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Michel Foucault: The Cultivation of the Self Michel Foucault (1926-1984) spent much of the later part of his studies on the idea of the care of the self and cultivation of the self. He defined such care as using one’s own reason to ascertain who one is and how h ....

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.... is still improbable”. Foucault did not address himself to a broad audience; rather, he used his project of the are of the self as a model for oppressed minorities who had no voice of their own. Foucault was fascinated by what one or a group has to suppress and reject to form a positive conception of itself. He believed that our conception of ourselves as subjects depends on controlling or excluding whole classes of people who do not fit our Enlightened category of “normal”. The same devices we use to understand and control these marginalized groups are also essential to understanding and controlling “normal” individuals. This practice is ....