The Allegory of the Cage: Foucault, Agamben, and the Enlightenment

Authors

  • Arne de Boever California Institute of the Arts

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i10.3124

Abstract

This article reconsiders the relations between Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault’s essays on the Enlightenment and adds Giorgio Agamben’s essay “What is an Apparatus?” to this constellation. It explores, specifically, the relations between Foucault’s definition of enlightenment and the central notion of Agamben’s philosophy: potentiality. The relation between potentiality and enlightenment is then mobilized in the article in the context of a discussion of technology in Kant, Foucault, and Agamben. What might be the relevance of the relation between Foucault’s enlightenment and Agamben’s potentiality for our understanding of technological developments today? The article engages with this question through a discussion of Foucault’s writings on the care of the self, Agamben’s theory of art, and Bernard Stiegler’s work on technology. It closes with a discussion of an artwork that stages the dramatic relation between all of these texts.

Author Biography

Arne de Boever, California Institute of the Arts

Arne De Boever did his doctoral studies at Columbia University in New York and teaches American Studies in the School of Critical Studies and the MA Program in Aesthetics and Politics at the California Institute of the Arts. He has published articles on literature, film, and critical theory and is one of the editors of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. His current research focuses on biopolitics and the novel.

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Published

2010-11-01

How to Cite

de Boever, A. (2010). The Allegory of the Cage: Foucault, Agamben, and the Enlightenment. Foucault Studies, (10), 7–22. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i10.3124

Issue

Number 10: November 2010: Foucault and Agamben

Section

Special Issue on Foucault and Agamben

License

Authors retain copyright to their work, but assign the right of the first publication to Foucault Studies. The work is subject to a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, but despite these restrictions, authors can take for granted that Foucault Studies will permit articles published in Foucault Studies to be translated or reprinted in another format such as a book providing a full reference is made to Foucault Studies as the original place of publication.