The topic of liberty in Foucault becomes controversial when related to the objections, predicted by the author, for the subjects to be located outside the power networks. However, Foucault also points out potential for resistance and a notion of freedom involved by historical circumstances, which suggests original normative questions. In order to analyze the tension between domination and freedom in his work, and what is normatively reflected, two main directions are noted: the idea of freedom as something inherent in power (...) relations and as the foundation of the critical exercise of knowledge. It is argued that Foucault`s estimation of dimensions of freedom generates singular implications of evaluation of social conditions based on a normative temperance. (shrink)

It has been commonplace to equate Foucault’s 1979 series of lectures at the Collège de France with the claim that for neoliberalism, unlike for classical liberalism, the market needs to be artificially constructed. The article expands this claim to its full expression, taking it beyond what otherwise would be a simple divulgation of a basic neoliberal tenet. It zeroes in on Foucault’s own insight: that neoliberal constructivism is not directed at the market as such, but, in principle, at society, arguing (...) that the value of this insight goes beyond the critique of a neoliberal present. The neoliberal rationale rather helps him to reveal a unique historical architecture, a latent approach to the social dissimilar to the one that has long predominated in the human sciences. The inversion of homo œconomicus in neoliberal theory amounted to the unearthing of a ‘social subject of interest’ within civil society. Such a subject, barely recognized by neoliberals who simply instrumentalize it for the sake of the market, demonstrates that the social is not necessarily the natural product of ethical subjects; that society may also need to be constructed. (shrink)

The global response to managing the spread of HIV has recently undergone a significant shift with the advent of ‘treatment as prevention’, a strategy which presumes that scaling-up testing and treatment for people living with HIV will produce a broader preventative benefit. Treatment as prevention includes an array of diagnostic, technological and policy developments that are creating new understandings of how HIV circulates in bodies and spaces. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, we contextualize these developments by linking them (...) to systems of governance and discursive subjectivation. The goal of this article is to problematize the growing importance of viral suppression in the management of HIV and the use of related surveillance technologies. For people living with HIV, we demonstrate how treatment-as-prevention’s emphasis on individual and collective viral load is transforming the performative dimensions of embodied risk, affect, subjectivity and sex. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the entanglement of the modern concepts of freedom, autonomy, and the modern notion of the subject and how a passion for and insistence on freedom has undermined the reconstruction of human subjectivity in Heidegger and Foucault, and how such passion has also limited the educational effort at addressing the problems brought to education by the modern notion of the subject. Drawing on Levinas, it suggests that a new understanding of freedom as heteronomy will allow us to envision (...) an open subjectivity that is essential for education. Particularly, it looks at Gert Biesta’s recent campaigns for “subjectification” and “the gift of teaching” to analyze the underlying contradictions caused by the entanglement of freedom and subjectivity. (shrink)

Recent success of Indian engineers, businessmen, as well as other technically qualified professionals has created an obsession with knowledge and creativity. Documents like India as a Knowledge Superpower have proliferated and we continually hear the mantra of investing in and harnessing of human capital. There are, however, several strands of human capital in India and not all of them harness knowledge and creativity. People on whom drugs are being tested represent one such human capital, which, even though it is being (...) energetically mobilized to provide India with a strategic advantage in the world market, also highlights the contradictions within India’s shifting imaginary, economy and politics. Drug trials in India, in the context of neoliberal globalization, not only challenge and complicate, but also operate within a constellation of divisions — labor/capital, west/non-west, colonial/sovereign, national/global and so on. In this article I analyze how the people on whom drug testing is being done in India are being ‘harnessed’ as human capital, which leads to politicization of ‘bare life’ through ‘inclusive-exclusion’. (shrink)

Michel Foucault has been presented as a unequivocal defender of civil society. He was particularly sensitive to diversity and marginality, aligned with local activism and bottom-up politics. This article re-assesses this view by demonstrating that despite his political militancy, Foucault never viewed civil society as an inherently progressive force. It traces Foucault’s struggle against his own enthusiasm for anti-institutional and anti-rationalist political movements. Inventing the notion of ‘transactional reality’, Foucault escaped the choice between naturalism and ideology critique, presenting civil society (...) as a ‘reality that does not exist’ but still has real effects. This new reality holds contradictory potentials. When articulated by political eschatology, civil society supports prophecies of the end of politics in a final accord where contradictions dissolve and the community absorbs the state. Neoliberal notions of civil society promise, on Foucault’s account, a more open-ended milieu of subject formation. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss nurses' ongoing difficulty in engaging with politics and address the persistent belief that political positioning is antithetical to quality nursing care. I suggest that nurses are not faced with choosing either caring for their patients or engaging with politics. I base my discussion on the assumption that such dichotomy is meaningless and that engaging with issues of relationships firmly grounds nursing in the realm of politics. I argue that the ethical merit of nursing care relies (...) instead on positioning nurses squarely at the centre of care activities, experiences, and functions. Such positioning makes possible what Foucault called ‘practices of self‐formation’, that is, micro‐level processes that balance out the ubiquitous economic, cultural, legal, and scientific technologies that steadily constitute subjects in this era of modernity. Nurses, then, become not a group that needs to be controlled and governed, but individuals who must care for their self before they may care for anyone else. (shrink)

Taking a Foucauldian framework as its point of departure, this paper discusses how transnational discourses of knowledge and learning operate in the profession of computer engineering and form a certain logic through which modes of being an engineer are regulated. Both the knowledge domain of computer engineering and its related labour market is heavily internationalised and characterised by a general focus on universalism and standardisation. Moreover, rapid shifts in technologies and institutional arrangements contribute to an embracement of more wide-ranging discourses (...) related to lifelong learning and the enterprising self. Thus, dominant discourses of knowledge and learning within this profession reflect processes of globalisation and take a transnational character. The paper discusses how the discourses in play constitute mechanisms of governmentality that present certain expectations to professionals and shape their energies, efforts and desires in certain directions. In order to be influential, however, the discourses depend on individuals who take up the subject positions offered and enact them in locally relevant and partially creative ways. Thus, careful analyses of the discourses in specific knowledge communities, as well as of their interrelated subject positions, may enhance our understanding of the more epistemic dimensions of globalisation and how these come to influence the imaginations of individuals as ‘citizens of the world.’. (shrink)

According to Foucault, the human body is the targeted object of modern power systems. In his genealogical studies, Foucault describes the manner in which these power systems leave an imprint on the body and utilize knowledge of the body as an indirect means of exercising subtle forms of control. In recent years, several researchers have claimed that the status of the body, subsumed as it is by modern power networks, has become a means for conducting a unique political critique in (...) which the human being is viewed as an agent of oppression and freedom. This article takes a fresh look at Foucault’s notions of life and death that underpin the critical understanding the body–power relationship. While this approach recognizes the completeness of subjective structuring processes, it also enables the formulation of new insights regarding the status of the modern individual as the subject of separate and independent modes of speech and action. (shrink)

Drèze and Sen are not entirely right in their apparent glorification of the roles of nongovernmental organizations in Bangladesh in An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions because they leave out and/or de-emphasize some important issues, especially those that are related to the problematic trusting relationship between nongovernmental organizations in Bangladesh and rural poor women. Nongovernmental organizations’ use of trust disturbs social solidarity in rural Bangladesh mainly because of their massive supervision mechanism that they undertake to sustain the so-called trusting (...) relationship between them and their debtors. The massive supervision mechanism damages social solidarity also because it creates a tension between local norms and nongovernmental organizations’ neoliberalist values of “discipline, efficiency and competitiveness,” which nongovernmental organizations try to inject into villagers by their numerous social engineering programs, which are state’s responsibility. Nongovernmental organization monitoring has some psychological impacts on their clients that also contribute to shaking social solidarity. The absence of a proper trusting relationship between nongovernmental organizations and rural poor women reduces the capabilities of the latter as a result of which Drèze and Sen’s glorification of Bangladeshi nongovernmental organizations and Sen’s capabilities approach are in tension. However, there are strategies that Bangladeshi nongovernmental organizations should employ to address the issues raised due to their massive supervision mechanism. (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)

Intentional communities are formed by a group of people who have voluntarily chosen to live together for a range of reasons in the creation of a shared lifestyle. They concern practical forms of living that may reflect diverse structures and distinct philosophies. The intentional community literature is both broad and unique in its representation of intentional community living. Intentional communities may also be considered sites that form the basis for resisting mainstream forms of living and representations of subjectivity. Through an (...) active process of self-constitution, participants engaged in communal forms of living may construct different identities and styles of life. Although the term ‘intentional community’ is fairly recent, notions of utopian living have a long history. Forms of utopian living can be found in early biblical times, while Foucault’s domain of ‘ethics’ is also derived from what the intentional community literature considers to be early utopian communities. Despite an extensive literature, very little research explicitly focuses on communal living as a form of ethics as praxis. This may be due to the characterisation of ethics as a form of rules, duties and consequences, rather than ethics as a relationship that a person cultivates with their ‘self’. Foucault’s domain of ethics provides a valuable context to explore whether intentional community living can be theorised as a Foucauldian form of ethics. Although there is contemporary interest in Foucault’s domain of ethics, relatively few texts have sought to use Foucault’s ethical conceptualisation as a qualitative methodology in the context of empirical research. Even fewer studies have drawn on Foucault’s theoretical framework in the context of empirical research on intentional communities. This is despite a number of themes that the literature shares concerning notions of resistance, identity as a form of selfconstitution and the potentially transformative effect of communal living. This research therefore seeks to make a significant contribution to a relatively underresearched and under-theorised area of the literature. Drawing on Foucault’s ethics as a theoretical framework, this thesis explores twenty-eight narratives of participants who live on five rural communities in northern NSW, Australia. Fieldwork was conducted over a nine-month period between 2004 and 2005, with periods of time spent on each community. One community was revisited for the purpose of collecting further empirical data. Foucault’s ethical analysis and Foucauldian constructionism are used in the analysis and interpretation of the interviews that resulted from this fieldwork. Where individual interviews were not undertaken, a document analysis of former empirical research serves to affirm participant observations. Ethical issues concerning confidentiality and representation were addressed through the attendance at communal or ‘tribal’ meetings where required. The findings suggest that intentional community living may be theorised as a Foucauldian form of ethics, with an analysis of the empirical research providing further insight into each of the four aspects of Foucault’s ethics: the ethical substance, the mode of subjection, the self-forming activities and the telos. The findings also indicate that communal, or co-operative, living may reflect the dominant form of ethics for intentional community members by the way it permeates all other aspects of ethics. In this light, it can be said that intentional community living is an ethics as praxis—a truly practical philosophy. The implications of these findings suggest that through their very practice of an ethics, intentional community participants may be ethical, or ‘individualising’, subjects. That is, through notions of personal choice, acts of resistance and the performance of practices on the self that effect transformation, participants may construct both a ‘self’ and ‘styles of life’ that they both like and affirm, thereby positioning themselves differently against mainstream representations of ‘suburbia’. (shrink)