Introducing Foucault

INTRODUCING FOUCAULT: THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND THE SUBJECT Federico José T. Lagdameo, M.A. This discussion takes for its point of departure Michel Foucault’s own statement about the general orientation of his philosophical project: “[W]hat has been the goal of my work during the last twenty years . . . has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects.”1 Such a history, he presses, concerns “games of truth” where human beings have comported themselves, acquiring in the process particular identities or subjectivities. Hence, Foucault adds: “I have tried to find out how the human subject fits into certain games of truth, whether they were truth games that take the form of a science or refer to a scientific model, or truth games such as those one may encounter in institutions or practices of control.”2 For Foucault, the problem par excellence is the subject and its relation to truth. Throughout his works, Foucault has sought to investigate the myriad ways in which the human subject fits into “games of truth.” He has tried to show that the kind of truth or truths we accept and adhere to, shape our selves and that therefore, a crucial link between “truth” and “subjectivity” exists. Although his investigations underwent shifts in the kind of phenomena they looked into, Foucault consistently maintained this problem of the subject and truth. Be it a study of how individuals are made subjects through coercive practices and discourses, or a study of how human beings adopt practices that turn themselves into subjects, Foucault’s researches underscore the insight that the “subjection” to truth is constitutive of the “modes of objectivation” that turn people into subjects. In fact, as Foucault reveals in his distinct historiographies he calls “genealogies,” the notion of the self as “subject” is one such truth to which we have understood ourselves. He says, the self as subject is “only one of the given possibilities of organization of self-consciousness,”3 yet it has been the 1

Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power” in Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 3, ed. James D Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley and others (New York: The New Press, 2000), 326. 2

Michel Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” in Ethics – Subjectivity and Truth: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 1, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and others (New York: The New Press, 1997), 281. 3

Michel Foucault, “The Return of Morality” in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York:

paradigm of the human sciences as it endeavors to tell us about the truth of ourselves. The self as subject, therefore, has functioned as a “regime of truth” to which we have come to be constituted as human beings who are subjects. Foucault has developed genealogy as a tool in which the different “modes of objectivation” are analyzed and critiqued. It is a tool in which regimes of truth in the human sciences—the “truth about ourselves”—are revealed to be contingent and not absolute, historical and not transcendental, manufactured and not discovered. Foucault’s genealogy has three domains or axes through which “the genealogy of the modern subject” is conducted: those of truth, power, and ethics.4 Through them, genealogy exposes truth and knowledge to be paired with power, contrary to the thought that there exists a complete disjunction between them. This insight on power/knowledge has its implications. Since knowledge is always linked with power, and because knowledge and identity-formation are themselves entwined, the constitution of the self has become not only an ethical question but a political one as well. For the “truth about ourselves” is in fact a truth that has been produced, supported, and promulgated by power relations. Hence, there is in Foucault “a politics of the truth about ourselves.”5 Truth and knowledge do not have universal validity; their validity is restricted within a temporal and cultural domain which Foucault terms an “archive.” Within this archive, “rules” governing discourse qualify certain propositions to be true or false, and at the same time, subsequently disqualify certain propositions to even warrant such a categorization. The latter, as it were, has no meaning or bearing within that archive. Changes, however, that are historical impinge on the integrity of an archive; this results in a realignment in the archive, and therefore, a new valuation of propositions as either true or false. Routledge, 1988), 253. 4

“Three domains of genealogy are possible. First, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, a historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents. So, three axes are possible for genealogy…” See Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 351-352. 5

See Michel Foucault, “Power and Sex” in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1988), 110-112.

In demonstrating the absence of any universal truth or knowledge valid for all places and for all times, Foucault has delineated a space of freedom from which individuals can act outside the power of any particular “truth.” That space of freedom, that “outside,” provided by Foucault’s genealogical analysis allows the rethinking of truth itself and of our relationship to that truth. It allows for a rethinking of how we are formed as a particular kind of subject by that truth. It should be noted, however, that the space of freedom or the “outside” revealed by Foucault’s genealogy of truth is but another archive whose own validity is within a particular historical, cultural, and hence, contextual domain. This note should undercut any question about the possibility of a selfreferential contradiction in Foucault raised by critics like Putnam, Merquior, and notably Habermas and Taylor.6 Genealogy is the distinct method that Foucault employs in his “historical ontology of the present.” His interrogation of the manner in which the present —who and what we are—has been constituted, is genealogical. Genealogy examines those notions about the present, those truths about ourselves which have often been accepted as obvious, as “natural,” as self-evident; and shows them to be inconclusive, refutable, and malleable. Precisely, genealogy reveals the present and its truths to be subject to the vagaries of history; it reveals them to be historical. It is due to this character of Foucault’s “historical ontology of the present” that genealogy is cast as a “critique of the present.” Genealogy functions as critique in as much as “it is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.”7 Genealogy figures as a critique of the present for it refuses to accept blindly and without thought the present and its constitution of the self. Rather, “it shows that things are not as selfevident as one believed… that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such.”8

6

See Gary Gutting, “Reason and Philosophy” in Critical Essays on Michel Foucault, ed. Karlis Racevkis (New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1999), 25-33. Also C. G. Prado, Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 5-15. 7

Michel Foucault, “Practicing Criticism” in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1988), 154. 8

Ibid., 155.

Similarly, genealogical analysis endeavors to show that one’s relation to oneself is constituted historically, and that constitution is conditioned by power/knowledge currently operating in one’s relationships. Since that relation to the self is historically constituted, a critique of that relation becomes possible. That analysis and that critique, however, are themselves new ways of relating to oneself. The genealogical process, therefore, intends a double function: it is not only critical, but more importantly, it is also “ethical,” i.e., it introduces a new way of relating to oneself. Foucault’s genealogy can serve as an analytical and critical tool for understanding who and what we are at the present. Foucault’s “historical ontology of the present” can aid us in exposing the kinds of truth about ourselves at the present, in criticizing these truths, and in creating spaces of freedom from which those truths and their power relations can be altered. Ultimately, Foucault’s ideas on how human beings are constituted as subjects provoke questions and prompt rethinking on that obvious and “selfevident fact” of the present: our identities.

Kantian and Nietzschean Roots Michel Foucault characterized himself as belonging to the critical tradition in philosophy inaugurated by and identified with the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Although this self-description may appear unfounded at first, Foucault provides an explanation that clarifies and justifies this claim. That explanation is found in Foucault’s reflections on Kant and the latter’s “Enlightenment project.” In his essay entitled “What is Enlightenment?” Foucault has interpreted Kant as inaugurating a novel way of philosophizing with the introduction of a new problematic. It is with the problem of the present, that is, who and what we are right now, that Kant—at least in Foucault’s estimation—begins a philosophical tradition whose main query centers on the critical ontology of ourselves. For Foucault, Kant has founded a philosophy of critique centering on the relationships between the self, knowledge, and history. Kant has begun a type of philosophical critique whose task it is to examine and analyze how knowledge and history come to play crucial parts in the drama of self-formation. And it is to this philosophical tradition that Foucault identified himself. What Foucault’s explanation clarifies is that his project of genealogy or historical ontology stems from the lineage of Kantian critique. More specifically, it clarifies what for Foucault is meant by philosophizing or to do philosophy: it is to undertake the critical analysis of who and what we are, at present. For Foucault therefore, to do philosophy is to critique our present identities.

Although Foucault has allied himself with Kant with regard to his philosophical orientation, it is from elsewhere that he derives his method and instrument in pursuing his critical project. It is from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche where Foucault draws, adopts, and develops his genealogical analytics. Perhaps as a consequence of this, Foucault also inherits Nietzsche’s suspicion of metaphysical and essentialist notions; he inherits Nietzsche’s suspicion of “truth” and its consequences. Like Nietzsche, Foucault offers no theory of truth, that is, a metaphysics of truth. Instead, Foucault construes truth to be an epistemological status accorded to propositions or statements made, to concepts and thoughts. Thus, broadly put, there is no truth in itself, only true propositions and concepts. Following this, his inquiries are not directed toward ascertaining the nature of truth but rather toward problematizing the process of valuation obtaining in the assertion of truth. In other words, Foucault does not and will not ask, “what is truth?” Rather, he asks—in characteristically Nietzschean manner —“why, in fact, are we attached to the truth, why the truth rather than lies, why the truth rather than myth; how is it that, in our societies, the truth has been given this value, thus placing us absolutely under its thrall?”9 It is to Foucault’s credit that he marries this Nietzschean question with Kant’s Enlightenment project of critiquing the present. This coupling begets the problematic that will be Foucault’s over-arching interest: the problem of how truth-claims or knowledges are generated and circulated, and of the effects this whole complex process have on us. As mentioned earlier, besides Nietzschean suspicion Foucault also derives his critical tool of genealogy from Nietzsche. Genealogy involves the historical study of the “descent” (Herkunft) and “emergence” (Entstehung) of truth-claims or knowledges that have come to constitute our present subjectivities or identities. Foucault borrows from Nietzsche these twin notions of “descent” and “emergence” in his historical examination “of the myriad events through which—thanks to which, against which—[these truth-claims] were formed.” Foucault’s genealogy, however, differs from Nietzsche’s with respect to their axes of analyses. Whereas Nietzsche employs the notion of “will to power” in order to conduct his genealogy, Foucault has developed the triadic axes of truth, power, and ethics for his own. Thus, Foucault’s genealogical analysis consists of the historical study of how truth-claims or knowledges

9

Michel Foucault, “On Power,” in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1988), 107.

obtain in a given context; how power relations effect these truths; and how particular subjectivities or identities ensue from these self-same truths. With this, it becomes apparent why, in Foucault’s pursuit of a critical ontology of our present identities, his genealogy has entailed a history of the truth of ourselves. This then is the overarching concern of the Foucauldian philosophical enterprise: the critical and historical study of how is it that we are who we are right now. In a word, the genealogical history of the formation of the self.