Description:
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.Review Quotes:
"An indispensable document for the student of Foucault's career."--Kritikon Litterarum
"A very important contribution to Foucault's opus because it represents the direction of his intellectual interest shortly before his death."--CHOICE "While these unfinished essays cannot be considered Foucault's masterpieces, the thinking, impulses, and revision they express are perhaps the deepest and most fertile in his oeuvre. They show how, even within matrices of power, the human being remains the effective force of his or her destiny."--Contemporary Sociology "A very readable and highly satisfying introduction to Foucault's final line of investigation.... Foucault's object is to uncover the history of self-technologies, to study the various ways that we in the West have acted upon ourselves, making ourselves the object of care and of domination. This volume is a wonderful introduction to Foucault [and] a testimony to the deep humanity of the man himself."--Critical Review "The seminar format renders Foucault's exposition extremely accessible, making this--one of his last works--a good point of departure for all his works."--Library Journal