This paper discusses how Switzerland is branded by the Swiss state under late capitalism. Drawing on discursive data collected in the framework of a research project investigating the international promotion of Switzerland, I particularly focus on how multilingualism and cultural diversity are constructed by the Swiss government as a capital belonging to Switzerland and its history and on how and why this imagined historical capital is reframed in promotional terms. In doing so, I question the function of the historicity of (...) Swiss multilingualism and cultural diversity in nation branding practices and analyze the logics causing specific tokens of multilingualism and cultural diversity to emerge as desirable promotional features. Finally, I research how the promotional investment in Swiss multilingualism and cultural diversity affects the status and value of its historical capital and how this has consequences for what can be said about Switzerland and its history. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es explicar la conexión entre reglas discursivas y normas morales en el marco de la ética del discurso. El trabajo comienza con un análisis de la diferencia entre acción y operación y con una reconstrucción del concepto de discurso. Luego es presentada la diferencia y la relación entre ley y obligación. La conclusión es que la conexión entre acción y discurso posible está implícita en la noción de responsabilidad moral.

El objetivo del presente trabajo es explicar la relación entre las nociones de discurso y acción en un marco pragmático trascendental. El trabajo comienza con una presentación de la primera noción y de la idea de pretensión de validez. Luego son examinadas algunas objeciones a la justificación última de la ética, formulada por Apel. La conclusión es que es posible una respuesta a esas objeciones mediante la diferenciación entre dos niveles de la relación entre discurso y acción: un nivel fáctico (...) y uno trascendental. The aim of this paper is to explain the relation between the notions of discourse and action in a transcendental-pragmatic frame. The paper begins with a presentation of the first notion and the idea of validity claim. After that, some objections to Apel's ultimate justifications of ethic are examined. The conclusion is that an answer to these objections is possible throw the difference between two levels of the relation between discourse and action: a real level and a transcendental one. (shrink)

Ce texte répond à trois objectifs : 1) dégager quelques éléments théoriques et méthodologiques essentiels au travail en Analyse du Discours, dans une perspective qui situe le discours comme objet dans un rapport déterminé entre langue et idéologie; 2) exposer la mise en oeuvre de ces éléments à travers la démarche suivie dans un travail d'Analyse du Discours ayant eu pour objet un corpus de discours du Parti communiste français adressés aux Chrétiens ; 3) indiquer le type de résultats auxquels (...) de telles orientations peuvent conduire : une redéfinition des notions de corpus, d'énoncé et d'énonciation dans l'analyse linguistique des processus discursifs.This paper aims at three goals: 1) to draw some essential theoretical and methodological elements from the works in the field of Discourse Analysis, in a perspective that situates discourse as a certain relation between language and ideology; 2) to expose the use of those elements through the approach followed in a Discourse Analysis research which took a corpus of speeches of the French Communist Party addressed to the Christian Community as its object; 3) to indicate the type of results to which such orientations may lead: a redefinition of the notions of corpus, enounced and enounciation in the analysis of discourse processes. (shrink)

Dans la Critique de la raison pratique, Kant entreprend une « archéologie » du Soi moral. Cette archéologie peut s’entendre conformément à la définition de Foucault : ne remontant vers aucune origine, comparant des faits de raison, oeuvrant sur un plan d’immanence strictement rationnel, Kant archéologue livre l’idée d’une « histoire de ce qui rend nécessaire une certaine forme de pensée ». Il s’agit de reconstruire les événementialités rationnelles qui séparent et articulent différentes conditions de possibilités d’émergence du Soi moral. (...) Et ces événementialités, portées au jour dans l’écart du présent au passé, dessinent l’horizon d’un possible politique, celui d’une articulation forte entre morale et politique, telle que le « politique moral » déjà l’annonce. Cet article est le premier jalon d’un travail en cours. (shrink)

The ArgumentUsing a pernicious Foucaultian reading of Weber's rationalization theories, I endeavor in this essay to illuminate academic acts as kept in the Brandenburg-Prussian state archive in Berlin, with some comparison to others, chiefly those in the Bavarian state archive in Munich. The essay concerns the microtechniques of marking, collecting and keeping records, and the form and content of archives of academic acts – interesting for the reason that paperwork circumscribes the state ministry's ability to recollect academic acts and hence (...) its power and knowledge over academics. I consider mostly acts relating to the early modern “Arts and Philosophy Faculty,” which corresponds more or less to the present-day “Division of Arts, Letters and Sciences.” The transformation, traced from the Baroque to the Romantic era, is understood as a process of “ministerial-market rationalization” of German academia: I try to show how central German ministries, as reflected in archival acts, altered the academic persona to suit themselves and the market, and how professorial appointments were rationalized accordingly. (shrink)

The most common way of analysing the meaning of causal generalisations relies on referentialist semantics. In this article, we instead develop an analysis based on inferentialist semantics. According to this approach, the meaning of a causal generalisation is constituted by the web of inferential connections in which the generalisation participates. We distinguish and discuss five classes of inferential connections that constitute the meaning of causal generalisations produced in policy-oriented economic research. The usefulness of our account is illustrated with the analysis (...) of generalisations about unemployment put forward by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in its highly influential 1994 OECD Jobs Study. The article ends with a discussion of some crucial philosophical questions about the use of inferentialism in the analysis of causal generalisations. (shrink)

In this article I assess Georges Canguilhem's historical epistemology with both theoretical and historical questions in mind. From a theoretical point of view, I am concerned with the relation between history and philosophy, and in particular with the philosophical assumptions and external norms that are involved in history writing. Moreover, I am concerned with the role that history can play in the understanding and evaluation of philosophical concepts. From a historical point of view, I regard historical epistemology, as developed by (...) Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem, as a conception and practice which came out of the project, elaborated in France from the 1920s to the 1940s, of combining history of science and philosophy. I analyse in particular Canguilhem's epistemology in his theory and practice of history of science. What he called 'normative history' is the focus of my analysis. I evaluate the question of the nature and provenience of the norm employed in normative history, and I compare it with the norm as discussed by Canguilhem in Le normal et le pathologique. While I am critical of Canguilhem's treatment of history, I conclude that his philosophical suggestion to analyse the formation of scientific concepts 'from below' represents a useful model for history and philosophy of science, and that it can be very profitably extended to philosophical concepts. (shrink)

Natural language plays a fundamental role in cognition and communication, but in the modern information society, language is increasingly used as a data transmission technology. The study of the problem of language power over thinking is a significant contribution to understanding the nature of language and its relationship with thinking. This article presents an analysis of the peculiarities of M. Foucault’s views on the problem of relationship between language and thinking. The author applies the elements of Foucault’s archaeological approach and (...) studies his concepts in connection with the ideas of other French thinkers. During the analysis, the author formulates her vision of the concepts of power and discourse. The first part of the article considers the understanding of natural language as a complex open sign system that interacts with the outside world and constantly accumulates elements of culture and creativity, from the point of view of philosophy and structural linguistics. The understanding of the division of language into separate discourses is explained. The presentation of the original methodology of Foucault’s language research explains what makes it possible to reveal the peculiarities of the historical development of discourse in the social aspect. Further, Foucault’s views on the role of language in obtaining knowledge and the formation of thinking are reflected, as well as an understanding of the relations of power that the philosopher notices in mental and speech activity of individuals. There follows J. Baudrillard’s criticism of Foucouldian concept of power and the process of language development in society. In conclusion, the author summarizes the analyzed views on power, development of language and thinking as well as Foucault’s understanding of language. (shrink)

Alain Corbin, The Village of Cannibals, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. 164 pp.

This article focuses on Michel Foucault’s concepts of authorship and power. Jacques Derrida has often been accused of being more of a literary author than a philosopher or political theorist. Richard Rorty complains that Derrida’s views on politics are not pragmatic enough; he sees Derrida’s later work, including his political work, more as a “private self-fashioning” than concrete political thinking aimed at devising short-term solutions to problems here and now. Employing Foucault’s work around authorship and the origins of power, I (...) show that Derrida is indeed fashioning himself. This self-fashioning is not merely private or fanciful. Rather, I argue that Derrida can be read as employing what Foucault would call “technologies of the self” to not only show the play of possibility and impossibility at work in all politics and thought, but also to use his savoir to create two important and potentially constructive power structures. First, there is the power of deconstruction itself as a “militant critique” that calls for a forceful and irreducible justice. Second, there is the power of Derrida himself, understood as leaving behind a legacy of himself as the “originator” of deconstruction and as a public intellectual. (shrink)

As the title of this paper suggests, these remarks on Foucault should be understood as an attempt to complete the picture that McDonell has provided of Michel Foucault's work, rather than as a critique of that picture. I find myself in agreement with much that McDonell has said, but would nevertheless like to comment on a few points. There are two main features of McDonell's introduction to Foucault. First, the overall bearing of Foucault's work is held to have to do (...) with the history of ideas, with a special concern with the methodology that such a type of history should follow. Second, the work of Michel Foucault possesses a rather strong unity that can be stressed in taking L'archéologie du savoir as, so to speak, the sun of a small theoretical system around which revolve such planets of written words as Histoire de Ia folie à l'âge classique, Naissance de Ia clinique, Les mots et les chases and, eventually, Surveiller et punir. (shrink)

This essay adopts a semiotic perspective focused on practices of communication, movement, and translation to examine the global impact of A. J. Greimas and his oeuvre. The linguist and semiotician’s lecture trips abroad, the number and provenance of international students in his Paris seminar, and the chronology and linguistic geography of translations of his work help describe, gauge, and explain the dissemination and development of his ideas throughout the world. His project has engendered distinctive appropriations and at times productive institutional (...) structures in a number of cultural and linguistic contexts, notably Romance, Anglo-American, Germanic, Russian, Lithuanian, and Chinese. The broader historical relations between France and other lands, and the extent of each society’s use of the French language have conditioned, fostered, or impeded responses to his proposals. The conclusion’s discussion of the relative importance of personal contacts, socio-historical context, and the sociolinguistic and pedagogical status of French for his international reception aims to contribute to general methodological debates in the history of science and ideas and in transnational history. (shrink)

To date, the primary focus of research in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the strategic implications of CSR for corporations and less on an evaluation of CSR from a wider political, economic and social perspective. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by critically engaging with marketing campaigns of so-called ‘ethical’ bottled water. We especially focus on a major CSR strategy of a range of different companies that promise to provide drinking water for (...) (what they name as) ‘poor African people’ by way of Western consumers purchasing bottled water. Following Fairclough's approach, we unfold a three-step critical discourse analysis of the marketing campaigns of 10 such ‘ethical’ brands. Our results show that bottled water companies try to influence consumers' tastes through the management of the cultural meaning of bottled water, producing a more ‘ethical’ and ‘socially responsible’ perception of their products/brands. Theoretically, we base our analysis on McCracken's model of the cultural meaning of consumer goods, which, we argue, offers a critical perspective of the recent emergence of CSR and business ethics initiatives. We discuss how these marketing campaigns can be framed as historical struggles associated with neo-liberal ideology and hegemony. Our analysis demonstrates how such CSR strategies are part of a general process of the reproduction of capitalist modes of accumulation and legitimation through the usage of cultural categories. (shrink)

To date, the primary focus of research in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the strategic implications of CSR for corporations and less on an evaluation of CSR from a wider political, economic and social perspective. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by critically engaging with marketing campaigns of so‐called ‘ethical’ bottled water. We especially focus on a major CSR strategy of a range of different companies that promise to provide drinking water for (...) (what they name as) ‘poor African people’ by way of Western consumers purchasing bottled water. Following Fairclough's approach, we unfold a three‐step critical discourse analysis of the marketing campaigns of 10 such ‘ethical’ brands. Our results show that bottled water companies try to influence consumers' tastes through the management of the cultural meaning of bottled water, producing a more ‘ethical’ and ‘socially responsible’ perception of their products/brands. Theoretically, we base our analysis on McCracken's model of the cultural meaning of consumer goods, which, we argue, offers a critical perspective of the recent emergence of CSR and business ethics initiatives. We discuss how these marketing campaigns can be framed as historical struggles associated with neo‐liberal ideology and hegemony. Our analysis demonstrates how such CSR strategies are part of a general process of the reproduction of capitalist modes of accumulation and legitimation through the usage of cultural categories. (shrink)

Our aim is to analyze the position of the leader in relation to the ethical dimension of truth-telling within the organization under his/her control. Based on Michel Foucault’s study of truth-telling, we demonstrate that the role of the leader toward the corporation and the imperative of organizational performance place the leader in an ambiguous position: he/she is obliged to take the lead in “telling the truth” internally and externally, but also to bear the consequences of this “truth-telling” for the organization (...) and for himself/herself. In this process of construction and implementing the truth, the leader is organizer and figurehead of the corporation’s truth-telling practices: determining the frontiers between truth that can be said and that which should remain hidden, both inside and outside the corporation; establishing a dialogue based on truth ; guaranteeing that the rules of truth-telling are respected; and offering a truth which is compatible with the firm’s economic and ethical interest. Invested with the authority—the office—of managing truth within the corporation, the leader can be considered to be the “Chief Truth Officer.” From this perspective, we demonstrate that this role requires specific skills, like courage and practical wisdom. (shrink)

It is argued that attempts to archive Derrida’s work and treat it in the standard terms of intellectual history are short-circuited by arguments within his work that undermine the coherence of the concept of archive as it is deployed in such historical descriptions. Drawing on a range of Derrida’s early and late writings and more especially his readings of Freud, it is suggested that Derrida’s claim that psychoanalysis ought to provoke a revision of the terms historians use to discuss it (...) is a fortiori valid for deconstruction. (shrink)

Cet article propose trois graphies pour distinguer trois sens assez différents au sein de ce que l’on fait confusément relever des « médias » en français. Ce faisant, il propose, à la suite de Marshall McLuhan, de considérer la cause formelle comme une catégorie centrale pour comprendre les dynamiques médiatiques. Cela le conduit à situer son approche aux confins de l’archéologie et de l’écologie des media.

The article aims to base the presence of a reconceptualization of the political in Michel Foucault's thought, taking as the reading key ethhopolitics as a conceptual proposal. There, we can find a concept completely opposed to the way in which both modern governmentality and the tradition of political thought have understood the meaning of politics in the West. Following this purpose, the hypothesis is proposed and developed, according to which the analytical gesture that persists in Michel Foucault's thought is a (...) concept of the political that affirms life in its radical exuberance and unfoundedness. In this statement, we recognize the signatures of a triangular conceptual structure made up of the fold between life, ethics and power. After exposing the problem and clearing some methodological difficulties for its approach, we examine in detail the investigations that comprise the archeology of ethical life in the French philosopher. It is argued that the very textuality of ethhopolitics is formulated as politicity rather than as a specific policy, that is, it is presented as a politics of life, since it is implied as a singular modulation of existence. The article concludes with a scriptural threshold composed of five theses that attempt to expand and project the philosophical-political returns of the analysis developed towards a research program. (shrink)

En collaboration avec Marie-France Bazzo, Maka Kotto et plusieurs autres, voici un ouvrage qui traite de la liberté d’expression (que ce soit à propos du mot en n, ou de la pièce de théâtre SLAV), des débats sur le genre, ainsi que d’autres questions sociales fortement médiatisées qui ont provoqué un certain malaise dans la société.

Les archives, bien que fondamentales dans la pratique des historiens, tiennent une faible place dans leur réflexion épistémologique, alors que la notion, employée le plus souvent au singulier, a été davantage analysée par certains philosophes, dont en dernier lieu Paul Ricoeur. Il s'agira donc de comprendre l'usage que ce dernier fait du concept d'archive dans son dernier ouvrage, La Mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli, puis de montrer sa filiation avec les travaux de Michel Foucault et de Michel de Certeau. Enfin, on voudrait (...) montrer en quoi cette« archive», liée intimement à la notion de témoignage, peut conduire à des difficultés du point de vue de l'épistémologie historique, et qu'il semble possible de lui opposer un autre usage de la notion, soucieux d'en souligner l'historicité et la matérialité face à une interprétation plus textuelle et herméneutique. (shrink)

The history of historiography, in other words the history of history, is in vogue. In the realm of Classical Antiquity (whence speaks the author of this essay), but elsewhere as well, increasing numbers of pioneers set out each day to explore this new path of history.

In the perspective of the philosophical archaeology proposed, here, the arkhé towards which archaeology regresses must not be understood in any way as an element that can be situated in chronology ; it is, rather, a force that operates in history—much in the same way in which Indoeuropean words express a system of connections among historically accessible languages, in which the child in psychoanalysis expresses an active force in the psychic life of the adult, in which the big bang, which (...) is supposed to have originated the universe, continues to send towards us its fossil radiation. But the arkhé is not a datum or a substance. It is much rather a field of bipolar historical currents within the tension of anthropogenesis and history, between point of emergence and becoming, between arch-past and present. And as such—that is to say, to the extent to which it is something that it is necessarily supposed to have factually happened, and which yet cannot be hypostatized in any chronologically identifiable event—it is solely capable of guaranteeing the intelligibility of historical phenomena, of ‘saving’ them archaeologically within a future perfect, yet not grasping its origin, but rather its history, at once finite and untotalizable. (shrink)

I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature on love from 2000 to 2016. I find that researchers make consequential assumptions concerning the production or generation of love, its temporality, its individual character, and appropriate control conditions. Next, I consider how to account for these assumptions’ being common in the literature. More generally, I’m interested in the ways in which epistemic communities construe, conceive of, and publicly represent and work with their objects of inquiry—and (...) what’s thereby assumed about them and about the world. I argue that these implicit or explicit assumptions are a distinct type of explanandum, whose distinctiveness sociology hasn’t adequately appreciated and taken advantage of. I think it should and I hope it will. (shrink)

During the Nazi regime (1933–1945), more than 300 000 psychiatric patients were killed. The well‐calculated killing of chronic mentally ‘ill’ patients was part of a huge biopolitical program of well‐established scientific, eugenic standards of the time. Among the medical personnel implicated in these assassinations were nurses, who carried out this program through their everyday practice. However, newer research raises suspicions that psychiatric patients were being assassinated before and after the Nazi regime, which, I hypothesize, implies that the motives for these (...) killings must be investigated within psychiatric practice itself. An investigation of the impact of the interplay between the notes left by nurses and those by psychiatrists illustrates the active role of the psychiatric medical record in the killing of these patients. Using theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and philosopher Giorgio Agamben and analyzing one part of a particularly rich patient file found in the Langenhorn Psychiatric Asylum in the city of Hamburg, I demonstrate the role of the record in both constructing and deconstructing patient subjectivities. De‐subjectifying patients condemned them to specific zones in the asylum within which they were reduced to their ‘bare life’‐ a precondition for their physical assassination. (shrink)

Introduction: Foucault and political philosophy -- Marx: antinormative critique -- Lenin: the invention of party governmentality -- Althusser: the failure to denormativise Marxism -- Deleuze: denormativisation as norm -- Rorty: relativising normativity -- Honneth: the poverty of critical theory -- Geuss: the paradox of realism -- Foucault: the lure of neoliberalism -- Conclusion: What now?

Wem wird geglaubt und wem nicht? Wessen Wissen wird weitergegeben und wessen nicht? Wer hat eine Stimme und wer nicht? Theorien der epistemischen Ungerechtigkeit befassen sich mit dem breiten Feld der ungerechten oder unfairen Behandlung, die mit Fragen des Wissens, Verstehens und Kommunizierens zusammenhängen, wie z.B. die Möglichkeit, vom Wissen oder von kommunikativen Praktiken ausgeschlossen zu werden oder zum Schweigen gebracht zu werden, aber auch Kontexte, in denen die Bedeutungen mancher systematisch verzerrt oder falsch gehört und falsch dargestellt werden, in (...) denen manchen misstraut wird oder es an epistemischer Handlungsfähigkeit mangelt. In diesem Buch wird eine Übersicht über die breite Debatte epistemischer Ungerechtigkeit, epistemischer Unterdrückung und epistemischer Gewalt gegeben, in dem unterschiedliche Theorien, die sich auf der Schnittstelle von Gerechtigkeitstheorie und epistemischen Fragen befinden, systematisch und kritisch diskutiert sowie theoretische Vorgänger dieser Theorien beleuchtet werden. (shrink)

La formación docente es indispensable para responder a los requerimientos de la compleja sociedad actual. De su conocimiento, iniciativa, praxis y creatividad depende el éxito o el fracaso del sujeto que aprende. Al modificar el rol del docente se transforma la actitud de los estudiantes. ¿Cómo entender la formación filosófica transdisciplinar? Este texto responde a este y otros cuestionamientos: ¿cuáles son los planteamientos pedagógicos afines a la era digital? ¿en qué medida las TIC se encuentran al servicio de una filosofía (...) educativa transdisciplinar?, ¿cómo se explica ese enfoque en la formación del docente?, ¿cuál es la función de la formación en la innovación educativa?, ¿cómo formar para la ciudadanía mundial?, ¿cuáles son las contribuciones de las nuevas ciencias para la formación educativa? El crecimiento exponencial de la ciencia y de la tecnología nos obliga a pensar en procesos formativos innovadores. En tal sentido, resulta imprescindible el estudio de estas problemáticas. (shrink)

Most European countries have adopted partial or comprehensive smoking bans in public places within a short period of time, although the underlying evidence on the risk of second-hand smoke is almost 20 years old. After giving a short overview of European smoking bans, the article aims to analyze and discuss what can explain this wave of smoking bans, not only regarding the similarities of the bans themselves, but also of the arguments proposed in favor of them. While typical explanations in (...) public policy studies fall short of explaining the momentum and similarity of smoking bans, the article discusses how the selective framing of knowledge and innocent victims can help to explain the strong impact of this particular policy proposal. (shrink)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

¿Qué entendemos hoy por “neoliberalismo”? Si bien hay varias formas de contestar tal pregunta, la respuesta más frecuente consiste en asociarlo con la aplicación de un conjunto de medidas estrictamente económicas; de hecho, se dice que los neoliberales, casi por defecto congénito, no pueden pensar la realidad más allá de los números y las recetas abstractas. Siguiendo el método arqueológico-genealógico de Michel Foucault y de algunos de sus intérpretes contemporáneos, el presente artículo buscará revisar y en lo posible ampliar aquella (...) concepción crítica. Nuestra hipótesis es que el neoliberalismo no se reduce a un mero “economicismo”, sino que contiene más bien toda una dimensión “espiritual”, todo un campo de prácticas y de discursos que se conforma como respuesta ante el excesivo racionalismo de las sociedades modernas. La cuestión consiste en transformar a los hombres desde dentro, hasta el punto de tornarlos más aptos para acceder a un conjunto de valores y asimilar ciertas formas de comportamiento. Según sostiene este artículo, es en los escritos de Wilhelm Röpke, un economista y sociólogo alemán de mediados del siglo XX, donde mejor se aprecia la dimensión espiritual del neoliberalismo. Röpke proponía un “diagnóstico” y una “terapéutica”. El primero sostiene que los hombres padecen una enfermedad espiritual denominada como “masificación” y “proletarización”, mientras que la terapéutica procura hacer de esos hombres unos emprendedores de sí mismos. Tal sería el modo de superar los efectos adversos del capitalismo: transformando a los hombres masificados y proletarizados en sujetos completamente comprometidos con su profesión. No se trata sencillamente de recuperar un pensamiento casi olvidado por la historia, sino de explorar los límites de nuestro presente, especialmente de nuestras formas de subjetividad. Aunque muchas de las críticas contemporáneas no hayan reparado aún en ello, hay que preguntarse hasta qué punto los diagnósticos y las terapéuticas propuestas por neoliberales como Röpke persisten en la actualidad. Aquí no se darán respuestas tajantes y definitivas, pero sí algunos indicios al respecto. (shrink)

De moderne filosofie lijdt aan muziekvergetelheid. Opvallend is echter dat filosofen, wanneer ze toch aandacht schenken aan muziek, hun aandacht bij voorkeur op één bepaald genre richten, namelijk de opera. Filosofen zoals Søren Kierkegaard en Friedrich Nietzsche lieten hun gedachten over Don Giovanni, Parsifal en Carmen gaan, terwijl omgekeerd de filosofie van Arthur Schopenhauer de opera heeft beïnvloed via Wagner. Diens werk lijkt zich op het snijpunt van het grensverkeer tussen moderne filosofie en moderne muziek te bevinden. Het was zijn (...) ambitie de menselijke existentie en de menselijke geschiedenis in één panoramisch oeuvre te vatten, vanaf het primordiale begin tot en met de dramatische finale die ophanden leek: een catastrofale apotheose die een geheel nieuwe toekomst mogelijk zou maken. Dat is althans de verhaallijn van zijn meesterwerk Der Ring des Nibelungen. Aan het slot van Götterdämmerung lijkt zich een algehele verwoesting te hebben voltrokken: ‘Everything is destroyed and there is an enigmatic kind of hovering over the scene of destruction’ (Badiou 2010, p. 106), een ambivalente stemming van hoop en destructie zette Wagner op muziek. Voor Wagner is dan ook een hoofdrol in deze studie weggelegd: voor zijn muziektheoretische geschriften (waarin hij over een ‘muziek van de toekomst’ filosofeerde), maar meer nog voor de muzikale totaalkunstwerken die hij daadwerkelijk componeerde. (shrink)

Selectionist evolutionary theory has often been faulted for not making novel predictions that are surprising, risky, and correct. I argue that it in fact exhibits the theoretical virtue of predictive capacity in addition to two other virtues: explanatory unification and model fitting. Two case studies show the predictive capacity of selectionist evolutionary theory: parallel evolutionary change in E. coli, and the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.

Foucault’s critique of early modern political theory aimed at displacing sovereignty as the principle of intelligibility of power. In the genealogical literature since Foucault, sovereignty has become a residual category lacking analytic specificity, largely displaced by governance, in turn equated with politics. We argue that Foucault and the Foucauldians have not understood that the flourishing of governance has presupposed a symbolic regime with a division of knowledge-power-law characteristic of the democratic sovereign. The conflation of governance with politics, together with the (...) sliding of sovereignty under governance, has left Foucauldians unable to diagnose the dangers present in varying possible sovereignty-governance configurations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Foucault's later works, experience and embodiment become important for explaining the normative constitution of the subject: for norms to be effective, discourses are insufficient – they must be experienced and embodied. Practices of “discipline” inscribe power constellations and discourses into subjective experience and bodies. In his lectures on the Hermeneutics of the Subject, he turns this “violent” form of normative embodiment into an ethical perspective by referring to the Stoic tradition. Even though Foucault never developed a notion of experience (...) and embodiment himself, his ideas can be re-read and complemented from a phenomenological perspective.The article tries to investigate the role of bodily experience and practice in Foucault's Genealogy and to bring it into dialogue with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty's conceptions of the lived body. It will attempt to show that concepts like sedimentation and habituality can help to explain how cultural norms not only influence the way we think abou.. (shrink)

Alors que l’épistémologie détermine les conditions de vérité du savoir, le travail « archéologique » de Foucault consiste à mettre au jour les systèmes implicites qui en dessinent la possibilité. Toutefois, ce n’est pas parce que l’individu est pris dans une épistémè contraignante qu’il est privé de liberté. Prônant l’interdépendance du théorique et du pratique, Foucault postule qu’il existe des processus de subjectivation qui, tout en faisant de l’individu un « sujet éthique », lui permettent en outre de dépasser l’assujettissement (...) qui pourtant le conditionne. Échappant à l’empire de la structure et récusant l’illusion du sujet, le concept d’ épistémè est compatible avec l’exigence d’une liberté lucide. (shrink)

Faced with the confused meanings of the concept of generation, this article defends the need to move from Karl Mannheim’s excessive emphasis on political and intellectual self-awareness as a pre-condition for generation formation to an enlarged social and cultural definition of generations. By developing the concept of social generations, we argue that rather than concrete groups, generations are better conceived as discourses with which individuals relate in order to build self-identification. Individuals living in similar historical contexts may share mental and (...) practical dispositions, but must always position themselves in face of the narratives that have come to be dominant to describe a given generational location. Such a contention implies redressing Mannheim’s culturalist view through a reformulation of his hierarchical view of the scheme of generations. By replacing generation-units by dominant ideas, we contend that generations are better conceived as discursive formations in the Foucauldian sense. (shrink)

Reading the Communist Manifesto against the contemporary background of massive unemployment, the author argues that Marx's theory of work is no longer adequate to tackle the problem of `workers without work' and suggests that it has to be reformulated in such a way that its normative intuitions and its critical impulses can be maintained. In the first part, he presents a philosophical critique of Marxism that is inspired by Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt. In the second part, he presents a (...) sociological critique of Marxism and argues that the theory of the alienation of work implies a justification of work and the work society. Finally, in the last part, the author presents an ideological critique of Marxism that is inspired by Marcel Mauss' sociology of the gift. Criticising the contractualist assumptions of workfare solutions, he proposes a package solution for a radical decommodification of the labour market by means of a disjunction of income and work. (shrink)

Both Ricoeur and Foucault, apparently independently of each other, dedicated much effort to provide an account of truth that goes far beyond the truth of sentences, propositions, or judgments. While well aware of the speech act theory and pragmatics, they want to go beyond a formalism of rules of speech or arguments and integrate the attitude of the one who speaks in the very notion of truth. They see truth not merely as a property of statements, but as an existential (...) process in such a way that the truth of statements is linked to the historically situated speaker. Truth as a property of statements is related to truth as an event. However, both reject any form of historicism or relativism. I examine Ricoeur's notion of attestation and Foucault's notion of parrhesia, showing how both notions represent a kind of “poetics of truth”, which combines the existential position of the speaker and the historical circumstances of utterance. I show the extent to which both poetics of truth are political and ethical and how successful each poetics is: Ricoeur believes that he can maintain a claim to universality whereas Foucault abandons such a claim and instead subscribes to a radical singularity of the event of speech in a mode of truth that is, as he says, “polemic”. (shrink)

Reading the Communist Manifesto against the contemporary background of massive unemployment, the author argues that Marx's theory of work is no longer adequate to tackle the problem of `workers without work' and suggests that it has to be reformulated in such a way that its normative intuitions and its critical impulses can be maintained. In the first part, he presents a philosophical critique of Marxism that is inspired by Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt. In the second part, he presents a (...) sociological critique of Marxism and argues that the theory of the alienation of work implies a justification of work and the work society. Finally, in the last part, the author presents an ideological critique of Marxism that is inspired by Marcel Mauss' sociology of the gift. Criticising the contractualist assumptions of workfare solutions, he proposes a package solution for a radical decommodification of the labour market by means of a disjunction of income and work. (shrink)

Una filosofía crítica de la historia se enfrenta a las injusticias del pasado y, por tanto, pone en duda la legitimidad toda institución que esté en deuda con ellas. De ahí que esa filosofía de la memoria sea, por lo mismo, un pensamiento utópico abierto a nuevas posibilidades de futuro de acuerdo con las esperanzas fracasadas del pasado. En el pasado y en el presente hay un común e indeleble anhelo de humanidad futura.

This paper defends Michel Foucault’s notion of archaeology of knowledge against the influential and putatively devastating criticism by Dreyfus and Rabinow that Foucault’s archaeological project is based on an incoherent conception of the rules of the discursive practices it purports to study. I argue first that Foucault’s considered view of these rules as simultaneously implicit and historically efficacious corresponds to a general requirement for the normative structure of a discursive practice. Then I argue that Foucault is entitled to that view (...) despite the charges to the contrary by Dreyfus and Rabinow. I also explain in detail how the argument by Dreyfus and Rabinow arises from a misunderstanding of Foucault’s archaeological project as transcendental inquiry, while archaeology of knowledge is, in fact, a diagnostic project. The result is a novel understanding of the notion of archaeology of knowledge that enables a reassessment of Foucault’s philosophical work in connection with current debates regarding the relationship between reflection and practice in the structure of thought. (shrink)