Q: You say that liberty must be practiced ethically?
MF: Yes, for what is morality, if not the practice of liberty, the deliberate practice of liberty?
Q: That means that you consider liberty as a reality already ethical in itself?
MF: Liberty is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the deliberate form assumed
by liberty.
(Michel Foucault, ‛the ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom: an interview with michel foucault on January 20, 1984,‛ Philosophy Social Criticism, Vol. 12 (1987), 115.)
I was rereading this interview the other day and it brought me back to some of the issues that we have been concerned with throughout the term. More specifically, it prompted me to think about the ways in which apocalyptic belief and practices shape our subjectivity in ways that are precisely not an “ontological condition of ethics.” Rather, in its absolutistic judgments, rigid gender and sexual prescriptions, hierarchical principles of power, and desire to become non-temporal, patriarchal apocalypse curbs liberty at every turn.
What then, can a post-apocalyptic imaginary achieve in fostering a break from these conditions? In light of your terrifically thoughtful responses to the films and my essay—which is greatly appreciated!—I think it will be useful for us to consider both postmodern apocalypse and post-apocalypse as two approaches that strive to undo the grounds of absolutism. What we need to keep in mind (from this perspective) is that we—as subjects or selves—are always shaped by the forces of power that circulate all around us and form our ideas and bodies and relationships. That doesn’t mean that we are entirely determined, however (as predestination says) but rather that our resistance to power relations can only be manifest in terms of those shaping forces.
We have seen from Rosen how postmodern apocalypse works to transform key elements of traditional apocalypse. The three films we have for discussion share a setting in which the apocalypse has happened and the characters dwell within a post-apocalyptic landscape. What is achieved in thinking about liberty and ethics from this imagined place and time?
