Foucault and the Unfinished Human of Rights

Abstract

This article argues that in his late work Foucault does not submit to the ‘‘moral superiority’’ of humanism and introduce a liberal humanist subject. Rather, Foucault’s late investigations of subjectivity constitute a continuation and not a radical departure from his earlier positions on the subject. This helps us in interpreting Foucault’s late supposed ‘‘embrace’’ of, or return to, human rights—which is here re-interpreted as a critical anti-humanist engagement with human rights, conducted in the name of an unfinished humanity.