Secondly we will try to bypass (note that we are not saying ‘overcome’) the micro/macro, intra/inter dualisms in social sciences and, through the understanding of its genesis following the different kinds of actors, spaces and times, try to offer a new ‘peace proposal’.

Technique and Subjectivity [3]

But now we would like to give an example that might illustrate a genealogical attitude put to work to the study of one of those supposedly stable dualisms. Later on we will come back to the general considerations. In particular we are going to focus on the very nature of the particular mediation that gives meaning to the story we read before and its relationship with the development of subjectivity.

Going back to our example, the main literary genre that mediates our stories of anorexia is a hybrid narrative device placed in between the classic clinical history’s contents and the genre of self-revelation. Clinical history’s mediation is clear in both form and content. Anorexics are precise measurers of their height and weight. They are proficient users of diagnostic categories; they expose their symptoms with a kind of emotional distance proper of a physician and so on and so forth. The genealogy of the other genre or self-revelation technique and of some of the cultural practices to which it was linked was analysed by Foucault (1988).

In short, the development of subjectivity in the wake of Christianism depended on the re-elaboration of the Greek technique of askesis or remembering, developed by the Stoics. The master-disciple relationship was, to the eyes of Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius, deeply asymmetric. The ancient Socratic pedagogy based in dialogue is substituted by a pedagogy of active listening, repetition and remembering. In fact, the beloved retirement of the Stoics was a strategy to remember properly, with the aid of peace, silence and solitude, the master’s words. The disciple listened and the master spoke. No questions, only rules to learn. ‘I retire so that nothing can disturb my askesis [remembering]’. We will exemplify it with bits of Marcus Aurelius letters:

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