The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault's Thought

On the short-list of crucial philosophical theorists of the 20th century, you would be pressed to justify why Michel Foucault would not be near the top. This anthology The Foucault Reader, can be informative in attempting to decipher, clarify, and express the system that Foucault relied upon to bring some of his most famous writings to culmination. From the origins of psychiatry in Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, to the genesis of the prison system in Discip

On the short-list of crucial philosophical theorists of the 20th century, you would be pressed to justify why Michel Foucault would not be near the top. This anthology The Foucault Reader, can be informative in attempting to decipher, clarify, and express the system that Foucault relied upon to bring some of his most famous writings to culmination. From the origins of psychiatry in Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, to the genesis of the prison system in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault's methodology is, at times, complex, and even more challenging in discovering a satisfactory answer. Nevertheless, within Foucault’s methodology, even his attempt at helping the reader understand (see The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language ) there is a frequent frustration by the sheer depth of his intellectual propensities. Hence, The Foucault Reader, through an excellent introduction to Foucault's work by Paul Rabinow, a series of interviews, and a sampling of some of his most prestigious works is helpful in placing the emphasis on the methods employed by Foucault.

Although many will interpret Foucault’s works as attempts of writing a history of certain disciplines, and the way that power and knowledge work through the techniques of these disciplines, labeling him as a historian would be unseemly. The term that Foucault preferred and the one described in this book is archaeologist. Again, this is not the familiar use of the term archaeologist, and at many points, it is also interchanged with the term genealogy. To define both these terms apropos to Foucault would be to understand that when Foucault used the term genealogy, he was using it in respect to what he defined as Friedrich Nietzsche's task in The Genealogy of Morals.

Notwithstanding, there are many lines of departure between the task of Nietzsche and that of Foucault. This is why it is perhaps better to define Foucault's task of archaeology as one of excavating the epistemological foundations of linguistics, psychology, cultural history, and the human sciences [sciences de l'homme].

From Foucault's perspective, the human sciences only appear to have developed in a historically linear line. However, this naturalistic view is grounded in the belief that scientific history is progressive and the human sciences have an intrinsic truth that establishes them. By challenging these assumptions through the techniques of archaeology, Foucault is able to present an alternate thesis suggesting that the “conditions of possibility” that underline the epoch's epistemology could produce the same results as the conditionally held "historical line thesis". As Foucault explains,

“...[T]he total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and formalizable systems…It is the totality of relations that can be discovered, for a given period, between the sciences when one analyzes them at the level of discursive regularities.”

By combining interviews and selected parts of Foucault’s works, Rabinow is able to produce the elements that are crucial to understanding them. In addition to being a good introductory work to understanding Foucault’s methodology, this anthology also has the additional usefulness as a common reference point to understanding what Foucault was writing in his own words. The various interviews present specific, detailed questions that more experienced readers of Foucault will find value in reading his answers.

Ultimately, this is a book that I will keep in my collection and refer to, on occasion, when discussing Foucault.