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Demonstrates how visual art can work as a powerful technology of the self Starting from criticisms of a simple, given self, found in Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault, Katrina Mitcheson addresses the problem of how a complex self is constructed, and how a hermeneutics of the self can avoid reproducing a subjugated self. Critically examining Ricoeur's narrative account of self-construction, Mitcheson makes the case that narrative as a model of self-construction overlooks the variety of processes that can contribute to forming a self and neglects the materiality of these processes. Drawing on the work of a range of visual artists including Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois, this study develops an alternative account of a plural and corporeal hermeneutics of the self. Diverse examples are explored of how visual art can operate not only as a critical technology of the self, exposing practices which contribute to our subjugation, but can also discover, explore, and affect bodily processes, thereby enabling experimentation in self-construction.
About the author
Katrina Mitcheson is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England. She is the author of
Nietzsche, Truth and Transformation (Palgrave, 2013).
Summary
Drawing on the work of a range of visual artists including Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois, Katrina Mitcheson explores how visual art can help us to know ourselves, when the self is complex, decentred and partially unconscious.
