ABSTRACT: Compared with his robust critical diagnoses, Foucault's work seems to offer few resources which might be put to use toward a positive or anticipatory political project. To mobilize the ethico-political commitment to freedom implicit (and, at moments, telegraphically explicit) in his work, he is frequently read together with theorists whose objectives and proposals are overtly normative and more clearly defined. However, to limit Foucault's contribution to problematization would deprive critical theory of crucial insights. This paper develops that claim by staging a dialogue between Rahel Jaeggi's Critique of Forms of Life (2018) and Foucault's concept of counter-conduct. Building on engagements with the pragmatist tradition which already have proven generative, I submit that the concept of counter-conduct has something salutary—even necessary—to offer dialectical and pragmatist efforts at thinking through the dynamics of social and political transformation.
Dawn Herrera Helphand (Sun,) studied this question.
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