The work of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze frequently gave rise to a practice of philosophy as a form of critical problematization. Critical problematization both resonates between their thought and is also generative for contemporary philosophy in their wake. To examine critical problematization in each, a shared theme of inquiry provides a useful focal point. Foucault and Deleuze each deployed critical problematization in the context of studies of sexuality, a site of excited contestation that remains as crucial for us today (...) as it was for them four decades ago. Foucault’s well-known History of Sexuality, Volume 1 and Deleuze’s little-discussed text Coldness and Cruelty thus provide us with exemplary instances of the critical problematization of sexuality. An examination of these two texts, and their broader resonance, illuminates the potential of Foucauldian genealogy and Deleuzian symptomatology as methods for critical problematization today. It is argued that they provide compelling alternatives to modern critical moods that would want to interpret sexuality through a series of oppositions. (shrink)

This paper considers the structure of the ethical subject found in Foucault’s late works on ethics, and gives an account of his two major ethical concepts: “care of the self” and “aesthetics of existence.” The “care of the self,” it is argued, gives Foucault a way of conceptualising ethics which does not rely on juridical categories, and which does not conceive the ethical subject on the model of substance. The “care of the self” entails an understanding of the ethical subject (...) as a process which is always in a relation, specifically in a relation to itself. Using his essay “What is an Author,” it is argued that the subject of the “aesthetics of existence,” like the author of a text, is understood to be fully immanent to the “object” which it is usually considered to be opposed to and separated from. Rather than aiming at a true expression of an “authentic” inner substance, Foucault’s “aesthetics of existence” leads instead to practices of “creativity,” whose form cannot be given in advance. (shrink)

The forceful impact of Michel Foucault’s work in the humanities and social sciences is apparent from the sheer abundance of its uses, appropriations, and refigurations. This article calls for greater self-conscious reflexivity about the relationship between our uses of Foucault and the opportunities afforded by his work. We argue for a clearer distinction between analytics and concepts in Foucault-inspired work. In so doing we draw on key moments of methodological self-reflection in Foucault’s Collège de France lectures and elsewhere. This distinction (...) helps identify different ways that Foucault might be put to productive use today as well as what can go wrong therein, a concern we develop with reference to Giorgio Agamben’s post-Foucaultian contributions to political theory. We are eager to open up a possibility that has been infrequently explored despite Foucault’s contemporary influence—-the idea that critique in and through Foucault is empirical critique. This idea can help facilitate a gain in reflexivity in the broader landscapes of contemporary theory, inquiry, and critique. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Origin vs. Descent Politics vs. History Interpretation Conclusion References.

"Next to Sartre's Search for a Method and in direct opposition to it, Foucault's work is the most noteworthy effort at a theory of history in the last 50 years." -- Library Journal.

_One summary of the great Kant's view, to the extent that it can be summed up, is_ _that he takes determinism to be a kind of fact, and indeterminism to be another kind_ _of fact, and our freedom to be a fact too -- but takes this situation to have nothing to_ _do with the kind of compatibility of determinism and freedom proclaimed by such_ _Compatibilists as Hobbes and Hume. Thus Kant does not make freedom consistent_ _with determinism by taking (...) up a definition of freedom as voluntariness -- at bottom,_ _being able to do what you want. This he dismisses as a wretched subterfuge,_ _quibbling about words. Rather, the freedom he seeks to make consistent with_ _determinism does indeed seem to be the freedom of the Incompatibilists --_ _origination. Is he then an Incompatibilist? Well, against that, it can be said he does_ _not allow the existence of origination in what can be called the world we know, as_ _Incompatibilists certainly do._. (shrink)

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic women's (...) "motherwork.". (shrink)

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)

From these elements, however, genealogy retrieves an indispensable restraint: it must record the singularity of events … in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history—in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in different roles.In much of what has been called the “affective turn,” Michel Foucault has figured as a paranoid (...) foil where he has been mentioned at all. Both continental feminists—influenced by Gilles Deleuze’s work on Spinoza and Nietzsche—and queer theorists—for whom affect presents an alternative to the normalizing .. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Subjection and Autonomy: Foucault contra Habermas What Is Fallacious About the Genetic Fallacy? Conclusion References.

This paper problematizes the claim that Michel Foucault's work is normatively lacking and therefore possesses only limited political relevance. While Foucault does not articulate a traditional normative framework for political activity, I argue that his work nonetheless reflects certain normative commitments to, for example, practicing freedom and improving the state of the world. I elucidate these commitments by sketching out Foucault's notion of critique as a mode of existence characterized by practices of the self, arguing that such practices possess political (...) significance within the context of what Foucault refers to as a way of life, and analyzing points of intersection and departure between Kant's and Foucault's respective responses to the question `What is Enlightenment?' in order to clarify the connection Foucault makes between self-practices and freedom. Through this analysis I also show that Foucault reconceptualizes normative concepts such as obligation, freedom, autonomy and publicity in non-normalizing, politically compelling ways, and argue that his work opens onto a similar reconceptualization of the notion of political unity. I conclude with a preliminary investigation into the political efficacy of Foucault's ethos by discussing its relevance specifically for feminist politics. (shrink)

This inquiry is situated at the intersection of two enigmas. The first is the enigma of the status of Kant's practice of critique, which has been the subject of heated debate since shortly after the publication of the first edition of The Critique of Pure Reason. The second enigma is that of Foucault's apparent later 'turn' to Kant, and the label of 'critique', to describe his own theoretical practice. I argue that Kant's practice of 'critique' should be read, after Foucault, (...) as a distinctly modern practice in the care of the self, governed by Kant's famous rubric of the 'primacy of practical reason'. In this way, too, Foucault's later interest in Kant - one which in fact takes up a line present in his work from his complementary thesis on Kant's Anthropology - is cast into distinct relief. Against Habermas and others, I propose that this interest does not represent any 'break' or 'turn' in Foucault's work. In line with Foucault's repeated denials that he was interested after 1976 in a 'return to the ancients', I argue that Foucault's writings on critique represent instead both a deepening theoretical self-consciousness, and part of his project to forge an ethics adequate to the historical present.
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Nel Noddings argues that hers is not an ethics of agape. I want to argue, on the contrary, that it is, and that this is a problem. My central thesis is that the unidirectional nature of the analysis of one-caring reinforces oppressive institutions.

This two-part article summarizes the major arguments of Lynne Huffer’s 2010 book, Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory. The second part of the piece is a dialogue between Huffer and feminist theorist Elizabeth Wilson about the implications of the book’s arguments about rethinking queer theory, interiority, psychic life, lived experience and received understandings of Michel Foucault’s work.

What is terrorism? What ought we to do about it? And why is it wrong? We think we have clear answers to these questions. But acts of violence, like U.S. drone strikes that indiscriminately kill civilians, and mass shootings that become terrorist attacks when suspects are identified as Muslim, suggest that definitions of terrorism are always contested. In Genealogies of Terrorism, Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson rejects attempts to define what terrorism is in favor of a historico-philosophical investigation into the conditions under which (...) uses of this contested term become meaningful. The result is a powerful critique of the power relations that shape how we understand and theorize political violence. -/- Tracing discourses and practices of terrorism from the French Revolution to late imperial Russia, colonized Algeria, and the post-9/11 United States, Erlenbusch-Anderson examines what we do when we name something terrorism. She offers an important corrective to attempts to develop universal definitions that assure semantic consistency and provide normative certainty, showing that terrorism means many different things and serves a wide range of political purposes. In the tradition of Michel Foucault’s genealogies, Erlenbusch-Anderson excavates the history of conceptual and practical uses of terrorism and maps the historically contingent political and material conditions that shape their emergence. She analyzes the power relations that make different modes of understanding terrorism possible and reveals their complicity in justifying the exercise of sovereign power in the name of defending the nation, class, or humanity against the terrorist enemy. Offering an engaged critique of terrorism and the mechanisms of social and political exclusion that it enables, Genealogies of Terrorism is an empirically grounded and philosophically rigorous critical history with important political implications. (shrink)