Foucault, Freedom and Sovereignty

Sergei Prozorov's engagement with Foucault is an intellectual tour de force! In developing a Foucauldian ontology of freedom that disrupts the reduction of freedom to an attribute of political order and provides an affirmation of freedom as a concrete human experience, Prozorov has provided an invaluable book for scholars and students.......which reinstates the need to reflect anew on freedom. Dr. Louiza Odysseos, University of Sussex, UK. This book presents a novel conception of political freedom developed on the basis of the work of Foucault. Against the prevailing interpretations which disqualify a Foucauldian approach from the discourse of freedom, this study posits freedom as the primary axiological motif of Foucault's writing. Prozorov reconstructs an ontology of freedom in Foucault's textual corpus AND outlines the modalities of its practice in the contemporary terrain of global governance on the basis of a new interpretation of the relation of Foucault's approach to the problematic of sovereignty. Critically engaging with acclaimed post-Foucauldian theories of Giorgio Agamben and Antonio Negri, this book restores the controversial notion of the sovereign subject to the critical discourse on global politics. As a study in political thought, this book will be suitable for students and scholars interested in the problematic of political freedom, philosophy and global governmentality. Contents: Preface; Introduction: thinking freedom freely; Part 1 Being Beside Itself: an Austere Ontology of Freedom: Unhappy positivism: is there a Foucauldian freedom?; Transcendence within immanence: Foucault's metaphysics of absence; Beyond identity: the meto-homonymy of potential being; Interlude. 'To be out of the camps': Michael K and the power of pure refusal. Part 2 Ecstatic Exodus: The Return of the Sovereign Subject: Ontological extremism: Foucault, Schmitt and sovereign freedom; Beyond the biopolitical terrain: the sovereign power of bare life; Counterproductivity: how to empty out the enemy's power; Conclusion: why want freedom?; Index. About the Author: Sergei Prozorov is Professor of International Relations in the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Politics and Social Sciences, Petrozavodsk State University, Russia.