Foucault’s Counter-History of Ideas

Foucault’s Counter-History of Ideas

Chapter – 1

Harshit Sharma

Alumnus (BHU)

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General background: discourse, power and knowledge

Foucault‘s work addresses three central concepts: discourse, power, and the subject.
Focus on discourse and power as they relate to Foucault’s rethinking of the history of ideas.
History of ideas involves reevaluating traditional concepts: discourse (linked to structural linguistics), power (as seen in Marxist philosophy), and knowledge (the main focus of history of ideas).
Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982) summarize Foucault’s project as going beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, dominant methods of Foucault’s time.
Structuralism, e.g., by Claude Lévi-Strauss, sought to identify underlying structures in human thought, reducing cultural texts (like myths) to objective, universal taxonomies.
Hermeneutics, based on phenomenology, emphasized the interpretive nature of human consciousness, allowing for local, subjective readings of texts.
Foucault’s approach avoids both the deterministic view of structuralism and the subjectivity of phenomenology.
He argues ideas are neither effects of hidden structures nor the product of human consciousness alone.
Foucault rejects phenomenology outright, emphasizing that it prioritizes the subject in ways that he finds problematic.
Instead of seeing ideas as rooted in a subject or hidden structures, Foucault focuses on discontinuity in the history of ideas.
The crisis of the 1960s-1970s in disciplines like Marxism, history of ideas, and structural linguistics led to a rethinking of scientific progress and the role of the individual subject.
Foucault’s work challenges traditional notions of scientific change and progress, rejecting the idea of historical agentsor the creative subject driving change.
He sees the subject not as the origin of ideas but as constructed by historical processes of subjection.
Subjection refers to the techniques and disciplines that shape individuals into subjects who can tell the truth about themselves.
Foucault’s analysis stresses that public ideas change before individuals’ subjectivity does.
Foucault’s counter-history emphasizes discontinuity in knowledge, seeing scientific change as fragmented and not a linear progression toward truth.
His critique includes both official knowledge and less conventional forms like those of medical patients, criminals, or sexual deviants.
The crisis in Marxism, history of ideas, and structural linguistics marked a rupture, leading Foucault to avoid mending these fields and instead rethink their foundations.
His works The Order of Things (1970) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) examine the broken strands of traditional disciplines and offer a new framework for understanding human sciences.

Marxism

By the late 1960s, mainstream Marxist political economy was seen as too mechanistic and deterministic to explain the diversity and fragmentation of late capitalism.
Concepts like economic base and ideological superstructure in classical Marxism were criticized for being oversimplified.
In classical Marxism, the base (economic conditions) was thought to determine the superstructure (laws, beliefs, culture, etc.), leading to a base-superstructure model.
This model became problematic as science and technology advanced, revealing the interdependence between economic and technological factors, like the Cuban missile crisis showing the links between economics and nuclear technology.
There was growing awareness that ideas (the superstructure) played a crucial role in understanding societal foundations, challenging earlier Marxist views.
New struggles in post-industrial societies began to focus on race, gender, ecology, alongside traditional economic issues like class and ownership of the means of production.
The industrial base was shifting from heavy industries to knowledge-based sectors, such as computing, education, cinema, and information systems.
The distinction between industrial base and superstructure became less clear in the face of information-based production.
Despite these changes, capitalism seemed to thrive, with no sign of the predicted degeneracy or collapse.
Bureaucratic Marxism faced its own failures, such as the gulag, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
Foucault saw movements of the late 1960s as paradoxical, combining Marxist references with a critique of dogmatic Marxism.
These movements highlighted the need for a new form of critical analysis that could address social fragmentation and the absence of a singular basis of social existence or central contradiction (like class struggle).
New critiques needed to consider diverse, local, and marginal practices and their effects, rather than focusing solely on economic power.
The connection between power and the economy in Marxism had to be reconsidered, with a shift away from economic determinism.
The traditional focus on class (e.g., the proletariat) as the central agent in social struggle had to be rethought.
Class could no longer be seen as the sole subject in history, but neither could it be reduced to a mere economic effect.
The new theory of constraint and enablement would move beyond economistic models, incorporating a broader view of society.
A theory of power had to focus on how it operates in everyday life, with relations of power embedded in all practices, not just imposed from above.
Foucault’s work aimed to move beyond mechanistic determinism and provide a more nuanced, historically detailed analysis of the local and specific effects of power.

History of ideas

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the history of ideas faced problems similar to those in Marxism, which had influenced the field through its critical approach.
Marxism had argued that ideas were simply superstructural effects of economic forces, with modes of production (feudalism, capitalism, socialism) shaping corresponding types of knowledge.
In France, the history of ideas was diverse and included various terms like history of reason, history of science, history of knowledge(s), and history of systems of thought (Foucault’s contribution).
Before Foucault, the two main philosophical influences were Hegelianism and phenomenology (influenced by Husserl).
Hegelian philosophy, established in France in the 1930s, believed that a universal reason (or Geist) was behind human knowledge and that history progressed through stages of reason, which were continuous rather than distinct.
Hegelianism influenced Marxism, providing the basis for dialectical thinking, where historical change occurred through a synthesis of contradictions rather than negation.
The phenomenological school, particularly through Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre, emphasized human freedom and the creative potential of individuals to transcend fixed conditions.
Existentialism influenced humanistic Marxism, with thinkers like Sartre arguing that existential freedom could align with Marxist economic analysis.
The work of Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem challenged progressivist and continuist views of science, particularly through Canguilhem’s research in the history of biology.
Canguilhem’s work showed that scientific change was piecemeal, local, and ad hoc, rejecting the idea of a universal theory of historical or ideological change.
The progressivist theory of scientific change, which held that superior theories replace inferior ones, was questioned by new philosophies of science.
Philosophers began to view theories as constructivist clusters of ideas that create the very objects they describe, rather than simply explaining them.
Nature and other phenomena were no longer seen as independent objects to measure, but rather as constructs shaped by theories themselves.
Fragmentation became seen as the norm in scientific thinking, challenging the idea that natural sciences were unified while social sciences were fragmented.
A new approach in the history of ideas emerged, focusing on discontinuity, multiplicity, and difference rather than continuity and progress.
The relationship between ideas and economic reality, or empirical refutations in the sciences, was no longer seen as the sole driver of historical or epistemic changes.
There was growing dissatisfaction with the idea that individuals or groups were the main agents of historical or epistemic change, with a shift away from genius or creativity theories.
Foucault challenged traditional theories of authorship, focusing on discursive formations—systems of thought that existed independently of individual authors.
Foucault introduced the concept of the author function, which examines the conditions that make assigning authorship to a text possible, showing that this is a historically contingent operation.
Authorship as a category has not always been used to attach meaning to texts, and its prominence has waxed and waned over time.
Foucault argued that history helps show that what seems evident today has been formed through encounters and chance and is subject to change.
Foucault emphasized that things can be unmade if we understand how they were made, challenging the permanence of seemingly established ideas.

Structural linguistics

In structural linguistics, the crisis of the 1970s was less about a dramatic breakdown and more about exhaustion or repetition of old ideas.
Structuralism had excited theorists in the 1950s and 1960s, and the early Foucault shared much of its epistemological tools, particularly influenced by Georges Dumézil.
Semiotics, a branch of structuralism focused on analyzing signs (linguistic and non-linguistic), had expanded by the early 1970s beyond the original scope of Saussurean structural linguistics but lacked fundamental theoretical innovation for almost 50 years.
Roland Barthes’ work in Elements of Semiology (1967) broadened Saussure‘s ideas, applying them to cultural objects like restaurant menus, but did not introduce new theoretical shifts.
The problem in structuralism was more repetition or sameness rather than a true crisis at the theoretical level.
Barthes’ later works (1978, 1981), arguably post-semiotic, moved beyond the impasse of structuralism and paved the way for the linguistic turn in human sciences.
This shift was fundamentally political, questioning Saussure’s conception of the linguistic sign divided into the signifier (sound or mark) and signified (mental representation or concept).
Saussure’s notion of the signified placed too much value on a naive theory of mind, which critics linked to bourgeois idealism.
The idea of replacing the signified with a real object, as in positivist accounts, also led to criticisms of realism and bourgeois thought.
Foucault critiqued these ideas of language, especially in the preface to The Birth of the Clinic (1973).
Structuralism’s impasse led to a rethinking of language and discourse as not merely representations of non-discursive reality (in the mind or external world), but as interconnected linguistic elements.
The focus shifted to the signifier side of things, with language becoming more autonomous, material, and tied to discourse, reflecting political and historical critiques.
Discourse was increasingly seen as more than just a system of representation, reconceived as a social and politicalentity that constructs knowledge about the world.
The term language was no longer adequate; it was replaced by discourse, which was understood as not only communication but the politics of communication.
The study of language had to be rethought: how did assumptions about language’s relation to the world emerge, and which disciplines or discourses enabled this thinking?
In The Order of Things (1970), Foucault began to explore this history, investigating how the idea of language as a representational system came to be accepted.
Foucault’s work wasn’t just historical documentation but aimed to shift the conceptual terrain of how discourse was understood, challenging the old structuralist foundations.

Critique

The first phase of Foucault’s work, focusing on his archaeological approach to the history of knowledge, is key to understanding his later social and political writings.
Foucault’s middle period (1977–1980) marks a shift to a more critical analysis of discourse, power, and knowledge, addressing social and political questions outside academic specialization.
In earlier works like Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things, Foucault explored how disciplinary knowledges functioned but focused on the historical and philosophical problem of how bodies of ideas transform.
Madness and Civilization isn’t just about psychiatry but about the historical conditions enabling its development, including the shift from viewing madness as a benign state in the Renaissance to its eventual confinement.
By the mid-1970s, Foucault turned to topics like crime and sexuality, requiring a new orientation and a more critical application of the concepts of power, knowledge, and discourse.
Discipline and Punish addresses not only criminology but the subjects produced by punishment techniques—such as criminals—while History of Sexuality explores how sexological disciplines created categories of sexual beings.
Foucault began to examine transgression and resistance in response to technologies of punishment and sexual classification.
One key element of the critical phase is attention to subjugated or marginal knowledges, particularly those disqualified or ignored by official histories and considered naive or inadequate.
These naive knowledges are often deemed lower on the hierarchy of knowledge, linked to marginalized groups like the mad, delinquent, or perverted.
Foucault emphasizes that simply repeating these subjugated positions without commentary can act as a form of resistance to how they’ve been treated by dominant sciences.
His archaeological method isn’t just about uncovering hidden or repressed discourses but about critically engagingwith how official discourses normalize populations.
Foucault examines how official discourses, particularly social sciences, normalize populations by creating hierarchiesof knowledge and transforming non-scientific discourses into mere data.
For example, medicine turns patients’ personal knowledges into diagnoses, creating a hierarchy where scientific knowledge is seen as superior to personal or subjective experience.
The concept of truth in Foucault’s work is not fixed but shaped by techniques and discursive practices that institutionalize certain knowledges, like the medical and psychiatric practices in Madness and Civilization and The Birth of the Clinic.
In his case study of the hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, Foucault questions whether we truly need a “true sex,” critiquing how medical and psychiatric practices have fixated on assigning a singular sex to individuals.
Foucault’s work on sexuality also critiques current beliefs that sexual irregularity is a fiction, linked to error or moral wrong, instead of being a legitimate form of human expression.
His works often avoid being overtly polemical or normative, instead focusing on descriptions of how power operates and how societal norms are created and enforced.
Foucault avoids providing definitive philosophical answers but emphasizes how certain truths come to dominate through historical processes.
He questions the nature of truth and suggests that there can be many truths, each with its own rationality, depending on historical context.
Rather than providing a singular truth, Foucault’s work encourages political activists to use his critical descriptions for their own purposes.
Foucault stresses that individual theories of social issues, like prison or delinquency, are more important than external theoretical frameworks or official narratives.
Foucault’s work can aid political action not just by directly engaging in political struggles but by offering studies of official techniques of regulation and normalization, which can be used to subvert these systems.
In his work I, Pierre Rivière, Foucault examines how modern criminal subjects are produced through evolving discourses on punishment, contrasting eighteenth-century ritualistic punishments with nineteenth-century techniques of surveillance and control.
Rivière’s trial occurred during a transitional period in punishment: the shift from spectacular retribution to humane treatment.
Courts struggled to decide between punishing Rivière as a moral example or opting for life-long observation.
Emergent scientific discourses (medicine, proto-psychiatry) faced similar dilemmas, questioning whether conditions like monomania could excuse murderers.
Rivière’s confession becomes problematic for official sciences like law, psychiatry, and medicine, which didn’t know how to handle it.
Foucault’s critique focuses on avoiding participation in official treatment methods like confession or psychiatric analysis.
Power exists not only in domination but in discursive relations, shaping how subjects are formed and treated.
Foucault advocates for focusing on how power functions rather than who holds power.
Discursive practices produce both knowledge and subjects who act as vehicles of power.
Power is not simply ideological but material, acting on the body and producing knowledge through records, investigations, and control mechanisms.
Foucault’s method tries to avoid becoming just another part of the disciplinary sciences, focusing instead on material discursive effects.
Prior to Foucault, structuralism and semiology analyzed texts, while psycho-social sciences focused on subjective interpretations. Foucault placed discourse outside of these oppositions.
Discourse isn’t just about interpreting or reading; it’s about the practices that produce both texts and conditions for reading.
Discourse can no longer be seen as simply surface phenomena or hidden structures beneath language; it’s tied to powerand techniques.
Techniques like the confessional and Panopticon were designed to manage and control subjects from the outside.
In his later works, Foucault shifts focus from external control (like the Panopticon) to ethics—the relation of the self to the self.
This shift isn’t an advocacy for a free self but a documentation of ancient practices that were more concerned with self-governance than legislation.
The liberation from political restrictions doesn’t guarantee moral freedom, as Foucault argues ethics lie outside political systems.
The later volumes of The History of Sexuality reflect Foucault’s ongoing interest in power relations and discursive practices, but in a more intimate context.
Foucault’s earlier works analyzed how subjects, like criminals or sick individuals, were formed and represented through techniques; this analysis is now extended to sexuality.
Foucault is concerned with how truths about subjects (like the sick, the criminal, and the sexual subject) are constructed and told.
His focus is on how truth is produced and by what techniques and conditions, rather than simply revealing hidden truths.
The term discourse captures the conditions for what can be said and how truths are constructed about different subjects.