Foucault, Douglass, Fanon, and Scotus in Dialogue.: On Social Construction and Freedom (New Approaches to Religion and Power)

Through examining Douglass's and Fanon's concrete experiences of oppression, Cynthia R. Nielsen demonstrates the empirical validity of Foucault's theoretical analyses concerning power, resistance, and subject-formation. Going beyond merely confirming Foucault's insights, Douglass and Fanon expand, strengthen, and offer correctives to the emancipatory dimensions of Foucault's project. Unlike Foucault, Douglass and Fanon were not hesitant to make transhistorical judgments condemning slavery and colonization. Foucault's reticence here signals a weakness in his account of human being. This weakness sets him at cross-purposes not only with Scotus, but also with Douglass and Fanon. Scotus's anthropology provides a basis for transhistorical moral critique; thus he is a valuable dialogue partner for those concerned about social justice and human flourishing. Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction: Why These Unlikely Dialogue Partners? 10 Character Sketches: Setting the Stage 10 Chapter Sketches 11 Whose Freedom, Which Ontology? 15 1. Themes and Their Variations: Harmonizing Humans as Socially Constructed and Free? 18 Understanding Socially Constructed Subjectivities via the Construction of “Race” 18 Social Construction and the Question of Agency 24 A (Post)Modern-Premodern Dialogue 30 2. Foucault and Subjectivities 34 Sketching Foucault’s Project 34 A Decentered, Dethroned, but Still Alive and Kicking Subject 35 Foucault on Power Relations, Freedom, and Resistance 41 Intentional Agents and Nonsubjective Maneuverings 49 Resistance Is Possible, But How? Tensions in Foucault’s Account 56 3. Frederick Douglass on Power Relations and Resistance “From Below” 62 Frederick Douglass on Loss, Longing, and the Social Construction of Slave Subjectivities 62 Frederick Douglass and Panoptic Surveillance Plantation-Style 64 Douglass’s “Word” to Hegel: Resist Now; Truth, Not Labor Sets the Slave Free 66 Douglass on Improvising “School,” Writing Duels, and the Insufficiency of Mental Freedom 74 Douglass Contra So-Called American Christianity 78 Douglass’s Rhetorically Complex Use of Masculinist Tropes 80 Transgressing Naturalized Gender Tropes and Douglass “The Woman’s-Rights Man” 83 4. Fanon on Decolonizing Colonized Subjectivities and the Quest for an Historically Attuned Symphonic Humanism 90 Introducing Frantz Fanon 90 Fanon’s Schemata and the Train Episode 93 Interiorization of the White Gaze 97 Resistance through (Re)narration, Fanon’s Relation to the Négritude Movement, and Warring with Words 100 Fanon and Négritude as “Strategic Essentialism” 107 Fanon and Foucault on Humanism and Rejecting the “Blackmail” of the Enlightenment 111 5. Duns Scotus and Multidimensional Freedom 120 Scotus and the Subtleties of Freedom: Putting Ontology to Work for Emancipatory Purposes 120 The Dual Affections of the Will and Scotus’s Contribution to Natural Law Theory 128 Scotus on the Harmony, Beauty, and Consonance of a Moral Act 133 Scotus on the Injustice of Slavery and the Groundwork for Universal Human Rights 142 Metaphysical Freedom as the Condition for the Possibility of Moral and Political Freedom 147 6. Recapitulation: Humans as Socially Constructed and Free, an Ongoing Improvisation 154 Major Themes Restated: Power, Resistance, and Freedom 154 Improvising and (Re)harmonizing Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern Themes 160 Dissonance, Philosophical Differences, and Potential Reharmonizations 163 Notes 166 1. Themes and Their Variations: Harmonizing Humans as Socially Constructed and Free? 166 2. Foucault and Subjectivities 170 3. Frederick Douglass on Power Relations and Resistance “From Below” 175 4. Fanon on Decolonizing Colonized Subjectivities and the Quest for an Historically Attuned Symphonic Humanism 181 5. Duns Scotus and Multidimensional Freedom 194 6. Recapitulation: Humans as Socially Constructed and Free, an Ongoing Improvisation 205 Bibliography 208 Index 220 Nielsen offers a dialogue with Foucault, Frederick Douglass, Frantz Fanon and the Augustinian-Franciscan tradition, investigating the relation between social construction and freedom and proposing an historically friendly, ethically sensitive, and religico-philosophical model for human being and existence in a shared pluralistic world.