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Introduction
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1 Introduction Rousseau, Marx, and Foucault: Three Phases of the Radical Imagination Radicalism in politics is a perennial presence. A niggling awareness that societal relations must change, that existing affairs are onerous, incompetent, or evidently soul-destroying, has stalked human societies ever since we have become conscious of the need to organize our collective interactions. As the colors of our societies change, so too do the guises of their radical comprehension and transfiguration. The radical imagination dons all apparels; utopians, scientists, aestheticians, historians, realists, and idealists have all transacted in the radical view of political life and used these divergent perceptions of the world to further radical political claims. Each political context through history will unwittingly summon the most appropriate character to shout and push for its downfall, and so the radical political imagination moves multifariously over time, accommodating itself to its particular hour. Not only are its aims squarely concentrated upon a furious need for change, but change itself seems to be its defining attribute. Its very permanence belies its shifting nature. The radical position seems to say, “despite my ubiquity I will not be easily framed and understood with stiff perennial abstractions; no truncated concept will account for my natural desire for change; I am the force that breaks the inertia of time and drives history forward .” It is this drive that regularly transforms our social world and that has been responsible for so much of the indisputable 2 Introduction political progress and social development of modern Western societies over the last few centuries. As opposed to that other side of the political spectrum, conservatism, with its desire for preservation, stability, resolution , and incontestable order, radicalism at least understands the reality and necessity of change, overthrow, and demolition, does it not? Surely it expects and celebrates the historicity and temporality of social forms? Surely it trumps its political rival with its insistent commitment to change and revolution by thus being closer to the primary spirit of politics as flux? But what if the reverse were true? That the radical imagination springs from a perpetual and timeless source; that its insistence that the world is unstable and fluctuating only pushes it to ground its worldview more deeply in the eternal. That the outward celebration of change masks a deeper despair of its omniscient presence. What if the radical political imagination’s assumed devotion to constant transformation is in fact the surface epiphenomenon of a more amaranthine concern? And what, too, if the increased prevalence, popularity, successes, and general assent given to the radical political perspective in modern Western culture have in fact contributed to the fortifying of its abstract and ahistorical foundations? Today, do radical political desires stem from the contingent, historical needs of a community, or can a timeless, ideological structure be discerned to be the cradle from which these drives are generated? And has an abstract ideological architecture become stronger as the radical’s calls for change become more sophisticated? This study is a look at what the radical political imagination is attempting to instill: change for change’s sake or the hope for an unchanging reality. Ultimately this book will uncover that the radical mindset’s primary desire is for a changeless reality that arrests history and time, but that the illusory and unsustainable nature of this vision forces it into a secondary and contradictory effusiveness for change and unceasing historical succession. To do this I will interpret a passage of thought spanning the political undertakings of Rousseau, Marx, and Foucault, viewed as representative of three historical phases of the radical political imagination. It is an attempt to uncover the elemental, yet inventive rationale behind their work. Hopefully this will go some way to examine, the power, influence, and inevitability, as much as the dilemmas and intemperance, of their thought. At first glance, their connection is as obvious as it can be tenu- [44.203.219.117] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:47 GMT) Introduction 3 ous. One can uncomplicatedly note their collective intention of social discontent and longing for social retransformation. But the time frame between these thinkers spans over 230 years, making the assumption of an uncomplicated coherence connecting their projects a risky enterprise. Therefore, the aim of this book is not to simply examine these thinkers from this overly extensive angle of social dissatisfaction and desire for radical alteration of society (an approach far too broad and general to be intellectually useful within such a time frame), but instead to animate this...