Sarel Marais

This article argues that Foucault’s work demonstrates a historical trend moving towards an exclusion from space. This exclusion is predicated on a gaze that has systematically moved further away from the corporeal body to include the digital realm. This study deploys Foucault’s conceptualisation of ‘heterotopia’ as a tool for analysing the transformations in the relations between spaces and bodies. The article investigates Foucault’s work on space throughout his oeuvre to demonstrate that such an investigation reveals an emergent focus on bodily surveillance in relation to space, emerging with disciplinary power. Foucault’s analysis reveals that the emergence of biopolitics and regulatory controls allowed for the emergence and proliferation of exclusionary practices from spaces and institutions beyond the body. His later work on liberal governmentality and security reveals an even more dramatic reorganisation in power’s approach to space, which allows for a hyper-specific approach towards determining the inclusionary and exclusionary criteria from space. Foucault’s contemporary interlocutors demonstrate that this trend towards exclusion has been exacerbated and expanded even further beyond the body by the turn towards digital criteria for inclusion/exclusion from heterotopic space. The relation between Foucault’s spatial analyses and the emergence of digital ‘spaces’ provides new insight into the analysis of the contemporary relation between digital data, corporeal bodies, and heterotopic spaces

This article identifies assistive technologies (ATs) as ‘pre-technologies’ mediating access to other technologies for disabled subjects (DSs). The motivation is to show that without ATs, DSs cannot be said to have the same level of access to freedom and self-forming activities as able-bodied subjects. I make this point through arguing that freedom in relation to power is predicated on freedom in relation to technology. I analyse Verbeek’s argument that self-formation is only possible through a relation to technology that continuously sets the norms and codes of society. I further analyse Verbeek with reference to Foucault’s argument that freedom is relational to power, and that freedom is manifested through self-forming activities in relation to the codes and norms of a society. In this way I create a relation between Verbeek’s understanding of freedom and Foucault’s notion of ‘self-formation’ that demonstrates that self-forming activities entail the ability to choose how to relate to the norms and conditions of possibility generated by technology. This ability for what I will refer to as ‘authentic’ choice then leads me to argue in conclusion that ATs function as ‘pre-technologies’ pre-conditioning access to other technologies through which DSs mediate their lifeworld.