Material Agency, 4E Cognition, and Kant’s Invisible Printing press: Regarding Foucault’s Trip to Iran

In order to help dispel a stubborn Enlightenment myth that continues to warp understandings of political speech, this analysis draws on developments in theories of «4E» cognition (theories of the embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted mind). Here I treat the ideal Kantian figure of the individual political actor who exercises public reason, the famous «scholar» of «What Is Enlightenment?», as a myth that has already in effect decomposed from the inside. It has been undermined by academic developments across fields including Foucauldian genealogy in the humanities, social-constructivist philosophy of science, and 4E theories of mind in cognitive science. It has also been undermined in common practice by complications of authorship, literacy, and publicity in current digital media. Yet its theoretical trouble persists as the Kantian model remains a dominant conception of political speech, and subsequently of freedom and reason. I use the example of Foucault’s engagement with the Iranian revolution, much-critiqued, to show how the persistence of this myth precipitates a major theoretical obstacle for a project committed to overcoming the transcendental themes of Kant, such that they re-emerge through an idealization of a spiritual dimension of the revolution. This episode indicates that Foucauldian genealogy did not complete its rejection of Kantian transcendental idealism, and more specifically that the issue lies in its concept of subjectivity. Introducing Andrew Pickering’s theory of the mangle, from his work in philosophy of science, in conjunction with 4E theories of cognition provides a supplement to genealogy that allows it better to address the still-clinging root of the Enlightenment myth of the ideal actor, namely Kant’s own theory of cognition, particularly in its relationship to Newtonian physics and the basic conception of reason as «internal.» The introduction of these supplementary theoretical elements can help conceive political speech beyond outmoded strictures -possibly helping to make it newly effective.