Creative Writing Commons^™

Foucault And The Hupomnemata: Self Writing As An Art Of Life, Matthias Swonger

Senior Honors Projects

Michel Foucault tells us about a form of self writing called the hupomnemata in an essay titled Self Writing in his book Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. In its simplest definition, the hupomnemata is a notebook, or journal of sorts for the Ancient Greeks. However, unlike the intimate, confessional journals later found in Christian literature, the hupomnemata does not intend “to pursue the unspeakable, nor to reveal the hidden, nor to say the unsaid, but on the contrary to capture the already said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read, and for a purpose that is nothing less …