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Foucault's Triple Murder and the Modern Development of Power*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Leslie Paul Thiele
Leslie Paul Thiele
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

Michel Foucault offered his readers an “analytics of power” and later began a “genealogy of the subject.” The two tasks were related, and both were premised on Foucault's rejection of traditional modes of political thought or reason. This article explores Foucault's attack on political rationality, something here called Foucault's triple murder: that is, his rejection of the role played in political thought by the ideas of sovereignty, History (as a predictable evolutionary or revolutionary process) and Man (as a transcendental subject). Foucault's restructuring of political thought is shown to be the foundation of his work.

Résumé

Michel Foucault offrait à ses lecteurs une « analytique du pouvoir » et ensuite il a commencé une « généalogie du sujet ». Les deux tâches étaient liées et fondées sur le rejet des modes traditionnels de la pensée ou de la raison politique. Cet article examine I'attaque de Foucault sur la rationalité politique—l'auteur l'appelle le triple meurtre commis par Foucault. C'est-à-dire, son rejet du rôle joué dans la pensée politique par les idées de souveraineté, de l'Histoire comme un processus évolutionniste ou révolutionnaire prévisible.et de l'Homme comme un sujet transcendental. L'auteur vise à illustrer que la restructuration de la pensée politique est le fondement de l'oeuvre de Michel Foucault.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 1986 , pp. 243 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1986

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References

1 Foucault's own denials that he offered a “theory” of power, and his preference for the term “analytics,” served a purpose. But his work on power not only analyzes, it synthesizes–without, however, making the claim of being a system or totality. I maintain that Foucault's work on power, as the analysis and synthesis of his genealogically discovered knowledge, is political theory. That his genealogy “celebrates the perspectivity of knowledge” (Smart, Barry. Foucault. Marxism and Critique [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983], 77)Google Scholar does not make the results less theoretical. Rather the opposite: theory is conjectural and perspectivist by definition. The word “theory” comes from the Greek theoria, to view.

2 See Foucault's“Omnes et Singulatum: Towards a Critique of ‘Political Reason,’ “in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 2, McMurrin, Sterling (ed.), (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1981).Google Scholar For an instructive evaluation of Foucault's contribution to the life of political philosophy, see Laforest, Guy, “Regards généalogiques sur la modernité: Michel Foucault et la philosophie politique,” this JOURNAL 18 (1985), 77–98.Google Scholar

3 Foucault, Michel, Power–Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings 1972-1977, Gordon, Colin (ed.), (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 115.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 187.

5 Ibid., 109.

6 Foucault, Michel, “Non au sexe roi.” interview in Le Nonvel Observateur. March 12, 1977, 105.Google Scholar Translations from French originals are my own.

7 Like anyone who studies Foucault, I must not attempt to pin down a man who spent a great amount of energy, and who so much enjoyed, escaping from the categories in which his critics placed him. In 1981, Foucault wrote: “I would like to say first of all. what has been the goal of my work during the last twenty years. It has not been to analyse the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis” (“The Subject and Power,” in Dreyfus, Herbert L. and Rabinow, Paul, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics [2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983], 208).Google Scholar Later I shall show how power remained central to Foucault's concern with the “genealogy of the subject.” For now, we may note that “The Subject and Power” (in which Foucault wrote: “Thus it is not power but the subject, which is the general theme of my research”) devotes about 17 of its 19 pages to the question of power.

8 Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans, by Hurley, Robert (New York: Vingage Books, 1980), 88, 89.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 139.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Power/Knowledge, 125.

13 The History of Sexuality, 142.

14 Ibid., 92.

15 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans, by Sheridan, Alan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 29.Google Scholar

16 Gilles Deleuze's review of Surveiller et punir illustrates how Foucault's works were perceived as treating power in terms of repression and constraint. He wrote, “No doubt one can say that in his activities as in his books, Foucault's problem was always that of ‘enclosure’ [enfermement].... It was inevitable that Foucault should strike out at prisons as the principal model of enclosure” (Ecrivain non: un nouveau cartographe,” Critique 343 [1975]. 1212).Google Scholar

17 The History of Sexuality, 103.

18 Ibid., 4.

19 Foucault, Michel, “Sorcellerie et folie,” interview in Le Monde, April 23, 1976, 18.Google Scholar

20 Power–Knowledge, 93.

21 The History of Sexuality, 48.

22 Ibid., and Power–Knowledge, 59.

23 Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 342.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 342, 343.

25 Ibid., 259.

26 For a discussion of the meaning of the end of History see Cooper's, BarryThe End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 The Order of Things, 262.

28 Foucault, Michel. interview in Le Monde, May 3. 1969. 8.Google Scholar

29 Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge. trans, by Smith, A. M. Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 15, 16.Google Scholar

30 Power–Knowledge, 164.

31 The History of Sexuality, 92, 93.

32 Foucault, Michel, Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Bouchard, Donald (ed.), (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 146.Google Scholar

33 Power–Knowledge, 83.

34 Language, Counter-memory, Practice, 153.

35 Power–Knowledge, 164.

36 Ibid., 209.

37 Ibid., 196.

38 The History of Sexuality, 95.

39 Ibid., 94, 95.

40 Power–Knowledge, 208.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 138.

43 The History of Sexuality. 93.

44 “Non au sexe roi,” 124.

45 Le Monde, May 3, 1969. 8.Google Scholar

46 “Omnes et Singulatum,” 253.

47 See especially the second volume. L'usage cles plaisirs (Paris: Editions Gallimard. 1984), 9–19.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., 10, 11.

49 As early as Discipline and Punish, Foucault had indicated that the genealogy of the subject, what he then called the soul, was the object of his analyses of the “technology of power.” He wrote: “The History of this ‘micro-physics’ of the punitive power would then be a genealogy or an element in a genealogy of the modern ‘soul’” (Discipline and Punish, 29).