Foucault's Political Challenge

Henrik P. Bang is Professor of Governance at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra, Australia. He publishes extensively within the fields of political participation and governance. He is most well-known for his concepts of the everyday maker and culture governance.

'Henrik Bang brings Foucault centrally into the political realities of contemporary democracy: the corruption of governments by economic power, the decline of popular trust and legitimacy, and the resulting incapacity of democratic states to address and resolve the multiple crises facing planetary survival. He shows how the large scale citizen uprisings in recent times are expressions of Foucault's essential conditions of free expression and resistance to political power. The question at the heart of Foucault's Political Challenge is whether leaders and entrenched power systems can find ways to engage their own people in an ongoing process of critical inquiry and power sharing. This book updates Foucault's life work for our times.' W. Lance Bennett, Professor of Political Science and Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle, USA 'This book offers a speculative, complex, yet optimistic, vision of the political implications of Foucault's work for democracy that stands in contrast to mainstream interpretation. As such it makes a distinctive contribution to contemporary political theory.' Mitchell Dean, Professor of Public Governance, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark 'Henrik Bang is among our most interesting political thinkers, and this book shows why. It is parrhesia in action: a bold and imaginative plea for rethinking Michel Foucault and taking seriously his thesis that blind obedience is the scourge of democratic politics.' John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Sydney, Australia

• List of Tables and FiguresPrefaceStructure of the BookPART I: THE CIRCLE OF PARRHESIA AND DEMOCRACY1. Foucault's Political Challenge 2. Political Authority at the Core of the Political 3. Foucault's Postfoundationalism PART II: PROBLEMATIZiNG MODERN SOVEREIGNTY AND DISCIPLINE4. The 'Modern' Alliance Between Science and Hierarchy Anti-Psychiatry: Critiquing the Psychiatric Regime of Truth5. Class Rule in the Name of Democracy 6. Recoding Sovereignty and Discipline 7. From Discipline to BiopowerPART III: THE POLITICAL BEYOND SOVEREIGNTY8. The Notion of Unlimited Statist Hegemony9. From Sovereignty to Security and Police10. Security and Neoliberalism 11. Why Foucault is a not a Neoliberalist Beyond Neoliberal HegemonyBibliographyIndex