Foucault, critique, subjectivity

Abstract

This article interprets Foucault's intellectual project by analysing the relation between his understanding of critique and the political conditions of subjectivation out of which it emerged. After reviewing some of the most typical criticisms of Foucault's work (and especially those maintaining that genealogy can only be rooted in a non-genealogical and universal conception of power), the argument shows in what sense he conceived of critique as a form of resistance and how the latter, in turn, was theorised as a force co-extensive to the power it counters. The paper goes on to argue that his theory of resistance is not necessarily to be viewed as a metaphysical representation of the immutable nature of political struggle, but might well be interpreted in performative terms, i.e. as a strategic re-inscription of existing political-discursive formations. More precisely, the analysis shows in what way Foucault's articulation of critique represented an attempt to displace the forms of subjectivation that underpin anthropological thought and the government of the self in the modern age.