foucault kyrokos

Upload: julio-alejandro-navarro-vilchez

Post on 14-Apr-2018

252 views

Category:

Documents


1 download

TRANSCRIPT

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    1/29

    This article was downloaded by: [UNAM Ciudad Universitaria]On: 08 October 2013, At: 06:03Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

    Economy and SocietyPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:

    http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reso20

    Foucault and the three-headed king: state, ideology

    and theory as targets of critiqueKyrokos Doxiadis

    Published online: 28 Jul 2006.

    To cite this article: Kyrokos Doxiadis (1997) Foucault and the three-headed king: state, ideology and theory as targets ofcritique, Economy and Society, 26:4, 518-545, DOI: 10.1080/03085149700000027

    To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085149700000027

    PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

    Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) containedn the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and

    are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

    This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

    http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085149700000027http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/03085149700000027http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085149700000027http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/03085149700000027http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reso20
  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    2/29

    Foucault and the three-headed king: state, ideologyand theory as targets ofcritiqueKyrkos Doxiadis

    A b s t r a c tThe paper presents an examination of the significance of Foucault's well-knowndictum: 'In political thought and analysis, w e still have not cut off the head of theking.' The author attempts to approach three interrelated issues in relation to theFrench thinker's uork: his disassociation from the problematic of the repressive state,his disapproval of the use of the term ideology and his systematic avoidance of formu-lating coherent theoretical statements. Th e author argues that the true theoretical andpolitical importance of these issues is revealed bj - connecting them to Foucault'sapproach to the q uestion of sovereignty and legitimation, and by considering his uorkas a continuation o f Kantian critique.Keywords: Foucault; ideology; legitimation; sovereignty; finitude; Kantian critique.

    ' In poli t ical tho ugh t and analys is , we s t i ll have not cu t of f the head o f the king'(Foucault 1979a: 88-9).

    Perhaps the s ingle most provocat ive s ta tement in contemporary poli t icalthought , this remark of Foucault is central to unders tanding his work. Inter -preted in one way, i t is the hidden motto behind most Anglophone Foucault-inspired social analyses of recent years : the emphasis on ' the social ' and'governmental i ty ' that has preoccupied Br i t ish Foucauldian sociology for thepast decade and a half , based o n Foucault ' s own wr i t ings on go vernmental i ty, lwhen exam ined at a more profo und level , can be shown to be direct ly related tothe metaphor ic meaning o f th i s s ta tement .

    T h e s ta tement i s embedded r igh t a t th e cen t r e of Foucault 's mos t ' theor e ti -cal ' book dealing with power - l thoug h not a lways recognized as such - amely,the f i r s t volume of T h e Hzitory o f S e x u a l i t y (f irst published in 1976). I t is alsopresent in what is perhaps Foucault' s most fam ous and inf luentia l interviewEcononzy andSoczrty Vblume 26 Number 4 Corrmber 1997: 518-74.70 outledge 1997 0308-5 147

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    3/29

    Fo~ri,rizrlt rlrd th e tlzrre-lzrodrrl kill8 5 l 9(June 1976) regarding his conception of po\\er, i.e. "liu th and power' (Foucault1980: 109-33).' ' I 'hus repeated, th e phrase insists on his fundame ntal injunc-tion: 'Let us stop viewing power as a repress]\-e soxreign!' Like manymetaphors, it can be interpreted in different \va!-s. A fuller mean ing emerges b ~ -looking at what entities Foucault himself ~v oul d nclude un der the (m etaphori-cal) label of 'repressive sovereign'. A large list, indeed: the law, right , legislativeand executil-e power (parhamentar!. or not) ; ultimately, that is, the (m oder n) stateitself as a cen tral aut hor ity (see especiall!. Fou cau lt 1979a: 81-91). Radic al in itsimplications, now seemingly familiar, this is where th e problems start.

    We may begin with an article published by Jacques D onzelot in the left-wingBritish theoretical journal Ideolog.)l crllrl (~'~t~zsi~to~~snrssn 1979, a year after itspublication in France, under th e title: 'Th e poverty of political culture' . ' In thesame issue there was an estcnsive presentation (H odges and Hu ssain 1979) ofDonzelot 's hook, I,rr po1ii.e tl rs ~f ir r~ ~ tl l~ ~s ,-hich had been published in France in1977, and w hich was to be transla ted in to English so on after (in 1980). 'l 'hcarticle \%-as rogram matic in character, at least as far as th e reception and spreadof Foucauldianism in Britain is concern ed. From its next issue, which containedFoucault 's main text on 'governmentality ' (1979b), I ~ / r o l o g ) ~tnd Consi.iousnesschanged its name to I S C . 4 Ne ithe r ideol ogj- nor co nsciousn ess were an!- longeraccepted terms."The povert!- of political cultur e' off ere d a scnsibl! radical, if not v-hollj-orig-inal, critique of social-democratic politics. .It the same time, it can be seen asattem pting a Ei)ucauldian intervention in the realm of professional politics. B!showing that social democrat!- and the n-hole reformis t politics of the \\-elfilrestate was by no mea ns in radical oppositi on to rig ht-win g a nd liberal par ties, h!-demo nstrating throug h careful argumentatio n that, in term s of strateg!; it actu-all!- belonge d together w ith thcm w ithin the political-institutional comp lex\vhich sup por ts and per petu ates present-da! \li.stern societ!; llo nz elo tattempted to shift the attention of left-n-ing political thought to the prob-lema tization o f precisely th at entitq- wh ich had hit he rto be en largel!- taken forgranted: 111e .soc.rirl. Un de r tha t label, as Gilles Lleleuze had alread!- stresse d inhis 'Afterword' to Ilonzelot 's book,' one should not understand the subjectma tter of sociolog!; bu t, rathe r mo re spccificall!, that secto r of mod er n socictj-which is located o n th e lel cl of everyda! practic es and n -hich is characterize d bqthe inter\-ention of certain technologies and strategies which are employed forthe regulation of hum an lil-es.

    Donzelot 's main argument rested on \\hat he described as the 'socializationof the political' . T h e points arc b! no\\ totall! familiar: that present-daq- politicsof both right-w ing and socialist parties, i.e. thc area of polic!- making, is no\\directed at managing social arrangements, welfare issues no\\- being the mainthru st of political argumen t on the right as muc h as on the left.

    T he s tate corrcspondingly no longer appears to be the bast ion of pon er heldh!- the ru l ing class as an ins trum ent for the perpetuat ion of i ts ru le, s ince thestate i tself has hccome tho rou ghl ~socialized'. (T he Fre nch te rm for the ' tvclLlrestate' - trrt soiictl - a!-s this vcr!- well.) In pe rpe tua tin g th c classic co nc ep tio n,

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    4/29

    520 Kj~rkos oxiadisthe traditional com munist conce ption of left-wing politics as the attemp t to seizestate power violently - n idea whose chief proponent in Western Europe at thetime Donzelot wrote his article was left-wing terrorism, the main target ofDonzelot's critique on this point -merely has the effect of enhancing the exist-ing order by juxtaposing itself to it as an infinitely worse alternative.Donzelot did not offer any facile blueprint for a new radical politics. Hisclosing state men t, however, seemed quite subversive:

    If the word revolution has a meaning othe r than tha t which it has been givenby the theoreticians of the coup d'Etat or of the earthly paradise, it is prob-ably that of the refusal, in one form o r other, of a blackmail which con dem nsthose who are never responsible for the society in w hich they live to either joinits ranks or to destroy themselves in pursu it of its destruction .

    (Donzelot 1979: 85-6)Apparently, Donzelot's implicit suggestion was that, in opposition to the 'social-ization of politics', a new left-wing politics should rest on the aim to 'politicizethe social'. N either the state nor t he existing parties being the exclusive, or eventhe ma in, levers and /or targets of resistance and op position, the very field of thesocial, i.e. the field of micro-social relations and of regulatory interventions ineveryday practices, w ould presumab ly have to be seen as theJeld pa r excellencewhere modern power was exercised. A new politics of resistance would thu s in turnrest on t he sem inal Foucauldian concept of bio-power, as this had been form u-lated extensively in his programmatic epilogue to the first volume of The Hist or j~of Sexuality (1979a: 133-59), two years before Don zelot published his article.

    Yet, while Donze lot in tha t article certainly seems keen to utilize the relatedFoucau ldian notion s of 'technologies' and 'strategies', 'bio-power' is not men-tion ed , nor even 'power' in general. In fact, he urges us to aba ndo n it, in favourof these other notions:

    [T lhe troub le with [th e term power], one can clearly see, is to contain weldedinto it the idea of an instrument and an agent. [After abandoning this term,][w]e would have then not a power and those who undergo it, but, as Foucaultshows, technologies, that is to say always local and multiple, intertwining,coherent or contrad ictory forms of activating and managing a population, andstrategies, that is to say, form ulae of gove rnm ent, 'theo ry-pro gram mes ', to usethe term employed by Pasquale Pasquino.

    (Donzelot 1979: 77)This is astonishing. Not so much because of Donzelot's audacity in usingFoucault's name for supp ort in the very sentences where he incites us to abando n'power'. (Fou cau lt, of course, never and in any sense 'shows' th at it is after aban-doning 'power' that we will be able to use the co nce pts of technologies and s trat-egies!) It is not merely a matter of someone grossly distorting Foucault. Wewould then have merely a minor p roblem. W hat is most excruciatingly puzzlingis that Donzelot otherwise remains Foucauldian through and through. Andof course it is no accident that Donzelot had been one of Foucault's closest

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    5/29

    collaborators in his work on prisons. D onzel ot is thoroughl!- enm eshed in theFoucauldian p roblematic of th e 1970s, as both his book on the famil!- and hisgenera l v iews re ~a rd in g on cep tion s of politics as expressed in t hat artic le clearl!-show

    How then co uld this contra diction be explained away? Mi ght it be that, eventhough Foucaul t himself never did abandon the concept of power, it would ulti-matel!- be mo re 'gen uin e1~ - ou cau ldia n' in spite c!fFouc.au/t actua lly to do so?

    Le t us return to the king's head which has >-et o be cut off in political though t,and its familiar significance as disconnecting the conception of power fromnotions of repress ion and r ight . Mig ht Donzelot ' s bold appeal to abandon theconcept of pobfer itself signify Foucault 's ultimate~firil~~ren this a t tem pt? DoesDon zelot finall>- see 'power' -rather than 'right ' , ' law'. and 'repression', or,simply, 'the state' - as the tr ue referent be hind the symbo l of th e liing's anach-ronistic head?

    Th at is jus t what I shall argu e -al th ou gh not in an!- simp le or straightfo rwardsense. For llon zelot 's conclusion arises from examining possible alternative anddiametricall!. opp osed rearlings (or 'versions') o f Wuc aul t's no tion of power. O nthe one hand, there is Marxism, which reads Foucaul t as an enrichment ofhlarxism itself and its main principle of the dialectic betrvecn forces andrelat ions of product ion. On the other hand, there is Andrt Glucksmann, who,criticizing Marxism precisely for that attempt at incorporation, instead seespornrr it se r (Ma rxism itself being o ne of \\-hose manifestations) as the centralforce of historical development. Yet, what both these versions of power have incom mon , according to Do nzelo t, is a 'structural or dialectical logic' , whichreduces ou t the 'nz~r~imumnd irredz~cihlrnrrrtrria1it)l' provided 'in the descrip-tion of social arrangements (rrgencrmen~s) (Donzelot 1979: 77). Abandoning'power' altogether will avoid t his red uct ion ism and th e ilirrlec.tical or structurrrllogic of po\ver that leads to the redu ctionis m.

    Foucaul t, ho w\- er , seemed to think that 'power ' could be differentiated fromthe Hegelian dialectic and structuralism. In 'Truth and power' , he says:

    T h e history which bears and d etermines us has the form of a war rather thanthat of a language: relations o f pow-er, not relations of m eaning. Histor)- hasno 'mean ing', thou gh th is is not to sa!- that it is absur d or incoh erent. O n thecontrarq; it is intelligible and should be susceptible of analysis down to thesmallest detail - but this in accorda nce with the intelligibilitj- of struggles, ofstrategies and tactics. Neither the dialectic, as logic of contradictions, norsemiotics, as the structure of communication, can account for the intrinsicintellig ibi1it~ - f conflicts. 'Dialectic' is a na!. of evading th e always op en an dhazar dous realit!. of conflict h!- red uci ng it to a Heg elian skeleton, an d 'semi-ology' is a \\ ay of a\-oiding its violent, bloody and lethal character b! reduc-ing it to the calm Platonic form of language and dialogue.

    (Foucault 1980: 114-15)

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    6/29

    522 Kyrkos DoxiadisHow a re we to take seriously Donzelot's implicit claim that he remains a Fou-cauldian if at the same time he insists on abandoning 'power' on the groundsthat it necessarily leads to a dialectical or struc tural reductionism, when in factone of Foucault's most famo us claims regarding power is exac tly t he opposite?

    Paradoxically, the answer lies in that Don zelot rem ains Foucauldian preciselyto the extent that he takes Foucault literally. Literally not in a superficial sense,of course . H e takes literally Foucault's claim tha t all dialectic necessarily leads toa Hegelian skeleton and all structural analysis necessarily leads to the form ofPlatonic dialogue. And he deduces from that, being faithful to Foucault on thisparticular point by betraying him o therwise, that if we are to avoid at all coststhe inevitable reductionism of both th e dialectic and struc tural analysis we mustget rid of th e concep t of power as well.

    Why? Because - and Donzelot unwittingly (perhaps) acknowledges this -precisely the wa.y t hat Foucuult himse lf had conceptualized th e notion of power wasprofoundly dialectical ( thou gh not Hegelian) a nd profoundly structural ( though notstructuralist).

    Le t me put my cards on the table. I do not pretend to hold any hidden t ruth sabout the deep er meaning of Foucault's work. I am merely trying to suggest analternative way of reading this work. What is offered here is an attempt at anintervention in the 'regime of truth' (see Foucault 1980: 125-33) of currentlydominant interpretations of Foucault.

    Foucault himself was no mean 'tactician' as to putting his own position withinthe regime of truth in which he belonged: namely, post-war French thought.Elements in his own statements thus may be seen as there more for tacticalreasons than as valid in their own term s. This is not to say that they are necess-arily false, or that Foucault was consciously lying with them. (This would beagainst the very notion of 'regime of truth'.) I am merely proposing that oneshould take this into account when analysing their true significance within themore general framework of Foucault's discourse and of the regime in - an dagainst - which it was uttered.

    Foucault could have simply said: 'I am not a Hegelian, nor am I a structural-ist in the sense that Sa ussur e or Levi-Strauss is; and furth erm ore, I am not evena Marx ist, insofar as being a Marxist implies also being a Hegelian of some sor tor other.' Perhaps in an ideal (non-existent) intellectual community, in whichevery participant can be heard and taken seriously quite simply on the solegrounds of her/his own words - which are to be judged, but fairly, and ex-clusively in terms of their own internal consistency and their truth value. Butnot in Foucault's time - an d I am here referring to the whole two and a halfdecades which was the time-span of the publication of all his main works, fromthe early 1960s to the mid-1980s. H e could n ot have been taken seriously: (a) ifhe had even on ce utilized the term 'dialectic' positively while claiming not to bea Hegelian, (b) if he had claimed that what he was doing was some sort of struc-tural analysis while at the same time disowning the stru cturalis m of the semiolo-gists and Levi-Strauss, or (c) if he had openly rejected Marxism in the abovesense - which was then the only sense possible (even Louis Althusser had in no

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    7/29

    Foucault and th e three-headed king 52 3way completely disengaged himself from Hegelianism)" while still consid eringhimself belonging to the left. Perhaps it would not even have been possible forFoucault to take himself seriously if he consciously believed any of the abovestatem ents regardin g his work. But this is beside the point, an d it would be fatallymisleading to engage here in the quasi-biographical issue of what Foucault wasconscious of and what he was not.

    Th is also goes for his choice of discurs ive tactics. T h e only possible way ofanalysing these is by their effects - .e. by the play of utterances which theseprovoke and in which they are involved. An analysis of these effects will showthat Foucault was capable of contribu ting immensely to co ntemp orary social andpolitical thought only at the cost of deliberately - hough not necessarily con-sciously- reating the ground s for an equally immense confusion as to the actualdirection of this contribu tion. Th is can be seen in the coexistence of three basicinterrelated a ntinomies which run through a large part of Foucault 's discourse,especially tha t dea ling with 'power':(a) H is constant emphasis on analysing power in m odern society, while at the

    same time systematically avoiding the problem of the (modern) state as arepressive institution.

    (b) His profound and systematic concern with the interrelationships betweenpower, knowledge, truth and subjectivity, while not only avoiding but alsoexplicitly disavowing the co ncep t of ideology.

    (c) T he fact that philosophers and theorists throughout the domain of thehuman and social sciences, in France, the United States and elsewhere, havenever ceased talking and writing about him, even though his books canhardly be viewed as coherent theoretical statements.

    Foucault ha s been regarde d by many social scientists who have been co ncerne dwith his work as a quasi-(post-)structuralist philosopher specializing in thehistory of ideas, who at some point, with Discipline and Punish (1979c, Frenchedition 1975), decide d to d o work in social history, or a 'history of the social'.'In these accounts, this shift is not considered as anything bizarre in itself. T h esociological milieu most receptive towards Foucault in Britain had already beentheoretically prepared for a possible positive significance of this shift. I am refer-ring to the Althusserian notion of the 'epistemological break' occurring inMarx's own work: Althus ser (see especially 1971: 69-101) include s virtually allof Marx's 'properly philosophical' works in his 'pre-historical-materialist', i.e.'pre-scientific' period, also claim ing that a truly Marx ist philosophy has yet to beformulated (1976: 174-5). For the Althusserians, even though M arx was aphilosopher, the only directly worthwhile part of his work was his social-scien-tific, i.e. political-economic and political-historical, writings. Indee d, so much sothat in the 'directions' provided by Althus ser himself on how to approa ch Marx 'swork all the writings preceding t he 'break' are excluded; chronologically speak-ing, the list begins with The Poverty of Philosoph~~Althus ser 1971: 97),8 which

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    8/29

    524 Kyrkos Doxiadistitle, in this case, acquires a symbolic significance: it signifies Marx's break notonly with his 'ideological' (i.e. 'non-scientific') past but also with his philo-sophical concerns.

    How was Althusser's own immense influence on British left-wing sociologyduring the 1970s to be reconciled with the fact that he never stopped claimingthat he himself was a (Ma rxist) philosopher and that his own work was directlyphilosophical (see, e.g., 1976: 163-207)? T h e answer I think lies in the fact thatdu ring that period British left-wing sociology was profoundly theore tical in itsorientation, both thematically and structurally. T h e distinction between M arxistphilosophy as 'dialectical m aterialism' and M arxist social theory as 'the theoryof historical materialism' made by Althusser, in both his 'theoreticist' (1969: 251,255) and his 'self-critical' period (1 976: 119-25, 142-SO), was so acad emic as tobe meaningless in practice. What mattered was Athusserian theory, whether itwas to be labelled 'philosophical' or 'scientific'.Ironically, when E.P. Thompson's anti-Althusserian book The Poverty oTheory appeared in 1978,y t was as if the very title had been strategically chosento effect anew, as it were, the Marxian-Althusserian 'break' in left-wing intel-lectual activity, but with a crucial difference. Th is time arou nd, it was theory ingeneral that was the sinful past to be broken w ith. In this context, what had beenconsidered as Foucault's own 'break' in his work now seemed to be a convenientalternative to Althusserianism, m uch m ore likely to survive und er the ve hemen tattacks of Thompson and his ilk. Together with the whole of Althusser,Foucault's pre-1972 worksI0 were almost completely d iscarded when the anti-theoretical tur n occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Foucault's morerecent works, by contrast, were seen as the refreshing injection which ex-Althusserian sociology needed in order to steer away from sterile theoreticismand towards fruitful empirical research. l

    Foucault's pre-1972 writings can hardly be considered 'theoreticist', eventhoug h they are far from 'empirically' oriented in the usual social-scientificsense. On the one hand, this work had emerged out of that extremely impo rtanttradition of French twentieth-century philosophy, which was not so much'theoretical' as concerned ra ther w ith the history of science and philosophy, andwhose chief representatives were Koyre, Bachelard, Cavaillts, Canguilhem andHyppolite. On the other hand, also within the framework of contemporaryFrench philosophy, it had an arch-enemy, a nd a very powerful one, too: phenom-e n 0 1 o ~ j l . ~ ~his latter - negative - onnection was explicitly stated by Foucaultin his 1970 preface to the English edition of The Order of Thzngs (1974a: xiv)'"and it is, as I shall argue, inherently prese nt in what I believe is the central philo-sophical contributio n of his 1960s writings.

    T h e true significance of the Foucauldian 'break' of the earl! 1970s is thu ssomething rather more complex than a mere shift from 'theory' to 'empiricalresearch' or from 'pure philosophy' or 'pur e history of ideas' to a conception ofpower and to social history.

    Of course, nobody ever explicitly gave such a simplistic interpretation of theFoucauldian shift. On a more profound level, though, what was happening

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    9/29

    du ring th e early 1980s aro un d Foucault's nam e and work was in fact a rearrange-me nt o f discursive practices along quite traditional and well-tested lines. We hadbefore us once spin the conventional division of labour between philosophy an dsocial science, philosop hy being exclusi\-el\- conce rned with pu rely the oretica lma tters an d social science, thoug h n ot esclusi\el!. emp irical (a n e.z.clusiz.el)~empirical discipline has yet to b e fo rmula ted), definitely giving empiricalresear ch pri de of place as the basis of its concern s. Wit h ver!- few exception s, no-4nglophone Foucauldian has ever dared to suggest, at least when referring toFoucault's post-1972 perio d, tha t Foucau lt \\-as a philosoph er w itho ut a1 the samelinze being also a social scientist, or vice versa.'+ It seems, h ow \- er , that this tra-ditional division of labo ur between phi1o soph ~- nd social science \+-asmainlj-exemplified in the different approaches to Foucault themselves. While socialscientists now viewed Foucault 's post-1972 writings as rejuvenating empiricaln-ork, there were some theoris ts who approached E i~ucau l tn an entirely oppo-site, bu t in a certain sense complementar!; dire ctio n.

    H u b e r t L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow's most influential hllchel Fouc.ault:Bellonrl Stru rt~~ rrili smrt~ri'Hermenez~tzcs 1982) includ ed two unpublished theor-e t i ca l t ex t s by Foucaul t on power (Dreyf~~snd Rabinow 1982: 208-26) -inevitabl!. taken as an endor semen t of the book b! Foucault himself. iVhat tookplace with D rey fu s and Rabinow 's influential boo k, hotvel-er, v-as a systematic-ally theoretical reading of Foucault 's work that was t~~ti r.el )l/~et~omenologic~il,reading that turned Foucaul t himself into some sort of a phenomenologis t . The irline of argum ent suggests the following schematization: with regard to the philo-sophical achievements o f his work, Fou cault, u p t o an d includ ing The .-lrchnt,-ology ~!fKnon~lerlgt,l969), went fu rther than H usserl but no t as far as Heidegger,and, durin g his la ter period, went further than H eidegger but no further thanXIerleau-Ponty ''

    T h e book's back CO\-er eclares: 'Ei)ucault him self has judged this interpre -tation as accu rate.' H owever, th e onl!- real eviden ce for this is E;oucaultls ackno n -ledgement that the book revealed the significance of HeidegR~er\mpac t on h i sthought , which no t many others had not iced (RIart in, Gutm an and Eiut ton 1988:12-13). -4s to Husserl and Merleau-Pont!, the evidence remains ocern~helmiiythat, especially in his 1960s work, the! ncr e, together w ith Sartre , the maintargets of his critique.'"

    Hov el-er, t is not so much that l . 'oucault 11as 'against ' certain autho rs, but thathc, in perhaps the most important book of his 1960s M-ritings, man aged todestroy completel!- on e of the fundam ental presupp osition s on which phe nom -cnolog!- is based. I am referr ing to T/ztO T ~ C T!/ 'Tlliyq and to the central t hem eof that book, n hich v-as the descript ion of the dramatic shif t that occurredaround the end of the eighteenth ccnturj - across the whole of W estern andCentra l Eu ropean thoug ht and kno15-ledge, \I-ith the ex ception of th e exact sci-ences: the shift from th e 'metaphysics of representation an d of the infinite' , an dfrom kno\~ -ledg e s (classical) representation, to th e 'analytic of finitude andhuman existence', and to the ne\\ empirical sciences (Ricardian economics,biolog!; and c om par atiw and historical linguistics) and t he sciences of 'man'

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    10/29

    526 Kyrkos Doxiadis(Fou cault 1974a: esp. 303-43). O n the strictly philosophical level, what this actu-ally involved was a consideration of Kantian critical philosophy as effecting abreak in Western though t of at least equal importance to that effected by Carte-sianism towards the middle of the seventeenth c entury (w hich for Foucault hadmarked th e beginning of th e classical - as opposed to the properly 'modern' -period ) (Fou cault 1974a: esp. 46-77). Foucault's diagnosis of a radica l disconti-nuity between C artesianism and Kantianism17 completely ove rturns phenom e-nology's own reading of Western philosophy, which precisely rests on thecontinuity existing between these two curr ents.ls

    Foucault's vehem ent (and notorious) 'anti-humanism' dur ing the 1960s thushad two interrelated aspects. On e was a directly political critique (ev ident in theinterviews of that period, thoug h not in The Order of Things itself), which attackshum anism as the main normalizing discourse of o ur times.19 Foucault did no t'wake up' politically after May '68, as it is sometimes suggested.20Th e import -ance of Foucault's 'break' occurring in the early 1970s, especially as far as itspolitical dimension is concerned, is quite overestimated. H e had always been prac-tically interested in power in modern societies, especially as this manifests itselfin norm alizing practices.

    Th er e was however an equally impo rtant theoretical 'underside', so to speak,to this negative preoccupation with hum anism , and this was expressed as a con-stant aim to demolish the philosophical foundation of humanism, i.e. (philo-sophical) anthropology. And it is evident that, to Foucault's mind, its maincontemporary exponents were the phe nom eno logi~ t s .~~

    Foucault's m ain contention in The Order of T hings, that before the end of theeigh teen th centur y 'man' did not exist, strikes a decisive blow against any phil-osophy that rests on the investigation of 'man'. However, apart from p henome-nology being (together with S artrean existentialism), according to F oucault, themain contemporary philosophical current actually to do so, what is even moreimportant is the more general - and at first glance rather 'technical' - basis ofFoucault's critique: the establishment of a radical discontinuity between Ca rte-sian and Kantian rationalism.

    As if by way of an implicit answer to Dreyf us and Rabinow's book, Foucault,in an interview with them which was published as an appendix in its secondedition (1983), has this to say regarding w hat he probably considers as th e mostessential difference between Des cartes and K ant (and I quote at length):

    we must not forget that Descartes wrote 'meditations' - nd meditations area practice of the self. But th e extraordinary th ing in Descartes's texts is thathe succeeded in substituting a subject as founder of practices of knowledge,for a subject constitute d throug h practices of the self.

    This is very important. Even if it is true that Greek philosophy foundedrationality, it always held that a subject could no t have access to the t rut h ifhe did not first operate upon himself a certain work which would make himsusceptible to knowing the truth - a work of purification, conversion of thesoul by contemplation of the soul itself. . . . In Western culture up to the

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    11/29

    F o ~ i c ~ l i l trnd the three-hended kzng 527sixteen th centur!; asceticism and access to trut h are aln-ays mo re or lessobscurely linked.

    Descartes, I think , broke with this when he said, 'To acccde to t ruth, i t suf-fices tha t I be an,)! subject which can see what is evident ' . E vidence is substi-tuted for ascesis at the point where the relationship to the self intersects therelationship to others and the world. T h e relat ionship to the sel f no longerneed s to be ascetic to get into relation to the tr ut h. It suffices that th e relation-ship to th e sel f reveals to m e th e oh\- ious t ru th of what I see for m e to apprc-hend that t ru th definitivelq-. Th us , I can be imm ora l and knon- the t ru th . Ibelieve that this is an idea w hich , mor e or less explicitl!, was rejected by allprevious cul ture. Before Descartes, on e could n ot be imp ure, imm oral , andknow the t ru th . W i th Descart es, d i rec t c d c n c c i s enough. -4f te r Descar tes ,we have a nonascetic subject of kno\vledge. This change makes possible theinstitutionalization of modern science.

    I am obv iously schem atizing a \-er!- lon g histor); which is, ho~vel- er,unda-mental. After Descartes, we have a subject of knowledge which poses for Ka ntthe problem of knowing the relat ionship between the subject of e thics and thatof knowledge. There was much debate in the Enl ightenment as to whetherthese t ' lr-o subjects were com pletelj- different o r no t. K ant 's solution was tofind a universal subject, which, to the extent that it was unkersal, could bethe subjcct of knowledge, but which de man ded, nonetheless , an ethical a tt i -tude - preciselj- the relationship to the self which Ka nt prop oses in T h e Cri-t ique r?f'Pnlc~ti~~irleuson.

    Q. You mean that o nce I>esca rtes had cut scientific rationality loose fromethics, Kan t reintroduced ethics as an appl ied fo rm of p rocedural rat ional ity?

    M .F R i g ht . K a n t s a p , 'I mus t recognize m! self as universal subject, tha tis, I mu st cons titu te m!-self in each of m!- action s as a universal subject by con-forming to universal rules' . T h e old ques t ions \ \ -ere reinterpreted: How can Icons titute myself as a subject of ethics? Recognize myself as such ? ;\re asceticexercises needed? O r s imply this Kant ian relationship to the universal whichmakes me ethical by conform ity to pract ical reason? T hu s Kan t int roduceso n e m o r e wa!- in our trad ition whe reby the self is not merely given but is con-stituted in relationship to itself as subject [end of interview].

    (Foucault 1986: 371-2)Non; as we kn o y for Foucaul t , this Cartesian ' c r n y subject v-hich can see what isevident ' is not me re1~- n in noce nt personification of scientific value-free objec-tivit!: N ot only in those thr ee pages in his 1961 .2lndness L I I Z L / Cirilizirtion (1976a:56-9), whe re he refers briefl!- to the im po rtan ce of 1)cscartes' .?/lei/ita~ionsregarding th e exclus ion of madness (and the internm ent of the mad) du ring theclassical period," but also in his mu ch m ore extensive and polemical 1972 replj-toJacques Derrida's critique,2i Foucault is quite clear as to the political meanin gof this Cartesian 'break'. T h e Cartesian subjcct of knowledge is free of ethics notn~ er el j ecause he is t r! ing to be 'objectne ' , out because, prcci sel~ ! b eco min gthe subject of kno nledg e and reason, he automaticall! becomes a soverezgn

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    12/29

    528 Kyrkos Doxiadissubject of ethics; i.e., quite simply, he becomes the legislator.24 For anyone whoknows Foucault's work, the 'institutionalization of mod ern science' h e is refer-ring to here, which became possible with Cartesian rationalism, rather thanbeing a manifestation of the m oral and political autonomy that scientific know-ledge enjoys in mode rn societies, is, on the contrary, intricately involved with thewhole re-organization of power relations in Europe an societies from the seven-teenth century onwards. And it is so from a dominant position: Cartesianrationalism involves the priority of reason and knowledge over ethics, not theirmere independence from it. And, to my mind, Foucault's notion of 'govern-mentality' works precisely in the direction of showing, in a more concretemanner, how this priority of reason over ethics was manifested in the actual strat-egies and technologies of power which starte d being deployed duri ng the seven-teenth century.25

    'The fact that Kant, o n the other hand, reconnected the subject of knowledgeto that of ethics by placing reason and m orality on an equ al footing is an indi-cation that Kantia n critique presents a radical challenge to Cartesianism. And itis here that the K antian 'break' with Cartesianism, as first described in The Orderof Things, acquires its full meaning. According to Foucault's earlier analysis (andI suppose most Ka nt scholars would agree on this), the K antian subject of know-ledge is a finite subject (see Foucault 1974a: esp. 243-4). Fou cault is now imply-ing that finitude also applies to the Kantian subject of ethics (and on this manyKant scholars might disagree). A subject that has continuously to constituteitself through its actions cannot be truly sovereign. The ided'eaof the moral law maybe infinite, the constituted subject of ethics itself is not. 'Universal' here m eans'universally equal': the only way that the K antian sub ject can function as a uni-versal legislator is by practically binding itself as to its ow n actions according touniversal p rinciples; in turn , this finitude is also that w hich provides it with itsliberty : since it is respo nsible solely for its ow n actions, it is also the ir only judge;the universal principles accord ing to which it acts are universal only to the extentthat it judges them to be so.26

    In a 1978 text in which Fouc ault defined 'critique' in general as 'the art of hownot to be governed like that' (1990: 38), he defined the meaning of Kant ian cri-tique in relation to th e Enlighte nme nt as follows:

    Critique [in Kant's view] means, in short, that it is less in what we dare try,with more or with less courage, than in the idea that we form of our know-ledge [connaissance] and its limits, that ou r liberty is at stake, and that, co n-sequently, instead of allowing ourselves to be told by someone else 'obey', it isat that very moment, when one has formed a right idea of one's own know-ledge, that one will be able to discover the principle of au ton om j and n o longerhave to listen to the obe )~; r rather that the obey will bc based on autonomlitself.

    (Foucault 1990: 41)Consequently a radical re-viewing is required of what, in the light of the more'socio-political' and 'empirical' works of Foucault's later period, might be

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    13/29

    F o u ~ a ~ l l trnd t he three-hetrrled $tug 529considered an empty and sterile philosophical notion, i.e. the 'analytic of fini-tude'. Th at \.er!- term, ~ h i c hn T h e O n l t r of' Tizii~gs oucault had insisted onusing to mark m ode rn tho ug ht in its most pro foun d specificit!; we now see clearlyre-emerging, plusi.se1)~ ~111,tnze he.fi~r.mz~l~~ter/he no/Wn of' koi.ernmentu/ity' iind111 rr~rliral ppositio ~ 0 it, by means of form ing the very basis of political and moralautonom!-." Foucault's continue d insistence on the importa nce of the splitbetween C:artesianism and Kantia nism non- acquires a m ore directly political sig-nificance, given Foucault's m ore explicit preoccupation with power and ethics.

    There is, certainlq, a basic difference of approach between The Ovt/er i!f 'Thingsand Foucault's 1970s and l(j80s work, but this consists in the fact that Foucau ltin that book dealt strictl? with the internal relations of discourse.zxWhat inter-ested him there is to she\\- that dis co nti nu it~ xisted on the level of the internal1~11esf thc formation of discourse; that what mad e the appearance of 'man' as ad iscur s iw en t i t~ - ossible at the end of the eightee nth centur! had not beenpresent beforeh and, w ithin classical discourse. Read too literally, this might givethe impression that Foucault is implq-ing that, with th e emergence of 'man' andthe anal!-tic of finitude, the ~v ho le f classical thou ght d isappea red once and forall from t he face of the e arth . E\-en if this is largelq- tru e for classical emnplrii.alknomlerlge (thou gh not entirely so; natural history is still being tau ght at primarj-schools; perhaps there is also some significance in the fact that contemporaryecono mics is divided in to 'neo-classical' and 'neo-Ricardian'), to suggest that italso holds for classical philosoplz)~n.ould be something so daft that Foucaulthimself M -ould ot even think of doing so. Hot$-otherwise could he expose phe-nomenology's presumed continuit?. between Descartes and Ka nt, withoutrecognizing the str ong Carte sian streak within phenomenologq-?"' Elsewhere, inhis fiamous 1970 text on lk le uz e , Fouc ault explicitlq- criticizes Hegel for ulti-matclq- being closer to Leibniz t han to an!- properly m ode rn philosophy,30and,in his polemical 1972 repl!- to Der rida , he openly accuses De rrida of being the'most decisil-e rep res en tat i~e ' of the classical (i.e. Cartesian) philosophicalSJ-stem- even if 'in its final splendo ur' (1991, 11: 267).

    In his post-1972 writings, he b! no means ceases to be concerned with thestudy of discourse, but is now directly concerned with discourse as embodied inpower relations and social practices, i.e. n-ith ho\\- subjects are constitute d withinsocial practice. He re he does not et-en h a w to make explicit that the disciplinarytechniq ues and power strategies of the classical period 01-erlap with tho se ofmodernit?; because he has already shown that the latter emerged out of theformer, which to a large estcn t continu e to esis t. 'There is no real discon tinuitythere."'However, it is true that in both Dzscipline i ~ n d unish and the first volume of7'he Histoql c!f'Se.ruu/i

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    14/29

    530 Kyrkos Dox iadisIn Discipline and Punish, Foucault contrasts modernity's 'gentle way in

    punishm ent' ( 19 79 ~: 04-31) to abhorrent scenes of public torture and execu-tion of the pre-modern period (1979~: -6). Also, in the last part of the firstvolume of The History of Sexuality (1979a: 133-59), he juxtaposes modernpower's positive approach towards human life to the right of death the absolutemona rch had over his subjects - a right, according to Foucault, which derivedfrom that of th e feudal lord. T h e contrast, i.e. the discontinuity, in both caseshowever is misleading, because it is between tw o unrelated term s. Th e compari-sons should rather be between pre-modern and modern forms of torture andexecution, and between the absolute monarch's and a modern government'simplementation of the death sentence and declaration of war. In such com pari-sons, even if the difference may (thou gh not always) be no less striking, it wouldbe much more difficult to establish a real discontinuity. And this would be dueto the fact that both sides of the comparisons rest on the same discursive prin-ciple, which is the princ iple of the legitimation o repression in terms of absolutesovereignty. In a similar way to that in which one has to accept that there areimp ortan t remainders of classical thought within modernity, Fo ucault would thu salso have to accept that there are im port ant rem ainders of classical orms of legit-imation within modernity.

    T h e problem is that, in the last part of the first volume of The History o Sexu-ality, Foucault seems to be implying that, with the exception of Nazism, in allother extreme forms of repression, modernity is providing its own principles oflegitimation: he considers the death sen tence an act of 'disallowing' so meon e tolive, rathe r than of taking life, and wars, he maintains, are carried out in th e nameof popu lations an d no t of sovereigns (1979a: 136-8).

    In terms of morality, though, what this would in turn imply is that mod-ernity's principles of legitimation, insofar as they may serve to justify killing,maim ing and to rture, even if all in the name of a 'good' (i.e. moder n) cause, arebasically not very different from pre-mo dern legitimation principles. Th is, in myview, exposes a profound structural similarity between classical and modernforms of legitimation, or, what amou nts to the same thing, a continuin g exist-ence of classical legitimation w ithin mo dernity (which will be furth er explainedbelow). However, Foucault, not o nly in tha t text (en d of The History o f Sexuality,Volume l ) but elsewhere too, seems to be avoiding altogether the discussion ofmode rn power in terms of legitimation.

    Indeed, avoidance of the use of 'legitimation' as an analytical and criticalconcept seems to lie at the bottom of his systematic disapproval of the use of theconcept of ideology. T h e tw o main explicit reasons for the latter, which are givenby Foucault in the famous interview on 'Truth and power', are important butinsufficient: 'ideology' being secondary in relation to something else, like theeconomy, for example, and being also in opposition to truth or science.32 It isevident that Foucault is thereby trying to distance himself from both orthodoxMa rxism i n general and Althus serianism in particular. Bu t 'ideology' is not necess-arily linked with either economism or scientism (in Karl M ann heim , for example,it is not - f. Mannheim 1936). Ideology as the term which most directly points

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    15/29

    Foucuult and t he three-headed kzng 53 1to the issue of legitimation is thus probably th e mor e general cause for Foucault'sdistaste. Particularly revealing as to this connection is the text of his lecture on'Critique and Enlightenment', where it seems that he is trying to disassociatehimself from the 'ideology critique' approach of the Frankfurt School preciselyby disowning the problem atic of 'legitimation' (1990: 42-9).33

    In accordance with this reading of F oucault, the significance of the dic tum:'In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king',would be reph rased as follows: 'Le t us get rid n ot only of the notion of power asa repressive sovereign, but also of the theory which suggests that the state, andall other forms of power, even though repressive, get legitimated by means ofideology. In sh ort, let us s top viewing power in term s of legitimation.'

    Now ge tting rid of the whole problem of legitimation as irrelevant to the exer-cise of power in m odern societies might well be taken to mean that the conce ptof 'power' itself is useless. Perhaps, after all, it is no accident that Foucault'sexplicit disassociation from the problematic of 'legitimation' and Don zelot'sincitement to abando n 'power' took place the same year (1978) . Power', indeed,is indissociable from 'legitimation', especially zn modern societies. Why? For thesimple reason that the very existence of power in a society which claims to bebased on universal equality needs to be legitimated: no matter whether i t is repres-sive or no t, power alway s implies some for m of inequalitjl.

    Not allowing oneself to be bothered with the question of legitimation, andtherefore of power, can thus mean only one thing: tha t one does not take seri-ously modern society's egalitarian claims, so one forgets about them, and onejust goes on do ing one's business as a (Fouc auldia n) social scientis t, which is, inDonzelot's words, to discover the 'minim um and irreducib le materiality'through 'the description of social arrangements (agencements)' (1959: 7 7 ) . Towhat end ? For the m ere fun of it, perhaps.

    Given what we have (and what we have not) already said so far regarding bo ththe practical and the theoretical involvements of all Foucault's work, this makesone rather suspicious. One is inclined instead not to take seriously Foucault'sclaim that he is not interested in legitimation. And there is a very good, solidreason for this, too: the fact that in those ae ty pages (in the first volume of TheHistorj~ f Sexualitjl) in which he describes his 'non-juridico-discursive' notion ofpower, w ith the king j. head which needs cutting 08 tc., Foucau lt him self has perhapsthe biggest ecer legitimation story to tell:

    W hy is this juridical notion of power, involving as it does the neglect of every-thing that makes for its productive effectiveness, its strategic resourcefulness,its positivity, so readily acce pted? In a soci etj su ch as ours, where th e devicesof power are so numerous, its rituals so visible, and its instrum ents ultimateljso reliable, in this society that has been more imaginative, probably, than anyother in c reating devious and supple m echanisms of power, what explains thistendency not to recognize the latter except in the negative and emaciated formof prohibit ion? W h j are the deployments of power reduced simplj to theprocedure of the lam of interdiction?

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    16/29

    Le t me offer a general and tactical reason that seem s self-evident: power istolerable only on co nditio n that it mask a substantial pa rt of itself. Its successis proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms. Would power beaccepted if it were entirely cynical? For it, secrecy is not in t he n ature of anabuse; it is indispensable to its operation. Not only because power imposessecrecy on those whom it dominates, but because it is perhaps just as indis-pensable to the latter: would they accep t it if they d id not see it as a mere limitplaced on their desire, leaving a measure of freedom - owever slight -inta ct?Power as a pure limit set on freedom is, at least in our society, the general fo rmof its acceptability.

    (Foucau lt 1979a: 86)He then goes on to explain how power, dating from feudalism, never ceased tobe identified w ith some sor t of juridical au thority: from the absolute monarch ofthe M iddle Ages and the classical age, who was identajied mzth rather than posedagainst the law, to the r ul e o f l a m of classical liberalism and to the ' fundamentallawfulness' of socialist egalitarianism (1979a: 8 6 4 , n order to reach his famousconclusion:

    At bottom, despite the differences in epochs and objectives, the represen-tation of power has remained und er th e spell of monarchy. In po litical thou ghtand analysis, we still have not c ut off the head of the king.

    (Foucau lt 1979a: 88-9)To notice that here Foucault uses the term 'representutiotz of power' adds thefinishing touch. W hat we have here is an (almost) com plete the or)^ of the (modern)ideolugj~ fpower . It is totally obvious that here Foucau lt is not m erely trying topoint out a purely theoretical 'mistake' in the conception of power, whose cor-rection has lagged for two centuries. What he is asking and answering is hornpeople accept , pm ct ic ul l~ ~,he exercise of power in modern societies. If he wereslightly more consistent in his terminology, his dictum should read: 'In (bothpractical an d theoretical) political thoug ht an d in political analysis, that is, in ourideology and in political philosophy and science, we still have not cut off the h eadof th e king; tha t is, we still rely on the existence of socereigntjl for the legitimationof power.'

    When I said Foucault offers us an 'almost complete' theory of the mod ern ideol-ogy of power, I was not referring only to a lack of terminological consistency.Rather, on an a pparently m ore substantial level, what is lacking h ere is a clearerexposition of how the legitimation process itself works. Reading Foucault, onemight get the impression that h e is interested only in one p art of this process, i.e.in how (pre-m odern) sovereignty legitimates mod ern p ower: We tolerate powerbecause we think that power is exercised only by and through the law, and there-fore we accept all other form s of it. It is obvious that Foucault h ere is not imply-ing the existence of a simp le deception which identifies all power with practices

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    17/29

    Fourazllt (init tile three-healled krng 533directly linked with the law or with parliamentarq- institutions and which con-vincingll- leaves all other power practices outside. T heo rist of ideology h e may be,vulgar theorist he is not. Foucault is clearly suggesting that even everydaj-relations of power which have no direct conne ction with the law or with politicsin the conventional sense and which, nevertheless, might normally be question-able b>- those who und ergo them - for cxample, the relationship betwecnemploq-er and employee, husba nd an d wife, parents and c hildren, teache r an dpupils, do ctor and patien t, or, for that m atter, the ver!. man ifest relationsh ips ofpower which are involved in administrative, or even military, practices and w hichare not always expressed in legal term s - re tolerated, to th e extent that they are,because the ),, rrlso, are identified with the l a n O ne thinks one obe?-san otherwiseundesirable power insofar as one is being la\vful. A4ndwh en the!- ar e not tolerated,it is again an o ~ e rl y epressive law that one is thinking of re \olting against.Foucault illustrates this process co ncretely n-hen he exposes (the ideology of) the'repressive hypothesis' regard ing sexuality, in that same book (19792: esp. 1 5 1 9 ) .

    A questio n however arises as to what happ ens preciselj- in all those cases wherethe exercise of power is tolerated (as law) and where it is none thc less clearlyvisible and q uit e strongl!- felt: I am referring to th e examples given in the abo\-eparagra ph. How is the sovereign authorit); which lays down the lam-, itselflegit-imated ? Cautio n: Foucault himself has stated that we are talking about a pvr-nzodern, monarchic type of authority here. f Io n is this to be tolerated, in thc firstplace?

    T h e answer Foucault gives in a rather elliptical manne r (in Tlzr Nistoqt ofSesualit,)~, olz~?ne ) : Power as a pure limit set on freedom is, at least in oursociety, the general form of its acceptability' (1979a: 86).Non; this 'pure limit set on freedom', why should it be acceptable? Foucault

    seem s to be implq-ing that it is the p rice we are willing to pay in ord er to be ableto enjoy our frecdom. This, of course, tirst brings to mind the classical socialcontract theory whereby the fbrce of lam- is considered as necessary if one is toavoid individual liberty being violated bj- the a rbitrariness of those who d o not\villinglj- obey the law. But, as I have already said, we are now investigating thearea of relations and practices which (ire no t directlj- conne cted with the lam;strictly speaking. In suc h cases, this 'trade-off' between limits and freedomneeds further exploration, since it involves something rath er mo re complex andactive than a clearly defined boundary which shall not be transgressed either onthe part of sol-ereigntj-or on th e part of what is experienced as freedom .

    Foucault himself, with the closing W-ordsof his final text (1984) on Kant's'What is Enlightenment?', published eight years after the first volume of TheHistor) (,J'Se.z.ualit.)~, efines this very explora tion, in concrete political term s, asthe task of critical thoug ht itself: '[T he critical] task requires work on o ur limits,that is, a patient labor giving form to ou r impatie nce for libertq-' (Fouc ault 1986:50). Now- this statem ent, w hich mig ht at first glance be taken to constitu te arather conservative incitement to intellectual work in place of revolutionaryfervour, could instead be considered as a more illuminating rephrasing of theking's head metaphor, and one that will make good the absence of a clearer

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    18/29

    534 Kyrkos Doxiadisexposition of how legitimation works; not only how (pre-modern) sovereigntylegitimates modern power but - ome thing which is rathe r more c rucial preciselyin modern society - how (pre-modern) sovereignty is itselflegitimated. We nowhave Foucault's answer: sovereignty is legitimated by the uncritical impatiencefor liberty which has characterized modernity since its very dawn.

    Wh at is this impa tience for liberty? It consists first of all in a refusal to acceptthat th ere can be a truly modern power, power being in essence anti-libertarianand anti-egalitarian, and therefore anti-modern . As an ironic consequence, thevery task of libe ration itself has always led to an acceptance ofsovereignty, on b oththe collective and the individual level, and in all sectors of social practice: accept-ance of the sovereignty of the democra tic nation-state or Rech tsstaat as the onlypossible defence against absolutism or imperialism; acceptance of the sover-eignty of the capitalist work ethic as the only way out of econo mic inequality orunderdevelopment; of the sovereignty of parliament as the only way of safe-guar ding individual rights; of the sovereignty of science as the only way out ofignorance; of the sovereignty of mass communication and mass culture as theonly way out of isolation; of the sovereignty of the workers' Party as the onlyway out of capitalism; of th e sovereignty of m en's way of life as the o nly way forwomen's emancipation; of the sovereignty of sexuality as the only way for per-sonal liberation; of the sovereignty of normality as the only way for attainingequal rights - or, in this sense, modern discipline and modern bio-power alsodepe nd o n the acceptance of sovereignty. It is either this, or on e simply rejectsall power as sovereignty and therefore as repression.

    Th is is perhaps the most insidious trap of the mo dern ideology of power -trap which Foucault has been trying to expose precisely by the formulation ofhis own conception of power. Modernity has always used the universal incite-men t to liberty and equality as an alibi for legitimating sovereignty, i.e. for legit-imating an absolute type of uncritically accepted power; that is, an ultimatelypre-modern type of power. In doing this, it also manages to legitimate its basicantinomy, which is contained in the very notion of 'modern power' - preciselyby relegating th e source of all power to (pre-mo dern) sovereignty.T h e only way out of this ideological vicious circle, that had traditionally beenproposed by th e Marx ist left, was the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic which rests onthe hypostatization of the very antinomy of power as the moving force of history;that is, as an 'actual' contr adictio n which carries within itself the seed of its (his-torical) resolution. The identification of power with repression is thus thegeneral schem a which gives form to the idea of power as an illegitimate sover-eignty which must of (both rational and ethical) necessity be overthrown byrevolution, if mo dernity is to fulfil its promise.

    By co ntrast, Fou cault intervenes precisely in this ideological vicious circle ofmodernity by denying the very presuppositions on which it is based: sovereignty isnot the only way that power can be legitimated, 'modern power' is not an antin-omy. Power can be both legitimate and m odern , insofar as one is able to adopt acritical attitude towards it. And it is precisely on this point th at th e 'work on ou rlimits' Foucault is proposing acquires its fu ll political significance.

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    19/29

    Fo~1~nt l l tnd the three-heuiled k ~ n g 53 5Cri t ique as a 'limit- t t i tude' is not a matter of 'rejecting' power: 'We have to

    move beyond the outs ide - nside alternative; we have to be at the frontiers '(Foucault 1986: 45). Critique, for Foucault, is not ' the Kantian question .. ofknowing what l imits kno~i4edge as to renoun ce t rangress ing', but rather con-sists in the follor\-ing question:

    in m-hat is given to u s as univ ersal, necessar!; obligator!; wha t place is occu -pied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary con-s t ra ints ?Th e point , in brief, i s to t ransform the cri t ique conducted in th e formof necessary limitation in to a practical critiq ue that takes the form of a poss-ible transgression.

    (Foucault 1986: 45 )

    One finds the same theme, more elaborated this t ime, in the conclus ion toFoucault's earlier text on Ka nt (1983 - Kant on En l ightenment and revolut ion' ),where Foucault separates what he considers to be the two great philosophicaltrad itio ns tha t Kant's critical philosoph!. has given rise to:

    Kan t seems to me to have founded th e two great cr i tical t radi t ions betweenwhich m odern philosophy has been divide d. i4'e can saJ- hat in his great workof cri t ique Ka nt la id down and founded that cr i tical t radi t ion of phi losophywhich defines the conditions under which a true knowledge is possible; andone can say that a whole area of modern phi losophy s ince the nineteenthcentury has been presented and developed o n that basis as an analytic of tru th .

    But there also exis ts in mo dern and contem porary phi losophy another kindof questioning, another mode of critical interrogation: this is the one whosebegin ning can be seen precisely in the questio n of Aujkluvung or in Kant 's texton th e Revolution; this other critical tradition asks: what is our pre sent? Whatis the contemporary field of possible experience? Here it is not a question ofan analytic of t ruth, b ut of what one mig ht call an ontology of th e present , anontology of ourselves, and it seems to m e that the philosophical choice whichtoday con fron ts us is the following: on e can opt for a critical philosophy whichis framed as an analytical philosophy of t ru th in gen eral, or one can op t for acrit ical though t which has th e form of an ontology of ourselves , an ontologyof the present; i t is this latter form of philosophy which, from Hegel to theFrankfurt School by wa ~ -f Nietzsche an d hla x Weber, has founded a fo rmof reflection w ithin which I have tried to work. (Foucault 1993: 17-18)

    Now this second critical tradition in which Foucault includes himself is so vastand varied that it gives us no clue whatsoever as to its internal co herence, at leastas far as its part ic ipants are co ncerned. (A word of caut ion thou gh is in order:this trad ition, also, starts with Kant, not w ith Hegel .) As to the f i rs t t radi t ion, i ti s even more enigmatic in this respect, s ince Foucaul t ment ions no names. On eassumes he is referring to what could be characterized as 'mainstream' mo der n

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    20/29

    philosophy, which would mainly include phenomenology in continental Europeand analytical philosophy in the Anglo-Saxon world. A rather hasty and overlyschematic conclusion would thus suppose that Foucault here is simply distin-guishing 'pure' and 'socio-politically oriented' philosophy. Yet is this consistentwith what Foucault pinp oints as the source of this division, namely, Kant h imse lf?

    Is Foucault seriously suggesting that what he presents as the separationbetween 'the two great critical traditions' derives from a division between thewhole of Kant's 'great work of critique' on the on e hand, and those two shorttexts on the Enlig htenmen t (1991) and on t he Revolution (1992: 150-61) on theothe r? I do not think so. I am inclined instead to refer to a rather more equitab ledivision, which is to be found in Kan t's main critical work itself; more specific-ally, in Kant's most important critical work, namely, in the Critique of PureReason (1934). The basic division there (and it is this division which is alsopresent in the other two Critiques (1956, 1952)) is actually so apparent that itcannot be missed; in fact, it is a literaldivision. In th e main pa rt of the book, i.e.in 'Transcendental logic', one has: 'Transcendental logic - irst division: tran-scenden tal analytic' (1934: 70-208) and 'Transcen dental logic- econd division:transcenden tal dialectic' (1934: 208-405).

    It is well-known that the first modern dialectician was Kant, not Hegel. It isonly after Hegel that the dialectic came to be identified with Hegelianism. InKan t, the dialectic has nothing to do with hypostatized antinomies. T h e 'cosmo-logical antinomies' are merely one of the three forms of the 'unavoidableillusions' of reason, which it is the task of the transcenden tal dialectic to expose- he oth er two being the 'psychological paralogism', i.e. the unavoidable ten-dency of reason to tu rn th e hypothetical thinking subject into a substance, andthe 'theological ideal' of G od as the necessary primal cause of everything. If theKantian transcendental analytic of truth served, according to Foucault's analy-ses both in The Order c$ Things and in his latest writings on Kant, as a philo-sophical determination of the limits of knowledge, and therefore as a firstanalytic of finitude, Kant's transcenden tal dialectic could be considered as being,in tu rn, a dialectic of finitude; its aim is to expose th e illusions of rational psy-chology, cosmology and theology (in Foucauldian terms, of classical - .e. pre-Kantian - hough t) by means of what is actually a critique of the thought o theinjnite; all such illusions arising, according to Kant, from reason's tendencytowards absolute unity and totality.

    T h e transcendental dialectic as critique has as its aim the exposure of tran-scendental illusion; the latter can be exposed but, in co ntras t to m ere logical illu-sion, which arises out of error or sophistry, it cannot be done away with. It isunavoidable insofar as it forms part of the 'natural dialectic of human reason':

    although we must say of the transcendental conceptions of reason, the.y arenn(y zdeas, we must not, on this account, look upon them as superfluous andnugatory. For, although no object can be determined by them, they can be ofgreat utility, unobserved an d at the basis of the edifice of the understand ing,as the canon for its extended and self-consistent exercise - a canon w hich,

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    21/29

    Fo~rc iiul t rnil the t/rr-et-heailer! king 537indeed , does not enable it to cognize more in an object than it v-ould cognizeby the help of its own conceptions, but which guides it more securely in itscognition. Not to mention that they perhaps re nder possible a transition fromour conceptions of nature and the non-ego to the practical conceptions, andthus produce for even ethical ideas keeping, so to speak, and connection withthe speculative cognitions of reason lund den moralischen Ideen selbst aufsolche Art Haltung und Zusammenhang mit den spekulativen Erkenntnissender V ernunft \ erschaffen l\onnen].

    (Kant 1934: 227; 1974: 332)In other words, what \ve have in Kant's 'Transcendental dialectic', together witha critique of the thought of the infinite, is a full-blown first version of modernirleology c.ritiq~re. h e Fra nkf urt Scho ol did not get as far, given their Hegelian-ism which is app are nt in the antinom ial wa!- the! have conceived their dialecticof Enlightenmcnt/m~-thology and liberation/domination (Adorn o andHo rkh eim er 1986; Ma rcu se 1991). A41thusser, eing th e least Hegelian of all con-temporary (official) Marxist philosophers, probably got closer, emphasizinginstead both the non-antinomial dialectical illusions (thoug h he does not nam ethem as such), i.e. the constitutive human subject and the absolute primal being(what .4lthusser calls 'absolute Subject') (1971: 121-73). Althusser is alsoKantian in that his functionalism leads him merely to substitutc for Kant'sni~turrrl ecessitj- of transcendental ideas the social necessity of the misrecogni-tion of the re prod ucti on of relations of produc tion . Howex-er, in juxtaposingideology to science, he tre ats ideolog!. pre-criticall!; i.e. as m ere logical illusion- ven thou gh not sim pl\- as sophistrj- or error, but as maintained rather by socialnecessityFoucault is pcrhaps the most important and the most genuine contemporaryexponent of the Kantian dialectic, insofar as his whole work consists in theexpo sure of precisel!. the equivalent of what Ka nt calls 'unavoidable illusions ofreason'. Fo ucault's pers istence in avoiding the ter m 'ideolog!-' and the correla-tive notion of 'legitimation' (and hence his insistence on using instead term s like'power-knowledge' and 'rkgime of truth ') has to do with the fact that, through-out the whole critical tradition in which he includes himself, the problematic of'ideology' had been identified either with some sort of Hegelion-dialecticalschem a ('false' consciousness, En ligh tenm ent as m!-thology etc. (cf. Lu ki cs1971; also Adorno and Horkh eime r 1986; hlarcuse 1991)), or v-ith a pre-criticalconception of ideology as mere logical illusion - omething opposed to reasonor science:'+ I;i)ucau lt insists on showin g that reason and (sc ientific) know ledgethemselves are cmplo!.cd in producing pract ical, i .e. porl-er, ef fects c n n c ~ ~ ~ r e n ~ l ~ ~rr~itiz nd iiz no opposition l o truth

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    22/29

    538 Kyrkos Doxiadisto do so, and which is manifest, as we have seen in explaining Foucault's dictumwith the king's head metaphor, in the general identification of power withsovereignty.

    But this is an illusion which can be exposed only throu gh c oncrete analyses-the sort that Foucault himself has been doing throu ghou t his work. It is imposs-ible to determine beforehand and in general terms the process whereby thisillusion takes place. It is in this sense - nd in this sense only - hat Foucault's workis anti-theoretical. Foucau lt is against 'theory' insofar as it also serves to legiti-mate sovereignty, by placing the subject of knowledge itself in a sovereign posi-tion outside and above, as it were, the perilous world of social practice; insofar,that is, as it rests on a (Cartes ian) subject of knowledge which is supposedly inde-pendent from ethics and politics. His conce ption of 'empirical research', th ough ,is precisely the opposite to that of empiricism. Foucault is not interested in thedetac hed yet reve rent observ ation of the evidence of (social) facts (which is merelyCartesianism resigned from its philosophical aspirations), but, o n the contrary, inpractical critique as a direct involv emen t of the ory in socialpractice -which of coursehas nothing to do with the Hegelian-M arxist theory/practice 'dialectic'.

    To a certain degree, Foucault's anti-theoreticism is Kantian. Like Kant,Foucault is concerned with the exposure of th e ideas which serve as 'regulativeprinciples' of the employ ment of both reason and action." But, unlike him , heis not conc erned with showing how these ideas, necessary as they may be, nonethe less give rise to illusions which are exposed if examined und er th e rules ofthe transcende ntal analytic, i.e. from the viewpoint of th e transcendentaljnitudeof knowledge. Rather, Foucault seeks to question them precisely in ter m s of theirpractical necessity as regulative ideas, i.e. from th e viewpoint of the socialfinitudeof dzscnurse; that is, of discourse embodied in social practice and pr oduc ing powereffects by this very emb~diment .~ 'oucault's concept of power is thoroughlystructu ral, insofar as it refers to th efi ni te structures of discourse; i.e. to discourse ashistorical events38- very unlike the infinite structures of language and of socialrelations as language with which Saussure and Levi -S trauss a re ~ o n c e r n e d . ~ ~Foucault's approach to power is structural insofar as it is concerned with dis-course - and till his very last writings he never stops claiming that his wholemethodology rests on the study of di sc o ~ rs e '~ ut i t is not structuralist insofaras he co ntinually gives prevalence to social practice over discourse. Rather thanprojecting social relations on the infinite expanse of linguistic or m ythical 'per-mutation groups' (see Levi-Strauss 1972: 228), he on the con trary conceives ofdiscourse as contained within and limited by social practice.''

    According to th e Foucauldian problematic, an,y hypostatization of the infinite,either on metaphysical (or linguistic) grounds or by means of an appeal to'natural (i.e. functional) necessity', should be exposed as an illusion which maypotentially serve to legitimate sovereignty. And antinomies are of secon daryimportance, precisely because their significance exhausts itself on the level ofdiscourse. T h e excessive imp ortan ce attributed to antinomies can itself operate,as we have seen with the antinomy 'modern power', further to sustain thelegitimating illusions.

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    23/29

    Foucrrult rlnrI the three-hrarlerl king 539I t is also in this sense that the emb odim ent of discourse referred to here is in

    no majt Hrgrlirin. It is a litrrillembo dime nt, insofar as social practice and the exer-cise of pow7er, precisely in accordance with F oucault's appro ach, are conceivedin terms of ucting ("nite) hum an hodirs; and the finite structures of discourse,whose finitude is ensured precisely by this emb odim ent, have nothing to do withthe Hegelian 'actual Idea', which 'becomes explicit as infinite actual mind' byme ans of the \er!- proce ss of its finite actua lization (H ege l 1967: 162).4 2

    It is as if Foucault goes one decisi\-e step furth er th an Ka nt in his dialectic offinitude, by calling Kant's bluff, as it were: 'Let us see horn neccssar!. ar e th es eregulative ideas that you have exposed in !-our dialectic as incapable of with-stan ding critical analysis, i.e. analysis from the v iewpoint of finitude.'

    The se regulative ideas that bother Foucault are prettl- muc h the sam e as inKant: they both a mou nt to the sovereign subject, whether as hypostatized subjectof knowledge or as primal cause of all things. It is no accident, howe\-er, that it isprecisely these two sort s of ideas, i.e. the ps!-chological and theological ones , thatKa nt treats in a privileged fashion, at the expense of th e cosmological ideas:

    there is nothing to hinder us from rriltnitting these ideas to possess an objec-tive and hyperbolic [h?.postatisch] existence, except the cosmological ideas,which lead reason into an antinomy: the PS!-chological and theological ideasare not antinom ial. Thej - contain no contradiction; and how then can anj- onedisp ute the ir objective reality, since he who denies it knows as little abou t theirpossibility as U-ewho affirm?

    (Kant 1934: 389; 1974: 585)It is here perhaps that is revealed the most important divergence betweenFoucault and Ka nt. I n drawing a di\-iding line between cosmological ideas,U-hoseobjective existence, unavoidable illusions of reason as they may also be,we canno t 'admit' because they are contradictor!; and psychological and theo-logical ones, for which there is not any reason no t to admit them , Kan t is imply-ing that there are ultimately two sorts of transcendental illusions: theunavoidable but unacceptable ones (cosmological ideas) and th e unavoidable andacceptable, even as illusions (psychological and theological ide as) .+ qfHegel (seeesp. 1975: 76-9) tried to show that the form er should not be unacce ptable either,thereby transforming the dialectic of finitude into a dialectic of the infinite,Foucault went in precisely the opposite direction, by radically questioning theacceptability of th e latter.

    For Ka nt, th e finite hum an being cannot avoid the illusion of the infinite (i.e.sovereign) subject precisely because it is finite. This theme is something thatremained constant in critical thought right up to and including the Lacanianmir ror stage theor):" It is also the basis for the legitimation of power thro ughsovereignt!. an d of so\- ere ign ty itself, to which I referred above: one is finite, oneis limited , therefore on e inevitabl!. underg oes power relations, therefore o ne alsodepen ds on sovereignty to legitimate the latter.

    T h e Foucauldian inter\-ention consists in acc epting that power is indeed poss-ible on th e condition that hum an beings are finite, but in showing also that it is

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    24/29

    540 Kyrkos Doxiadisprecisely for this reason tha t one should no t accept the no t ion of an ' in f in i t esubject ' of power . T h e hum an being s who exercise power are just as fini te as thosew ho un der go i t . Th er e i s no acceptab le pr act ica l - .e. ideological - r theoret i-ca l - w hether in t e r ms of a ( Car tes ian) metaphysics of the inf inite or in accord-ance with a (Hegelian) dialectic of th e in f in i te - egit imation o f sovereignty. Af terFoucault , cr i tical social theory ma y have to reconsider th e (Weber ian) ' legit imatedomina t ion ' thes i s , and Mar x ism may have to r eappr a i se the ( G r amsc ian)conc ept of 'hegemony'. Polit ically speaking, in t he age of the ( seeminglyinevitable) resurgence of nationalism, we may finally have to realize - an dFoucault would cer tainly agree on this - ha t k i l ling in the name of the peopleor o f popula t ion m ay be jus t a s bad as k i ll ing in th e name of a k ing .

    ' In poli t ical though t an d analys is, we s t i ll have not cu t off the head of Hobbes . 'University o f Athens

    Notes

    1 Foucault (1994,111: 635-57,719-23, 818-25; 1981). See also Burchell, Gordo n andMiller (1991).2 T he exact phrasing in this text is as follows: 'We need to cut off the King's head: inpolitical theory tha t has still to be done' (Foucault 1980 : 121).3 Th e article had originally been published in French as a review of PatrickVirelet andPierre Rosanvallon's Pour une nouvelle culture politzque and Andre Glucksmann's LesMuitrespenseurs; cf. Donzelo t (1979: 71, 86).4 Th is text was a lecture given at the College de France in 1978.5 In the E nglish translation, Deleuze 's text is published as a Foreword; Donzelot (1980:ix-xvii).6 Cf., for example, his 'Elements of self-criticism': 'whatever you do, you cannot findin S pinoza what H egel gave to Marx: contradiction' (Althu sser 1976: 141).7 Th e two terms have been juxtaposed (for examp le, by some of the participants in theFoucault Conference held in Ma rch 1980 at the Polytechnic of Central Lon don ), but notconvincing ly; given the sense in which the 'social' has often been utilized, a 'history of th esocial' could well be taken to signify a sort of specialized branch of social history.8 On this, cf. also Althusser (1976: 111). In it ia ll ~ lthusser had tended to situate theMarxian 'break' one year earlier, in The German Ideology (1846); cf. Althusser (1969).Even so, it is revealing that in do ing this he had paid special notice to the fact that, in th atwork, 'Marx always uses philosophy to mean ideology pure and simple' (Althusser 1969:162; cf. also Althusser 1971: 151).9 See also Paul Hirst's critique (1985: 57-90).10 I choose 1972 as a convenient date for the Foucauldian 'break', with reference to thesubtitle and contents of Colin Gordon's most influential collection of Foucault's textspublished in 1980; see note 2, above.11 A characteristic example of this kind of reaction to Foucault is Stu art Hall's other-wise rather hostile reference in a 1980 article: 'Foucault's work - currently enjoyinganother of those uncritical periods of discipleship through which British intellectualsreproduce today their dependency on yesterday's French ideas - has had an exceedinglypositive effect: above all because . . . Foucault has made possible a welcome return to theconcrete analysis of particular ideological and discu rsive formations, and th e sites of theirelaboration' (H all 1980: 71).

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    25/29

    Foui.ault and the three-hearled kzng 54112 For a link between the positive and the negative framework, i.e. between Frenchhistory of science and phenomenology, see Foucault (1994, IV: 53, 436; 1990: 44).13 And elsewhere - ee belokv, note 16.14 A recent exception can be found in Thoma s Osbornc's admirabl j audacious aphor-ism: 'there may be limits to Foucault 's uses, and yet . . . such limits are at the source ofFoucault 's great strengths . . . [O]bviously enough . . . Foucault was n ot a sociologist. . . .Sociologists might concentrate on becoming i ~ h a t hey are, in the meantime leavingFoucault to wande r off on his own' (O sborn e 1994: 498-9). O the r readings of Foucaulthave been much more careful, especially in this respect, cf., for example, Cousins andHussain (1984).15 See esp. Drcy fus and Kabinow (1982: 4 k 5 2 , 97-8, 11 1-12, 165-7, 206); Foucau lt(1974b).16 Mo st revealing in this respect are Foucault 's interview s and response s to critiques inthe period folloaing the first publication of The Order o f Thzng.~ 1966). See Foucault(199 4,I: 498-731). See also Eribo n (1991: 156-7) and 1,ebrun (1992). M)r an example ofFoucault 's own retrospectike affirmation of this fact, see a 1981 intervien, in Fou cault(199 4,I i ' : 666-7).17 T hi s discontinuity has never since been seriousl!- challenged by anyone (Ilr eyf us andRabinow merely pia!- down its importance in Foucault 's work).18 Th is is evident, in different ways of course, in both H usserl 's Curte sWn ,Vfeditutrons:.4n Intro(iuction to Phmotnenolog~~1977), a most influential text especially in France, andMerleau-Pontj-'S Phetzomenokogy of Perception (1962), the founding text of post-warFrench phenomenology. Foucault explicitly rcfcrs to this in The Order cf Thzngs; cf.Foucault (1974a: 325). O n the other hand, th e above-mentioned impact of Heidegger onFoucault 's thought is clearly evident in that Heidegger had already demonstrated theimpo rtance of 'finitude' in Kantia n philosophy. See Hei degg er (1990).19 T he whole ofvo lume I of Dits et dcrits is illuminating in this respect. A character-istic example, in a 1966 interv ien: 'Ou r task is to free ourselves definitively from hu man -ism, and it is in this sense that our work is political, insofar as all the regimes in bothEast and West sel l their nasty merchandise under the banner of h umanism' (Foucault1994, I: 516).20 A recent example of a similar approach to Wucau lt 's politics can be found in Simon s(1995: 8-12), where it is suggested that '[ulp to the . . . publication [of The Order cdThzngs] in 1966, Foucault was associated politically with anti-communism', and that'Foucault's radical initiation occurre d in 'lunis (1966-8), where, while holding a teachingpost, he illicitly aided stud ents oppose d to the regime, com ing into contact with politicalprisoners.'21 See the references mentioned in note 16.22 In the E nglish edition (Foucau lt 1971), which is a translation of an abridged Fre nchedition, these pages have not been included.23 Foucau lt (1994 ,II: 245-68); Derr ida (1978: 31-63).24 T h e sovereign character of the Cartesian su bject is especially stressed in Foucault 'sreply to Derrida, when he underlines the arbitrary character of the difference betweenth e cogito and madness: 'The proof [ that my meditat ion is dist inct from madness] iscarried ou t instantly. O r rather, if one looks mo re closely, on e clearly sees that it has nottaken place, in the way that it has with the drea m. In fact, there is no ques tion whateverof trying to take myself for a ma dma n who takes himself for a king; nor is there any ques-tion whatever of asking myself if I am not a king (or even a n army officer from 'I 'ouraine[Descartes had actually been one - KD]) who takes himself for a philosopher secludedfor meditation. Th e difference with m adness does no t have to be proved: it is stated[constatee]' (Foucault 1994, 11: 252). T h e passage tha t Foucau lt refers to is in the firstMeditation (Descartes 1968: 96).25 See the references in note 1, above, and esp. Foucau lt (1981: 242-6).26 Cf. also Foucault (1974a: 343, n. 2): 'Th e Kantian mo ment . . . is the discovery that

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    26/29

    542 Kyrkos Doxiadisthe subject, in so far as he is reasonable, applies to himself his own law, which is the uni-versal law.' See esp. Kant (1993).27 It is true that, in his main writings on governmentality (see above, note 1; alsoFoucault 1979b), one gets the impression that Foucault does not really oppose govern-mentality to autonomy, and it could be argued that these two notions are positively inter-dependent. In those writings, however, he is not so much concerned with the meaning ofKantian critique, and it is this that interests me here.28 Which is not the case, anyway, with two of Foucault's other most important, andearlier, 1960s works; neither with Madness and Civilization (1976a; see also note 22) norwith The Birth o f the Clinic (1976b).29 See references in note 18. This is even more evidently the case with EmmanuelLevinas, someone also closely connected to French phenomenology, even though perhapsnot its most characteristic representative. See, for example, Levinas (1987). See alsoDerrida's paper on Levinas (Derrida 1978: 79-153).30 Foucault (1977: 184-5):

    it was indeed toward dialectics that the philosophy of representation was headed.And yet, how is it that we fail to recognize Hegel as the philosopher of the greatest

    differences and Leibniz as the thinker of the smallest differences? In actuality, dialec-tics does not liberate differences; it guarantees, on the contrary, that they can alwaysbe recaptured. T he dialectical sovereignty of similarity consists in permitting differ-ences to exist, but always under the rule of the negative, as an instance of non-being.They may appear as the successful subversion of the Other, but contradiction secretlyassists in the salvation of identities.

    31 Cf. Foucault (197 9~ : 33-228; 1979a) and the references in note 1.32 Foucault (1980: 118). The third reason he gives at that particular interview, i.e. that'the concept of ideology refers . . . necessarily, to something of the order of a subject',should not be taken too seriously anyway, given that Foucault himself, in that same inter-view (1980: 117), and at many instances throughout his work elsewhere, has stressed thatthe constitution of the subject is one of his central concerns. See esp. Dreyfus andRabinow (1982: 208-9).33 On the close link between 'ideology' and 'legitimation', see also Cousins and Hussain(1984: esp. 242-3).34 It is revealing that perhaps the single instance in his work where Foucault employeda Hegelian schema of ideology (again, however, avoiding the word 'ideology') was hisreference to the young Marx's characterization of religion as 'the spirit of a world withoutspirit', in his support of the Iranian 'revolution' of 1978-9 -by far his worst ever politi-cal blunder. See Foucault (1988: 218); Marx (1975: 244).35 In fact, someone also concerned with illusion is Nietzsche, to whom Foucault con-stantly refers as a source of inspiration, especially when he wants to disengage himselffrom the concept of ideology (see esp. Foucault 1980: 133). Does not the famous Niet-zschean thesis that truth is the most profound lie mean, simply, that tr uth is the mostpro-found illusion? Cf., for example, Nietzsche (1968: 247-9, 290). Generally speaking, whyon earth should preoccupation with t ruth preclude the possibility of being also preoccu-pied with illusion?36 A similar connection between Kant and Foucault in this respect has been made byColin Gordon (1979: 41).37 Cf. Foucault's 1984 essay 'What is Enlightenment?': 'this criticism [the one E isproposing] is not transcendental, and its goal is not that of making a metaphysics possible:it is genealogical in its design and archaeological in its method. Archaeological - and nottranscendental - in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of allknowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the instances of discoursethat articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events' (Foucault 1986: 46).38 See previous note.

  • 7/27/2019 Foucault Kyrokos

    27/29

    f iu ruu l t an d the three-headed kzng 51339 It is my contention that Saussure, in his fundamental postulate that 'in language thereare on11 differenc es mithoul posztrne terms' (Sa ussu re 1974 : 120), an d all conse que ntapproaches to culture and social relations based on structural linguistics - see esp. Levi-Strauss (1972) -have adopted a con ception of structure which rests entirely o n the infinite.Levi-Strauss in particular, in an exceptionally revealing passage, has substituted for