Foucault on Leadership: The Leader as Subject (Routledge Studies in Leadership, Work and Organizational Psychology) - Softcover

Harter, Nathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815381875 ISBN 13: 9780815381877

Publisher: Routledge, 2017

Synopsis

Michel Foucault, one of the most cited scholars in the social sciences, devoted his last three lectures to a study of leader development. Going back to pagan sources, Foucault found a persistent theme in Hellenistic antiquity that, in order to qualify for leadership, a person must undergo processes of subjectivation, which is simply the way that a person becomes a Subject. From this perspective, an aspiring leader first becomes a Subject who happens to lead. These processes depend on a condition of parresia, which is truth-telling at great risk that is for the edification of the other person. A leader requires a mentor and advisors in order to lead successfully, while also developing the capacity in one’s own mind to heed the truth. In other words, a leader must learn how to guide oneself.

A valuable contribution to the field of leadership studies, this book summarizes these last lectures as they pertain to the study and practice of leadership, emphasizing the role of ethics and truth-telling as a check on power. It then presents several other contexts where these same lessons can be seen in practice, including in the life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose career as a writer epitomized speaking truth to power, and somewhat surprisingly in the United States military, in response to its twenty-first century mission of counterinsurgency.

About this title

About the Author

Nathan W. Harter is Professor of Leadership and American Studies and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies, Christopher Newport University, USA.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815381875
• ISBN 13: 9780815381877
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 140