Revolution is not a magic Fiat. An analysis of the processes of political subjectivation from Foucault and cultural studies

Abstract

This article is a critical and integrative approach to the processes of political subjectivation in the works of Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Raymond Williams, and Stuart Hall. To this end, it will first explain the epistemic turn made by Michel Foucault in the late 1970s that leads him to seek the aesthetics of existence after theorizing the relationship between power and freedom. Subsequently, what these authors understand by political subjectivation will be analysed. The analysis of Michel Foucault’s theoretical transformation of the relationship between power and freedom from works such as The Birth of Biopolitics, The Use of Pleasure, and The Hermeneutics of the Subject will allow us to specify the comparative analysis between hegemony, self-concern, and counter-hegemony in the mentioned authors. Finally, we will present the specificity of the relationship between the works of Gramsci and Foucault with Williams and Hall as epistemological mediators.