Power and Punishment in M. Foucault’s Genealogical Project

Abstract

The article proposes analytical reconstruction of the French philosopher and historian M. Foucault’s interpretation strategy related to the genealogical project The History of Punishment. The object of cognition marginalization is content moment of this reconstruction, as contributing to both the transformation of the research subject field and the genealogical identification of the object. There are defined the rules of reconstruction, contributing to the diffusion of the methodological approach to power in the genealogy of M. Foucault. The article substantiates the position that the use of some individual rules of reconstruction cannot lead to methodological unity in the genealogical project due to the marginal-positive identification of the object and the structure of The History of Punishment. Comparison of J. Deleuze’s functional analysis and M. Foucault’s genealogical approach to the problem of power points to the diffusion of the method, which is unable to localize its object in the social space. In many ways, this will be facilitated by the use of the visual model as an epistemological one, which is traditional for Foucault’s research. All the dynamic and structural characteristics that are used in Foucault’s genealogy to analyze the concept of Microphysics of power will be reduced to marginal anthropology. In the genealogical period of the French thinker’s work, marginal anthropology is regarded as a way of constructing genealogical reality. Genealogical description as a method of a marginal object description is viewed as a consequence of methodological diffusion. The phenomenon of disciplinary power is considered as a marginal construction, deriving the concept of normal-abnormal from the totality of disciplinary practices, structuring the European society. M. Foucault’s focus on marginal anthropology will serves as a basis for the transition to The History of Sexuality project.