Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: who are we?
- 2 Archaeological histories of who we are
- 3 Genealogical histories of who we are
- 4 Who we are and who we might be
- 5 Coda: Foucault's own straying afield
- 6 Are we still who Foucault says we are?
- Notes
- Further reading
- References
- Index
5 - Coda: Foucault's own straying afield
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: who are we?
- 2 Archaeological histories of who we are
- 3 Genealogical histories of who we are
- 4 Who we are and who we might be
- 5 Coda: Foucault's own straying afield
- 6 Are we still who Foucault says we are?
- Notes
- Further reading
- References
- Index
Summary
Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order.
How is one to say something about Foucault's life in the wake of this request? Can one say anything at all without betraying him? Or are we to dwell within the irony that this thinker who told us so much about who we are now and opened doors to our asking who we might be is someone about whom we are barred from asking who he was?
We cannot do biography. This much is clear. We cannot say, Foucault is this; he is not that. Or better, if we want to say who Foucault is, we need look no further than his writings. There he seeks to tell us who we are, who we are now, and he among us. History, not psychology, is what is required to know who we are, and to know the contingency of that who, so we can make ourselves into something else: so that we can take care of ourselves, mould ourselves into a work of art.
We cannot place Foucault neatly in a set of psychological categories and think we have remained within the ambit of his own thought. And yet, in the wake of this last chapter, in the personal seeking his thought displays there, perhaps there is a way to say something about him that would reveal a bit about his own self-creation without placing him within an epistemic framework that his works constitute a constant struggle to abandon.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Philosophy of Foucault , pp. 126 - 131Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2006