Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought [Paperback]

Nikolas Rose (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0521659051 | ISBN-13: 978-0521659055 0

This book presents an impressive synthesis of an important and influential school of thought, derived from Foucault's writings on governmentality, which extends into new and challenging domains. Nikolas Rose ranges across the many fields on which governmentality theory has been been brought to bear, including expertise, culture and government, economic management, psychology, and community. Unusually, he suggests that freedom is not the opposite of government but one of its key inventions and most significant resources. His book will serve as an intelligent introduction to governmentality for students and scholars alike.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This provocative postmodern account accepts but `reframes' long-accepted values." Choice

Book Description

An impressive synthesis of an important and influential school of thought, derived from Foucault's writings on governmentality, which extends into new and challenging domains. Nikolas Rose ranges across the many fields on which governmentality theory has been been brought to bear, including expertise, culture and government, economic management, psychology, and community. Unusually, he suggests that freedom is not the opposite of government but one of its key inventions and most significant resources. His book will serve as an intelligent introduction to governmentality for students and scholars alike.

Product Details

• Paperback: 334 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (May 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521659051
• ISBN-13: 978-0521659055
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #388,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Building on Foucault, December 5, 2002

By 

O. Melnick (Scotland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Paperback)

Michel Foucault admitted in an interview that his writings were works of fiction, yet had a certain truth about them. Nikolas Rose's `Powers of Freedom' is far less of a fiction that anything of Foucault's, but it is similarly a search for truth. I much prefer to read Foucault, though if you are a Foucault fan you won't be disappointed with Rose. He indeed builds on Foucault's ideas. And where Foucauld tends towards nihilism and depression, Rose keeps up a spirit of optimism and hope. Both advise using thought as a weapon in the never-ending battle against those who purport to rule us in our own name and for our own good.

There are many interesting ideas in `Powers of Freedom'. I suppose the main one is that freedom is an invention of modern government. Before the modern age there was no such thing as freedom - one lived in fear of violence and intimidation from above and below. Only with the advent of the modern age with its mores of civility and self-control has sovereign power felt able to let its subjects reasonably alone.

Another idea, according to Rose, is that individuality is both an invention and a subjectivity. He develops Foucault's notion of a personal ethics and argues that our current `wars of subjectivity' emerge around the concept that `individuals can shape an autonomous identity through choices in taste, music, goods, styles and habitus outside the control of coherent discourses of civility or the technologies of political government. The politics of conduct is faced with a new set of problems: governing subject formation in this new plural field.' (page 179).