6 - Are we still who Foucault says we are?

Summary

As I write this, it is twenty-one years since Foucault's death. His last published book that does not deal with ancient practices is twenty-nine years old. Since his death, we have seen the rise of the internet, DVDs, cell phones, gated communities, Tivo, sport utility vehicles, email and instant messaging. The United States has started three wars: two in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Terrorism, not communism, is the chosen enemy of what would charitably be called Western democracies. Neoliberalism has come to replace welfare liberalism in many quarters as the reigning economic philosophy of the state. Europe has made steps toward integration; the Soviet Union has disintegrated. China seeks to position itself as the next great national power as the United States squanders its resources, its military and its good will. In short, much has changed.

To admit that much has changed requires us to ask of Foucault a question that is an ineluctably Foucauldian one. Are we still who Foucault has said that we are? Do we remain the normalized beings of discipline, the “empirico-transcendental” doublet – the man – of The Order of Things, the products of bio-power, the moral legacy of a Reason that seeks to keep its madness at bay? Are the accounts Foucault offers us still accounts of the character of our being? Or have we moved on? Are we in another episteme, another archive, another genealogical moment from the one Foucault has brought us to?