Michel Foucault As "Thin" Communitarian: Difference, Community, Democracy

Michel Foucault as "Thin" Communitarian:
Difference, Community, Democracy

Mark Olssen
University of Surrey
Rather than advocating a variant of ethical dandyism revolving around

individualistic withdrawal and the aesthetic intensification of sexual plea-
sures, this article argues that Foucault’s ethical and political ouvre can best
be represented as a form of nonmonistic communitariamsm termed "thin"
communitarianism. In this model, difference and unity are paired or bal-
anced. Although difference is given greater scope than in traditional
enlightenment philosophical theorizing, the author argues that it must be
nevertheless contextualized in relation to a model of community if it is to be
coherent. Extending the argument further, he argues that a form of demo-
cratic associationism better fits the type of political community he intends. In
this sense, Foucault is best represented as a "thin" communitarian, not in the
sense of Rawls, Habermas, or the premodern notion of a community as hav-
ing a substantive common goal or unified bond (communio), but rather as a

interactive multiplicity (commercium) not ruled by any organizing or bind-
ing law or principle, and as a structure of tacit agreements, understand-
ings, and rules that represent the basis of political reason as a pragmatic
code for problem solving rather than a set of universal epistemological prin-
ciples based on truth.
The revival of the idea of community in the 1990s be seen partly as a

can
reaction to the individualizing effects of neoliberalism dominant form of

as a
state reason. Among postmodern analysts, there has been concern that commu-
nity identification should not be equated with consensual value systems or uni-
fied cultural normative arrangements. Writers such as Zygmunt Bauman
( 1991, p. 246), although seeing the revival of a &dquo;globalised community&dquo; as nec-
essary in postmodernity, stressed that such a conception should not be equated
with traditional rural communities of the past but retheorized in terms of a
&dquo;postmodernization&dquo; of culture, a conception of community that transcends
the politics of totality and nationalism. Similarly, Etzioni (1995) argued to
recover a sense of community that is relevant to contemporary conditions and
not just a return to the nostalgic traditions of some bygone era. For Etzioni
(1995, pp. 1-5), the &dquo;responsive community&dquo; is one rooted in &dquo;social virtues&dquo;
and &dquo;basic settled values.&dquo; The family and the school are the two basic institu-
tions that can cultivate the kind of citizenship required by such a community.
In his conception, Etzioni conceived of criss-crossing, overlapping communi-
Cultural Studies H Cntical Methodologies, Volume 2 Number 4, 2002 483-513
DOI: 10.1177/153270802237357
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484
ties whereby less encompassing communities nest inside more expansive ones.’
In this context, Delanty (2000) argued that such a conception of community
refers to a deterritorialized global cultural order, whereas the notion of society
refers to the sphere of institutionalized action within a national geopolitical
domain. Such conceptions of community, it can be argued, better explain than
liberal models the intersocial context within which individuals are constituted
and in terms of which they act, the relational nature of identity, as well as the
dimensions of social action embedded in notions such as responsibility, trust,
obligation, and duty.
One of the central theoretical concerns of this renewed interest concerns the
issue as to how claims for community can be rendered consistent with differ-
ence, that is, where the multiplicity of group and individual life is recognized
and where a stress on cohesion and unicity is avoided. As William Corlett
(1993) noted, rather than appeal to a golden age of the shared interests of a lost
totality, we need a stress on the idea of community without unity. Similar theses
have been argued by Craig Calhoun (1983), Maurice Blanchot (1988),
Georgio Agamben (1993), Bill Readings (1996), Michel Maffesoli (1996),
Jean-Luc Nancy (1991), and, recently, Gerard Delanty (2000). The revival of
conceptions of community has been central to the theoretical elaboration of
new models of citizenship. If modernity was constructed in the destruction of
community and the rise of the sovereign presocial individual, community has
become the key to postmodern theoretical work (Delanty, 2000, p. 116). This
renewed interest in the theory of community takes place against the backdrop
of the perceived inadequacies represented by both sides of the liberal/commu-
nitarian debate, for whereas liberals exaggerated citizenship as free and inde-
pendent and neglected elements such as trust and mutuality, communitarians,
it has been argued, overplayed the organic ties between individuals and social
forms and failed to articulate rights, freedom, and individual or group agency
as they operate in the context of community normative arrangements.2 What
was needed, clearly, was a conception of citizenship that saw it in terms of mem-
bership of a community as well as in relation to group and individual rights and

freedom.
In The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society
(1996), Michel Maffesoli suggested that mass society is giving way to the time
of the tribes, whereby emotional communities, defined by affectual and aes-
thetic criteria, are developing, characterized by unstable and open structures as
opposed to the fixed and closed totalities of earlier times. People now live, said
Maffesoli, in temporary networks or tribes organized around lifestyle or image.
Such new and different forms of community amount to the end of modernity
and introduce a new era in which communities are more open and uncon-
strained. In a similar way, Jean-Luc Nancy (1991) saw community as the basis
of all human experience and as the source of the self as a social being. Whereas a
sense of community is therefore vital to a theorization of contemporary social
processes, it is important not to hark back to a traditional conception of a

485
bounded and closed totality-a communio-for the interruption of open pro-

cesses and the imposition of moral constraints is the source of the inoperative
community, in Nancy’s view. In his book, Gerard Delanty (2000) represented

community as a &dquo;shared cultural imaginary&dquo; (p. 127) in the attempt to develop
a postmodernist discourse &dquo;beyond unity.&dquo; Following writers like Cornelius
Castoriadis, Maffesoli, and Benedict Anderson, he stressed the ability of soci-

ety to imagine itself not as a traditional bonded order but as a deterritorialized
and globalized one, in response to the needs of trust, solidarity, and autonomy,
which he saw as the core concepts of community.
In that much of the postmodern theoretical work on the topic comprised an
attempt to reconcile a conception of community with a conception of differ-
ence, and to privilege the later in relation to the former, it is left unclear in
accounts such as those of Corlett, Maffesoli, Delanty, or indeed writers like Iris
Marion Young, who will be considered below, how difference can be reconciled
in postmodern theorizing with the political strategies such as resistance and
with the conflicting political processes of democracy and law. In addition,
there is the related political issue of how differences are to be arbitrated and
resolved in situations of conflict, an issue that Habermas can claim to solve but
that postmodernists, including those mentioned above, have some difficulty
with. In relation to Delanty’s book, for instance, it is not clear how a globalized
and deterritorialized cultural imaginary can be reconciled with conflicting
community demands in relation to law and democracy. Thus, although
postmodernists conceptualize communities as unstable and open, which
respect difference, and which abandon any attempt to find a unified point of
legitimation, it is not clear how the practical problems of politics are to work
themselves out. A further example of such analysis is demonstrated by Bill
Readings’s (1996, p. 191 ) account of the postmodern university as a &dquo;commu-
nity of dissensus&dquo; where &dquo;the university will have become one place, among
others, where the attempt is made to think the social bond without resource to a
unifying idea, whether culture or the state&dquo; (cited in Delanty, 2000, p. 127).
Although this is indeed a noble sentiment, it is unclear in Readings’s account
how, at the level of practical day-to-day politics, such a conception is to oper-
ate. There is a need, then, to rescue the idea of community from postmodern
incoherence, just as there is a need to rescue it from neocommunitarian author-

itarianism or from liberal atomistic individualism to build a more viable model
of the relations between citizenship and society.
Foucault as Materialist
In this article, I want to revive the debate on difference/community in rela-

tion to the work of Michel Foucault to address the specific problems encoun-
tered in relation to politics and democracy when one of these concepts is privi-
leged. Rather than prioritize difference as opposed to community, I want to
suggest that a particular reading of Foucault’s oeuvre can be rendered consistent

486
with a form of nonmonistic communitarianism, which I will term &dquo;thin&dquo;
communitarianism. Although I will not claim in this article that Foucault actu-
ally proposed such a societal conception, I do claim that such a conception is
broadly consistent with the overall balance between individual and society that
Foucault sought to achieve. In this model, difference and unity are paired or
balanced. Although difference is given greater scope than in traditional
enlightenment philosophical theorizing, I argue that it must be nevertheless
contextualized in relation to a model of community if it is to be coherent.
Extending the argument further, I argue that a modified model of civic
associationism better fits the form of political community he intended. In this
sense, the argument I am making maintains that Foucault can be represented as
a &dquo;thin&dquo; communitarian, not in the sense of Rawls, Habermas, or the
premodern notion of a community as having a substantive common goal or

unified bond (communio) but rather as an interactive multiplicity
(commercium) not ruled by any organizing or binding law or principle, and as a
structure of tacit agreements, understandings, and rules that represent the basis
of political reason as a pragmatic code for problem solving rather than a set of
universal epistemological principles based on truth. Such a conception of the
political in Foucault also leads to a theory of democracy. Although not directly
advocated for by Foucault, such a reading, I will claim, is supported by two fac-
tors. First, I will claim that his social-historical ethics of selfhood requires it in
that a community context of some sort constitutes the basis of all human expe-
riences and, indeed, the source of all human beings’ development. Second, I
will claim that some sort of conception of democracy is politically presupposed
to enable difference to get off the ground, that is, to operate at the level of prac-
tice within the constraints of any actual community.

Considering the issue of difference/community in relation to Foucault is
also of interest in that his own theorizing works at the level of the material
rather than in relation to language, which has been a feature of much
postmodern theoretical elaboration. In Michel Foucault,: Materialism and Edu-
cation (Olssen, 1999), I represented Foucault as a materialist in relation to a
number of arguments. First, I dissociated Foucault from linguistic representa-
tions of his work, such as those of Christopher Norris (1993) or Hayden White
(1978), which represented him as part of the linguistic turn in French philoso-
phy, where &dquo;there is nothing beyond [the] prison-house of language&dquo;and where
&dquo;language (or representation) henceforth defines the limits of thought&dquo;
(Norris, 1993, p. 30), toward a conception that represents Foucault’s thought
as resting on a duality of &dquo;discursive and pre-discursive&dquo; or, in Poster’s (1984, p.
12) phrase, &dquo;discourse/practice.&dquo;In this conception, discourse is itself a mate-

rial force.
This more materialist approach also separates Foucault from the later
poststructuralists such as Derrida, Lyotard, and Lacan. Quite distinct from
Derrida’s concept of différance, for instance, which prioritized the processes of
signification as a specific linguistic thesis essential to discourse, Foucault’s was

487
a materialistic thesis about practices, structures, and discursive series and their
historical emergence. In this sense, there is something further to be learned
from a consideration of Foucault over and above the interesting arguments
made by William Corlett in his Derridean approach to the issue of community
and politics.33
With relation to Marxism, I present Foucault’s theoretical orientation as a
particular formulation of the base/superstructure model of social relations and
argue that although he clearly rejects a great deal of Marxism and moves beyond
its formulations, similar to Althusser, he retains a concept of practice and uti-
lizes a model of complex causation and determination within the social struc-
ture. Unlike Poster (1984), I do not see a radical break or alteration in
Foucault’s thought as occurring around 1968,4 but rather, with Rabinow
(1984), I maintain that
Foucault has been consistently materialist. In asking, &dquo;How does discourse func-
tion,&dquo; his aim has been to isolate techniques of power exactly in those places
where this kind of analysis is rarely done. But to achieve this, he at first overem-
phasized the inner articulations and seemingly self-enclosed nature of social sci-
entific discourses. Although Foucault has preserved the majority of his &dquo;archaeo-
logical&dquo; systematizations of the formation of concepts, objects, subjects, and
strategies of discourse in the human sciences, he has now explicitly widened his
analysis to show how these disciplines have played an effective part in a historical
field that includes other types of nondiscursive practice. (p. 10)
Foucault’s materialism can be distinguished not simply from Marxism but also
from the approaches of Nietzsche and Freud in that it rejects what Paul Ricoeur has
called the &dquo;hermeneutics of suspicion&dquo; in the particular sense employed by these
writers. The best reading by which to distinguish Foucault’s approach from these
thinkers is his article &dquo;Nietzsche, Freud, Marx&dquo; ( 1986b), where Foucault identified
Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx as characterizing the &dquo;suspicious stance&dquo; by introduc-
ing new techniques of interpretation. Here Foucault questioned whether Nietz-
sche, Freud, and Marx had not in some way multiplied the signs in the Western
world. Rather than giving new meaning to things that had no meaning, &dquo;They have
in reality changed the nature of the sign and modified the fashion in which the sign
can in general be interpreted
[modifying the] space of distribution in which signs
can be signs&dquo; (p. 2). Hence, with these three thinkers, &dquo;Interpretation has become
an infinite task.&dquo; This is because with Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx, interpretation is
preoccupied with
already present interpretation.... One sees this already in Marx, who interprets
not the history of relations of production, but a relation already offering itself as
an interpretation, since it appears as nature. Likewise, Freud interprets not signs
but interpretations.... In the same manner Nietzsche seizes interpretations that
have already seized each other. For Nietzsche there is no original signified. Words
themselves are nothing but interpretations and ultimately they signify only
...
because they are essentially nothing but interpretations. (p. 4)

488
All three thinkers then employed a suspicious mode of interpretation that ques-
tioned already accepted interpretations trading under the title of truth. Hence, in all
three thinkers, signs are revealed as masks. In Foucault’s ( 1986b) words,
Thus money functions in the way that one sees it defined in The Critique of Po Itt-
ical Economy and above all in the first volume of Capital. Thus symptoms func-
tion in Freud. And in Nietzsche, words, justice, binary classifications of Good
and Evil, and consequently signs, are masks. (p. 4)
Notwithstanding his debt to Nietzsche, in his own form of materialism

Foucault rejected the particular form of suspicion, as it characterizes these
three thinkers’ work, by which the present is understood to be a &dquo;cover-up of
truth&dquo; (class struggle, libido, anxiety) which, when unmasked, will result in lib-
eration (Dreyfus, 1987, p. xxviii). Rather, influenced by the later Heidegger, he
rejected the supposition of seeing a phenomenon like madness as a constant
underlying state waiting to be revealed or liberated, or that there was any
ahistorical structure to experience that could be liberated by simply changing
social circumstances, in preference for a more nuanced materialism that saw
the structures of experiences, and human beings as well, as constituted through
historical and social practices.’ Such a clear-cut and grounded materialism in
Foucault’s work constitutes, I will argue, an adequate foundation for a theory
of the political with respect to community and difference.
Foucault as &dquo;Thin&dquo; Communitarian
Indeed, it is this particular form of materialism that forms the necessary

basis for community that becomes the prerequisite to all subjective actions and
judgments as such phenomena require the invocation of a collective context,
that is, a context of being-in-common as the necessary basis in terms of which
group and individual self-creation takes place. And at a political level, ensuring
an equal possibility of self-creation requires in turn a democratic polity.
Although I accept responsibility for the argument advanced, and in this sense
do not claim the argument is Foucault’s, it is consistent with a particular read-
ing of Foucault and has arisen from my efforts to theorize meaningfully about
community in a way consistent with Foucault’s approach.’
Beyond these general statements, in what specific senses can Foucault be
called a communitarian thinker? And what place does difference have in the
context of such a communitarian view? The case for Foucault being consistent
with the argument for communitarianism, I will argue, depends on several
subarguments that concern
1. a
conception of the histoncal constitution of the subject;
2. a relational or dialogical conception of ethics with implications for agency, autonomy, and social
mterdependence;

489
3. a conception of liberty as nondomination or as involving an equalization of power;

4. an analysis of the emergence of liberal individualism as a form of state reason;
a critique of monistic communitananism and
5. conceptions of totality; and
6. a pragmatic political
principle that would oppose governmental policies that conflict with or
mhibit self-creation. Government is important, as Dean (1999) stated, &dquo;According to whether it
&dquo;
allows rather than inhibits the ’self directed use and development of capacities’ (p. 184).
For Foucault, the emergence of liberal individualism at the onset of modernity

involved bifurcation of individual from community, the care of the self from
a
knowledge of the self, or ethics from reason (Descartes, Kant). Its social effects were
to undermine community and promote individualizing forms of power. Rabinow
(1997) noted how Foucault lamented this development:
From Descartes to Husserl, the imperative to &dquo;know thyself’ increasingly pre-

dominated over that to &dquo;take care of thyself.&dquo; As the care of the self had tradition-
ally passed through or entailed relationships with others, this disproportionate
weighting of knowledge has contributed to the &dquo;universal unbrotherliness&dquo; that
caused Weber so much pain and which he lacked the tools to do more than to
decry. For Foucault the creation of philosophical askesis with renunciation of
family, solidarity, and care for oneself and for others-as the price for knowledge-
was one of our
biggest wrong turnings. (p. xxv)
In his analysis of the Greco Romans and Greeks, Foucault reinstated, I argue, a
form of communitarianism whereby there is a conception of community neces-
sitated by the social conditions of selfhood, and articulated, ideally, according
to the principle of difference, which operates to safeguard democratic norms
and maximize diversity in the context of a historicist and antitranscendental

conception of knowledge. Such a communitarianism is &dquo;thin&dquo; in the sense that,
contra Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx, it has no substantive common goal or bond
but comprises a minimal structure of agreements, rules, practices, and under-

standings necessitated to permit a social ontology of difference to take effect
and function. Central to representing Foucault in this way are a number of
themes that he stressed in his later works on ethics and self-creation, as well as
the broad philosophical orientation of his work. Such constitutes the basic evi-
dence for considering Foucault as a communitarian thinker in the first place.
The following sections will seek to expand briefly on each major category in
turn.
Autonomy and Freedom

A materialist notion of the self is central to Foucault’s conception of politics
and community. As he stated in his essay &dquo;On the Genealogy of Ethics&dquo; (1997),
So it is not enough to say that the subject is constituted in a symbolic system. It is

not just in the play of the symbolic that the subject is constituted. It is consti-

490
tuted in real practices-historically analyzable practices. There is a technology

of the constitution of the self, which cuts across symbolic systems while using
them. (p. 227)
Yet this materialism of the self is also, for Foucault, the basis of &dquo;ethical work&dquo;
and of liberty. Notwithstanding one’s social and historical construction, he
argued in his later works that it is always possible for the self to make something
out of what it has been made into, once it learns how to pull the strings. Hence,
Foucault theorized agency within the context of history and a certain, albeit in
his hands, untheorized notion of community.
Liberty, or freedom, is not the ahistorical or essential character of man in the
&dquo;State of Nature&dquo; but develops historically as a consequence of engagement in
history. Agency or freedom emerge with the development of thought from
interaction in history. To quote Foucault (1984a),
For a domain of action, a behaviour, to enter the field of thought, it is necessary

to have made it lose its familiarity, or to have provoked a certain number of diffi-
culties around it. These elements result from social, economic, or political pro-
cesses. But here their only role is that of castigation. They can exist and perform
their action for a very long time, before there is effective problematization by
thought. And when thought intervenes, it doesn’t assume a unique form that is
the direct result or the necessary expression of these difficulties, it is an original
or specific response-often taking many forms, sometimes even contradictory in
its different aspects. (pp. 388-389)
Hence, self-creation, which is collective and individual, is a historically learned

activity, as are problem solving and intelligence. This is the implication of the rejec-
tion of essentialism. Furthermore, Foucault (1984a) conceptualized autonomy or
freedom as an &dquo;original and specific response&dquo; (pp. 388-389) within a context of
rules. The model of causation here is one of holism/particularism, where
to a set of difficulties, several responses can be made.... But what has to be

understood is what makes them simultaneously possible: it is the point in which
their simultaneity is rooted; it is the soil that can flourish them all in their diver-
sity and sometimes in spite of their contradictions. (p. 389)
Foucault made his position vis-h-vis the freedom of the subject clear in his
interview with Noam Chomsky (Foucault & Chomsky, 1997, p. 114), where
he clarified the relation between individual conduct and social and cultural
production. As Foucault stated (1997),
One can only, in terms of language or of knowledge, produce something new by
putting into play a certain number of rules.... Thus we can roughly say that lin-
guists before Mr. Chomsky mainly insisted on the rules of construction of state-
ments and less on the innovation represented by every new statement.... And in
the history of science or in the history of thought, we place more emphasis on
individual creation, and we had kept aside and left in the shadows these commu-

491
nal general rules, which obscurely manifest themselves through every scientific
discovery, every scientific invention, and even every philosophical innovation.
(pp. 119-120)
In the interview with Chomsky, Foucault agreed that &dquo;rules and freedom are not
opposed to each other&dquo; (pp. 121-122). In fact, the point he was at pains to stress in
the interview with Chomsky was that within any system of rules, in the long run
&dquo;what is striking is the proliferation of possibilities by divergences&dquo; (pp. 121-122).
As he said,
Creativity is possible in putting into play a system of rules; it is not a mixture of

order and freedom ... where I don’t completely agree with Mr. Chomsky is when
he places the principle of these regularities, in a way, in which the interior of the
mind or of human nature. (p. 123)
Although Chomsky was interested in the &dquo;intrinsic capabilities of mind,&dquo;
Foucault was interested in explaining how infinite possibilities of application

arise from a limited number of rules that constitute the social conditions of
existence. In that Foucault sought to safeguard freedom and creativity within a
community context, his conception of freedom involved a post-Humean con-
ception of complex causality.’
Because autonomy and freedom are relational, they involve nondomination
and a certain equalization of power. This in turn involves the organization of a
complex political space, that is, one that must be politically constructed in rela-
tion to rights, capacities, and opportunities. Against contemporary liberal
political theorists, like Kymlicka, Foucault’s notion of autonomy is not a lib-
eral notion, neither is it explainable as counterfactual to the liberal notion as it
depends on a completely different order at the level of ontology. Freedom, in
this sense, is a historically and politically constructed space that is structured as
nonexclusive, democratic, decentralized, or multiple, and allowing for maxi-
mum diversity.
Ethics and Liberty
Support for Foucault as consistent with my conception of &dquo;thin&dquo; communi-
tarian is also
provided in his conception of ethics as self-creation, which also
presupposes a collective form of analysis and a communitarian context. The
question of how to conceptualize ethics and write its history led Foucault to a
study of ancient cultures in the tradition of historians of ancient thought, such
as Paul Veyne, Georges Dum6zil, Pierre Hadot, and Jean-Pierre Vernant.
Influenced centrally by Hadot, Foucault utilized the concept of philosophia
as a form of life, which required exercises aimed at realizing one’s vision of the
world and one’s conduct within it. As Arnold Davidson (1994) noted, &dquo;The
idea of philosophy as a way of life is one of the most forceful and provocative
...
directions of Foucault’s later thought&dquo; (pp. 70-71). To emphasize philosophy

492
as a &dquo;way of life&dquo; must be seen as distinct, said Davidson, from everyday life, for,
as Hadot wrote in respect to the ancients, the idea of a way of life &dquo;implies a rup-
ture with what the sceptics called bios, that is daily life.&dquo; For Foucault, &dquo;philoso-
&dquo;
phy was a spiritual exercise ... in order to learn to think differently.&dquo;

By ethics, Foucault referred not to morality in the narrow individualist sense
of the term, but rather customs and practices-what Kant meant by Sitten
(Hacking, 1986, p. 239). Hence, ethics is not intended in the Kantian sense,
said Hacking (1986), as pertaining to something &dquo;utterly internal, the private
duty of reason&dquo; (p. 239), but more in the sense of Ancient Greece where ethics
was concerned with the good life. As Foucault ( 1991 ) stated it,
The Greeks ... considered this freedom as a problem and the freedom of the indi-
vidual as an ethical problem. But ethical in the sense that Greeks could under-
stand. Ethos was the deportment and the way to behave. It was the subject’s
mode of being and a certain manner of acting visible to others. One’s ethos was
seen by his dress, by his
bearing, by his gait, by the poise with which he reacts to
events, etc. For them that is the complete expression of liberty. (p. 6)
In this, Hacking (1986) stated that Foucault reversed Kant. Kant had held that
we construct our ethical position by recourse to reason. As Hacking put it, &dquo;But
the innovation is not reason but construction&dquo; (p. 239). In other words, Kant
taught us that we make the moral law and that is what makes us moral. Foucault
incorporated this constructionist dimension into his historicism, meaning that
&dquo;morality leads away from the letter of the law of Kant, but curiously preserves
Kant’s spirit.&dquo; As Hacking concluded, &dquo;Those who criticize Foucault for not
&dquo;
giving us a place to stand might start their critique with Kant.&dquo;

Closely related to the Greek view of ethics, for Foucault, ethical action
demanded stylization, which is aesthetics of existence. In this sense, ethical
self-creation of one’s life as a work of art extended Nietzsche’s conception that
life has value as an aesthetic achievement and that one must give style to one’s
life by integrating the diffuse nature of oneself into a coherent whole. The ques-
tion of style was crucial in ancient experience: There is the stylization of one’s
relationship to oneself, the style of conduct, and the stylization of one’s rela-
tionship to others. In the Greco-Roman Empire of the 2nd and 3rd centuries,
style became thought of as a moral code (Foucault, 1989, p. 319). According to
Davidson ( 1994, pp. 70-71 ), this theme of aesthetics as involving a style of exis-
tence was another of Foucault’s central ideas in his later writings.8 &dquo;Styles of
existence&dquo; refers to how one lives a life philosophically. The problem of ethics is
in choosing a style of life. As Paul Veyne (cited in Davidson, 1994, p. 67)
noted, &dquo;Style does not mean distinction here; the word is to be taken in the
sense of the Greeks, for whom artist was first of all an artisan, and a work of art
was first of all a work.&dquo; As Davidson noted, one of Foucault’s concerns was in
the style of life of the homosexual community by which he sought to

&dquo;advance ... a homosexual askesis that would make us work on ourselves and

493
invent, I do not say discover, a manner of being that is still improbable&dquo; (p. 72).
Hence, as Davidson pointed out, the homosexual style of life involves new
forms of friendship and yields &dquo;a culture and an ethics aimed at the creation of a
homo-sexual mode of life&dquo; (p. 72).
The reference to ethics as customs and practices such as embodied in the
Greek sense of the good life, plus Foucault’s conceptions of philosophia and
styles of existence, provides support for the communitarian thesis I am advanc-
ing.’ Such a conception can also be seen in relation to the links he posited
between ethical actions, liberty, and social structure. Ethical action is not, for
Foucault, an individual affair but presupposes a certain political and social
structure with respect to liberty. For liberty or civic freedom to exist, there must
be a certain level of liberation conceived as the absence of domination. In this,

Foucault ( 1991 ) disputed the view &dquo;more or less derived from Hegel&dquo; in terms
of which &dquo;the liberty of the individual would have no importance when faced
with the noble totality of the city&dquo; (p. 5). The concern for liberty as expressed in
ancient societies-in not being a slave, for instance-was an absolutely funda-
mental theme, a basic and constant issue, during eight centuries of ancient cul-
ture. We have there an entire ethics that turned about the care of the self, pre-
mised on liberty, and which gave ancient ethics its distinctive form (p. 5).
Thus, the subject’s activity is intrinsically mediated through power that coex-
ists with freedom in that relationships of power are changeable relations that
can modify themselves. But where states of domination result in relations of
power being fixed &dquo;in such a way that they are perpetually asymmetrical [then
the] margin of liberty is extremely limited&dquo; (p. 12). Foucault gave the example
of the traditional conjugal relation in the 18th and 19th centuries:
We cannot say that there was only male power; the woman herself could do a lot
of things: be unfaithful to him, extract money from him, refuse him sexually. She
was, however, subject to a state of domination, in the measure where all that was
finally no more than a certain number of tricks which never brought about a
reversal of the situation. (p. 12)
Such states of domination entail relations of power that
instead of being variable and allowing different partners a strategy which alters
them, find themselves firmly set and congealed. When an individual or social
group manages to block the field of relations of power ... to prevent all reversibil-
ity of movement... we are facing what can be called a state of domination. (p. 3)
In such a situation, liberty is &dquo;extremely confined or limited&dquo; (p. 3) and in this

sense a certain degree of liberation is a precondition for liberty, which in turn is
a precondition for the ethical practices of the self. Such ethical practices of self
on self involve choices that are essentially moral choices, said Foucault.
The fact that liberty is political also confirms Foucault as consistent with a
particular form of communitarianism. Just as ethical work presupposes liberty,

494
it also is intrinsically political in that it involves relations of power. As Foucault

( 1991 ) explained,
It is political in the measure that non-slavery with respect to others is a political

condition: a slave has no ethics. Liberty is itself political. And then it has a politi-
cal model, in the measure where being free means not being a slave to one’s self
and to one’s appetites, which supposes that one establishes over one’s self a cer-
tain relation of domination, of mastery, which was called arche-power, author-
ity. (p. 6)
Practices of the self are political also in that they constitute relations of
power: They are ways of controlling and limiting. As such, it raises the problem
of the abuse of power, when one imposes on others &dquo;one’s whims, one’s appe-
tites, one’s desires&dquo;:
There we see the image of the tyrant or simply of the powerful and wealthy man
who takes advantage of his power and his wealth to misuse others, to impose on
them undue power. But one sees-at least that is what the Greek philosophers
say-that this man is in reality a slave to his appetites. And the good ruler is pre-
cisely the one who exercises his power correctly, i.e., by exercising at the same
time his power on himself. And it is the power over self which will regulate the
power over others ... if you care for yourself correctly, i.e., if you know ontologi-
cally what you are ... then you cannot abuse your power over others. (Foucault,
1991, p. 8)
The care posits a politically active subject acting in a commu-

of the self thus
nity, involving practices the self that include governance as well as the prob-
of
lems of practical politics. These in turn involve managerial imperatives, includ-
ing decision making; the interpretation and application of rules, gambits, and
risks; knowing when to act and when to hold back; or being able if necessary to
attack or defend. These skills required autarkeia (self-sufficiency), which per-
tained in the ancient schools to a form of internal freedom &dquo;located in the fac-
ulty of judgement, not in some psychologically thick form of introspection&dquo;
(Davidson, 1994, pp. 76-77).
Hence, the care of the self does not just refer to &dquo;attention to oneself in the
narrow sense; noris it concerned solely with the avoidance of mistakes and dan-
gers ; nor designate primarily an attitude toward one’s self or a form of
does it
awareness of self. Rather, it designates a &dquo;regulated occupation, a work with its
methods and objectives&dquo; (Foucault, 1986a, p. 50, 1997, p. 95). This work is by
its very nature political, as it contains integral to it notions concerning the
management of self and others. This is evident, said Foucault, in the meaning
of the word epimeleia and its various uses. Xenophon employed the use of the
word to designate the work of a master of the household who supervises its
farming, and it is a word also used to pay ritual homage to the dead and to the
gods. In addition, Dio of Prusa used it to refer to the activity of the sovereign
who looks after his people and leads the city-state. Also, in the comparison of

495
Plato’s Alcibiades with texts from the 1 st and 2nd centuries, Foucault pointed
out that the care of the self is related to politics, pedagogy, and self-knowledge
(1986a, p. 50, 1997, p. 95).

Foucault’s emphasis on the interdependence between self and others also
marks him as a communitarian thinker. This interdependence between self and
others was evident among the Greeks in relationship to the responsibilities of
governance in the home, of the city, or in interindividual relationships,
whether formal or based on friendship. Thus, as Foucault ( 1991 ) put it, &dquo;The
problem of relationships with others is present all along in this development of
care for sell (p. 7). In one of his last interviews, moreover, Foucault stated his
central interest in The Care of the Self ( 1986a) as being to show &dquo;how an experi-
ence is formed where the relationship to self and others is linked.&dquo; This is to say
that &dquo;care of the sell is always, at the same time, concerned with &dquo;care for oth-
ers.&dquo; Ethical practice is in this sense social and, as Foucault (1991) put it,
&dquo;Ethos implies a relation with others to the extent that care for self renders one
competent to occupy a place in the city, in the community ... whether it be to
exercise a magistracy or to have friendly relationships&dquo; (p. 7).
Foucault ( 1991 ) noted how this quality of interdependence of individual
and social relationships was the ethical imperative of Socrates. In Greek society,
he stated,
One who cared for himself correctly found himself by that very fact, in a measure
to behave correctly in relationships to others and for others. A city in which
everyone would be correctly concerned for self would be a city that would be
doing well and it would find therein the ethical principle of its stability. (p. 7)
There is a temporal and logical order in relation to self and others, however.
As Foucault (1991) stated, &dquo;One must not have the care for others precede the
care for self. The care for self takes moral precedence in the measure that the
relationship to self takes ontological precedence&dquo; (p. 7).
Against Unity and Totality

For Foucault, then, ethical self-creation takes place within some sort of
community. Such a community does not, clearly, depend on utopian or imagi-

nary models. His of
conception community is not the same as the liberal
communitarians, nor is it the same as the conceptions advanced by Hegel,

Marx, or, in contemporary debates, Habermas. In that Foucault is a communi-
tarian, it is not the sense of community that speaks to an integrated, consen-
sual, state-centered conception of political life, but rather one that is
decentered, open, and dynamic. Essentially, it is in relation to the historical
and social constitution of the self, the imperatives of ethical self-creation, and a
historicist and antitranscendental conception of truth and morality that
Foucault articulates a conception of difference whereby a community repre-

496
sents the contexualized and embedded grounds in terms of which the problems
of politics must be worked out. In this sense, the implications for politics is, I
will argue, a form of democracy, in terms of which communities must seek to
equalize power relations and work with what they have rather than pursue uto-
pian proposals. It is on this basis that Foucault gave us a criterion of critical
reflection on limits that has practical consequences for the political organiza-
tion of community.
Foucault’s (1991) opposition to Marxism, Hegelianism, the Frankfurt
School, and Habermas is at one level directed at the utopian character of these
theories. As he expressed the point in relation to Habermas,
[In Habermas’ work] there is always something which causes me a problem. It is

when he assigns a very important place to relations of communication and also to
functions that I would call &dquo;utopian.&dquo; The thought that there could be a state of
communication which would be such that the games of truth could circulate
freely, without obstacles, without constraint, and without coercive effects, seems
to me to be Utopia. It is being blind to the fact that relations of power are not
something bad in themselves, from which one must free oneself. I don’t believe
there can be a society without relations of power.... The problem is not of trying
to dissolve them in the utopia of a perfectly transparent communication, but to
give oneself the rules of law, the techniques of management, and also the ethics,
the ethos, the practice of self, which would allow these games of power to be
played with a minimum of domination. (p. 18)
For Foucault, the political is not equated with the rational as a unified con-
sensual form, for such form ignores diversity. Rather, difference implies con-
flict in practices and perspectives, which does not maintain that one way of liv-
ing is superior to another. Essentially, then, Habermas’s view ignores the reality
of diversity and conflict in preference for what is a new rationalist conception
of utopia. As with Plato or Hegel, Habermas, in asserting the intersubjective
nature of rationality, failed to respect difference. For Habermas, rather, differ-
ences are filtered through the internalized procedures of government whereby
the parts of the polis are represented as different parts of a unity. For Foucault,
the state played only a pragmatic role, not of imposing the rational on the irra-
tional but of arbitrating conflicts between different groups. In this sense,
unlike Habermas, politics is not a means of integration based on procedural
considerations. The consensus reached is not rational but functionally expedi-
ent and provisional, and continuing conflict is not a failure of communicative
rationality but an indication of diversity.

Although this entails an important theoretical point in reference to
Foucault’s rejection of theories of totality, as long as the qualifications posited
above are kept in mind, Foucault accepted that a consensus model can operate
in politics as a form of critical principle. The issue was put to him in 1983 by a
group of interviewers, including Paul Rabinow, Charles Taylor, Martin Jay,
Richard Rorty, and Leo Lowenthal:

497
Q If one can assume that the consensus model is a fictional possibility, people might nonetheless act
according to that fiction in such a way that the results might be superior to the action that would
ensue from the bleaker view of politics as essentially dommauon and
repression, so that although
m an
empirical way you may be correct and although the utopian possibility may never be
achievable, nonetheless, pragmatically, it might m some sense be better, healthier, freer, whatever
positive value one uses, if we assume that the consensus is a goal still to be sought rather than one
that we simply throw away and say it’s impossible to achieve.
M.F Yes, I thmk that is, let us say, a critical principle ...
Q. As a regulatory pnnciple?
M. F I perhaps wouldn’t say regulatory pnnciple, that’s gomg too far, because starung from the pomt
where you say regulatory pnnciple, you grant that it is indeed under its governance that the phe-
nomenon has to be organised, within limits that may be defined by expenence or the context. I
would say, rather, that it is perhaps a cntical idea to mamtam at all times: to ask oneself what pro-
poruon of nonconsensuality is implied m such a power relation, and whether that degree of
nonconsensuahry is necessary or not, and then one may question every power relation to that
extent. The farthest I would go is to say that perhaps one must not be for consensuality, but one
must be agamst nonconsensuahry. (Foucault, 1984b, p. 379)
For Foucault, the opposition to Marxism and Hegelianism is in terms of the

unitary notion of totality that seeks to explain the individual instances of a cul-
ture as decodable parts of the whole totality or system. In Thompson’s (1986)
words, such a conception seeks to explain &dquo;the principle that binds the whole,
the code that unlocks the system [so that] the elements can be explained by
deduction&dquo; (p. 106). This was the approach of Hegel, as well as Marx, which
seeks to analyze history and society as totalities, where the parts are an expres-
sion of the whole-hence, the notion of an expressive totality. It is also the
approach of Spinoza and Rousseau, where the ideal of community expresses a
longing for harmony among persons. For Foucault (1980), such an approach
represented &dquo;the Rousseauist dream&dquo; of
a transparent society, visible and legible in each of its parts, the dream of there no
longer existing any zones of darkness, zones established by the privileges of royal
power or the prerogative of some corporation, zones of disorder. It was the dream
that each individual, whatever position he occupied, might be able to see the
whole of society, that men’s hearts should communicate, their vision be unob-
structed by obstacles, and that the opinion of all reign over each. (p. 152)
In his opposition to totalizing approaches, Foucault (1972) drew a distinction

between total and general history, giving his allegiance to the latter. The central dif-
ferences between the approaches are as follows:
The project of total history is one that seeks to reconstitute the overall form of a
civilization, the principle-material or spiritual-of a society, the significance
common to all the phenomenon of a period, the law that accounts for their
cohesion.... General history on the contrary, would deploy the space of
dispersion ... it speaks of series, divisions, limits, differences of level, shifts,
chronological specificities, particular forms of rehandling, possible types of
relation.... The problem ... which defines the task of general history is to deter-

498
mine what form of relation may be legitimately described between these differ-
ent series. (pp. 9-10)
In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972, p. 114), Foucault explained this critique of

unitarism, which he saw as having implications for totalitarianism, as being a &dquo;cen-
tral theme.&dquo; His concern was to uncouple the linkage that existed within systems of
thought such as Hegelianism, as has preoccupied writers in the liberal and conti-
nental traditions of thought, between metaphysical holism and terror. By so doing,
Foucault attempted to salvage a pluralist political ontology premised on a holist
epistemology and a conception of the historical and social constitution of subjects,
both as individuals and as collectivities. Rather than seek to explain all phenomena
in relation to a single center, Foucault was interested rather to advance a polymor-
phous conception of determination to reveal the play of dependencies in the social
and historical procesS.l0 Hence, in opposition to the themes of totalizing history,
Foucault (1978) substituted what he called a differentiated analysis:
Nothing, you see, is more foreign to me than the quest for a sovereign, unique
and constraining form. I do not seek to detect, starting from diverse signs, the
unitary spirit of an epoch, the general form of its consciousness: something like a
Weltanschauung. Nor have I described either the emergence and eclipse of for-
mal structure which might reign for a time over all the manifestations of
thought: I have not written the history of a syncopated transcendental. Nor,
finally, have I described thoughts or century-old sensitivities coming to life, stut-
tering, struggling and dying out like great phantoms-ghosts playing out their
shadow theatre against the backdrop of history. I have studied, one after another,
ensembles of discourse; I have characterised them; I have defined the play of
rules, of transformations, of thresholds, of remanences. I have established and I
have described their clusters of relations. Whenever I have deemed it necessary I
have allowed systems to proliferate. (p. 10)
In opposition to totalizing models, Foucault saw his own analysis as a more

limited search for the empirical historical grounds for discursive consistency or
coherence. In his later studies, he asserted the differentiated nature of his pro-
ject through his use of concepts like &dquo;eventalization,&dquo;and argued that specific
events (évenments singuliers) cannot be integrated or decoded simply as an
application of a uniform and universal regularity. In this nonunified sense, the

analytic of discourse effects a nonunified perspective. As Foucault (1972)
explained it,
It has led the individualization of different series, which are juxtaposed to one
to
another, follow one another, overlap and intersect, without one being able to
reduce them to a linear schema. Thus, in place of the continuous chronology of
reason, which was invariably traced back to some inaccessible origin, there have
appeared scales that are sometimes very brief, distinct from one another, irreduc-
ible to a single law, scales that bear a type of history peculiar to each one, and
which cannot be reduced to the general model of a consciousness that acquires,
progresses, and remembers. (p. 8)

499
Departing from Kantian and neo-Kantian views, Foucault’s historicist con-

ception rejected all transcendent and ahistorical foundations for knowledge,
meaning also that there is no quasi-transcendent or a priori basis in language
(pace Habermas) to which a conception of reason could be linked. In this,
Foucault reinstated a view, similar in many senses to the Aristotelian notion of
phronesis, against the Kantian principle of universal reason as the basis of politi-
cal life. Phronesis pertained to ethical knowledge and implied a form of ratio-
nality specific to human practice in a community. Although it demands the
existence of practical reason, it rejected the Enlightenment concern with uni-
versal truth through science as the condition for unproblematic communica-
tion and interaction, and hence it rejected Kant and post-Kantian conceptions
in preference for more pragmatically grounded conceptions, such as those
based on Aristotle. No longer is the practical sphere subject to and subordinate
to scientific knowledge. Rather, ethical knowledge (phronesis) and theoretical
knowledge (theoria) are more adequate than the Kantian conception of judg-
ment as a universalization of reason to understand the sphere of human action.
Reconciling Difference and Community

Foucault’s rejection of Hegelianism as a form of monist communitarianism
established difference as the political principle, which ensures and safeguards
pluralism, democracy, and inclusion. For Foucault, the concept of difference
underpins his approach to the political as well as his conception of citizenship.
It is the theory of difference that established relationality and multiplicity as
fundamental social and political attributes. It is also his conception of differ-
ence that established the particular character of Foucault’s communitarianism
as &dquo;thin,&dquo; and which regulates the legitimate sphere of state and group actions
vis-h-vis individual and group discretion.

For Foucault, the articulation of the concept of difference, which stemmed
from his dependence on Neitzsche and was based on his condemnation of the
postulates of identity as initially embodied in Aristotelian logic, underpinned
his approach to the political as well as his conception of citizenship. Foucault
established difference as the central principle underpinning his objections to
prevailing theories of identity and totality. In linguistics, Saussure used a phi-
losophy of difference to explain the complexity and functioning of language
and representation. He claimed that language itself undermines and
problematizes the very identities it establishes. What difference entailed for
Foucault, as for other postmodernists, is that an object’s essential identity is
not fixed within it but is established by its relations or connections to other
objects. For Foucault, however, the process is more historical and applies not
just to language but to discourses and practices in the processes of their histori-
cal constitution. The difference that an object has to other objects in terms of
the overall matrix of relations establishes the contrasts that count in establish-

500
ing its identity. In this process, however, there is no final resolution or settle-
ment as to what an object finally is, because any attempted conclusion as to an
object’s identity or unity maintains that any apparent unity only exists through
an object’s relations to other objects. These relations are constitutive of a mul-
tiplicity revealing that any unity or essential identity is only an illusion. Hence,
it is argued that an analytic of difference consistently applied reveals the falsity
of any supposed unity or totality.
At a political level, the poststructuralist claims that the search for totality or
unity results in totalitarianism. This is because the search for unity entails a
limitation of discourse within a predefined range of possibilities, a range
defined by the supposed real nature of the totality to be discovered. Such
assumptions thus prevent freedom of expression in that the very attempt to
achieve unity in the light of a predefined totality forces a reduction and delimi-
tation of the differences that exist to a single theoretical idea or supposed mate-
rial state of the real. This for the poststructuralist implies totalitarianism in
that thought is directed along a single channel where differences and
oppositional elements are suppressed.
This conception of difference effects a certain conception of the political
latent within a possible reading of Foucault’s work,&dquo; which I am characterizing
as &dquo;thin&dquo; communitarian. Because this is not normally the way Foucault or
postmodernist conceptions are stated, it is necessary to further articulate the

justifications for such a designation. Central to my argument is that Foucault’s
notion of difference presupposes a &dquo;minimal universalism,&dquo; which in turn
necessitates a certain conception of community. To say that difference must be
underpinned by a minimal universalism, I mean a limited and conditional uni-
versalism. It is not a Kantian universalism in relation to reason but rather a
Nietzschean universalism conditional on the will of the human species to sur-
vive. To the extent that there is such a will to survive, then there are certain
implications for democratic politics and the equalization of power. My argu-
ment here is that a concordance of difference and unity is a requirement of
Foucault’s thought. Although Foucault supported a conception of the politics
and philosophy of difference in the sense that he opposed the unitaristic ten-
dencies inherent in Hegelianism, Marxism, and other Enlightenment dis-
courses as well, he did not privilege difference over unity, or to the exclusion of
unity.
This perspective, which entails that difference can only be articulated in the
context of a concept of community, stands opposed to the perspective of writ-
ers such as Iris Marion Young and others who represent difference and commu-
nity as mutually opposed categories. Although Young (1986) observed that dif-
ference presupposes equality between groups and it cannot entail &dquo;absolute
otherness&dquo; but stresses its relational character, noting that difference requires a
strong state, job protection, common schooling, specific representation for the
oppressed, and a democratic polity, she nevertheless contrasted the &dquo;politics of
difference ... instead of community as the normative ideal of political emanci-

501
pation&dquo; (p. 2). My own argument places greater emphasis on the complemen-
tary nature of difference and community. It is based on an analysis of the con-
cept of difference in Western philosophical ontology and Foucault’s
representation of difference as dialogical or relational, presupposing strategies
to equalize power relations, involving, not isolation or separateness, but an
open-ended process of negotiation and debate.

Since the time of the Greeks, and certainly in Marxism and Hegelianism,
difference has been articulated in relation to unity. Although Marxism has
always refused to make the theme of difference its organizing principle, it has
always found a place for difference in relation to unity. What the
poststructuralist correction involves, then, is altering their ontological
weightings of &dquo;unity&dquo; and &dquo;difference&dquo; within the context of the theory as a
whole. As Milton Fisk (1993) observed,
The materialist interpretation of history is certainly in the tradition of the theme

of difference-in-unity, for it attempts to organise the different aspects of a society
around its economy considered as a unity.... Post Marxists of the
poststructuralist sort claim that privileging gets us into difficulty since it is
inherently reductionist of differences. (p. 326)
My central argument here-that Foucault must be adjudged a &dquo;thin&dquo; commu-

nitarian-relates to mysubarguments that difference cannot constitute a
structuring ontological principle on its own but must always be seen in relation
to unity. Although difference will affect the sort of communitarianism that
Foucault could be adjudged as subscribing to, it nevertheless constitutes the
ordering principle of a community. The central point here is that, as Fisk
(1993, p. 324) observed, the ontological postulates of difference and unity
have to be kept in balance, which is to say that the principle of difference can-
not plausibly explain social relations on its own. This is why in classical philos-
ophy the theme of otherness, which underpins difference, was always paired
with that of unity or identity. To try to make one’s philosophical orientation
work solely on the grounds of difference neglects equally strong arguments for
unity. For to try to define objects solely in terms of differences neglects equally
compelling reasons for considering them as objects of certain kinds. Similarly,
if, as the poststructuralist insists, a final synthesis is not possible to achieve, this
does not mean, nor should it entail, that all unities or identities simply collapse
into differences, or that social life is simply a process of endless, vicious regress.
In short, as Fisk (1993, p. 325) argued, unless the theory of difference is to
result in incoherence, there must be a minimal kind of unity. This is perhaps
the major reason for considering Foucault as a &dquo;thin&dquo; communitarian.
To represent this argument in political terms, it can be said that pushing the
principle of difference too far results in contradiction. Although Foucault
wanted to celebrate multiplicity and a decentered polis, the fundamental ambi-
guity resulted from the fact that respecting the autonomy of different groups-

502
whether based on religion, race, gender, or ethnicity-is only possible within

certain bounds unless difference is to be elevated as a new universal. This para-
doxically lets Kant in through the back door: &dquo;Act always so as to respect the
difference of the other.&dquo;
Todd May (1994) developed a similar argument in relation to Deleuze,
which applied equally well to Foucault. As he expressed the point,
Thus Deleuze asks us to think difference as constitutive all the way, and of unity
as a
product of the play of difference. But if difference is to be thought of as con-
stitutive, this is in order to rid philosophy not of unities, but of unifying forces or
principles that either preclude difference or relegate it to a negative phenome-
non. (pp. 39-40)
Part of the point here is that difference cannot be reduced to a logic outside of his-
tory or injected with metaphysical serum. Thus, for Foucault, neither difference
nor unity can be seen as primary. As May ( 1994) put the point,
If meaning were merely the product of difference, there would be no meaning,

only noises unrelated to each other. In order for meaning to occur, identity must
exist within difference, or better, each must exist within the other. To speak with
Saussure, if language is a system of differences, it is not only differences but sys-
tem as well; and system carries with it the thought of identity... to posit a con-
cept whose function is to be given primacy to difference is to violate the neces-

sary chiasmic relationship between unity and difference. (pp. 46-47)
Like Deleuze, Foucault utilized difference to create a context to shape a way of

thinking for a general perspective. Central here is how the concept of difference
is to function, and for Foucault the principle functioned to undermine the
unity of being that has reigned supreme from Plato to Hegel, to introduce a
new way of
thinking philosophically. In Foucault’s pluralism, systems were not
unities but compositions of series, each defined on the basis of difference. Like
Deleuze, too, Foucault wanted us to see difference as constitutive of reality and
unities as the outcome or, in Spinoza’s sense, the expression of such a process.
Quite distinct from Derrida’s concept of différance, which involves what is
essentially a theory of discourse characterized by a linguistic logic, Foucault’s
project was a materialistic thesis about practices, structures, and series and
their historical emergence. Such a conception also expresses an &dquo;internalist&dquo;
view of history. There is no guiding principle underlying structures or their
emergence. Difference then is historical, and resists the univocity of being, as
well as transcendence in all its forms, whether God, cogito, forms, or difference.
There is nothing outside of history.
Within Foucault’s writing, then, unity and difference represent a balance of
forces in the search for any ethics or perspective. In this sense, Foucault is a
holist, as is Deleuze (see May, 1994, p. 44). As Arnold Davidson ( 1997) noted,
this is explicit in relation to Foucault’s dependence on structural linguistics as

503
developed in his lectures published in Dits et Écrits (Foucault, 1994a, 1994b,

1994c). Traditionally, the rationality of analytic reason, he said, has been con-
cerned with causality. In structural linguistics, however, the concern is not with
causality but in revealing multiple relations that Foucault ( 1994b) called &dquo;logi-
cal relations&dquo; (p. 824). Although it is possible to formalize one’s treatment of
the analysis of relations, it is, said Foucault, the discovery of the &dquo;presence of a
logic that is not the logic of causal determinism that is currently at the heart of
philosophical and theoretical debates&dquo; (p. 824). Foucault’s reliance on the
model of structural linguistics provided him with a method that avoids meth-
odological individualism and being trapped by a concern with causalism.
Structural linguistics is concerned with &dquo;the systematic sets of relations among
elements&dquo; (Davidson, 1997, p. 8), and it functioned for Foucault as a model to
enable him to study social reality as a logical structure, or set of logical rela-
tions, revealing relations that are not transparent to consciousness. The meth-
ods of structural linguistics also enabled Foucault to analyze change. For just as
linguistics undertakes synchronic analysis seeking to trace the necessary condi-
tions for an element within the structure of language to undergo change, a simi-
lar synchronic analysis applied to social life asks the question, &dquo;in order for a
change to occur what other changes must also take place in the overall texture
of the social configuration?&dquo; (Foucault, 1994b, p. 827). Hence, Foucault
sought to identify logical relations where none had previously been thought to
exist or where previously one had searched for causal relations. This form of
analysis became for Foucault a method of analyzing previously invisible deter-
minations (see Davidson, 1997, pp. 1-20). Holism in this model is defined not
in relation to closure, but in reference to the relationality of elements within a
structure. According to Davidson (1997), it is through such methodological
strategies that Foucault proceeded to advance a nonreductive, holist analysis of

social life. As he put it,
This kind of analysis is characterised, first, by anti-atomism, by the idea that we

should not analyse single or individual elements in isolation but that one must
look at the systematic relations among elements; second, it is characterised by
the idea that the relations between elements are coherent and transformable, that
is, that the elements form a structure. (p. 11)
Foucault, Community, Democracy

I would now like to argue for a particular form of community that is consis-
tent with Foucault’s concepts in ethics, totality, and difference. Centrally, in

this regard, arguments for radical difference or pluralism cannot answer the
objection that it is simply not possible in practice within any territory to allow
unlimited difference. The real problem is power and how to share it, that is,
which practices can be respected/tolerated in relation to difference, and which
must be part of the common? Whose law should prevail? What when the prac-

504
tices of one group interfere with the lives of another group? What property
codes and entitlements apply? What sanctions need to be enforced against
groups that do not support an ethics of difference? This issue is between group
and individual practices, on one hand, and community requirements on the
other hand. Hence, whereas many postmodernist writers seem to manifest a
fear of community such that they see a principle of difference as adequate alone
to constitute the structuring principle of the polis, at a political level this must
be squared with the issue of democracy if it is to function as a principle at all.
One writer who has realized this is Honi Fern Haber. In her book Beyond
Postmodern Politics (1994), she argued that theories of difference if pushed too
far become incoherent in relation to politics and culture for they deny unity,
community, or any single standard in ethics at all, leaving, by implication, only
a level playing field of market exchanges as the de facto context in terms of
which difference actually operates. Although a form of civic associationism can

be maintained that respects different group lifestyles and values, there must be
some common (i.e., shared) intergroup, between-individual commitments (if
nothing else at a minimum to the procedural rules of the game) that permit a
cultural ethics of difference to be maintained at all. In this sense, Foucault’s
conception of ethical self-creation must entail a minimal universalism pre-
mised on a complex and sophisticated conception of the good. Although
Foucault himself never articulated such a principle at the level of the political,
the overriding communitarianism of his approach to ethics and self-creation
means that such a push is warranted. For while difference can be respected for
groups and individuals, such a concept itself implies limits in relation to the
basis on which such a complex political ideal itself rests. Although it has some
applicability in relation to lifestyles and values, it is not possible to actually
respect different actual policies as to how politics should be conducted, or as to
how the state should be run, just as it is not possible to tolerate lifestyles that are
themselves intolerant and are not in turn committed to the same ground rules.
Hence, the principle of difference itself must entail a commitment to certain
nonnegotiable universal values if it can function as a principle at all. Expressed
positively, as a series of critical reflections on limits, a certain political ordering
is required if the development of capacities is to be realizable and if different
group and individual lifestyles and cultural ends are to be respected. Put in dif-
ferent terms, if it is to be a minimal universalism, the good must have a &dquo;smart
button&dquo; for, while giving pride of place to difference and pluralism, it must
itself be dogmatically committed to those democratic values that are intolerant
of styles of life not themselves respectful of the principle. What is necessarily a
part of the common and what is optionally different must be negotiated
substantively for each domain of behavior or action (sexuality, religion, child-
rearing practices) for each different social and historical context. In this sense,
democratic values, defined as those values that protect the spaces in terms of
which self-creation can take place, constitute the essential basis of difference
and, at a pragmatic level, its necessary foundation.

505
What form of association could accommodate a form of community that is

consistent with Foucault’s theorizing? Or, put slightly differently, what form of
political community would he commit himself to if he were able to address the
issue? There are several competing notions of the political that would claim to
allow for difference.
Liberal theory has traditionally claimed to allow for difference in terms of an
order of rights founded on a rational idea of justice, as in that advanced by
Rawls, for instance. Problems within liberal theory related to the nature of the
self as well as the nature of rationality make liberalism an unsuitable contender,
however. In addition, because freedom and autonomy are politically con-
structed spaces, the liberalist presupposition, a presupposition present for
instance in writers like Kymlicka, that collective and institutional practices and
organizations constitute a &dquo;constraint&dquo; on freedom, or are represented as in
some way &dquo;being opposed to&dquo; the freedom of individuals, dissolves. In Liberal-
ism, Community and Culture ( 1989), Kymlicka defended the traditional liberal
emphases on negative freedom and noninterference by the state as opposed to
seeing people embedded in the situatedness of community structures that pro-
vide a context through which issues can be resolved and the good for all pur-
sued. For Kymlicka, it is for individuals to weigh competing conceptions of the
good, whereas for Foucault the processes are more collective, or group based,
and contextualized. Although, like liberalism, Foucault’s conception of cri-
tique encourages reflection of the limits and functions of the reason of state,
while respecting difference, a Foucauldian approach might also instantiate col-
lective determinations of what is good (i.e., of shared ends and moral patterns).
Unlike liberals, it is not just a matter of individuals deciding on what to do, for
in many cases minority rights cannot simply be reduced to issues concerning
individuals. For instance, certain minority rights may need protecting and
assisting, which may indeed, after discussion and due process, involve abridg-
ing the liberties of certain groups or individuals. The state is further involved in
rendering collective decisions authoritative and in enforcing the conditions of
difference. Here again, it is not a question of minimal state involvement, for
whether it provides a certain policy or does not (e.g., transport, smoking), it is
still substantively involved in public life. Not to act or provide may simply be to
side with dominant interests. For Foucault, indeed, collective and institutional
practices, properly arranged, become freedom’s necessary basis, that is, its
presupposition.
Just as liberal
theory cannot serve Foucault’s purpose, premodern or
Hegelian conceptions are also inadequate, conceiving the individual as simply
a shadow within the noble
totality of the city, for reasons already discussed.
Similarly, agonal theories of the sort associated with William Connolly ( 1991 ),
or the communitarianism of Habermas (1984, 1987), which perceived the pos-
sibility of &dquo;noise-free&dquo; communication in undistorted contexts, are also unsuit-

able in that their overarching theory of rational communication denies the
grounds in terms of which difference originates and is articulated.

506
The type of communitarianism that I believe sustains an ethical principle of

difference most appropriate for Foucault represents a form of associationism
best illustrated in the political philosophy of the Greeks and the Greco
Romans. It is of interest that Chantal Mouffe also argued that a similar concept
of the political, in her case a form of &dquo;civil associationism&dquo; developing in a tra-
dition starting with Hobbes, is best fitted to the accommodation of diversity in
her book The Return of the Political (1993).
In her own book, Mouffe (1993) likened civil associationism to Oakeshott’s
distinction between societas and universitas. Whereas universitas pertains to a
tightly knit community with a common purpose, societas is marked by the fact
that it does not presuppose a common or shared purpose. Rather, what is
entailed is a purely procedural conception of community as requiring a &dquo;spe-
cific language of civil intercourse&dquo; referred to by Oakeshott as res publica. The
basis of this type of community is procedural rules; hence,
This modern form of political community is held together not by a substantive

idea of the common good but by a common bond, a public concern. It is there-
fore a community without a definite shape or a definite identity and in continu-
ous re-enactment. Such a conception is clearly different from the premodern
idea of the political community [namely, held together by a common purpose, as
provided by religion], but it is also different from the liberal ideal of the political
association. For liberalism also sees political association as a form of purposive
association, of enterprise, except that in its case the aim is an instrumental one:
the promotion of common interest. (p. 67)
Under this form of community, the bonds that unite are not the sharing of a
single substantive idea of the common good, and thus it constitutes a frame-
work that regulates and makes room for liberty. It is a form of association that
can accommodate relative strangers and requires a minimum of participation
to the extent that specific interests or goals collide. Thus, in civil
associationism, said Mouffe, diversity is accommodated by a nonpurposive

framework of formal rules.
As Mouffe represented her position, however, it is in the tradition of agonal
conflict resolution and must be regarded as an excessively narrow proceduralist
position. A return to reinstate aspects of Greek thinking, in the works of Aris-
totle, and in the Greco-Roman writing of the 1 st and 2nd centuries encom-
passed a broader sense of community, allowing for the development of proce-
dural structures to facilitate friendships, sexual relations, and different styles of
life. In this sense, if we can borrow a conceptual designation made by liberal-
ism, it incorporates positive and negative dimensions of state, but where state
action is not confined within a purely procedural mode of governance and rule
but actively pursues substantive ends in the interests of difference within com-
munity. Central to the thesis here is that a politics of difference presupposes a
space for government as the guarantor and enforcer of the rights of difference,
most notably ethical self-creation and the development of capabilities. If

507
indeed difference is to work at all, some mechanism to ensure that all groups
abide by the norms and procedures of conflict resolution is necessary. Among
all the differences, too, there will be certain common ground based on overlap-
ping interests. The fact that all groups must respect the norms of difference
constitutes one set of common concerns. In addition, certain groups or catego-
ries might warrant preferential treatment, on the grounds of protection or sup-
port, which also constitute contexts in terms of which the state may play a sub-
stantive role. What emerges, then, is a conception of the political that can be
characterized as &dquo;thin&dquo; communitarianism, defined in a sense that establishes a
noncoercive means of allowing for the diversity of contemporary Western
societies.
Society, for Foucault, like Oakeshott, was certainly in one important sense a
societas or cive-a form of civil association adequate to define community for
modern democratic conditions, and a mode of association that makes room for
group differences and individual liberty. Unlike liberalism and Kantianism,
which give priority to the right over the good, Foucault’s community was in
fact conceived in Hegelian terms, with the exception that difference is now
privileged within unity, thus enabling a sittlich-type relation, one based on plu-
ralism and liberty, to emerge. Unlike Habermas, Foucault’s conception did not
stress shared normative codes or see community as integrated around rules of
discourse and forms of argumentation rooted in communicative codes of the

public sphere. Whereas, like Habermas, Foucault’s community would avoid
uncritical or unreflexive appeal to tradition or to established cultural codes,
unlike Habermas he did not define community around integrated normative
principles, for such a system runs the risk of being too decontextualized and
elevates consensus as an exclusive regulatory principle.
Within Foucault’s conception, importantly, are various senses of the politi-
cal. The negative notion accommodated the insights of writers such as Karl
Marx, and later Carl Schmidt, which depicted the political in terms of conflict
and division, while the positive notion conceived of the possibility of the man-
&dquo;
agement of difference through ethical self-creation and &dquo;the care of the self.&dquo;
Although the state’s role must give a preeminent respect to difference, it is not
simply necessarily a neutralist vehicle for the arbitration and resolution of dis-
cord. Rather, the state’s role is substantive of the common conditions for self-
creation, and with respect to the shared interests of different groups within the
polis. Any unity in the polis is seen simply as the product of a falsely normalized
hegemony, however, for the polis in this model represented, for Foucault, as for
other postmodern theorists of community, a deterritorialized and global cul-
tural order. It is the centrality of the requirement for openness and the avoid-
ance of closure at the social-institutional level that presupposed the need for
democratic institutions. In other words, to operate community in accord with

the principle of difference requires a certain societal public sphere, as well as
institutions of democracy, which link community to the social. &dquo;Thin com-
munitarianism&dquo; thus constitutes a form of decentralized republican democracy

508
that limits the scope of state administration, and specifies its form, without
diminishing social provision. As a civic form, it enables the operation of a mar-
ket order regulated by a network of coordinative institutions and agencies.
Foucault’s community is not, then, simply an aesthetic conception devoid of
politics. Foucault’s political writings can thus be represented to support, I
claim, a model of radical democratic citizenship, with citizenship defined not
on the basis of naturally established rights but as the articulating principle
through which subject positions in a community are defined and through

which self-creation can be realized.
Conclusion
I have argued in this article that a politics of difference/community is not

simply compatible with democratic politics but can be represented as positively
aligned and supported by it. Although the specificity of democratic procedures
will be historically contingent, there is potentially a long inventory of proce-
dures and structures, including equal, universal suffrage; majority rule; minor-
ity rights; the rule of law; and constitutional guarantees of freedom, including
the liberties of assembly and expression. The fact that democratic institutions
such as free elections, competitive party systems, or written constitutions have
emerged historically does not necessarily mean that they will be retained
unadapted. Whether they are would be decided anew in each era. Even if
retained or improved, however, such procedures would not be, for Foucault,
one suspects, an automatic protection against arrogance or corruption of polit-
ical leaders, but nevertheless would best constitute the vital mechanism for lim-
iting the growth of monolithic state power. For Foucault, a postliberal polity in
terms of a model of republican democracy might involve any number of moves,
including decentralizing state power, limiting the unequal accumulation of

power and increasing democracy within civil society, extending the democra-
tizing process from the political to the civil sphere of the society, as well as
strengthening the role of associations in civil society vis-~-vis the state. The
state must be efficient without being oppressive, functioning to represent the
diverse interests of civil society without succumbing to forms of authoritarian
rule.
Democracy, in this sense, best represents the Foucauldian politics of difference/
community on a whole range of grounds. Although he did not argue for it
directly, as a Foucauldian I do. It is the main bulwark against violence and
authoritarian rule, and its major normative impulses are consensus, open dia-
logue, mediation, and revocable concessions and compromises. Although his-
torically, democracy has been associated, as Weber argued, with an expanding
hierarchical bureaucracy and as a form of technical expertise as ends in them-
selves, Foucault would see these tendencies as contingent historical episodes
and challenges to be surmounted rather than as the necessary consequences of
the expansion of the democratic process. Although democracy may well carry

509
with it its own dangers, and although it comprises a multifaceted range of

mechanisms and processes, its advantage for a Foucauldian politics is not sim-
ply that it enables the participation and approval of concerns by the entire col-
lectivity and of all the major groups within it but, even more important, it per-
mits continued debate, modification, rejection, or revision of agreed decisions
while enabling a maximum of freedom and autonomy, an ongoing possibility
of negotiation and dialogue, and the most effective opposition to possible
abuses of power.
Notes
1. Etzioni (1995, p. 32) used the term Chinese nesting boxes to represent this
process.
2. See, for instance, Mulhall and Swift (1992) and Beiner (1997) for a summary of
these arguments.
3. Corlett’s book is subtitled
A Politics of Derridean Extravagance (1993).
4. Poster (1984) saw a break between "the structuralist concern with language and
its autonomy that was paramount in The Order of Things " and the perspective of
"discourse/practice ... in which the reciprocal interplay of reason and action was pre-
sumed" (pp. 39-40). Although I acknowledge a shift in the problems explored, and a
greater emphasis on power and institutions, I believe that too much should not be made
between Foucault’s earlier and later writings. For further discussion of the issue, also see
Olssen (1999, pp. 39-42), Mahon (1992, p. 103), Dreyfus and Rabinow (1983), Smart
(1985, pp. 47-48), and Barrett (1988, p. 135).
5. This shift in the form of materialism in Foucault’s work was undoubtedly one of
the reasons he opposed the republication of Mental Illness and Psychology in 1962.
6. Although for ease of expression I will speak sometimes as if the argument
belongs to Foucault theoretically, I wish only to maintain that my argument regarding
"thin" communitarian is only inspired or suggested by a consideration of key themes
within his work. My argument in this sense is of the kind that if Foucault were to theo-
rize the issue of community, this is the sort of perspective he may take. Or, put another
way, as a Foucauldian, and given my own reading of Foucault (accepting even that other
reasons might be possible), this is the particular representation on the matter of com-
munity that I have arrived at. In no way am I trying to represent this argument as
Foucault’s.
7. In this sense there is a parallel between Foucault’s model of "holism-
particularism" or "system/originality" to theories of complex determination that are
being used to explain how infinite possibilities and random nonpredictable occurrences
are derivable from a set of determined rules or laws (see Cilliers, 1998).
8. Foucault acknowledged a debt in his use of style to Peter Brown (1978). See
Foucault (1989, p. 320).
9. Such a representation of Foucault will be seen to conflict with other readings of
his work. For instance, Beiner (1997) represented Foucault’s ethics individualistically,

510
representing his later work as a Stoical concern with a "praxis of ’intensified’ quasi-
aesthetic self crafting" preoccupied with individual "withdrawal" and where individu-
als are concerned primarily with the "intensification " of pleasures (p. 73). Although as
stated above, I do not claim that Foucault actually advocated for the "thin"
communitarianian thesis that I am advancing but only that his approach is consistent
with it, a number of points can be made to counter such readings of writers such as
Beiner. First, although Foucault was influenced by and even inspired by the Stoics, as
Paul Veyne (cited in Davidson, 1997) said, "Clearly no one will accuse [Foucault] of
aspiring to renew the Stoic ethics of the Greeks ... the solution to a contemporary prob-
lem will never be found in a problem raised in another era" (p. 226). Furthermore, more
direct evidence can be seen in that Foucault, as supported by citations given in the text
of this essay, frequently drew on the classical Greek thinkers in his elaboration of the
"care of the self." But it should also be noted, most important, that to accuse Foucault of
a form of "dandyism," or of simplistically supporting a form of self-crafting based on
individualistic values, supported by the views of the Stoics, is to misrepresent Stoic con-
ceptions. The Stoic idea of the "continuum" or of the "interdependence of things" sup-
ports a conception of Foucault as more in keeping with a form of communitarianism,
albeit of a "thin" variety, as the Stoics saw all parts of the universe as linked in dynamic
interplay. In addition, as Beiner pointed out, the Stoics, not Aristotle or Plato, can be
seen as the originators of natural law within the Western moral tradition in that they
subscribed to a conception of the "natural cosmos as the source of rational norms"

(p. 73). Balancing the influence of the Stoics with that of the classical Greeks, as I am
suggesting, can also be seen to accentuate the idea of ethical self-creation as a form of
"self-mastery" (over passions, etc.), which is also more in keeping with Stoic thought.
Hence, Foucault was, as Beiner noted, radicalizing the Socratic-Platonic tradition, but
not (as Beiner also would have it) of producing an individualized form of self-crafting
based on an intensification of pleasures. In this sense, I would claim that Foucault’s eth-
ics drew variously from the Greeks, the Romans, the Renaissance (Burckhardt), and
Baudelaire (see Foucault, 1985, pp. 10-12).
10. One of Foucault’s central aims was to (re)introduce notions of indeterminacy,
complexity, and chance (alea) into the historical process. See Foucault (1981, p. 69).
11.I claim at least that it is a plausible reading of Foucault, not that it is the true
reading, or accurately reflects the "real" Foucault.
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Mark Olssen is a reader in the School of Educational Studies at the University

of Surrey, England. He is the editor of Mental Testing in New Zealand: Critical
and Oppositional Perspectives (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1988),
author (with Elaine Papps) of The Doctoring of Childbirth (Palmerston North:
The Dunmore Press, 1997), and editor with Kay Morris Matthew of Education
Policy in New Zealand: The 1990s and Beyond (Palmerston North: The Dun-
more Press, 1997). More recently he is author of Michel Foucault: Materialism
and Education (New York: Bergin and Garvey, 1999). He has published articles
in Britain in the Journal of Education Policy, British Journal of Educational
Studies, Educational Psychology, and Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Michel Foucault As "Thin" Communitarian: Difference, Community, Democracy

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Michel Foucault As "Thin" Communitarian: Difference, Community, Democracy

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Michel Foucault as "Thin" Communitarian:

Difference, Community, Democracy

Rather than advocating a variant of ethical dandyism revolving around

ing a substantive common goal or unified bond (communio), but rather as a

The revival of the idea of community in the 1990s be seen partly as a

reaction to the individualizing effects of neoliberalism dominant form of

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bership of a community as well as in relation to group and individual rights and

processes, it is important not to hark back to a traditional conception of a

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bounded and closed totality-a communio-for the interruption of open pro-

community, in Nancy’s view. In his book, Gerard Delanty (2000) represented

Castoriadis, Maffesoli, and Benedict Anderson, he stressed the ability of soci-

incoherence, just as there is a need to rescue it from neocommunitarian author-

In this article, I want to revive the debate on difference/community in rela-

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with a form of nonmonistic communitarianism, which I will term &dquo;thin&dquo;

premodern notion of a community as having a substantive common goal or

tice within the constraints of any actual community.

12) phrase, &dquo;discourse/practice.&dquo;In this conception, discourse is itself a mate-

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because they are essentially nothing but interpretations. (p. 4)

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Notwithstanding his debt to Nietzsche, in his own form of materialism

Foucault as &dquo;Thin&dquo; Communitarian

Indeed, it is this particular form of materialism that forms the necessary

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3. a conception of liberty as nondomination or as involving an equalization of power;

For Foucault, the emergence of liberal individualism at the onset of modernity

(1997) noted how Foucault lamented this development:

From Descartes to Husserl, the imperative to &dquo;know thyself’ increasingly pre-

and maximize diversity in the context of a historicist and antitranscendental

but comprises a minimal structure of agreements, rules, practices, and under-

Autonomy and Freedom

So it is not enough to say that the subject is constituted in a symbolic system. It is

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tuted in real practices-historically analyzable practices. There is a technology

For a domain of action, a behaviour, to enter the field of thought, it is necessary

Hence, self-creation, which is collective and individual, is a historically learned

to a set of difficulties, several responses can be made.... But what has to be

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Creativity is possible in putting into play a system of rules; it is not a mixture of

Although Chomsky was interested in the &dquo;intrinsic capabilities of mind,&dquo;

Foucault was interested in explaining how infinite possibilities of application

directions of Foucault’s later thought&dquo; (pp. 70-71). To emphasize philosophy

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phy was a spiritual exercise ... in order to learn to think differently.&dquo;

giving us a place to stand might start their critique with Kant.&dquo;

the style of life of the homosexual community by which he sought to

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be a certain level of liberation conceived as the absence of domination. In this,

Such states of domination entail relations of power that

In such a situation, liberty is &dquo;extremely confined or limited&dquo; (p. 3) and in this

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it also is intrinsically political in that it involves relations of power. As Foucault

It is political in the measure that non-slavery with respect to others is a political

The care posits a politically active subject acting in a commu-

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(1986a, p. 50, 1997, p. 95).

relationship to self takes ontological precedence&dquo; (p. 7).

Against Unity and Totality

community. Such a community does not, clearly, depend on utopian or imagi-

communitarians, nor is it the same as the conceptions advanced by Hegel,