Being in the time of the world: Subjectivity and politics in foucault and the feminisms

Abstract

In this text, I highlight the convergences of the feminist interpretations with Foucault’s reflections regarding his criticism of the modes of subjection promoted in modernity and the search for other possibilities of existence. His analyzes of neoliberalism and his notion of counter-conduct are useful for thinking about the feminist politics of subjectivity, which fight against normalizing processes and affirm the desire for the truth about itself. These struggles demand the courage of truth, as evidenced by the forms of exclusion, torture and death used against them historically, from the bonfire and guillotine in the past to prisons in dictatorships and to other forms of daily violence. Although neoliberalism today appropriates various feminist agendas, valuing the competitive figure of the “self-entrepreneur”, feminisms denounce these sophisticated technologies of power in their struggle for an anti-capitalist, philological and libertarian world.