Technologies of the Self 219

The Executive Management Committee/Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002 The Executive Management Committee/Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley
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Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32:2
00218308
Technologies of the Self: Habitus and Capacities
IAN BURKITT
In his later work on technologies of the self, Michel Foucault (1988a) turned his
attention away from the focus of his previous studies, centred on inquiries into
how the self had been objectied by the human sciences and subjectied by
various dividing practices, and instead refocused on the question of how the
self constituted itself as a subject. Central to this question was the use of techno-
logy by human beings as a means of creating and rening the self. However,
Foucault never lived to complete this task himself and, in his wake, we are left
with a number of tantalising questions. What exactly did Foucault mean by
technology in relation to the self and, even more centrally, what did he mean by
the self ? Although Foucault never reached a fully developed understanding
of the human self in his own work, I believe that we can begin this task by
studying the work of others who employed a similar terminology to Foucault
and addressed the same questions about technologies of self constitution. In the
main, this will make my analysis decidedly non-Foucauldian, but that is not my
concern here. I am not so much interested in developing a Foucaldian style
methodology for analysing the self, as exploring the key issues his work on
technologies of the self has left us with.
I do this initially by tracing the root of the term technology back to Aristotle
and looking at how he saw the relation between technology and self. In that
relation, though, another vital term emerges in the understanding of self, that of
habit or habitus. For Aristotle, the basis of human activity and self are the habit-
ual dispositions that are instilled in us from the earliest years of our education and
onwards. This position is one that was also adopted by both Marcel Mauss and
John Dewey, who regarded habit or habitus as central to what makes humans
into selves. Although Foucault does not use this term, I believe it is key to under-
standing the constitution of self, for habitus is the often non-reexive aspect of
the self that we are forced to partially reect upon whenever we want to rene
or reconstitute the self. Foucault (1988a) says that technologies of the self permit
individuals to perform operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct,
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and ways of being, in order to transform them. Yet what does Foucault mean
here by soul and ways of being? Also, precisely what does he mean when he
refers to bodies, thoughts, and conduct? In the absence of a fully developed
understanding of the self, are we to assume that these elements are conceived of
as wild and untamed until the individual begins operating upon them through
technologies of self? Or are these elements already socialised, in which case why
would they become the objects of technological operations? To clarify this we
need a more fully developed understanding of the self, one that includes the
habitual aspects of the self as well as the reexive aspects (that is, those aspects of
the self that can turn around and perform operations on other aspects of the
self ). As Camic puts it in terms of a certain usage of the term,
habit is the durable and generalised disposition that suffuses a persons action throughout an
entire domain of life or, in the extreme instance, throughout all of lifein which case the term
comes to mean the whole manner, turn, cast, or mould of the personality. Today the word
character probably comes closest to evoking this nearly forgotten meaning of habit . . . (1986:
1046).
Camic believes that this use of the term habit is nearly forgotten because,
despite the emphasis placed on habit or habitus in the works of many classical
sociologists, particularly Durkheim and Weber, the sociological theories that
followed mainly focused on the conscious, reective, and meaningful aspects of
practice and self. This is evidenced most recently in the sociological works of
Anthony Giddens (1990; 1991) who, while noting the importance of tacit know-
ledge and routinization, stresses the importance of reexivity in modernity. With
the exception of John Dewey (see Mixon, 1980) in social psychology and, more
recently, Pierre Bourdieu (1977; 1990) in sociology, few have taken the concept
of habit or habitus seriously. Fewer still, except for Dewey, have spelled out the
implications of habit for theories of the self. This is why I will concentrate more
on Deweys theories than those of Pierre Bourdieu: for me, and given the task
here of developing an understanding of technologies of the self, Deweys ideas
are more helpful in allowing us to understand the conditions in which the self
becomes reexive of itself. That is, those moments when habit breaks down or
when habits clash and the self is forced to reexively monitor itself and the
context in which it is acting in order to meaningfully reconstruct with others
both self and situation. This is something that Bourdieu is consistently accused of
failing to account for in his work (see Kgler, 1997). Thus, Dewey helps us to
understand those reexive moments of the self, where, through the use of tech-
nologies of the self, an individual can effect operations upon other aspects of
their own self. Dewey also helps us to understand what those other aspects of the
self are: they are the habitual aspects of the self which form the basis of our
character but which can often become non-reexive. That is, the dispositions
that lead to certain actions in particular contexts that we are aware of perform-
ing and yet we dont know why we perform them. Thus, the notion of self and
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habitus also relates to the question of performativity and I will say something
about this towards the end of this piece.
However, in setting the context of this discussion I am already running way
ahead of myself. All of this must unfold through a careful analysis of the meaning
of the terms technology, habitus, and capacity.
TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SELF
As I have already noted, Foucault began using the notion of technologies of the
self in his later works to denote the specic techniques that human beings use to
perform operations on themselves or on other things. He identied four major
types of these technologies, each a matrix of practical reason: these were,
(1) technologies of production, which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things;
(2) technologies of sign systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or signica-
tion; (3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to
certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; (4) technologies of the self, which
permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of
operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to
transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection,
or immortality. (Foucault, 1988a: 18)
For Foucault, these four types of technologies always function together, even
though they cannot be reduced to one another, as each is associated with a
certain type of domination. However, I think it is worth emphasising at this
point that these technologies are also associated with a certain form of production
as well as domination, because it is always uncertain that what humans produce
through their own powers leads automatically to a state of unambiguous domina-
tion. I will explore this point at greater length at the end of this piece. Foucault
goes on to say that each of these technologies involves certain modes of training
and modication of individuals, not just in terms of acquiring particular skills but
also in the sense of developing certain attitudes. This can be seen in Karl Marxs
Capital, where every technique of production requires modication of individual
conduct (Foucault, 1988a: 18). However, in the later works of Foucault it was
the ethical relation to the self as illustrated in the texts of Greco-Roman philo-
sophy and Christian spirituality that occupied him (Foucault, 1986; 1988b). In
other words, his analyses still focused on a hermeneutics of the self, rather than
the more practical business of the actual training of individuals in particular
social activities. While such a hermeneutics is undoubtedly invaluable, in this
piece I want to focus on the training of the human body and the formation of self
through practices that instil habitus, capacities and skills in the human body,
along with certain attitudes and beliefs. I think this is necessary because we need
to explain how technologies of power and of the self have a subject who is there
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to work on. That is to say, if technologies of power objectivize the subject and
technologies of the self permit individuals to work on their own bodies, souls,
thoughts, conduct, and ways of being, as indicated in the quotation from Foucault
above, who is the subject that is objectied and what constitutes the bodies and
souls that are worked on?
It is these processes that I hope to clarify here. Prior to this, though, we need
to say a little more about the concept of technology itself, and for this I will turn
to the works of Aristotle.
It is surprising that in his texts Foucault does not make more of the work of
Aristotle, as this relates directly to the issue of technology, as illustrated for
example by Heidegger. Indeed, Heidegger (1954/1978) pointed out that the
origin of the word technology has its roots in the Greek term techne, which
indicated the knowledge of how to produce things. For the Greeks, however, this
term was not only concerned with the production of objects, as in the narrower
sense that we use the term today to indicate mechanical production, but also
referred to the production of works of art. So technology was not just about the
machinery of production, instead it denoted all the knowledge and skills that
humans employ in any productive or creative activity, and it is in this sense that
I want to employ the term here. Aristotle referred to poiesis as the productive,
manipulative, uncovering attitude of humans that orients us towards the produc-
tion of various works not given in nature itself. Techne is the knowledge that
guides poiesis towards its productive objectives and also involves the training of
humans in particular skills (Volpi, 1992). To put it in a more Marxist frame
Marx being another thinker greatly inuenced by Aristotlewe could say that
techne involves the knowledge and skills handed down from previous generations
and developed by those who inherit this legacy. Aristotles term praxis is also
important here, as this indicates that attitude which involves doing, transaction,
and practical activity in general. The knowledge attached to this is called phronesis,
which was used more widely to indicate practical rationality or wisdom in gen-
eral (Volpi, 1992; Hughes, 2001). This is the kind of practical knowledge that
Foucault was concerned with in his hermeneutics of the self, for phronesis, unlike
techne, does not aim for the actual production of a work: it is in itself a work that
creates the sense of a fullled life (eudaimonia). These are the kinds of moral
activities we do simply because we recognise them as noble or worthwhile, rather
than for an end product, and the point of the good life is simply the living of it,
not what we will get out of it. It was this latter type of knowledge that Aristotle was
mainly concerned with, for it was this in which the young men he was educating
should be trained: the sons of those citizens of high or noble rank, who would
themselves one day go on to play an important part in matters of the govern-
ment of the city state, something which is not unrelated to matters of prac-
tical wisdom. Aristotle therefore also connected matters of politics to practical
wisdom and ethics, seeing politics as the highest of the practical sciences ( Hughes,
2001).
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It could be said, then, from Aristotles work, that different types of practice
involve different forms of knowledge with varied aims and objects, which also
involve differential ways of distributing human energies and reecting on conduct.
These can be regarded as technologies in the very general sense because moral
training has an end product, even if moral action in itself does not: the end
product of moral training is a human being with the habitual dispositions and
capacities to act morally. Technology, then, could be said to be the practical rationality that
accompanies and guides productive activities, and, thus, is enmeshed in those social relations in
which people are educated and trained. Furthermore, this involves something more
fundamental than the types of education in which people are taught bodies of
knowledge in classrooms, where they are expected to be still and take in the
information they are being given. A technical education involves the body in all
its movements, gestures, positions and dispositions, as Marcel Mauss noted in his
lecture on techniques of the body. With reference to the way in which people are
taught to swim in different cultures and, especially, to dive, Mauss says that;
there is a technique of diving and a technique of education in diving which have
been discovered in my day. And you can see that it really is a technical educa-
tion and, as in every technique, there is an apprenticeship in swimming (Mauss,
1935/1973: 71). So the technical education of individuals in any culture involves
training in techniques of the body, and this can go for any type of technical
education, be it in techniques of production, of art, of sport, or in learning the
correct moral predispositions.
For example, we have already noted that Foucault believed that the works
of Marx implied a technical education because every technique of production
requires a modication of human conduct. Mauss (1935/1973: 75) also noted
this in his denition of techniques of the body, because for him,
The body is mans rst and most natural instrument. Or more accurately, not to speak of in-
struments, mans rst and most natural technical object, and at the same time technical means,
is his body . . . Before instrumental techniques there is the ensemble of techniques of the body.
So for Mauss, then, the body is both the object and the means of the technical
activities of humans. First of all, the body itself must be re-formed (Mellor and
Shilling, 1997) in order to take on the instrumental attitudes needed for the
processes of production. This re-formation occurs through the cultural develop-
ment of techniques of the body, where the body itself becomes an object for
transformation in the practices of the human group. Thus, Mauss calls technique
an action that is both effective and traditional. By this I take him to mean that
technique is effective because it does something, it produces something; and it is
traditional in the sense that all techniques are cultural and passed down through
the social group. For Mauss (1935/1973: 75), there is no technique and no
transmission in the absence of tradition. This above all is what distinguishes man
from the animals: the transmission of his techniques and very probably their oral
transmission.
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However, this goes not only for techniques of production but for all other
technologies of the body and self. As Aristotle pointed out, even moral virtue is
founded upon a technique of the body, a habitual disposition, which he expects
to have been embodied in his pupils from their earliest years. From childhood
onwards we are trained in habitual ways of acting in certain situations and these
habits form either moral virtues or practical skills. It is on the basis of the correct
habitual dispositions that Aristotle can then begin to teach his students practical
wisdom, so that the right reason accompanies the virtuous dispositions. This is to
expand peoples choices and to allow them to be reexive, contemplating the
reasons why they do things rather than just responding to situations.
Aristotle, Mauss and Foucault are in agreement on this; that technology aims
at the body of the individual, shaping and forming it, and, through this pro-
cesses, creating fundamental aspects of the self. However, Aristotle and Mauss
make clear exactly what it is that practical reason has to work on in the full
spectrum of self-formation. For Aristotle, it is the prior habitual dispositions,
either good or bad, that we are made to reect upon in the higher forms of
learning, involving reading, writing, and intellectual training. These, of course,
are also aimed at the body and its practices, and at the thoughts and feelings that
accompany them; only now, the learning of practical reason aims to reect on
this process and rene, modify or change it. It also aims to expand choice by
giving people the powers to reason about their behaviour at the highest possible
level. Technology, as a matrix of practical reason, forms both the practical aspects of the self
that can operate non-reexively, and the reexive aspects of the self that can discourse upon and
attempt to change the self and its practices.
So to sum up, technology is a form of practical action accompanied by practical
reason, which aims to instil in the body certain habitual actionseither moral
virtues (that is, right ways of acting in a situation) or technical skillsand, later, to
give people the reexive powers to reason about their virtues or skills, providing
them with the capacity to rene, modify or change them. In other words, tech-
nology is a means through which humans produce not only products and works,
but also themselves as human selves in both their reexive and non-reexive
aspects. It is through various technologies that humans develop the habits,
capacities, skills, identity, and knowledge that mark them out as individual mem-
bers of a social and cultural group. It is to the production of the self, with all
these aspects to it, that I now want to turn.
THE SELF: HABITUS, CAPACITIES, AND KNOWLEDGE
So far we have been considering the term technology in developing the concept
of technologies of the self. We have considered how, through these technologies
and techniques of the body, habitual forms of action are instilled in humans that
are passed down through the traditions of the social group. However, we need to
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consider here what we mean by the term habit, for this can be highly misleading.
The everyday notion of habit seems to suggest an unthinking and unchanging
routine, and while there is some element of this in the social scientic notion of
habit developed by thinkers like Mauss and Dewey (and originally, of course,
Aristotle), it does not allow for the exibility and changeability that they wanted
to build into this term. It also does not allow for the fact that practical reason
itself is built into habits, so that these habits are the very things that allow us
to act in a thoughtful and rational way. In order to convey this, Mauss has
suggested that instead of the word habit we should use the Latin word habitus,
because
The word translates innitely better than habitude (habit or custom), the exis, the acquired
ability and faculty of Aristotle (who was a psychologist). [ The habitus does] not just vary
with individuals and their imitations, they vary especially between societies, educations, pro-
prieties and fashions, prestiges. In them we should see the techniques and work of collective
and individual practical reason rather than, in the ordinary way, merely the soul and its
repetitive faculties. (Mauss, 1935/1973: 73)
Habitus, then, denotes an acquired ability or faculty rather than an acquired
habit to act in a routine way. The term ability suggests the possibility of doing
something, of acting in ways that are creative and not wholly predetermined.
Equally, although technology as collective practical reason is embodied in the
habitus, this is still reason: it is a locus of meaningful action on which individuals
may come to reect, rather than the ingrained physical responses and reexes of
the behaviourists (which, of course, contain no meaning). Also contained in the
above quotation is the idea drawn out and enlarged upon by Pierre Bourdieu
(1977; 1990) that the habitus in a society is not uniform and differs, both between
societies and within society, by educational background, fashion, and social pres-
tige. However, I want to concentrate for the moment on the notion of habitus as
acquired modes that predispose individuals towards particular forms of practical
actions in given situations. For Aristotle, human beings can be trained to be
predisposed towards either a good or bad habitus, especially in childhood and
young adulthood. In our early years we may acquire the moral virtues or we
may not. Either way, the habitus is still connected with choice, for it is on this
basis that we choose the actions we feel are appropriate to the situation we nd
ourselves in. Moral virtue, or the lack of it, is a habitual disposition that forms
the basis on which we choose how to act. For example, on nding a wallet in the
street a virtuous person may decide to take it to the police or look for the owners
address in order to return it to them, whereas a person who lacks virtue may
decide to keep the wallet and the money in it for themselves. Whichever way the
person chooses to act, their choice will depend on a prior disposition that has been
formed by their habitus. It is entirely possible for the virtuous person to be
tempted to keep the wallet and even to do so, or for the non-virtuous to decide
to be honest just this once: yet to do this is to act against their own dispositions
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formed by the habitus, a set of inclinations it would take the learning of a different
habitus to fundamentally and permanently change. In other words, the habitus
forms the basis of our character, what we regard as our own self. Aristotle refers
to this as hexis, which is a habitual disposition that may have a natural basis (the
ability to be good or bad) but which is developed by training (Hughes, 2001). For
Aristotle, good habits perfect our nature while bad habits corrupt it, yet clearly it
is not nature that determines how each one of us develops as a self, for we can be
trained to act either well or badly.
People can also be taught the reasons, the practical wisdom, of acting virtu-
ously, yet it would seem that this in itself is not enough to make a person
virtuous. This occurs when the right reason follows the right action to take in
that situation. So, intellectual reason in itself cannot necessarily change the hexis
we have acquired. Practical wisdom can strengthen the capacities of the virtuous
person, providing them not only with the right dispositions but also with the
intellectual knowledge to make the right decision for the situation they nd
themselves in (for moral good is situation dependent). So reason, in its intellec-
tual or reexive sense, is not necessarily enough to change hexis: this could only
occur by changing the persons habitus.
This is true not only of praxis and practical wisdom, but also with poiesis and
techne, that is, the productive attitude and the knowledge and skill that accompan-
ies it. We all acquire habitus from our earliest years, inclining us towards particular
activities in which we can be further trained. These may be practical abilities to
make or do things, taking apart equipment to nd out how it works, and repair-
ing it or putting it back together: or we may be athletically disposed and inclined
towards sporting activities: or we may be sedentary and have a disposition more
to reading and other intellectual activities. Whatever it may be, the habitus we
acquire creates dispositions towards certain types of activity and the develop-
ment of the bodily hexis. Aspects of this may well be natural, so that, for example,
it serves well a good basketball player to be tall: but we all know of people who
have overcome what seems like a natural disadvantage in a particular activity
and, through sheer application in their training, have developed the required
ability and necessary habitus to excel in it. Here again, though, we need to think
carefully about another word, training, for it is often thought that training is
an almost dictatorial process, the drilling of a person in forms of activity until
they develop the required responses. Training someone, then, becomes a process
of instilling in them the right reactions, rather then educating them in the right
reasons for an action. Looked at in this way, training seems like a process that
eradicates all creativity, spontaneity and innovation from activity. Yet nothing
could be further from the truth. All the greatest artists, artisans, musicians,
sportspeople, etc. have all had a thorough training in the basis of their art, have
had to acquire the necessary habitus and hexis, and master the required skills, in
order to reach the highest levels of practice with all its possibilities of innovation.
Just as being able to choose is integral to having acquired the dispositions towards
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certain actions, so being innovative is integral with the discipline of having
trained thoroughly in an art.
These ideas are also reected in the work of John Dewey, for whom the term
habitbut let us continue here to use the term habituswas an integral concept.
For Dewey (1922/1983: 1516), habits are arts, in that,
They involve skill of sensory and motor organs, cunning or craft, and objective materials.
They assimilate objective energies, and eventuate in command of environment. They require
order, discipline, and manifest technique. They have a beginning, middle and end. Each
stage marks progress in dealing with materials and tools, advance in converting material to
active use.
So Dewey is raising another idea here, which is that habitus rests not only on the
use of the body, but the use of the body supported by tools. Indeed, the techniques
of the body and the use of tools cannot be considered as separate things, as
Mauss suggested, for these are integral elements within the habitus itself. Echoing
Heideggers idea that the action of hammering cannot be considered apart from
the hammer, Dewey (1922/1983: 22) says,
Even the saw and the hammer are means only when they are employed in some actual
making. Otherwise they are tools or potential means. They are actual means only when
brought in conjunction with eye, arm and hand in some specic operation. And eye, arm and
hand are, correspondingly, means proper only when they are in active operation. And when-
ever they are in action they are cooperating with external materials and energies. Without
support from beyond themselves the eye stares blankly and the hand moves fumblingly. They
are means only when they enter into organization with things which independently accomplish
denite results. These organizations are habits.
In these processes, then, the body is not to be thought of as a discreet entity, for
we can consider the bodily habitus only insofar as we also consider the techno-
logical means through which the body operates and turns itself into a self. This
is also true for the moral dispositions that moral habits inculcate, for these are
dependent on the social institutions in which peoples moral actions are located.
Dewey refers to these institutions as customs, saying that we all acquire our
habitus in conditions set by prior customs, that is, institutionalised sets of social
activities. This is why customs tend to persist, because each generation is brought
up under the conditions set by the previous one and acquires its habitus within
that matrix. And the continual reproduction of habitus depends on the network of
social relations and interactions in which it is set. However, Dewey stresses the
point I have made earlier: that although habitus involves some mechanisation of
activity, it should not be thought of as a simple mechanical reex that is always
bound to reproduce itself in the same way. Talking about the great artists,
Dewey (1922/1983: 51) claims that they have to possess a degree of mechanical
technique because, as is the case for all of us, if each movement or act we
undertake has to be consciously searched for in the moment and intentionally
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performed, the execution of the act is painful and the product is clumsy and
halting. However, the great artist is a masterful technician, in that her or his
technique is fused with thought and feeling so that the technique does not dictate
the performance, but aids it. The technique is the essential medium through
which the work is produced, yet it is not the product itself, and may not even be
immediately evident in the product. (It is often said a great work hides its tech-
nique). So Dewey (1922/1983: 51) says, a exible, sensitive habit grows more
varied, more adaptable by practice and use.
But habitus cannot be mechanical for two other reasons: rstly, all selves are
constituted by a range of different habits, some of which may clash with or
contradict some of the others: and, secondly, within contemporary societies there
is a massive variety of customs, so that each situation may call for a subtly
different performance of acts. In the rst instance, Dewey believes that every
habit we possess is operative all the time, inuencing our thoughts and actions.
However, many of these habits will remain latent, with only the necessary habits
coming to the fore in the required situation. For example, the habitus of walking
is expressed in what someone sees even when they are still, and this is evidenced
in their recognition of distance, direction and perspective. Not only do the habits
overlap and inform one another, so do social situations. In the second instance,
then, where we nd a massive variety of customs in society, there is a continuous
modication of habits by one another. This is where thought and rationality
come into the picture, because contemporary humans must use personal ingenuity
and sensitivity in selecting and rearranging aspects of social customs, thereby
remaking them. Thus, for Dewey, reason is not to be seen as a mirroring of
objective facts, but is related to the need for intercourse with objective adapta-
tions and relations. Reason, then, creates an attitude of criticism and enquiry,
making us sensitive to the potential tyranny of customs. In short, it becomes a
custom of expectation and outlook, an active demand for reasonableness in
other customs (Dewey, 1922/1983: 56). So, reason and criticism are not innate
capacities of humans, but arise in situations where there is a conict of customs,
and there is need for the re-organisation and reconstruction of social institutions.
It was in such circumstances that Aristotle wrote his moral treaties, in a soci-
ety becoming more complex and where traditional actions could no longer be
simply reproduced, but had to be judged in accordance with varying situations
and their often contradictory demands. Also, as societies grow larger and more
complex, with a range of different social classes and groups who identify with
different values or interests, we need individuals with the abilities to reorganize
society so that it is not simply pulled apart by conicting demands.
Habitus, though, forms our basic dispositions and will as selves, so that it is
impossible for rational thought to change these things without being accom-
panied by a collective effort to remodel social customs. Thus, all habits are
demands for certain kinds of activity; and they constitute the self. In any intelligible
sense of the word will, they are will. They form our effective desires and they
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furnish us with our working capacities. They rule our thoughts, determining
which shall appear and be strong and which shall pass from light into obscurity
(Dewey, 1922/1983: 22). As an example of this, Dewey presents the case of an
alcoholic attempting to cure their addiction through rational thinking alone, by
telling themselves it is irrational to crave another drink. This, of course, is imposs-
ible, because the habitual desires soon take hold again. Similarly, as discovered by
F.M. Alexander, who pioneered the famous Alexander technique, it is imposs-
ible to get people to change their bodily posture and carriage, the way they stand,
walk, talk, and gesticulate, simply by giving them verbal instruction and then
leaving the rest to their conscious will. No matter how many times someone con-
centrates on assuming the correct posture, in the next instant they have slipped
back into their old habits. Instead, we must aim for the changing of the habitus
itself, and this can only be done through changing the social institutions through
which it is instilled in us. This is what rational, critical thought must aim at, rather
than mounting an intellectual critique alone and then leaving it at that. The
consequences that must follow are actions that work on and change the institu-
tions that structure the eld of activity itself. We therefore need to work towards
intelligently controlled habitus, but we do this primarily by changing social
institutions, whereupon change also then occurs in individual activity.
As outlined by Aristotle, Mauss and Dewey we now begin to get a clearer
picture of habitus. It is a mode of habitual action marked by mastery of tech-
niques of the body, which are modes of doing something in the world, of effecting
an action that may or may not have a particular end product. Although habitus
involves the mastery of mechanical technique, it is not bound to eternal repeti-
tion, for complex human activity must be exible and adaptable to various
situations. Technique also is the tool, the instrument through which we achieve
our ends, so it does not in every instance determine the outcome of the end
product of the action, just as the artists technique of writing or painting allows
the creation of the work, but does not entirely determine its subject or the form
it will take. A great artist who has thoroughly mastered technique can begin to
concentrate on the development of style and subject matter, producing the works
as if spontaneously. Also, technology is linked to rationality in habitus, because
each habitus has its own accompanying rationale, its modes of instruction in the
required techniques and its moral framework. Habitus must be justied and
supported by reason, then, which not only acts to rene, modify, and give
intellectual depth to the habitus, but also performs a critical faculty. This is
possible because there is a vast array of habitus that often conict and clash with
one another, some setting themselves as the critical opposition to the others. It is
in this context that individuals must use reason to guide them in their social
activities, and critical reason in the processes of social change.
However, habitus is not the only aspect of the self we need to deal with here in
analysing technologies of the self. This is because, as Dewey pointed out, habitus
is often latent, always operating but not always present as a mode of action
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currently taking place. In this sense the operation of many of our habits is
unconscious, as we are not aware that they are currently inuencing our thought
and activity. Also, the habitus may be unconscious even when it directly inu-
ences the activity we are undertaking, as in the case of a tennis player who needs
to concentrate primarily on the game she or he is playing rather than the tech-
nique they are using in playing. The technique will only become the focus if
something starts to go wrong with the players game. Otherwise, habitus remains
largely non-reexive, even though the interpenetration of the different habits
constitutes a fundamental aspect of the self. This would be what the psychoana-
lysts regard as the unconscious, although in the approach being developed here
that is not to be thought of as an inner universe, but as the habits and tech-
niques constituted by technologies of the self (and this also accounts for the fact
of why psychoanalysis often nds it hard to affect change in a persons activity
purely through the means of a talking cure). Yet at various times the habitus also
becomes the focal point of our reexive consciousness. This tends to be either
when different habits clash or when we are using techniques to effect a certain
product or outcome. In the latter case, we encounter the term capacity in the
study of technologies of the self.
Dewey has already said that habits furnish us with our working capacities, yet
the term capacity is often used in a slightly different way to how we have been
speaking here of habits or habitus. As Lucien Sve (1978) dened the term,
capacities are the consequence or product of an act and the subjective condition
of its production. They are the innate or acquired abilities to carry out an act,
more often than not being acquired: as Sve says, capacities are both the product
of and the subjective conditions for activity. In this sense capacities seem just like
habitus, except that there is more of a sense of the conscious about the nature of
capacities. So, capacities are the ensemble of actual potentialities to carry out an
act and there is a dialectical relationship between acts and capacities: the latter
being the products of prior activities, in which individuals develop, rene, or
modify their capacity for action. Coming from a Marxist standpoint, Sve links
capacities more closely to social labour than did Mauss or Dewey, although both
recognised the importance of tool use. In Sves work, capacities are more than
just the skills or techniques developed in some form of social apprenticeship.
They also involve the knowledge of what one has done and how to use or extend
that ability to produce a desired consequence in the future. Capacity is a facility
that seems to relate more directly to Aristotles concept of techne, in that it
involves knowledge of how to produce things, including effects, within the world.
It is the taking up and transforming of nature that is central to the effects of
capacities and the knowledge of how and what one is producing from that
transformation. This is reected in Sves (1978: 130) denition of labour-power,
which he conceptualises as the aggregate of mental and physical capabilities.
Furthermore, it is through labour that individuals appropriate the productive
forces of their society as individual capacities.
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Although Sves Marxist conception may sound a little dated, with its emphasis
on social labour, if we broaden this a little to include all those activities that aim
toward the production of workswhich Aristotle called poiesisthen we get a
very different picture. Moreover, it is one probably closer to Marxs original
conception of labour, for surely he meant that term in the sense of the range of
human productive activities and not just in the narrow sense of industrial pro-
duction, which it has come to signify. Humans, then, learn all their capacitiesbe
they aimed at the production of works of industry, services, or art, or be they
moralin their social activities through which they appropriate the social herit-
age. As Sve says, the characteristic of an act is that it does something: it goes out
into the network of social relations in which the individual is bound and it
returns through that medium as a consequence of the act. The product of these
acts, the realisation of their consequences for the individual, is a capacity, which
is the ability to act in that way again to produce similar results. In the process the
individual is appropriating their social heritage as a system of capacities that
dene their own social individualitythe self. However, it is not the individual
as an isolated centre of self-motivation who voluntarily undertakes these activit-
ies, for it is the mediations, the network of social relations and activities, which
induce in the individual the necessary structures of activity. As an example of
this, Sve claims that it is not need that drives us as humans to produce, but the
product itself. It is the product, the end point of activity, that inspires and
motivates us to act, the need for which has been created historically rather than
biologically. ( Just think of all the products that surround us today that we do not
have a natural need for, but need all the same, and all the others that extend
and elaborate on our biological needs: such as the gourmet dinner to satisfy our
hunger).
Again, then, there is something more conscious about the nature of capa-
cities and their products than of habitus, although of course the two cannot
be separated at root. Both are bodily techniques to engage in certain activities
and are supported by the network of social relations, activities, and their
instruments, which produce these habits and capacities. It is just that there
is a more conscious aspect to those habits we call capacities, for it would be
hard to think of having a capacity to act that we were not to some degree
conscious of, whereas it is easy to think of habits of which we are unaware. Yet
both constitute a fundamental aspect of the self, that which we refer to as
character.
Dewey states, for example, that the emotional habitus that each one of us
possesses tends to mark out our character in the eyes of others. We all know
people who stay cool and calm under pressure, or others who are quick to anger
or to other open displays of temperament. This does not mean that these people
will automatically respond this way in situations that call out their cool headedness
or their anger. This is not a behavioural theory in the sense of understanding
the human body as trained through techniques of reinforcement to automatic
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physiological responses when the required stimulus is presented. Rather, we are
talking of a tendency to certain emotional or intellectual habitual actions. Yet
people do not always have to act in this way because habits interpenetrate and
sometimes conict with each other, causing one to remain latent while another
becomes more dominant, so there is never just one habit or capacity being called
out in any given situation. Also, where habits clash, this is precisely the moment
that reective intelligence is called upon to judge what form of action, with its
particular emotional colouration, is appropriate in that particular situation. In
human societies, with their complex overlapping social situations that often place
ambiguous demands on people, beings conditioned as automatons, to respond in
certain ways to particular stimuli, would not last long. Intellectual and emotional
habitus and capacities must work together to judge the appropriate action for
situations where there are ambiguous or conicting demands. This is not to say,
however, that we are guaranteed in getting it right. We may act without thinking
in situations that call for thought, allowing certain habits to be dominant when
this is not appropriate, or the habit may be too strong in its inuence for us to
break. We can also attempt to use our judgement but still get it wrong. Never-
theless, whatever tendency or disposition may become dominant, these are the
aspects of the self, the habitus and capacities that are called out in various situ-
ations and mark our performances.
However, there is another darker side to the nature of habitus and capacities,
which is the way in which they gure in relations of power and domination to
support the current social system. Dewey remarks how unreective patterns of
habit serve those who monopolise social power, for the leaders can do the plan-
ning while the majority are simply required to do the work, without questioning
their actions or position. People in this situation tend to unthinkingly reproduce
social institutions rather than reectively adjust their actions with the aid of
critical thought. There is an element of disciplining humans in this mode of
habitual activity that is always bound to stand in the way of the development
of full democracy. For Sve also, capacities are found to be stunted and under-
developed in capitalist society, where little is required of the majority of people
except the unthinking repetition of the most basic tasks. Under this system, the
majority of people are always bound to never realise their full potential, for the
techniques they are subject to do not require them to develop their capacities to
the full; in fact, the opposite is true, as most people are prevented from doing so.
Also, Bourdieu (1984) has studied the various ways in which peoples bodily
dispositions and habitus signal their place in the social system of class and hier-
archy and, in their performative repetition, tend to the reproduction of that very
system. It is in performativity where habitus and reexive thought are separated
that we nd the habitual reproduction of the social system that supports current
power relations. However, this opens up questions of power, performativity, and
the technologies of sign systems that have been reactivated in current social
scientic debates.
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THE SELF, PERFORMATIVITY AND SIGN SYSTEMS
The habitus and capacities, then, including the consciously reexive ones, are
what constitute human performativity, our ability and motives to act in the social
situations we nd ourselves in. I say motives here quite deliberately, for the
habitus and capacities are always operative within particular social contexts, con-
stituting both the motives and the faculties for styles of action. This notion of
performativity differs from that currently being developed in feminist theory by
Judith Butler (1990; 1993). It differs not so much in the sense that Butler insists
that performances are always gendered, for Mauss (1935/1973: 7677) also
pointed out that habitus will always be gendered, in that all cultures establish
different bodily techniques for women and men (indeed, they are what mark out
the very difference between differently gendered selves). Thus, this approach to
the self can be in total agreement with Butlers idea that gender identity is not
something tagged onto a self in the later stages of its development, for the self is
gendered at its very inception through the practices it is engaged in. I am also in
agreement with Butler that norms are materialised in performances, for I hope
here to have clearly shown that all our habits are normative, in that they are
acquired through training or instruction which have a normative framework,
even if it is not made explicit, and because all our actions are subject to moral
evaluation. Norms can also be materialised in the form of written instructions,
such as Aristotles course on moral training, but only with the purpose that
people will attempt to carry this through in practice, in active performance.
Even the performance of capacities associated with production can be said to be
moral, for they are aimed at the production of works that have some moral value
for the group. (Indeed, the Greeks regarded all skills as virtues in the sense that
we could say someone has the virtue of being a good worker or a good artist).
Yet this is also where my approach begins to depart from Butlers. For her,
performance is iterative and citational, drawing on a set of linguistic conventions
that have traditionally worked to produce certain effects. This is also how
performativity is related to power, for the effects produced by the citation of the
linguistic conventions are ones that are gendered within the heterosexual order
of domination. Thus, the heterosexual order reproduces itself through these
citations, which mark the everyday performance of gender in society. However,
as Foucault pointed out, sign systems, such as language, are only one of the
technologies that have been used in the production of human selves, and they
are not always bound to be technologies of domination, although they will
always have some relation to them. It is wrong, then, to see behind performances
(and, indeed, power relations) only the compelling force of linguistic conven-
tions, for these are by no means the master key that unlocks the intricacies of
performativity. Butlers approach ignores the way in which performances take
place though acquired technique, habitus and capacity. As Mauss pointed out,
humans transmit their techniques from generation to generation through traditions
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of instruction, which involve oral transmission. Alongside this, techniques of the
body are also bound up in systems of signication, for performances are often
part of rituals and ceremonies that have a meaning for the group, sometimes
spiritual or mystical. Yet this is not the same as saying that for a performative to
work, it must draw upon and recite a set of linguistic conventions . . . (Butler,
quoted in Rose, 1998: 185). Why must it? Surely, a performative can work by
drawing more broadly on a set of bodily techniques, habits and capacities, many
of them latent in any given context, but all of them forming aspects of the self
and its perceptual processes. Indeed, as Dewey points out, language itself can be
thought of as habitual, in that it is a tradition passed down within the human
group and inheres in each one of us as a bodily technique. It is also in this sense
that Merleau-Ponty (1962: 180) writes that language persists in us at the bodily
level of being, for we do not have to think of each word or carefully formulate a
sentence before we begin to speak: rather, it is enough that I possess [the
words] articulatory and acoustic style as one of the modulations, one of the
possible uses of my body. Merleau-Ponty, then, points up the habitual nature of
language as one of the techniques of the body. Instead of understanding per-
formance solely in terms of linguistic conventions, it seems better to think of
performance as the result of technologies that also produce habitus, capacities,
dispositions, and, thus, the selves who engage in these performances.
This is not to say, of course, that language is not an important technology in
the production of the self. As Foucault has noted, the oral and dialogical tradi-
tion that formed the cultural landscape of early Greek philosophy had, by the
Hellenistic age, given way to the literary form. In this literary age, the ethical
relation to oneself became linked to writing activity, so that,
the self is something to write about, a theme or object (subject) of writing activity. That is not
a modern trait born of the Reformation or of romanticism; it is one of the most ancient
Western traditions . . . The new form of the experience of the self is to be seen in the rst and
second century when introspection becomes more and more detailed. A relation developed
between writing and vigilance. Attention was paid to the nuances of life, mood, and reading,
and the experience of oneself was intensied and widened by virtue of this act of writing. A
whole eld of experience opened which earlier was absent. (Foucault, 1988a: 278)
However, while this is undoubtedly the case, we must pay careful attention to
what Foucault is saying above. He is not claiming that the self is produced within
the text, in the act of writing, and is thus dependent upon literary or linguistic
convention. What he is saying is that experience of the self became intensied
and widened in writing, which is a technique for more detailed introspection.
The self could also be objectied in a different way than in speech, for self-
analysis could be set down on the page, laid out in detailed description before
oneself and others. A literary style of confessions developed where the self be-
came the subject matter of letters and, in later periods, of whole books. Thus,
writing is a technique of the self in which the self becomes more stabilised as an
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object that can be set out in detail before oneself and others and, in such an
objective form, studied and analysed.
But writing is only one technology of the self. It is part of the sign systems that
Foucault identied as one of the four technologies of the self. And what is this
self about which one writes? What is it that we can make the object (subject) of
more detailed introspection when we put pen to paper (or ngers to keyboard)?
This must be the self of everyday performativity and action, of habitus, disposi-
tion, capacities, practical knowledge and speech that we pour over, analyse,
make subject to analytical thought and the object of techniques for improve-
ment. The self is no more governed by linguistic conventions alone than is
performativity, although, of course, both are closely related to them. At its founda-
tion the self is habitus and capacities, instilled and guided by practical rational-
ity and, later, in certain instances, the subject of critical reason. It is in all these
aspects that the human self appears to us, not so much in terms of what it is
made to be, even though it is a product of certain technologies, but in terms of
what it can do. For at the end of the day, how do technologies themselves come
into being if not as the reciprocal product of the constantly developing capacities
of human beings?
In conclusion, we can say, then, that technologies of the self are forms of
production as well as means of domination. They produce human selves with
various dispositions and capacities that are formed in the matrixes of practical
reason: that is, modes of activity that are supported and mediated by artifacts (as
in the case of tool use for example) and social institutions, which aim to transform
the world by the production of new works as much as they aim to reproduce the
existing world. The self is also a product of these technologies, which are located
in situations of social conict, creating in each one of us a conicting set of
habitus. Here, critical reason becomes a necessary capacity of the fully developed
self, which allows us to decide upon courses of action in situations where codes
are not clear and the demands of the social contexts and our own desires are
ambiguous. Because of this, social performativity in the contemporary world
cannot alone be determined by the reiteration and citation of linguistic conventions.
Such speech acts are but one aspect of performativity, not necessarily its basis,
and writing just one aspect of one of the four technologies of the self.
Having said this, it does not of course mean that techniques of the self should
not be considered in terms of power and domination. We have noted here how
institutionalised systems often demand an unthinking and repetitive style of
action from social individuals that ossify habitus and stunt the development of
capacities. Following Foucault more closely, Rose (1998) points out how contem-
porary technologies developed by psychiatry and psychology (in Roses term, the
psy complex) serve systems of domination. They can be part of institutional
(not just linguistic) apparatuses that attempt to instil through coercive means the
required habitus, capacities, and skills of the good citizen. However, in his work
Rose is focusing only on technologies of domination and power within the psy
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complex. While this is entirely valid, it can sometimes give the impression that all
the technologies through which the self is produced are part of systems of power
and domination and that we are always the subjects (in the sense of being
subjected) of this power. Yet technologies of domination were only one of the
four technologies indicated by Foucault, and they were also the one that Foucault
felt he had overemphasised in his own work. What I have wanted to explore
here are the productive aspects of technology alongside the disciplinary aspects,
for it is through technologies that the self is produced in all its aspects, including
those that serve domination and those that challenge it through the powers
of critical reason. Let us be in no doubt about the ambiguous and dual nature of
the uses of technology: it can serve both to dominate us and to free us. However,
the purpose it serves is not inherent within technology itself, but in the power
relations in which it is used. Technology can be the handmaiden of systems of
domination as well as the productive process in which humans seek to make
themselves human or, in some cases, more human, through productive, critical
or ethical relations. For habitus, capacities, and consciousness are all products of
the technologies of self: without them there would be no self, as either free
subject or slave. Even in the human search for the highest reaches of the spirit,
for transcendental consciousness or being, it is necessary for humans to employ
techniques. Spiritual practices are full of such techniques, whether they are to be
found in the meditation practices of Zen Buddhism, involving breathing tech-
niques, or in the movements of Tai Chi, it seems that humans need new techniques
of the body and self in order to break the old ossied habits of action, thought,
and emotional dispositions that are hindering our development or our relations
with others. Even in our quest for the ultimate freedoms, for the transcendent
and the divine, humans are bound to go by way of the earthly, through tech-
nologies of self and body.
Ian Burkitt
Department of Applied Social Science
University of Bradford
Bradford BD1 7DP
UK
I.burkitt@bradford.ac.uk
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