The Body Problematic

Late in life, Foucault identified with "the critical tradition of Kant," encouraging us to read both thinkers in new ways. Grounding modern knowledge in the limits of human reason engendered highly successful forms of political, social-scientific, and medical rationality as well as Kant's Copernican turn. These limits achieved a concrete, manageable form in historical structures like the asylum, prison, and the sexual or racial human body. Such institutions built upon and shaped the aesthetic judgment of those considered "normal."

Following Kant through all of Foucault's major works, this book shows how bodies functioned as "problematic objects" in which the limits of post-Enlightenment European power and discourse were imaginatively figured and unified. It suggests ways that readers in a neoliberal political order can detach from the imaginative schemes vested in their bodies and experiment normatively with their own security needs.