Foucault Studies, Number 11: February 2011: Foucault and Pragmatism

Prophetic Pragmatism and the Practices of Freedom: On Cornel West's Foucauldian Methodology

Brad Elliott Stone

Abstract


This essay explores the Foucauldian influence on Cornel West’s prophetic pragmatism. Although West argues that Foucauldian methods are insufficient to deliver a philosophy of liberation, I argue that there is nothing in Foucault that would prohibit West from such a goal, even though a philosophy of liberation was not one of Foucault’s goals. Fortunately, one can understand West’s own project of liberation in terms of “practices of freedom,” allowing one to describe West’s philosophical project in strict Foucauldian terms.