Human life and subjectivity. Learning from Foucault

In advanced democratic societies we are free to dispose of ourselves in procreation, at the end of life, in sexuality, and at the same we might not have the sense that we can express our subjectivity as we never engaged in the task of giving form to our life in such areas: we do not have the words, the experience, we are deprived of everything. In order to open these areas of life as fields of experience in the first person, we must see them as areas where a work of self constitution is required. Foucault’s lesson in his last courses is crucial in order to equip us with the instruments to visualize the work needed and to acknowledge the state of the present condition, torn between the traditional religious framework and the privileged access to life granted to scientific technology, which both contribute to remove from view the social possibilities of self constitution.