ABSTRACT
'Sovereignty' entered the author’s conceptual universe as one among various other notions, such as 'ultrapolitics' or 'exceptionalism' that were frequently invoked in International Relations (IR) at the time. This chapter explores the disciplinary journey through which the author came to read Foucault the way he reads him now. The author provides a personal account of how the author moved from IR's conventional reading of Foucault and its focus on 'governmentality', 'biopolitics' and 'security' as elements of a critical toolbox to an understanding of Foucaultian philosophy as a practice of the care of the self that persistently works towards self-transformation and struggles against any fixity of identity, thinking or knowledge. Through recounting these transformations in the author’s own relationship to texts and Foucault's writings, the chapter opens up a possibility for loosening the grip of Cartesian instrumentality on practices of reading.
