Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom

by Thomas Dumm

Michel Foucault has long been considered one of the most powerful critics of modern civilization. He is especially noted for his analysis of power which many readers claim is an absolute rejection of modernity as unfree. In contrast, Thomas L Dumm reads Foucault as a philosopher of freedom. Dumm shows how Foucault connects the constitution of space with various practices of freedom. Foucault, he suggests, enables us to see how contemporary liberalism′s separation of public and private spheres aims to preserve freedom but ultimately contains it. Ranging from Foucault′s earliest work to his final interviews, Dumm brings the work of Foucault′s middle period - from Discipline and Punish to the first volume of The Hist

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 1996

About the author

Thomas Dumm is William H. Hastie '25 Professor of Political Ethics at Amherst College. He is the author of My Father's House, Loneliness as a Way of Life, A Politics of the Ordinary, Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom, and Democracy and Punishment: Disciplinary Origins of the United States, and a coeditor of Performances of Violence.