I tend to see what Timo Siivonen is saying about Foucault's version of
modernism as inclusive of a strand of postmodernism-- although I'm
nervous about the claim that relying on reason vs authority to free
ourselves isn't one of those metanarratives. The Enlightenment project
is afterall the exemplary metanarrative that post-modernists point to as
having lost its legitimacy.
Foucault's response, and again this is where he leans toward the "local,"
was several times to refuse to found anything on a unitary Reason
(opposed to madness, the irrational, etc.), but instead to reason within
relatively specific situations, beginning with the diverse discourses of
reason applicable (e.g., "reasons of state," medical reason, economic
reasons, etc.).
--Erick Heroux
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