To understand how we have become what we are requires, following Foucault, not a theory but an `analytics' which examines how technologies of power and knowledge have, since antiquity, intertwined and developed in concrete and historical frameworks. Distilling from Foucault's oeuvre as a whole a rough periodization of western political rationalities, this article shows how the processes whereby some people discipline or govern others are frequently closely connected to procedures of identity-constitution and knowledge-production. Platonic, Stoic and Christian pursuits of self-mastery (...) and self-knowledge, often via the intervention of an external master, were initially confined to an elite, but thereafter were amplified and generalized to encompass entire populations in conjunction with the rise of the modern state. Via techniques of confession and ascetic conduct, faith and empiricism, and selfreflection and everyday reality, western political rationalities, in the form of combined totalization and individualization technologies whereby some (struggle to) discipline others even as all (are exhorted to) discipline themselves, have come to dominate the globe. (shrink)

The figure of chiasmus, which plays a key role inside Merleau-Ponty’s thought, makes it possible to address the way Castoriadis defines the imaginary throughout his entire work from a new perspective, as well as to shed light on some complexities concerning the relation between instituted and instituting. Tthis article emphasizes the intertwining of three pair of concepts, each of which corresponds to a different but yet interrelated aspect of his philosophy: psyche-society, tradition-innovation, and autonomy-heteronomy.

This paper takes up Foucault's theoretical legacy and looks for the hermeneutical keys which will enable its critical appropriation by the present day revolutionary left. It also aims to developping an idea previously set out by N. Poulantzas: not only are Foucault's thesis compatible with marxism, they can only be fully understood fiom it.