Foucault as anti-strategic

Undermining the idea that the meaning in a political action is placed somewhere else outside the action in an instrumental reason, and that this other meaning defines the value of the action, Foucault regards himself as antistrategic.

In his own texts, though, he is using strategic in different ways. Ali Rizvi suggests three distinct meanings of strategic in Foucault’s usage:

1) Strategic as related to the space of freedom. In this sense Foucault contrasts strategic to what he calls techne.

2) Strategic in the sense of instrumentalism (explained earlier here).

3) Strategic as belonging to an ethos, certain value system. This belonging is strategic to the extent that one cannot give ultimate justification for it.

Per Herngren
2007, version 0.11

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