ABSTRACT
This chapter explores in more depth three central concepts used in the book: freedom; the ‘will’; and addiction. It aims to build a foundation for the argument that is developed in the rest of the book, providing the analytical and conceptual resources for the chapters that follow. This conceptual and theoretical overview will be elaborated and extended in the analysis of historical material presented in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 and then revisited in the concluding chapter. I should perhaps clarify my purpose here. What I am doing in this chapter
is not a conventional type of conceptual analysis as might be undertaken by an analytic philosopher (see Jackson, 1998). I am not seeking to break these
ideas down into their constituent parts in order to deepen or extend our understanding of their meaning. Indeed, to the extent that such an approach would involve attributing a fixed or universal or a priori meaning to these concepts, that is entirely contrary to the theoretical orientation I set out in the previous chapter. Rather, my starting point is that concepts of this kind can be usefully viewed as governmental or practical, in the sense implied by the governmentality approach (see Rose, 1999; Rose et al., 2006). The purpose or objective of the conceptual overview presented here is therefore to recognize and then begin to map out the multiple, shifting and overlapping meanings these terms have been given. This involves seeing them as multivocal and polysemic discursive resources utilized within changing regulatory strategies. Milan Kundera puts this idea of multiple meanings rather beautifully in The Unbearable Lightness of Being:
The bowler hat was a motif in the musical composition that was Sabina’s life. It returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed. I might call it Heraclitus’ (‘You can’t step twice into the same river’) riverbed: the bowler hat was a bed through which each time Sabina saw another river flow, another semantic river: each time the same object would give rise to a new meaning, though all former meanings would resonate (like an echo, like a parade of echoes) together with the new one … Now, perhaps, we are in a better position to understand the abyss separating Sabina and Franz: he listened eagerly to the story of her life and she was equally eager to hear the story of his, but although they had a clear understanding of the logical meaning of the words they exchanged, they failed to hear the semantic susurrus of the river flowing through them.
