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Turning the gaze to the self and away from the self
– Foucault and Weil on the matter of education as
attention formation
Johannes Rytzler
To cite this article: Johannes Rytzler (2019) Turning the gaze to the self and away from the self
– Foucault and Weil on the matter of education as attention formation, Ethics and Education, 14:3,
285-297, DOI: 10.1080/17449642.2019.1617452
ARTICLE
Turning the gaze to the self and away from the self –
Foucault and Weil on the matter of education as
attention formation
Johannes Rytzler
School of Education, Culture and Communication, Mälardalen University College, Eskilstuna,
Sweden
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Through writings of Simone Weil and Michel Foucault, the Simone Weil; Michel
article explores the notion of education as the formation of Foucault; attention;
the attending and attentive subjects. Both writers have in education
different ways acknowledged the important relation
between attention and the self. While Weil develops a spiri-
tual form of attention, an attention which can be trained in
any form of serious studying, aiming at dissolving the illu-
sion of the self, Foucault understands attention as an impor-
tant aspect in the Greek notion of the care of the self, which
was developed outside of and due to the limitations of
pedagogy aiming at a self-attentive self-formation. Both
non-egotistic notions of attention address ethical and edu-
cational dimensions of human subjectivity. Foucault’s notion
is anti-institutional and Weil’s notion is non-formative. As
such, both perspectives inform educational thinking and
practice by highlighting attention as a crucial aspect of
both the active and the contemplative subject.
Introduction
The importance of attention has been more or less a general theme within the
history of educational thinking. Educational practices are per definition rela-
tional domains, where enactments of showing and pointing out are performed
in order for people to act, re-act or transform (see, e.g. Mollenhauer 2014). As
such, they are connected to attention in at least two ways. First, they point
towards something, some specific content, certain ideas or different ways of
living (Rytzler 2017). Second, by doing this, they summon transformative and
self-active responses (Benner 2005). In other words, educational practices
invite children and students to become attentive subjects (Sobe 2004; Rytzler
2017). However, to address the question of human subjectivity is to enter into
a complex domain of thought. During the twentieth century, the very notion
of a human subject with an intentional consciousness (i.e. attention) became
The link between education and attention can be developed by putting forth
the specificity of an educational relation as a realm of attention formation (Stiegler
2010). In order to explore the notion of education as a relational practice that
forms attentive subjects, the writings of Simone Weil and Michel Foucault are
enlightening, as both thinkers, in quite different ways, have acknowledged the
important relation between attention and the self. While Weil develops a spiritual
form of attention, an attention which can be trained in any form of serious
studying, aiming at dissolving the illusion of the self (and maybe the self in itself),
Foucault understands attention as an important aspect in the Greek notion of the
care of the self, which was developed outside of and due to the limitations of
pedagogy aiming at a self-attentive self-formation. Both notions of attention have
a non-egotistic dimension that, in line with Foucault, is anti-institutional and, in
line with Weil, is non-formative. Due to this, their respective perspectives inform
educational thinking and practice in interesting ways, especially when it comes to
the question of the attentive subject. I will in the following paragraphs show how
Foucault and Weil contribute to the creation of a space for thinking of and
dwelling upon the very notion of human subjectivity and also how they provide
important insights when questions about subjectivity are framed educationally –
that is when subjectivity is connected to the event when someone is called or
summoned into presence and self-activity by a concrete other (see, e.g. Todd,
2003; Benner 2005; Säfström 2005; Biesta 2014).
Attention, always at the base of any care system, is formed in schools, but as
a rational discipline of adoption inculcated into the psyche of the student-as-
scholar (i.e., rationally adopting a knowledge or skill) before the entire literate
world (initially, classmates). (Stiegler 2010, 60)
According to the modern mode of subjectivation, the constitution of the self as subject
depends on an indefinite endeavor of self-knowledge, which strives only to reduce the
gap between what I am truly and what I think myself to be; what I do, the actions
I perform, only have value insofar as they help me to know myself better. Foucault’s
thesis can thus be put in the following way: For the subject of right action in Antiquity is
substituted the subject of true knowledge in the modern West. (Gros 2005, 523)
Attention as waiting
that will be available in the moment of prayer. To Weil (2012), school studies
should only be a means for practicing attention, not for reaching specific
results. There is true desire wherever there is an effort of attention. An exercise
of study is performed with the sole desire to perform it correctly not in order
to achieve anything else, like grades for instance. It is about applying oneself
to an exercise, welcoming any errors that may occur, and openly trying to
uncover the origin of each error (Weil 2012, 23). To Weil, understanding is not
an issue in this case, since making errors, as well as succeeding, are experi-
ences that both develop attention. This is on the condition that the studies are
performed with a kind of negative effort rather than an effort of the will. By
turning to the errors and the mistakes, Weil highlights the importance of
critically examining our own stupidity.
Weil’s notion of attention takes the form of an aesthetic sensibility that can
be cultivated through the practice of solitude (Caranfa 2007). The subject
cultivates this sensibility through the exposure to art and other aesthetic and
sensible experiences. Weil’s thinking is not rooted in the Cartesian ego but
rather in ‘the inspiring source itself, manifesting through us only when no ego
or agent is in the way’ (Finch 1999, p.33). This inspiring source is to Weil the
work of a specific form of attention:
Human beings, utterly fragile, at the mercy of every material accident and at any
moment exposed to the possibility of affliction, have only two tiny points where they
are linked to something else. One is the capacity for impersonal, impartial attention,
the waiting that is an intense receptivity to that which comes from outside; the other
is the ineradicable expectation in every human being that Good will be done to us.
(Finch 1999, 15)
Weil’s other
In the very notion of the self, Weil detects a too fixed connection between the
world and the world as it is shown to me. Attention is not will because it is
connected to desire but without any accomplished goal in sight (thus a form
of waiting). These desires must be deprived of their mental orientation.
Appearance is what attracts and forms our attention and thus also what
distracts us from paying attention to being. The attentive subject of Weil is
a non-subject or a self-less subject. It is not, however, an egotistic way of losing
oneself; the attentive subject of Weil is also an ethical subject, open towards
the unpredictable emerging of the other. That is also why school studies, if
they are performed with real attention, can lead to grace and love of the
ETHICS AND EDUCATION 293
afflicted. Weil’s subject waits without knowing how the other will appear or
address her. Weil (2012) states that the key to a Christian conception of studies
is that prayer consists of attention: ‘Never, in any case, is any effort of true
attention lost. It is always completely effective on the spiritual plane, and
therefore also, in addition, on the inferior plane of the intelligence, for all
spiritual light enlightens the intelligence’ (22). Truth is to Simone Weil a matter
of attention and contemplation as well as a matter of action and life: ‘Nothing
can rightly restrict the freedom of the intellect (indeed, it is an obligation) to
attend to everything and let each show itself for what it is. We must want to
see things as they are and not as we want to see them’ (Andic 1999, 6).
Intelligence can only be led by desire, and not muscle effort. A short period
of intense attention is far better than hours of contracting muscles and the
following (false) feelings of achievement. Attention is nevertheless much more
difficult, as it destroys the evil within ourselves. It is about suspending our
thought in order to be penetrated by the object of study. Weil (2002) coins the
concept of decreation, which is a sort of acceptance of death or a willingness
to become nothing. Decreation is, however, not destructive because it is
a process of liberating a tied up energy. What man can know about himself
is only what is lent to him by circumstances. Weil (2002) accepts that the self is
formed in the intersection between our outer impressions and inner sensa-
tions, but she also aims to renounce this self as it only stands in the way for the
attainment of grace. Weil’s concept of attention has more to do with
a readiness to receive without searching. The attentive subject thus must resist
the desire to be active. Waiting is to Weil the essence of paying attention.
p.18). Foucault shows that the self is empty in a sense that it can only emerge
from within a specific culture or context. As the self as such is embedded in
a complex of relations (of both power and care) it can never exist as
a singularity. That is why the care of the self always has to be a practice,
a doing. In this practice, the self emerges through a sort of double-gesture of
turning both inwardly and outwardly: the formation of the self that comes as
a result of the care of the self, is always a formation dependent upon the
existence and the care for the other. Weil works in a rather opposite direction.
She renounces the self in a way that gives it an ethical meaning, through the
uninterested relation(s) to its object(s) of attention. The training of this self-less
attention is characterized by looking, listening and, most importantly, waiting.
While these techniques also have a very practical nature, they are supposed to
work in a non-formative direction, in the sense that they work against
a consolidation of the ego-self. Through Weil’s thinking, the non-cultural self,
or the non-self, becomes a self that is striving for non-striving. Attention as
waiting is the negative effort through which one attains Grace.
Thought and intelligence are always already collective: both are part of a process of
individuation that is actually a metastabilizing co-individuation of the transindividual,
where a circulating intelligence, as interlegere, forms an organological milieu linking
minors and adults, parents and children, ancestors and descendants, and the gen-
erations containing mind and spirit: pneuma, ruah, spiritus. (Stiegler 2010, 34)
In the quote, Stiegler points to the peculiar nature of education that works as
both a destabilizing and a formative process that cuts through the collective in
the same way as it creates a spiritual milieu where intelligence grows together
with the collective and the subjects coming together therein.
I believe that it is in the tension between subject as constituted as
a relation of power(s) and subject as exercising power in this spiritual and
collective field that the writings of Foucault and Weil become interesting as
they both address the possibilities and the limitations for a subject to come
forth. Important to both writers in relation to this ambivalent existence of
the subject becomes the practice of attention, either as a care of the self
(Foucault) or as a form of self-less waiting (Weil). Even if the Greek notion of
the care of the self, in fact, is promoted as a way of letting the self maintain
an open and not completely determined character, it is a self that is
measured or evaluated in relation to a social or cultural context, even if
ETHICS AND EDUCATION 295
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Johannes Rytzler http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9518-4089
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