Foucault, politics and the autonomy of the aesthetic

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 273-291

  O'Leary, Timothy ^a  

^a DEAKIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Aesthetics; Ethics; Fascism; Foucault; Politics

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249155695     PISSN: 09672559     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09672559608570835     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Michel Foucault, 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: an Overview of Work in Progress', in P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 350 (henceforth) cited in text as Foucault 1983a.
2. Cf. André Breton, Manifestes du Surréalisme (Paris: Pauvert, 1962), pp. 31-2:' Qu'on se donne seulement la peine de pratiquer la poésie'.
3. Cf., e.g., the writings and interviews in C. Kuoni (ed.), Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990).
4. For a criticism which implicates Beuys in a 'fascist' politics cf. B. Buchloh, 'Beuys: the Twilight of the Idol', Artforum 5 (1980), pp. 35-43.
5. Against this view, see my 'Fat, Felt and Fascism: the Case of Joseph Beuys', Literature and Aesthetics, forthcoming, 1996.
6. This forms part of Jürgen Habermas' account of the tradition of thought from Schiller, through Baudelaire, to the avant-garde which attempts to 'level art and life'. See 'Modernity - an Incomplete Project' in H. Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), pp. 11-12. At the end of the article thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida are included in this tradition.
7. Richard Wolin, 'Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism', Telos 67 (Spring 1986), pp. 71-86.
8. R. Wolin, Foucault's Aesthetic Decisionism, Ibid., pp. 84-5.
9. A phrase used by Foucault in a lecture at the Collège de France in 1979. A recording of this lecture has been released under the title, De la gouvernementalité (Paris: Seuil, 1989).
10. Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Illuminations (London: Fontana, 1973) (henceforth cited in text as Benjamin 1973).
11. Russell Berman, Modern Culture and Critical Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 52.
12. R. Berman, Modern Culture and Critical Theory, Ibid., p. 72.
13. Cf. esp., Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics, trans. C. Turner (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) (henceforth cited in text as 1990a)
14. and also Lacoue-Labarthe and J-L. Nancy, 'The Nazi Myth', Critical Inquiry 16 (Winter 1990), pp. 291-312, (henceforth cited in text as 1990b).
15. Walter Benjamin, 'Theories of German Fascism', New German Critique 17, (Spring 1979), pp. 120-8. cf. p. 128.
16. I owe this formulation to Howard Caygill, 'Benjamin, Heidegger and the Destruction of Tradition' in A. Benjamin and P. Osborne (eds), Walter Benjamin's Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1994), cf. p. 25.
17. For one of the best discussions of this aspect of Benjamin's essay cf. Susan Buck-Morss, 'Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered', October 62 (Fall 1992), pp. 3-42.
18. Walter Benjamin, 'On Some Motifs in Baudelaire' in Illuminations, op. cit. note 9, pp. 176ff.
19. Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy have acknowledged Syberberg's film (below) as having made possible their interpretation of 'the Nazi myth': 1990b, p. 303.
20. A partial translation of the film script has been published as, Hitler, A Film From Germany, trans. J. Neugroschel (New York: Carcanet Books, 1982).
21. Hitler, A Film From Germany, Ibid., p. 109.
22. Andrew Hewitt, 'Fascist Modernism, Futurism, and Post-modernity' in R. Golsan (ed.), Fascism, Aesthetics and Culture, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992) (henceforth cited in text as Hewitt 1992).
23. See also Hewitt's, Fascist Modernism; Aesthetics, Politics and the Avant-Garde (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).
24. For a partial translation, see R.W. Flint (ed.) Marinetti: Selected Writings (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971) (henceforth cited in text as Marinetti 1971).
25. Jacques Lacan, 'The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I', in A. Sheridan (trans.) Ecrits, a selection (London: Tavistock, 1977).
26. Cited in Russell Berman,Ecrits, a selection , op. cit. note 10, p. 78.
27. Hitler's speech inaugurating the 'Great Exhibition of German Art 1937' in Munich, published in H.B. Chipp (ed.) Theories of Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 474-83, at p. 478.
28. Benito Mussolini, 'The Doctrine of Fascism', excerpts in H. Kohn (ed.) Nationalism: its Meaning and History (New York: D.Van Norstrand, 1965), p. 172.
29. Lacan, Nationalism: its Meaning and History, op. cit. note 24, p. 4.
30. M. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1987) (henceforth Foucault 1984a);
31. and The Care of the Self trans. R. Hurley, (London: Penguin Books, 1987).
32. Foucault uses this term in relation to the changes in ethical subjectivity which occured in the early Roman Empire, cf. R. Hurley, The Care of the Self op. cit. note 30, p. 95.
33. 'An Aesthetics of Existence', in L. Kritzman (ed.), Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy and Culture (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 49 (henceforth, Foucault, 1984b).
34. 'The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom', in Philosophy and Social Criticism 2, (Summer 1987), pp. 112-31. cf. p. 122 (henceforth Foucault, 1984c).
35. 'The Concern for Truth', in L. Kritzman (ed.), op. cit. note 32, p. 262 (henceforth Foucault, 1984d).
36. 'The Return of Morality', in L. Kritzman (ed.), op. cit. note 32, p. 254 (henceforth Foucault, 1984e).
37. 'What is Enlightenment?' in P. Rabinow (ed.), op. cit. note 2, p. 50 (henceforth Foucault, 1984e).
38. Paul Veyne, 'Le dernier Foucault et sa morale', Critique 471-2 (Aug-Sept. 1986), pp. 933-41.
39. 'Foucault's Aesthetics of Existence', Radical Philosophy 63, (Spring 1993), pp. 13-21 at p. 14.
40. See, e.g., Plato's Timaeus, 87c: 'The good, of course, is always beautiful'.
41. Cf. Habermas,Plato's Timaeus, The good, of course, is always beautiful , op. cit. note 5, pp. 13-14.
42. Cf. Section 290 of Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974) and Foucault's reference to it, 1983a, p. 351.
43. Bertolt Brecht, Poems: Part Two 1929-1938 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1976), pp. 308-9.