Ben Golder

Foucault and the Politics of Rights

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Ben Golder is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 264
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. Oktober 2015
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 226mm x 151mm x 17mm
• Gewicht: 366g
• ISBN-13: 9780804796491
• ISBN-10: 0804796491
• Artikelnr.: 42801802

Autorenporträt

Ben Golder is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction
chapter abstract
The Introduction lays out the central issues discussed in the book and
summarizes its general thesis: that Foucault's late political thinking on
rights represents neither a return, nor a capitulation, to liberalism, but
a critical (yet ambivalent) engagement with it. It contextualizes the
book's argument within previous interpretations of Foucault's late work and
argues for the wider importance of the way in which these texts should be
understood. It concludes with some methodological observations and by
mapping the chapter structure of the book.
1Critical Counter-Conducts
chapter abstract
This chapter details three things: first, it addresses Foucault's
understanding of critique via a discussion of his methods of genealogy and
archaeology; secondly, it provides a discussion of his critical analyses of
subjectivity and sovereignty made in work of the 1970s; and, finally, it
addresses his particular notion of the 'counter-conduct' introduced into
his work in the late 1970s via his lectures at the Collège de France. This
largely expository material is vital for an understanding of the arguments
made in the following chapters, each of which develops a reading of a
different dimension of Foucault's rights politics.
2Who Is the Subject of (Foucault's) Human Rights?
chapter abstract
This chapter develops an account of the first dimension of Foucault's
politics of rights; namely, their contingent and ungrounded character. By
this is meant that when Foucault makes rights claims in his late work he
consciously disavows the conventional normative grounds of rights (reason,
will, intention, and so forth) in favor of an undetermined conception of
subjectivity. On this view, rights become a promising site where competing
and contingent claims about the subject of rights are made but can never
ultimately be resolved or determined. The chapter starts with an
examination of the status of the subject in Foucault's late work on ethics,
which is then related to his anti-essentialist advocacy of human rights
(such as in Cold-War-era Poland and postrevolutionary Iran), as well as his
advocacy of the 'rights of the governed' in the context of global politics
and humanitarianism.
3The Ambivalence of Rights
chapter abstract
This chapter develops an account of the second dimension of Foucault's
politics of rights; namely, his appreciation (and negotiation) of their
ambivalence. Rights are ambivalent for Foucault in the sense that they are
vehicles both of empowerment and regulation. Rights allow for claimants to
expand and protect their sphere of action but they also subjectify and
regulate those claimants even as they assert rights on their own behalf.
The present chapter pursues this theme through a reading of the work of the
political theorist Wendy Brown on rights to 'identity' as well as of
Foucault's own advocacy of rights to sexual choice in his late work (and
his related conceptions of friendship and of relational rights). It
concludes with a reflection on the possible meaning of freedom in the
context of Foucault's ambivalent account of rights.
4Rights Between Tactics and Strategy
chapter abstract
This chapter develops an account of the third and final dimension of
Foucault's politics of rights; namely, their tactical and strategic
deployment. By 'tactical' is meant an instrumental appropriation of rights
for political purposes beyond, or subversive of, the demands of a liberal
democratic system. By 'strategic' is meant the use of rights to challenge
wider structures and relations of power. The chapter assesses whether
Foucault's rights claims can be called strategic in the sense just given
(ultimately concluding that they can) by examining his deployment of rights
in two different yet related contexts. These contexts are linked by the
broader theme of the biopolitical management of life. The first context is
Foucault's assertion of a right to die and the second is his opposition to
the death penalty.
Conclusion
chapter abstract
This concluding chapter performs two tasks. The first task is to situate
the preceding interpretation of Foucault within an evolving historical
debate about the origin of contemporary human rights discourse-a debate
catalyzed by the work of Samuel Moyn. According to Moyn's revisionist
understanding, the turn to human rights in the late 1970s reflects a
general turning away from revolution in the Western political imaginary
(and the embrace of liberal utopias instead). The chapter argues that
Foucault's ambivalent deployment of rights cannot be reduced to this shift
but is more critical of liberalism. The second task is to relate Foucault's
engagement with rights in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the
contemporary fascination with human rights and to pose (yet not ultimately
resolve) the question of whether his approach counsels a continued
engagement with human rights or a strategic withdrawal from them.