Foucault Technologies of Power and of the Self

Technologies of power ‘determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject’ (Foucault 1988b, p 18). Technologies of the self are the various ‘operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being’ that people make either by themselves or with the help of others in order to transform themselves to reach a ‘state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality’ (Foucault 1988b, p 18).

Foucault M (1988b) Technologies of the self. In L H Martin, H Gutman and P H Hutton (eds) Technologies of the self. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, pp 16–49.

Here is the Structure<>Agency Dialectic


Not complicated!:


 patterns of actvivity and thought
 some have a pay off for the actor `(technologies of the self)  some have a pay off for others..(technologies of Power) wanting control & profit


Those with a  capital pay off for those with wealth power are promoted /normalised c.f those without  a pay off  (ie those based around free inherent qualities/resources)

some mutual?

Why did it take him so long to get to this point. He mentions he should have read other authors... (Why didn't he?

Habermas?  see below

(I assume his academic game led to him complicating / mystifying a particular specialisation instead of looking for a balanced overview .. why..  expert position and money...?)

http://www.sciy.org/2010/01/31/foucault-truth-telling-and-technologies-of-the-self-in-schools-by-tina-besley/

***  Essay Late in his life when discussing his work, Foucault (1988b) said that his project had been to historicise and analyse how in western culture the specific ‘truth games’ in the social sciences such as economics, biology, psychiatry, medicine and penology have developed knowledge and techniques to enable people to understand themselves. Foucault not only provides quite a shift from earlier discourses on the self, but also brings in notions of disciplinarity, governmentality, freedom and ethics as well as notions of corporeality, politics and power and its historico-social context. His own understandings about the self shifted over the years. Late in his life he notes that he may have concentrated ‘too much on the technology of domination and power’ (Foucault 1988b, p 19).*** Essay

** Essay

Foucault also harnessed Heideggerian notions of techne and technology. Heidegger questioned our relationship to the essence of modern technology, which treats everything, including people, ‘as a resource that aims at efficiency – toward driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense’ (Heidegger 1977, p 15). Unlike Heidegger though, who focused on understanding the ‘essence’ or coming into presence of being or dasein, Foucault historicised questions of ontology and in the process was therefore not concerned about notions of aletheia or an inner, hidden truth or essence of self (Heidegger 1977). Dreyfus points out that for both Foucault and Heidegger it is the practices of the modern world and modern technology that produce a different kind of subject – a subject who does not simply objectify and dominate the world through technology, but who is constituted by this technology (Dreyfus 2002).

Foucault set out a typology of four inter-related ‘technologies’: technologies of production, technologies of sign systems, technologies of power (or domination) and technologies of the self. Each is a set of practical reason that is permeated by a form of domination that implies some type of training and changing or shaping of individuals. Instead of an instrumental understanding of technology, Foucault used ‘technology’ in the Heideggerian sense as a way of revealing truth and focused on technologies of power and technologies of the self.