In the post-Fordist society, free time collapses into time of updating and education. The forms of co-working and the fab lab extend the times of work and creativity to the personal sphere, enabling the sharing and hybridizing of practices.
Free time becomes a space of reflection and redesign of a continuous flux in which the subject acts as the central element.
Self care is the translation of the ancient Greek expression epimeleia heautoù, which can be traced back to the philosophy of Socrates and was taken up by Roman culture of late antiquity as cura sui.
The concept of “self care” is discussed in depth by Pierre Hadot, Arnold Davidson, the philosopher Raimon Panikkar, and by Michel Foucault, especially in the volume Le Souci de soi [M. Foucault, Le souci de soi, Gallimard, Paris 1984]. The notion of “self care” does not take the form of an abstract theory, but is expressed in a series of practical strategies that set it apart as a true “technique of life”.
These practices must be acquired through continuous work of research and training; they are not forms of biopolitics, i.e. the terrain of action of the practices with which the network of powers supervises the disciplines of life practices, as in the education provided by the “audit and automation” university, but an integral part of the offerings of ARS ACADEMY RESEARCH.