Comments on: In-dividual

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 22 May 2007 22:57:46 +0000

Tycho, perhaps I wasn’t clear (other comments suggest that I wasn’t – it’s a topic I’ll return to eventually anyway), but I certainly don’t imagine politics as “interest maximumization” or any such thing. Most incarnations of politics have very little to do with interests, which is precisely the point of some of the more interesting (if you wish) things being written in contemporary political theory – Agamben, Brown, Butler, Zizek, etc.

Furthering one’s own interests is inherently anti-political. It is, precisely, economic reasoning.

By: tycho

tycho — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:29:11 +0000

So politics are about what happens between people, and the how groups represent and further their own intersts to other groups in the persuit of power and resources. Production, means of production, etc. Or something like that. Individuals are part of this, but individuals aren’t political except as markers and signs for larger group signifiers. That’s pretty standardish marxist…

Ok, I tend to buy this defintion….

Liberal political theory is about individuals: the rights of individuals, the responsibilties of individuals, the represenation of individauls in politics.

So to submit that liberal political theory, indeed liberal politics, aren’t really political, isn’t wholy absurd.

I’m with you, what’s next? ;)

By: rob

rob — Wed, 16 May 2007 01:06:18 +0000

When you say “It’s long been noted that liberal political theory is political in name only”, are you accepting the argument that liberal political theory is political in name only, or do you mean that there are some who would want to represent “liberal political theory” in that way?

Similarly, when you write, “if politics takes the individual as the point of departure – that is, that which can (literally) not be divided or can no longer be divided – then liberal political theory is ‘always already’ a- or non-political”, is the conditional (the “if”) registering the question of whether politics does take the “the individual” (i.e. as “the individual person”) as a departure point, or is it the question of whether “the individual” does indeed amount to the “no-longer-dividable”?

I ask these questions because it would seem strange to me if a posting related to the question of Foucault’s contribution to political theory would travel in the direction of the first option in either case (i.e. accepting the argument that liberal political theory is political in name only and/or accepting the idea that the individual amounts to the “no-longer-dividable”). And if that’s indeed the direction in which you’re traveling, I would have to admit that I, too, am confused.

By: NotOften

NotOften — Mon, 14 May 2007 00:05:46 +0000

must admit, I’m confused.

By: Dividing the individual « Foucault blog

Dividing the individual « Foucault blog — Sun, 13 May 2007 18:40:58 +0000

[...] 13th, 2007 by Jeremy Craig at theoria suggests that because an individual is indivisible, and that because politics is based on divisions, then [...]