Michel Foucault and the contradictions of modern thought
Keywords:
Foucault, self-consciousness, modern thought, contradictions, modernismAbstract
This paper offers a sympathetic yet critical examination of Michel Foucault’s discussion –in the final chapters of his book, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences– of the contradictions inherent in the self-consciousness of the modern or post-Kantian mind. I argue that Foucault’s account of the “empirical-transcendental doublet” of modern thought can provide a crucial mapping of humanist, anti-humanist, and postmodern responses to the reflexivity of the modern “episteme”. I criticize Foucault’s treatment of structuralism as insufficiently critical, and inconsistent with his own arguments, but defend him against the charge that he undermines his own position through a form of performative self-contradiction, while also offering some speculations on the redemptive implications of the suggestion that Foucault was likely aware of the contradictions he commits. The objective is to offer a clear analysis of these difficult chapters, one that might bring Foucault’s analysis of the modern episteme more to the center of current discussions of modernism, postmodernism, and modern thought in general. Foucault’s analysis suggests the possibility of a bracing synoptic overview that can help clarify the dialectical vicissitudes of modern art, thought, and experience.
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