Foucault a postmodernist?

One of the most interesting documents with regards to Foucault's
relation to postmodernism appears in Eribon's _Michel Foucault et ses
contemporains_. It is a comparison of two versions of an essay
originally published in English, as the preface to Georges
Canguilhem's _On the Normal and the Patholgical_. The first version
was written in 1978, The essay wasn't published in French until 1985
(in _Revue de metaphysique et morale_ as something like `La vie,
l'experience et l something else (I've forgotten what)), and Foucault
revised this later version. Eribon says that it was probably the last
piece he worked on before his death

Translating from memory, here is the relevant passage:

1978 version:
Two centuries later, the Enlightenment returns. Certainly not (*non
point*) as a way of reaffirming the possibilities and the freedoms
that are ours today, but as a way of testing the limits of the reason
which we have abused. Reason, the despotic Enlightenment.

1984 version.
Two centuries after its inception, the Enlightenment returns. At the
same time as a way of reaffirming the possibilities and the freedoms
that are ours today, and as a way of testing the limits of the reason
which we have used. Reason as enlightenment and as despotism.

In the first passage, Foucault clearly associates the Enlightnemnt
and totalising, even totalitarian, thought. In the second, he
distinguishes between them. In the first, he seems to wish to reject
modernity (which he clearly, in the `What is Enlightenment' essay,
associates with the Enlightenment (`Kant marks the threshold of our
modernity': _The Order of Things_). In the second, he appears, like
Habermas, to regard it as an `unfinished project' (though he is more
aware of its limits than was Habermas).

If any one's interested, I'll provide the original passages in
French, or a more accurate translation (I don't have the book with
me).

One more reference. In the interview with Gerard Raulet, published in
_Telos_, Foucault is asked about postmodernism. He interrupts Raulet
with: `What is postmodernism? I'm not up-to-date.


Neil.=========================================================
NLLEV1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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