Foucault, the History of Truth and the Genealogy of the Modern Subject Cover Image
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Фуко, историята на истината и геналогията на модерния субект
Foucault, the History of Truth and the Genealogy of the Modern Subject

Author(s): Daniele Lorenzini
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Philosophical Traditions, Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy, Sociology
Published by: Институт по философия и социология при БАН
Keywords: history of truth; genealogy of the subject; subjection/subjectivation; governmentality; critique

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the articulation between two of the main projects that characterise Michel Foucault’s work in the 1970s and the 1980s: the project of a history of truth and the project of a genealogy of the modern subject. After addressing the meaning and ethico-political value of Foucault’s history of truth, focusing above all on the shape it takes in 1980 (namely, a genealogy of a series of “regimes of truth” in Western societies), it offers an analysis of the related project of a genealogy of the modern (Western) subject, and more precisely of Foucault’s account of the processes of subjection (assujettissement) and subjectivation (subjectivation) within the Christian and the modern Western regimes of truth. It eventually argues that the essential political and moral issue that Foucault raises is not whether the subject is autonomous or not, but rather whether he or she is willing to become a subject of critique by opposing the governmental mechanisms of power which try to govern him or her within our contemporary regime of truth and striving to invent new ways of living and being.

  • Issue Year: 48/2016
  • Issue No: 3-4
  • Page Range: 219-233
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Bulgarian