Foucault's rhetorical challenge to law

Extract

For scholars of law, the turn to Michel Foucault's works almost inevitably invokes an apology, a qualification, or a caveat. With the acknowledgement that Foucault never offers a sustained account of law as an ‘object of inquiry’ comes a sense that his work might nonetheless offer important insight into contemporary forms of law and modern legal problems. The difficulty with which many scholars struggle is how to begin from the position of this ‘nevertheless’ or ‘however’ that marks the contingent ground from which they argue. That is, scholars grapple with how to make Foucault say something about law when what he says is indirect or culled from several different works.