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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
As the title of this paper suggests, these remarks on Foucault should be understood as an attempt to complete the picture that McDonell has provided of Michel Foucault's work, rather than as a critique of that picture. I find myself in agreement with much that McDonell has said, but would nevertheless like to comment on a few points. There are two main features of McDonell's introduction to Foucault. First, the overall bearing of Foucault's work is held to have to do with the history of ideas, with a special concern with the methodology that such a type of history should follow. Second, the work of Michel Foucault possesses a rather strong unity that can be stressed in taking L'archéologie du savoir as, so to speak, the sun of a small theoretical system around which revolve such planets of written words as Histoire de Ia folie à l'âge classique, Naissance de Ia clinique, Les mots et les chases and, eventually, Surveiller et punir.
1 Donald J. McDonell, “On Foucault's Philosophical Method”, Canadian journal of Philosophy, this number, pp.
2 I use this expression “history of ideas” in the general and neutral sense in which it is used to refer to an endeavour to describe past intellectual achievements and not in the specific sense (“History of Ideas“) which is the object of Foucault's critique in L'archéologie du savoir.
3 Most of McDonell's references are to L'archéologie du savoir.
4 This remark of McDonell is fully substantiated by what Foucault says in L'archéologie du savoir. See, in particular, p. 86 (Foucault, M. (1969), L'archéologie du savoir, Paris, GallimardGoogle Scholar).
5 In the foreword of Les mots et les choses (Paris, Gallimard, 1966) Foucault writes: “Une telle analyse, … ,ne relève pas de l'histoire des idées ou des sciences … ce qu'on voudrait mettre à jour c'est le champ épistémologique, l'épistémé ou les connaissances … enfoncent leur positivité … “ (p. 13). (Such an analysis does not belong to the history of ideas of sciences … what we would like to bring into light is the epistemological ground, the episteme, where knowledge … anchors its positivity … )
6 Althusser, Louis (1965), Pour Marx, Paris, Maspero, François.Google Scholar
7 See Lecourt, Dominique (1972), Pour une critique de l'épistémologie, Paris, Maspero, fraçois p. 100Google Scholar, note 3. This book has been translated under the title Marxism and Epistemology (1975).
8 Foucault himself is no stranger to the excesses of structuralism as is apparent from his Preface to a reedition of La grammaire do Port-Royal. In this paper he tries to deduce the structure of the grammatical theory presented in that work from an element that is absent from that theory. This significant lacuna is supposed to give the key to the book. This might be seen as some kind of overstatement.
9 McDonell writes that “the relations Foucault is converned with are those established between various institutions at the level of discourse, so making it possible to analyse, classify and describe certain objects. Foucault's first and last books [emphasis mine] are primarily descriptions of these types of relations”. Foucault's last book is Surveiller et punir. Judging from this quotation, it does seem certain that McDonell believes that Surveiller et punir is concerned with the transformations of relations occurring at the level of discourse.
10 See McDonell's paper.
11 I will offer some quotations from Surveiller et punir (Paris, Gallimard, 1975). “But then, here is the problem: at the end of a short period, detention had become the essential form of punishment … “ (p. 117). “The point of application of punishment … is the body” (p. 131). “The problem therefore is this one: how did the coercitive, corporeal, solitary, secret patter of the power to punish substitute itself to the representative, theotrical, signifying, public and collective model?“ (p. 134).
12 Owing to the all embracing present influence of Lacan, psychoanalysis in France is much more than a specific form of mind therapy. For good or bad, it is reputed to be a theory that has something to say in most of the fields covered by the social sciences.
13 See Foucault's own presentation of the book on the inside flaps of the cover.
14 See Derrida, Jacques (1967), L'écriture et la différence, Paris, Seuil, pp. 51–96.Google Scholar
15 See Sztulman, Henri (1972), “Anti-psychiatrie et psychiatrie” in L'evolution psychiatrique XXXVII, fasc. I, janvier-mars 1972, pp. 83–109,Google Scholar especially p.85.
16 The conferences are published in L'évolution psychiatrique XXXVI, fasc. II, 1971, pp. 223–298.
17 See for example Ronald Donzé's remark that Foucault is not a historian of science in La grammaire générale et raisonnée de Port-Royal, Berne, Editions Francke, 1967, note 34, p. 198 (” … taking into account the particular viewpoint of the author [Foucault], which is not( … ) that of a historian of science“).
18 See Wahl, Francois “La philosophie entre I’ avant et l'aprés du structuralisme”, in Qu'est-ce que le structuralisme?, Paris, Seuil, 1968, pp. 301–441.Google Scholar
19 Since this paper was completed, Foucault, has published La volonte de savoir (Gallimard, Paris, 1976).Google Scholar This book, whose title could be translated as “The will to know”, is about the repression of sexuality. This repression is viewed by Foucault as a result of the ways in which people are allowed to speak, scientifically or otherwise, about sexuality. La volonte de sa voir will be followed by five other books on the same subject.
20 I fully agree with most of Dominique Lecourt's conclusions in his already cited essay on Foucault. Lecourt tries to bring out that starting with L.'archéologie, a book that has received much less critical notice than Les mots et les choses (see Lecourt, p. 98) Foucault is progressively discovering history, in the Marxist sense of the word— that is, history is viewed as a struggle between material forces and not merely as a clash between conflicting world-views (épistémé) expressed through discourse. I do not know whether Foucault's positions are evolving towards Marxism. I would, in fact, be inclined to doubt it. But, as I have said of Surveiller et punir, it is quite clear that he now speaks about more concrete things than he did before. This raises methodological problems which I have not had the space to discuss in this rejoinder.
21 I wish to thank john King-Farlow for detailed editorial assistance in formulating sentences likely, I hope, to diminish that ‘indeterminacy of translation’ which often seems to bedevil discussion between spokesmen for different philosophical traditions.