Bruno Latour was once asked : "Do you believe in reality?" This text is an attempt to answer this question.

I would like to suggest another way to go further toward a new economy of power relations, a way which is more empirical, more directly related to our present situation, and which implies more relations between theory and practice. It consists of taking the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point. To use another metaphor, t consists of using this resistance as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light power relations, locate their position, (...) and find out their point of application and the methods used. Rather than analyzing power from the point of view of its internal rationality, it consists of analyzing power relations through the antagonism of strategies.[…]Let us come back to the definition of the exercise of power as a way in which certain actions may structure the field of other possible actions. What, therefore, would be proper to a relationship of power is that it be a mode of action upon actions. That is to say, power relations are rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted "above" society as a supplementary structure whose radical effacement one could perhaps dream of. In any case, to live in a society is to live in such a way that action upon other actions is possible-- and in fact ongoing. A society without power relations can only be an abstraction. Which, be it said in passing, makes all the more politically necessary the analysis of power relations in a given society, their historical formation, the source of their strength or fragility, the conditions which are necessary to transform some or to abolish others. For to say that there cannot be a society without power relations is not to say either that those which are established are necessary or, in any case, that power constitutes a fatality at the heart of societies, such that it cannot be undermined. Instead, I would say that the analysis, elaboration, and bringing into question of power relations and the "agonism" between power relations and the instransitivity of freedom is a permanent political task inherent in all social existence.[…]In effect, between a relationship of power and a strategy of struggle there is a reciprocal appeal, a perpetual linking and a perpetual reversal. At every moment the relationship of power may become a confrontation between two adversaries. Equally, the relationship between adversaries in society may, at every moment, give place to the putting into operation of mechanisms of power. The consequence of this instability is the ability to decipher the same events and the same transformations either from inside the history of struggle or from the standpoint of the power relationships. The interpretations which result will not consist of the same elements of meaning or the same links or the same types of intelligibility, although they refer to the same historical fabric, and each of the two analyses must have reference to the other. In fact, it is precisely the disparities between the two readings which make visible those fundamental phenomena of "domination" which are present in a large number of human societies.Michel Foucault has been teaching at the Collège de France since 1970. His works include Madness and Civilization , The Birth of the Clinic , Discipline and Punish , and History of Sexuality , the first volume of a projected five-volume study. (shrink)

An examination of the relation between war and politics, by one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers From 1971 until 1984 at the College de France, Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures ranging freely and conversationally over the range of his research. In Society Must Be Defended , Foucault deals with the emergence in the early seventeenth century of a new understanding of war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power, a hidden presence within society that (...) could be deciphered by an historical analysis. Tracing this development, Foucault outlines the genealogy of power and knowledge that had become his dominant concern. (shrink)

Epistemology -- Power I -- Power II -- Subjectivity -- Resistance -- Critique -- Ethics.

Drawing upon philosophy and social theory, Social Theory of International Politics develops a theory of the international system as a social construction. Alexander Wendt clarifies the central claims of the constructivist approach, presenting a structural and idealist worldview which contrasts with the individualism and materialism which underpins much mainstream international relations theory. He builds a cultural theory of international politics, which takes whether states view each other as enemies, rivals or friends as a fundamental determinant. Wendt characterises these roles as (...) 'cultures of anarchy', described as Hobbesian, Lockean and Kantian respectively. These cultures are shared ideas which help shape state interests and capabilities, and generate tendencies in the international system. The book describes four factors which can drive structural change from one culture to another - interdependence, common fate, homogenization, and self-restraint - and examines the effects of capitalism and democracy in the emergence of a Kantian culture in the West. (shrink)

In this article I consider how our experiences of bodily privacy are changing in the contemporary surveillance society. I use biometric technologies as a lens for tracking the changing relationships between the body and privacy. Adopting a broader genealogical perspective, I retrace the role of the body in the constitution of the modern liberal political subject. I consider two different understandings of the subject, the Foucauldian political subject, and the Lacanian psychoanalytic subject. The psychoanalytic perspective serves to appraise the importance (...) of hiding for the subject effects of excessive exposure to the Other’s gaze. I conclude to the importance of the subject’s being able to hide, even when it has nothing to hide. By considering these two facets of subjectivity, political and psychic, I hope to make sense of our enduring and deeply political passionate attachment to privacy. (shrink)

This is a book about the theory of the city or commonwealth, what would come to be called the state, in early modern natural law discourse. Annabel Brett takes a fresh approach by looking at this political entity from the perspective of its boundaries and those who crossed them. She begins with a classic debate from the Spanish sixteenth century over the political treatment of mendicants, showing how cosmopolitan ideals of porous boundaries could simultaneously justify the freedoms of itinerant beggars (...) and the activities of European colonists in the Indies. She goes on to examine the boundaries of the state in multiple senses, including the fundamental barrier between human beings and animals and the limits of the state in the face of the natural lives of its subjects, as well as territorial frontiers. Drawing on a wide range of authors, Brett reveals how early modern political space was constructed from a complex dynamic of inclusion and exclusion. Throughout, she shows that early modern debates about political boundaries displayed unheralded creativity and virtuosity but were nevertheless vulnerable to innumerable paradoxes, contradictions, and loose ends.Changes of State is a major work of intellectual history that resonates with modern debates about globalization and the transformation of the nation-state. (shrink)

This article aims to trace the development of the concept of the state through the use of the word by politicians and lawyers as well as by theorists, without prejudice as to what �state� ought to mean.

Onuf understands all of international relations to be a matter of rules and rule in foreign behavior and draws on the work of such diverse figures as Kenneth Arrow, J.L. Austin, Max Black, Michael Foucault, Anthony Giddens, Jurgen Habermas, Lawrence Kohlberg, Harold Lasswell, Talcott Parsons, Jean Piaget, J.G.A. Pocock, John Roemer, John Scarle and Sheldon Wolin to reveal a consistent pattern of categories of rules, rule and related social phenomena.

Deleuze & Guattari: Emergent Law is an exposition and development of Deleuze & Guattari's legal theory. Although there has been considerable interest in Deleuze & Guattari in critical legal studies, as well as considerable interest in legality in Deleuze & Guattari studies, this is the first book to focus exclusively on Deleuze & Guattari and law. Situating Deleuze & Guattari's engagement with social organisation and legality in the context of their theory of 'abstract machines' and 'intensive assemblages', Jamie Murray presents (...) their theory of law as that of a two-fold conception of, first, a transcendent molar law and, second, an immanent molecular emergent law. Transcendent molar legality is the traditional object of legal theory. And, as explicated here, immanent molecular emergent law is the novel juridical object that Deleuze & Guattari identify. Developing this conception, Deleuze & Guattari: Emergent Law draws out its implications for current and for future legal theory; arguing that it provides the basis for a new jurisprudence capable of creating new concepts of legality. (shrink)

This book presents a post-structuralist-queer theory of the self drawing on representations of de Beauvoir and her bisexuality.

Foucault’s concept of pastoral power is envisioned as a technique of power developed from the medieval period and carried through into modern political rationalities. As such, it is an old power technique – which originated in Christian institutions – in a new political shape, which he coined governmentality. This article uses Foucault’s genealogy of pastoral power and governmentality to discuss the intersection of domination and technology of self in the Greenlandic colonial context and to bring out the central role of (...) religion in Foucault’s conceptualisation of governmentality. (shrink)