Subjection and Freedom

This chapter examines the transformation of Foucault’s view of subjectivation, subjection, and freedom that accompanied his transition away from the ultra-radical toward the pragmatic phase, resulting in a view of freedom that, while barely hinted at, is nonetheless peculiarly interesting and promising. Foucault claimed that the cognitive ability which makes individuals into ‘subjects’—self-awareness, rationality, and agency—is enabled and strictly constrained by a background of unconscious structures consisting of implicit conceptual schemes, automatisms at various levels, and frameworks of subjectivation. This background is not an original creation of the individual but is thoroughly shaped by sociocultural influences. This conception seems to rule out any possibility of individual freedom. And yet, even if in the pragmatic phase of his thought he held on to the idea of subjectivation as governed by sociocultural influences, he sought to make room for a form of freedom by distinguishing between a merely passive reception of these influences (subjection) and an active elaboration of them (freedom). The chapter reconstructs the contours of this form of freedom, referring to it as freedom-as-authorship, and shows how it is underpinned by a conception of individual creativity and cultural transmission and change well attuned to present-day naturalized accounts.