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ToolsTesta, Federico (2026) Narrating the Self: Biography and the Politics of Life in Foucault’s Psychiatric Power. In: The Foucauldian Mind. Routledge Philosophical Minds . Routledge, pp. 113-128. ISBN 9781032441962
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This chapter explores the notion of life-story as a key element for building a more complete picture of the politics of life in Michel Foucault. I address three interconnected points of his 1973–1974 lectures at the Collège de France, Psychiatric Power. First, I analyze how the “biographical” appears as a key terrain for the establishment of disciplinary and psychiatric power and for the constitution of “police individualities,” characteristic of modern politics. Second, I show how the life-story constitutes the terrain for counter-power and is used by the “mad” as a weapon to challenge asylum power, focusing especially on the productive antagonism between doctors and hysterics. Third, I show how the category of the life-story and the modalities of self-narration associated with it play a pivotal role in the emergence and investment of sexuality as a terrain for psychiatric power and, more widely, for the articulation of new modalities of exercise of power over life.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | general social sciences,philosophy,history and philosophy of science,social psychology,health(social science) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3300 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Medical Humanities Research Network Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Philosophy |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Jan 2026 10:30 |
| Last Modified: | 29 Oct 2026 09:33 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101651 |
| DOI: |
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