Bernard E. Harcourt

About

Bernard E. Harcourt is the Corliss Lamont Professor of Law and Civil Liberties at Columbia Law School. He is also a faculty affiliate in the departments of African American and African Diaspora Studies, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. A distinguished critical theorist and legal advocate, Harcourt's scholarship focuses on political, social, and legal theory, political economy, punishment practices, and critical philosophy. He has authored and edited over a dozen books, with recent works including 'Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory' (2023), which offers a blueprint for a society based on cooperation, and 'Critique & Praxis: A Critical Philosophy of Illusions, Values, and Action' (2020), which charts a vision for political action and social transformation. His previous publications examine issues such as government counterinsurgency tactics, digital age disobedience, free markets and punishment myths, and profiling and policing in an actuarial age. Harcourt began his legal career representing individuals on Alabama’s death row, working with Bryan Stevenson at the Equal Justice Initiative, and continues to represent persons sentenced to death, life imprisonment without parole, and detainees at Guantanamo Bay. He has been recognized with awards such as the Norman J. Redlich Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award for his work on death row cases. Harcourt has also served…

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Gender studies
• History
• Genealogy
• Law

Selected publications

• Cooperation

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2023 · 15 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Foucault’s Keystone: Confessions of the Flesh

  Foucault Studies · 2021 · 12 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The fourth and final volume of The History of Sexuality offers the keystone to Michel Foucault’s critique of Western neoliberal societies. Confessions of the Flesh provides the heretofore missing link that ties Foucault’s late writings on subjectivity to his earlier critique of power. Foucault identifies in Augustine’s treatment of marital sexual relations the moment of birth of the modern legal actor and of the legalization of social relations. With the appearance of the modern legal subject, F…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• On critical genealogy

  Contemporary Political Theory · 2024-08-31 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Today most critical theorists who deploy history use a genealogical method forged by Nietzsche and Foucault. This genealogical approach now dominates historically inflected critique. But not all genealogical writings today, nor all philosophical debates surrounding genealogy, advance the goals of critical philosophy. It is crucial now that we assess the value of genealogical critiques. The proper metric against which to evaluate such work is whether it contributes to transforming ourselves, othe…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Five Modalities of Michel Foucault’s Use of Nietzsche’s Writings (1959–73): Critical, Epistemological, Linguistic, Alethurgic and Political

  Theory Culture & Society · 2021-03-29 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In a series of essays, conferences, and lectures over the period 1959–73, Michel Foucault directly engaged the writings of Nietzsche. This article demonstrates the five different modalities of Foucault's use of Nietzsche’s writings: namely, critical, epistemological, linguistic, alethurgic, and political. Each of these modalities is tied to a particular intellectual turning point in Foucault’s philosophical investigations and can be located chronologically in five important texts from that perio…

  PublisherDOI

• On Critical Genealogy: An Answer to the Question “What Good Is Genealogy for Praxis?”

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• François Ewald

  24 shared

• Tracey L. Meares

  Yale University

  23 shared

• Alessandro Fontana

  16 shared

• Fabienne Brion

  14 shared

• Jens Ludwig

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  11 shared

• Sacha Raoult

  University of California, Irvine

  6 shared

• M Lee Badgett

  6 shared

• Michele Goodwin

  Georgetown University

  6 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Law and Political Science

  University of Chicago

• Other

  University of Chicago

• B.A.

  University of Chicago

Awards & honors

• New York City Bar Association Norman J. Redlich Capital Defe…

Similar researchers at Columbia University

• Jeffrey A. Faganh-90
• Charles F. Sabelh-60
• Petros C. Mavroidish-51