Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2016

Subjectification through Institutions: The Debate about Freedom in the Works of Foucault

Résumé

One of the longest lasting problems in the discussion about Foucault has been the problem of freedom. More precisely the question is: How can freedom and resistance be thought and explained in a theory of power and subjectification? I will address this problem not by talking about Foucault himself, for example by offering a new interpretation of his writings. Rather, I claim that the problem can only be addressed by looking at the social-philosophical debate kicked off by his works. The problem of freedom does not originate in Foucault, but was first articulated in discussions of his work by political theorists. These interpretations, through constructing the problem, go beyond mere exegesis. They are complex philosophical works in themselves and as such they are the main object of my analysis. The social-philosophical debate about freedom in Foucault’s works began when political theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser and Charles Taylor treated Foucault as one of them, as a political theorist, and criticized him for having an implausible account of freedom due to his Nietzschean concept of power. Other interpreters, who were both interested in political theory and sympathetic to Foucault, came up with interpretations of his work aimed at constructing a coherent theory of freedom within the Foucaultian framework of subjectification and power. In my talk, I reconstruct exemplary versions of the three main types of approaches to make Foucault a coherent political theorist, and criticize them for failing to solve the problem of freedom they aimed to solve, proposing a new approach of my own.

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hal-02921910 , version 1 (28-08-2020)

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Karsten Schubert. Subjectification through Institutions: The Debate about Freedom in the Works of Foucault. Foucault@90 Conference, Jun 2016, Ayr, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-02921910⟩
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