Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

ooks state what is true, But Foucautt does not give the question of truthpriority (at least in the sense of providing a susuined treatment of it). Therelative neglect of truth relates to Foucault's fundamental conception ofsubjectivity as not preexistent, Subjects are wholly historical; discoursesand practices constitute them, For Foucault "the individual is not a pregivenentity," The individual "is the product of a reiarion of power exercisedover bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces,"""4 The subjectuis not to be conceived as a sort of elementary nucleus . . . on whichpower comes to fasten or against which it happens to strike." "stead, it is""one of the grime effects of power tbat certain bodies, certain gestures, certaindiscourses, certain desires, come to be identified and constituted as individuals,"'"The consequence is that truth cannot be anything hut hiscoricaland perspectival for Foucauldian subject% There can be no differencebetween wkat is true and wkat passes fOr true.106 Even if Foucault allowedthe conceivability of ob~ective truth, it could he nothing to us; it could playno role in cognition. As suggested above, historical truth has all the farce ofputative ahisturical truth if it is the only truth we can amin. However, thisis unsatishctary as it stands. We must turn now t0 a mare detailed cunsiderationof Foucault's conception of truth.Motes1. Six volumes were projected, Three were published and apparently a fourth existsin manuscript or note form,2. Faucault 1980at152,3, Foucauit 1980a:152.LE. In my classes X have used the example of a book Foucault might have written:The Flktory o(Eerd;tzg. Our practice of sharing meals might have been precluded bya deployed hurnar-t nature that required that food be Ingested in private, as now isthe case with evacuative bodily functions.5. FoucauIt usuaXly descdbes these as ""plcasurahle" activities, He distinguishesbemeen things people do that involve certain sort of satisfacticrns, and those samerhings as integral parts of behaviar that manifests a natural aspect of being I~uxnan,6. It is also a somewhat suspect point and I will allude to it agairl, Foucault7s iinsistencethat gratifying acts are deemed sexual only because of tile deployment ofsexuality aken looks setf-serving. Betow I mention his reference to homosexualsodomy. It is difficutt to see how that act might have been deen-red gatifying but notsexual prior to the deployment of sexuality, Foucault" attempt to portray thefondling of a child as innocent (pages 31 and 32 of The History of Sexuality) is anothercase in point. Sce below7. Foucauit 1980a:95,8. Foucault 1988b:265,9. Some do maintain that crimillallty lnanlfests something natural, However,aside from certain religious doctrines about our "fallen" nature, not many claim