"The Policing of Self and Others"| Foucault, Political Reason & a Critical Ontology of police

• Main Author: Jobe, Kevin Scott
• Language: EN
• Published: State University of New York at Stony Brook 2015
• Subjects: Philosophy
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3685060

<p> Situating Foucault as a philosopher of actuality, I interpret and extend Foucault's critique of police as part of a broader philosophical reflection on subjectivity, and the practices of freedom (<i>parrhesia</i>) and revolt that constitute our actuality as free beings. In the first chapter, I situate Foucault as a philosopher of actuality, understood as the thinking of the continuity of ourselves ("we") as free beings involved in struggles against authority. In the second chapter, I draw out the fundamental antagonism in Foucault's later work between pastoral modes of subjectivity and Cynic modes of subjectivity, setting up an oppositon in Foucault's account between police and the practices of <i>parrhesia.</i> In the third chapter, tracing the critique of police power to Hegel's analysis of <i>polizei, </i> I uncover the ancient roots of police in the notion of <i> politeia.</i> Through an analysis of <i>politeia</i> as origin of police, I uncover a military-pastoral technology of power, one which produces certain forms of authority and subjectivity. In the fourth chapter, I show how this political technology, developed most famously in ancient Sparta, can be traced to the formation of the American <i>politeia</i> in the early republic. By tracing this political technology to the early Republic, I seek to show how the warlike or military relations of a military-pastoral technologies are redeployed in the early American <i>politeia.</i> In the fifth chapter, I spell out how these various forms of police power converge in neoliberal governmentality in the context of policing the conduct of urban life. In conclusion, I argue that the apparatus of police in American government should be understood as a set of military-pastoral technologies that seek to establish hierarchical relations of authority-obedience. These military-pastoral technologies, I argue, should be understood in their current context as preserving the neoliberal "rule" of an American <i>politeia. </i></p>