Michel Foucault and the Politics of FreedomWhat is freedom? In this study, Thomas Dumm challenges the conventions that have governed discussions and debates concerning modern freedom by bringing the work of Michel Foucault into dialogue with contemporary liberal thought. While Foucault has been widely understood to have characterized the modern era as being opposed to the realization of freedom, Dumm shows how this characterization conflates Foucault's genealogy of discipline with his overall view of the practices of being free. Dumm demonstrates how Foucault's critical genealogy does not shrink from understanding the ways in which modern subjects are constrained and shaped by forces greater than themselves, but how it instead works through these constraints to provide, not simply a vision of liberation, but a joyous wisdom concerned with showing us, in his words, that we “are much freer than we feel.” Both as an introduction to Foucault and as an intervention in liberal theory, Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom is bound to change how we think about the limits and possibilities of freedom in late modernity. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
agent Arendt argument Auschwitz become Berlin body claims Colin Gordon common concerning connection Connolly constitution contemporary crime criminal critical critique cruelty delinquency democratic desire disciplinary society Discipline and Punish discourse displacement Dumm Dumm's element emergence essay establishment ethics exercise existence experience force Foucault suggests Frankfurt School genealogy Hannah Arendt heterotopia homelessness human Ibid idea identity illegality imagination important individual Isaiah Berlin King Levi liberal Madness and Civilization meaning ment Michel Foucault moral negative freedom negative liberty neutral space Nietzsche Nietzsche's normalization operates pain panopticism Panopticon paradox perhaps philosophers political theory political thought Politics of Freedom positive freedom possibility practices of freedom precisely present Primo Levi prison question realization regime relationship resistance response Rodney King role seek sense social sovereign sovereignty space of freedom spatial strategies theorist tion torture trans transformation transgression truth understand writes York