|
|
|
 by Brian Milstein Presented as part of my application for admission to the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science at the New School for Social Research, as submitted on 15 January, 2001 Cite as: Milstein, Brian. "The Unfinished Project of Foucault." Unpublished paper, New School for Social Research, New York (accessed on [DATE] at http://magictheatre.panopticweb.com/aesthetics/writings/foucault.html). I would not be the first to observe that the so-called "Foucault/Habermas debate" has until now been framed mainly in terms of the Habermassian point of view. Most attempts by scholars to assess the philosophical issues that may lie between these two thinkers seem to take the form of either an elaboration on or a reply to the charges leveled by Habermas against Foucault in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. That is, they use at least as a takeoff point the question of whether or not Foucault is (to borrow Michael Kelly's words) guilty of "a self-referential, total critique of reason...in the form of a transcendental, genealogical historiography...which is itself based on a theory of all-encompassing power."* James Schmidt and Kelly have both noted problems with framing the debate in this way. Kelly remarks that "Habermas's critique of Foucault is largely based on a single text, Discipline and Punish, and even more specifically on a particular interpretation of that text."* Schmidt goes further to suggest that Habermas hinges his entire critique of Foucault on the assumption that Foucault is in fact trying "to answer a question that he [Habermas] regards as essential," namely, the question of the "project" of modernity.* Thus, Habermas evaluates the merits of Foucault's work in terms of how well it responds to the problem of subject-centered rationality in modern society as he himself frames it. "Conveniently enough for Habermas," Schmidt writes, "this path leads straight to his own notion of communicative rationality."* Foucault did not read The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity in its final form, although he was familiar with the themes Habermas was developing that would ultimately serve its makeup. Foucault was present in 1983 when Habermas delivered the first four lectures on "modernity" at the College de France.* Foucault may also have been familiar with a now-famous speech given by Habermas in September 1980 entitled "Modernity: An Unfinished Project." The two thinkers even considered meeting for a formal discussion on questions regarding modernity or "the Enlightenment."* It would seem to me then that if Foucault were to have provided his own views on how his thought related to Habermas's, they would be with regard to the broader themes Habermas was developing at this time and not with regard to the specifically leveled charges of "presentism," "relativism," and "cryptonormativity" that would be elaborated later. I intend to argue that Foucault did precisely that in his late essay on "What Is Enlightenment?" I think that, by placing Foucault's essay in direct relation to the Habermassian question of modernity as Habermas expressed it in his speech on the "unfinished project" and his CollĄge de France lectures, we can open up new avenues for ongoing dialogues among disciples of these two eminent philosophers. To that end, I will dedicate the remainder of this section to briefly outlining a couple of points in Habermas's views of the project of modernity and how they might relate to Foucault. In Section II, I will attempt to open up Foucault's essay on "Enlightenment" in a way that provides insight as to how it might fit into Habermas's line of questioning. Section III will be an attempt to show how their respective treatments of modernity accord with alternative paradigms of critique. Finally, I will conclude in Section IV with some final thoughts on the implications of Foucault's project with regard to the future direction of social theory. Habermas and the "Project" of Modernity. Habermas seeks to pose the question of modernity in terms of a certain "consciousness of time" and a "need for self-reassurance." He traces the philosophical discourse of modernity back to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History, where the "modern" becomes an "epochal concept" identified with the "new:" The division still usual today...into the Modern Period, the Middle Ages, and Antiquity...could take shape only after the expression "new" or "modern" age ("new" or "modern" world) lost its merely chronological meaning and took on the oppositional significance of an emphatically "new" age. Whereas in the Christian West the "new world" had meant the still-to-come age of the world of the future, which was to dawn on the last day...the secular concept of modernity expresses the conviction that the future has already begun: It is the epoch that lives for the future, that opens itself up to the novelty of the future.*Habermas sets the basis for a conception of modernity in which its participants are intimately bound up with a consciousness of the movement of history as a whole. "At this time," he states, "the image of history as a uniform process that generates problems is formed, and time becomes experienced as a scarce resource for the mastery of problems that arise -- that is, as the pressure of time."* There arises a penetrating "expectation of the differentness of the future" giving new venue and emphasis to "words such as revolution, progress, emancipation, development, crisis, and Zeitgeist" in contemporary discourses on history.* With this peculiar consciousness of time, the modern age views itself in terms of a continuously epochal present moment that embraces "the novelty of the future" in the same motion by which it decisively breaks with the past, and, in doing so, imposes upon itself the task of finding direction while simultaneously rejecting the normative landmarks of another epoch. And it is here that Habermas famously diagnoses the essential problem facing modernity: "it has to create its normativity out of itself."* In both his speech on "Modernity: An Unfinished Project" and the first lecture of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas is concerned with "modernity" as a cultural concept, the genesis of which he finds in the art criticism of the mid-nineteenth century: "At this juncture, what was considered modern was what assisted the spontaneously self-renewing historical contemporaneity of the Zeitgeist to find its own objective expression."* At the center of this developing mentality of aesthetic modernity, he sees Charles Baudelaire: For Baudelaire, the aesthetic experience of modernity fuses with the historical. In the fundamental experience of aesthetic modernity, the problem of self-grounding becomes acute, because here the horizon of temporal experience contracts to the decentered subjectivity that splits away from the conventions of everyday life. For this reason, he assigns to the modern work of art a strange place at the intersection of the axes of the actual and the eternal: "Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one-half of art, the other being the eternal and immovable."*Habermas thus locates the mentality of aesthetic modernity in the "immortality" (or perhaps "classic-ness") raised by the actualization of the present moment -- "the 'flash' at the dawning of a new world."* The "modernity" of a work possesses a distinct time-consciousness of being "radically bound to the moment of its emergence," and it is bound up with "fashion" as the guise through which it must be experienced by the spectator.* Habermas's aesthetic modernity is connected with what he calls an "anarchistic intention of exploding the continuum of history."* He elaborates: "It is this consciousness that expresses itself in the spatial metaphor of the avant-garde -- that is, an avant-garde that explores hitherto unknown territory, exposes itself to the risk of sudden and shocking encounters, conquers an as yet undetermined future, and must therefore find a path for itself in previously uncharted domains."* The spirit of the avant-garde and the "surrealist rebellion" becomes, for Habermas, the epicenter of cultural modernity. This is especially apparent as Habermas entertains that the "aging" of this spirit, citing Octavio Paz and Peter B½rger in their discussions of the "post-avant-garde," may be partly responsible for ushering in claims regarding "the demise of modernity" or "a transition to postmodernity."* He describes such claims as a kind of "neoconservatism," which "displaces the burdensome and unwelcome consequences of a more or less successful capitalist modernization of the economy on to cultural modernity."* It is out of his attempt to address such claims that the theses we most associate with The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity take shape. Habermas's doctrine on the "three conservatisms" is well-known. First, there are the "Young Conservatives," who "establish an implacable opposition to modernism precisely through a modernist attitude."* He places Foucault in this group, which also includes Bataille and Derrida, and with which he also identifies an "aesthetically inspired anarchism:" "The subversive force of this critique which pulls away the veil of reason from before the sheer will to power, is at the same time supposed to shake the iron cage in which the spirit of modernity has been objectified in societal form. From this point of view, the modernization of society cannot survive the end of the cultural modernity from which it arose."* Second, he lists the "Old Conservatives," who "do not allow themselves to be contaminated by cultural modernity in the first place."* Finally, there are the "New Conservatives," who "welcome the development of modern science so long as it only oversteps its own sphere in order to promote technological advance, capitalist growth and a rational form of administration. Otherwise, they recommend a politics directed essentially at defusing the explosive elements of cultural modernity."* They assert that the possibilities offered by the project of modernity have all been exhausted and that the "history of ideas" has been essentially concluded. Thus they hail the arrival of "posthistoire."* Foucault's Unknown "X." Habermas accuses Foucault of rejecting the "project" of modernity outright by recasting its accomplishments "as the monstrous offspring of a 'terroristic reason.'"* Foucault, of course, made his name through revisionist historiographies of modern institutions that seem to demonstrate that progressive advances in the human sciences are little more than new and successively more pervasive forms of domination. For Foucault, knowledge cannot but be entrenched in exercises of power, and power cannot but be organized within a specified domain of knowledge. He goes on to claim that the human subject or individual we identify ourselves with was not so much "discovered" by the human sciences as "produced." Our very existence and activity as constituents of modern society did not come about by way of the purification of reason but by the reification of its use, such that the "truth" that seemed to have been achieved only with the secularization of the pursuit of knowledge turns out to be "produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint."* This contention appears to greatly devalue any "emancipatory effects" brought about by the scientific and political advances of the past few centuries: [I]t is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body.*Such a perspective seems to turn the task of "creating normativity out of itself" right on its head. Indeed, from the standpoint of Foucault's notion of "normalization" it would seem that the very idea of progress as understood in modern society is at its base infected with a tendency to create a domain of imposed homogeneity in whichever direction it should turn its gaze; the enthusiastic push to legitimize itself as the culmination of history's temporal consciousness serves instead to intensify a "regime of truth" that politicizes the individual as the object of interrogation and the subject of colonization. The very basis upon which Habermas seeks to justify modernity thus appears thwarted. But perhaps the problem is not with how Foucault seems to address the question of modernity, but with how Habermas wants to pose it. Nancy Fraser, for example, believes that "Habermas's formulation is too tendentious to permit a fair adjudication of the issues," and ultimately rejects his contention that Foucault is a "young conservative" who wants to "criticize even the constitutive norms of modernity, rejecting the very commitments to truth, rationality, and freedom that alone make critique possible."* Rather, she sees Foucault's aim as a criticism of but one aspect of it -- a system of practice and discourse that Foucault calls "humanism." This rejection is not simply on philosophical or strategic grounds, but on what Fraser calls "substantive normative grounds." Yet despite her feeling that Habermas's argument is, in itself, unconvincing, Fraser states that "a normative rejection of humanism will require appeal to some alternative, posthumanist, ethical paradigm capable of identifying objectionable features of a fully realized autonomous society. It will require, in other words, nothing less than a new paradigm of human freedom."* It would then seem that "the reading of Foucault as a normative rejectionist of humanism pushes us to choose between a known ethical paradigm and an unknown x. As long as we keep the discussion on this moral-philosophical plane, we are justified in siding with Habermas; we must balk at rejecting the idea of autonomy, at least until the Foucauldians fill in their x. But I suspect it will be more fruitful to hold off that conclusion for a while and to shift the debate onto a more hermeneutical and sociological plane."* I suspect that Fraser is right in sensing that the "Foucault/Habermas debate" has until now been not only lopsided in favor of Habermas's agenda but limited in its scope in general. In terms of implications for social theory at large, I think she is also correct in suggesting that any major effort at redirecting our "utopian energies" may ultimately require a general surpassing of Foucault/Habermas. At the same time, the framing of Foucault's project as leaving an "unknown x" suggests that there is more work to be done, and I do not think that Foucault necessarily took all possibilities for pursuing this line to the grave. It was shortly before his death that Habermas challenged Foucault to come to terms with his own philosophical efforts vis-a-vis something called "modernity." Although Foucault and Habermas did not have the opportunity to stage a formal, full-scale discussion on the matter, Foucault was able to provide some thoughts of his own on it, most notably in his essay on "What Is Enlightenment?" I believe it is here that we may be able to piece together a possible Foucauldian response to the Habermassian challenge, and perhaps even catch a glimpse at what this "x" might look like. | ||
|
Since its appearance in Paul Rabinow's Foucault Reader in 1984, "What Is Enlightenment?" has become the focus of much attention and controversy. Published posthumously and without any further commentary from its author, it has become almost certainly the most well-known of Foucault's shorter works. It is also, in many ways, one of the most enigmatic and puzzling. Scholars, students, and critics of Foucault have disagreed on its significance, both as a philosophical text and as a part of a larger body of work. To some, the essay is nothing more than "an ironic gesture;" to others, it suggests a "deathbed concession of defeat" to his critics; to still others, however, it is crucial to understanding the direction Foucault's thought was taking just prior to his death.* I think the essay on "Enlightenment" is significant because it represents a rare lean toward a positive recommendation for future research by a thinker so closely associated with ardent skepticism. But I also think that, sparse as it may be, it stands as Foucault's most direct attempt to address Habermas's challenge. Habermas mentions that it was on the topic of Kant's essay on "What Is Enlightenment?" that Foucault wanted to convene a conference; Foucault made this suggestion in March 1983, around the same time that Habermas delivered the lectures that would ultimately make up the first part of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.* It is the Habermassian view of modernity, then, that Foucault is in part trying to address when he raises the question of a "countermodernity." "I know that modernity is often spoken of as an epoch," writes Foucault, "or at least as a set of features characteristic of an epoch; situated on a calendar, it would be preceded by a more or less naive or archaic premodernity, and followed by an enigmatic and troubling 'postmodernity.'"* James Schmidt and Thomas Wartenberg state that "It is not too difficult to guess who it is that Foucault has in mind here," and cite Habermas's speech on "Modernity: An Unfinished Project."* We have already seen how Habermas traces the concept of modernity back to Hegel's use of it as an "epochal concept;" he has also stressed that any evaluation of theories of postmodernity must be done in light of this epochal interpretation.* Foucault counters by suggesting it may be better to "envisage modernity rather as an attitude than as a period of history."* By freeing modernity from its "epochal opposition," Foucault enables himself instead to consider modernity from the perspective of an ethical opposition which he calls "attitudes of 'countermodernity.'" (It may be helpful to recall that Foucault has stated previously that he does not consider history to have "meaning" in reference to "language and signs," but we must analyze it "in accordance with the intelligibility of struggles, of strategies and tactics."*) By defining "modernity" in terms of its relation to the possibility of contemporary counter-attitudes instead of to the discourses of the past and possible future, he shifts the paradigm of the discussion from a question of historical progression to one of continuing struggle and puts the argument back on Nietzschean footing. This "struggle paradigm" for modernity becomes clearer as we turn to Foucault's interpretation of Baudelaire. "Modernity," he states, "is often characterized in terms of consciousness of the discontinuity of time: a break with tradition, a feeling of novelty, of vertigo in the face of the passing moment. And this is indeed what Baudelaire seems to be saying when he defines modernity as 'the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent.'"* Foucault is playing off of Habermas's discussions on Baudelaire, citing the same passage, with a counter-interpretation: But, for him, being modern does not lie in recognizing and accepting this perpetual movement; on the contrary, it lies in adopting a certain attitude with respect to this movement; and this deliberate, difficult attitude consists in recapturing something eternal that is not beyond the present instant, not behind it, but within in. Modernity is distinct from fashion, which does no more than call into question the course of time; modernity is the attitude that makes it possible to grasp the "heroic" aspect of the present moment. Modernity is not a phenomenon of sensitivity to the fleeting present; it is the will to "heroize" the present.*In Habermas's view, modernity unites "the real or true with the ephemeral;" expressive actuality fuses with the progression of time, thrusting the spectator into a momentary vision of already looking back on one's own present as "classic."* Foucault, in contrast, sees modernity as challenging "the truth of what is real" by way of a productive "exercise of freedom;" in such a case, it would not be the act of distilling the classic from the ephemeral so as to "immortalize" it, but a "will" to engage the contemporary world vis-a-vis oneself so as to "transfigure" it that comprises the attitude of modernity. In contrast to Habermas, therefore, Foucault's modernity does not seek to project or confirm itself "as the authentic past of a future present" but to ultimately charge itself with "an exercise in which extreme attention to what is real is confronted with the practice of a liberty that simultaneously respects this reality and violates it."* This point can also be illustrated in each's treatment of Baudelaire's opposition of the "flaneur" to the "dandy." As Foucault describes it, the flaneur is "the idle, strolling spectator" who is "satisfied to keep his eyes open, to pay attention and to build up a storehouse of memories."* The dandy, on the other hand, subjects herself "to an indispensable asceticism." Foucault thus declares, "To be modern is not to accept oneself as one is in the flux of the passing moments; it is to take oneself as object of a complex and difficult elaboration. ...[M]odernity does not 'liberate man in his own being;' it compels him to face the task of producing himself."* Habermas, on the other hand, finds modernity in a certain "character of the present" that must be available to the spectator "only in the guise of the costume of the times."* He elaborates: This character of the present is also the basis of the kinship of art with fashion, with the new, with the optic of the idler, the genius, and the child, who, lacking the antistimulant of conventionally inculcated modes of perception, are delivered up defenceless to the attacks of beauty, to the transcendent stimuli hidden in the most ordinary matters. The role of the dandy, then, consists in turning this type of passively experienced extraordinariness to the offensive, in demonstrating the extraordinary by provocative means. The dandy combines the indolent and the fashionable with the pleasure of causing surprise in others while never showing any himself.*Modernity, for Habermas, must involve something separable from both the dandy and the flaneur, which we might call "the work." Thus, while Foucault's modernity cannot exist beyond the acting self (it is the dandy who "makes of his body, his behavior, his feelings and passions, his very existence, a work of art"), the arrival of Habermas's modernity hinges on its ability to affect an observer, to be "accessible to objective judgment."* We can easily see how this difference is paradigmatic to each philosopher's approach to social theory: for Habermas, modernity can gain force only from its status as an intersubjective endeavor, while for Foucault, it must be elaborated within the very process of constituting subjectivity. This divergence on the nature of modernity both reflects and grounds important differences in their respective normative-teleological outlooks. By no means am I trying to suggest that Foucault's main intent in "What Is Enlightenment?" is merely to contradict Habermas. Rather, it is my contention that Foucault was attempting to demarcate a ground on which to engage this notion of "modernity," a notion which he felt to be ambiguous and evasive yet still capable of being approached in the context of an identifiable "problematic." In one well-known interview with Gerard Raulet, Foucault goes so far as to question the very coherence of the term with regard to what it connotes or what sets of issues it is intended to accompany. Foucault thinks we should resist what he calls the "habit" of giving the present a special status in relation to some grand narrative of history; at the same time, "the present" should not be dismissed as inconsequential and must indeed be analyzed in its own mode of being.* It is in this context that he declares the need for a "permanent reactivation of an attitude -- that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era."* Foucault is seeking a form of critique that can interrogate our self-reflective limits, not as universal and final markers of what can or cannot be known, done, or hoped, but as historically constituted contingencies capable of infinite transformations. | ||
|
Schmidt and Wartenberg classify Foucault's piece on "Enlightenment" as the final of three attempts to come to terms with Kant's essay, the other two emphasizing first political critique in relation to a notion of "governmentality" and then revolution with regard to a teleological perspective on "progress." This third installment is different from the previous ones in this way: instead of focusing on the relationship of a perceptible phenomenon (e.g., government, revolution) to a broader concept of society or history, he focuses on the relation of oneself to one's own experience. Foucault finds four points brought up in Kant's essay especially notable: first, the idea of "Enlightenment" as "a process that releases us from the status of 'immaturity;'" second, a corollary to this "process of release" that takes the form of an individualized "task" or mission signaled by a motto (Aude sapere -- "dare to know"); third, an ambiguous relationship between this on the one hand individualized task/process and a larger notion of "mankind;" finally, a programmatic distinction Kant makes between "public" and "private" uses of reason to reflect the dual domains of autonomy and obedience.* These points stand in a unique relationship to each other so as to situate the experience of the individual squarely at the heart of the question of the present moment, of "Enlightenment," of "What difference does today introduce with respect to yesterday?"* It is in the "novelty" that he attributes to this approach that Foucault sees its relevance to what he calls the "attitude of modernity."* Foucault notes that this "Kantian question" defines Enlightenment in "an almost entirely negative way, as...an 'exit,' a 'way out,'" and is aimed at releasing us from our "self-incurred immaturity."* As examples of this state of "immaturity," Kant points to "when a book takes the place of our understanding, when a spiritual director takes the place of our conscience, when a doctor decides for us what our diet is to be."* Foucault remarks that "the register of the three critiques is easy to recognize" in these examples, and finds this to be signitive of a "preexisting relation linking will, authority, and the use of reason" behind Kant's Enlightenment.* It also links the text to Kant's larger philosophical project: "it is precisely at this moment that the critique is necessary, since its role is that of defining the conditions under which the use of reason is legitimate in order to determine what can be known, what must be done, and what may be hoped."* Foucault finds in Kant's text a novel and multi-faceted twist on the enterprise of critical reflection. In reflecting on "today" both "as difference in history and as motive for a particular philosophical task," Foucault finds an intersection among the realms of knowledge, morality, and aesthetics.* This view stands, once again, in opposition to Habermas, who sees the explicit and irrevocable separation of these three realms to be a defining characteristic of cultural modernity.* The difference here arises from a distinction Foucault makes in his interpretation of Kant between the question of "universal philosophy" or "an analytics of truth" and the question of "What is the present?"* For Foucault, it is only by way of the former question that we arrive at the tripartite distinction among science, morality, and art; the second question, in a way, exposes the historical contingency of the first by making one's very relationship to reason (as practice) the focus of critique. Yet a program for critique as perpetually radical as Foucault is striving for cannot be ingrained in a doctrine, theory, or orthodoxy; its very significance lies in that it can only be presented by way of the exercise of an "attitude." Perhaps we can call the question he is trying to raise a matter of "the intrasubjective:" it cannot be told or even shown, but only spoken about, and in certain instances demonstrated. By coloring Kantian Enlightenment with Baudelairean modernity, Foucault believes himself able to set the stage for a "philosophical ethos" that connects us to the Enlightenment not by way of "faithfulness to doctrinal elements" but rather by "the permanent reactivation of an attitude."* He seeks to characterize this "ethos" in both negative and positive terms. The "Blackmail" of the Enlightenment. This "philosophic ethos" Foucault describes requires, first of all, the recognition of a certain historical heterogeneity of reason and a refusal of what he calls "intellectual blackmail:" [O]ne has to refuse everything that might present itself in the form of a simplistic and authoritarian alternative: you either accept the Enlightenment and remain within the tradition of its rationalism (this is considered a positive term by some and used by others, on the contrary as a reproach); or else you criticize the Enlightenment and then try to escape from its principles of rationality (which may be seen once again as good or bad). And we do not break free of this blackmail by introducing "dialectical" nuances while seeking to determine what good and bad elements there may have been in the Enlightenment.*How this relates to Habermas's attempts to pigeonhole Foucault as a "postmodernist" or "antimodernist" does not need to be explained. But I would argue that Foucault has in mind a problem more subtle than plain dichotomizing, and to which critical inquiries that cast "modernity" or "rationality" in terms of historical narrative are particularly susceptible (including his own). This "blackmail" of the Enlightenment, according to Foucault, stems from several "habits" in contemporary philosophical discourse that need to be surpassed: 1) This "blackmail" arises, first of all, from a common failure to grasp the tenuous relationship between the forms of rationality we analyze and "reason in general." For Foucault, "rationality" comes about in processes based in a "fundamental experience" (e.g., madness, criminality, sexuality).* Such processes often draw influence from Enlightenment efforts to discover and delimit the powers of reason, but one cannot isolate reason itself in such forms of rationality, and "no given form of rationality is actually reason."* Reason, for Foucault, is a concept "self-created" within various discourses on rationality or forms of rationality -- there is nothing in actual forms of rationality we can point to and say "this is reason" and, more to the point, nothing by which we can form a judgment about reason in general. Nor is it recommendable to evaluate forms of rationality in terms of how well they conform to "reason," as being truly "rational" or "irrational."* This can even be extended to the projects of Weber, Horkheimer, or Habermas, which attempt to assess the legacy of rationality in its historical entirety and from there frame judgments about what is "good" rationality and what is "bad" rationality. Foucault's rationality is local, specific, and forever being created in new and unexperienced forms. 2) This "blackmail" can also be credited to what Foucault sees as another frequent mistake in modern philosophy since Hegel of placing undue significance on the present in relation to the rest of history: "I think we should have the modesty to say to ourselves that, on the one hand, the time we live in is not the unique or fundamental or irruptive point in history where everything is completed or begun again. We must also have the modesty to say, on the other hand, that...the time we live in is very interesting; it needs to be analyzed and broken down, and that we would do well to ask ourselves, 'What is the nature of our present?'"* In any case, Foucault here believes that we should avoid "solemn" or "theatrical" characterizations of the present (although he does list both himself and Nietzsche as previous offenders). 3) This "blackmail" is finally linked with the ways we characterize our connection with the Enlightenment. This can once again be related to views he has presented on "meaning" and "history," and it has to do with the way we construe chains of events and historical processes as "narratives" undergirded by a defining characteristic or motif, which can be thought of as having a definite beginning and endpoint, and which determine our mode of thinking about ourselves. For even though Foucault agrees that the Enlightenment was an important event in our history, it would be a mistake to think that there exists some continuous "doctrinal" feature such that our very connection to the Enlightenment depends on our efforts to voluntarily perpetuate or reject it. The most obvious examples of this are those who trumpet the immanent end of "modernity," the "collapse of rationality," or the subsequent arrival of "postmodernity."* We can already see how these points might figure into Foucault's desire to separate Enlightenment from humanism, which he states is "in itself too supple, too diverse, too inconsistent to serve as an axis for reflection."* By Foucault's definition, movements so divergent and seemingly contradictory as Deism, Marxism, existentialism, National Socialism, Stalinism, and certain kinds of scientisms and romanticisms are closely linked with some form of a humanism. Reliance on a "humanistic thematic," then, would require nothing less than a project to discover the "real" humanism, which would imply rejecting the "false" humanisms and also accepting and assuming the conceptions of humanity by which the one true humanism claims authenticity. Foucault argues that, while there may have been notions of "What is man?" put forth during the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment's defining feature is one of "critique" or of a questioning consciousness. The "permanent critique of our historical era" thus prescribes a distinction between the two. Transforming the Kantian Question. Foucault's precautionary agenda is at least partially aimed at setting himself apart from Habermas. Foucault had long found the notions of "ideology" and "emancipation" with which Hegelian-Marxist paradigms of social criticism often work to be somewhat suspect. He had stated, for example, that ideology "always stands in virtual opposition to something else which is supposed to count as truth."* Emancipation, similarly, assumes something continuous in time and preserved in "the order of the subject" such that it sets down the agenda for progress as a normative stake that dictates our practices and presets our limitations. It presupposes an element in the constitution of the subject that can be taken for constant and analytically expounded. Thomas McCarthy argues that the conceptions of ideology Foucault is criticizing are "rather crude," and there is significantly less to separate Foucault from the Frankfurt School than (he claims) Foucault wants to maintain.* Still, if Foucault's critical project is directed toward a "historical ontology of ourselves," an interrogation into our historical constitution as subjects, than the emancipatory ideal proves to be of little use. But we must recognize that, despite Foucault's reputation for being opposed to "universals" per se, there is nothing intrinsic to the Foucauldian viewpoint that denies the possibility of a fruitful though contingent referential model of analysis that is both generalizable in its outlook and specific in its historico-critical context. He looks to uphold the Kantian enterprise at least insofar as critique "consists of analyzing and reflecting upon limits."* Yet he believes that the multiplicity with which various forms of rationality have exercised themselves over the two centuries since Kant suggests that the task of critique is no longer to perfect the "architectonic" or the "organon" by which all formal criteria of truth can be determined, but to interrogate (without end!) the possibilities for change with respect to contemporary reality by way of "a historical-practical test of the limits we may go beyond."* He situates his philosophic ethos in terms of a "limit-attitude" that defines critique positively: "The point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression."* He stresses that "this criticism is not transcendental," but transgressional: it seeks to force to the surface significations of historical constitutions of our practices without attempting to uncover "formal structures with universal value," i.e., without aspiring to the perfection of a metaphysic or grand theory.* It is therefore Foucault's desire to jettison the utopian dream of final emancipation from the project of modernity in favor of an informal historical program derived within an ethical paradigm that is perpetually novel -- it is to be rooted in experiment and an eternal process of "beginning again." Despite this, or perhaps even in accordance with it, Foucault contends that the limit-attitude of his modernity "does not mean that no work can be done except in disorder and contingency."* Foucault's own research is both preserved in and serves to constitute what he sees as the "stakes" of his program: "How can the growth of capabilities be disconnected from the intensification of power relations?"* All his key works, including Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality, deal at least in retrospect with various aspects (or "axes") of what he here calls "the paradox of the relations of capacity and power." They open the way for further analysis of practical systems" that are both technological and strategic: "Here we are taking as a homogeneous domain of reference not the representations that men give of themselves, not the conditions that determine them without their knowledge, but rather what they do and the way they do it."* These systems are technological, that is, they are organized by particular forms of rationality or "practical knowledges," but they are also strategic in the sense that, within their matrices, people are capable of instrumentalizing a certain allocation of freedom within which they can achieve an alternative of ends. It is the task of Foucault's historical ontology "to answer an open series of questions" by way of "an indefinite number of inquiries which may be multiplied and specified as much as we like."* But it is also to inhere to a systematized order of questions, namely: "How are we constituted as subjects of our own knowledge? How are we constituted as subjects who exercise and submit to power relations? How are we constituted as moral subjects of our own actions?"* It is here that we see Foucault tying his reflection on Enlightenment directly into his previous body of research, which he in fact does a number of times throughout the essay. Foucault has already noted that Kant's three examples of "immaturity" betray a reference to the three Critiques. Interestingly enough, Foucault -- probably intentionally -- does the same thing, but in a different way. Kant's reference to the Critiques takes the form of a set of specific examples derived from a corresponding set of more general inquiries. Furthermore, these examples are intended in the negative -- Kant lists them as things to be avoided. In contrast, Foucault lists a set of more general questions derived from specific examples of them -- madness, criminality, and sexuality -- and these questions are offered not as conditions from which we need to seek release, but as three interconnected modalities of inquiry which we are intended to pursue. Foucault reiterates that "This critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating."* In other words, he wants to renounce any claims to "truth" or the discovery of "truth" that might be interpreted from his work. Instead, he wants his historico-critical approach to "be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them."* | ||
|
The question of Enlightenment is directly implicated in what can be viewed as the passage of humanity and the individuals that compose it toward a state of "maturity." It therefore "situates contemporary reality with respect to the overall movement and its basic directions. But at the same time, it shows how, at this very moment, each individual is responsible in a certain way for that overall process."* Hence, we must also recognize that any reflection on the question of Enlightenment must also be a reflection on the self. Upon reading Foucault's essay on Enlightenment, one can immediately see that it is not Foucault's intention to "answer" the question, nor to interpret or critique what he believed Kant was trying to say, but rather to pose the question anew as it might apply today. In doing so, Foucault is able to invoke the question as both a reply to his critics and as a recommendation for future research. Foucault is reflecting on himself, on his own maturity, on his place within that "teleology immanent in the very process of history." By reframing the question of Enlightenment in this way, Foucault also endeavors to pose "the question of Foucault." Paul Rabinow describes a 1983 interview with Foucault by a French union official about the future of social security in France: "The interview contained a clear and unequivocal commitment to the positive value of social security. Foucault says '[T]he objective of an optimal social coverage joined to a maximum of independence is clear enough.' The interview contained no talk of Normalization as the greatest danger, nor increasing totalization, nor epochs, nor Gods."* Rabinow believes that such a demonstration indicates that, "from Foucault's perspective, contempt for matters of the present amounted to contempt for thinking."* Foucault advocates a reassessment of our aims and approaches to values such as freedom, autonomy, and rationality: "I think that we must reckon with several facts: [1] there is a very tenuous 'analytic' link between a philosophical conception and the concrete political attitude of someone who is appealing to it; [2] the 'best' theories do not constitute a very effective protection against disastrous political choices; [and 3] certain great themes such as 'humanism' can be used to any end whatever...."* Ultimately, I believe Foucault rejects the notion that "freedom" can be maintained by a juridical model of governance that restricts itself to equalizing liberties through the establishment of legal limits or that such emancipation as Habermas talks about is finally possible. To the question, "How can the growth of capabilities be disconnected from the intensification of power relations?," there can be no final answer, or rather, as Rabinow states, "It is a question that must be repeatedly answered, and the answers will never be satisfactory."* Yet this does not mean that the question cannot be approached in a way that is fruitful and practical; nor can we properly call this, as others have suggested, a kind of aestheticism, as least insofar as "aestheticism" is meant to stand in clear opposition to a corresponding "rationalism." Foucault insisted that it is indeed possible to "bring to light the domain where the formation, development and transformation of forms of experience can situate themselves," by which he means a critical enterprise activated toward understanding "thought" as a modality of practices encased in the triple-axis matrix of experience that conjoins domains of "true" discourse, fields of disciplines, and modes of relationship to oneself.* This represents the very philosophic ethos that Foucault himself sought to adopt, and it also, in my view, best explains the generality of Foucault's project, a project which can never be said to be fully completed. I therefore would like to end on the point of suggesting that, if Foucault can be said to have broken from the ongoing project of modernity, it is because he chose to reflect upon his own work not with a sense of urgency of shaping it into a universalized or formalized theory, but with an "attitude" in which he critically engaged his own thoughts as events within his own historical ontology: I reflected that, after all...it would probably not be worth the trouble of making books if they failed to teach the author something he hadn't known before, if they didn't lead to unforeseen places, and if they didn't disperse one toward a strange and new relation with himself. The pain and pleasure of the book is to be an experience.* | ||
|
Note 1. Cf. also "Unfinished Project," 40: "The new value which is now accorded to the ephemeral, the momentary and the transitory, and the concomitant celebration of dynamism, expresses precisely the yearning for a lasting and immaculate present. As a self-negating movement, modernism is a 'yearning for true presence.'" Note 2. According to Habermas, also partly responsible is what he describes as a "functionalist" approach to "modernization research:" "The concept of modernization refers to a bundle of processes that are cumulative and mutually reinforcing.... It dissociates 'modernity' from its modern European origins and stylizes it into a spatio-temporally neutral model for processes of social development in general. Furthermore, it breaks the internal connections between modernity and the historical context of Western rationalism, so that processes of modernization can no longer be conceived of as rationalization, as the historical objectification of rational structures" (See Philosophical Discourse, 1-5). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1976. "The Art of Telling the Truth" in Kelly (below). "Critical Theory/Intellectual History" in Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman. New York: Routledge, 1988. "Politics and Ethics: An Interview" in The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. "Politics and Reason" in Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture. "Preface to The History of Sexuality, Volume II" in The Foucault Reader. "The Subject and Power" in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. University of Chicago Press, 1983. "Truth and Power" in Power/Kowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. "What Is Enlilghtenment?" in The Foucault Reader. "Modernity: An Unfinished Project" in d'Entreves and Benhabib (below). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. MIT Press, 1987. "Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present" in Kelly (below). d'Entreves, Maurizio Passerin and Seyla Benhabib, editors. Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity. MIT Press, 1997. Fraser, Nancy. "Michel Foucault: A Young Conservative?" in Kelly. Kelly, Michael, editor. Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate. MIT Press, 1994. McCarthy, Thomas. "The Critique of Impure Reason: Foucault and the Frankfurt School" in Kelly. Miller, James. The Passion of Michel Foucault. Harvard University Press, 2000. Rabinow, Paul. "Modern and Counter-Modern: Ethos and Epoch in Heidegger and Foucault" in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, edited by Gary Gutting. Cambridge University Press, 1994. Schmidt, James. "Habermas and Foucault" in d'Entreves and Benhabib. Schmidt, James and Thomas E. Wartenberg. "Foucault's Enlightenment: Critique, Revolution, and the Fashioning of the Self" in Kelly.
|