Situation, meaning, and improvisation: An aesthetics of existence in Dewey and Foucault

Abstract

This essay explores important intersections between the thought of John Dewey and Michel Foucault, with special attention to the distinction between emancipation versus "practices of freedom." The complex relationship between these thinkers is, at once, complementary, divergent, and overlapping. The author however stresses the way in which both Dewey and Foucault portray situated subjects as improvisational actors implicated in unique situations, the meaning of which turns on the extemporaneous exertions of these implicated agents. © Vincent Colapietro 2011.