Foucault,Critique and Rights

Abstract

This paper outlines Foucault's genealogical conception of critique and argues that it is not inconsistent with his appeals to concepts of right so long as these are under stood in terms of his historical and naturalistic approach to rights. This approach is explained by reference to Nietzsche's account of the origins of rights and duties and the example of Aboriginal rights is used to exemplify the historical character of rights understood as internal to power relations. Drawing upon the contemporary ‘externalist’ approach to rights, it is argued that the normative force of rights can only come from within historically available moral and political discourses. Reading Foucault's 1978-1979 lectures on liberal governmentality in this manner suggests that his call for new forms of right in order to criticise disciplinary power should be answered by reference to concepts drawn from the liberal tradition of governmental reason.     

Foucault,epistemology and history

This paper explores the way in which Michel Foucault utilized, re-worked and applied, in the field of the analysis of epistemological transformations, certain concepts from the history of the sciences that had been deployed the Bachelard and Canguilhem. More particularly, the paper focuses attention, on the one hand, upon the distinction between the present and the actual, from which derives the question of ‘recurrence’, and, on the other, on the idea of games of the true and the false.     

Liberalism and the anxiety of belief

Anxiety about perceived threats to liberal freedom has played a double role in liberalism. On the one hand, such anxiety has driven the development of liberal institutions aimed at safeguarding freedoms. Yet another, problematic, side of this anxiety can also be found in the history of liberalism and in the policies and practices of contemporary liberal states. From the beginning, liberal intolerance of those perceived to be connected, through religious affiliation or beliefs, with arbitrary or absolute power and therefore deemed to pose a threat to the existing order has justified social exclusion and, in many cases, systematic violence. Rae’s article examines the theoretical and political roots of this distinctive form of liberal anxiety, tracing the connection between anxiety about Catholicism and Catholics in John Locke’s time and contemporary anxieties about the relationship between Islamism and Muslims in liberal states.     

But our citizenship is in heaven: a proposal for the future study of Christian citizenship in the global south

For a field whose continual points of departure have been such Christian themes as belonging responsibility, and stewardship, and whose current conceptual framing prioritizes transnational processes and globalization's cultural complexities, astoundingly little has been written in citizenship studies about global Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. In critical response, this article addresses how scholars of citizenship might begin to think about global Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity and, more importantly, about the formation of Christian citizenship in the global south: in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Using the Guatemalan context as a case study, this article proposes a new way of thinking about contemporary formations of Christian citizenship. The article follows the work of Michel Foucault to see Christian citizenship as a political rationality for millions of believers at everyday levels of action and practice.     

东亚安全:现实主义和自由主义的视角评析

东亚地区日益成为21世纪国际政治的中心舞台之一,有关该地区的安全问题也逐渐被人们提上了议事日程。时至今日,该地区仍尚未形成一种稳定的国际关系格局。不同学者对于东亚地区未来安全的前景也存在多种解读,本文从国际关系理论的两大流派———现实主义和自由主义的不同视角,综合分析对东亚安全的不同解释,并提出东亚安全面临的现实挑战及可能选择。     

A Case for reflexive politics: challenging Luhmann's account of the Political system

This article attempts an internal critique of N. Luhmann's account of the political system. Internal because it takes up the principal tense of system epistemology. Critical because it attempts to situate the potential for utopian politics within that framework which, according to Luhmann, precludes it. The article briefly explores this epistemology, its specific application to the political system and the negative conclusions that are drawn from this account for utopian politics. In order to confront these conclusions, the strategy of the argument is to extract from Luhmann's notion of political theory, as the meta-level of the political system, the possibility to problematize the terms in which the political system casts political questions. In political theory, this article argues, inheres the potential to turn politics reflexive. This in turn both suggusts opportunities for action carrying utopian vision but also leads to a better understanding of what shifts are involved in the social problematic of alternative politics that have shifted away from the framework in which Luhmann sees political possibility circumscribed.     

Between Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman: between discourse in the abstract and face-to-face interaction

Michel Foucault's ‘archaeology’ and Erving Goffman's interpersonal sociology are complementary. Both are essential for understanding how classifications of people interact with the people classified, and hence for the author's studies of ‘making up people’. The paper begins by explaining how that project is rooted in an ‘existentialist’ conception of the person. It then uses Goffman's Asylums and Foucault's Folie et déraison - both published in 1961 - to illustrate how these methodologies reinforce each other.     

The Four Predicaments of American Liberalism: Challenges and Opportunities in a Presidential Election Year

The presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have indicated an apparent resurgence in American liberalism. More significantly, they have underlined both the highly problematic nature of the liberal legacy within the Democratic Party and the difficulties of mobilising liberal themes in the battle of ideas that characterises the conduct of politics in the United States. The article examines the difficulty of the issue by reference to four predicaments that persistently condition the status and deployment of liberal themes. In analysing the problems of strategy, historical narrative, political positioning and ideational engagement, the study analyses the negative connotations of contemporary liberalism, the multiple limitations of liberal reform, and liberalism's deficiencies in the politics of America's core ideas. A revived liberal prospectus will depend upon the ingenuity of liberal forces in challenging the conservative ascendancy in ideational competition, and in renegotiating a public settlement of their own with the central strands of political legitimacy.     

Canguilhem: life,health and death

This paper consists of comments and reflections on the legacy of Canguilhem's work, especially in Britain. After reviewing some aspects of the reception of Canguilhem's thought in Britain, the paper defends Canguilhem's vitalist philosophy, and concludes with hints as to the political uses of Canguilhem's thought in today's bio-political age.     

Liberalism,neo-liberalism and governmentality: introduction

This paper concerns the emergence of a specifically 'economic' way of governing poverty at the start of this century, an event which is to be accounted for, though by no means exhaustively, by the discovery of 'unemployment'. The latter will make it possible to relate the nineteenth-century 'problem of the unemployed' to an object domain that is primarily economic, rather than cultural or moral. A new object of regulation will emerge from this economic problematization of the 'social question': the labour market. The paper pays particular attention to the national labour exchange system, the political technology that will visibilize the labour market in new ways. Together with unemployment insurance, it will suggest new ways of governing poverty and a new course for social policy.     

Metaphysics Postponed: Liberalism, Pluralism, and Neutrality

Many recent liberal theorists have argued that state neutrality is supported by a metaphysical thesis about value, namely pluralism , which asserts that there are some conceptions of the good life which neither form a hierarchy nor represent versions of a single good. It is however doubtful whether neutrality is supported by pluralism; indeed, it may in some cases be precluded by it. Arguments for pluralism can, in many cases, be reconciled with a monistic metaphysics of value, and pluralism itself fails to support neutrality. This is particularly true of traditional liberal policy positions such as religious toleration and opposition to censorship, where attention to diverse conceptions of the good may favour, or demand, non–neutral policies. The political problems which neutrality addresses arise before we accept the metaphysical 'truth' of pluralism, and often remain even if the parties to a political conflict have false conceptions of value. A sharp question for the pluralist neutralist is why conflicting conceptions of the political cannot themselves feature in plural conceptions of the good life. Dispensing with pluralism may not, however, be enough to rescue neutrality, since the disputes which neutrality was designed to deal with may not be resolvable neutrally; and more particularly, some of the traditional liberal policies may be incapable of neutral justification. If so, liberals may find a more traditional form of non–neutral liberalism more attractive.     

Question,ethos, event: Foucault on Kant and Enlightenment

The use of labour values as a basis for economic calculation in a socialist economy is defended. A resource allocation mechanism is outlined that uses a combination of labour value calculation with market clearing prices for consumer goods. Conditions for full employment are specified. A type theoretic analysis of economic calculation is presented. Information theory is used to estimate the information content of real price vectors. It is demonstrated that both price calculations and value calculations are type theory equivalent and that both involve information loss. It is shown that modern computer technology is capable of computing up to date labour values with comparative ease.     

Official apologies,reconciliation, and settler colonialism: Australian indigenous alterity and political agency

The burgeoning literature on transitional justice, truth commissions, reconciliation and official apologies tends to ignore the conditions of settler states in which ‘reconciliation’ needs to take account of indigenous minorities. The settler colonialism literature is worth including in the general discussion because it is exceptionally reflective about political theory (the constitutional recognition of indigenous rights) and ethnogenesis (the origin and viability of both settler and indigenous identities), challenging mainstream liberalism, in particular, to account for difference beyond platitudes about multiculturalism. This article highlights the postcolonial critiques of the Australian governments' apology to the indigenous peoples of the country. The authors of these critiques seek to protect indigenous alterity from the Australian state, which they regard as irredeemably colonialist, especially in its liberal and progressive mode. The article suggests that Indigenous political agency transcends the resistance/co-option dichotomy presented in much of the apology's commentary.     

The unbearable rightfulness of being human: citizenship,displacement, and the right to not have rights

Claims to human rights protection made by displaced persons are displaced from the universe of humanity and rendered ineffective by the geopolitical character of modern international human rights law, in favour of the protection of citizens' rights claims. In response, there is increasing interest in leveraging respect for and protection of the rights of displaced persons through extension of the rights enjoyed and supposedly borne by emplaced citizens. However, it is a mistake to assume that humans as citizens bear human rights or that the freedoms that they may be able to extend beyond state boundaries are universalisable. The extension of the right to citizenship functions to displace questions of human rights themselves. The question of the human in rights is in fact always displaced, as long as the human subject is acted upon as if it could possess rights. In paying attention to the critical perspectives with which displaced persons confront the citizen, she or he may come to appreciate the fact that the universality of human rights is served where one does not claim to have rights but, rather, actively engages, without limits, with others in the struggle for rights and their respect.     

Strong Poets and Utopia: Rorty's Liberalism, Dewey and Democracy

Richard Rorty is one of the most controversial philosophers today. He argues, among other things, that philosophy should be replaced by literary writing and that it has nothing to say to politics. Yet his own more recent writing has been more and more about political issues. This article focuses upon the inconsistency of his politics with the philosophical influence which he has consistently identified as the strongest on his writings; that of John Dewey. At the root of this incompatibility lies the failure of his theoretical project to carry over his synthesis between Deweyan pragmatism and Nietzschean poststructuralism into the realm of politics.     

Liberalism,socialism and democracy: variations on a governmental theme

Liberalism is commonly understood as a political doctrine or ideology concerned with the maximization of individual liberty. However, following Foucault's work on governmentality, a different usage has been suggested, based on the idea of a liberal mode of government. I argue that the differences between these accounts of liberalism derive from a fundamental ambiguity in the liberal project, as a result of which the figure of a community of autonomous individuals appears on the one hand as given reality, serving to identify the character and the limits of legitimate government, while on the other it appears as yet to be realized positivity, serving to define the objective for a variety of governmental projects.

This paper examines the implications of that ambiguity for the understanding first of liberalism as doctrine and second of its relationship to other contemporary doctrines - democracy, socialism and the neo-liberalism in particular. Since the figure of the community of autonomous persons considered as given reality tends to dominate standard characterizations of liberalism as doctrine of government, it also plays an important part in the contrasting characterizations of democracy and socialism. We should expect the view of such a community as artefact to produce a rather different picture.