La resistencia y la estética de la existencia en Michel Foucault

Abstract

That resistance for Michel Foucault is a constant theme that appears at the end of his work as esthetics of existence. By centering his analysis on self concern and ethics as esthetics of existence Foucault does not abandon the question of resistance to political power. Under the light of self care, proposes an esthetics of existence, a style of life that opens the individual to resisting the powers that try to dominate him/her. In the first section of this article, I focus on the French thinkers motivations for returning to Greece. I analyze his travels throughout his search and the distinction he makes between ethics and morality. Additionally, I state that Michel Foucault arrives to the Greek and Greco-Latin cultures and he finds his techniques that allow him to attain a history of the building of subjectivity and he calls them the arts of existence. In the second section, I approach the question of pastoral power, governmentality and illustration. Finally, taking into consideration that Foucault does not believe that the only possible point of resistance to political power is in the relation between one and oneself, this resistance allows the fragmentation of power and invention of possibilities of unedited life. Then, the fundamental task of our times consists of carrying out a type of action that has the goal of producing a new type of subjectivity that allows liberation from the State and the kind of individualization connected to it, thus we must promote new forms of subjectivity by rejecting this kind of individuality that has been imposed on us for centuries.