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The Practical Self

A Test Case for Foucault

  • Chapter
Ontopoietic Expansion in Human Self-Interpretation-in-Existence

Part of the book series: Analecta Husserliana ((ANHU,volume 54))

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Abstract

In this paper, I examine Bret Easton Ellis’ fictional portrayal of a serial killer named Patrick Bateman. I argue that Patrick Bateman exemplifies a post-humanistic Foucauldian subject. However, his practices of self-constitution and his comportment towards them are problematic. They lead us to question the liberating possibilities of Foucault’s ethics of self-care. To frame this literary analysis, I will summarize Foucault’s provocative conclusions about the death of man and survey the alternative suggestions he offers for conceiving the human in the wake of this critique.

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Notes

  1. Michel Foucault, “Truth, Power, Self,” Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), p. 11.

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  6. Ibid., p. 387.

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  7. Jon Simons, Foucault and the Political (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 2.

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  43. Ibid., p. 398.

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  51. Ibid., p. 252.

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  54. Ibid., p. 23.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Baylor University, USA

    Anne-Marie Bowery

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  1. Anne-Marie Bowery
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The World Phenomenology Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning , Belmont, Massachusetts, USA

    Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

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Bowery, AM. (1998). The Practical Self. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Ontopoietic Expansion in Human Self-Interpretation-in-Existence. Analecta Husserliana, vol 54. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5800-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5800-8_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6449-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-5800-8

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