Overview

Demonstrates how visual art can work as a powerful technology of the self Asks how we can know a decentred and partly unconscious self, and shows how particular artworks can help us to address this challenge Illustrates how both artists and audience members can use artworks as a means of cultivating or controlling specific aspects of the self Draws on the work of artists including Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois Demonstrates the specific contribution that visual art makes to projects of the self by discussing a variety of mediums and contemporary developments in artistic practice 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 the narrative model overlooks the variety of processes that can contribute to forming a self and neglects the materiality of these processes. She develops an alternative account of a plural and corporeal hermeneutics of the self: exploring how visual art can operate as a critical technology of the self. Art not only exposes practices that contribute to our subjugation, but can also discover, explore and affect bodily processes, enabling experimentation in self-construction.

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9781399511186

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Reviews

"""A novel theory of selfhood centered on embodiment and modeled on Louise Bourgeois' creative process. Seeking a deep form of personal emancipation, Mitcheson explores the transformative potentialities of bodily openness to aesthetic experience. Her account of the interplay between psychocorporeal subjects and artworks by Cindy Sherman and other identity-destabilizing artists is fascinating."" -Diana Tietjens Meyers, University of Connecticut"

Author Information

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).

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