Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: It has been twenty-one years since Foucault's death.Think for a moment of what this means.In 1984, there was no internet, there were no DVDs, no cell phones, CDs were just coming into existence, TIVO was a distant dream, and we could drive around without having to deal with sport utility vehicles.It was, many would claim, a different world.My children make that claim, and they express wonder at the fact that we were somehow able to conduct our lives under those conditions.And yet, nearly a generation after Foucault's death, we return to this thinker, this historian, this philosopher, as though he still speaks to us, as though we had not yet exhausted the meanings of his words.So, we are confronted with the question: what do we make of Foucault now?What remains for us to learn from him?What remains for us to think about and to act upon in the wake of his writings?To begin to get a grip on these questions, allow me to step back and ask another one.It is a question associated with the discipline of philosophy, but it ought not to be.Or at least it ought not to be associated solely with the discipline of philosophy.It ought to be associated with all disciplines, and with our lives.It is a question that will not be foreign to anyone who is reading this.The question is: Who are we?It is a question that, in Foucault's hands, will turn into another question, but for reasons it would be worth pausing over.Consider the answer to the question of who we are offered by a classic philosopher, René Descartes.Descartes tells us that we are a combination of a mental substance that thinks and a physical substance that acts, a mind and a body: two separate types of entities that meet for some reason in the pineal gland.For Descartes, to be who we are is essentially to be a certain kind of being, a certain kind of ontological arrangement.There are other things that 1 This paper was first given as an address to the inaugural conference of the Foucault Society at the New School in New York on May 13, 2005.My thanks to the organizers of the conference for the opportunity, especially Yunus Tuncel, David Carlson, and Martin Parkins, to present the paper.
Source: Foucault Studies
DOI: 10.22439/fs.v0i3.873
Author: Todd May
Institution: Clemson University
Language: English
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4242984814