A Self-Interested Reader? Foucault and Imperial Greek Technical Texts

Abstract:

This article examines Foucault's Le Souci de soi: while purporting to be a work on sexuality, it is also about the formation of the self and the relationship of subjectivity with claims to truth. I argue that Foucault's use of imperial Greek medical and technical texts connected the ancient world to his own background in the history of medicine and psychoanalysis. By reading medical and technical texts both on sexuality and on selfhood, Foucault examined not just what philosophy dictated about these topics but how its ideologies of sexuality and self were—in practice—translated into adjacent fields of knowledge.