History, Markets, and Revolutions: Reviewing Foucault’s Contribution to the Analysis of Political Temporality

Auteurs-es

  • Alessandro Volpi University Vita-Salute San Raffaele
  • Alessio Porrino University of Salerno

Mots-clés :

Michel Foucault, neoliberalism, temporality, Iranian Revolution, political spirituality

Résumé

This article explores the Foucauldian analysis of the linkage between temporality and politics, addressing mainly two loci of Foucault’s production: the assessment of the post-WWII ordoliberal experience in The Birth of Biopolitics and the Iran reportage for “Corriere Della Sera”. The article emphasizes the relevance of Foucault’s assessment of ordoliberal Germany for contemporary studies on neoliberalism and inscribes Foucault in a wider tradition of thought on the relevance of history and temporality for the comprehension of political dynamics. In TBoB, Foucault offered a prescient analysis of neoliberal temporality and its de-politicizing effects. In his view, ordoliberal theorists and politicians sought to ground political legitimacy in the economy itself, giving birth to a political-economic “double circuit” which did away with history and made political consensus “permanent” and automatic. The connection between neoliberalism, the restructuring of state sovereignty, and temporality will be highlighted. Furthermore, by analyzing the almost-coeval Iranian reportages and the eulogy for Clavel, the article further investigates Foucault’s reflection on the link between temporality, politics, and subjectivation processes. If the analysis of ordoliberal temporality in TBoB describes a linkage between de-temporalization and de-politicization, the reportages will be highlighted as a possible “pars construens” – as a way to reinstate the possibility of political action through the appeal to different ways to experience temporality. The article concludes that Foucault’s sparse comments on temporality can be read as an attempt, albeit not fully developed, not only to envision the de-politicizing effects of marketization but also to envisage new, re-politicizing modes of experiencing temporality and history.

Bibliographies de l'auteur-e

Alessandro Volpi, University Vita-Salute San Raffaele

Alessandro Volpi is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Philosophy at University Vita-Salute San Raffaele. His research interests comprise neoliberal studies, philosophy of history and temporality, and climate politics. His current PhD project deals with the relationship between climate change and state sovereignty.

Alessio Porrino, University of Salerno

Alessio Porrino is a Ph.D. candidate in Theories and History of Political Institutions at the University of Salerno, Italy. He focuses on contemporary political philosophy in the French-speaking world. His research project is aimed at investigating the role of violence in Michel Foucault's thought.

Références

Aeschimann, Eric, "Michel Foucault, l'Iran et le pouvoir du spirituel: L'entretien inédit de 1979," BibliObs, 7 February, 2018.

Afary, Janet, and Kevin B. Anderson, eds., Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226007878.001.0001

Baschet, Jérôme, Défaire la tyrannie du présent. Paris: La Découverte, 2018.

Baudrillard, Jean, The Illusion of the End. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Becchio, Giandomenica, and Giovanni Leghissa, The Origins of Neoliberalism. Insights from Economics and Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315849263

Benhabib, Seyla, "Democracy and Difference: Reflections on the Metapolitics of Lyotard and Derrida," The Journal of Political Philosophy 2:1 (1994), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.1994.tb00013.x

Berardi, Franco 'Bifo', After the Future, eds. G. Genosko and N. Thoburn. Oakland, CA and Edinburgh: A K Pr Distribution, 2011.

Berardi, Franco 'Bifo, Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility. London and New York: Verso Books, 2019.

Berman, Marshall, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air [1982]. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.

Bidet, Jacques, Foucault with Marx. London: Zed Books, 2016. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350220218

Binkley, Sam, "The Work of Neoliberal Governmentality: Temporality and Ethical Sub-stance in the Tale of Two Dads," Foucault Studies 6 (2008), 60-8. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i0.2472

Bloch, Ernst, A Philosophy of the Future [1963], ed. J. Cumming. Freiburg: Herder and Herder, 1970.

Bloch, Ernst, The Principle of Hope [1954], trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1986.

Bloch, Ernst, Heritage of Our Times. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1990.

Bonefeld, Werner, "Freedom and the Strong State: On German Ordoliberalism," New Politi-cal Economy 17:5 (2012), 633-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2012.656082

Boukalas, Christos, "No future: pre-emption, temporal sovereignty and hegemonic implo-sion: A study on the end of neoliberal time," Constellations 28:2 (2021), 252-268. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12469

Braun, Kathrin, "Biopolitics and Temporality in Arendt and Foucault," Time & Society 16:1 (2007), 5-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X07074099

Brown, Wendy, "Neo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy," in Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Brown, Wendy, "American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and DeDemocra-tization," Political Theory 34:6 (2006), 690-714. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591706293016

Brown, Wendy, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution. Princeton: Zone Books, 2017. https://doi.org/10.5380/dp.v14i1.48108

Cahill, Damiel, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings and David Primrose, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism. London: Sage, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526416001

Cavagnis, Julien, "Michel Foucault et le soulèvement iranien de 1978 : retour sur la notion de 'spiritualité politique'," Cahiers Philosophiques 130:3 (2012), 51-71. https://doi.org/10.3917/caph.130.0051

Cerny, Philip G., "In the Shadow of Ordoliberalism," European Review of International Studies 3:1 (2016), 78-92. https://doi.org/10.3224/eris.v3i1.5

Chamayou, Grégoire, The Ungovernable Society: A Genealogy of Authoritarian Liberalism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021.

Chignola, Sandro, Foucault's Politics of Philosophy. Power, Law and Subjectivity, trans. Valeria Venditti. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315182094

Christofferson, Michael S., French Intellectuals Against the Left. The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781571814289

Cremonesi, Laura, Orazio Irrera, Daniele Lorenzini and Tazzioli, Martina, eds., Foucault and the Making of Subjects. London and New York: Rowman Littlefield, 2016.

Crouch, Colin, Post-Democracy. Themes for the 21st Century. Malden, MA: Polity, 2004.

Crouch, Colin, The Strange Non-death of Neo-liberalism. Cambridge: Polity, 2011.

Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, trans. Gregory Elliott. London and New York: Verso, 2017.

Davies, William, The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competi-tion. Los Angeles and London: SAGE, 2016. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529793734

De Carolis, Massimo, Il rovescio della libertà. Tramonto del neoliberalismo e disagio della civiltà. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2017.

Debord, Guy, Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, Mich: Black & Red, 1984.

Di Chio, Sabino, Tempo Irreale. Il Restringimento Dell'orizzonte Temporale della tarda Modernita. Napoli: Liguori, 2015.

Eagleton, Terry, "The Contradictions of Postmodernism," New Literary History 28:1 (1996), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.1997.0007

Fisher, Mark, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. Winchester, UK and Washington, USA: Zero Books, 2009.

Foucault, Michel, Dits et Écrits. 1954-1988, vol. II. Paris: Gallimard, 2001, n. ed. 2017.

Foucault, Michel, Power. Essentials Works of Foucault 1954-1984, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: The New Press, 2000.

Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge, 2002.

Foucault, Michel, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College De France, 1977-78. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Foucault, Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1978-79. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man [1992]. New York, NY: Free Press, 2006.

Furet, François, Interpreting the French Revolution [1978], trans. Elborg Forster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz, Foucault in Iran. Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

Grimm, Dieter, Sovereignty: The Origin and Future of a Political and Legal Concept, trans. Belinda Sooper. New York: Columbia Scholarship Online, 2015. https://doi.org/10.7312/grim16424

Gurvitch, Georges, The Spectrum of Social Time. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1963. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3623-8

Habermas, Jürgen, Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985.

Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio, Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674038325

Hartog, François, Presentism and Experiences of Time. Regimes of Historicity [2003], trans. Saskia Brown. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.7312/columbia/9780231163767.001.0001

Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199283262.001.0001

Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991.

Hull, Gordon, "How Foucault Got Rid of (Bossy) Marxism," Critical Review 34:3-4 (2022), 372-403. https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2121516

Irrera, Orazio, "Michel Foucault - Une généalogie de la subjectivité militante," Chimères 83 (2014), 35-45. https://doi.org/10.3917/chime.083.0035

Jambet, Christian, "Retour sur l'insurrection iranienne," in Michel Foucault, eds. Philippe Artières, Jean-François Bert, Frédéric Gros and Judith Revel, 372-376. Paris: L'Herne, 2011.

Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso Books, 1992. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822378419

Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge, 2002.

Jameson, Fredric, The Seeds of Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Kalmo, Hent, and Quentin Skinner, eds., Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Fu-ture of a Contested Concept. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511675928

Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2007.

Klein, Naomi, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York NY: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Kojève, Alexandre, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spir-it [1958]. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.

Koselleck, Reinhardt, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time [1979], trans. Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Lazzarato, Maurizio, Il governo dell'uomo indebitato. Saggio sulla condizione neoliberista. Bologna: DeriveApprodi, 2013.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, "Histoire et ethnologie," Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 38:6 (1983), 1217-1231. https://doi.org/10.3406/ahess.1983.411017

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, "The Scope of Anthropology," Current Anthropology 7:2 (1966), 112-123. https://doi.org/10.1086/200687

Lilja, Mona, "The politics of time and temporality in Foucault's theorisation of resistance: ruptures, time-lags and decelerations," Journal of Political Power 11:3 (2018), 419-432. https://doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2018.1523319

Lyotard, Jean-Francois, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge [1979], trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, ed. Fredric Jameson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Mandel, Ernest, From class society to Communism: An introduction to Marxism, trans. Louisa Sadler. London: Inks Links, 1977.

Mierzejewski, Alfred C., "1957: Ludwig Erhard's Annus Terribilis," Essays in Economic and Business History 22 (2004), 17-27.

Miller, James, The Passion of Michel Foucault. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Mirowski, Philip, and Dieter Plehwe, eds., The Road from Mont Pèlerin: the Making of the Ne-oliberal Thought Collective. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674054264

Mitchell, William, and Thomas Fazi, Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World. London: Pluto Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp

Munn, Nancy D., "The Cultural Anthropology of Time: A Critical Essay," Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1992), 93-123. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.000521

Negri, Antonio, Marx and Foucault, trans. Ed Emery. Cambridge: Polity, 2017.

Niethammer, Lutz, Posthistoire. Has History Come to an End?. New York: Verso, 1992.

Oksala, Johanna, "Neoliberal Subjectivation: Between Foucault and Marx," Critical Inquiry 49:4 (2023), 581-604. https://doi.org/10.1086/725022

Peck, Jamie, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Jan. 2011, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580576.001.0001

Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674982918

Porrino, Alessio, and Alessandro Volpi, "L'orologio e il calendario: Simbologia politica del tempo a partire da Walter Benjamin," Materiali di Estetica. Terza serie 8:2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.54103/mde.i8.2.16983.

Portschy, Jürgen, "Times of power, knowledge and critique in the work of Foucault," Time & Society 29:2 (2020), 392-419. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X20911786.

Reese-Schäfer, Walter, "Michel Foucaults Interpretation des Ordoliberalismus in seinen Vorlesungen zur Gouvernementalität", in Ideengeschichte als Provokation, 197-216. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04840-0_17

Revel, Judith, Foucault avec Merleau-Ponty. Ontologie politique, présentisme et histoire. Paris: Vrin, 2015.

Revel, Judith, "Foucault, marxiste hérétique? Histoire, subjectivation et liberté," in Marx & Foucault. Lectures, usages, confrontations, eds. C. Laval, L. Paltrinieri and F. Taylan, 154-172. Paris: La Découverte, 2015. https://doi.org/10.3917/dec.laval.2015.01.0154

Ricciardi, Maurizio, "Tempo, ordine, potere. Su alcuni presupposti concettuali del programma neoliberale," Scienza & Politica. Per una storia delle dottrine 29:57 (2017). https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1825-9618/7551

Ricciardi, Maurizio, "L'Eterna Attualità dell'Ideologia tra Individuo, Storia e Società," in Storia d'Europa e del Mediterraneo. Dal Medioevo all'Età della globalizzazione, VI. L'età Con-temporranea, volume XIV, ed. G. Corni, 717 - 747. Roma: Salerno editrice, 2017.

Rodrik, Dani, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012. https://doi.org/10.1355/ae28-3k

Rosa, Hartmut, and William E. Scheuermann, High Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, And Modernity. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2009.

Roy, Claude, "Les débordements du divin," Le Monde 16 July 1979. https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1979/07/16/les-debordements-du-divin_2781201_1819218.html (accessed February 2, 2024)

Sassen, Saskia, Losing Control?: Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Schmidt, James, ed., What is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Shapiro, Stephen, "Foucault, Neoliberalism, Algorithmic Governmentality, and the Loss of Liberal Culture," in Neoliberalism and Contemporary American Literature, eds. Liam Kenne-dy and Stephen Shapiro. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2019.

Šporer, David, "Contrast and History - Michel Foucault and Neoliberalism," Zbornik radova Filozofskog fakulteta u Splitu 15 (2022), 87-100. https://doi.org/10.38003/zrffs.15.5

Srnicek, Nick, and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. London and New York: Verso Books, 2016.

Streeck, Wolfgang, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, trans. Patrick Camiller and David Fernbach, Second edition with a new preface. London and New York: Verso, 2017.

Trindade da Silva, Lucas, "Gênese da intelectualidade neoliberal segundo Michel Fou-cault," Revista Pós Ciências Sociais 16:31 (2019), 181-207. https://doi.org/10.18764/2236-9473.v16n31p181-207

Vogelmann, Frieder, "Ordoliberalism as Political Rationality in Foucault's Genealogy of Liberalism," in The Oxford Handbook of Ordoliberalism, eds. Thomas Biebricher, Peter Nedergaard, and Werner Bonefeld. (2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 Oct. 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198861201.013.37 (accessed February 2, 2024)

Volpi, Alessandro, ed., Storia, Utopia, Emancipazione. Firenze: Mimesis Edizioni, 2022.

Volpi, Alessandro, "Reich Der Freiheit o American Way of Life? Kojève e La Fine Della Storia", Dianoia. Rivista Di Filosofia 1:34 (2022), 113-28. https://doi.org/10.53148/DI202234007

Virilio, Paul, Polar Inertia. London and Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1999. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446218099

Wolin, Richard, The Seduction of Unreason. The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nie-tzsche to Postmodernism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Young, Brigitte, "Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Neoliberalism is not German Ordoliberal-ism," in The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism, eds. Damien Cahill et al., 179-189. London: SAGE, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526416001.n15

Žižek, Slavoj, Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism. London: Penguin, 2015.

Téléchargements

Publié-e

2024-09-01

Comment citer

Volpi, A., & Porrino, A. (2024). History, Markets, and Revolutions: Reviewing Foucault’s Contribution to the Analysis of Political Temporality. Foucault Studies, (36), 350–376. Consulté à l’adresse https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/view/7222

Numéro

Rubrique

Special Issue: Foucault’s Legacy in Contemporary Thinking