Foucault and the politics of self-government

This thesis examines Foucault’s politics of self-government. Through an analysis of Foucault’s work on power and ethics, it demonstrates the multifaceted political dimensions of the ethical practices of the care of the self. Particularly, it identifies two possible meanings of the politics of the care of the self: self-fashioning as a form of voluntary servitude, and self-fashioning as a form of voluntary inservitude or resistance. The first chapter offers a conceptual framework to this analysis. It contextualises the problem of self-fashioning within the broader issue of the modalities of the constitution of subjectivity and it identifies governmentality, defined as the conduct of conducts, as the key concept to study the politics of self-fashioning. Chapters Two and Three then investigate the first meaning of the practice of self-fashioning: that is, a voluntary servitude. According to Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power and of the emerging society of norms, self-fashioning can be a form of self-disciplinarisation (Chapter Two). With the advent of the economisation of life, self-fashioning can also be a form of self-entrepreneurship or self-optimisation based on a business model (Chapter Three). Chapter Four then investigates the second meaning, viz. the practices of self-fashioning as a form of resistance or counter-conduct; doing so by looking at Foucault’s turn to Antiquity. Specifically, it explores Foucault’s analysis of parrhesia (or practices of truth-telling) in the Cynics and Euripidean tragedy. Following up on the problematic relationship between parrhesia and citizenship in Chapter Four, Chapter Five then investigates the connections between the politics of self-government and the politics of rights. It argues that, in light of the ambivalent nature of law, rights claims can be strategically deployed to promote new modes of relationships and new forms of life. Finally, chapter Six applies the politics of the care of the self to the current debate about citizenship, which is driven by the dissatisfaction with its juridical definition. It claims that Foucault’s politics of self-government can contribute to the attempt to re-conceptualise this notion, allowing us to uncover a lived or practical dimension of citizenship