January 28, 2007
The Social
We have been working to specify the concept of “the social” in relationship to concepts such as biopolitics and vital systems. One approach has been to look at how various authors working in a Foucaultian tradition have used the term in recent work. What follows is a brief summary of Nikolas Rose’s discussion of the historical emergence of “the social” as a political and analytic category in his book, Powers of Freedom.
Rose’s approach is that of historical ontology - ie. looking at how the social came into being as an entity with its own positivity, in response to specific problems of government. Thus, for Rose the social is one distinctive way of problematizing collective life. And one that is now operating in relation to other ways of thinking about and intervening in collective life. Read more »
connectivity
Proposal to call a general get together to see what is going on with the lab. Wednesday 7th Feb 5pm.
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