Technology as Efficacious Action on Objects . . . and Subjects

Techniques are usually defined as efficacious actions on something, that is, typically, on material substances and artefacts. This definition may be extended to the techniques of the subject as efficacious actions on the embodied human being. Consequently, the relevance of the anthropology of techniques may be extended from the material world to the human subject. This article draws on the work of Hubert, Mauss, Foucault and others, and on an ethnographic example to suggest that the efficacy of the techniques of the subject may rest on a process of identification between subjects and objects.