Ontology of Literature and Subjectivity in Foucault

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reflect on the connection between the first and the last Foucault and to present some elements of continuity that link his reflection on literature in the 1960s and his ethical-political research of the last period. The literary genealogy of self-practices is studied on the basis of the hypothesis that Foucault has handled a unitary ontological presupposition on which he constructs both the idea of literature and that of ethical subjectivity, embodied in the extreme case of the philosophical parrêsia of ancient cynicism.