Behrad Rahmani

Calling Card for GRTS (Mar 2012)

Foucauldian Critique: Artistic, Political, and Ethical

The explosion of works dedicated to Foucaults ideas, whether applying those ideas to a variety of disciplines and areas (e.g. nursing (Coverston, 2010), medicine and health (Peterson and Bunton, 2002) and sport (Markula and Pringle: 2006)) or adding to the literature of Foucauldian study, though testament to his prominence for our time, has made it to some extent inevitable to justify venturing into a new project in this field. I will argue, in this regard, that while most studies try to interpret Foucault by dissecting a dead body (Smart, 2002), imposing a fraction to the whole (Ransom, 1997) or focusing on a fragment at the cost of the totality (Kelly: 2008), my attempt will be to keep together soul and body, the static and the dynamic and constancy and alteration, or history and structure. To put it in another way, Verstehen is the organizational and regulative principle of this study. What I mean by this term is that my attempt will be to understand Foucault by participating in Foucault: to understand his oeuvre through the oeuvre and by utilizing it. It is commonly accepted that Foucaults oeuvre consists of three periods, each separated from the other by a caesura (Flynn, 2006; McNay, 1994; Han, 1998: xiii): Archaeology (marked by the publication of History of Madness, 1961), Genealogy (marked by the publication of Discipline and Punish, 1975, though The Discourse on Language, 1971, heralded this period) and The Ethical (marked by the publication of History of Sexuality II: The Use of Pleasure, 1984). According to this periodization, the main concern of each period and the way that it is conceptualized are also thought to alter. Moreover, the last phase also witnesses an alteration in terms of the historical period of study. The question this raises is: are we dealing with a discontinuity? Are those caesuras emblematic of a series of rupture? Foucault himself, obstinately holding that there is continuity beneath this apparent discontinuity, at the beginning of each new phase reassesses the previous works in the light of the current concern. In Society Must be Defended, a series of lectures given at College de France in 1975-1976, he describes his whole project up until that time in this way: archaeology is the method specific to the analysis of local discursivities, and genealogy is the tactic which, once it has described these local discursivities, brings into play the desubjugated knowledges that have been released from them (Foucault, 2004:10-11). Thus, while one is descriptive and the other is tactical, archaeology and genealogy are deemed to be logically successive. Or again in another lecture series, Psychiatric Power (1973-1974), he states that genealogy of knowledge is the indispensible historical other side to the archaeology of knowledge (Foucault, 2006:239). In The Use of Pleasure the main theme is problematization. Here Foucault argues that archaeology was the study of forms of problematization and genealogy was practical formation and modification of it and now problematization through practices of the self is the concern of the ethical period (Foucault, 1990:11-12). Moreover, it seems that he accepts a kind of discontinuity, referring to it as a theoretical shift at the beginning of each period (Foucault, 1990:6). He considers these theoretical shifts or, to put it another way, the lack of continuous and systematic theoretical background as one of the main characteristics of his overall career (Foucault, 1991:38). How should we understand these two apparently contradictory set of statements? Should we understand his project as defined by a

Behrad Rahmani

Calling Card for GRTS (Mar 2012)

discontinuity which faced with retrospective concern about the unity of intellectual trajectory, a matter of formality? Or is there a unity that is so deep or that is of a nature which this ostensible discontinuity cannot reach or shatter? There is more. In the preface to the 1972 edition of History of Madness, Foucault argues that while a new preface seems to be necessary but any attempt to accomplish it would always end up trying to justify it [i.e. History of Madness] for what it was, and reinsert it, insofar as such a thing might be possible, in what is going on today. Perhaps that would be possible, perhaps not, I might do it with varying degrees of success, but it would not be an honest course of action (Foucault, 2006: xxvii). In this sense, he considers imposing retrospectively a unity on a trajectory by reinserting what has been done in the context of the present as an act of dishonesty. How can one tackle these three claims: theoretical shift, unity of project and a concern for honesty? There are some works that deal with these claims or at least with two of themes, e.g. Batrice Han in Foucaults Critical Project (1998), Todd May in The Philosophy of Foucault (2005) and Jacob S. Fisher in What is an Oeuvre? Foucault and Literature (1999). I will discuss these works to demonstrate their inadequacy in terms of providing an exhaustive explanation of Foucaults oeuvre and trajectory, and then I will put forward an alternative perspective which while will address the three core claims but remain Foucauldian; that is to say it will not impose a ready-made unity on his oeuvre, will not make it fragmentary, and will not make him dishonest. For example, while May gives a unity to Foucaults oeuvre by accepting the question of who we are as the convergent point of it he fails to account for Foucaults shift from archaeology to genealogy (May, 2006:61-63) or from genealogy to ethics (May, 2006:96-97). Moreover, his account of unity is unable to explain why art (literature and painting) which was once pivotal for Foucault (e.g. Bataille and his writings on sexuality (Foucault, 1980:29-52)) lost its importance in his later works: to conceive the category of the sexual in terms of the law, death, blood, and sovereignty-whatever the references to Sade and Bataille, and however one might gauge their subversive influence- is in the last analysis a historical retro-version (Foucault, 1987:150). My contention is that the precondition of tackling those claims, and thus being able to provide a Foucauldian conception of critique, is to engage with the notions of continuity and discontinuity in his oeuvre and apply them to it. While it seems that Foucault is always concerned with discovering and highlighting discontinuity and rupture, paradoxically he also at the same time admits a kind of continuity. For example, in his studies into the history of sexuality he distinguishes between at least three eras: Greeks, Roman Empire and Christianity. In each era there are fundamental differences concerning the type of relation to the self (Foucault, 1984:144), thus here we are dealing with discontinuity. Nevertheless, he also constructs his studies on the basis of a quadri-thematics which maintained a certain constancy as time went by (Foucault, 1990:21-22), and thus a kind of continuity lurks throughout these periods. That kind of radical periodization (in archaeological period there were pre-classical, classical and modern era), which are mostly understood as a praise for and study of ruptures (Midelfort, 2002:105; Canguilhem, 2005:74-95), overshadowed any indication to continuity. When, in a response to Lawrence Stone, Foucault described the main concern of History of Madness the slow evolution from one form of confinement, intended

Behrad Rahmani

Calling Card for GRTS (Mar 2012)

mainly for the poor, into a confinement involving medical treatment (Foucault, 1983:42), H.C.Erik Midelfort, one of Foucaults stubborn critics, considered it as a surprise and even a disappointment to some of Foucaults admirers (Midelfort, 2002:105). However, was it really a surprise? Has Foucault shifted from celebration of rupture to praise of continuity? My argument is that Foucault gave another twist to the dichotomy of continuitydiscontinuity, which distinguishes him from thinkers such as George Canguilhem and Gaston Bachelard (Gutting, 1989: 9-55) as well as structuralism. As mentioned above, for him the constancy of quadri-thematics does not contradict the fundamental shift in the self-relation throughout different periods. In The Order of Things, where he discusses the shift in general organization of the empirical sphere from classical age to 19th century, he gives us a vivid picture of this type of continuity-discontinuity (Foucault, 2002:218-219): here what remain the same are four elements (Attribution, Articulation, Designation, Derivation) while the relation between them undergo a major shift. I will discuss this dichotomy in his oeuvre and utilize it in order to understand Foucaults own trajectory. Here lies the core thesis of my project: what justifies Foucaults claim for continuity is the constancy of four elements, i.e. Visibility, Articulation, Subject and History; and what constitutes shifts in his oeuvre are the relations between these elements; the critical project of Foucault is determined in each period by the totality of those relations. Accordingly, the nature of critique in the archaeological period is artistic, in genealogical period is political and in ethical period critique hinges upon the truth. By so doing I will be able to provide a Foucauldian conception of critique as well as addressing the notion of critique in a broader sense by suggesting a pluralized understanding of critique.

Visibility

Articulation

Visibility

Articulation

Subject

History

Subject

History

(1)

(2)

Visibility

Articulation

Subject

History

(3)

Behrad Rahmani

Calling Card for GRTS (Mar 2012)

My research will consist of: 1- The study of these four elements. My argument is that these elements emerged as a result of Foucaults engagement with Kant (Foucault, 2008; Han, 2002:17-72; Schaff, 2002), Nietzsche (Shapiro, 2003; Geuss, 2002; Curtrofello: 2005), phenomenology (May, 2005; Gutting, 2010) and generally art (Foucault: 2011; Foucault: 2008; Tanke, 2009; Freundlieb, 1995; Soussloff, 2009). 2- In the Archaeological period (diagram 1), all elements acquire their meaning and importance in relation to articulation. Visibility-articulation is discussed in The Birth of Clinic, where he studied the notion of gaze, and also when Foucault contemplates on relation between painting and writing about it (Foucault, 2002:10; Carvalho: 1993). Subject-articulation is specially highlighted in History of Madness (2006) as well as Madness, the Absence of an Oeuvre (2006). The study of articulationarticulation culminates in The Archaeology of Knowledge (2004), but it is also discussed in Death and The Labyrinth (2007). This does not mean that those relations are local concerns of one of his works; rather one could see the constancy of these relations throughout this period, especially when it comes to history. After pondering the architectonic of the archaeological period, I will discuss how the notion of critique was determined by it and took an artistic nature.

3- In genealogical period (diagram 2), it was visibility that singled out as the confluence of relations. This change of relations, as Russell West-Pavlov states, can be envisaged as a shift from a notion of spatial discourse (discourses described with the help of an array of spatial metaphors) to a concept of discursive space (spaces in which discourses about space interact with physical space in its architectural, urban, institutional forms) (West-Pavlov, 2009). Here what is of paramount importance is to discuss the nature of this shift and the way that it can be differentiated from an abstract general and wearisome form of change (Foucault, 1996:36), hence the importance of Foucaults own experience as well as theoretical failures and limits. After elaborating the new relations between those four elements, the political nature of critique in this period will be more comprehensible. Using notions such as banality (Foucault, 1998:82-86; Foucault, 1990:3; Cutrofello, 1994), biopolitics (Foucault, 1998:139-141; Foucault: 2008) and eventalization (Foucault, 1991:76-78), I will try to shed more light on that nature and also situate it in the tradition of the Political (Simons, 1994). 4- The last period is characterized by the predominance of subject as the convergent point of relations. While, for example, the subject-articulation in archaeological period gave rise to issues such as literature, author and madness, in The Use of Pleasure the articulation-subject amounts to manifestation of the notion of arts of

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Calling Card for GRTS (Mar 2012)

existence which means those intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria (Foucault, 1990:10-11). Critique, here, is related to the truth and the overriding notion of Parrhesia: with the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the critical tradition in the West (Foucault, 2001:6).

Behrad Rahmani

Calling Card for GRTS (Mar 2012)

Bibliography
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Calling Card for GRTS (Mar 2012)

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Calling Card for GRTS (Mar 2012)

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