Construction and Deconstruction of the Self between Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy

Abstract

This study is devoted to the connections between writing and the development of subjectivity in Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy. In Foucault, writing is a technique belonging to a process of subjectivization of truth, that is to the constitution of the self. Writing is investigated by Foucault in the classic Greek and Roman culture: with the redaction of hypomnémataand correspondences, people cooperated in the organization of a lógos biotikós aimed at the psychagogy of the individual. For Nancy, on the other hand, writing has mainly a deconstructive purpose. In its Cartesian sense,subjectivity is at the same time the object and the place in which deconstruction occurs: it represents the starting point of the philosophical work. In the horizon of an autobiographic ontology, philosophy goes beyond the self-positioning of the cogito and shows the irreducible and primordial punctuality of existence.