"Sensitive killers, cruel aesthetes, and pitiless poets": Foucault, rorty, and the ethics of self-fashioning

Polity

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 568-592

  Longford, Graham ^a  

^a TRENT UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039567746     PISSN: 00323497     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3235517     Document Type: Article

References (98)

1. See, for example: Linda Alcoff, "Feminism and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration," in Crises in Continental Philosophy, ed. Arlene Dallery and Charles Scott (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 69-86; Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 384-395; Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 17-34; Martin Jay, "The Morals of Genealogy: Or Is There a Poststructuralist Ethics?," in Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 38-48; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 489-90; Richard Wolin, "Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism," Telos 67 (1986): 71-86.
2. See, for example: Linda Alcoff, "Feminism and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration," in Crises in Continental Philosophy, ed. Arlene Dallery and Charles Scott (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 69-86; Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 384-395; Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 17-34; Martin Jay, "The Morals of Genealogy: Or Is There a Poststructuralist Ethics?," in Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 38-48; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 489-90; Richard Wolin, "Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism," Telos 67 (1986): 71-86.
3. See, for example: Linda Alcoff, "Feminism and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration," in Crises in Continental Philosophy, ed. Arlene Dallery and Charles Scott (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 69-86; Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 384-395; Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 17-34; Martin Jay, "The Morals of Genealogy: Or Is There a Poststructuralist Ethics?," in Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 38-48; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 489-90; Richard Wolin, "Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism," Telos 67 (1986): 71-86.
4. See, for example: Linda Alcoff, "Feminism and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration," in Crises in Continental Philosophy, ed. Arlene Dallery and Charles Scott (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 69-86; Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 384-395; Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 17-34; Martin Jay, "The Morals of Genealogy: Or Is There a Poststructuralist Ethics?," in Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 38-48; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 489-90; Richard Wolin, "Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism," Telos 67 (1986): 71-86.
5. See, for example: Linda Alcoff, "Feminism and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration," in Crises in Continental Philosophy, ed. Arlene Dallery and Charles Scott (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 69-86; Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 384-395; Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 17-34; Martin Jay, "The Morals of Genealogy: Or Is There a Poststructuralist Ethics?," in Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 38-48; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 489-90; Richard Wolin, "Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism," Telos 67 (1986): 71-86.
6. See, for example: Linda Alcoff, "Feminism and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration," in Crises in Continental Philosophy, ed. Arlene Dallery and Charles Scott (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 69-86; Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 384-395; Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 17-34; Martin Jay, "The Morals of Genealogy: Or Is There a Poststructuralist Ethics?," in Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 38-48; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 489-90; Richard Wolin, "Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism," Telos 67 (1986): 71-86.
7. Examples of this form of criticism can be found in the following works: Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism, trans. Mary Cattani (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990); Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1987); Allan Megill, Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and Richard Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
8. Examples of this form of criticism can be found in the following works: Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism, trans. Mary Cattani (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990); Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1987); Allan Megill, Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and Richard Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
9. Examples of this form of criticism can be found in the following works: Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism, trans. Mary Cattani (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990); Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1987); Allan Megill, Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and Richard Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
10. Examples of this form of criticism can be found in the following works: Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism, trans. Mary Cattani (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990); Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1987); Allan Megill, Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and Richard Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
11. Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 1.
12. See, for example: Thomas McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1991), 7.
13. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 23-69.
14. Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 142.
15. Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," 155.
16. Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," 153.
17. Michel Foucault, "Truth, Power, Self," interview in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault, ed. Luther Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 10.
18. Michel Foucault, "Critical Theory/Intellectual History," interview in Michel Foucault, Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. Lawrence Kritzman (London: Routledge, 1988), 37.
19. Quoted in Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, eds., After Philosophy: End or Transformation? (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1987), 96.
20. Quoted in Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 191.
21. Michel Foucault, "An Aesthetics of Existence," interview in Michel Foucault, Foucault Live: Interviews 1966-1984, ed. Sylvere Lotringer (New York: Semiotext(e), 1989), 311.
22. Michel Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?," Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997), 312.
23. Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?," 319.
24. Jürgen Habermas, "The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-reading Dialectic of Enlightenment," New German Critique, 26 (Spring-Summer 1982): 13, 23-28. Emphasis in original.
25. See: Wolin, "Foucaults Aesthetic Decisionism," 73-74; and Megill, Prophets of Extremity, 2-4.
26. See: Wolin, "Foucaults Aesthetic Decisionism," 73-74; and Megill, Prophets of Extremity, 2-4.
27. Wolin, "Foucaults Aesthetic Decisionism," 71-86; and Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 192.
28. Wolin, "Foucaults Aesthetic Decisionism," 71-86; and Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 192.
29. Wolin, "Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism," 84.
30. Wolin, "Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism," 85.
31. Jay, "The Morals of Genealogy," 45.
32. Jana Sawicki, Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body (New York: Routtedge, 1991), 105.
33. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 489.
34. Here my argument is indebted in part to William Connolly's work on Foucault in, for example, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
35. Foucault, "An Aesthetics of Existence," 311.
36. See: Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1986), 39-68; and Michel Foucault, "The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom," interview in Foucault, Ethics, 281-301.
37. See: Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1986), 39-68; and Michel Foucault, "The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom," interview in Foucault, Ethics, 281-301.
38. Foucault, "An Aesthetics of Existence," 311.
39. Michel Foucault, "The Concern for Truth," interview in Foucault, Foucault Live, 303.
40. Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?," 315-16.
41. Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," 162.
42. See: Michel Foucault, "Maurice Blanchot: The Thought From Outside," in Maurice Blanchot and Michel Foucault, Foucault/Blanchot, trans. Brian Massumi and Jeffrey Mehlman (New York: Urzone, 1987), 9-58; Michel Foucault, "Language to Infinity," in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice, 53-67; and Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?," in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice, 113-38.
43. See: Michel Foucault, "Maurice Blanchot: The Thought From Outside," in Maurice Blanchot and Michel Foucault, Foucault/Blanchot, trans. Brian Massumi and Jeffrey Mehlman (New York: Urzone, 1987), 9-58; Michel Foucault, "Language to Infinity," in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice, 53-67; and Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?," in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice, 113-38.
44. See: Michel Foucault, "Maurice Blanchot: The Thought From Outside," in Maurice Blanchot and Michel Foucault, Foucault/Blanchot, trans. Brian Massumi and Jeffrey Mehlman (New York: Urzone, 1987), 9-58; Michel Foucault, "Language to Infinity," in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice, 53-67; and Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?," in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice, 113-38.
45. Quoted in David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (London: Vintage, 1993), xiii.
46. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith, (London: Tavistock, 1972), 17.
47. Michel Foucault, "Michel Foucault: An Interview With Stephen Riggins," interview in Foucault, Ethics, 129.
48. Michel Foucault, "Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity," interview in Foucault, Ethics, 164-70.
49. Quoted in Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, xv.
50. Foucault, "Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity," 166.
51. Michel Foucault, "Rituals of Exclusion," interview in Foucault, Foucault Live, 71-72.
52. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 74.
53. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 377.
54. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 29-43.
55. Bloom is quoted in Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 24.
56. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 23-25.
57. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 28.
58. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 29
59. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 159.
60. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 157.
61. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, 70.
62. Michel Foucault, ed., I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother..., (New York: Random House, 1975)
63. Foucault, I, Pierre Rivière, 108.
64. Foucault, I, Pierre Rivière, 108.
65. Foucault, I, Pierre Rivière, 101-103.
66. Foucault, I, Pierre Rivière, 103.
67. Jean Pierre Peter and Jeanne Favret, "The Animal, the Madman, and Death," in Foucault, I, Pierre Rivière, 198.
68. Foucault, I, Pierre Rivière, 108.
69. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 157-58.
70. Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 192.
71. Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 193.
72. John Lysaker notes this silence in, "The shape of selves to come: Rorty on self-creation," Philosophy & Social Criticism 22 (1996): 39-74.
73. Richard Rorty, "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity," in Habermas and Modernity, ed. Richard Bernstein (Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1985), 172-75.
74. Fraser, Unruly Practices, 96.
75. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 83.
76. See the following: Fraser, Unruly Practices, 93-110; McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions, 11-34; Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 149-69.
77. See the following: Fraser, Unruly Practices, 93-110; McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions, 11-34; Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 149-69.
78. See the following: Fraser, Unruly Practices, 93-110; McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions, 11-34; Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism, 149-69.
79. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 73.
80. Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections From Plato to Foucault (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 181.
81. Michel Foucault, "Friendship as a Way of Life," interview in Foucault, Ethics, 140.
82. Foucault, "Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity," 170-73.
83. Foucault, "Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity," 169-70.
84. Foucault, "Friendship as a Way of Life," 135.
85. Foucault, "Friendship as a Way of Life," 136.
86. Foucault, "The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom," 288. Emphasis added.
87. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, 65-74.
88. Michel Foucault, "Sexual Choice, Sexual Act," in Foucault, Michel Foucault, 289.
89. Foucault, "Sexual Choice, Sexual Act," 294-95.
90. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 29-30.
91. See, for example, Michel Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," in Martin, et al., eds., Technologies of the Self, 16-49.
92. Foucault, "The Return of Morality," in Foucault, Foucault Live, 330.
93. See: Alcoff, "Feminism and Foucault," 69-86; Sawicki, Disciplining Foucault, 102-107
94. See: Alcoff, "Feminism and Foucault," 69-86; Sawicki, Disciplining Foucault, 102-107
95. Alasdair MaIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 213.
96. Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 67-103.
97. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, 35.
98. MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry, 215.