In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Empire Writes Back, With A VengeanceDenis DuttonOne of the more uplifting aspects of the turn toward theory in recent years has been the growth of postcolonial cultural studies. Postcolonial studies are in actuality constituted by counterdiscoursive, decolonizing practices which acknowledge the recognition of minority discourses, deconstructing hegemonic texts and imperialist metanarratives, opposing unduly overprivileging Western canonical paradigms of “literature,” and—well, you know what I mean. As Benita Parry (...) so lucidly explains, “The labor of producing a counter-discourse displacing imperialism’s dominative system of knowledge rests with those engaged in developing a critique from outside its cultural hegemony.” And what an awesome labor it is. The noted postcolonial theorist Georg M. Gugelberger sums things up by saying (I’m not inventing this) “postcolonialism can be conceptualized as the last bulwark against an encroaching total capitalism.”But what of the struggling masses of oppressed peoples whose interests and cultural sensitivities are so caringly looked after by practitioners of postcolonial studies? How do they feel about the fact that the only thing standing between them and “total capitalism” is resistance being mounted in a comparative literature department in Idaho, or someplace? This is a question seldom asked, let alone answered. Fortunately, new light has been thrown on the matter with the arrival of a booklet at this journal. Indian History from Above and Below, by Rukun Advani, is published by Ram Advani, probably a member of the family, in Lucknow. It is dedicated to “all Bengali intellectuals and those whose dollar salaries rise in proportion with obscurity and jargon.” Advani notes in his preface that although Bengali intellectuals talk torrents in their native tongue, when they [End Page 198] disseminate their thoughts abroad, they translate into a “clogged, colonial, unfluid flow,” with footnotes such as: “Derrida; ibid.; see my recent essay on the modes and moods of Foucault in JPS, III.iii, 3–333; on Lacan, see Lacan, On Lacan; Barthes, how many times a day do you have one in summer; idem., do you really?; differentiated peasantry; undifferentiated peasantry; for a feminist, though partially anthropologized, hermeneutic-critical discourse on the post-colonial subversive dimensions of the undifferentiated middle peasant in Midnapore district in June 1959, see the provocative controversy between Ranajit da and Amiya da in Gayatri di, ed., Gendered, Gendered, O Most Gendered: Epistemology and the Male Menopause in Bengal between June 1959 and July 1959 (Oxford University Press, forty years later).”The first of the booklet’s two essays, “Indian History from Below: a Swiftian Consideration,” discusses a neglected but “important arena of subaltern existence, namely the history of belching, wind-breaking and defecation.” Just to name these three functions posits “a bourgeois hierarchy of disgust with what Marx, in one of his most decisively Derridesque reflections, termed ‘The Asiatic Commode of Production.’” Beginning with the Foucauldian notion of “the peasant’s overdetermined relative autonomy from the olfactory,” Advani describes “the Barthesian notion of the impossibility of critical transcendence by the historian into either the symbiotic acculturation of the pastness, and indeed the presentness, of the present-subject, or indeed the even greater epistemological and hermeneutic problems posed by attempting a recreation of the ontological presuppositions of the peasant.” Much of this is elaborated in the classic essay by Professor Lavatri Lavatory Spewhack, “The Post-Colonial Lavatory and Its Radical Implications for Nomenclaturing Among Gendered and Subalternized Third World Expatriate-Marxist-Feminists in the First and Second Worlds: A Derivative Discourse Decoded.”The debt that Rukun Advani owes to Professor Spewhack is clear from the sheer number of his references to books and articles by her. These include, on the subject of toileting, Master Disgusted, Native Disgusting: a Perspective on Peasants from 250,000 Dollars per Annum, “On the Symbolic Hegemony of Subsection Numbers in a Gendered and Subalternized Post-Colonial Context: A Derivative Discourse Decoded” (in The Phenomenology of Praxis and the Praxis of Phenomenology in a Postmodern Residential Colony), “The Violence of Steam and the Episteme of Violence: Foucault’s Views on Hot Air Balloons” (in Obscurata), and even parts of her autobiography: The Larger than Life of Lavatri Lavatory [End Page 199] Spewhack (chapter titled “My Collected Phonecalls and Faxes”). While some... (shrink)

The article addresses the puzzling silence of the Foucaldian studies of biopolitics about Soviet socialism by revisiting Foucault’s own account of socialism in his 1970s work, particularly his 1975–6 course ‘Society Must Be Defended’. Foucault repeatedly denied the existence of an autonomous governmentality in socialism, demonstrating its dependence on the techniques of government developed in 19th-century western Europe. For Foucault Soviet socialism was fundamentally identical to its ideological antagonist in its biopolitical rationality, which he defined in terms (...) of racism. This article challenges Foucault’s reading, demonstrating that his notion of racism is ill-suited to describe the governmental rationalities of Soviet socialism during both the formation and the consolidation of the Stalinist regime. While the Soviet project was paradigmatically biopolitical in its ambition to transform the forms of life of the population in line with the communist ideology, its biopolitics was fundamentally different from the security-oriented logic of racism, focusing instead on the exposure of the population to the violent transformation of their forms of life. Revisiting Foucault’s genealogy of racism, we argue that the point of descent of this biopolitics lies in the 19th-century split of the ‘counter-historical’ discourse of the struggle of the races into the discourses of state racism and class struggle. While Foucault’s genealogy focuses on the development of the former into liberal and totalitarian biopolitics as we know them, it leaves class struggle out of the history of biopolitics and is therefore unable to account for the biopolitical specificity of the Soviet project. (shrink)

Michel Foucault turned to Classical and Hellenistic philosophy late in his career, a change of focus that surprised and was misunderstood by many at the time. Often, it is supposed that his aim was to find the “freedom” that he had allegedly denied in his earlier works on power relations; he is thought to have proposed an autonomous self which would oppose and resist dominating political institutions. I instead contend that Foucault’s work on the Ancients is better understood (...) as a challenge to or interrogation of current understandings of freedom. Rather than locating a subject whose freedom would consist in a lack of determination (whether from power or any other source), “freedom” in Foucault’s work on the Ancients is the result of a deterministic production. Rather than describing a freedom which is already naturally ours, Foucault shows how Classical and Hellenistic subjects used techniques to constitute themselves as free. Hence his later works’ emphasis on askesis, or “practices of the self”— that is, the work one performs on oneself in order to transform what one is. Practices of askesis, and those of Epictetus in particular, show that knowledge alone is not sufficient for morally improving oneself. Practices of askesis also indicate that treating one’s volition (or “will”) as a quasi-object to be adjusted through practical techniques does not alienate freedom, but rather is freedom’s foundation. Indeed, Foucault shows that through the exercises of askesis, a subject can be produced and constituted as free for the first time. Examples of askesis in Epictetus are given to show how a Stoic could force himself to have a morally correct volition: taking ideas which he knew but could not follow, and transforming them into principles of actual conduct which he could not help but follow. The sense of “freedom” and “subject” developed in Foucault’s reading of the Stoics thus remains wholly foreign to free will as an original possession of a purely autonomous self. In fact, it challenges free will on a number of issues, including the relation of choice to knowledge, how to effectively reform and reshape desire and judgment, and the benefits of treating oneself as a quasi-object. It is through askesis that Foucault most clearly raises these challenges, and in so doing, makes us question our reliance on the free will as an explanation for human ethical behavior. He replaces it with askesis, a set of effective techniques which can actually transform us into the ethical selves we want to become. (shrink)

Em seus últimos cursos no Collège de France, Foucault dedica uma atenção especial ao conceito de parrhesía. Trata-se de uma experiência viva na cultura greco-romana, que ele analisa em meios às técnicas de produção dos modos de subjetivação. No ensaio de si, como forma de cuidado de si, os antigos submetiam a vida à prova por meio do exercício corajoso da verdade. A parrhesía é, pois, o dizer-verdadeiro que faz da vida um campo de experimentação. No contexto dessas análises, (...) Foucault não cessa de se referir às suas obras anteriores e de situá-las a partir dos problemas que se ocupa na presente ocasião. É assim que inscreve seus outros trabalhos na temática da subjetividade e da verdade. Acompanhando esta releitura, arrisco aqui uma aproximação, bastante pontual, entre a noção de parrhesía e o livro O Sobrinho de Rameau, de Denis Diderot, a partir da abordagem deste texto feita por Foucault em História da loucura. (shrink)

Foucault’s later writings continue his analyses of subject-formation but now with a view to foregrounding an active subject capable of self-transformation via ascetical and other self-imposed disciplinary practices. In my essay, I engage Foucault’s studies of ancient Greco-Roman and Christian technologies of the self with a two-fold purpose in view. First, I bring to the fore additional continuities either downplayed or overlooked by Foucault’s analysis between Greco-Roman transformative practices including self-writing, correspondence, and the hupomnemata and Christian ascetical (...) and epistolary practices. Second, I add exegetical support to recent arguments denying Foucault’s advocacy for the death of the subject per se. In fact, my analyses show that Foucault’s ethico-aesthetic turn and its corresponding concern with self-transformation and self-(re)constitution via ascetical practices assumes a subject with rational and volitional capacities. Without these capacities, the art of living Foucault describes is not possible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Foucault for Psychoanalysis”Monique David-Ménard’s Kind of BluePenelope DeutscherFoucault for psychoanalysis? This is a paradoxical question. Foucault also produced a critique of psychoanalysis, aiming to show that sexuality was not an a-temporal reality, nor a truth eventually discovered by Freud. It was a discursive formation, one among others.—Eloge des hasards dans la vie sexuelle, 172.To the philosophers..A practicing psychoanalyst and a professor of philosophy, Monique David-Ménard extends a (...) singular proposition to philosophers. She is not the first philosopher to engage the assumptions of psychoanalysis, but hers is a particularly idiosyncratic suggestion for how to think with the analyst’s clinical work, intimate and alien. She has proposed we do so in the company of Gilles Deleuze,1 and most recently, in Eloge des hasards dans la vie sexuelle (2011) has extended her invitation to think with the clinic through an ingenious reading of Michel Foucault.As Eloge opens, David-Ménard’s reading of Foucault is far from the scene. Early in the work, we are asked to think with a practice, seemingly in a different register. An analyst finds herself accused of being an obstacle, of opposing the analysand’s wishes in life. In this context, we are asked to think about the blue of a painting in the room where the analysand waits (David-Ménard 2011, 34). [End Page 111]Given the criticisms of psychoanalysis elaborated in the work of Foucault and Deleuze, one might have expected these philosophers to be considered in Eloge in that stead.2 Or, one could imagine Foucault playing a role because of his genealogical analysis of the formation of the Oedipus complex.3Two years after the publication of Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus, Foucault had, in Abnormal, characterized the desiring space of the family as stimulated in a capillary network of individualizing normalization (Foucault 2003, 257), linked by medicalized and expert concern of which parents became the auxiliaries. They are charged, and charge themselves, with the goals of family health, of preservative and defensive good parenting, and with the conduct of the child’s conduct. Foucault describes the pre-twentieth century emergence of lay and expert preoccupation with the dangers of childhood masturbation. This produces an environment whose intensive scrutiny involves a close “folding of... parents’ bodies over... children’s bodies” (ibid., 265) in a saturated, hermetic environment stimulating oedipalized desire. This means one can offer a genealogical account of the conditions of formation of the latter. These include a responsibilization of parents, who control for the presence of abnormal sex, advised by new experts (lay, medical, pseudo-scientific) in collective crusades for health and life. Thus there is differentiation through minor gradations of abnormality. Even the specificity of the architectural spaces in which scrutiny is directed plays a role in the hollowing out of the child’s putatively interior psychic-sexual life, the intense object of “palpating” interest (Foucault 1978, 45) in new apparatuses of knowledge-power (Foucault 2003, 327).Because he presents this as the context in which the “nuclear and substantial family was gradually constituted” (Foucault 2003, 264), along with its oedipal configurations of desire, Foucault emphasizes the contingency of both. Psychoanalysis would be, from his perspective, willfully indifferent to these or other possibilities for genealogical analysis of the apparatus of power, knowledge, and the body, of the repeating configurations of desire that are its special domain of expertise,4 and the emergent forms of authority associated with the analyst, described in History of Madness (Foucault 2009) and in Psychiatric Power (Foucault 2006).Perhaps we’d expect to see David-Ménard, the psychoanalyst, addressing these accounts, but they are neither repudiated in Eloge, nor extensively discussed. Far from rejecting a genealogical analysis of psychoanalysis, she promotes its promise. But this is so in a particular sense.Necessity and repetitionA particular patient might fear being “mad like her mother.” She might fear being denied, trapped, or annihilated (David-Ménard 2011, 33). She might [End Page 112] consider herself somehow denied a lover. She might seem to be denying herself a lover. There’s a degree of necessity in all these variants. Perhaps these... (shrink)

« Si la connaissance se donne comme connaissance de la vérité, c’est qu’elle produit la vérité par le jeu d’une falsification première et toujours reconduite qui pose la distinction du vrai et du faux. » Leçons sur la volonté de savoir, Gallimard-Seuil, Paris, 2011 (1re éd. : 1971)."If knowledge is given as knowledge of the truth, it is because it produces the truth by the game of a first, primary falsification renewed again and again which raises the distinction of true (...) and false" [my translation]. Michel Foucault, Lessons on the will to know, Gallimard-Seuil, Paris, 2011 (1st ed.: 1971)I wonder how can Foucault, who refers to Nietzsche as source of inspiration, speak of falsification and deny at the same time objectivity of truth – besides the obvious pun. The challenge of Nietzsche is to contest the objectivity of truth as human desiderata, in such a context Foucault's notion of falsification (of what? falsification of an objective reality?) does either make no sense at all or encodes some other meaning beyond being false – a possible reading would be to take it that Foucault means "distortion", or better “will to deceive “.Perhaps, Foucault's observation amounts to the simple remark that some of the so-called scientific justifications of institutionalized qualifications and anathemas that have important political and socio-economic consequences such as those involving notions as health, disease, or gender do not have the scientific backing they are purported to have (now scientific backing, I guess, must be understood in a rather standard or naïve sense of distinguishing between sciences and pseudo-sciences). This might in some sense be a sensible reflection, and it must be conceded that Foucault had the merit of undertaking extensive and thorough examinations of archives, protocols and reports buried in institutions of various kinds which animated his legendary charming style of writing. Of course, this is quite far away from constituting a revolutionary assault on the notions of (scientific) truth, knowledge and meaning, but, one can say, I think, that his work motivated and still motivates some new approaches to the study of institutional archives. If the reading proposed in the preceding paragraph seems a too meagre result and we are prepared to read Foucault's remarks as involving more thorny epistemological matters, there are of course other ways to delve into them: On one hand I allow me to suggest studying the sceptics of the ancient Greek tradition, or the study of analogical dialectical reasoning within the Arabic Jurisprudence theories of the Middle-Ages (or more generally their theory of Argumentation that has been largely ignored also by the analytic approaches to Argumentation theory and Epistemic Logic), or if one dares to go so far the millenary Jain epistemological lessons on the Art of the Point of View provide plenty to learn from (this constitutes another gap in the recent studies on reasoning and knowledge). On the other one cannot escape the feeling that claims as those of Foucault, though they might be seen as involving interesting questions, many of them have been brought forward without awareness (or perhaps even because of lack of awareness) of the discussions that took place in depth and length in philosophy of logic and knowledge – moreover, as a quick look on nowadays publications bring to the fore, such kind of discussions are nowadays experiencing a creative impulse at a breath-taking pace (particularly so in the context of social sciences). True, analytic philosophers and some philosophers of logic stemming from analytic philosophy quite often ignore history of philosophy or even the history of the science they are purported to study, or more generally philosophical approaches foreign to their own framework – with the result that quite often they produced a rather superficial analysis of the links between knowledge and truth – however, this only points out, that it is time that we start learning each from the other Am I falsifying Foucault? Who knows …. (shrink)

This essay aims to critically assess the later Foucault's ethical turn by using Levinas's ethical metaphysics as critical yardstick. Foucault's notion of ethical subjectivity constitutes a site of resistance against externally imposed subjugating subject identities. Apart from a practice of freedom, Foucault also insists that it engenders the subject with a generous responsiveness towards others. Despite Foucault's other-aspirations, it seems probable that care of the self would fall short ethically when compared to Levinas's insistence upon an (...) unconditional openness towards the Other. Upon closer investigation, however, we find that Levinas's ethical metaphysics is founded upon phenomenological analyses of our immanent 'economic' existence here and now in the world. Although he maintains that metaphysics or 'transcendence, the welcoming of the other by the same' (Levinas, 1979:43/13) is primary, the immanent process of the subject's 'auto-personification' ( ibid ., p.147/120) serves as a necessary condition for the possibility of becoming ethical, of welcoming the Other. Moreover, contrary to Foucault's self-caring subject, who actively partakes in its own ethical self-formation, Levinas's existent has no educable ethical sensibility. It is powerless against the gravitational pull of its egoism, condemned to a hopeless amorality unless the Other intervenes and saves it from itself. I shall therefore argue that Foucault's account of ethical self-becoming invests the subject with a meta -physical potential, which it is denied by Levinas's ethical metaphysics. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 25(2) 2006: 113-125. (shrink)

Epistemology was a central concern of Michel Foucault. By denying the conflation of knowledge with power, and consistently maintaining a dyadic relationship (“power/knowledge”) rather than a relationship in which power eclipses knowledge, Foucault maintains that knowledge requires its own analysis irreducible to the strategic maneuvers of power. “Epistemology,” by this caricature, has to approach the question of knowledge as a transcendent entity, akin to Plato's Ideal Forms. Foucault's work on knowledge is primarily critical rather than normatively reconstructive. (...) The most important and influential of his ideas was Foucault's claim that power and knowledge are co‐constituting: “that power and knowledge directly imply one another ”. The chapter also explores some of Foucault's case studies, which reveal general claims about the nature of truth and knowledge. (shrink)

Though Foucault was intrigued by the possibilities of radical social transformation, he resolutely resisted the idea that such transformation could escape the effects of power and expressed caution when it came to the question of revolution. In this article we argue that in one particularly influential line of development of Foucault’s work his exemplary caution has been exaggerated in a way that weakens the political aspirations of post-Foucaldian scholarship. The site of this reduction is a complex debate over (...) the role of normativity in Foucaldian research, where it has been claimed that Foucault’s genealogical approach is unable to answer the question ‘ Why fight?’ The terms of this debate (on the neo-Foucaldian side) are limited by a dominant though selective interpretation of Foucault’s analytics of power, where power is understood primarily in terms of government, rather than struggle. In response we suggest that if we reconfigure power-as-government to power-as-war, this adjusts the central concern. ‘ Why fight?’ becomes replaced by the more immediate question, ‘ How fight?’ Without denying the obvious benefits of cautious scholarly work, we argue that a reconfiguration of Foucault’s analytics of power might help Foucaldian research to transcend the self-imposed ethic of political quietism that currently dominates the field. (shrink)

Enciclopédia não está entre os termos mais conhecidos de Michel Foucault. Todavia, ao olhar com atenção para algumas ocorrências desse termo ao longo de sua carreira, com uma especial ênfase aos anos de 1960 e 1970, algo se revela ao leitor atento. O intuito desse texto é discernir esse termo no vocabulário foucaultiano, mostrando sua dupla face. Se por um lado, Foucault se refere tecnicamente à Enciclopédia editada por Denis Diderot e Jean D’Alembert; por outro, ele recorre ao (...) termo sugerindo outra prática que não simplesmente elabora um memorial de nossos saberes, mas ultrapassa essa fronteira na direção do que ele chamará de heterotópico. No primeiro momento, o caráter crítico da abordagem levará a considerações sobre os limites do projeto enciclopédico, e as consequências práticas das políticas de memória e esquecimento que ele implica. Num segundo momento, a partir de fontes importantes como Nietzsche, Freud e Marx, compreenderemos as possibilidades de uma nova dobra na história das técnicas de interpretar, em busca de uma ressignificação foucaultiana das enciclopédias. (shrink)

of autonomous agency. Yet neither denies the importance of human freedom. In Heidegger's early work the subject is reinterpreted as Dasein -- a non autonomous, culturally bound (or thrown) way of being, that can yet change the field of possibilities in which it acts. In middle Heidegger, thinkers alone have the power to disclose a new world, while in later Heidegger, anyone is free to step back from the current world, to enter one of a plurality of worlds, and, thereby, (...) facilitate a change in the practices of one's society. Likewise, for early Foucault, the subject is reduced to a function of discourse; for middle Foucault, writing can open up new worlds, and in later Foucault, freedom is understood as the power to question what is currently taken for granted, plus the capacity to change oneself and, perhaps, one's milieu. In short, while both Heidegger and Foucault reject the Enlightenment idea of an autonomous subject, they have a robust notion of freedom and action. And it will turn out for both thinkers that each person can modify his or her cultural practices by openness to embeddedness in them. All this needs a great deal of explanation. We need to determine, on the one hand, just what each rejects and why, and, on the other, what series of understandings of the self and its possibilities for action each introduces. (shrink)

The object of this article is to show some convergences between the thought of Hannah Arendt and of Michel Foucault. My thesis is that both authors aims a thought of the openess and not determined, a political alternative that goes beyong the party politics and aims to recover the public space. Politics as activity of creation and experimentation. The political theory of Hannah Arendt represents a tentative to think the event, to affront the contingency and to deny the traditional (...) images and metaphors offered to imagine the political. It is a will to act, to transgress and overcome the limits.O objetivo deste artigo é mostrar algumas convergências entre o pensamento de Hannah Arendt e o de Foucault. Minha tese a respeito é, que no fundo, ambos os autores visam a um pensamento do aberto e do não determinado, uma alternativa política que vai além de uma política partidista e que aponta para recuperar o espaço público. Política como atividade de criação e de experimentação. A teoria política de Hannah Arendt representa uma tentativa de pensar o acontecimento, de afrontar a contingência, de recusar as imagens e metáforas tradicionais oferecidas para imaginar o político, como uma vontade de agir, de transgredir e superar os limites. (shrink)

In the field of critical philosophy, the view of Michel Foucault has been subject to very extensive discussion. It has been an ongoing puzzlement how he could reject any talk about ahistorical universals and at the same time claim philosophy – at least in its genealogic form – to be of critical importance. How could he claim any analysis to have only local significance, and at the same time take the view that some analyses can show other views to (...) be problematic? According to what standards?A common strategy against Foucault has been to state that he is not as neutral as he claims to be – that underneath his analysis of, say, prison (Discipline and Punish – 1975) or sexuality (The History of Sexuality 1-3 – 1976/1984) there is a hidden universal normativity that shapes his critique of these fields. Another approach to the seemingly paradox claim by Foucault has been to deny the critical aspect of his work. This has been Jürgen Habermas’ strategy – most thoroughly carried out in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985). In the following I will try to articulate a notion of critique that will demonstrate that it nevertheless does make sense to attribute a critical approach to the Foucaultian writings. Foucault’s critical approach has certain difficulties, but I will argue that it at the same time has certain qualities that can broaden the more traditional account of critique that can be extracted from for example Habermas’ writings. This I will do by (II) demonstrating in what sense it is possible for Foucault to maintain a concept of critique, without having to commit himself on universals. I will show that in Foucault’s writings, critique is understood as reality resisting a conceptual grip – critique is a pointing out of a resistance against or response to the understanding activity. Critique is understood as something that is put upon us. After this I will (III) show that Habermas’ opposition to the position of Foucault springs from a focus on critique as an activity between acting agents. This view is seen in his emphasis on communicative actions and validity claims and in his hesitance towards “natural” reality in discursive matters. But as I will show, this hesitance is rather an effect of than a cause to his basic notion of critique: his latest change in view on reality, has not brought a similar change in the concept of critique. Finally, I will (IV) show how both Foucault and Habermas are important in illuminating the notion of critique – that they complement, rather than exclude, each other. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Husserl’s and Foucault’s approaches to the historical a priori and defend Husserl’s richer notion. Foucault borrows the expression ‘historical a priori’ from Husserl and there are continuities, but also significant and ultimately irreconcilable differences, between their conceptions. Both are looking for ‘conditions of possibility,’ forms of ‘institution’ or instauration, and patterns of transformation, for scientific knowledge. Husserl identifies the ‘a priori of history’ with the ‘historical a priori’ and believes that the ‘invariant essential (...) structures of the historical world’ can be identified. Foucault, on the other hand, is less interested in the Kantian inquiry into the limits or legitimization of knowledge than in the relation between knowledge and power. Foucault rejects the idea of universal and necessary a priori structures and denies that the structure of the conceptual framework governing an era can be fully determined. Both Foucault and Husserl contrast ‘inner’ history with external history, but, I argue, Foucault misconstrues Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as a form of ‘absolute subjectivity’ against which his ‘archaeological’ method reacts. In fact, Foucault’s own conception of the historical a priori is ambiguous and fails to have explanatory value precisely because it misunderstands the need for the a priori to be both universal and necessary, and offers no account of the ‘a priori of historicity’ which, for Husserl, is essential to human cultural life. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;This thesis proposes that the death of the author is neither a desirable, nor properly attainable goal of criticism, and that the concept of the author remained profoundly active even--and especially--as its disappearance was being articulated. ;As the phrase implies, the death of the author is seen to repeat the Nietzschean deicide. In Barthes, the idea of the author is explicitly connected to that of God, for Foucault (...) and Derrida, to that of the transcendental subject of knowledge. Nowhere, however, is any demonstration forwarded as to why we must conceive author, transcendental subject, and divinity as specifications of the same subject, and therefore implicated in a common closure. Always and everywhere, the death of the author proceeds on the basis of an idealized conception of authorship. ;In practical terms, such are the pressures exerted upon critical discourse by the death of the author that the author is implied from the outset. Barthes will insist that the authorial subject is constituted in and through language, whilst also recommending that we should regard certain authors as "founders of languages". With Foucault, the requisite transindividuality of archaeology is subverted by the absolutely privileged, metahistorical status it bestows upon Nietzsche. Derrida's history of logocentrism denies the author precisely because of the exorbitant recourse it must make to Rousseau as the single systematized instance of an age of logocentric metaphysics. ;The placement of the author reflects the experience of these critics in writing their texts. In Barthes, the return of the author is inseparable from his own autobiographical project; with Foucault, it relates to the rejection of the transcendental detachment of the archaelogist in favour of the engaged subjectivity of the genealogist; in Derrida, authorial reinscription coincides with his attempt to move beyond critical reading toward autobiographical literature. With hindsight, it appears that it is the becoming-author of the critic that is actually at issue. ;However, this revisionary phase has been largely neglected, and Barthes, Foucault and Derrida are continually invoked to underwrite critical resistance to the author. From the Russian Formalists onward, literary theory has shown itself incapable of accommodating authorial subjectivity. As such, the question of the author increasingly presents itself as the question of theory, of its adequacy as a descriptive science of literature and discourse in general. (shrink)

In this book, Honi Haber offers a much-needed analysis of postmodern politics. While continuing to work towards the voicing of the "other," she argues that we must go beyond the insights of postmodernism to arrive at a viable political theory. Postmodernism's political agenda allows the marginalized other to have a voice and to constitute a politics of difference based upon heterogeneity. But Haber argues that postmodern politics denies us the possibility of selves and community--essential elements to any viable political theory. (...) Haber calls into question the postmodern dichotomy of totality or difference. She argues that the self--which need not be coherent or unchanging--is always already a social entity. The "subject" must be understood as a subject-in-community, but any subject is constructed by many different communities. The subject whose death has been dictated by postmodern deconstruction is the very subject whose life is necessary for a politics of difference. Haber develops this theory through a detailed examination of postmodern politics as formulated in the work of Lyotard, Rorty, and Foucault. Beyond Postmodern Politics suggests that we must use the concept of subjects-in-community in order to move beyond postmodern politics and arrive at a genuine politics of difference. (shrink)

Between the first and the second volume of The History of Sexuality there is a gap of eight years in which Foucault did not publish anything except interviews. Analyzing some of those interviews, the article reconstructs the reasons that lead Foucault to abandon the thematization of power’s constraints imposed on the subject and start to elaborate an ethics in which the subject can be rid of him or herself thorough a care of pleasure. Arguing how this change does (...) not represent for Foucault a denying of his previous work but its evolution, the article shows that, despite Foucault’s attempt to establish a discourse other than psychoanalysis, his ethics of sexuality unwittingly returns to the “force” that psychoanalysis recognizes as animating sexuality. (shrink)

The centerpiece of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality is the analysis of what Foucault terms the “repressive hypothesis,” the nearly universal assumption on the part of twentieth-century Westerners that we are the heirs to a Victorian legacy of sexual repression. The supreme irony of this belief, according to Foucault, is that the whole time that we have been announcing and denouncing our repressed, Victorian sexuality, discourses about sexuality have actually proliferated. Paradoxically, as Victorian (...) as we allegedly are, we cannot stop talking about sex. Much of the analysis of the first volume of the History of Sexuality consists in an unmasking and debunking of the repressive hypothesis. This unmasking does not take the simple form of a counter-claim that we are not, in fact, repressed; rather, Foucault contends that understanding sexuality solely or even primarily in terms of repression is inaccurate and misleading. As he said in an interview published in 1983, “it is not a question of denying the existence of repression. It’s one of showing that repression is always a part of a much more complex political strategy regarding sexuality. Things are not merely repressed.”1 Foucault makes this extremely clear in the introduction to the History of Sexuality, Volume 1, when he writes. (shrink)

Resumen: Las políticas europeas de inmigración y refugio han sido criticadas por quienes las consideran emblemas de una concepción que pone en grave riesgo elementos básicos del Estado de Derecho y aun de la democracia. El epítome es la aparición de mercados de esclavos en Libia, a las puertas de la UE, un Estado fallido que la UE y sus Estados miembros se empeñan en elevar a la condición de partner privilegiado de sus políticas de externalización. Tomando como base los (...) análisis de Lochak, Agambem y Bauman y la concepción de la propuesta por el filósofo camerunés Mbembé, desarrollando tesis de Foucault (biopolítica), se proponen algunas alternativas que vienen presididas por la exigencia de reconocimiento y garantía de derechos básicos de inmigrantes y refugiados. Abstract: European immigration and refuge policies have been criticized by those who see them as emblems of a conception that puts in serious risk basic elements of the Rule of Law and even of democracy. The epitome is the emergence of slave markets in Libya (at the gates of the EU), a failed state that, nevertheless, the EU and its Member States are determined to raise to the status of privileged partner of their outsourcing policies. Based on the analysis of Lochak, Agambem and Bauman and the conception of the proposed by the Cameroonian philosopher Mbembé who develops Foucault's thesis about biopolitics, this text will propose some alternatives that are leaded by the requirement of recognition and guarantee of rights of immigrants and refugees. (shrink)

Namjera ovog teksta je pokušaj opovrgavanja Foucaultove teze o smrti autora, ali pokušaj koji ne ide smjerom analize svih relevantnih tekstova i iznošenja argumenata protiv ove teze, nego primjenjujući metodu komentiranja odabranih dijelova jednog njegovog teksta – »Poretka diskursa«. Koristeći ovu metodu nastojao sam »ispitati diskurs« u znaku pitanja opovrgava li on sam i na koji način tezu o smrti autora. Drugu točku »ispitivanja diskursa« predstavlja utjecaj osobne Foucaultove biografije na njegovo djelo, smjer koji se otvara odgonetanjem nositelja »bezimenog glasa« (...) s početka ovog teksta. Foucault je i sam priznavao utjecaj biografskih činjenica na svoj rad, odnosno, prepoznavao da se cijeli njegov rad temelji na elementima vlastitog iskustva. Završni tok analize ide u smjeru otkrivanja paternalističke mreže odnosa Foucaultovog teksta.The intention of this text is an attempt to deny Foucault’s thesis on death of the author, an attempt using method of commenting one of his texts , rather than analyzing all relevant texts and giving arguments against this thesis. By using this method of commenting, I am trying to “question discourse” by examining if and how this discourse alone denies thesis on death of the author. Other way of “questioning discourse” is the way in which Foucault’s personal biography influences his work; this direction opens by uncovering the “nameless voice” from the beginning of this text. It is Foucault himself who admits influence of biographical facts on his work, and he recognizes that his whole work is founded on the elements of his own experience. Final course of analysis goes in direction of revealing the paternalistic web of relationships in this Foucault’s text. (shrink)

On several occasions Michel Foucault advocated a methodological turn towards what he called a ‘happy positivism’. Foucault’s emphasis on the surface does not deny the importance of structures of hiding, but understands it as a game in which the structures of hiding are viewed as contingently given. In this paper, I will analyse the conflict between the hacker movement and the field of corporate interests. I argue that the introduction of graphical user interfaces and the maintaining of copyright (...) interests are the contingent background of the ongoing conflict. By bracketing the analyses of hidden intentional structures, the happy positivist is thus able to facilitate deeper understandings of the prevailing structures of hiding. (shrink)

Does truth have a history? Whereas Bernard William denies it and only allows a history of truthfulness, I defend the possibility of a critical history or genealogy of truth. Because a trifling relativistic historicization of truth leads to a paradoxically a-historic and pacifistic conception of truth, one must first establish the methodological concepts with which a genealogy of truth can avoid both problems. Three first steps towards such concepts can be found in some of Michel Foucault’s lectures, which lead (...) the genealogy of truth to focus on the origins of truth’s force. (shrink)

Both Anglo-American and Continental thinkers have long denied that there can be a coherent moral defense of the poststructuralist politics of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard. For many Anglo-American thinkers, as well as for Critical Theorists such as Habermas, poststructuralism is not coherent enough to defend morally. Alternatively, for Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, and their followers, the practice of moral theorizing is passé at best and more likely insidious. Todd May argues both that a moral defense of (...) poststructuralism is necessary and that it is possible. First, he develops a metaethical view of moral theorizing that treats it as a social practice rather than a transcendentally derived guarantee for right action. He then articulates and defends antirepresentationalism, a principle central to poststructuralism. Finally, May offers a version of consequentialism that is consonant both with the principle of antirepresentationalism and with other poststructuralist commitments. In conclusion, he distinguishes morality from an aesthetics of living and shows the role the latter plays for those who embrace antirepresentationalism. (shrink)

The article is devoted to present Polish research on the literary work and philosophical thought of Hryhorii Skovoroda. The scientific reflection on Skovoroda’s legacy was initially carried out on the historical and literary level. It was initiated by Adam Honory Kirkor in 1874. In the context of the history of Ukrainian literature, Józef Tretiak, Ivan Franko and Bohdan Lepkyi presented the general characteristics of Skovoroda’s work, seeing in it only the original style and compilation character of thoughts. Ivan Mirtchuk started (...) his research on Skovoroda’s thoughts from the history of national philosophy, seeing in Skovoroda’s philosophy the features charac- teristic of Ukrainian philosophy, differing it fundamentally from Russian philosophy. As part of the research, it was possible to find an extensive article by Jarosław Ulwański, Philosophy of G.S. Skovoroda, published in 1930, in which the author presented arguments for a pantheistic interpretation of the Ukrainian philosopher’s thoughts. A breakthrough event was the publication of a monograph by Dmytro Tschižewskij, who formulated a view on the mystical philosophy of Skovoroda similar to the Western European mysticism of the 17th and 18th centuries. The interwar period ends with the work of Czesław Jastrzębiec-Kozłowski, in which the work of Skovoroda was analyzed against the background of Józef Hoene-Wronski’s messianic philosophy. After World War II and the 1990s, research on Skovoroda’s legacy was conducted primarily by philologists. Ryszard Łużny and Włodzimierz Mokry treated Skovoroda’s work as a Christian philosopher. In the 21st century, Polish research increasingly refers to philosophical interpretation. Denys Pilipowicz researched the ancient and patristic sources of Skovoroda’s mystical thought and compared it with the teachings of Paisij Velyczkovskyi. Iryna Betko analyzed his poetry from the perspective of Jung’s theory of archetypes. Michał Handzel conducted an in-depth historical and philosophical analysis of Skovoroda’s philosophy, seeing Skovoroda as a representative of the panentheistic trend, and Pavlo Snopkov examined the concept of Skovoroda’s self-knowledge from the perspective of Jung’s and Maslow’s psychological theories. (shrink)

Progress in psychiatry depends on accurate definitions of disorders. As long as there are no known biologic markers available that are highly specific for a particular psychiatric disorder, clinical practice as well as scientific research is forced to appeal to clinical symptoms. Currently, the nosology of obsessive-compulsive disorder is being reconsidered in view of the publication of DSM-V. Since our diagnostic entities are often simplifications of the complicated clinical profile of patients, definitions of psychiatric disorders are imprecise and always indeterminate. (...) This urges researchers and clinicians to constantly think and rethink well-established definitions that in psychiatry are at risk of being fossilised. In this paper, we offer an alternative view to the current definition of obsessive-compulsive disorder from a phenomenological perspective.TranslationThis article is translated from Dutch, originally published in [Handbook Obsessive-compulsive disorders, Damiaan Denys, Femke de Geus (Eds.), (2007). De Tijdstroom uitgeverij BV, Utrecht. ISBN13: 9789058980878.]. (shrink)

A closely argued book about what the negative tradition in Western theology involves.

_A concise and illuminating introduction to the elusive Thomas Aquinas, the man and the saint_ Leaving so few traces of himself behind, Thomas Aquinas seems to defy the efforts of the biographer. Highly visible as a public teacher, preacher, and theologian, he nevertheless has remained nearly invisible as man and saint. What can be discovered about Thomas Aquinas as a whole? In this short, compelling portrait, Denys Turner clears away the haze of time and brings Thomas vividly to life (...) for contemporary readers—those unfamiliar with the saint as well as those well acquainted with his teachings. Building on the best biographical scholarship available today and reading the works of Thomas with piercing acuity, Turner seeks the point at which the man, the mind, and the soul of Thomas Aquinas intersect. Reflecting upon Thomas, a man of Christian Trinitarian faith yet one whose thought is grounded firmly in the body’s interaction with the material world, a thinker at once confident in the powers of human reason and a man of prayer, Turner provides a more detailed human portrait than ever before of one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in all of Western thought. (shrink)

The meeting, hosted by McGill University, was held in Montréal, from Friday, October 12, to Sunday, October 14, 1990. Approximately 125 members and friends of the Society attended. The topic of discussion was “Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion.”.

Satisfaits que la connaissance soit un aller vers l'objet, les hommes se détournent au moment d'en déduire le retour. Croyant connaître, ils ne font que désirer leur propre échec. D'où vient qu'ils s'arrogent ainsi la mesure de l'abstrait selon des conditions finies? Comment cesser d'entendre "nature" (et, avec lui, tout son cortège : "être", "matière", "substance", "objet"...) dans "physique"? Le stratagème de la raison s'accompagne ipso facto d'une extase, d'une recherche de conditions qui, pour la raison, se situent précisément hors (...) d'elle. Tenir toutes les mesures dans l'effacement même du principe : ce n'est pas là simple jeu abstrait, mais discipline qui voue à l'inhumain. Reconduire les proportions vers le foyer d'une possibilité qui tranche : ce n'est pas là dessaisissement par la pensée de sa tâche propre, mais reprise terrible de ce qui, en elle, est davantage qu'elle. Qu'avons-nous à craindre? Qu'est-ce qui nous retient? Si les hommes ne peuvent vivre sans "les choses", le physicien doit du moins indiquer ce en quoi les choses s'évanouissent. Si la science est une tekhnè, la physique a, par et en elle-même, renoncé d'emblée à toute quête de salut. Non par désespoir, mais parce que la lucidité seule est joie. Le physicien est généreux car il reconnaît en son interrogation quelque chose de plus précieux que lui-même : voilà qui devrait inexorablement l'éloigner des hommes. Personne ne sera sauvé. S'il faut la vérité, elle se fera au prix de nous. Alexandre Lissner. (shrink)

In the paper is analyzing the process of the institutionalization of Islamic Studies in Ukraine on the period of independence (1991–2013). The centers of Islamic Studies, its histories, particularities of the activity and publications are studied. The author argues about the existence of three centers of Islamic Studies in Ukraine: 1) as the substructure of the Institutes of Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; 2) as the substructure inside the universities; 3) inside the non-government organizations. Three main spheres of the activity (...) of Islamic Studies centers are specified: research, organizational and educational. The main problems, which appear in the process of institutionalization of Islamic Studies in Ukraine are formulated. (shrink)

As you know, the foundations of modern historiography of religion were laid by Hegel. "Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion," which he read at the University of Berlin, represent not only a unique system of philosophy of religion, but, equally important, is also an example of a profound historiosophical study of the religious phenomenon. However, unfortunately, this part of the Hegelian heritage remains largely unexplored in the national philosophic and religious studies literature.

In the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge there is a papyrus fragment, hitherto unpublished, of Euripides' Medea. It was written early in the 2nd century A.D., or possibly at the end of the 1st century A.D. The hand is a good round medium upright, similar to that of P. Oxy. 1810, possibly a little older. The stop and apostrophe in Fr. 1 line 1174 were evidently added later. There are several smudges and blots. Elisions only. There were 35 lines to a (...) column. (shrink)

For most of the period during which 'Aqaba belonged to the Ottoman Empire, the precise nature of its frontier status needs to be nuanced, since, in theory at least, all of the provinces adjoining it formed part of the same political unit, and the Red Sea itself was a largely Ottoman lake. In practice, however, Ottoman political and military control in the Syrian and Arabian deserts was often tenuous and reliant on individual deals struck with Bedouin leaders, often within the (...) context of the sultan's fulfilment of his obligation to protect the pilgrimage to the Holy Places of Arabia. From this perspective, forts along the pilgrimage routes such as that at 'Aqaba, were none the less frontier places, mediating relations, whether peaceable or belligerent, between populations who regarded themselves as either belonging to or extraneous to the polity of the Ottoman state. (shrink)

Human suicide presents a fundamental problem for the scientific analysis of behavior. This problem has been neither appreciated nor confronted by research and theory. Almost all other behavior exhibited by humans and nonhumans can be viewed as supporting the behaving organism's biological fitness and advancing the welfare of its genes. Yet suicide acts against these ends, and does so more directly and unequivocally than any other form of maladaptive behavior. Four heuristic models are presented here to account for suicide in (...) an evolutionary and sociobiological framework. The first model attributes suicide to the extraordinary development of learning and cultural evolution in the human species. Learning may make human behavior so independent of biological constraints that it can occasionally assume a form entirely contrary to the principles of biological evolution. The second model attributes suicide to a breakdown of adaptive mechanisms in extremely stressful novel environments. The third model involves kin and group selection, arguing that in limited circumstances suicide may occur because of beneficial effects it has on other, surviving individuals who share the suicidal individual's genes. The last model suggests that suicide should be tolerated by evolution when it has no effect on the gene pool. This model holds particular promise in accounting for aspects of suicide not attributable to culture. The evidence indicates that suicide is most common in individuals who are unlikely to reproduce and unable to engage in productive activity; such individuals are least capable of promoting their genes. A complete explanation of suicide may derive only from an analysis of its biological significance. (shrink)

Excerpt from Descartes L'homme a souvent exalté avec orgueil la puissance de sa raison; mais plus souvent encore il l'accuse, la renie, et se met à. Douter d'elle. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, (...) an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)