Goodbye Foucault's 'missing human agent'? Self-formation, capability and the dispositifs

Bibliographic Data

ID2398362
AuthorsK Villadsen (0000-0002-9966-942X, Copenhagen Business School, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume26
Issue1
Pages67-89
Publication date2023-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/13684310221125350
OpenAlexW4296230919
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited34

A steady stream of commentary criticizes Foucault's 'agentless position' for its inability to observe, much less theorize, the ways in which human actors manoeuvre, negotiate, transform or resist the structures within which they are situated. This article does not so much refute this critical consensus but seeks to reconstruct a framework from Foucault's writings, which allows space for 'human agency', including individuals' pursuit of tactics, attempts at solving problems, reactions to unexpected events and their reflexive work on their own subjectivities. The revised analytical framework, 'dispositional analytics', integrates the study of self-techniques with the analysis of dispositifs. Recognizing that Foucault's work eschewed an adequate consideration of individuals' capacity to affect the forces that bear upon them, the article discusses the sociopolitical conditions for self-formation. Finally, a case study of 'voice-hearers' who use self-techniques to reconstitute themselves in opposition to institutional psychiatry is reinterpreted through the framework of dispositional analysis

Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Governmentality · Michel foucault · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Reflexivity · Self · Situated · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy

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