tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post8541011739410497151..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: The Late Foucault, the One Who Got Away: Post/medieval AscesisCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-83720812215261427242012-04-08T15:03:53.465-04:002012-04-08T15:03:53.465-04:00Aranye: your question got me thinking about how dr...Aranye: your question got me thinking about how dream & regimen come together in medieval hagiographic narratives, such as the life of Saint Guthlac [Anglo-Latin version], where Guthlac's visitations by demons, who scourge him, etc., happens after he falls asleep. So now I'm also thinking, how are "regimen"/ascesis and dreams entwined? As to the persistence of regimen and dream treatises, that is a wonderful question, and one I have to think on further [your cousin A.F.'s chapter in The Post-Historical Middle Ages is obviously helpful on this question.<br /><br />As to Vols. 2 & 3 of Foucault's Hist. of Sexuality having been eclipsed [in scholarship on Foucault, regimes/history of sexuality, biopolitics, etc.] by Vol. 1: very much agreed. Now that Palgrave has been publishing Foucault's last lectures at the College de France, and given the copius number of late interviews and smaller pieces we have [and which we can happily read in French as well], we have a LOT to ruminate on Foucault's thinking on non-sexualized ascesis and care of the self. One hopes something like a new politics of friendship and affectivities [whether auto- or other affective] might also arise from a return to this material, which is also in needs of a cautionary, historized-by-way-of-the-Middle-Ages approach.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-37937352640890650342012-04-07T17:56:59.671-04:002012-04-07T17:56:59.671-04:00I've always been puzzled by the way Volume I s...I've always been puzzled by the way Volume I seemed to eclipse vols. 2 and 3 so thoroughly, so I'm delighted by these developments. Also wondering what you and Karl would say about the historical persistence of regimens and dream treatises.Aranye Nin, Ph.D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/02499702130175213723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-77762483985251404582011-12-19T17:18:33.445-05:002011-12-19T17:18:33.445-05:00Thanks for that tip, Irina; I just ordered the art...Thanks for that tip, Irina; I just ordered the article through my library,Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-62237336400668882662011-12-19T14:09:21.097-05:002011-12-19T14:09:21.097-05:00This conversation seems to be missing something --...This conversation seems to be missing something -- Niklaus Largier's essay "Praying by Numbers" in Representations (2008). I found it a stimulating approach to the relationship between asceticism, imagination, and pleasure.ihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-65658439657487758602011-12-19T14:01:51.511-05:002011-12-19T14:01:51.511-05:00And Karl, that's a very insightful comment, in...And Karl, that's a very insightful comment, indeed, from you [and by way of Dinshaw], when we consider what I have mapped out [with help from David Halperin and Jeremy Carrette] as Foucault's TRI-fold definition of ascesis, which he saw only positively [see, esp. in relation to your comment, #2:<br /><br />first, relative to its articulation as a stylistics of the self in ancient Greek and Roman thought, ascesis offers a way of mapping and experiencing bodily pleasures that cannot be captured under disciplinary regimes of desire, and therefore, the human self becomes, through ascesis, ‘the site of a radical alterity: it is the space within each human being where she or he encounters the not-self, the beyond’;<br /><br />second, and still related to its expression in ancient thought, ascesis names an austere practice of philosophy or ‘thought on thought’—in Foucault’s words, ‘an exercise of the self in the activity of thought,’ where we consider how our ‘own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so enable it to think differently’;<br /><br />and finally, following from its expression within a distinctly Christian hermeneutics of the self, especially as expressed in certain texts from late antiquity, ascesis also refers to various techniques of ‘mastery’ over one’s body and sufferings, through which the self surpasses itself, and homosexuality, as a spiritual exercise, might serve as ‘an historic occasion to re-open affective and relational virtualities.’Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-66229457640226175982011-12-19T13:15:24.894-05:002011-12-19T13:15:24.894-05:00Eileen and Anna, let me say with Irina that I wish...Eileen and Anna, let me say with Irina that I wish I could take this class! I'm definitely stealing the reading list and, I hope, getting through that. <br /><br />Anna, thanks for that (and thanks for your faith in my French!). I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Dinshaw last year or the year before, where I compared the fun and creativity of the kind of pleasure-oriented scholarship we've been championing to the old and (apparently) (merely) ascetic scholarship of textual editors and old philologists. Dinshaw wisely said that this too could be a site of pleasure for them. I'm suggesting then that, say, "une ascèse philologique" could be as rich a site for self-transformation and new happinesses as anything else.medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-56265859688654773792011-12-19T12:53:09.966-05:002011-12-19T12:53:09.966-05:00People have been noticing this phrase of Foucault ...People have been noticing this phrase of Foucault that Eileen uses, "the improbable manners of being," so I just wanted to add that Eileen has been working on that particular phrase, in relation to his late writings on asceticism and medieval<br />hagiography, for a number of years. <br />Karl: the whole passage may be of interest to you: "L'ascétisme comme renonciation au plaisir a mauvaise réputation. Mais l'ascèse est autre chose : c'est le travail que l'on fait soi-même sur soi-même pour se transformer ou pour faire apparaître ce soi qu'heureusement on n'atteint jamais. Est-ce que ce ne serait pas ça notre problème aujourd'hui ? Congé a été donné à l'ascétisme. À nous d'avancer dans une ascèse homosexuelle qui nous ferait travailler sur nous-mêmes et inventer, je ne dis pas découvrir, une manière d'être encore improbable."<br />It's in the interview he gave entitled Friendship as a way of Life, transl.<br />by John Johnston, French version: Le Gai pied, April 25, 1981, original<br />title de l'amitié comme mode de vie, p. 38-39, interview with René de<br />Coccatty, Jean Danet et Jean Le Bitoux , and it's published in Michel<br />Foucault, ed. By Sylvère Lotringer, English in Foucault Live: Collected<br />Interviews, 1961-1984, Semiotext(e)1986, 1996.<br />There is a link to the full French text here:<br />http://1libertaire.free.fr/MFoucault174.html<br />xoxoox Annaanna klosowskahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09611569607945164280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1446721263303066252011-12-18T07:15:42.942-05:002011-12-18T07:15:42.942-05:00maria aegyptiaca:
http://www.brynmawr.edu/visualcu...maria aegyptiaca:<br />http://www.brynmawr.edu/visualculture/archive/KPeters.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-21284471072829511992011-12-17T22:56:35.447-05:002011-12-17T22:56:35.447-05:00Thanks Eileen -- I read all of those for my diss c...Thanks Eileen -- I read all of those for my diss chapter a few year ago. My sense is that the French versions are more commented, partly because they vary more. And of course there are multiple versions in German and Spanish. But the OE, being such a close translation, has seen little commentary, aside from that Old English Newsletter Subsidia volume and the Poppe and Ross edited collection. (And a chapter in Linda Coon's Sacred Fictions that I remember finding useful.)<br /><br />The more I work with the OE version though, the more I find myself turning to a very detailed and precise reading of the text. It's where I come from methodologically, but it's also the case that the translator does some really interesting things. But, you know, stay tuned...ihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-68465679750906729382011-12-17T20:59:50.245-05:002011-12-17T20:59:50.245-05:00Irina: the OE Mary of Egypt, especially, is one of...Irina: the OE Mary of Egypt, especially, is one of those great under-commented-upon texts; there should be MUCH more on it, but there isn't. Burrus addresses it in her book [but earlier versions], and Cary Howie also looks at [a French?] version in his "Claustrophilia" book. Both of those are worth reading. I think Ruth Mazo Karras also deals with Mary in “Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 1.1 (July 1990): 3-32.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-17600936461135223592011-12-17T14:54:19.707-05:002011-12-17T14:54:19.707-05:00So what, exactly, do I have to do to be in that se...So what, exactly, do I have to do to be in that seminar if it's offered? (Oh wait, it's just for grad students right? Argh.) <br /><br />This comes at a gorgeously perfect time for me -- teaching done, and I'm sitting down with the outline of my radically-revised Mary of Egypt chapter. There is *so* much to say about this text -- the challenge is what to cut out -- that I'm amazed more hasn't been written on it.ihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-5789315167577595522011-12-17T12:48:30.883-05:002011-12-17T12:48:30.883-05:00I/we will definitely explore the "nostalgia&q...I/we will definitely explore the "nostalgia" angle, but Foucault's interest in classical sources vis-a-vis care of the self and ascesis was never entirely *just* pre-Xian: if you looks at his last lectures and seminars, especially [such as one he gave at the Univ. of Vermont in 1982, published in 1988 as "Technologies of the Self," UMass. Press], he always discusses the classical sources alongside Christian sources from late antiquity [esp. 4th-5th centuries]. Foucault saw a real "connect" between classical writings on care of the self [such as Plato's "Alcibiades I"] and early Christian monasticism/asceticism. But Foucault never looked at medieval sources, of course, and so one of my questions is: what happens when we do turn to those sources, especially the more -- I would say -- *fictional* realm of hagiography, and read Foucault on technologies of the self *again* through those sources and through the lenses of more recent work [by Burrus, Mackendrick, Mills, and others] on the erotics/queerness of early saints' lives, etc.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-5282990519652755602011-12-17T09:25:10.214-05:002011-12-17T09:25:10.214-05:00very rich material, and no surprise EJ! wondering ...very rich material, and no surprise EJ! wondering if you'll see your seminar as engaging with the kind of nostalgia or 'starting over' of MF's implied call for a return to preXian sexual/ethical philosophy? Obviously you're planning to linger--perversely--in the later period, the moment when discourses of sex start to proliferate along with new desires of pain, so you're already shortcircuiting Foucault a bit so far as I can tell; but I wonder if his nostalgia (can we call it that?) can be investigated too?medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.com