Re: Shift from discourse to power / archaeology to genealogy

hi Brady,

I think that this shift you want to chart is one of emphasis and not of
kind, and thus that one needs to be circumspect about demarcating such a
strong division between Foucault?s texts of the 1960s, and those of the
1970s and early 1980s. One the one hand, Foucault?s post-1960s texts quite
clearly evidence an archaeological dimension; on the other hand,
Foucault?s analyses of the birth of the asylum in Folie et deraison
(Histoire de la folie ? Madness and Civilization [1961] 1967), and the
birth of the clinic in Naissance de la clinique (The Birth of the Clinic
[1963] 1973), are evidently precursors to his treatment of the birth of
the prison in Discipline and Punish. These archaeological studies, albeit
in a less direct manner than in later texts, quite unmistakably address
questions concerning power and the body: which form two nuclei around
which genealogical analyses orbit.

Stated slightly differently, and following Mahon (who identifies three
axes of Foucaultian genealogy (truth, power, and the subject) that arose
out of Foucault?s analyses in Madness and Civilisation, and in opposition
to his phenomenological-existential-marxist project of 1954, Maladie
mentale et personnalite) we can say that, although each of these axes is
evident in all three studies, the subject axes emerged in Madness and
Civilisation, the power axes arose in The Birth of the Clinic, and the
truth axes materialised in Les motes et les choses (The Order of Things
[1966] 1970) (cf. Mahon, M. (1992) Foucault's Nietzschean Genealogy:
Truth, Power, and the Subject, New York: State University of New York
Press: 29ff, 44ff, and 57ff, respectively).


Having said all that, you might want to look at some of these for starters:

Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1977) 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,' in id. Language,
Counter-Memory, Practice:
Selected Essays and Interviews, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Foucault, M. (1981a) 'The Order of Discourse - Inaugural Lecture at the
Collège de France, 2 December
1970,' in Young, R. (ed) Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader,
London: Routledge: 48-78.
Foucault, M. (1981b) 'Questions of Method: an Interview with Michel
Foucault,' I&C (8: Power and
Desire: Diagrams of the Social): 3-14.
Foucault, M. (2002) 'First Preface to Histoire de la folie a l'age
classique (1961),' Pli: The Warwick
Journal of Philosoph 13 (Foucault: Madness/Sexuality/Biopolitics): 1-10.

Cook, D. (1990) 'Nietzsche and Foucault on Ursprung and Genealogy,' Clio
19 (4): 299-309.
Dean, M. (1994) Critical and Effective Histories: Foucault's Methods and
Historical Sociology, London: Routledge.
Deleuze, G. (1988) Foucault, London: The Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G. (1992) 'What is a Dispositif?,' in Armstrong, T. J. (ed) 1992
Michel Foucault:
Philosopher: Essays Translated from the French and German, New York:
Routledge: 159-168.
Dreyfus, H. and Rabinow, P. (1982) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism
and Hermeneutics, Brighton:
Harvester.
Elden, S. (2001) Mapping the Present: Heidegger, Foucault, and the Project
of Spatial History, London:
Continuum.
Evans, F. (2001) 'Genealogy and the Problem of Affirmation in Nietzsche,
Foucault, and Bakhtin,'
Philosophy & Social Criticism 27 (3): 41-65.
Guess, R. (2001) 'Nietzsche and Genealogy,' in Richardson and Leiter (eds)
Nietzsche, Oxford: Oxford
University Press: 322-340.
Kusch, M. (1991) Foucault's Strata and Fields: an Investigation into
Archaeological and Genealogical
Science Studies, London: Kluwer.
Mahon, M. (1992) Foucault's Nietzschean Genealogy: Truth, Power, and the
Subject, New York: State
University of New York Press.
Owen, D. (1994) Maturity and Modernity: Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault and the
Ambivalence of Reason,
London: Routledge.
Shiner, L. (1982) 'Reading Foucault: Anti-Method and the Genealogy of
Power-Knowledge,' History and
Theory 21 (3): 382-398.
Stevens, J. (2003) 'On the Morals of Genealogy,' Political Theory 31 (4):
558-588.
Visker, R. (1990) 'Can Genealogy be Critical? A Somewhat Unromantic Look
at Nietzsche and Foucault,'
Man and World 23 (4): 441-452.
Visker, R. (1995) Genealogy as Critique, London: Verso.
Wilson, T. H. (1995) 'Foucault, Genealogy, History,' Philosophy Today 39
(2): 157-170.

Regards - K



On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 14:54:37 -0700 (PDT), brady heiner
<bradyation@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi, folks,
> I am trying to track different accounts of Foucault's 'turn to power' --
> that is, the shift away from discourse towards power, away from
> archaeology towards genealogy. I am looking both for Foucault's own
> articulations of his change of focus/method, as well as secondary
> literature on the shift.
> If anyone can think of places where I might look for such accounts, I
> would be very grateful to know. Am I correct in saying that the most
> widely accepted view is that Foucault was influenced by his reading of
> Nietzsche?
> Thanks,
> Brady
>
>
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--
Kevin Turner
Dept. of Sociology
Cartmel College
Lancaster University
Lancaster
LA1 4YL

(01524) 594508


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