Foucault News

Schubert, Karsten (2020): Freedom as critique: Foucault beyond anarchism. Philosophy & Social Criticism. First Published May 7, 2020
DOI: 10.1177/0191453720917733

Authors note: This contains some of the core arguments of my German book Freiheit als Kritik and makes them finally available in English.

See also post on author’s blog.

Abstract
Foucault’s theory of power and subjectification challenges common concepts of freedom in social philosophy and expands them through the concept of ‘freedom as critique’: Freedom can be defined as the capability to critically reflect upon one’s own subjectification, and the conditions of possibility for this critical capacity lie in political and social institutions. The article develops this concept through a critical discussion of the standard response by Foucault interpreters to the standard objection that Foucault’s thinking obscures freedom. The standard response interprets Foucault’s later works, especially ‘The Subject and Power’, as a solution to the problem of freedom. It is mistaken, because it conflates different concepts of freedom that are present in Foucault’s work. By differentiating these concepts, this article proposes a new institutionalist approach to solve the problem of freedom that breaks with the partly anarchist underpinnings of Foucault scholarship: As freedom as critique is not given, but itself a result of subjectification, it entails a demand for ‘modal robustness’ and must therefore be institutionalized. This approach helps to draw out the consequences of Foucault’s thinking on freedom for postfoundationalist democratic theory and the general social-philosophical discussion about freedom.

Keywords
critique, democracy, freedom, freedom as critique, institutions, Michel Foucault, modal robustness, normativity, political theory, power, subjectification

Aryal, Y.
Affective politics and non-sovereign identity
(2020) Textual Practice, 34 (1), pp. 67-85.

DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2018.1508059

Abstract
The paper proposes a new political philosophy of non-sovereign identity based on the model of politics without coercive sovereignty as a source of our political life. It argues that the formation of our identity is not only determined by the existing power relations, but also by our capacity and strategy to work on our own creative self-formation or self-fashioning. The paper combines Michel Foucault’s ethical project of self-fashioning and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s idea of ‘lines of flight’ together invoking Lauren Berlant’s idea of ‘the political’ in order to observe the constitution of non-sovereign identity beyond and within the given power relations. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords
Affect; identity; nonsovereign; power; self-fashioning; the political

Margolin, L.
Rogerian Psychotherapy and the Problem of Power: A Foucauldian Interpretation
(2020) Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 60 (1), pp. 130-143.

DOI: 10.1177/0022167816687640

Abstract
Guided by Foucault’s argument that “knowledge is an ‘invention’ behind which lies something completely different from itself: the play of instincts, impulses, desires, fears, and the will to appropriate,” this study considers the possibility that “nondirectivity” in Rogerian psychotherapy operates as a trope for power. This is partly based on Edwin Kahn’s observation that nondirective therapists may be less mindful of their own fallibility than other therapists, less wary of their capacity to influence clients, and therefore, less prepared to interrogate the ways they might actually be influencing them. Nondirective, client-centered therapists, in short, may be less likely to have doubts about their comments and interventions, and thus more likely to exercise influence. What I show in this study is how Rogers did just this in his famous session with Gloria, how—without telling Gloria about his personal and theoretic biases, without first discussing them with her to see if and how they fit her goals—he continually pushed her to view herself through the lens of those biases. © The Author(s) 2017.

Author Keywords
Carl Rogers; Gloria; Michel Foucault; nondirective psychotherapy; Rogerian psychotherapy