The architectonic of Foucault's critique

Abstract

This paper presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault's critical project. It is well known that Foucault's genealogical critique does not focus on issues of justification, but instead tackles “aspectival captivity,” that is, apparently inevitable limits of thought that constrain the subject's freedom but that, in fact, can be transformed. However, it has not been recognized that, according to Foucault, critique can proceed along two distinct paths. In a key passage of “What Is Critique?,” Foucault states that critique is tasked with questioning truth about its effects of power and with questioning power about its discourses of truth. We show that this “double movement” organizes Foucault's critical project as a whole, giving it a significantly wider scope and a more complex structure than has been previously acknowledged. At the heart of the above‐mentioned bifurcation lies an apparent tension between two contrastive roles Foucault assigns to truth‐telling in the context of critique: on the one hand, truth‐telling (as avowal) is a target of critique; on the other, truth‐telling (as parrhesia) is one of critique's methods. We argue that combining these two dimensions in a unified account is crucial for understanding and re‐evaluating Foucault's critical project as a whole. By showing that truth‐telling remains an essential element of Foucauldian critique, this paper also rectifies some influential misinterpretations according to which Foucault's critical project seeks to eliminate truth from the picture.

Rethinking biopolitics: COVID-19, differential vulnerabilities and biopolitical rights

“…Moreover, the claim 'This is intolerable' comes from below, that is, from the social actors and militants themselves, rather than from intellectuals and political philosophers who assess a given situation from above, as it were, and against a pre-established normative framework. On this point, see Lorenzini and Tiisala (2023).…”

“…Yet, what we can do is to at least become aware that our forms of subjectivity are historically, politically and socially constructed, and therefore that they constitute one of the main 'battlefields' where technologies of power and practices of freedom incessantly confront each other. Foucault's critical ontology of ourselves is therefore an eminently political endeavour through which we are incited to consider our form(s) of subjectivity and of life as political enjeux, and the effort to transform them as a political task (Lorenzini, 2015(Lorenzini, , 2023.…”

“…Foucault's work is not very helpful in dealing with this delicate issue. His genealogical approach aims first and foremost to show us that biopolitical governmentality is not natural nor necessary, but historically contingent and the fruit of a series of specific political, social and economic factors (Lorenzini, 2023). And even though Foucault clearly wanted to emphasise the dangers connected to this way of governing people, and point to its intolerable aspects, he always refused to explicitly present the biopolitical production of hierarchies in the value of lives, and the political multiplication of vulnerabilities, as an injustice.…”

“…5. Sovereign power, disciplinary power and biopower are for Foucault three (sets of) power mechanisms that co-exist in contemporary society, even though their genealogies differ; on this point, see Lorenzini (2023). 6.…”