Foucault’s Difficult Reconfiguration of the Self and the Daoist Nonbeing Self

• In Event: Confucianism, Taoism, and Education: Wisdom and New Insights in Education

Abstract

In this proposal, I will trace the shifts and changes in Foucault's destruction and reconstruction of the subject and suggest that a circling return to the modern notion of the subject has occurred in his final work. I will examine the difficulties associated with his reconfiguring of the subject in different phases and especially when combined with an insistence on the liberty and freedom of the subject. I suggest that an eastern no-self or non-being self that does not move to the reflective and representing state of the conscious, that renders a radically different concept of freedom, may help with such a project.

Author

• Guoping Zhao, Oklahoma State University