Introduction

Michel Foucault’s The Hermeneutics of the Subject, a series of lectures that begins with Plato’s Alcibiades and finishes before Augustine’s Confessions, could be viewed as a prehistory of the genres that informs current practice in nonfiction. As Foucault explores genres like the Commonplace Book and philosophical schools like the Stoics, he uncovers a history of care of self. The care of self often involves techné, “technique that enables this life to be fashioned.” This tradition illuminates what is often at the core of writing about the self—the creation of the ethical subject.