Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom (Modernity and Political Thought) - Softcover

Dumm, Thomas L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803938659 ISBN 13: 9780803938656

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 1996

Synopsis

Michel Foucault has long been considered one of the most powerful critics of modern civilization. He is especially noted for his analysis of power, which many readers claim is an absolute rejection of modernity as unfree. By contrast, in Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom, Thomas L. Dumm reads Foucault as a philosopher of freedom. Dumm shows how Foucault connects the constitution of space with various practices of freedom. Foucault, he suggests, enables us to see how contemporary liberalism′s separation of public and private spheres aims to preserve freedom, but ultimately contains it. The weight of Foucault′s political strategy becomes increasingly dangerous to the practice of freedom. As an alternative, Dumm argues, Foucault develops an ethics of freedom that calls upon us to be "seduced" into being free. Ranging from Foucault′s earliest works to his final interviews, this volume brings the work of Foucault′s middle period --from Discipline and Punish through the first volume of The History of Sexuality -- into play with such thinkers as Isaiah Berlin and Primo Levi to shed new light of the complex and problematic situations of freedom in the late modern age. Throughout, Dumm is concerned to show how Foucault is always aware of the ways in which "we are freer than we think we are." Students in political science, political theory, and comparative politics will find Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom insightful, stimulating, as well as thought provoking. "Among the hundreds of books and articles on Foucault, only a handful makes genuinely rewarding reading. Thomas L. Dumm′s Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom is a welcome addition to that handful, for it treats Foucault with the subtlety his thought deserves and demands but almost never receives. As Dumm shows, appreciating Foucault′s accomplishmnents as a political theorist requires sustained attention to the difficult balancing act to which he devoted himself: on the one hand, Foucault′s analyses, cool and impassioned at once, of the macabre inventiveness of power in our era; on the other, his likewise passionate and realistic imagination and appraisal of the resources our era offers for freedom, emancipation, liberation. Most interpretations of Foucault suffer from emphasizing one of these twinned concerns at the expense of the other; Dumm, by masterfully giving each its due, takes the measure of Foucault′s original, provacative, unforgettable understanding of power and freedom. Dumm′s own voice too is strong, and his wits are sharp. This is a book that will enlighten those coming to Foucault for the first time, and provoke many who think they know his work well to read it again." -Frederick M. Dolan, University of California Berkeley author, Allegories of America: Narratives, Metaphysics, Politics "If Foucault′s task was to show people how ′they are freer than they feel,′ Thomas L. Dumm brings the Foucauldian practices of freedom to life. Through Foucault, Dumm explores how space, discipline, and freedom engender and disrupt one another in a world of entrenched, intersecting, and yet moveable contingencies. This is an imaginative and timely book. It will surprise those who already know Foucault and inspire those who already know they don′t." --William E. Connolly, Professor Johns Hopkins University This product is now available from: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Phone: 800-462-6420 Fax: 800-338-4550 http:\\www.rowmanlittlefield.com

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803938659
• ISBN 13: 9780803938656
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192