• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
 Essay:
Is Foucault’s ‘stylistics of existence’ a method ora strategy or something else altogether?
Abdisalam M Issa-Salwe
June 1996School of Social Science, University of Greenwich
 
Content
1. Introduction-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------12. ON SUBJECTIVITY---------------------------------------------------------------------------22.1 Discourses On Sexuality-----------------------------------------------------------------32.2 Foucault’s Analytical Objections3. THE TRANSGRESSION OF LIMITS------------------------------------------------------53.1 Affirmative Mood--------------------------------------------------------------------------63.2 The Experience of the Outside----------------------------------------------------------84. THE ART OF ORAL VERSE ----------------------------------------------------------------94.1 The Art of Oral Craft and the Somalis: A Brief Background--------------------------105. CRITICS OF FOUCAULT’S LIMITS-------------------------------------------------------116. CONCLUSION---------------------------------------------------------------------------------13REFERENCES--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------14
 
1
Is Foucault’s ‘stylistics of existence’ a method or a strategy orsomething else altogether?
1. INTRODUCTION
Foucault’s ‘stylistics of existence’ is not a ‘stylisation of conduct, or more simply alifestyle’ but its main aim should be how to free the self from the shackles or limits of life. Foucault’s work on aesthetics can be understood as an attempt to transgress thelimits of humanism which encourages the concept of man as tolerant and bearing aguilty conscience.To understand the conceptual argument of Foucault’s work on this matter we have toexplore his concept of subjectivity and his critique of the humanist’s theory about theself. In this essay I will look at the basis on which Foucault rejected the subjectivityand what solution he forwarded to counter this rejection.Foucault’s work is a distinctive fusion of philosophy and historical investigations. Onone hand he theorised about relation between general history and the history of thought; and on the hand about how individuals are constituted as knowing, knowableand as self-knowing beings. Each of Foucault’s historical studies deals with theintimate and sometimes morally confusing relationship between such knowledge andsocial practice, techniques and power-relations through which these are developed andapplied (Deleuze, 1988:32).While I was attempting to examine his notion of stylistic existence, I began to explorehow appropriate it would be to look at the context of Somali poetry (especially thenomadic) ‘through this concept’. Art helps to transgress, according to Foucault, and it‘can take us right up to the void, exposing what is absent’ (Simons 1995: 71). This isprecisely what Somalis do. By extending language to its limits, the pastoral Somalisthink of their verse as more than just an artistic enterprise whose aim is to enlarge theimagination and to inspire men toward the lyrical and the beautiful (Samatar, 1982:55).To make more meaningful my analysis, I shall attempt partially to examine withFoucault’s work Somali poetry in general and how these helped these people asmechanism to give meaning and sense to life. However, to attempt such a work wouldrequire more in-depth analysis.
2. ON SUBJECTIVITY
 To understand Foucault’s argument it is essential to understand the reasoning behindhis deduction and rational. He concentrates on subjectivity and how power operateson it. He argues that people are still tied to the identity which identifies themselves asbelonging to an ethnic, national or racial group. This identity is tied firmly as peopleparticipate in the process by exercising power over themselves (Simons, 1995:2).Foucault refers the process of moral or scientific definitions as ethics.To understand the question of power, Foucault analyses the types of power relationswhich focus on the matters of states and sovereignty, freedom and will, rights and
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...