Exploring the apparent tension between Foucault’s analyses of technologies of domination – the ways in which the subject is constituted by power–knowledge relations – and of technologies of the self – the ways in which individuals constitute themselves through practices of freedom – this article endeavors to makes two points: first, the interpretive claim that Foucault’s own attempts to analyse both aspects of the politics of our selves are neither contradictory nor incoherent; and, second, the constructive claim that Foucault’s analysis (...) of the politics of our selves, though not entirely satisfactory as it stands, provides important resources for the project of critical social theory. (shrink)

The first book-length treatment in English of Habermas’s theory of social evolution and progress.

In this paper I argue that the social constructionist view found in Foucault''s work does not condemn one to a deterministic portrait of the ''self.'' Attention to the early and late writings allows one to articulate a weak notion of autonomy even under the heavy-handed descriptions found in Foucault''s early work. By recognizing autonomy as a public task, and not as a notion of freedom relegated to particular individuals, one is entitled to view autonomy as present in Foucault''s work - (...) and not merely in those writings dedicated to the ''techniques of the self.'' Far from emphasizing practices of freedom, I demonstrate that we need not always think of autonomy as contained in necessary 0resistance. It is this that permits reading autonomy as a product of social construction, and not an objection to it. (shrink)

Beatrice Han has argued that the theories of subjection (determinism: structure) and subjectivation (freedom: agency) are the “the blind spot[s] of Foucault's work.” Furthermore, she continues, as historical and transcendental theories, respectively, Foucault left them in a state of irresolvable conflict. In the Scientific Temptation I have shown that, as a practicing researcher, Foucault encourages us to situate the theories of the subject in the context of his un-thematized search for a metaphysics of realism, the purpose of which was to (...) ground his complementary reach for a possibility of naturalism. In Returning to Kant I now argue that it is this fundamental feature of “Foucault's Foucault” that drives his returns to Kant, the purpose of which was to resolve the conflicting theories of the subject and thereby solve his Giddensian problem of structure and creativity. Locating the returns and their purpose in the context of my own arguments for the recovery of human agency, I argue that Foucault's attempts to solve his Giddensian problem led to two unfortunate solutions. In the first return, his resort to Baudelaire's aesthetic subject is a regression to a pre-noumenal conception of the Kantian subject. With the second return, the reinstatement of the Kantian subject as causally empowered, minus the noumenalism, is nothing more than a reclamation of Kant's conception. I argue that only a reconstruction of Foucault's scientific realism permits us to understand that he could have moved beyond mere reclamation to the actual recovery of human agency. (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)

Michel Foucault's critical studies concerning regimes of power are of special interest when applied to architecture. In particular, he warned of the hazards of building surveillance into architectural structures for the purpose of monitoring people and took as his historical exemplar English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's ?Panopticon,? a structure originally used to assist in rehabilitating prisoners. He felt this kind of regulatory control resulted in maintaining power of one group over another. This article discusses what Foucault called the general ordering of (...) the visible and the invisible by examining architecture as he viewed it?as an operation of power, control, and domination. More to the point, it places this belief in the context of power constructions in both sacred and school architecture and how this, in turn, creates a carceral society. This article also puts forward some of Foucault's thinking on architecture and connects this to his ideas of perceptual visibles and invisibles. The suggestion of schools as institutions of conformity and how their built environment functions as a regulatory force for this conformity is also explored. (shrink)

Foucault and modern medicineModernity as a concept or ideal, resulting from the age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution gave hope of a better future and new possibilities. To be modern means an ‘enlightened’ individual and society, welcoming change and development. In this paper, I will discuss Foucault's analysis (1973) of problematics in medicine in eighteenth century France. Three themes prominent in the text are: ‘the birth of the clinic’, ‘the clinical gaze’ and the power‐knowledge relationship. Three problematics identified in (...) modern medicine by Foucault and which are particularly relevant to twentieth century medicine are: (i) the extension of the clinical gaze from the individual body to the wider population; (ii) the increasing medical intervention and use of technology in fundamental life processes; and (iii) the relationship between society and medicine. I will argue that Foucault's analysis is fraught with ambiguities. It is useful, however, for establishing an explanation for medicine today and for presenting a particular interpretation of modernity. (shrink)

A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought, the practices that we accept rest.... Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted (...) as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult. Michel Foucault (1988b, 154). (shrink)

This article takes as its starting point the observation that neoliberalism is a concept that is ‘oft-invoked but ill-defined’. It provides a taxonomy of uses of the term neoliberalism to include: an all-purpose denunciatory category; ‘the way things are’; an institutional framework characterizing particular forms of national capitalism, most notably the Anglo-American ones; a dominant ideology of global capitalism; a form of governmentality and hegemony; and a variant within the broad framework of liberalism as both theory and policy discourse. It (...) is argued that this sprawling set of definitions are not mutually compatible, and that uses of the term need to be dramatically narrowed from its current association with anything and everything that a particular author may find objectionable. In particular, it is argued that the uses of the term by Michel Foucault in his 1978–9 lectures, found in The Birth of Biopolitics, are not particularly compatible with its more recent status as a variant of dominant ideology or hegemony theories. It instead proposes understanding neoliberalism in terms of historical institutionalism, with Foucault’s account of historical change complementing Max Weber’s work identifying the distinctive economic sociology of national capitalisms. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur and Michel Foucault enjoy a privileged status in nursing academia as two thinkers who influence both nursing research and philosophical explorations of nursing practice. Most nurse authors, however, focus only on the earlier works of these two philosophers and, for example, base qualitative research methodologies on Foucault's genealogy and Ricoeur's hermeneutics. In their later years, both these writers talk more explicitly about being an ethical self. Ideas from their earlier writing is evident in their writing on ethics and (...) both writers could not discuss ethics without also exploring their ideas of the self and the other. I suggest that some of their thoughts on ethics connect with or complement each other quite well. I will first give an overview of Foucault's ethics, self and the other, and then do the same with Ricoeur's thought. In the third part of the paper I will describe how Foucault and Ricoeur complement each other, and conclude the paper by briefly suggesting how these writers influence my own practice as a nurse educator. (shrink)