However, I would also be happy to return to Foucault with new eyes based on suggestions made here.

On the other hand, the notion that critique makes it possible to imagine a different future and truth is a vital part of any political theory concerned with justice. Indeed, I see this as precisely what Socrates does as he encourages us to consider the nature of justice itself, which, on my reading, operates as an erotic principle rather than as an determinate, instrumental one.

I would like to hear more about Pettit's suggestions mentioned by AnPan because the question of participation is critical here. It will be interesting to see how the transformation of Obama's website into "Organizing for America" might facilitate the sort of participatory deliberation AnPan envisions. I think the web opens up many new possibilities in this regard, not least of which is the discussion we are having here.

Let me add, finally, a personal note about the celebratory tone of many of my recent blog posts on the Long Road. I celebrate exactly what Dr. J. identifies as the rejection of a truly impoverished conception of government (and community). But for me, it is more than this, more even than the huge victory associated with electing an African-American as President – and the lasting power of this fact must not be underestimated – it is rather the celebration of a kind of political participation I had not previously experienced. I had to swallow a lot of cynicism to get out there an knock on doors for a politician. But I did that not because I agree with all his policies and decisions, but because I wanted to put my weight behind something better even if the better still requires the constant nurture of critique to hold it accountable and press it toward justice.

I celebrate the fact that in some small but significant way, that effort, and the lesson it held for my two young daughters, made a difference.

To take one example, I would have liked Obama to roll out a mechanism for citizen comment and deliberation on budget items before he tackled the stimulus bill: something like publicmarkup.org would have been great. It would have been better for ordinary citizens of both parties to debate pork barrel projects and earmarks than to turn his very first legislative action-item into the same old partisanship. Most of the debate is still happening among political and intellectual elites, and we're already seeing the fractioning of the progressive/centrist coalition that elected him. In the last two days, I've seen the following questions seriously pondered: "Is infrastructure improvement misogynistic because construction workers and engineers are predominantly men?" "Does maintenance and beautification of the DC National Mall constitute a handout to the Democratic base?" "By increasing higher education funding, aren't we just dumping money into a liberal bastion and paying off Obama's supporters?" "Why grant the Republicans their tax cut demands if they're not going to support the bill?"

We can't blame Obama for the things people have been saying about his proposed policies, but the fact that he can't forestall this resentful bickering, even among his supporters, suggests that we still need to work on the institutions that empower people to participate in policy-making rather than being left out. The old way of doing things is to deal with citizens only when necessary: we are courted during elections then ignored. Having been so recently welcomed by a campaign of inclusion, it's all the more disappointing that Obama is governing in the ordinary exclusionary manner, though of course there are structural problems to handle and matters of scale to be dealt with.

Obama's supporters and detractors alike apparently feel as if only confrontation and antagonism will grant them a place at the table so that they can prevent the domination of both the unruly and unjust market and the administrative state that will govern it… and threatens to govern us as well. I prefer Arendt's account of politics to the agonistic struggle to direct the steering-mechanism of political economic life. For her, political activity draws us together and increase our collective power, but this only happens if we act publicly, if our words and deeds appear to each other and our actions effect the constitution of our shared world.

That's not really critique, any longer: it's 'the future and the truth' that appears in the space cleared by critique.

Very nice post and exchange so far. A few remarks:

First, Chris, I don't think Foucault's conception of critique (as a way of teaching us "not to be governed") is an "impoverished… immature conception of critique" bound to what you call "a negative conception of freedom that refuses to recognize the degree to which human-beings are by nature political, that is to say, communal beings." To the extent that Foucault has a conception of "human freedom" at all, I agree that it may very well be "negative," but I don't think that is found in his definition/discussion of the function and purpose of "critique." The operative term in Foucault's definition (from "What is Critique?") that AnPan provides is, I think, "governed". Governmentality, which both follows (historically) and supplements sovereignty as the dominant mode of power for Foucault, is a complex set of techniques and practices aimed at producing "governable" subjects… or, rather, subjects who reproduce the kinds of power that produced them as subjects. Foucault's call for a practice of critique that enables us "not to be governed," as I understand it, only means this: critique makes it possible to imagine "a future and a truth" that is other than the ones we are subject(ed) to by the various forms of governmental control. So, to "not be governed" does not mean to "not be political," as you seem to suggest, but rather to "not be political in this way."

As far as I can tell, Foucault's intuition has been borne out in the last year. That is, weighted down with a truly "impoverished" conception of government, the populace finally made room for the voice(s) of critique, which collectively allowed us to imagine another future and another truth. On November 11th, we all effectively said "we will not be governed in this way anymore." Critique made that possible. It is the only thing that could have made that possible– short of revolution perhaps… which I suspect also requires Foucault's conception of critique as a condition of it's possibility.

The point is, I suppose, that I agree with AnPan that this is neither impoverished nor immature… and I also agree with AnPan that the time for that kind of critique has not passed with Obama's election. If it is the case, as Foucault speculated in his College de France lectures from '75-'79, that "power" has entered the eras of "governmentality" and "biopolitics," then we ought to worry that "critique" is in a far more precarious position than it was during the Enlightenment (when it only really had to worry about being suppressed by the sovereign). With so many institutions– hospitals, schools, banks, and as AnPan rightly notes, prisons– contributing to the formation of docile, passive, self-interested, fearful, needy, and most importantly non-critical "subjects," it behooves us to devote a greater vigilance to keeping a space open for the communal exercise of reasonable debate.

As much as I want to side with you in the purely celebratory account of this move away from isolated liberalism towards a communitari–ahem, I mean, political liberalism ('with a spine' in Stephen Macedo's words) I do think there are some ways in which we must play out the old political conflicts in fresh ways for the coming era. I think that there remains an 'ideological' conflict to be had in the President's preference for the Chicago school of economic 'libertarian paternalism,' the kind of choice architecture advocated by his friend and colleague Cass Sunstein. Not all of the ways of life subtly emphasized or denigrated by this kind of paternalism are being subjected to the critical scrutiny we would use for more explicit coercion.

There's also work to be done advocating on behalf of a truly cosmopolitan understanding of community: not simply the American or the Euro-American way of life, but a community that includes the Chinese workers who have loaned us their savings to finance our consumption and our wars, and the Africans whose exclusion from the global economic order serves as the foundation of the reserve army of global unemployed, and whose political institutions were irrevocably undermined by the colonial exploitation and violence of our ancestors.

While there is much from the culture wars that we debated for too long and now ought to be settled, there are still some matters that we think are settled that need to be critiqued and made the subject of debate. To borrow Nussbaum's apt title, we have yet to fully explore the 'frontiers of justice.'

For my part, I associate Obama's appeal to scripture in the inaugural address as directed toward a specific kind of immaturity, one that sets individual concerns over the concerns of the community. I have suggested that it be heard as a kind of response to some words from James Baldwin, but one might in fact bring it to bear on a whole range of political theories that give priority to liberty over justice.

Your appeal to Foucault's understanding of critique as the "'practice of liberty' that teaches 'how not to be governed'" strikes me as an impoverished and, to be provocative, immature conception of critique. It is an understanding of critique bound to a negative conception of freedom that refuses to recognize the degree to which human-beings are by nature political, that is to say, communal beings.

All of this is to affirm your main point about the role political theorists (and all citizens) have to play in rooting their critique not in concerns for individual liberty, but communal justice: this conception of critique would be welcomed by a mature leadership as oriented to a common goal, however difficult it might be at times to hear. To hear it however, and to allow it to inform decisions are part of what it means to give up childish things.

The points you lay out above, including the specific areas you mention, are clearly oriented toward this more mature understanding of critique. But this is not the practice of liberty that teaches how not to be governed, but the practice of responsibility that teaches how the governed are always empowered in governing. It is far easier to level childish criticisms animated by a negative conception of individual liberty than to engage in mature critique animated by the attempt to embody a more just community.