Is revolution desirable? : Michel Foucault on revolution, neoliberalism and rights

In The Hermeneutics of the Subject, in the midst of a discussion of Platonic and Christian forms of conversion, Foucault makes an intriguing suggestion: one day, he writes, ‘the history of what could be called revolutionary subjectivity should be written’ (Foucault 2005: 208). Posing a hypothesis that the idea of ‘converting to the revolution’ emerged only in the wake of the French Revolution, and indeed precisely as a response to that founding event, he posits that we cannot understand either revolutionary practice throughout the nineteenth century or the revolutionary individual without taking into account the schema of conversion to the revolution (Foucault 2005: 208). While he does not dwell on this, except to suggest that belonging to the revolution through conversion was ultimately replaced by belonging through the party, he makes a remark that helps to illuminate both the context in which he was working and his own attitude to it: these days, he notes, in the ‘somewhat bland experience of our immediate contemporaries – we only convert to renunciation of revolution’ (Foucault 2005: 209). Implicitly addressing those former Maoists with whom he was closely aligned at the time, Foucault suggests that the ‘great converts today are those who no longer believe in the revolution’ (Foucault 2005: 209).