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In the above quote, Foucault notes that ancient criticism was "authorized in the name of a knowledge of nature," it was an ecological discourse concerned with "the balance of life processes' (1997:295). For Foucault, at the center of this ecological discourse was an ethics for a concern for the self. Says Foucault: "Philosophy's most important preoccupation centered around the self, with knowledge [connaissance] of the world coming after and serving, most often, to support the care of the self" (294). Guattari's thinking in Chaosmosis also brings together criticism and a concern for self, evident in the idea that one needs to accept as the only finality of human activity the "production of subjectivity that is auto-enriching" (1996:21). Following on from the previous two chapters, here I explore the literary function with respect to an ethics for a concern for the self, and in doing so situate this form of criticism within an ecological discourse. However, where the previous chapter considered the question of the literary function in relation to society, this chapter considers the literary function in relation to the activity of the reader. In examining the "role" of the reader, further implications of the literary function—as an ethics for a concern for self and as an ecological discourse—can be explored.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137015785_7

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