E-LOGOS 2016, 23(1):46-52 | DOI: 10.18267/j.e-logos.430

Is the Autonomous Soul Possible? The Role of the State in Regulating the Self in the Thought of Michel Foucault from 1968-1984

Bohdana Kurylo
Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom

Keywords: autonomous soul, state, self, regulation.

This paper challenges the notion of "sexual liberation" prevalent in the post-1968 period in the West, based on the philosophy of Michel Foucault. The idea of the autonomous self is put under a thorough interrogation, as Foucault showed that it has become a powerful tool used by the state to control and normalise the population. Despite the paradoxes in Foucault's thinking about the possibility of liberation, it is the ethnical value of freedom that eventually led him to see the need for resistance to power and self-cultivation, or rather self-cultivation through resistance in his later writings.

Prepublished online: September 2, 2016; Published: June 1, 2016  Show citation

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Kurylo, B. (2016). Is the Autonomous Soul Possible? The Role of the State in Regulating the Self in the Thought of Michel Foucault from 1968-1984. E-LOGOS, 23(1), 46-52. doi: 10.18267/j.e-logos.430
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