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You're listening to the Partial Exam of the Life episode 245 on a fashion.

We've been talking to Shahidabari about her book Dress, a philosophy of clothes.

We covered Jacques Derri does essay, the animal that therefore am.

And we are in the middle of Michel Foucault's The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom.

And we will get to Susan Sontag's on style from 1963.

What else do we still have to cover here that's relevant in Foucault before we want to get on to Sontag?

I want to say something about this concept of freedom and liberation and dress or style, if you will.

So Wes mentioned that Foucault talks about freedom being the condition for resistance.

In essence, the structures of power, domination exist at all levels.

It's not just you're talking about government, you're talking about interpersonal relationships, but that they're fluid.

And insofar as there's room for reversing or changing those power dynamics, that's what constitutes freedom.

Liberation and freedom are two different things, right?

Sorry, resistance should I say the possibility of resistance is predicated by freedom. How's that?

That relationship is a little is complicated and unclear to me, but I think he's saying that liberation doesn't guarantee freedom.

Absolutely.

Although it is total domination would make freedom a non-starter in his sense.

Which is why resistance requires freedom.

Yeah, freedom is not the result. Freedom is the precondition for the possibility of resistance.

And total domination would mean there's no possibility for resistance, so no freedom.

So one thing does not follow from the other, but go ahead and say what you're going to say.

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