Johanna Oksala, Dr.
Senior Research Fellow
Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies
P.O.Box 59
FI-00014 University of Helsinki
FINLAND
E-mail johanna.oksala@helsinki.fi
CV
Publications
Recent papers (for downloading at the bottom of this page)
I am currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Academy of Finland research project Philosophy and Politics in Feminist Theory located in the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki. I have previously worked as a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, UK (2007-2011) and as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New School for Social Research, USA (2006-2007).
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy, Foucault, Feminist Philosophy, Phenomenology, 20thC and Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Research interests
My first major monograph was a scholarly explication of Foucault’s conception of freedom, Foucault on Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The book charted new ground in Foucault studies by showing that in order to appreciate Foucault’s project fully we must understand his complex relationship to phenomenology. It also discussed Foucault’s treatment of the body in relation to the feminist work on this topic and made new openings in feminist phenomenology. The book has been reviewed in professional journals, discussed in book panels (SPEP 2006, British Society for Phenomenology 2010) and cited widely.
My second monograph was an introductory book written for a wide academic audience, How to Read Foucault (London: Granta Books, 2007). In a recent review in Foucault Studies (No. 8, Feb 2010) Trent Hamann rates it as the best introduction to Foucault currently available: “_How to Read Foucault_ is now the first book I would recommend to anyone who is interested in getting an accurate overview of Foucault’s life work and a reliable pathway into any one of his books”. The publishing rights of the book have so far been sold to USA, South–Korea, Japan and Brazil.
I have recently completed my third monograph titled Foucault, Politics, and Violence (forthcoming from Northwestern University Press in May 2012). While appropriating Foucault’s thought, I develop an original philosophical position by outlining a distinctive conception of the political and its relationship to violence. The key aim is to show that the connection between violence and the political is not internal or essential, but contingent: violence is not an ineliminable part of politics. While contesting all essentialist claims about violent human nature and sociality, the study nevertheless defends an agonistic conception of politics. The agonism intrinsic to the political is not derived from the aggression and hostility inherent in human nature, however, it is derived from the inevitably exclusionary and power-laden nature of the constitution of reality. In other words, the study outlines an agonistic conception of the political based on a post-structuralist denial of all essentialist political ontologies: we live in an agonistic society because the social sphere is, by necessity, a hegemonic field of contestable interpretations and values, and not because it is made up of violent individuals. My approach allows us to understand the distinctive forms of violence that characterize our political landscape: the violence of 20th century totalitarianism, the relationship between violence and the law in the post-2001 world, gendered violence, state violence and its relationship to neoliberalism, and the significance of terrorism for our contemporary understanding of politics. In addition to Foucault’s thought, I also critically assess the work of several prominent philosophers advocating an agonistic conception of politics such as Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, Chantal Mouffe, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek.
Current research
My current research focuses on feminist philosophy. The guiding idea is that feminist political theory must retrieve a sophisticated philosophical understanding of experience and rethink its relationship to both language and politics. I investigate critically post-structuralist and phenomenological feminist attempts to theorise experience.
Recent papers (selected)
Violence and the Biopolitics of Modernity. Foucault Studies, a special issue on Foucault and Agamben, no. 10, November 2010, pp. 23-43.
Neoliberalism and Biopolitical Governmentality. Invited paper, presented at The American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Annual Meeting, New York, USA. December 27-30, 2009.
What is Political Philosophy? Invited paper presented at the symposium The Government of Self and Others: On Foucault’s Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982–3. Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University, London, UK. December 2, 2010.
Rethinking Violence: Foucault on Terror and Political Spirituality. Single paper with an appointed respondent (Professor Thomas Flynn), presented at Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), 49th Annual Meeting, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. November 4-6, 2010.