Amy Allen, POS, Ch. 2

1. Allen writes of Foucault: “These histories of the present are designed to lay out the contingent conditions of possibility of our modern selves” (2008, 39). Our question: do the conditions that bind us bind us with the force of necessity or with the constraint of contingency? If the latter, as the quote suggests, then in what sense can we talk of contingent conditioning? Can there be contingent conditioners? To put this question quite technically: What is the modal status of conditioners on Allen’s account of Foucault?

In our discussions we distinguished ‘modality in history’ from ‘modality in practice’. The former refers to whether or not historical conditions emerged contingently or necessarily. Clearly Foucault held that disciplinary power emerged contingently in the Classical Age. The latter (modality in practice) refers to whether or not the conditions that constrain act as constraints with the force of necessity or with the force of contingency. Our group was split on this, as an account of Foucault. The philosophical problem for those who think that conditions constrain necessarily is to explicate this ‘necessity’ without being foundationalist or metaphysical. The philosophical problem for those who think that conditions constraint contingently is to give an account of contingent conditioners.

2. To what extent is Allen’s project framed by the classical task of critical theory as responding to a normative deficit? To what extent does this classical task continue to be historically valid given changing historical circumstances (e.g., neoliberalism as our problem rather than fascism as our problem)?

Why start with Foucault and work toward Habermas, rather than start with Habermas and work toward Foucault, or start with something else? Why start with a normative deficit in order to work toward building in a contextualist account of normativity? Why not start instead with an attempt to account for the possibility of critical theory itself? Why not try to explicate the conditions of possibility of critique? A reflection point in the text for this: the understanding of the two tasks of critical theory as discussed on page 3.