Philosophical Practice Following Foucault

Authors

  • Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i25.5574

Keywords:

Contextualism, Appropriationism, Methodologism, queer theory, feminist philosophy

Abstract

This paper develops a heuristic of different modes of philosophical engagement with Michel Foucault’s work with the aim to aid self-reflection about contemporary uses of Foucault. Drawing on debates in the history of philosophy, I describe contextualism, appropriationism, and methodologism as three strands of Foucault scholarship. I then examine queer and feminist philosophical engagements with Foucault to explicate and illustrate the aims and strengths of each strand. I conclude by spelling out the larger implications for different uses of Foucault for philosophical practice and make the case for a methodological pluralism that draws on all available modes of inquiry.

Author Biography

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson, DPhil

Assistant Professor

Department of Philosophy

University of Memphis

Tennessee, USA

                                                         vrlnbsch@memphis.edu

References

Agamben, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life [1998]. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Agamben, Giorgio, State of Exception [2003Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Agamben, Giorgio, The Signature of All Things: On Method [2008]. New York: Zone Books, 2009.

Agamben, Giorgio, What Is an Apparatus?: And Other Essays [2006]. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Alcoff, Linda Martín, Rape and Resistance. Cambridge: Polity, 2018.

Allen, Amy, “‘Psychoanalysis and Ethnology’ Revisited: Foucault’s Historicization of History.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 55 (2017), 31–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12229

Allen, Amy, The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Allen, Amy, The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Benardete, José Amado. Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.

Blencowe, Claire, “Foucault’s and Arendt’s ‘Insider View’ of Biopolitics: A Critique of Agamben,” History of the Human Sciences 23:5 (2010), 113–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695110375762

Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Braunstein, Jean-François, Daniele Lorenzini, Ariane Revel, Judith Revel and Arianna Sforzini, eds. Foucault(s). Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2017.

Bussolini, Jeffrey, “Critical Encounter Between Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault: Review of Recent Works of Agamben,” Foucault Studies 10 (2010),