Monday 8 March 2010

"We have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get rid of political 'double bind'[...]" (Foucault 1982: 785)

We have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get rid of political "double bind", which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures.
The conclusion would be that the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.

Excerpt from "The Subject and Power" by Michel Foucault, published in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1982), pp. 777-795, The University of Chicago Press

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