Technologies of the self in current autobiographical practices

Abstract

Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self’ is a useful term for talking about autobiography where we see writers give meaning to their past experiences. His analyses of ‘technologies of the self’, along with other notions such as ‘care of the self’, ‘renunciation of the self’ and other terms, relate to the ways and practices individuals employed in forming ‘truths’ about their lives in Hellenistic and Imperial periods, with implications for current modes of self-relation and ‘truth’-forming, and the particular ways in which ‘power’ and ‘knowledge’ incite subjects to articulate ‘truths’ about their lives. Psychotherapy urges one to talk about one’s self and tell every detail with a promised ‘truth’ as a reward of this process. Foucault draws parallels between Christian ascetic practices and what the ancient Greeks called ‘the care of the self’. The question this thesis explores is to what extent and in what ways do the technologies employed in the two works, The Motion of Light in Water by Samuel R. Delany and My Father’s House by Sylvia Fraser, adhere to the principles upon which Christian technologies of the self concerning ‘truth’-production are founded. This thesis argues that My Father’s House is caught in a cycle of self-renunciation, akin to the mode in Christian ascetic conventions, whereas The Motion of Light in Water, while writing within certain textual, discursive and narrative conventions, at the same time subverts expectations of telos and unity, ironizing the conventions within which the author writes.