Subjectivation as problem and project

is there an existentialist motif in Foucault

Claudius Messner

pp. 36-60

in: James Hardie-Bick, Ronnie Lippens (eds), Crime, governance and existential predicaments, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

"Our modern mode of being subjects' (Foucault 2003, p. 9) in the world has always been a central topic in Foucault's thinking, from the first studies on Unreason — the History of Madness — to the last ones centred on the "concern for the self". "Government" in the sense of the reflexive conduct (conduite) of oneself and of others by the self seems to constitute the very key to the writings and practices of Foucault. One might well say that his reasoning revolves around the issue of individual and social existence as complexity, as problem and project.

Cited authors

Foucault Michel