Foucault, Freedom and Sovereignty

Book excerpt: Against the prevailing interpretations which disqualify a Foucauldian approach from the discourse of freedom, this study offers a novel concept of political freedom and posits freedom as the primary axiological motif of Foucault's writing. Based on a new interpretation of the relation of Foucault's approach to the problematic of sovereignty, Sergei Prozorov both reconstructs ontology of freedom in Foucault's textual corpus and outlines the modalities of its practice in the contemporary terrain of global governance. The book critically engages with the acclaimed post-Foucauldian theories of Giorgio Agamben and Antonio Negri, thereby restoring the controversial notion of the sovereign subject to the critical discourse on global politics. As a study in political thought, this book will be suitable for students and scholars interested in the problematic of political freedom, philosophy and global governance.