Publication
Title
Entering the Archive: 'Il faut défendre la société' and Michel Foucault’s 'Critical Archeological Inquiry into the History and Method of Genealogy'
Author
Abstract
In "Il faut defendre la societe", Foucault attempted to historicize and criticize Nietzsche's equating of the social with struggle. In order to do so, Foucault produced a descriptive discursive history of his genealogical project by deploying the method of the critical archaeology. Foucault realized thereinafter that his archaeological exposition of the genealogical discourse in fact laid bare a close historical and conceptual bond between genealogy and modern racial discourses. In the first lectures, Foucault, unearthed the genealogical discourse hidden in the literature written by the nobility as they attempted to resist the centralisation of royal power. In the latter part of his lectures, he described a discursive interplay between genealogy-as-struggle and the biopolitical practices of the modern state. As such, he gave a tentatively description how the modern state inherited and extensively applied the notion of struggle in its biopolitical control on its populations. The immoral and historical consequences of this affinity, resulting in the biopolitics of genocide, warranted Foucault to distance himself from Nietzsche's concept, which in effect resulted in rethinking the social within the framework ofgouvernmentalite, in which struggle was a modality rather than the prime mover of society.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Critical Horizons. - Place of publication unknown
Publication
Place of publication unknown : 2020
ISSN
1440-9917 [print]
1568-5160 [online]
DOI
10.1080/14409917.2020.1790753
Volume/pages
21 :3 (2020) , p. 240-263
ISI
000553369200001
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
VABB-SHW
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 27.08.2020
Last edited 17.08.2024
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