The challenge of developing humane migration and refugee politics in Western states is far from resolved. This ongoing failure is typically attributed to the increased influence of right-wing populism and neo-fascism in Western migration politics. In this article I discuss a more radical explanation: Christoph Menke argues that political…[Read more]

In ‘Postdigital Politics’ I examine our contemporary postdigital political conjuncture. This conjuncture, I argue, springs from the crisis of representative democracy we are currently experiencing and involves a shift to more direct forms of democracy via postdigital communications. The latter is evident in the decentralised manner in which mov…[Read more]

Finally published 34 years after his death, Foucault’s book Confessions of the Flesh sheds new light on the debate about freedom and power that shaped the reception of his works. Many contributors to this debate argue that Foucault’s theory of power did not allow for freedom in the ‘genealogical phase,’ but that he corrected himself and presented…[Read more]

„Political Correctness“, „Identitätspolitik“ und „Cancel Culture“ werden heutzutage überwiegend als Waffen von Konservativen eingesetzt, um ihre Privilegien gegen emanzipative Neuregelungen zu verteidigen. Solche Neuregelungen als Einschränkung der Kunst- und Meinungsfreiheit zu kritisieren ist deshalb meist falsch. Tatsächlich tragen „Politic…[Read more]

Two fifths of Britain’s leading people were educated privately: that’s five times the amount as in the population as a whole, with almost a quarter graduating from Oxford or Cambridge. Eight private schools send more pupils to Oxbridge than the remaining 2894 state schools combined, making modern Britain one of the most unequal places in Eur…[Read more]

Vor wenigen Tagen hat das Hamburger Kabarett-Theater Schmidts Tivoli die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Komiker Kay Ray beendet, offenbar weil rassistische Witze in der Show einen zentralen Platz einnehmen. Kurz nach der Cancel-Affäre zwischen Lisa Eckhart und dem Hamburger Nochtspeicher sieht sich nun auch Ray als Opfer von „Cancel Culture“, die die Kuns…[Read more]

What about insāniyat (humanity)? Or put differently, how are morality and ethics compelled and shaped in the pahars (mountainscapes) of Kashmir? Insāniyat is an emotion and ethics that expresses interdependencies between people. Insāniyat is moral and ethical proclivity. It is not enforced by an external authority but inheres in human en…[Read more]

It becomes hard for me to think of morality as inherently an oppressive tool of the ruling class. After all, we would be hard pressed to find a communist who isn’t drawn to Marxism—or any left tendency for that matter—who doesn’t possess a strong, disciplined moral conviction that guides their actions and assists them in determining what is the…[Read more]

Foucault bildet eine zentrale Grundlage der queeren und schwulen Theorie, die sich seit den späten 1980er Jahren insbesondere in den USA entwickelt hat. Seine Macht- und Subjekttheorie ist die Basis für eine nicht- essentialistische Analyse von Sexualität und für die Kritik ihrer normierenden Wirkung, die Foucault selbst in Der Wille zum Wis…[Read more]

In der postmarxistischen politischen Philosophie wird die Veränderung gegenüber der Verstetigung analytisch und normativ bevorzugt. Deshalbleistet die postmarxistische Theorie keine realistische Analyse und normativ-differenzierende Bewertung von politischen Institutionen, insbesondere des Rechts. Der Beitrag liefert einen Ansatz, um diese L…[Read more]

Wir wissen nicht, wie eine emanzipative und kritische Institutionentheorie aussehen kann, weil wir in einem theoretischen Dilemma stecken: Traditionelle politische Theorie, von Liberalismus bis Marxismus, ist machtblind und damit unrealistisch – dies hat Foucaults Kritik gezeigt. Unrealistische Theorie kann nicht die Basis für die Konzeption gu…[Read more]

I would like to deal with the following questions: What is the reason for the failure of Western states to protect refugees and to welcome migrants? And what is an ad-equate response? One popular hypothesis is that liberalism is the problem. The most elaborate version of this hypothesis comes from Christoph Menke, who employs his radical critique…[Read more]

Thank you very much for this excellent presentation. In my comment I aim to render more explicit some fundamental tensions or contradictions between legal emancipation and queerness, which are at stake in your description of the legal frameworks for the protection of queers. It thereby reopens the question of the strategic choice between appealing…[Read more]

One of the longest lasting problems in the discussion about Foucault has been the problem of freedom. More precisely the question is: How can freedom and resistance be thought and explained in a theory of power and subjectification?
I will address this problem not by talking about Foucault himself, for example by offering a new interpretation of…[Read more]

Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Karsten Schubert liefert die erste systematische Rekonstruktion der sozialphilosophischen Debatte um Freiheit bei Foucault und eine neue Lösung für das Freiheitsproblem: Freiheit als die Fähigkeit zur reflexiven Kritik der eig…[Read more]

Foucault’s theory of power and subjectification challenges common concepts of freedom in social philosophy and expands them through the concept of ‘freedom as critique’: Freedom can be defined as the capability to critically reflect one’s own subjectification, and the conditions of possibility for this critical capacity lie in political and soc…[Read more]

Right-wing intellectuals often invoke Nietzsche’s concept of slave morality to underpin their criticism of ‘political correctness’ (‘PC’). This interconnection of Nietzsche’s slave morality and ‘PC’ criticism is correct, as a systematic analysis of their common elements shows, which leads to a new description of ‘PC’ criticism as a defense of…[Read more]

The article develops the concept of “political judgement” – a new, affirmative understanding of the phenomena which are criticized as “political correctness” by both right-wing and liberal commentators. To that end, it takes the right’s claims, that “political correctness” is slave morality in Nietzsche’s sense seriously and proposes a systematic…[Read more]

How can freedom and resistance be conceived within Foucault’s theory of power and subjectivation? This central question of the interpretation of Foucault’s multi-layered work has been widely discussed and yet not satisfactorily answered. The fact that until today there has been little clarity about the status of freedom in Foucault’s work is also…[Read more]

Présentation de l’article « Humanisme et Organisations »
par Bernard Sionneau
In Humanisme et Entreprise, numéro spécial 200/201, Octobre 1993, pp. 51-115
Près de trois décennies se sont écoulées depuis la rédaction de cet article. Accepté pour être présenté en mars 1993 au cours de la 5ème conférence de la Society for the Advancement of So…[Read more]