Thus, Foucault’s redefinition of power allows us to read one’s experience of double-consciousness as leaving room for their emancipation from it.
In his historical inquiry on the self, Foucault attempts to prove that an agent’s understanding of himself is the product of purely contingent historical configurations and developments. What an oppressed agent can interpret as objective proofs for their ‘inferior’ position is but a set of subjective, contingent, and escapable beliefs mistakenly taken for true.
Yet, undergoing such a project of emancipation requires from the agent to question every belief that informed their vision of the self, in order to establish what counts as justified true belief, and what doesn’t.
Undertaking such a historical work is the only way for an oppressed agent to reach a field of mobility from pathos to freedom.
Bibliography:
[1] Interview with Toni Morrison, “On the inspiration for The Bluest Eye“ published on 1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02x9ybx , 2015.
Morrison, Toni, The Bluest Eye, New York : Plume Book, 1994.
Dubois, W.E.B, The Souls of Black Folk, Essays and Sketches, Chicago, A. G. McClurg, 1903.
Foucault, Michel, “Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, №4, pp. 777–795, The University of Chicago Press, 1982.