Besides Christianity and Commentary: Techniques of the Self, Self-writing, and Genealogy of the Modern Subject

Abstract

In this piece, I read Foucault’s text “Self Writing” through the lens of technologies of the self. A late addition to the conceptual framework of Foucault’s project, technologies of the self highlight the way in which the subject can transform him/herself, which adds a new component to the analytic of the formation of subjectivity and the genealogy of the modern subject. In Foucault’s discussion of self-writing, techniques of the self illustrate the nature of the distinction between Greco-Roman and Christian practices, the stakes of the distinction in the work of a genealogy of the modern subject, and the way in which writing as a practice functioned across its historical shifts. I highlight two movements to read Foucault’s comparison of Greco-Roman and Christian writing practices: the development of the techniques, and the development of their ethical values. In particular, I suggest the Christian invention of self-renunciation and self-hermeneutics is a crucial distinction in these techniques. In the end, I move to return to literature in the modern context, even despite its inheritance of these techniques, to consider a case in which the text can illustrate other modes of relation to oneself and, as a critical-political movement, expand the conceptual possibilities of modes of being.