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?

Atheists are rarely associated with holiness, yet they can have deeply spiritual experiences. Once such experience of the author exemplified ‘the holy’ as defined by Otto. However, the subjectivism of Otto’s Kantianism undermines Otto’s otherwise fruitful approach. While the work of Hegel overcomes this, it is too rationalistic to account for mortal life. Seeking to avoid these shortcomings, this paper places ‘holiness’ within a self-differentiating ontological unity, the Heideggerian ‘fourfold’. This unity can only be experienced by confronting groundless finite mortality, (...) and the resulting existential disposition is characterized as ‘reverence’. Reverence is gratitude for mortal existence, and existence itself. Moreover, it is as much political as it is ontological, atheistic as it is theistic. (shrink)

This article illustrates one way in which philosophical inquiry and empirical research can be combined to illuminate processes like learning and social identification. Over the past 20 years, my empirical work in classrooms and communities has drawn on philosophical discussions about how knowledge is interconnected with social relationships and how we should conceptualize multiple levels of explanation. Both empirical research and philosophy can be done in various ways, and I offer no comprehensive account of how the two relate. I focus (...) instead on one central goal of my work—to clear away assumptions that commonly limit our view of human activity and to offer alternative conceptualizations that open new pathways for thought and action. In pursuing this goal I have drawn on philosophical accounts of knowledge, identity and scientific explanation, as well as on philosophical methods for interrogating assumptions. My empirical analyses also provide philosophers useful cases to think with. Empirical research enriched by philosophical insights and methods can combine tools from both traditions to clear away unproductive assumptions and advance our understandings of the human world. (shrink)

Taking seriously Linda Martín Alcoff's suggestion that we reevaluate the extent to which poststructuralist articulations of the subject are truly socially constituted, as well as the centrality of Latina identity to her own account of such constitution, I argue that the discussion Alcoff and other Latina feminists offer of the experience of being Latina in North America is illustrative of the extent to which the relational and globally situated constitution of subjects needs further development in many social-constructionist accounts of selfhood. (...) I argue, however—contra Alcoff—that Michel Foucault's mode of investigating subjectivation, particularly as it is articulated in his later work, has room for just such an account, especially when it is supplemented by postcolonial theory. With this end in mind, I take as a case study the public discourse surrounding Sonia Sotomayor prior to her confirmation as the first Latina woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, suggesting that an analysis of this discourse (including its position within and contribution to wider discourses of ethnicity, race, gender, and class) shows why the accounts of relational subject-constitution offered by both Foucault and Alcoff are indispensable. (shrink)

A crucial element of sovereignty politics concerns the role that juridical techniques play in recursively creating images of the sovereign. This paper aims to render that dimension explicit by focusing on examples of crime-focused law and colonial rule at the Cape of Good Hope circa 1795. It attempts to show how this law helped to define a colonial sovereign via such idioms as proclamations, inquisitorial criminal procedures, and case narratives framing the atrocity and appropriate punishment for crimes. Referring to primary (...) texts of the time, the paper explores how procedures and narratives of Cape law were also deeply involved in fashioning specific images of the sovereign in whose name it claimed to operate. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relation of religious language and public debate within the context of postsecularism and defend a falsificationist model. I argue that the postsecular public sphere...

Michel Foucault is well-known as a contemporary representative of counter-Enlightenment. His analyses bring to light finely a self-deception committed by social and political institutions inherited from Enlightenment which, in spite of their progressive, more humane self-image, facilitate domination and subjugation more than before. Based on some hints from Rorty, Habermas and Walzer, I would show that Foucault’s analyses presuppose some crypto-normativity, despite his persistent refusal of using such normative concepts as truth, emancipation, reform and progress. In his work, the concept (...) of ‘power’ is constantly fluctuating between two meanings: neutral, descriptive on the one hand, and pejorative, normative on the other hand. Foucault’s fear of being bounded to a specific position subjected unconsciously to a ubiquitous power, related to first meaning, prevents him from making an invidious distinction between emancipatory and authoritative aspects of social and political disciplinary institutions. I would argue that this ambiguity of power concept makes him biased towards emancipatory contribution of Enlightenment.‏. (shrink)

At once historical and philosophical, Michel Foucault used his genealogical method to expose the contingent conditions constituting the institutions, sciences and practices of the present. His analyses of the asylum, clinic, prison and sexuality revealed the historical, political and epistemological forces that make up certain types of subjects, sciences and sites of control. Although noting the originality of his work, a number of early critics questioned the normative framework of Foucault's method. Nancy Fraser argued that Foucault's genealogical method was ‘normatively (...) confused’ as it implied political critique yet claimed to be value-neutral. Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor also questioned the normative basis of Foucault's appeals to critique, arguing it was self-refuting as Foucault left no room for the subject to escape power. Although a debate among these scholars was planned for the mid-1980s, Foucault's death in 1984 meant this could not occur. A number of edited volumes sought to fabricate a debate, with defenders of Foucault excavating his published monographs to construct responses to his critics. While the monographs remain the central texts of Foucault's oeuvre, over the past decade his Collège de France lectures have been published and translated into English. This article offers a schematic survey of the influence of the Collège de France lectures in recasting different points in the debates over normativity, critique and resistance. (shrink)

Following Foucault, ‘critique’ could be regarded as being the art not to be governed in this way or as a project of desubjectivation. In this paper it is shown how such a project could be described as an e‐ducative practice. It explores this idea through an example which Foucault himself gave of such a critical practice: the writing of ‘experience books’. Thus it appears that such an e‐ducative practice is a ‘dangerous’, public and uncomfortable practice that is not in need (...) of pastoral care but requires generosity, presence and attention. As such it demands a pedagogy of experience which is to be invented in order to ‘make’ oneself into a question, to transgress the limits of a governmental regime. (shrink)

Since early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected our world in multiple ways. What we know and how we know it has shifted on a global scale. How we move throughout the world has been restricted and locked down. How we see one another has changed the cultural narrative in numerous countries throughout the world. As we seek to rid ourselves of the novel coronavirus infecting our everyday, three significant paradigm shifts have mutated our realities and imaginaries in which we (...) dwell. With millions dead or sickened by the evolving Covid-19 virus, we are a different world now than we were. As guest editors for this Special Issue, Visible Mutations of the Information Imaginary: Knowledge, Movement, and Cultural Discourse in the Wake of Covid-19, we pay tribute to the millions affected by these changes by offering this collection of scholarship as a critical path forward. We examine three primary areas in which life, law, and legality have mutated with results that demand our immediate attention. The first section of contributing articles, Knowledge, engages with the dissemination of knowledge and information as either fact or fiction in lexicons and media outlets throughout the world. The second section, Movement, focuses on aspects of motion and its restriction in terms of bodies, legislation, access, and the threat of viral contamination across borders and within communities. The third section, Cultural Discourse, considers the visibility of viral spread ranging from masks that cover the face to the separation of bodies through social distancing to the politicization of religion and vaccination. What once were normative cultural positionalities of space and politics have been volatized by institutionalized risk reduction and the confrontation of the unknown in the tenuous unforeseeable realm we now globally inhabit: L'idée se fait jour qu’il s’agit au moins autant d’une syndémie que d’une pandémie. Alors que la pandémie est une épidémie qui touche une partie importante de la population mondiale, une syndémie caractérise un entrelacement de maladie, de facteurs biologiques et environnementaux qui, par leur synergie, aggravent les conséquences de ces maladies sur la population. Ost F. We hope that this Special Issue helps to contribute as a vital source of critical engagement with the effects of the new pandemic lexicon and re-emerging, yet irrevocably mutated public and private spaces and relationships to each another. (shrink)

The present essay discusses a notorious rhetoric means familiar to all scholars in the social sciences and humanities including philosophy: name-dropping. Defined as the excessive over-use of authoritative names, I argue that it is a pernicious practice leading to collective disorientation in spoken discourse. First, I discuss name-dropping in terms of informal logic as an ad verecundiam-type fallacy. Insofar this perspective proves to lack contextual sensitivity, name-dropping is portrayed in Goffman’s terms as a more general social practice. By narrowing down (...) the focus to social science and the humanities, the essay emphasizes its function of discursive legitimation. This view, I argue, is incomplete because it overlooks the basic mechanism beneath. Names not only provide legitimation of but also orientation in discourse. Consequently, two tipping points—detour and disorientation—are proposed as benchmarks for it to become problematic. The conclusion re-widens the argument’s scope by suggesting questions for future inquiries. (shrink)

The argument in this article is that knowledge is an important phenomenon to understand in order to discuss development and innovation in modern workplaces. Predominant theories on knowledge in organisation and innovation literature, we argue, are based on a dualist concept of knowledge. The arguments found in these theories argue for one type of knowledge in contrast to another. The most prevailing dualism is that between local and universal knowledge. We believe that arguing along this line does not bring us (...) further in order to understand what knowledge is and what it does. We argue that there are contradictory arguments in the dualist conception of knowledge. We discuss how to move beyond this. We present a framework for discussing what knowledge is. We discuss what type of meta perspective will allow us to compare different knowledge kinds. We argue that insight into this has implications for understanding knowledge generation and innovation. (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)

This paper addresses the teaching of citizenship in schools and focuses on the monarchy as an example of one issue often ignored within curriculum discourse. We argue that to conflate subjecthood and citizenship in unacknowledged ways may serve to perpetuate the status quo and is potentially unhelpful to the development of young people's critical thinking.

Motivated by discourses that link early child development and health, nurses engage in seemingly benign surveillance of children. These practices are based on knowledge claims and technologies of developmental science, which remain anchored in assumptions of the child body as an incomplete form with a universal developmental trajectory and inherent potentiality. This paper engages in a critical discursive analysis, drawing on Donna Haraway's conceptualizations of technoscience and figuration. Using a contemporary developmental screening tool from nursing practice, this analysis traces the (...) effects of this tool through production, transformation, distribution, and consumption. It reveals how the techniques of imaging, abstraction, and measurement collide to fix the open, transformative child body in a figuration of the developing child. This analysis also demonstrates how technobiopower infuses nurses' understandings of children and structures developmentally appropriate expectations for children, parents, and nurses. Furthermore, it describes how practices that claim to facilitate healthy child development may inversely deprive children of agency and foster the production of normal or ideal children. An alternative ontological perspective is offered as a challenge to the individualism of developmental models and other dominant ideologies of development, as well as practices associated with these ideologies. In summary, this analysis argues that nurses must pay closer attention to how technobiopower infuses practices that monitor and promote child development. Fostering a critical understanding of the harmful implications of these practices is warranted and offers the space to conceive of human development in alternate and exciting ways. (shrink)

This essay reviews three books that engage the writings of Michel Foucault. It examines to what extent and in what ways Foucault has been made to ‘work’ in educational practice and research. It suggests that Foucault has been narrowly appropriated in a way that is, ultimately, ironic—namely, as either liberating us from or entrapping us within our culture's structures and practices. This essay concludes by suggesting that Foucault's work was an attempt to avoid and subvert exactly such binaries.

This article reviews the development of feminist studies during the latter quarter of the twentieth century, identifying initial themes in feminist theory and highlighting three major themes framing feminist scholarship today: the relationship between structure and agency; the intersection of race, class, and gender; and emerging studies of the political economy of sexuality. The article emphasizes the significance of understanding structured inequality, including new studies of sexuality and their relationship to race/class/gender stratification.

This article outlines a new approach to the law of political economy as a form of transformative law, a new approach that combines a focus on the function of law with a concept of law encapsulating the triangular dialectics between the form-giving prestation of law, the material substance the law is oriented against, and the transcendence of legal forms—that is, the rendering of compatibility between forms. Transformative law thereby serves as an alternative to both law and economics and recently emerging (...) culturalist and neo-Marxist approaches. The timing of this publication is not coincidental. The era of neoliberalism—that is, of structural liberalism, which started in the 1970s and experienced its breakthrough in the 1980s and 1990s after the collapse of structural Marxism—is ending. This makes the question of what will succeed the neoliberal episteme pertinent. (shrink)