Visual Art and Self-Construction

Drawing on the work of a range of visual artists including Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois, Katrina Mitcheson explores how visual art can help us to know ourselves, when the self is complex, decentred and partially unconscious.
Demonstrates how visual art can work as a powerful technology of the selfAsks how we can know a decentred and partly unconscious self, and shows how particular artworks can help us to address this challengeIllustrates how both artists and audience members can use artworks as a means of cultivating or controlling specific aspects of the selfDraws on the work of artists including Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Francis Bacon and Louise BourgeoisDemonstrates the specific contribution that visual art makes to projects of the self by discussing a variety of mediums and contemporary developments in artistic practiceStarting from criticisms of a simple, given self found in Nietzsche, Freud and Foucault, Katrina Mitcheson addresses the problem of how a complex self is constructed, and how a hermeneutics of the self can avoid reproducing a subjugated self.Critically examining Ricoeur's narrative account of self-construction, Mitcheson makes the case that the narrative model overlooks the variety of processes that can contribute to forming a self and neglects the materiality of these processes. She develops an alternative account of a plural and corporeal hermeneutics of the self: exploring how visual art can operate as a critical technology of the self. Art not only exposes practices that contribute to our subjugation, but can also discover, explore and affect bodily processes, enabling experimentation in self-construction.

Pages: 176

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