Reflections about academic formation in Physical Education on the light of technologies of self in Foucault

Abstract

This article seeks support in Foucault´s conceptions about ethics and aesthetics of existence to compose reflections about academic formation in Physical Education. To mobilize this intent, the notion of “Self Technologies”, found in the last stage of Michel Foucault´s works, is contextualized. Subsequently, heterogeneous and differential approximations are drawn between the ethical issue posed to the constitution of the subject and academic formation. Although these approximations should be viewed with caution – so as not to take the practices of constitution of ancient subjects as a distant origin to forge and to explain a formative model for modern subjects –, such approximations point to other non-hegemonic rationalities that oppose the enabling logics commonly attributed to academic studies, which tend to be reduced to its instrumental aspects. In this way, the reflections ahead here do not affirm general theories, nor good or bad truths about academic formation, but give visibility to the composition of alternative discursive and non-discursive practices of elaboration and self-improvement, established in the power dynamics that sustain them throughout the formation process.