Foucault and the Politics of Rights

This book focuses on Michel Foucault's late work on rights in order to address broader questions about the politics of rights in the contemporary era. As several commentators have observed, something quite remarkable happens in this late work. In his early career, Foucault had been a great critic of the liberal discourse of rights. Suddenly, from about 1976 onward, he makes increasing appeals to rights in his philosophical writings, political statements, interviews, and journalism. He not only defends their importance; he argues for rights new and as-yet-unrecognized. Does Foucault simply revise his former positions and endorse a liberal politics of rights? Ben Golder proposes an answer to this puzzle, which is that Foucault approaches rights in a spirit of creative and critical appropriation. He uses rights strategically for a range of political purposes that cannot be reduced to a simple endorsement of political liberalism. Golder develops this interpretation of Foucault's work while analyzing its shortcomings and relating it to the approaches taken by a series of current thinkers also engaged in considering the place of rights in contemporary politics, including Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Jacques Rancière.

"Ben Golder offers an invigorating new political defense of rights grounded in the works of Michel Foucault...this book offers a revitalized reading of Foucault's work in relation to rights and secondary Foucauldian scholars more generally. Foucault and the Politics of Rights is a meaningful contribution for both advocates and critics of Foucault alike due to its resistance to resort to a normative (liberal) definition of rights while still advocating that rights do something, and, accordingly, should not be overlooked by anyone in conversation with rights, politics and power. ", "I really enjoyed this book. To the Foucault scholar, it presents a series of close readings of late texts that are generous, penetrating, and persuasive. To the critical lawyer, it offers a thoughtful Foucauldian appraisal of Verges' strategy of rupture in legal practice as theorized by Emilios Christodoulidis and others. To the scholar with an interest in human rights, it puts forward an important and thorough analysis of Foucault's practice and thinking on rights, and through discussion with Foucault and other thinkers it proposes some ideas and cautions for making use of rights in political practice. Written in clear, engaging English, with a rhythm and an excitement that draws you through to the end, it is an accessible and fascinating book on subjects of wide interest to us all.", "Michel Foucault, a political actor and rights advocate? Making claims for the right to die, the rights of the governed, and rights to sexuality? This is a most unfamiliar Foucault for many, but it is the focus of Ben Golder's Foucault and the Politics of Rights. Breathing new life into somewhat stale debates about the political character of Foucault's work, Golder reveals a thinker and activist deeply committed to rights politics as well as to critiques of power and subjectivity. ... With this provocative account, Golder's work certainly deepens our understanding of Foucault's ideas in important ways. But so too does it shed light on the ongoing value of rights for contemporary politics, shaking up both the liberal faith in and the postmodern skepticism of rights in the process.", "In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Michel Foucault appealed to a truly astounding, if not dizzying, array of rights: the rights of prisoners, the right to asylum, human rights, the right to suicide, the rights of the governed, and relational rights. How are we to make sense of his appeals to these rights? What do they tell us about Foucault's commitments? How can they illuminate rights talk more generally? One of the many merits of Ben Golder's Foucault and the Politics of Rights is that it pursues these questions with an unparalleled depth, rigor, and eloquence... Golder not only masterfully distances Foucault's late rights talk from his putative embrace of liberalism, but also convincingly demonstrates that Foucault heralded a whole new praxis of rights.", "Golder is one of the most original and innovative legal theorists working in Australia. His books and numerous essays demonstrate a consistent commitment to scholarly rigour and reflection on contemporary political problems. His work encapsulates Edward Said's idea of the intellectual as someone who accepts the responsibility to raise difficult questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to reproduce them) and who is prepared to challenge conventional wisdom...Golder's book is a major intervention in Foucauldian studies and research into the legalphilosophical dimensions of rights. It deserves to be read and to be taken seriously by legal scholars, including those unfamiliar with Foucault."

Ben Golder is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, Australia.