Governing the Soul, Governing the Text: Foucault, May 68, and the Fall of the Sovereign

Abstract

Abstract:This article explores the impact of the events of 1968 on Michel Foucault's thought. It argues that, shortly after the events, his criticism of the notion of the author took on a political importance. The 'death of the author' now meant the 'birth' of the reader, of a subject who could 'experiment' with the text and create new meanings. This dimension is crucial because it makes clear that his 'turn' to the subject happened earlier than we thought. Moreover, by the late seventies, his analysis of the text constituted an intellectual framework for thinking about the subject itself, increasingly thinking of it as a text in itself: as something to be invented, rather than 'interpreted'. Foucault's perspective would strongly oppose older models of textual interpretation and of left politics, putting experimentation, by the subject at the center of new ways of constituting the self.