Introduction: Counter-Conduct

Abstract

While many on the academic left still regard the work of Michel Foucault with some measure of ambivalence, others turn to his works as a source of revitalization and renewal, and it is in this latter spirit that we offer these essays on conduct and counter-conduct. This is an effort made possible by the recent availability of English translations of Foucault's lectures, where one discovers a rich repository of categories and themes that did not make their way into his publications, such as governmentality, counter-conduct, security, and race war-ideas which, without necessarily resolving the tensions accompanying Foucault's early reception on the left, point out new pathways through his thought. We hope these essays will find their way into the interdisciplinary fields of feminist and queer theory, ethnography, post-colonial, social movements, science, legal, and cultural studies. It is there that Foucault's work is pressed hardest into service for conceptually, historically, and politically innovative studies that extend his work into new fields, to study different kinds of subjects, and of far flung relations of power and knowledge. For example, it is as the result of materials only made available through his lectures that his implicit eurocentrism, resulting in his share of overt rejection during the 1980s, was taken up again and scrutinized in a new light by post-colonial scholars of the left. By the same token, Foucault's treatment of conduct and counter-conduct merits revisiting Foucault's reception and provides new cause for pressing him into further service.