PRESENTATIONS OF COLLECTED READINGS & THINGS ON MATERIALITY

Berndt Clavier
reading: Foucault, Michel, Mauro Bertani, Alessandro Fontana, François Ewald, and David Macey. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1975-76. New York: Picador, 2003.
thing: photos of fitness wristband advertising

How material objects have become better than people at displaying truths. Foucault’s series of lectures as a good starting point on this: how materiality enters into the category of political thought and ontology at the same time that nations discover they are people, English state composed of two people: the ruler and the people, from here discourse of race arises, transforms political discourse from universality to a materiality of the local from now on.

The modern concept that if you know who you are you can make the right decisions. The popularity self is materialised in the technologies of the self, such as the contemporary wristband that measures the number of steps and heartbeat, or the vibrator that measure your orgasm. The desire to know whether you have had the “right” orgasm, the “proper” amount of physical exercise, etc.
images: wristband that tracks who you are, etc.