{"id":{"repo_id":"uwo","oai_identifier":"oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/30446"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uwo/oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/30446","repository":{"repo_id":"uwo","name":"Western University","base_url":"https://uwo.scholaris.ca/server/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Foucault, Affect, History: On the Art of Feeling","abstract":"While the work of Michel Foucault has not generally been thought to engage in questions of affect, I argue that his work entails a meaningful engagement with such questions but in a way that challenges how we tend to think about affect. Drawing from Foucault’s oeuvre, I enter a series of dialogues with thinkers of affect, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Brian Massumi, in order to understand to what extent the turn to affect—especially for Sedgwick and Massumi—represents an attempt to work through a number of difficulties and tensions in Foucault’s thought and writing. I argue that Foucault is an insightful yet challenging interlocutor for affect theorists because of his understanding of the ethical dimensions of affect, and his historicization of separate modalities of relating to those areas of life and experience that belong to affect, emotion, and feeling. In this thesis, I aim to tease out that historicization in the form of two key historical modalities belonging to modern and ancient technologies of the self: the scientia affectus, which endeavours to decipher truth in emotion or affect, and the ars pathetica, which derives truth from feeling itself.","abstract_html":"While the work of Michel Foucault has not generally been thought to engage in questions of affect, I argue that his work entails a meaningful engagement with such questions but in a way that challenges how we tend to think about affect. Drawing from Foucault’s oeuvre, I enter a series of dialogues with thinkers of affect, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Brian Massumi, in order to understand to what extent the turn to affect—especially for Sedgwick and Massumi—represents an attempt to work through a number of difficulties and tensions in Foucault’s thought and writing. I argue that Foucault is an insightful yet challenging interlocutor for affect theorists because of his understanding of the ethical dimensions of affect, and his historicization of separate modalities of relating to those areas of life and experience that belong to affect, emotion, and feeling. In this thesis, I aim to tease out that historicization in the form of two key historical modalities belonging to modern and ancient technologies of the self: the scientia affectus, which endeavours to decipher truth in emotion or affect, and the ars pathetica, which derives truth from feeling itself.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Chisholm, Austin"],"institution":"The University of Western Ontario","degree_name":"MA","degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":"Theory and Criticism","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Faflak, Joel"],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2020,"date_issued":"2020-08-21","date_published":"2020-08-21","updated_at":"2026-07-27T21:56:20Z","subjects":[],"languages":["en_ca"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/30446","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.uri"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Faflak, Joel"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Chisholm, Austin"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.accessioned","label":"Dc Date Accessioned","values":["2025-07-10T18:40:59Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2025-07-10T18:40:59Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2020-08-21"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["The University of Western Ontario"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Theory and Criticism"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["MA"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language.iso","label":"Language (ISO)","values":["en_ca"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/30446"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["The thesis cover page in the PDF document includes references to Western University’s previous institutional repository platform, known as Scholarship@Western, and links to that platform (beginning with ir.lib.uwo.ca). In citing or referring to this thesis, use the DOI or handle from this page instead. Sample citation: Author name, \"Thesis title.\" (Year). Western University Open Repository. https://doi.org/10.71858/123456."]},{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["While the work of Michel Foucault has not generally been thought to engage in questions of affect, I argue that his work entails a meaningful engagement with such questions but in a way that challenges how we tend to think about affect. Drawing from Foucault’s oeuvre, I enter a series of dialogues with thinkers of affect, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Brian Massumi, in order to understand to what extent the turn to affect—especially for Sedgwick and Massumi—represents an attempt to work through a number of difficulties and tensions in Foucault’s thought and writing. I argue that Foucault is an insightful yet challenging interlocutor for affect theorists because of his understanding of the ethical dimensions of affect, and his historicization of separate modalities of relating to those areas of life and experience that belong to affect, emotion, and feeling. In this thesis, I aim to tease out that historicization in the form of two key historical modalities belonging to modern and ancient technologies of the self: the scientia affectus, which endeavours to decipher truth in emotion or affect, and the ars pathetica, which derives truth from feeling itself."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Foucault, Affect, History: On the Art of Feeling"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor.advisor":["Faflak, Joel"],"dc:creator":["Chisholm, Austin"],"dc:date.accessioned":["2025-07-10T18:40:59Z"],"dc:date.available":["2025-07-10T18:40:59Z"],"dc:date.issued":["2020-08-21"],"dc:description":["The thesis cover page in the PDF document includes references to Western University’s previous institutional repository platform, known as Scholarship@Western, and links to that platform (beginning with ir.lib.uwo.ca). In citing or referring to this thesis, use the DOI or handle from this page instead. 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I argue that Foucault is an insightful yet challenging interlocutor for affect theorists because of his understanding of the ethical dimensions of affect, and his historicization of separate modalities of relating to those areas of life and experience that belong to affect, emotion, and feeling. In this thesis, I aim to tease out that historicization in the form of two key historical modalities belonging to modern and ancient technologies of the self: the scientia affectus, which endeavours to decipher truth in emotion or affect, and the ars pathetica, which derives truth from feeling itself."],"dc:identifier.uri":["https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/30446"],"dc:language.iso":["en_ca"],"dc:publisher":["The University of Western Ontario"],"dc:title":["Foucault, Affect, History: On the Art of Feeling"],"dc:type":["thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Theory and Criticism"],"thesis:degree_name":["MA"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-27T21:56:20Z"}