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If There Is No Subject, Who Has Human Rights?

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I. What Do We Mean by “Subject”? Questioning the subject became one of the central concerns of twentieth-century philosophy. But there seems to be an obvious problem with this move when we turn to human rights. Modern ideas of freedom, responsibility, and human rights seem to require someone who possesses them. Rights belong to people; people act, choose, suffer, speak, and take responsibility for what they do. Behind these actions, we tend to imagine a stable individual: the human being as the subject of experience, activity, responsibility, and freedom. So what happens if philosophy begins to question the subject itself? The question can sound almost absurd. If there is no stable subject, who is left to have rights? If there is no fixed human essence, on what basis can we speak of universal human rights at all? This is essentially the problem put to Jacques Derrida in an interview devoted to the “deconstruction of the subject.” The interviewer asks whether the subject whose...
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Look Where the Concept Points: Foucault and the Epistemological Indicator

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  “In the history of knowledge, the notion of human nature seems to me mainly to have played the role of an epistemological indicator to designate certain types of discourse in relation to or in opposition to theology or biology or history”. — M. Foucault, The Chomsky-Foucault debate: On human nature 1. The Finger and the Moon There is an old image of someone pointing at the moon while the person being addressed keeps looking at the finger. The mistake is simple: confusing the indication with what it indicates. Something similar can happen in philosophy. We encounter a familiar term and begin treating it as though it were already a clearly defined object of thought. We ask what freedom is, what justice is, what human nature is. But perhaps the term itself is telling us where to look rather than giving us something to look at. This is one way of approaching an intriguing remark Foucault makes in his 1971 debate with Noam Chomsky. Discussing the notions of life and hum...
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What Is the Origin of an Idea? Foucault on the Creative Self

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  1. The Letter On September 13, 1971, Michel Foucault wrote to Fons Elders, who was preparing to moderate a televised debate with Noam Chomsky. His request was simple: “ I do not wish that during the television broadcast you want to devote to me, any biographical information be given any place. I consider indeed such information to have no importance for the subject matter at hand .” The request is striking. When someone is invited to appear on television, biographical information would normally seem harmless, perhaps even useful. We expect to know something about the person who is going to speak: where he comes from, what he has studied, what experiences have shaped his ideas. Biography seems to provide a natural introduction to thought. Foucault rejects precisely this assumption. But his wording is important. He does not say that biography is false, embarrassing, or private. He says that it has “no importance for the subject matter at hand.” This distinction is importa...
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Foucault and the Refusal of the Creative Self

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  Sir, I do not wish that during the television broadcast you want to devote to me, any biographical information be given any place. I consider indeed such information to have no importance for the subject matter at hand. Yours sincerely, Michel Foucault — Fons Elders, Freedom and Knowledge 1. The Question Foucault Refuses There is a revealing moment in the 1971 debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky when Fons Elders turns the discussion of creativity toward Foucault himself. Chomsky has been defending the importance of creative activity, while Foucault has questioned the tendency to explain innovation through the individual who produces it. Elders now asks what happens when Foucault himself discovers a new idea. The question is explicitly personal. Elders asks whether, when Foucault develops what he takes to be a new fundamental idea, he experiences a sense of liberation: whether, “within your own personality, creativity and freedom are working together.” ...
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