A Foucauldian Approach to International Law

A Foucauldian Approach to International Law
Author: Leonard M. Hammer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2016-03-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317188195

Foucault's challenging view of power and knowledge as the basis for interpreting the international system forms the central themes of this book. As the application of international law expands and develops this book considers how Foucault's approach may create a viable framework that is not beset by ontological issues. With International law essentially stuck within an older framework of outmoded statist approaches, and overly broad understanding of the significance of external actors such as international organizations; current interpretations are either rooted in a narrow attempt to demonstrate a functioning normative structure or interpret developments as reflective of some emerging and somewhat unwieldy ethical order. This book therefore aims to ameliorate the approaches of a number of different 'schools' within the disciplines of international law and international relations, without being wedded to a single concept. Current scholarship in international law tends to favour an unresolved critique, a utopian vision, or to refer to other disciplines like international relations without fully explaining the significance or importance of taking such a step. This book analyses a variety of problems and issues that have surfaced within the international system and provides a framework for consideration of these issues, with a view towards accounting for ongoing developments in the international arena.

Foucauldian Interpretation of Modern Law

Foucauldian Interpretation of Modern Law
Author: Martire Jacopo Martire
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-07-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1474411940

This book addresses a surprisingly overlooked Foucauldian conundrum: what is the logical relationship between modern law and power? Jacopo Martire investigates the development of modern law in conjunction with what Foucault termed biopolitical forms of power. He gives you a much-needed genealogical analysis of the modern legal phenomenon, opening new avenues for Foucauldian approaches to law.

Foucault and the Politics of Rights

Foucault and the Politics of Rights
Author: Ben Golder
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2015-10-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804796513

This book focuses on Michel Foucault's late work on rights in order to address broader questions about the politics of rights in the contemporary era. As several commentators have observed, something quite remarkable happens in this late work. In his early career, Foucault had been a great critic of the liberal discourse of rights. Suddenly, from about 1976 onward, he makes increasing appeals to rights in his philosophical writings, political statements, interviews, and journalism. He not only defends their importance; he argues for rights new and as-yet-unrecognized. Does Foucault simply revise his former positions and endorse a liberal politics of rights? Ben Golder proposes an answer to this puzzle, which is that Foucault approaches rights in a spirit of creative and critical appropriation. He uses rights strategically for a range of political purposes that cannot be reduced to a simple endorsement of political liberalism. Golder develops this interpretation of Foucault's work while analyzing its shortcomings and relating it to the approaches taken by a series of current thinkers also engaged in considering the place of rights in contemporary politics, including Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Jacques Rancière.

The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon

The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon
Author: Leonard Lawlor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1318
Release: 2014-04-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139867067

The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon is a reference tool that provides clear and incisive definitions and descriptions of all of Foucault's major terms and influences, including history, knowledge, language, philosophy and power. It also includes entries on philosophers about whom Foucault wrote and who influenced Foucault's thinking, such as Deleuze, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Canguilhem. The entries are written by scholars of Foucault from a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, gender studies, political science and history. Together, they shed light on concepts key to Foucault and to ongoing discussions of his work today.

Foucault and International Relations

Foucault and International Relations
Author: Nicholas J. Kiersey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 131798675X

The recent debate about biopolitics in International Relations (IR) theory may well prove to be one of the most provocative and rewarding engagements with the concept of power in the history of the discipline. Building on Foucault's arguments concerning the role played by the concept of security in 19th-century liberal government, numerous IR scholars are now arguing for the relevance of his theories of biopolitics and governmentality for understanding the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and broader issues of security and governance in the post 9/11 world. Conversely, others have criticized this idea. Marxist and Communitarian scholars have challenged the notion that the category of biopolitics can be 'scaled' up to the level of international relations with any analytical precision. This edited volume covers these debates in IR with a series of critical engagements with Foucault's own thought and its increasing relevance for understanding international relations in the post 9/11 world. This book was based on a special issue of Global Society.

Foucault and the Government of Disability

Foucault and the Government of Disability
Author: Shelley Lynn Tremain
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2010-02-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0472025953

Foucault and the Government of Disability is the first book-length investigation of the relevance and importance of the ideas of Michel Foucault to the field of disability studies-and vice versa. Over the last thirty years, politicized conceptions of disability have precipitated significant social change, including the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, the redesign of urban landscapes, the appearance of closed-captioning on televisions, and the growing recognition that disabled people constitute a marginalized and disenfranchised constituency. The provocative essays in this volume respond to Foucault's call to question what is regarded as natural, inevitable, ethical, and liberating, while they challenge established understandings of Foucault's analyses and offer fresh approaches to his work. The book's roster of distinguished international contributors represents a broad range of disciplines and perspectives, making this a timely and necessary addition to the burgeoning field of disability studies.

Foucault and Neoliberalism

Foucault and Neoliberalism
Author: Daniel Zamora
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2016-01-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1509501800

Michel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death, neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work on neoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus has acquired a central, even dominant position for a substantial segment of the world's intellectual left. However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism? This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures.

Foucault and the Modern International

Foucault and the Modern International
Author: Philippe Bonditti
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2017-02-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137561580

This book addresses the possibilities of analyzing the modern international through the thought of Michel Foucault. The broad range of authors brought together in this volume question four of the most self-evident characteristics of our contemporary world-'international', 'neoliberal', 'biopolitical' and 'global'- and thus fill significant gaps in both international and Foucault studies. The chapters discuss what a Foucauldian perspective does or does not offer for understanding international phenomena while also questioning many appropriations of Foucault's work. This transdisciplinary volume will serve as a reference for both scholars and students of international relations, international political sociology, international political economy, political theory/philosophy and critical theory more generally.

The Limits of International Law

The Limits of International Law
Author: Jack L. Goldsmith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2005-02-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199883378

International law is much debated and discussed, but poorly understood. Does international law matter, or do states regularly violate it with impunity? If international law is of no importance, then why do states devote so much energy to negotiating treaties and providing legal defenses for their actions? In turn, if international law does matter, why does it reflect the interests of powerful states, why does it change so often, and why are violations of international law usually not punished? In this book, Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner argue that international law matters but that it is less powerful and less significant than public officials, legal experts, and the media believe. International law, they contend, is simply a product of states pursuing their interests on the international stage. It does not pull states towards compliance contrary to their interests, and the possibilities for what it can achieve are limited. It follows that many global problems are simply unsolvable. The book has important implications for debates about the role of international law in the foreign policy of the United States and other nations. The authors see international law as an instrument for advancing national policy, but one that is precarious and delicate, constantly changing in unpredictable ways based on non-legal changes in international politics. They believe that efforts to replace international politics with international law rest on unjustified optimism about international law's past accomplishments and present capacities.

Foucault, Freedom and Sovereignty

Foucault, Freedom and Sovereignty
Author: Sergei Prozorov
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317133757

Against the prevailing interpretations which disqualify a Foucauldian approach from the discourse of freedom, this study offers a novel concept of political freedom and posits freedom as the primary axiological motif of Foucault's writing. Based on a new interpretation of the relation of Foucault's approach to the problematic of sovereignty, Sergei Prozorov both reconstructs ontology of freedom in Foucault's textual corpus and outlines the modalities of its practice in the contemporary terrain of global governance. The book critically engages with the acclaimed post-Foucauldian theories of Giorgio Agamben and Antonio Negri, thereby restoring 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 governance.