ABSTRACT
If one wants to analyse the genealogy of subjects in Western Civilisation, one has to take into account, not only techniques of domination, but also techniques of self. One has to show the interaction between these types of technique .... What we call discipline is something really important .... But it is only one aspect of the art of governing people in our societies. (Foucault l98la:5)
the subject constitutes himself [sic] in an active fashion, by practices of the self, these practices are nevertheless not something that the individual invents by himself. They are patterns that he finds in his culture and which are proposed, suggested and imposed on him by his culture, his society and his social group. (Foucault 1988b:ll)
1. Community Mediation as Confessional
a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile; ... a ritual in which the expression alone ... produces intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it: it exonerates, redeems, and purifies him. (Foucault 1978:61-62)
Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are. We have to imagine and build up what we could be to get rid of this kind of political "double bind," which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures. (Foucault 1982:216)
