Foucault on Freedom

Foucault, Freedom, and the Limits of Modernity

In order to locate and understand a notion of freedom in the later works of Michel Foucault, I will first offer a discussion of delinquency as described in Discipline and Punish. Within this discussion I will argue against Thomas Dumm’s characterization of the delinquent as emblematic of freedom on the grounds that such a characterization is implicitly contested in Discipline and Punish. I will...

Critique of Foucault on Iran

Nondomination or Practices of Freedom? French Muslim Women, Foucault, and The Full Veil Ban

This article proposes a conception of freedom understood as practices. Based on Michel Foucault’s work on the ethics of the self, I develop a conception of freedom that exceeds liberation and distinguishes between genuine practices of freedom and practices of the self that are unreflective responses to systems of government. I develop and illustrate this conception through an engagement with th...

Foucault Studies

REVIEW ESSAY Michel Foucault, History of Madness, translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London/New York: Routledge, 2006) ISBN: 0415277019. Alain Beaulieu, Laurentian University Réal Fillion, University of Sudbury Introduction Since its presentation on May 20, 1961, Foucault’s principal doctoral thesis has never ceased both to fascinate and to fuel controversy.1 Blanchot, Barthes, ...

Foucault Studies

INTERVIEW Governing Liberal Societies – the Foucault Effect in the English‐ speaking World1 Jacques Donzelot, University of Paris X‐Nanterre Colin Gordon, Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust JD: In the two volumes of his lectures of 1978 and 1979, we see Michel Foucault making a major intellectual change of direction, moving away from an analysis of power as the formation and production of i...