Technologies of the Self: Conceptual Context

Every Sunday at 1:00 in February and the first Sunday in March the studio on 13 E. Tulane Rd. (itlookslikeitsopen.blogspot.com) will host “Technologies of the Self,” a series of workshops focused on traditional and non-traditional methods of reconstructing or deconstructing personhood through ritual and awareness. All events are by donation.

This program is intended to introduce participants to a set of spiritual disciplines for self knowledge and self transformation. No particular religious affiliation is expected nor need one enter the experience without a critical attitude. It is for you to decide if these practices are beneficial to your own project of life acceptance and adaption. It is my hope that all the practices presented in this series will benefit artists, activists, seekers, and others.

The presentation of these “technologies” is also intended to challenge scholars and academics to step outside purely theoretical or objective modes, and enter into another kind of knowing. Social theorist Michel Foucault, best known for his work on sexuality and theories of power, turned at the end of his life away from “technologies of power” to those technologies which “permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.” (http://foucault.info/documents/foucault.technologiesOfSelf.en.html) For Foucault, technologies of the self are value-neutral. Neither necessarily good nor bad. They bring to bear regimes of truth onto psychic and somatic inner-life, and through practices of knowing, reformulate the subject, or deconstruct it. Foucault’s primary interest was in how the Greek maxims of “know yourself” and “take care of yourself” were transformed into early Christian techniques of self-disclosure and self-renunciation with the goal of spiritual purity. Here other, largely non-Western, forms and philosophies will be presented for exploration and consideration.

2/5 - Ecstatic Trance with Susan Josephson    http://www.facebook.com/events/209487835811000/

2/12 - Mindfulness Meditation with Daron Larson    http://www.facebook.com/events/174591049313517/

2/19 - Tea Ceremony with Sherab Chen   http://www.facebook.com/events/337423969611899/

2/26 - Krishna Kirtan with Satish More  http://www.facebook.com/events/292017704194841/

3/4 - Restorative Yoga with Ann Tepperman  CANCELED 

seth.josephson@gmail.com for more information.