I've found recently that for me, reading the college course "Hermeneutic of
the Subject" has extensively clarified the philosophic context under which
Foucault wrote his 2nd and 3rd volumes of the History of Sexuality. On their
own, one can very easily mistakenly read them as sexual dandyistic gross
simplifications of a complex set of practices in greek and roman philosophy,
as they were criticized for being by several, including Pierre Hadot, though
they were clearly intended not to constitute the whole of Foucault's
interpretation of the practices of the self. Reading this lecture course
proves this intention so, and shows both of these books in their true light
as subset analysis within a broader, richer framework of the practices of
subjectivization that Foucault was setting up, a framework that would be
expanded to also focus on parrhesia or the practices of truth telling.
Can one simply read the 2nd and 3rd volumes of The History of Sexuality on
their own to appreciate his late work, or would you think reading them alone
could potentially lead to misunderstandings of his project that can only be
clarified by the detailed lectures from 1982 and 1983?
--
Chetan Vemuri
West Des Moines, IA
aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
(515)-418-2771
"You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change the
world"
the Subject" has extensively clarified the philosophic context under which
Foucault wrote his 2nd and 3rd volumes of the History of Sexuality. On their
own, one can very easily mistakenly read them as sexual dandyistic gross
simplifications of a complex set of practices in greek and roman philosophy,
as they were criticized for being by several, including Pierre Hadot, though
they were clearly intended not to constitute the whole of Foucault's
interpretation of the practices of the self. Reading this lecture course
proves this intention so, and shows both of these books in their true light
as subset analysis within a broader, richer framework of the practices of
subjectivization that Foucault was setting up, a framework that would be
expanded to also focus on parrhesia or the practices of truth telling.
Can one simply read the 2nd and 3rd volumes of The History of Sexuality on
their own to appreciate his late work, or would you think reading them alone
could potentially lead to misunderstandings of his project that can only be
clarified by the detailed lectures from 1982 and 1983?
--
Chetan Vemuri
West Des Moines, IA
aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
(515)-418-2771
"You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change the
world"