In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari claim that a general theory of society must be a generalised theory of flows. This is hardly a straightforward claim, and this paper attempts to examine the grounds for it. Why should socio-political theory be based on a theory of flows rather than, say, a theory of the social contract, or a theory of the State, or the questions of legitimation or revolution, or numerous other possible candidates? The concept of flow (and the related notions (...) of code and stock), I argue, is derived from contemporary economic theory, and most notably John Maynard Keynes. Deleuze and Guattari remained Marxists, not only because they held that contemporary political philosophy must inevitably be centred on the analysis of capitalism, but also because they held, following Marx himself, that the Marxist analysis of capital must constantly be transformed and adapted to new conditions. Thus, while certain aspects of Marx's analysis disappear from Capitalism and Schizophrenia, they are supplemented by the addition of new concepts adequate to the contemporary state of capitalism. The paper concludes, then, with an analysis of the role played by the concepts of flow, code and stock in Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy. (shrink)

Recently, Judith Butler refused to accept an award for civil courage at the Berlin Christopher Street Day, because she felt the event had become too commercial, and the event's organization had failed to distance itself from certain discriminatory statements. This, as well as many of her works, suggests that more than any other contemporary feminist author, Butler is aware of the risk of implication in exclusionary politics; a risk she might therefore successfully avoid. However, in this essay I argue that (...) to the extent her theory of performativity has become a hegemonic framework within the field of gender studies, it leads to the foreclosure of certain possible gendered identities. Using Nancy's notion of finite thinking, I argue that a different approach to universality may lead to a less exclusionary way of conceptualizing gender. (shrink)

This article argues against the doxa that Foucault's analysis of education inevitably undermines self-originating ethical intention on the part of teachers or students. By attending to Foucault's lesser known, later work—in particular, the notion of ‘biopower’ and the deepened level of materiality it entails—the article shows how the earlier Foucauldian conception of power is intensified to such an extent that it overflows its original domain, and comes to ‘infuse’ the subject that might previously have been taken as a mere effect. (...) What emerges, accordingly, is a subject divested of ‘traditional’, substantial, formation, located wholly on an immanent plane, and yet centrally concerned with the practice of freedom and ethical resistance. In turn, what seemed to have no place at all in the earlier Foucault becomes central: in general, active subjectivization (subjectivation) as a counter to passive subjection (assujetissement); more particularly, subjects' ongoing production and creation (via strategic decisions and localized opposition) of a new ethos, new ‘practices of self’, and new kinds of relations. With this alternative Foucauldian position outlined, the article then focuses more particularly on the practices of education: it concludes that, instead of being rendered merely the factories of obedient behaviour, schools or colleges can be the locus for a critically-informed, oppositional micro-politics. In other words: the power-relations that (quite literally) constitute education can now be regarded, on Foucault's own terms, as being creative, ‘enabling’ and positive. (shrink)

Deleuze and Foucault shared a period of political activism and both drew connections between their activism and their respective approaches to philosophy. However, despite their shared political commitments and praise of each other's work, there remained important philosophical differences between them which became more and more apparent over time. This article identifies some of the political issues over which they disagreed and shows how they relate to some of their underlying philosophical differences. It focuses on their respective approaches to the (...) state, to ‘actuality’ and to the analysis of the present. (shrink)

Activism is defined in this paper as involving local instigations of new series of elements intersecting the actual, generating new collective enunciations, experimentations and investigations, which erode good and common sense and cause structures to swing away from their sedimented identities. By appealing to Spinozism, the paper describes the microphysics of the activist encounter with stable structures and the ways in which activism imposes new regimes of succession of ideas and affective variations in the power of action. Rather than understanding (...) activism as supporting or leading social struggles, the definition of activism pursued here conceives it as an open-ended process and stresses the role of investigation in relation to practices within the social situations to which activism addresses itself. (shrink)

The paper explicates a politicized conception of reality with the help of Michel Foucault’s critical project. I contend that Foucault’s genealogies of power problematize the relationship between ontology and politics. His idea of productive power incorporates a radical, ontological claim about the nature of reality: Reality as we know it is the result of social practices and struggles over truth and objectivity. Rather than translating the true ontology into the right politics, he reverses the argument. The radicality of his method (...) lies in showing how the ontological order of things is in itself the outcome of a political struggle: Ontology is politics that has forgotten itself. I argue that Foucault’s thought accomplishes the politicization of ontology with two key theoretical moves. The first is the contestation and provocation of all given and necessary ontological foundations. He affirms the ontological view that there is a discontinuity between reality and all ontological schemas that order it, and a subsequent indeterminacy of reason in establishing ultimate truths or foundations. After this initial step whereby ontology is denaturalized—made arbitrary or at least historically contingent—the way is open for explanations that treat the alternative and competing ontological frameworks as resulting from historical, linguistic and social practices of power. The second key move is thus the exposure of power relations and their constitutive role in our conception of reality. I conclude by considering the implications of Foucault’s politicization of ontology for our understanding of politics. (shrink)

Much has been written on Michel Foucault's reluctance to clearly delineate a research method, particularly with respect to genealogy (Harwood, 2000; Meadmore, Hatcher & McWilliam, 2000; Tamboukou, 1999). Foucault (1994, p. 288) himself disliked prescription stating, ‘I take care not to dictate how things should be’ and wrote provocatively to disrupt equilibrium and certainty, so that ‘all those who speak for others or to others’ no longer know what to do. It is doubtful, however, that Foucault ever intended for researchers (...) to be stricken by that malaise to the point of being unwilling to make an intellectual commitment to methodological possibilities. Taking criticism of ‘Foucauldian’ discourse analysis as a convenient point of departure to discuss the objectives of poststructural analyses of language, this paper develops what might be called a discursive analytic; a methodological plan to approach the analysis of discourses through the location of statements that function with constitutive effects. (shrink)

Published in 1972, Anti‐Oedipus was the first of a number of collaborative works between the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, and the French psychoanalyst and political activist, Felix Guattari. As the first of a two‐volume body of work that bears the subtitle, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti‐Oedipus is, to say the least, an unconventional work that should be understood, in part, as a product of its time – created as it was among the political and revolutionary fervour engendered by the events of (...) ‘May 1968’. However, this paper will suggest that Anti‐Oedipus – as a critique of psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex, as well as being a study of the relationship between capitalism and schizophrenia – should also be understood in a less ‘time‐bound’ fashion. In particular, the paper will examine Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation of a concept of ‘desire’ and its employment in relation to subjectivity, time, capitalism, representation, and the radical ‘therapeutic’ practice that they refer to as ‘schizoanalysis’. Moreover, nearly 40 years after the events of May 1968 and against possible doubts concerning the contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis, it will be suggested that psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex are to be understood as symptomatic of a wider ‘malaise’ that can be discerned within psychiatry, psychotherapy, and contemporary capitalist society itself, and that it is this that forms the broader target of the book’s critique. Accordingly, by providing an accessible and critical introduction to Anti‐Oedipus, the paper also hopes to stimulate further discussion and research regarding both the critique and the contribution that the work can make to contemporary psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health nursing generally. (shrink)

Although ‘modern’ mental health care comprises a variety of theoretical approaches and practices, the supposed identification of ‘mental illness’ can be understood as being made on the basis of a specific conception of subjectivity that is characteristic of ‘modernity’. This is to say that any perceived ‘deviation’ from this characteristically ‘modern self’ is seen as a possible ‘sign’ of ‘mental illness’, given a ‘negative determination’, and conceptualized in terms of a ‘deficiency’ or a ‘lack’; accordingly, the ‘ideal’‘therapeutic’ aim of ‘modern’ (...) mental health care can be understood as the ‘rectification’ of that ‘deficiency’ through a ‘re-instatement’ of the ‘modern self’. Although contemporary mental health care is increasingly becoming influenced by the so-called ‘death’ of the ‘modern self’, this paper will suggest that it is the work of the 20th century French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, that is able to provide mental health care with a coherent determination of a ‘post-modern self’. However, a Deleuzian account of subjectivity stands in stark contrast to ‘modernity’s’ conception of subjectivity and, as such, this paper will attempt to show how this ‘post-modern’ subjectivity challenges many of the assumptions of ‘modern’ mental health care. Moreover, acknowledging the complexity and the perceived difficulty of Deleuze’s work, this paper will provide an account of subjectivity that can be understood as ‘Deleuzian’ in its orientation, rather than ‘Deleuze’s theory of subjectivity’, and therefore, this paper also seeks to stimulate further research and discussion of Deleuze’s work on subjectivity, and how that work may be able to inform, and possibly even reform, the theoretical foundations and associated diagnostic and therapeutic practices of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health nursing. (shrink)

(2006). A ‘Retro‐version’ of Power: Agamben via Foucault on Sovereignty. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 445-459.

In this paper I argue that Deleuze's ‘thinking with’ Whitehead gives access to a range of novel conceptual resources that offer a route out of phenomenology and back to life, a movement beyond intentionality and back to things ‘in their free and wild state’. I lay out four conceptual and methodological markers (there are many more) – creativity, event, prehension, empiricism – that characterise Deleuze's metaphysics and provide a guide for showing how these develop through a sustained becoming with Whitehead. (...) I conclude by looking at Deleuze and Guattari's use of the term most famously associated with Whitehead: the concept of ‘process’. (shrink)

This paper explores the significance of the concept of power/knowledge in educational theory. The argument proceeds in two main parts. In the first, I consider aspects of Stephen J. Ball’s highly influential work in educational theory. I examine his reception of Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge and suggest that there are problems in his adoption of Foucault’s thought. These problems arise from the way that he settles interpretations into received ideas. Foucault’s thought, I try to show, is not to be seen (...) in a confined way. In the second part, I seek a different reading of Foucault’s notion of power/knowledge in order to break with this tendency to confine, referring to the work of Gilles Deleuze. I draw particularly on Deleuze’s thought of the outside as a means of manifesting the significance of power/knowledge in relation to processes of subjectification. At the end of the paper, I suggest how educational theory might be reconceived in the light of potencies of power/knowledge that the paper has demonstrated. (shrink)

Foucault's preoccupation with the visual, specifically his positing of a sort of ‘positive unconscious of vision’, offers an entry point for examining data generated through a field study of home‐care case management practice. In Foucault's work, our attention is directed not so much to what is seen but to what can be seen and to the effects of practices of knowledge and power in constituting these particular realities. Knowledge emerges as a matter of what it is possible for knowers, for (...) nurses, to see and to say, as well as the conditions that constitute these specific possibilities for seeing and saying in a given context. Given the significance of practices of seeing in case management – seeing clients, seeing situations – examining how possibilities for understanding are constituted through ways of seeing helps us to ‘see’ the limits of currently possible practice. In the case examined in this paper, these limits constitute a gap between what a client may actually need and what it is possible, in the context of current practice, to provide. To change practice it seems important, if only as a first step, to recognize the constraints of thought in what we see. (shrink)

Richard Rorty, in his ‘Consequences of Pragmatism’ (1982), acknowledging the pragmatic direction taken by both modern and postmodern philosophy, declared that ‘James and Dewey were not only waiting at the end of the dialectical road which analytic philosophy traveled, but are waiting at the end of the road which, for example, Foucault and Deleuze are currently traveling’ (Rorty, 1982, p. xviii). This paper does not aim to establish who traveled the farthest along the road posited by Rorty. Instead, its purpose (...) is to trace a common direction as a sort of pragmatic trajectory that will map a territory constituting Gilles Deleuze’s new image of thought, or rather as he put it, a thought without image. By addressing some of Deleuze’s ideas on thinking and learning, especially with regard to the problematics of sources of knowledge, this paper posits the convergence between his philosophical position and Dewey’s philosophy of education despite the two being seemingly separated by time, place and culture. The paper further shifts the focus from the factual knowledge to an experimental and experiential process of knowing and asserts the latter’s far-reaching implications for education as a developing and generative practice. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the use of Deleuzian theories in educational contexts. In particular, I am interested in the use of the concept of rhizomes, and the analysis of texts as rhizomes, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's work in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). I discuss the possibilities for using rhizomatics in educational contexts through an exploration of the construction of an 'apparatus of social critique' (Buchanan, 2000). I then describe a rhizomatic understanding of the relationships between teachers and (...) policy texts, which can disrupt commonsense understandings of these relations. I provide examples from my own research (Honan, 2001) of a rhizo-textual analysis of policy texts. This rhizo-textual analysis involved an exploration of the construction of the subject position, teacher, within one policy text, as well as a mapping of two teachers' readings of this text. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for using Deleuzian theory in educational contexts, implications for both policy developers and educational researchers. (shrink)

Discourses of public education reform, like that exemplified within the Queensland Government's future vision document, Queensland State Education‐2010 , position schooling as a panacea to pervasive social instability and a means to achieve a new consensus. However, in unravelling the many conflicting statements that conjoin to form education policy and inform related literature , it becomes clear that education reform discourse is polyvalent . Alongside visionary statements that speak of public education as a vehicle for social justice are the visionary (...) or those reflecting neoliberal individualism and a conservative politics. In this paper, it is argued that the latter coagulate to form strategic discursive practices which work to secure dominant relations of power. Further, discussion of the characteristics needed by the ‘ideal’ future citizen of Queensland reflect efforts to ‘tame change through the making of the child’ . The casualties of this vision and the refusal to investigate the pathologies of ‘traditional’ schooling are the children who, for whatever reason, do not conform to the norm of the desired school child as an ‘ideal’ citizen‐in‐the‐making and who become relegated to alternative educational settings. (shrink)

While most other works focus on conspiracy theories, this book examines conspiracy panics, or the anxiety over the phenomenon of conspiracy theories. Jack Z. Bratich argues that conspiracy theories are portals into the major social issues defining U.S. and global political culture. These issues include the rise of new technologies, the social function of journalism, U.S. race relations, citizenship and dissent, globalization, biowarfare and biomedicine, and the shifting positions within the Left. Using a Foucauldian governmentality analysis, Bratich maintains that conspiracy (...) panics contribute to a broader political rationality, a (neo)liberal strategy of governing at a distance through the use of reason. He also explores the growing popularity of 9/11 conspiracy research in terms of what he calls the "sphere of legitimate dissensus." Conspiracy Panics concludes that we are witnessing a new fusion of culture and rationality, one that is increasingly shared across the political spectrum. (shrink)

What is philosophical genealogy? What is its purpose? How does genealogy achieve this purpose? These are the three essential questions to ask when thinking about philosophical genealogy. Although there has been an upswell of articles in the secondary literature exploring these questions in the last decade or two, the answers provided are unsatisfactory. Why do replies to these questions leave scholars wanting? Why is the question, “What is philosophical genealogy?” still being asked? There are two broad reasons, I think. First, (...) on the substantive side, the problem is that genealogical models will get certain features of the method right but ignore others. The models proffered to answer the first question are too restrictive. The second reason is that the three essential questions to ask regarding the nature of genealogy are run together when they should be treated separately. In the following paper, I address these problems by attempting to reconstruct genealogy from the ground up. I provide what I hope is an ecumenical position on genealogy that will accommodate a wide variety of genealogical thinkers, from Hobbes to Nietzsche, rather than a select few. Therefore, I examine two of the three questions above: What is philosophical genealogy and its purpose? I argue there are seven main features of genealogy and that these features may be used as a yardstick to compare how one genealogist stacks up to another along the seven aspects I outline in the paper. (shrink)

Die Debatte um die politische Differenz stellt Kontingenz und Konfliktualität als fundamentale Eigenschaften des Politischen heraus. Dies birgt ein Problem für die postfundamentalistische Demokratietheorie, die auf Augenhöhe mit dieser Debatte argumentieren will: Durch die Kontingentsetzung aller normativen Begründungen ist zunächst unklar, welche Art von demokratischen Institutionen wie begründet werden kann, und sogar, ob es überhaupt eine von der postfundamentalistischen Sozialontologie ausgehend argumentierende normative Begründung für demokratische Institutionen geben kann. Meine These ist, dass Freiheit, verstanden als kontinuierliche selbstreflexive Kritik, derjenige normative (...) Begriff ist, der sich aus der Sozialontologie von Konflikt und Kontingenz herleiten lässt. Anders gesagt: Freiheit als Kritik ist derjenige Universalismus, der sich aus der Ontologie des Partikularismus ableitet. Freiheit als Kritik kann dabei einerseits das Operieren einiger Institutionen in liberal-pluralistischen Demokratien beschreiben, und andererseits als radikaldemokratisch-normativer Kritikbegriff für die Analyse ihrer Dysfunktionalität dienen. Um diese These zu begründen, gehe ich zurück zu einem Theoretiker, der eine Grundlage der aktuellen Debatte um das Politische bildet: Foucault, dessen Machttheorie als Ansatz einer Sozialontologie der Kontingenz und Konfliktualität gelten kann. Gleichzeitig hat Foucault den Begriff der Freiheit als den zu dieser Ontologie passenden normativen Begriff herausgestellt. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of the analysis of technological zones. A technological zone can be understood as a space within which differences between technical practices, procedures and forms have been reduced, or common standards have been established. Such technological zones take broadly one of three forms: (1) metrological zones associated with the development of common forms of measurement; (2) infrastructural zones associated with the creation of common connection standards; and (3) zones of qualification which come into being when objects (...) and practices are assessed according to common standards and criteria. The article argues that technological zones can have more or less clear borders, but such borders increasingly do not correspond to the borders of nation-states. Through a discussion of the global oil industry, some of the ways in which the formation of technological zones has become critical to contemporary economic and political life are examined. (shrink)

Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Diese zentrale Frage der Interpretation von Foucaults vielschichtigem Werk wurde breit diskutiert und dennoch nicht befriedigend beantwortet. Dass bis heute kaum Klarheit über den Status von Freiheit in Foucaults Werk erreicht werden konnte, liegt auch daran, dass die gängigen Interpretationen die verschiedenen Freiheitsbegriffe, die in Foucaults Werk zu finden sind, vermischen. Der Artikel bringt deshalb Ordnung in diese unübersichtliche Lage, indem er die verschiedenen Freiheitsbegriffe und (...) Freiheitsprobleme in Foucaults Werk differenziert. Dies ermöglicht ein besseres Verständnis von Foucaults Freiheitsdenken und Machttheorie und führt zu einem neuen Freiheitsbegriff: Freiheit als die Fähigkeit zur kritischen Reflexion der eigenen Subjektivierung. Weil diese "Freiheit als Kritik" nur durch politische Institutionen ermöglicht werden kann, produziert dieser Freiheitsbegriff neue Anschlüsse von Foucaults Denken an die normative politische Theorie und postfundamentalistische Demokratietheorie. How can freedom and resistance be conceived within Foucault's theory of power and subjectivation? This central question of the interpretation of Foucault's multi-layered work has been widely discussed and yet not satisfactorily answered. The fact that until today there has been little clarity about the status of freedom in Foucault's work is also due to the fact that the current interpretations confuse the various concepts of freedom which can be found in Foucault's work. The article therefore brings order to this confusing situation by differentiating the various concepts and problems of freedom in Foucault's work. This enables a better understanding of Foucault's thinking of freedom and his theory of power and leads to a new concept of freedom: freedom as the capability to critically reflect on one's own subjectivation. Because this "freedom as critique" can only be made possible by political institutions, this concept of freedom produces new connections from Foucault's thinking to normative political theory and post-fundamentalist democratic theory. (shrink)

Throughout one’s career, a professional sports practitioner is confronted with various choices to make, ranging from coaching a fair match or offering opportunities for selected individuals to win; showing true sportsmanship or venturing for a better compensation; to even sticking to one’s home team or accepting a better offer. This is faced by all sports practitioners within the same industry: athletes, coaches, managers, and even team owners. In making these choices, individuals recognize essential ethical considerations. However, a primary factor that (...) influences them—albeit without them knowing—is their alienated state. The preferences of the sports practitioner mirror society’s response to the demands of the Culture Industry. He or she would opt to choose what the Industry is offering and uphold these standards. After all, sports is a social phenomenon that has undergone changes throughout the years, along with other aspects of society. It bears the impact of the Aufklärung, the true question of being enlightened and of being cultured. Thus, sports could be seen as constituting another level in the individual’s (and even society’s) alienated sphere. This paper seeks to shed light on the ethical considerations of the sports practitioner, in particular the heavy influence of the Culture Industry, the individual’s alienated state, and his or her response. I am interested in the play of power-relations among the sports practitioners and society, both dominated by the Industry. The paper does not present an exhaustive claim enlisting all considerations, but merely critiques the present setup. By presenting individuals’ (ultimately social) alienated state, I show that their choices are in fact social, even though they would seem to be solely individualistic in terms of their situated-ness in sporting events. Thus, this paper shows the heavy influence of the Industry in the continuous power relations between sports practitioners and society, as well as the alienated state of both. (shrink)

This article further elaborates on the “pre-crime society” thesis as developed and examined by Arrigo and Sellers. Specifically, the article focuses on the ultramodern era of digital inter-connectivity and argues that productive psychic desire is held clinically captive. Ultra-modernity is populated by cyber-forms of human relating and of economic exchange that nurture hyper-securitization. We discuss how the maintenance of hyper-securitization supports a pre-crime society, and how hyper-securitization’s object of desire consists of sign-optics. We argue that the co-constitutive forces of this (...) desire represent the sign-exchange values of post-criminology. Post-criminology’s signifiers include, among others, “predictive policing”, “crime mapping”, and “actuarial penology.” Post-criminology’s signifieds produce captivity-generating bio-digital “laws” of human relatedness. Among others, these laws sanction the neurosis of de-vitalization and certify the psychosis of finalization. We explain how the unchecked excess neutralizations of de-vitalization and finalization cultivate clinical captivity. Clinical captivity is a social anxiety in which reciprocal consciousness, inter-subjectivity, and mutual power are limited in existence or are denied an existence. (shrink)

Identity is a contemporary buzzword in education, referencing the individual and the social, the personal and the political, self and other. Following Maggie MacLure, we can think of identity in terms of teachers ‘arguing for themselves’, or giving an account of themselves. Yet in the wake of poststructuralism's radical de‐centering of the subject and its highlighting of a number of impediments to agency, we might well ask how teachers are to give an account of themselves? This paper offers reading of (...) identity that recognizes its paradoxical aspects, yet also contains scope for ethical agency. The latter is explored via a ‘diagram’ that utilizes Foucault's four axes of ethics to elaborate a framework for thinking about teacher identity as ethical self‐formation and for engaging in what I refer to here as ‘identity work’. This approach to thinking about teacher identity recognizes our discursive determination, yet also offers scope for recognizing and building ethical agency. (shrink)

This paper, conceptually mainly informed by Michel Foucault’s notion of morality, ethics, and ethical practice, illustrates the power program and the moral codes which currently govern the professional field of the arts. Building on empirical material from the field of theatre, the paper discusses how the moral codes and subject ideals that are promoted through the ‘culturepreneurial’ program affect and shape the subjectivity of artists and their specific modes of organizing ethical relations to self and others (Foucault 1984, 1986). The (...) insights of the study emphasize that subjectification presents a dynamic and precarious process. Discursively promoted moral codes are used by the artists in a variety of ways; they are accepted, undermined, and re-created. While doing so, artistic professionals contribute to both their own subjection and in-subordination. (shrink)

The Foucault’s conception of power, so as those instructions that lead to think the body as a surface or exteriority, enable to suppose that body transcends the restrictive context with the one usually associated with. For that, it’s necessary to inquire into the Foucault’s form to think about the exteriority; principally the one that persists between visibility and enunciation. This subject will be analyzed starting from the multiples forms with which they appear in the foucaultian’s proposition, especially about the clinic (...) and the explanation of the passage from classic to modern culture. (shrink)

Françoise Proust explains that where Foucault established a cartography of power, she is interested in elaborating an “analytic of resistance.” This, she elaborates, would be “the transcendental of every resistance, whatever kind it be: resistance to power, to the state of things, to history; resistance to destruction, to death, to war; resistance to stupidity, to peace, to bare life.”.

Proust interrogates Gilles Deleuze's notion of resistance in relation to death as that which is “turned against death.” She questions a concept of resistance which is “no more than impassivity and indifference.” How, she asks, can we know if the force of resistance is on the side of death or life? Characterizing life as movement, she speaks for a concept of resistance as on the side of life.

The cosmology of Deleuze and Guattari emphasises the new. I raise the question of whether this emphasis cancels out two other political virtues, solidarity and heterogeneity, and thereby amounts to a fascism of the new. I reply that what Deleuze and Guattari say about cosmological unity and difference suggests that they can avoid this negative designation. I support this conclusion by considering their statements on ethics and politics and by translating their cosmological philosophy into the more immediate ethico-political context of (...) the alloplastic stratum. The latter effort is abetted by elaborating the two thinkers’ use of the term ‘voice’, for example, in Deleuze's statement that Being is the ‘single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple … a single clamour of Being for all beings’ or in the two authors’ notion of a ‘constellation of voices’ that makes up the ‘molecular’ or ‘unconscious’ collective assemblage of enunciation. This elaboration is pertinent because political ethics is essentially which voices are heard, and which not, or at least their relative levels of audibility in the alloplastic regime. I further clarify this treatment of Deleuze and Guattari's political ethics by linking it to the idea of parrhesia, courageous speech and hearing. (shrink)

The art of living idiom suits well a practice-oriented approach in ethics of technology. But what remains or becomes of the functioning and use of reason in ethics? In reaction to the comments by Huijer this reply elaborates in more detail how Foucault’s art of living can be adapted for a critical contemporary ethics of technology. And the aesthetic-political rationality in Foucault’s ethics is compared with Wellner’s suggestions of holding on to the notion of code but with a new meaning. (...) Foucault’s fourfold scheme of subjectivation and a distinction of “below and above reason” structure the argument. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new reading of the interaction between subjectivity, reflection and freedom within Foucault’s later work. I begin by introducing three approaches to subjectivity, locating these in relation both to Foucault’s texts and to the recent literature. I suggest that Foucault himself operates within what I call the ‘entanglement approach’, and, as such, he faces a potentially serious challenge, a challenge forcefully articulated by Han. Using Kant’s treatment of reflection as a point of comparison, I argue that Foucault (...) possesses the resources to meet this challenge. The key, I contend, is to distinguish two related theses about reflection and freedom: Foucault’s position is distinctive precisely because he accepts one of these theses whilst rejecting the other. I conclude by indicating how this reading might connect to the longstanding question of Foucault’s own right to appeal to normative standards. (shrink)

This paper builds a three-part argument in favour of a more transcendentally focused form of ‘postphenomenology’ than is currently practised in philosophy of technology. It does so by problematising two key terms, ‘constitution’ and ‘postphenomenology’, then by arguing in favour of a ‘transcendental empiricist’ approach that draws on the work of Foucault, Derrida, and, in particular, Deleuze. Part one examines ‘constitution’, as it moves from the context of Husserl’s phenomenology to Ihde and Verbeek’s ‘postphenomenology’. I argue that the term tends (...) towards different senses in these contexts, and that this renders its sense more problematic than the work of Ihde and Verbeek makes it appear. Part two examines ‘postphenomenology’. I argue that putatively ‘poststructuralist’ thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze may be better characterised as ‘postphenomenologists’, and that approaching them in this way may allow better access to their work from a philosophy of technology perspective. Part three argues for a ‘transcendental empiricist’ approach to philosophy of technology. In doing so, it argues for a rewriting of contemporary philosophy of technology’s political constitution: since an ‘empirical turn’ in the 1990s, I argue, philosophy of technology has been too narrowly focused on ‘empirical’ issues of fact, and not focused enough on ‘transcendental’ issues concerning conditions for these facts. (shrink)

As symbols of adaptability and transformation, together with qualities of vigilance and intelligence, we argue the relevance of dragons for spatial planning in China. We develop a metaphorical concept – the green dragon – for grasping the condition of contemporary Chinese societies and for facilitating the development of theories and practices of spatial planning which are able to face the challenges of rapid change. We ask Chinese scholars and spatial planners to liberate Deleuzian potential for strategic spatial planning in a (...) ‘becoming-between, coming-together’ of concepts which can effectively make a difference in the world. Having outlined what we regard as key transversals or diagonals between our reading of Gilles Deleuze and aspects of Chinese philosophy, we then offer the metaphor of strategic spatial planning as Chinese literati landscape painting. This is a form of painting which rejects the idea of the world being supremely organised from a particular point of view, preferring to paint immanence and transformation. Chinese literati landscape paintings, like philosophy and strategic spatial planning, ‘look only at the movements’. We conclude that connections between what concepts of Chinese philosophy and those of Gilles Deleuze can do, suggest that in China, a conception of strategic spatial planning as metaphorical green dragon may offer academics and planning practitioners a transverse way to relate the legacies of past philosophies and current thinking. (shrink)

Autopoietic theory is increasingly seen as a candidate for a radical theory of law, both in relation to its theoretical credentials and its relevance in terms of new and emerging forms of law. An aspect of the theory that has remained less developed, however, is its material side, and more concretely the theory’s accommodation of bodies, space, objects and their claim to legal agency. The present article reads Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic systems in a radical and material manner, linking it (...) on the one hand to current post-structural theorisations of law and society, and on the other hand extending its ambit to accommodate the influx of material considerations that have been working their way through various other disciplines. The latter comprises both a materialisation of the theory itself and ways of conceptualising the legal system as material through and through. This I do by further developing what I have called Critical Autopoiesis, namely an acentric, topological, post-ecological and posthuman understanding of Luhmann’s theory, that draws on Deleuzian thought, feminist theory, geography, non-representational theory, and new material and object-oriented ontologies. These are combined with some well-rehearsed autopoietic concepts, such as distinction, environment and boundaries; Luhmann’s earlier work on materiality continuum; more recent work on bodies and space; as well as his work on form and medium in relation to art. The article concludes with five suggestions for an understanding of what critical autopoietic materiality might mean for law. (shrink)

In this paper Foucault’s thought on monstrosity is explored. Monsters appear whenever and wherever knowledge/power assemblages emerge. That which eludes the latter, and which threatens to subvert them, is the monstrous. Foucault distinguished the production, throughout history, of juridical-natural monsters, moral monsters, and political monsters. In this paper it is argued that Foucault must have sensed that monstrosity eludes all notions of identity and difference, and therefore also the notion that places it ‘outside’. It is the space of emergence itself, (...) i.e. the location where sheer potentiality becomes the possible of and in the event. All monstrosity is therefore deeply, and inevitably, political. It is the promise of unsettling subversion. (shrink)

This article aims to consider how the ‘diagram’ or ‘little machine’ is integral to the dissociative, at once polyvocal and polymorphous writing that marks the work of Blanchot and that, in turn, informs the disjunctive – hence critical and productive – operation within the register of Deleuze's writings on cinema. I shall consider a number of Deleuze's ‘keywords’ or recurring formulas as diagrams, that is, as intermediate configurations at once visual and lexical, in order to show how, like rebuses or (...) ideograms, they form collisions and ruptures of voice and graphic form, in order to bring forward the ‘outside’ of thought – what cannot be put into language yet is conveyed in language. (shrink)

This article contrasts the notion of a Deleuzian imaginary with that articulated by various film theorists during the 1970s and 1980s. Deleuze offers us, I argue, a way to conceive of the imaginary in the cinema in a positive way; that is, as something which opens up new expressions of the real. By contrast, for film theorists of the 1970s and 1980s, the imaginary was primarily conceived as a negative concept, as something which offered merely escapes or fraudulent distortions of (...) the real. A Deleuzian imaginary for the cinema can be articulated, I argue, by way of the films of Jean Renoir. (shrink)

In an attempt to reaffirm Deleuze's Nietzschean affinities, this article argues that it is possible to detect in his thought an alternative concept of the political which gives ontological priority to difference. In order to map this out, a Deleuzian reading of the Zapatista experience will be provided, with particular attention given to the manner in which power is re-conceptualised, resistance strategised, subjectivities recast, and political solidarities formed anew. Once this has been established, the paper will argue that not only (...) does Deleuze provide us with a meaningful basis for political action, he offers us possibilities for creating new forms of political solidarity that no longer take Hegelian inspired dialectical enmity or dangerous Kantian unfulfilment as their point of theoretical departure. (shrink)

This paper formulates the categories of "ethics," "self," and "subject" for an analysis of classical rabbinic ethics centered on the text, "The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan." Early rabbis were concerned with the realms of life that today's scholars describe as ethics and self-cultivation, yet they had no overarching concepts for either the self/person or for ethics. This analysis, then, cannot rely only upon native rabbinic terminology, but also requires a careful use of contemporary categories. This paper first sets out (...) basic features of "Rabbi Nathan" and presents appropriate formulations of the relevant scholarly terms. The latter sections address possibilities for employing and revising these categories in descriptive and comparative studies more broadly, first surveying relevant scholarship on Christian, Muslim, and Manichaean sources, and then turning to ancient East Asian sources with a particular focus upon passages in the "Zhuangzi". (shrink)

Freedom, conceived ontologically, is power's condition of possibility. Yet, considering that the subject's interests and identity are constantly shaped, one still has to explain how – theoretically speaking – individuals can resist control. This is precisely the issue I address in the following pages. Following a brief overview of Foucault's contribution to our understanding of power, I turn to discuss the role of visibility vis-à-vis control, and show how the development of disciplinary techniques reversed the visibility of power. While Foucault (...) illustrates that during different historical periods, distinct modes of visibility are produced by power in order to control society, I argue that the very same power that produces visibility is concomitantly dependent upon it. In addition, I maintain that visibility is a necessary component of resistance. But Foucault – perhaps due to his premature death – never adequately explains how individuals can resist the mechanisms of control in a world in which power is ubiquitous. To help clarify this enigma, I turn to Hannah Arendt's insights into power, freedom, plurality, and natality. These concepts, I claim, can serve as a corrective to Foucault because they make room for resistance without assuming that humans can exit power's web. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo abordo las relaciones entre la subjetividad y la gubernamentalidad en la obra de Michel Foucault con la finalidad de profundizar y elucidar ciertos elementos que subyacen en su estrategia para escapar de las formas de subjetivación neoliberales. La subjetividad se piensa como la tensión entre un dispositivo de control y un lugar para la resistencia. Su estrategia se funda en la comprensión de los procesos de estatalización y de las prácticas estatales a partir de las cuales (...) podemos entender cómo hemos llegado a ser lo que somos y con ello resistir a los procesos de subjetivación que fomentan dichas prácticas.This article examines the relations between subjectivity and governmentality in the work of Michel Foucault in order to clarify the elements involved in his strategy to escape from neoliberal forms of subjectivation. Thus, i examine how subjectivity emerges from the tension between being a control device and at the same time a place of resistance. Foucault's strategy is based on the understanding of processes of nationalization and State practices, from which we might understand how we have become what we are and, on this basis, resist the processes of subjectivation promoted by state practices. (shrink)