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)

Critical thinking, considered as a version of informallogic, must consider emotions and personal attitudesin assessing assertions and conclusions in anyanalysis of discourse. It must therefore presupposesome notion of the self. Critical theory may be seenas providing a substantive and non-neutral positionfor the exercise of critical thinking. It thereforemust presuppose some notion of the self. This paperargues for a Foucauldean position on the self toextend critical theory and provide a particularposition on the self for critical thinking. Thisposition on the self is (...) developed from moretraditional accounts of the self from Descartes toSchopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Since the Enlightenment, critique has played an overarching role in how Western society understands itself and its basic institutions. However, opinions differ widely concerning the understanding and evaluation of critique. To understand such differences and clarify a viable understanding of critique, the article turns to Kant’s critical philosophy, inaugurating the “age of criticism”. While generalizing and making critique unavoidable, Kant coins an unambiguously positive understanding of critique as an affirmative, immanent activity. Not only does this positive conception prevail in the (...) critique of pure and practical reason and the critique of judgment; these modalities of critique set the agenda for three major strands of critique in contemporary thought, culminating in among others Husserl, Popper, Habermas, Honneth, and Foucault. Critique affirms and challenges cognition and its rationality, formulates ethical ideals that regulate social interaction, and further articulates normative guidelines underway in the ongoing experimentations of a post-natural history of human nature. In contradistinction to esoteric Platonic theory, philosophy at the threshold of modernity becomes closely linked to an outward-looking critique that examines and pictures what human forms of life are in the process of making of themselves and challenges them, by reflecting upon what they can and what they should make of themselves. As a very widely diffused practice, however, critique may also become a self-affirming overarching end in itself. (shrink)

On several occasions Michel Foucault advocated a methodological turn towards what he called a ‘happy positivism’. Foucault’s emphasis on the surface does not deny the importance of structures of hiding, but understands it as a game in which the structures of hiding are viewed as contingently given. In this paper, I will analyse the conflict between the hacker movement and the field of corporate interests. I argue that the introduction of graphical user interfaces and the maintaining of copyright interests are (...) the contingent background of the ongoing conflict. By bracketing the analyses of hidden intentional structures, the happy positivist is thus able to facilitate deeper understandings of the prevailing structures of hiding. (shrink)

In the final volume of his Homo Sacer series, The use of bodies, Agamben claims that for Foucault ethics never escapes the horizon of governmentality and therefore his conception of ethics is ‘strategic.’ In light of this criticism, motivated by Agamben’s Pauline conception of ‘use,’ we reassess the status and function of ethics in Foucault’s late lectures. We investigate how Foucault’s approach to ethics develops from his treatment of liberal governmentality and also how its methodological foundation is developed in an (...) interpretation of truth-telling in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Our interpretation emphasizes the ambiguous status of ethics in Foucault’s late work: on the one hand, Agamben is right that Foucault assigns an irreducible strategic function to ethics thereby connecting it intrinsically to governmentality. On the other hand, Agamben overlooks how Foucault’s interpretation of Sophocles implies a conception of governmentality which emphasizes how ethical practices cannot be captured solely in strategic terms. Foucault’s ‘anarcheological’ approach thus articulates a dimension of ethics that remains, using Agamben’s own terms, ‘ungovernable’ and therefore also genuinely creative. Even so, Foucault’s approach to ethics remains in Agamben’s perspective on the deepest level faced with an antinomy that Agamben seeks to mediate with his Pauline conception of ‘inoperativity.’. (shrink)

In the 1881 note 11 [156], Nietzsche mentions the “infinitely small moment” as “the highest reality and truth” for the individual who tries to contrast the “uniformity of sensations” and to affirm his “idiosyncratic taste”. The fragment explores some ideas on the herd instinct that will be developed in "The Gay Science"; observations on the cultural and anthropological value of science; critical refections on metaphysical realism. Most important, these considerations focus on the relationship between man and society, which is the (...) plane of the standardized “normal taste” selected throughout the evolution of mankind. The paper explores these issues and especially deals with the dialectic relationship between the individual and the community viewpoint that Nietzsche seems to take into account. (shrink)

En este artículo se plantean los problemas de la unidad y de la especificidad de la filosofía y de su facultad, en el marco de la universidad y en relación con la sociedad. Todo ello al hilo del análisis de los aspectos más destacados de aquella noción que Michel Foucault reservó para indicar la característica diferencial de la actividad del pensamiento: la noción de “problématisation”. En el marco de nuestras consideraciones presentaremos la facultad de filosofía como la facultad de una (...) universidad libre y pública, como una facultad no entregada a “conocer”, “crear” o “actuar”, sino a un pensar -cuya especificidad es problematizar- capaz de vertebrar la imprescindible función crítica que la universidad ha de tener en nuestra sociedad, bajo una autonomía, libre de las demandas sociales, que, por lo mismo, pueda proponer modelos de orientación para una mayor libertad e igual social. (shrink)

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)

Luego de estudiar las relaciones de poder en la modernidad, Michel Foucault realizó una conceptualización de la crítica, a la que describió como una actitud de inservidumbre que denuncia al poder por sus efectos de verdad y a la verdad, por sus efectos de poder. Años más tarde, presentó la modernidad como una actitud que busca encontrar los límites que nos han formado como sujetos, para luego atravesarlos. Finalmente, caracterizó el cuidado de sí como una actitud, como una práctica de (...) libertad. En este artículo rastreo las distancias y cercanías entre la actitud crítica, la moderna y la que cuida de sí, para contrastarlas con una actitud que difícilmente puede caracterizarse como una práctica de libertad: el empresario de sí. Esta comparación permite interrogar el potencial de la crítica, la modernidad y el cuidado de sí como prácticas de resistencia o de libertad. (shrink)

This work aims to show the relevance of the question of law in Michel Foucault’s political philosophy. Arguing against the so-called ‘anti-juridicism’ of the author, we seek to determine the place that juridical forms occupy in his analysis of power based on the relationship between the history of law and the history of truth. To this end, we discuss the distinction proposed by François Ewald between the juridical and legal and we raise the need to complement the perspectives of Foucault's (...) books with some texts edited posthumously, particularly his courses at the Collège de France. Este trabajo se ocupa de mostrar la relevancia de la cuestión del derecho en la filosofía política de Michel Foucault. Argumentando contra el denominado “antijuridicismo” del autor, busca determinar el lugar que ocupan las formas jurídicas en su analítica del poder a partir de la relación entre la historia del derecho y la historia de la verdad. A tal fin, discute la distinción propuesta por François Ewald entre lo jurídico y lo legal y plantea la necesidad de complementar las perspectivas de los libros de Foucault con los textos editados póstumamente, en particular sus cursos en el Collège de France. (shrink)

Today, capitalism functions as a very complex tool of colonisation capturing our desires, dreams, and putting life itself at risk. Its effects lead us all to times of extreme anxiety increasing the number of people with mental health problems. This paper is concerned with the question of ‘critique’ within this context. How can critical legal scholarship engage with a theoretical mode that allows us to confront the politics of law with today’s capitalism? This analysis shows that contemporary capitalism, which operates (...) as an immanent desiring-machine, is investing in our unconscious. In this sense, we aim to rethink the idea of ‘critique’ as an opportunity to make it creative and effective. As such, this paper argues that the Deleuzian concept Critical and Clinical is particularly useful, as it opens new roots for the critical movement. Taking the literary strategy of Masochism and the experience of the Institutional Psychotherapy movement in France, the clinical–critical practice contributes to push and expand critical scholarship into new terrains of thought and practice. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como objetivo mostrar que la obra de Judith Butler ofrece un conjunto de estrategias de lectura que no se reducen a principios o leyes. Por el contrario, son contingentes sin ser azarosas o arbitrarias. Los resultados de esta estrategia, que consideramos metodológica, se conforman gracias a una práctica de lectura que constituye un ejercicio crítico constante. Esta práctica adopta diversas estrategias que se condensan a partir de los aportes de diversos filósofos. Butler convierte entonces esa estrategia de (...) lectura en un acto político, enraizado en una ética que le permite hacer visibles a quienes están en situación de máxima vulnerabilidad, insinuando, al mismo tiempo, caminos para transformar la sociedad y ampliar los espacios de libertad. (shrink)

O objetivo principal deste artigo é desenvolver uma reflexão a respeito das relações entre a arqueogenealogia das relações entre verdade, poder e discurso, tal como a pratica Michel Foucault, por um lado, e a teoria crítica da sociedade, da Escola de Frankfurt, por outro lado. Essa aproximação é feita por meio de uma reconstrução da crítica de Jürgen Habermas a Michel Foucault, no livro O Discurso Filosófico da Modernidade. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a reflection on (...) the relations between Michel Foucault's archaeo-genealogy of the relationships between truth, power and discourse, and the critical theory of society of the Frankfurt School. The discussion is taken up in the context of Habermas' critique of Foucault in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende identificar los retos a los que se enfrenta la educación artísti- ca en la formación inicial del profesorado y enumerar los aspectos que deben guiar las nuevas prácticas pedagógicas orientadas a la sostenibilidad. Se ha optado por una investigación cualitativa basada en un estudio de casos múltiples, mediante una entrevista a profesores de enseñanza superior en Portugal y España. Las con- clusiones apuntan a la necesidad de una refundación de la educación artística a la luz de los (...) retos de la sociedad, que haga a los alumnos partícipes de la construcción de una ciudadanía activa. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de reconstruire la représentation de la découverte de l'Amérique, dans la période qui va de 1492 à la parution de Kosmos par Alexander von Humboldt en 1855. Il s'agit de démontrer que ce que nous appelons la« découverte » de l'Amérique était perçu non seulement comme l'abordage d'un lieu jamais vu, mais surtout comme le premier repérage d'un lieu qui offrait un nouveau défi à la connaissance. Ce premier repérage allait transformer deux perspectives: le rapport à (...) l 'Antiquité et la vision européenne de l'espace et du temps. Après la découverte de l'Amérique, l'histoire de l'humanité devint une série d'inventions connectées au mouvement des êtres humains. À mesure que l'espace connu s'étendait, l'avenir se faisait de plus en plus imprévisible. (shrink)

While all human agency unfolds with a certain degree of improvisation, there are specific cultural practices in which improvisation plays an even more relevant role. Argentine tango is one of them. If tango is the chosen field of reference, I do not attempt to sing the praises of the form, but rather to establish a set of categories which enable to analytically frame improvisation. My contribution, as Wittgentstein would say, has a “grammatical” design to it, proposing signposts and concepts to (...) clarify the significance of the term “improvisation”. (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)

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)

The article offers a brief history of the Critical Legal Conference and the emergence of general jurisprudence as a main theoretical school in legal scholarship. It charts the aesthetic, ethical and the current political phase of the school. In the current situation of economic and political crisis, the intellectual and the critic is called to abandon the facile position of neutrality and assume the responsibility of resistance and radical change.

Since the Enlightenment critique has played an overarching role in how western society understands itself and its basic institutions. However, opinions differ widely concerning the understanding and evaluation of critique. To understand such differences and clarify a viable understanding of critique, the article turns to Kant’s critical philosophy, inaugurating the “age of criticism”. While generalizing and making critique unavoidable, Kant coins an unambiguously positive understanding of critique as an affirmative, immanent activity. Not only does this positive conception prevail in the (...) critique of pure and practical reason and the critique of judgment; these modalities of critique set the agenda for three major strands of critique in contemporary thought, culminating in among others Husserl, Popper Habermas, Honneth, and Foucault. Critique affirms and challenges cognition and its rationality, formulates ethical ideals that regulate social interaction, and further articulates normative guidelines underway in the on-going experimentations of a post-natural history of human nature. In contradistinction to esoteric Platonic theory, philosophy at the threshold of modernity becomes closely linked to an outward-looking critique that examines and pictures what human forms of life are in the process of making of themselves and challenges them, by reflecting upon what they can and what they should make of themselves. As a very widely diffused practice, however, critique may also become a self-affirming overarching end in itself. (shrink)

Neste texto pretendo analiticamente tomar o conceito foucaultiano de biopolítica no sentido de escancarar o movimento que ora inclui ora exclui certas formas de vida no contexto da pandemia da COVID-19. A questão é saber que formas de vida são levadas em consideração quando os desafios a que são confrontados gestores da ordem governamental conduzem medidas pautadas por uma lógica econômica neoliberal. Devo trabalhar metodologicamente sobre atos enunciativos dispersos proferidos em diferentes instâncias de saber. De partida, adoto o pressuposto de (...) que vozes de saber – política, estatística, biomédica --, nem sempre coincidem no modo de fazer dizer e significar o fenômeno da pandemia. O dispositivo analítico, portanto, deve alinhar os dizeres sobre a pandemia do novo coronavírus à maneira de compreendê-los. Quero mostrar a atualidade do conceito de biopolítica como operador da análise de um certo jogo de relações de poder historicamente situado no presente de uma pandemia em curso. (shrink)

Este trabajo argumenta que la noción de racionalidad gubernamental articulada por Michel Foucault pudo haber sido influenciada por la obra de la Escuela de Fráncfort, particularmente por Marcuse, en torno a la relación entre poder y racionalidad. La argumentación se construye sobre la base de un análisis genealógico del concepto de racionalidad en el contexto del capitalismo y concluye con una reflexión acerca de las contribuciones metodológicas al enfoque de la gubernamentalidad que pueden explorarse a partir de la relación intelectual (...) entre Foucault y la Teorı́a Crı́tica. (shrink)

Por ocasião dos quarenta anos da publicação do primeiro volume da História da sexualidade – A vontade de saber, este trabalho tem por objetivo colocar em destaque seu caráter profundamente inovador, dando especial atenção a dois momentos do percurso que Foucault realiza no livro: a definição de poder como “multiplicidade de relações de forças” imanentes ao domínio político e o conceito de biopolítica. Esses dois pontos têm como pano de fundo comum a crítica ao discurso jurídico-político e, além disso, articulam (...) uma concepção da política moderna extremamente original. (shrink)

This article deals with Michel Foucault’s 1978 and 1979 courses on liberalism and neoliberalism. It aspires to elucidate the historical circumstances, the conception of liberalism as critical political rationality and its projections in Foucault’s subsequent research. Along the same lines, the article also makes some critical considerations about the reception of Foucault’s ideas about liberal and neoliberal thought.

A lo largo del presente artículo se pretende dar cuenta de la densidad epistemo-ontológico-política que atraviesa la problematización de los saberes elaborada por Michel Foucault en el contexto de sus trabajos sobre biopolítica. En ese sentido, no es la biopolítica en cuanto tal lo que constituye el objeto de nuestra indagación, sino que más bien es a través del abordaje foucaulteano de la misma que buscaremos desbrozar la mencionada densidad de los saberes. The aim of this work is to analyse (...) the epistemo-ontological-political density that permeates the Foucauldean problematisation of knowledge made in his researches about biopolitics. Because of that, bipolitics doesn´t constitute the core of our paper. However, we will analyse the Foucauldean reading of knowledge through his works about this topic. (shrink)

Schmitt’s theologisation of sovereignty has been subjected, 50 years later, to a ‘quarter turn’ by Foucault’s move from issues of domination to issues of government. After a further 30 years, radicalising Foucault, Agamben’s archaeology of economy adds another ‘quarter turn’: the structure that emerges once the old European conjugality of facticity and validity, of praxis and being, emptied of all bonds, links, and loops, gives way to the bare opposition ‘bipolarity’. The new constellation provides the old legal-theoretical problem of rules (...) unsuspended from a ruler who would authorise them, with a new, unexpected, political content and with a change of epistemic paradigm. (shrink)

El presente estudio monográfico (que se divide en dos artículos que serán publicados consecutivamente en esta revista) está dedicado a estudiar la manera en que Gilles Deleuze abordó el problema psico-político de la dominación y de la violencia psico-sexo-política masculina. Para ello, será necesario partir de la pregunta que interroga acerca de la relación genética que el Patriarcado (en tanto que mega-red de relaciones de alianzas masculinas de sexo-poder) guarda con el Estado (en tanto que forma de organizar la sociabilidad (...) humana) y con el Capitalismo (en tanto que modo de organizar la productividad humana). Con respecto a dicha relación genética, Deleuze postulará, siguiendo al sinólogo marxista Ferenc Tökei, que ‘esclavo liberto’ (antepasado del proletario moderno) fue la personificación social masculina clave en la génesis patriarcal del Capitalismo por el Estado, siendo la explotación psico-sexual de las mujeres (prostitución) una empresa de primer orden para la comprensión de dicha génesis. Según el Esquizoanálisis, la explotación psico-sexual y libidinal es la ratio de la explotación económica y de la dominación de clase. Por eso, no podremos abordar dicha relación genética entre Patriarcado, Estado y Capital (tocante a las violencias masculinas) sin abordar, en esta «Parte I», las críticas de Deleuze/Guattari hacia Marx/Engels: esquizo-análisis ácrata (en tanto que análisis de procesos maquínicos) versus materialismo dialéctico (en tanto que análisis de procesos dialécticos). Ahora bien, ¿acaso el materialismo dialéctico resulta operativo (en la crítica y en la clínica) a la hora de comprender y de caracterizar (y de luchar contra) las violencias psico-sexuales patriarcales masculinas, como por ejemplo, la prostitución? ¿Cómo Marx, Engels, Bebel y Riazánov caracterizaron (desde el materialismo dialéctico) tanto a la prostitución, como a la prostituta, y al prostituyente? ¿No acaban incurriendo en un reduccionismo economicista y cambista (en materia sexual) que torna invisibles las causas patriarcales de la dominación y las violencias masculinas, tornándose incluso su garante insospechado “por izquierda”? Este será el problema central de la «Parte II». Nuestro concepto social de ‘Salud Mental’ depende directamente del modo de caracterizar dichos problemas psico-sexo políticos. (shrink)