodies.I recall you saying in the lecture that Foucault did not account sufficiently for the psychological effects of power but this may have proved self defeating in terms of his efforts to remove the subject from politicaly motivated discourses."
Is my construal accurate?
cheers
Scott
I'm just wondering if anyone would care to give me their perspective on this question that I recently and I think legimately posed?:
"the question that I meant to follow up with you is: if social practices, power relations and technologies of the self in creating docile bodies are constitutive of the contemporary individual according to Foucault (this is what I believe him to be saying?) then how can the individual decide to or take the initiative to resist said relations, practices and technologies? Of course Foucault might respond by saying well we can invariably reconstitute ourselves by actively changing or acting on our environment but that seems to presuppose an active body; a knowing self certain individual(not the Cartesian variety of course); who has the wherewithall to understand their predicament accurately; and, moreover, who has the means to influence said practices, relations and technologies. This seems to imply that we are more than just docile bodies.I recall you saying in the lecture that Foucault did not account sufficiently for the psychological effects of power but this may have proved self defeating in terms of his efforts to remove the subject from politicaly motivated discourses."
Is my construal accurate?
cheers
Scott