Postmodernism's Revolt Against Order

2002

This paper focuses on comparisons of Michel Foucault’s and Georges Bataille’s visions of histories as centered around thematics of the utopic, dystopic and difference. Positing that contemporary events (the intifada, the “war on terrorism”) force us to face the possibility of a dystopic turn in relation to ideas of difference in contemporary or “postmodern” history, I suggest that Foucault and others in the milieu of the postmodern historical theory are unable to help us consider this turn from the perspective of philosophy of history. Bataille, however, I argue, can. The difference comes in the idea of the meaning of the renunciation of the utopic, and whether or not that is an act based in a vision of the utopic itself. For Foucault it is; for Bataille it neither is not, nor should it be. This gives us perhaps a better analytical tool for understanding turns in contemporary history, as well as suggests a truly radical reformulation within the domain of philosophy of history. I. Th...

The postmodernism is a term that has been defined in relation to modern. The critics have defined the term in various ways. But one feature common to all the definitions is that postmodern is suspicious about notions used in Western Metaphysics. The ideas put forth by Derrida, Lacan and Foucault turn upside down the very ideas of Western metaphysics such as continuity and reason. In short the philosophy of Derrida and history viewed by Foucault raises doubts about long standing belief in man as a stable and unique entity, reason as guiding principle of the progress of humanity and continuity of history. The postmodernism is a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism and a general suspicion of reason. In western metaphysics from the days of Plato to present day reason is considered as guiding principle of humanity. The most of the philosophers think that reasoning and rationality are keys to Man's emancipation. For them reasoning is the capacity to draw logical conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim to seek the truth. Foucault in his works whom gave new perspectives of Power/knowledge that raises questions about stability and permanence of the concept like reason and truth. For Foucault concepts like identity, sexuality and normality are historical construct.

The notion of civil society, as an ontologically distinct sphere, separated from the state thereby serves as an antidote to the sovereign power of the state. Since the 1990s, we have seen reforms and organizational structures that advances the role of the market as well as the civil society along with a voluntary sector, often with the deliberate attempt to disrupt the power of the state and to tame the Leviathan through the promotion of networks, partnerships, co-governance and collaboration. This can be understood in terms of a present day state phobia and builds on a liberal conception of negative freedom understood as non-interference. Yet if we take Foucault's theorizations of power as omnipresent as it disrupts the power/freedom dichotomy we need to find alternative ways to cope with relations of power in order to not let them deteriorate into relations of domination. I argue in this article that neo-republican ideal of non-domination can be combined with Foucault's insights on the nature of power. If correct, a continued promotion of more civil society involvement and partnerships between public and private actors provides a false insurance to diminish domination in contemporary societies.

Anthropological Quarterly, 2006

Foucault Studies, 2016

In this article I reconstruct the philosophical conditions for the emergence of the notion of counter-conduct within the framework of Michel Foucault’s study of governmentality, and I explore the reasons for its disappearance after 1978. In particular, I argue that the concept of conduct becomes crucial for Foucault in order to redefine governmental power relations as specific ways to conduct the conduct of individuals: it is initially within this context that, in Security, Territory, Population, he rethinks the problem of resistance in terms of counter-conduct. However, a few months later, in What is Critique?, Foucault (implicitly) replaces the notion of counter-conduct with that of critical attitude, defined as the particular form that counter-conduct takes in modern times. This notion allows him to highlight the role played by the will (to be or not to be governed like that) in resistance to governmental strategies. But since the notion of counter-conduct is conceptually wider than that of critical attitude, I suggest in conclusion that it could be worth reactivating it as a “historical category which, in various forms and with diverse objectives, runs through the whole of Western history.”

New Political Science, 1998

The postmodern turn which has so marked social and cultural theory also involves conflicts between modern and postmodern politics. In this study, we articulate the differences between modern and postmodern politics and argue against one-sided positions which dogmatically reject one tradition or the other in favor of partisanship for either the modern or the postmodern. Arguing for a politics of alliance and solidarity, we claim that this project is best served by drawing on the most progressive elements of both the modern and postmodern traditions. Developing a new politics involves overcoming the limitations of certain versions of modern politics and postmodern identity politics in order to develop a politics of alliance and solidarity equal to the challenges of the coming millennium. ******* In the past two decades, the foundational claims of modern politics have been challenged by postmodern perspectives. The grand visions of emancipation in liberalism, Marxism, and other political perspectives of the modern era have been deemed excessively totalizing and grandiose, occluding differences and neglecting more specific oppressions of individuals and disparate groups. The liberal project of providing universal rights and freedoms for all has been challenged by specific groups struggling for their own rights, advancing their own specific interests, and championing the construction of their own cultures and identities. The Marxian project of revolution, worldwide and global in scope, has been replaced in some quarters by more localized struggles and more modest and reformist goals. The result is a variety of new forms of postmodern politics whose discourses, practices, and effects we shall interrogate in this study. In our view, the contemporary world is undergoing major transformations and the discourse of the postmodern serves to call attention to the changes and novelties of the present moment. In this context, the postmodern turn in politics describes the new forms of political conflict and struggle. The present conjuncture is highly ambiguous, positioning those in the overdeveloped Western and Northern areas between the era of modernity and a new epoch for which the term postmodernity has been coined, while people in other parts of the world are still living in premodern social and cultural forms, and on the whole the developing world exists in a contradictory matrix of premodern, modern, and postmodern forms. The rapid transformation of the world and development of novel cultural forms generates new dangers, such as the potential loss of the modern traditions of humanism, the Enlightenment, and radical social traditions, as well as innovative possibilities, such as emerge from new technologies, new identities, and new political struggles. The old theories, concepts, modes of thought and analysis, will only go so far in theorizing, analyzing, and mapping the emerging constellations, thus requiring novel modes of thought, strategies, discourses, and practices. Accordingly, in addition to the transformations in

Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, 2019

2019

in Manzo, L.K.C. (ed) Culture and Visual Forms of Power. Experiencing Contemporary Spaces of Resistance, 2015

Michel Foucault’s construction of power offers a revaluation of the modern “perpetual battle” (1995, 26) and, in particular, of the biopolitical and neoliberal forms of governance that characterize our present. The Foucaldian idea of power is that it is not a thing, but a relation (1971). Power is not simply repressive (like the use of violent control in the pre-modern era), but is also productive and is an everyday disciplinary practice. “It is not the ‘privilege’, acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions- an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the positions of those who are dominated” (1995, 26-27). In short, Foucault conceives power as “exclusively social, multiple, variable in character” (Sluga 2005, 231) and, more importantly, exercised on a small scale by political acts taken up by the supposedly powerless. In order to understand what power relations are about, rather than analyze distinctive forms of power, perhaps “we should investigate the forms of resistance and attempts made to dissociate these relations” (1983, 211). (in Manzo 2015: page 1).