Derrida and Foucault: Philosophy, Politics, and Polemics (Reframing the Boundaries: Thinking the Political)

Derrida and Foucault offers a major contribution to the interpretation of these two highly influential thinkers. By tracing the moments where Derrida and Foucault’s arguments converge but also where they deviate, this book fundamentally recasts our understanding not only of these two philosophers, but of the political more broadly. Organised thematically around questions of epistemology, ethics, and politics, this is the only work to bring Derrida and Foucault’s whole oeuvres into dialogue with one another. This book frames a dialogue not only between their works of the 1960s and 1970s but also their works that deal with political questions around liberalism, capitalism and democracy. This book offers the first substantial critical assessment of Derrida and Foucault’s political work and also situates these crucial thinkers in contemporary debates in political theory. Derrida and Foucault 1 Contents 6 Preface 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Locating the Limits of Political Thought 12 Philosophy: The Limits of Critique 15 Politics: The Limits of Contingency 17 Polemics: At the Limits of Derrida and Foucault 19 Outline of Chapters 22 1 Genealogy, Ontology, and Situated Thought 28 Nietzsche, Genealogy, and Metaphysics 29 Heidegger and Situated Thought 35 From Nietzsche and Heidegger to Derrida and Foucault 42 2 Cartesian Exclusions 56 Reading the Cogito Debate: Text and History 57 Doubling the Empirico-Transcendental Double 70 Between Derrida and Foucault 77 3 The Aporia and the Problem 84 Thinking the Outside 87 The Question of the Question 91 Neither a Problem Nor an Aporia 100 4 Economies of Violence 112 Derrida’s Ethics of Alterity 113 Foucault, the Same, and the Other 119 The Same, the Other, and the Between 128 5 The Postponement of Politics 136 Destabilizing Sovereignty 137 Radical Democracy 145 The Claim to Universality 150 Revolt and Revolution 156 Conclusion 168 Bibliography 172 Index 186 About the Author 190