The truth as power, the power as truth: the procedures of christian subjectivation by the optics of Michel Foucault – Part I

Abstract

The aim of a first dimension of this work is to examine Foucault’s analysis of the practical-discursive framework present in the building of the Christian subject as elaborated by Tertuliano and Cassiano. The investigations of the french thinker, especially those found in On the Government of the Living (1979-1980), invite the reader to conceive of the production of power not as an abstract and sovereign instance of the traditional model, but as a continuous and circular manifestation of truth itself, truth that produces and expresses the subjective constitution of men. In Foucault’s work, therefore, power in the West was built in the manner of a regime of truth, or even a regime of veridition. Here, the manifestation of power is immediately a manifestation of truth and subjectivity. What are the roots of modern civilization in the Western tradition? What kind of procedures and devices are involved in your activity? We will seek the answers to these questions, at the level of foundation, in the meshes of Christian subjectivation; the contemporary expression of this device, however, will remain to a second dimension of this work, based on the encounter with the researches of The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-1979).