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Relationships of freedom
Relationships of freedom
" Mirroring Foucault’s memorable construct, it becomes possible to suggest that there are relationships or at least moments in a relationship that are not about the conduct of conduct but rather about the ‘reflection of reflection’; about managing to reflect in practice one’s own reflections.
...Freedom would refer to all those human initiatives and forms of expression that strive to ‘reflect’ an individual’s own personal take or ‘reflection’ on a certain matter, regardless of their position vis-à-vis the materiality of power (as embodied in present discourse, knowledge, institutions, status, etc.).
...Speaking or acting in a way that reflects one’s own peculiar reflections is never easy or straightforward. It threatens the performer with the risk of losing herself in an action that is not fully intelligible to her or anyone else, and, in cases like parrhesia, of undermining her standing in society in some considerable way.
...A relationship of freedom requires the presence of power precisely in the same way a relationship of power requires the presence of freedom. If the exercise of power consists in directing the conduct of free individuals who could just as well act otherwise, the exercise of freedom consists in challenging the perception of powerful subjects who could just as well take their own understanding for granted " (Palacios 2018, pp.258-260)
Symbio-politics
Symbio-politics
" The reason the biopolitical appropriation of symbiotic imagery has had such a level of success comes down to its seemingly natural apolitical dynamic. Yet ‘symbiosis’, even culturally, has never implied a sense of fairness that is strict as to the equivalence of the benefits received. In everyday use, it is fair to say, a symbiosis is simply thought to be a happy discovery, a found complementarity that is positive to the extent that it creates a synergy, not an even plateau.
The symbiotic phenomenon offers the revelation that nature is actually imbalanced in the way it fosters collaboration...
Thanks to the way contemporary biology conceptualizes it [as a well-defined, first-order natural phenomenon that is, intrinsically, macro- and micro-political] my thesis is that symbiosis can now be culturally appropriated as a diagnostic tool to lead the much needed questioning of all those ‘win-win’ discourses driving social initiative in a market-driven era of post-welfarist intervention " (Palacios 2021 pp.121-122)
The politicization of humanism
The politicization of humanism
" ...it was not Jean-Jacques Rousseau but Denis Diderot who managed to convey the self-evidence of humanity as a political question for the first time and in a way that was far from inconsequential. From his authoritative editorial position, Diderot helped to make the European sense of humanity into an actual reform movement rather than just a moral value, symbol of civility, religious quality, or philosophical debate
...In the end, it is thanks to the way he daringly poses his criterion of judgment, the general will, that the concept of humanity is effectively politicized in the dual sense that it is recognized to be a universal problematic (relevant to all individuals, regardless of how reasonable, skeptical, or selfish they are) and a contested field open to inquiry as to its solvability.
...While the problem founding his radicalism is the matter of what to do in the face of a moral skeptic, his answer is not moralistic. A criterion like the general will of mankind is useful to Diderot not simply because it can tell us what is ethical but rather because it can elucidate the more difficult and intrinsically political question of what is more ethical." (Palacios 2019, pp. 97-103)
The primacy of politics (over the market)
The primacy of politics (over the market)
" The founding technical principle ruling the claims of economic science, “the invisible hand,” establishes that successful intervention in the economic domain can never be attributed to the order of things itself but is attributable to the things we order—as undetermined subjects of choice or risk-takers in the market, as critical analysts of empirically unverifiable distributive patterns in economics, and, necessarily, by extension, as deliberative authorities on economic policy-making at the level of the state.
...Acknowledging that an entrepreneurial order of things can come into existence and have a particular efficiency should not amount to acknowledging that such a hypercompetitive model is the most desirable plausible order for any economy simply because it can be accepted that “it works” or has an internal logic that makes sense without the need to rely on a hermeneutic fantasy about the harmonious essence of the economic subject.
The fact that the price-driven dynamic of competition “always works” explains why Hayek can embrace it so blindly ...And yet the market’s seemingly self-evident functionality—however partial it is—can encourage automatism and teleology in governmental thought. This is precisely the irony that Foucault captured for posterity. For if the market mechanism always works, then we cannot possibly rely on its internal logic for political decision-making, since what this means is that it works independently of and without any regard for what our own economic scenario is. " (Palacios 2021, pp. 60-64)
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