Abstract
This paper argues that Michel Foucault explicitly rejected the model of critique by which he is often understood—by both his defenders and detractors. Rather than justifying norms that could be said to represent “the people;” judging institutions, norms, and practices accordingly; and creating programs for others to enact, he theorized and practiced an experimental social criticism in which specific intellectuals help people work through “intolerable” situations by multiplying the ways they can think about and act upon them. As Foucault’s work with the prisons in France shows, one way intellectuals can be part of the experimental transformations social bodies carry out upon themselves is through genealogical work describing the ways problems have come to be identified—and can thus be transformed. This account of criticism undercuts the problem of justifying a standpoint of critique that has plagued philosophers and suggests a few concrete means of better aligning theory and practice.
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Notes
Nancy Fraser (1985), Michael Walzer (1988), Gayatri Spivak (1988), and Jürgen Habermas (1990) argue that Foucault is uncritical because he forwards no universal norms. Walzer claims, for instance, “Foucault believes that discipline is a literal necessity; he abhors all its forms, every sort of confinement and control; liberalism for him is nothing more than discipline concealed. Since he cannot point to an alternative and better discipline, social criticism must always be a futile enterprise” (p. 204).
Amy Allen (2003), Johanna Oksala (2005), and Eric Paras (2006) claim that Foucault embraced Enlightenment values in some form, if with some revision. Oksala writes, "By rooting his thought in the inheritance of the Enlightenment, he implicitly professed his faith in its values: the increase to autonomy among individuals and the importance of philosophy, that is, philosophy understood as critical thought. His writings on the Enlightenment can be read as a clear gesture of distancing himself from the utlra-relativist, neoconservative, and postmodern labels that had been stuck on him" (p. 183).
I make use of Mitchell Dean's (1994, p. 119) distinction between “criticism” and “critique,” using the former to characterize Foucault's views and the latter for contrast, though this may seem arbitrary given Foucault's own use of the word in “What is Critique?” (2002; see also Butler 2002). I believe that the term “criticism” should help distinguish what Foucault is doing from Kantian Kritik, which is an intellectual or reflective and not experimental act. Foucault himself was not consistent on this question of terminology, though I do take it to be significant that the mature version of the essay, “What is Enlightenment?” (1997, pp. 303–319), uses “critique” to characterize Kant's work and ethos—an attitude, habit, or way of life—to describe his own.
Besides Foucault, John Dewey articulated a theory and practice of criticism similar to the one I will describe through his term “reconstruction.” For instance, in a passage echoing Foucault's account of the specific intellectual, Dewey writes that the expert is not defined by her knowledge but is “one who has skill in making experiments to introduce an old meaning into different situations and who has a sensitive ear for detecting resultant harmonies and discords” (1988 [1925], p. 152). This kind of reconstruction is very similar to genealogical problematization, and, though he was not quite as comfortable in the archives as Foucault, Dewey did attempt some genealogical work, such as Liberalism and Social Action (1991 [1936]). See John Stuhr (1997) and VanderVeen (2010a) for more on the resonances between Dewey and Foucault.
Foucault (2000, p. 288).
Though it may seem that the language of “experimentation” entails a kind of scientism or objectivism of the kind Foucault would be wary, he says, “I am an experimenter and not a theorist” (2000, p. 240). He calls his texts “an ensemble of descriptive experiments still in basic outline” (1998, p. 310). And he asserts that the “historico-critical attitude must also be an experimental one” (1997, p. 316).
Foucault (1977b, p. 206).
Though Foucault does not use this term, I hope to show that it is a not implausible way of understanding Foucault’s work. In the preface to The Use of Pleasure, he explains that the book required an analysis not of “behaviors or ideas, nor societies and their ‘ideologies,' but the problematizations through which being offers itself to be, necessarily, thought—and the practices on the basis of which these problematizations are formed” (1990, p. 11). Since we are already operating on the basis of certain problematizations and practices, I will call the work of transforming conceptual frameworks “re-problematization” to be most clear.
I am not at all arguing that critique should not have a standpoint, i.e., that it should be disinterested or universal. On the contrary, the purposes for doing intellectual work should be affirmed (see, e.g., Collins 2000). I am simply suggesting that the value of such work or the norms it expresses cannot be determined in theory. That is, whether or not a “critique” is critical is a function of its conditions and effects for certain purposes, such as helping certain people deal with an intolerable situation.
Foucault (1997, p. 323).
I take this term from Gayatri Spivak (1988). She argues that Foucault and Deleuze cannot conceptualize the economic interests that are truly representative of the people of developing countries. The term echoes the epistemological problem of developing criteria that distinguish between appearances that are representative of reality from those that are not, because both uses depend upon a dichotomy between reality and appearance. The experimental account that I will use Foucault to develop is an attempt to move past such a dichotomy and its consequent problems.
Locke (1988 [1690]).
Rawls (1999 [1971], p. 10).
Rorty (1996, p. 334).
Rorty (1989, p. 197).
Walzer (1987, p. 32).
Walzer (1988, p. 202).
Habermas (1994, p. 154).
Allen (2003, p. 191).
Foucault (2000, p. 288).
Foucault (2000, p. 127).
Foucault (2000, p. 126).
Foucault (1997, p. 117).
Foucault (2000, pp. 236, 288). I believe it is for this reason that Foucault connected problematization with askeseis for developing new ethe. Some commentators who have connected Foucault’s aesthetics, ethics, and criticism are Ladelle McWhorter (1999), Judith Butler (2002), Timothy O’Brien (2002), and Dianna Taylor (2003). See also Jane Addams’ Democracy and Social Ethics (2002 [1902]), which suggests that more democratic ways of life (ethe) can only occur through new experiments in living—not via governmental reform alone.
Foucault (2000, p. 370).
I will provide a more positive account of looking to effects in my discussion of Discipline and Punish. There I suggest that genealogy may turn purely theoretical debates over the purposes of penality towards an analysis of the norms and practices problematizations make possible.
Foucault (1998, p. 441).
Foucault (1997, pp. 114–115).
Foucault (1997, p. 118).
Foucault (1990, p. 11).
Foucault (2000, p. 288).
Foucault (2000, pp. 215–220).
Foucault (2000, p. 370).
Foucault (1984, p. 88).
Foucault (1997, p. 323).
Foucault (1997, p. 325).
The experimental question about, for example, John Rawls's work (1993, 1999), would not be whether or not he gives coherent or intuitive arguments—though this may be important—but when and how the concepts he invents are useful. We could then compare “the original position,” “reflective equilibrium,” or “the fact of reasonable pluralism” with, say, Deleuze and Guattari's “micropolitics,” “nomadology,” or “schizoanalysis” (1987) in ameliorating certain value conflicts. Despite—or perhaps because of—the tremendous differences between these philosophers, they have all contributed to the conceptual frameworks of many different fields of inquiry.
Foucault (2000, p. 284).
Foucault (1980, p. 396).
I will not explore le Group d’information sur les prisons (GIP) or any of Foucault’s “activist” interventions, which seem to exemplify the specific intellectual. These well-known stories show one way of problematizing or re-problematizing the problems people face, and they notably involve the participation of non-philosophers, as in the GIP’s collection and dissemination of testimonials from prisoners. However, they are not useful for showing how intellectual work may itself problematize and thus potentially be part of a social body’s critical work upon itself. For more on the GIP, see Eribon (1991) and Foucault (1980, 2001).
Foucault (1977a, pp. 272–278).
Foucault (1977a, pp. 85–87, 278–280).
Foucault (2000, p. 236).
In later interviews, Foucault often remarked that discipline, for example, is only one aspect of assujettissment and that Discipline and Punish may have been too one-sided on this issue. In describing the four technologies of subjectivization/objectivization—those of objects, sign systems, domination, and selves—he remarks, “Perhaps I've insisted too much on the technology of domination and power” (1997, p. 225; see also 1997, p. 177).
Many of Foucault’s interpreters split his work into a number of parts—usually three—and then try to understand how these stages show a development in his thought. See Dreyfus and Rabinow (1983), Han (2002), and Paras (2006). If, on the contrary, we see his different methods as ways of taking part in experimental social criticism upon different problems, we need not figure out how to put the pieces back together again.
Foucault (1977b, p. 208).
Foucault (2000, pp. 242–243).
Foucault (1977b, 206). To anticipate Spivak's objection (1988), Foucault and Deleuze do not deny that economic interests are often important. Foucault's account of the development of discipline, outlined above, is strongly tied to class issues. Foucault and Deleuzue simply become worried when all other interests are trumped by a single set of interests—whether they be economic or something else—and those who do not agree with the “experts” are said to be suffering from “ideology.” Instead, the two suggest that the differential effects of an economic problematization for those working to address a problem show its value, not the arguments of philosophers.
Foucault (1997, p. 316).
VanderVeen (2010b).
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank John Stuhr, Charles Scott, José Medina, Noellë McAfee, Brooke Ackerly, Matt Whitt, Erin C. Tarver, Colin Koopman, and two anonymous reviewers for providing comments on previous versions of this paper. I have also benefited from the support of the Kettering Foundation and my colleagues there, especially Randy Nielsen, Derek Barker, Dana Walker, and David Matthews. Finally, I am grateful to Jeff Edmonds for our ongoing conversations and his generosity in reviewing my work.
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VanderVeen, Z. Bearing the lightning of possible storms: Foucault’s experimental social criticism. Cont Philos Rev 43, 467–484 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9160-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9160-7