Università Roma Tre

Module A
The first module addresses the key steps of Foucault’s analytics of power: the relations between power and knowledge, sovereign power and pastoral power, power exerted on individuals and power exerted on the community.
Module B
The second module addresses the connection between “care of the self”—in classical ethics— and the constitution of the subject on the basis of a well-known course held by Foucault at the Collège de France in 1981-82. By comparing the ancient ethics—grounded on the epimeleia heautou—to the following developments, the course shows a paradoxical outcome: the distinguishing feature of modernity is neither autonomy nor self-control, but the subject being a stranger to himself.

Module A
M. Foucault, Biopolitica e liberalismo, Medusa.

Module B
M. Foucault, L’ermeneutica del soggetto, Feltrinelli (parti scelte).