British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the French Department, University of Bristol
Foucault’s Art of Listening: Revisiting the Problem of Normativity and Critique
This paper revisits the problem of norms and normativity in Foucault’s work, seeking to provide an alternative construal of his notion of critique. Drawing on a set of conceptual tools found in Georges Canguilhem’s work on medicine and the life sciences, I seek to interpret Foucault’s work as fundamentally engaged in the task of proposing what I call a pragmatics of norms, concerned with the ways in which human beings can put norms into action, thus changing the structure of their lives. This construal of Foucault’s analysis leads me to propose two possible complementary views on his notion of critique, which could still be relevant for us today: (1) the first concerned with writing a counter-history of the norm, capable of revealing the contingency of the constellations of norms that configure what we are in the present; (2) the second being a particular practice or technique of self and modality of relation to others. This attitude is marked by the development of certain political and epistemic virtues that the critic must embody in her relation to voices and struggles emerging in the social space, which I characterize as an ‘art of listening’. My hypothesis is that this concept shed light onto the normative aspect of Foucault’s genealogy and critical ethos.
Federico Testa‘s work focuses on the problem of normativity, as he seeks to provide an account of agency based on a critical philosophy of norms. With training in philosophy, social sciences, and visual arts, Testa is particularly concerned with issues related to norms and critique in different domains of experience, from politics to health, passing through artistic creation and aesthetics. His recent monograph On the Politics of the Living discusses the works of Foucault and Canguilhem, reopening the problem of life and the normative grounds of social criticism in order to reflect on biopolitical resistance. Currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bristol (UK), Testa is writing a new book project on Georges Canguilhem and politics drawing on extensive unpublished archival material. He is also interested in ancient philosophy and its modern and contemporary receptions. Previously a Postgraduate Fellow at the European University Institute (Italy), an Early Career Fellow and an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) of the University of Warwick, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at PUC-Rio (Brazil), and a Visiting Scholar at NYU, Testa has taught in different universities in Brazil, Australia, and the United Kingdom.