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Abstract
The normative status of Michel Foucault’s critical method of genealogy has been the topic of much debate in secondary scholarship. Against the criticisms forwarded by Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas, I argue that genealogy is not a normatively ambitious exercise insofar as it does not aim to judge its objects of critique. Rather, genealogy ought to be understood as reparatively concerned with the task of marking out possibilities for transforming those practices that constitute problems for our present selves. To clarify this feature of genealogy, I take up Foucault’s late writings on care to show how this affect informs his critical practice. Care is important, I suggest, for highlighting the intimacy between critique and transformation. Once we understand how care guides genealogical inquiry, we can begin to see how Foucault’s method of critique is reparative rather than robustly normative.
disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher” in Essential Works, Volume 1 (EW1) 323.
2 Ibid.
3 See Sedgwick.
4 Foucault, “Power, Moral Values” 288.
5 Fraser 28. In this Fraser argues that Foucault commits the genetic fallacy insofar as he used history to draw evaluative conclusions about the present. See Allen, “Entanglement of Power” 85–88 and Koopman, Genealogy 88–90.
6 Fraser 28.
7 Habermas 282.
8 Allen, Politics 148; italics in original.
9 Koopman, Genealogy 88–99.
10 My position thus differs from the recent work of Mark G.E. Kelly and Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson. Whereas Kelly negatively positions Foucault as “anti-normative” in his refusal to offer political prescriptions, I clarify, more positively, Foucault’s genealogical method as a practice of reparative critique to address its status of normativity. See Kelly 10–12. In Genealogies of Terrorism, Erlenbusch-Anderson suggests that Foucault’s method is “normatively oriented” insofar as it “describes practices that are intolerable [ … ] with the aim of making transformation possible.” I follow Erlenbusch-Anderson in distancing Foucauldian genealogy from a normatively ambitious exercise, yet my own account differs from hers in emphasizing the affective dimensions of genealogical critique in terms of care and concern. See Erlenbusch-Anderson 173.
11 This latter example is inspired by one that Foucault uses to clarify the normative status of disciplinary power as dangerous, but not necessarily harmful. See Foucault, “Power, Moral Values.”
12 Foucault, “So Is It Important to Think?” in EW3 458.
13 Sedgwick 146; italics in original.
14 Ibid.
15 Foucault, “Interview with Michel Foucault” in EW3 294–95.
16 See Hacking; Allen, Politics; Sluga; and Koopman, Genealogy.
17 See Kant Axii, Axxii.
18 Nietzsche, Unfashionable Observations 94; Deleuze, Nietzsche 107.
19 See Deleuze, Nietzsche and Essays.
20 Foucault, “What is Called Punishing” in EW3 382. Unlike in English, the word for critique and criticism is the same in French – la critique. The translator here could have translated “oeuvre de critique” as “a work of critique,” but the distinction between critique and criticism would hold insofar as Foucault is distancing his work of critique from one that negatively judges.
21 Ibid. 383.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid. See also Foucault’s interview titled “Questions of Method” where he distinguishes the discourse of critique from the “prescriptive, prophetic discourse” of reformers in Foucault, EW3 236.
24 See Foucault, Use of Pleasure and Hermeneutics. For more on Foucault’s method of problematization, see Koopman, “Problematization.”
25 See Rabinow in Foucault, EW1 xxxvi and Koopman, Genealogy 98–99.
26 Koopman, Genealogy 99.
27 Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume 2 23–24.
28 Foucault, EW1 256; italics added.
29 May 103.
30 Foucault, “Power, Moral Values” 288.
31 Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in EW1 315.
32 Ibid. 316.
33 Davidson, Emergence of Sexuality; Tiisala; Koopman and Matza.
34 Koopman, Genealogy 144; italics in original.
35 Foucault, EW1 256.
36 Ibid.
37 Foucault, “What is Enlightenment” in EW1 317.
38 Foucault, EW3 394.
39 Foucault, “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations” in EW1 119.
40 Ibid. 117.
41 Ibid.
42 For work on Foucault’s ethics of self-care, see Rajchman; Veyne; Bernauer and Mahon; Davidson, “Archaeology” and “Ethics”; O’Leary; Oksala; Huffer; and Smith.
43 Neither Allen (Politics), Koopman (Genealogy), Kelly, nor Erlenbusch-Anderson discuss Foucault’s concept of care in their writings on critique and normativity in his work. For an exception to this, see Rabinow’s introduction in Foucault, EW1 xxi, xxiv–xxvi.
44 See Butler; Sharpe; Davidson, “Ethics”; and Taylor. For an account of Foucault’s rethinking of critique between 1978 and 1984, see Rajchman’s introduction in Foucault, Politics of Truth.
45 See Foucault, “Ethics of the Concern for Self” in EW1 301; Foucault, “What is Critique” 42; and Foucault, “What is Enlightenment” in EW1 309.
46 Foucault, “What is Enlightenment” in EW1 319; italics added.
47 Ibid. 316.
48 Foucault, Hermeneutics 5.
49 Ibid. 15.
50 Ibid.
51 See Davidson, “Introduction,” in Foucault, Hermeneutics xxiii and Foucault, “What is Enlightenment” in EW1 315.
52 Foucault, Hermeneutics 17.
53 According to Foucault, the subject’s transformation can take a variety of forms, though he names two: love (eros) and work (ascesis). Love names the dual-movement whereby the subject is removed from her “current status and condition” and whereby the truth comes to the subject and “enlightens” her. Work names a kind of “elaboration of the self by the self [ … ] for which one takes responsibility” through a long, painful, and arduous labor. This transformation of the subject through love or work has “rebound effects” on the subject that “fulfill” or “save” or “transfigure” her being as a subject. See Foucault, Hermeneutics 16–19.
54 Ibid. 17.
55 Foucault, “Ethics of the Concern for Self” in EW1 282.
56 Foucault, Hermeneutics 10–11.
57 Foucault, “What is Enlightenment” in EW1 309, 316.
58 Ibid. 309.
59 Ibid. 316, 319.
60 Ibid. 316.
61 Butler 214.
62 Foucault, Use of Pleasure 9.
63 Ibid.
64 Foucault, “Preface to The History of Sexuality, Volume 2” in EW1 201.
65 Foucault, “An Interview by Stephen Riggins” in EW1 131.
66 Ibid.
67 Foucault, “An Interview with Michel Foucault” in EW3 239.
68 See Foucault, Use of Pleasure 8 and Foucault, “Preface” in EW1 205.
69 Foucault, “Interview with Michel Foucault” in EW3 242.
70 Ibid. 245.
71 Foucault, “Questions of Method” in EW3 235.
72 Ibid. 236.
73 Ibid.
74 Huffer 275.
75 Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher” in EW1 325; italics added.
76 See Huffer and Guilmette for this rendering of curiosity-as-care.
77 For the etymological connection between curiosity and care, see Leigh.
78 Foucault’s use of care differs from that deployed by care ethicists in two important ways. First, whereas care functions as a normative category in care ethics, care gets deployed by Foucault as an affect informing the work of critique. Second, Foucault conceptualizes care in terms of curiosity, concern, and attention rather than in terms of specific types of relations between, say, a parent and child or a care worker and patient. For examples of this latter understanding of care in care ethics, see Noddings; Ruddick; and Kittay.
79 Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher” in EW1 326; Foucault, “For an Ethic of Discomfort” in EW3 448.
80 Foucault, “Lives of Infamous Men” in EW3 158.
81 Ibid. 157.
82 Ibid. 163.
83 See Foucault, Herculine Barbin.
84 Foucault, Use of Pleasure 8; Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher” in EW1 325.
85 Foucault, “What is Enlightenment” in EW1 311.
86 Ibid. 319.
87 Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture 154.
88 Foucault, “Structuralism and Post-Structuralism” in EW2 449–50.
89 Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture 155.
90 Sedgwick 146.
91 Foucault, “Lives of Infamous Men” in EW3 163.
92 Sedgwick 146.
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