In the last lectures that Michel Foucaultdelivered at the Collège de France, from 1982to 1984, he addressed the practices anddisciplines surrounding the care of the self. Inthese lectures, given while Foucault himselfwas dying of AIDS, he ponders Socrates’slast utterance to his disciple Crito: Take careof yourself. From that statement, Foucaultembarked on a study of the concept of care,from the ancient world to the modern: care ofthe body; of the other; of the spirit; and of thefreedom to speak freely, with openness, froma place of truth. Language can be thought ofas a large opening through which we advance,a space where meaning may unravel or bedissembled, become ambiguous, or dissolve.These drawings by Alice Attie are comprisedof repetitions of the phrase, the last one,apparently, which Socrates uttered: Take careof yourself. Repetition urges disturbancesthat push meaning towards abstraction. Thedrawings mediate between a disequilibriumand a quietness. As linguistic gestures, theyassure the kind of transgression that disruptsand offers up a contemplative space.
