Foucault and the Critique of Institutions (Studies of the Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium) [Hardcover]

John D. Caputo (Author, Editor), Mark Yount (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1993 | Series: Studies of the Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium

The issue of the institution is not addressed systematically anywhere in the literature on Foucault, although it is everywhere to be found in Foucault's writings. Foucault and the Critique of Institutions not only interprets the work of Foucault but also applies it to the question of the institution. Foucault is a master at analyzing the web of social relations that effectively shape the modern individual. While these social relations are smaller and finer than institutions, institutions are, by Foucault's account, saturated with such relations. This study is the first sustained account to follow up the implications of Foucault's provocative theses about power for the analysis of institutions.Foucault and the Critique of Institutions offers a set of preliminary essays that raise basic questions about the theoretical character of Foucault's thought and then several groups of other essays that go on to take up the practical issues raised by his work. Joseph Margolis and Jitendra Mohanty address one of the most complex problems posed by Foucault's texts: his status as a philosopher. Mark Poster explores the problem of the self; in Foucault, while Judith Butler focuses her searching investigation of the self on its gendered nature. Joseph Rouse examines the functioning of the natural sciences within the institutional setting of the university and the academic profession, while Chuck Dyke and Mary Schmelzer present vigorous critiques of the normalizing power of the university. Robert Moore and Mark Yount offer original studies of the implications of Foucault's work for the workplace, labor law, and affirmative action. Finally, John Caputo studies Foucault's famous history of madness and raises the question of the possibility of exercising a healing; and not merely a normalizing; power in the mental hospital and the church.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Caputo is David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and author of four books, including Radical Hermeneutics (Indiana, 1987). Mark Yount is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Joseph's University. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (June 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271008814
• ISBN-13: 978-0271008813
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,320,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John D. Caputo, the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion (Syracuse University) is a hybrid philosopher/theologian who works in the area of radical theology. Prof. Caputo is working on a theory of "theo-poetics," by which he means a poetics of the "event" harbored in the name of God, a notion that depends upon a reworking of the notions of event in Derrida and Deleuze. His past books have attempted to persuade us that hermeneutics goes all the way down ("Radical Hermeneutics"), that Derrida is a thinker to be reckoned with by theology ("The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida"), and that theology is best served by getting over its love affair with power and authority and embracing what Caputo calls, following St. Paul, "The Weakness of God." His notion of the weakness of God, an expression that needs to be interpreted carefully by following what he means by "event," is reducible neither to an orthodox notion of kenosis nor to a death of God theology (Altizer, Zizek), although it bears comparison to both. He has also addressed wider-than-academic audiences in "On Religion," "Philosophy and Theology," and "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?" and has an interest in interacting with working church groups like Ikon and the Emergent Church. He is currently working in a book on the weakness of our frail and mortal flesh, probably to be entitled "The Fate of all Flesh: A Theology of the Event, II." At Syracuse, Professor Caputo specializes in continental philosophy of religion, which means both working on radical approaches to religion and theology in the light of contemporary phenomenology, hermeneutics and deconstruction, and tracking down the traces of radical religious and theological motifs in contemporary continental philosophy.