Visual Art and Projects of the Self

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.

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Starting from Nietzsche, Freud and Foucault's criticisms of a simple, given self, 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.