Foucault News

Foucault’s freedom, Johanna Oksala interviewed by Richard Marshall, 3:AM Magazine, Friday, August 1st, 2014.

Update October 2025: Link above to archived page on the Internet archive Wayback Machine

Johanna Oksala is a political philosopher who broods on Foucault, thinks that it’s time people stopped thinking in terms of continental vs analytic, thinks about Foucault and freedom, on Foucault, politics and violence, on Chantal Mouffe’s compelling ideas,on state violence, on why neoliberal rationality must be resisted, and on political spirituality. She’s out there making windows where there were once walls…

3:AM: What made you become a philosopher?

Johanna Oksala: I initially started to study philosophy because it seemed like an easy subject that wouldn’t consume too much of my precious time – I was young so my primary interest at the time was to study life! I was involved in various forms of anarchist politics such as squatting and organizing illegal parties and events in different European cities. While that was exciting and eye opening in many ways, it also taught me that genuine political change requires that people fundamentally alter the way they think. I believe that good philosophy can sometimes do that: it can make possible completely new ways of seeing the world around us. (I have also discovered since that philosophy is not easy at all and nowadays it consumes practically all my time!)

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