READING FOUCAULT
The purpose of this Foucault workspace is to outline
the main intellectual traditions against which Foucault established his thought
and practice. While the emphasis is on the theoretical frameworks in play the
questions provided are designed to encourage you to explore the relationship of
ideas to events in people's lives, i.e. a concern with the theme of identity.
Foucault broke decisively with certain frameworks, particularly phenomenology
and idealist thought, structuralism and Althusserian approaches. However, he
also built on a radical philosophical tradition which was critical of
Enlightenment pretensions. This tradition includes Nietzsche and Bataille. I
assume here you are either meeting both Foucault and the respective intellectual
traditions referred to for the first time or that you have read one of the
substantive studies such as Madness and Civilisation, Discipline and
Punish, The Birth of the Clinic without possessing any particular
context to Foucault's work.
While Foucault has been absorbed into a
postmodernist framework (Best and Kellner, 1992) he firmly rejected this
positioning. But to get to the heart of what this is about and to see how we can
apply his social thought in a way that confronts oppression requires us to learn
to read the oppositional texts of Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault in a new way.
You are probably used to studying an author in small doses and worrying away at
the meaning of a passage or concept. While that is important in studying
Foucault it is a secondary act. Foucault's work demands to be read quickly and
with vitality first, then slowly.
Many who reject Foucault's work out of hand do so
because they have not learned to read him. Why should this author be so
different? He isn't. The same form of reading is demanded by Nietzsche and
Bataille and I shall try to give examples from their work and from commentators.
The first reading I refer to is a quick, almost breathless one, rushing to
mention all the points. As you read in this way so you will find that certain
ideas stick in your mind - perhaps an odd thought or a forgotten reference, or
indeed a contradiction. These writers invite you to go back then to study their
texts in terms of these phenomena. It is a critical and disciplined rapid read
followed by a more painstaking analysis. If you read these social theorists in
the same way that you might read conventional sociology you are likely to face
defeat and rob yourself of an understanding of a particular 20th century
intellectual tradition. This of course does not mean that you should accept the
tradition but we need to understand it.
I know these remarks seem to accord a privilege to
particular ways of reading texts. The debate over this is not part of my present
concern but I recognise that the command "read it twice, first quickly and
then slowly!" carries all sorts of hidden messages about tutor -student
positions, the role of the author and the reader
Foucault's
Life 
Birth
of the Clinic