Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

80 Making f ubjecasian and Kantian corrceptians of the self as conditional or logically prior toexperience. Susan Hekrnan remarks that though Foucault sees the subjectas ""constituted within discursive formations," he dodoes not merely ""replacethe constituting subject with the corzsdtuted subject," lonaead he offers ""aconception of the subject that explodes the polarity between constitutedand constituting by displacing the o,ppositi~n."~~~ Uniike mead, Foucaultdoes not offer a competing ontological conception of the self,l" In a sensethat must be handled carefully, Foucault is not concerned with thc self orego, as are Descartes, Kanr, and Mead, f-;aucault7s constructed subject is notintended as an alternative to the Cartesian ego or the Kantian ""Ihink" orMead's "combination" of remembered selves and internal responses to actions.'"buoucault is equally opposed to essentialist conceptions of the self,like Bescairtes3 and Mant9ss, and to constructivist ones, like Mead's.For Foucault, the construction of the subject means the investing of abody with a pattern sf subjectivity-determining habits. That body is thenassigned certain asfributes and a certain status. Recall the deliberate ambiguivin Foucault's concept of the subject. The habit-invested body is both asubject in being subject to institutianal and state authority, and in being aswbjert of exgerienre. "The iormer is clear enough; the latter is more elusive.The point is that habits determine subjectivity in that conditioned behavioralters attitudes and instrlls new ones. This is precisely the avowed aim ofdisciplinary techniques: to change people by making them behave differently.What it is to be a power-construmd sub~ect, in the subject-of-experiencesense, is Eor a habit-invested body to adopt a certain perspe~tive on itselfand its surroundings. The individual comes to experience the world in acertain way as a result of behaving in certain ways, being categorized incertain ways, and being dealt with in certain ways. A constrgctgcl subjectthen is an exiperiencing self of a pnrtic~la'ar sort in that an iadividgal ilzternalixespower-assigned attribzaites and comes to intend power-imposedactions,Foucault's objecrive is to displace the dualicy of preexis.tentlconstructedsubjects by providing a gnealogical account of what it is to become and tohe a subject through disciplining of the body, Ontologcal theorizing aboutthe ultimate nature of the self thus is undercut by showing havv the subjectis the: result ol ""a process of self-knowledge." Far FoueaJt the subject is aproduct of an "obligation to seek and state the truth about oneself.""'""This is a marter of subjectivity being defined in the process of "learning"what one is by internalizing power-produced truths and ""acting as oneshould" to cc=ont*orm to what is learned about oneself. Constructed subjectivityis noc a metaphysical emergence but a cognitive result,~lQecoming asubject is coming to hold certain things as true about oneself, saying certainthings about oneself, and intentionally acting in certain ways. This is thesense in which the subject "is not a pre-given entity, The individual, with