Taylor, Dianna. "Foucault's Ethos: Guide(Post) for Change."

Taylor, Dianna. "Foucault's Ethos: Guide(Post) for Change." Feminism and the Final Foucault. Eds. Dianna Taylor and Karen Vintges. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

In this chapter, Dianna Taylor asks the question of how to understand a “crisis in meaning” produced by the 911 attack in the United States that is analogous to Europe through the Second World War, and suggests that Foucault, especially with his final works on self-practices, or ethos, can serve as a “guidepost,” in Hannah Arendt’s term, for us to understand the post-911 situation, the “hybrid war-law” rhetoric of the U.S. government, and domination and possibility of resistance in general. In her analysis of the 911 rhetoric, Taylor argues that the unprecedentedness of the 911 attack created a crisis in meaning (how to make sense of it?), followed by a rejection of reality, which “paves the way for its replacement with ideology, or the reinforcement of existing ideology” that could easily become normalizing and oppressive. This explains the rhetorical phenomena such as the government’s interpretation of the attack as a war act, the analogy drawn between 911 and the Pearl Harbor, and the reaction that a swift and decisive military reaction is required. “Given the continued relevance of the complexities and dangers” of the play of ideology in the post-911 U.S., therefore, Taylor is compelled to ask “how might the current crisis in meaning be productively negotiated?” To do so, she draws on Foucault’s later work on self-practices, or ethos, “a way of life,” which is at once critical, creative, and political, to “transform” the subject and productively resist domination in the context of power relations.

Unlike Nancy Hartsock and Nancy Fraser, who criticize the Foucauldian thoughts for being unproductive in activism, Taylor views feminism “compatible with the kind of critically creative work that characterizes a Foucauldian ethos.” Her analysis of the post-911 discourse in the States shows how Foucualt's theory can be applied in understanding the power relations of a highly mediated society like ours. I agree with Taylor that instead of being only a resource we can draw on to understand power relations, Foucault actually "offers a vision of an emancipatory, practical politics that is able to function, even thrive, within a context where traditional foundations for action and thought are not longer reliable.” Also see Fraser, "From Discipline to Flexibilization? Reading Foucault in the Shadow of Globalization" and Hekman, Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault.