Recorded Lecture: Dr Johanna Oskala, “What is Political Philosophy?”

On 2 December 2010, Dr Johanna Oskala, keynote speaker for our upcoming Bodies in Movement conference, delivered this lecture at Kingston University, London, on Foucault’s series of lectures entitled ‘The Government of Self and Others’.

Closely reading Foucault’s recovery of philosophy as a game of “truth-telling” in its irreducible relationship to the practice of politics, Oskala proposes that the lectures may be read as a genealogy of paresia.

“The relationship between philosophical paresia and politics that Foucault finds from Plato’s Letter 7 is one of both distance and necessary correlation. Philosophy and politics depend on eachother but they must never coincide. Philosophy has to tell the truth in relation to politics, but it should not attempt to tell what politics has to do, “what to govern, what decisions to take, what laws to adopt or what institutions to develop”. At the same time, philosophy and politics must exist in an irreducible correlation because philosophy cannot be just logos, it has to be ergon too, it must be able to affect reality.”

Oskala’s lecture has been archived by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company, along with presentations made by Dr John Marks (Nottingham), whose current work tends towards critical implications of molecular biology, biotechnology and genetics, Dr Miguel de Beistegui and Dr Matthieu Potte Boneville.