Dawn Helphand

ABSTRACT: Compared with his robust critical diagnoses, Foucault's work seems to offer few resources which might be put to use toward a positive or anticipatory political project. To mobilize the ethico-political commitment to freedom implicit (and, at moments, telegraphically explicit) in his work, he is frequently read together with theorists whose objectives and proposals are overtly normative and more clearly defined. However, to limit Foucault's contribution to problematization would deprive critical theory of crucial insights. This paper develops that claim by staging a dialogue between Rahel Jaeggi's Critique of Forms of Life (2018) and Foucault's concept of counter-conduct. Building on engagements with the pragmatist tradition which already have proven generative, I submit that the concept of counter-conduct has something salutary—even necessary—to offer dialectical and pragmatist efforts at thinking through the dynamics of social and political transformation.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and the “Society Must Be Defended” lectures (1975–1976), Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault present unexpected engagements with Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. This article contextualizes and elucidates their interpretations of Hobbes by foregrounding the genealogical aspect of their projects. Their readings of Leviathan reflect common methodological commitments and figure the distinct but related problematics which Foucault and Arendt articulate, encapsulating the differences between their influential conceptions of power. The article concludes with a reading of Hobbes’ theory of the liberty of subjects, which, while not explicitly addressed by Arendt or Foucault, lends support to their treatments of his text. Comparing their readings of Hobbes opens a potentially generative dialogue between their critiques of sovereignty and racialized state violence.