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Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics

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I did my dissertation on Foucault's archaeology (his first four books), and this required me to acquaint myself with much of the secondary literature concerning his thought. The bulk of this literature seems to be coming from critical theory and culture studies, and it is, well, not very good. Literature and sociology writers are fond of quote-mining his work, and the views I took from their articles almost convinced me that we had read different books.

So Dreyfus and Rabinow's slender volume was a welcome relief. They have the philosophical background required to get a handle on what's going on in Foucault's discourse on discourse, and they had considerable access to the Man Himself to keep them on the straight and narrow. Their work follows the text very closely, and can help the careful reader identify the themes, arguments, and (most notably) tensions that run through these books.

If you've read anything by Foucault, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. Even if it's unable to reveal anything new to you, it will bring the works into a sharper focus and help you realize the place any given volume occupied in the overall project of Foucault's career.

While I have read the "genealogy," I'm in no way an expert on the later works and cannot vouch for Dreyfus and Rabinow's authority concerning them. But given the sensitivity and alacrity with which the first four works are treated, I'm fairly confident they will provide rock-steady guidance for Foucault's examination of power and the institutions the wield it.

Indeed, Dreyfus and Rabinow have "cleared up" much of Foucaults difficult methods. I would say that reading this does not excuse anyone from Foucaults works; it could be read alongside them to help clarify themes and connect seemingly useless portions that most people would like to skip through. Besides, without actually reading Foucault you are missing out on some of the most profound, stylistic, and original philosophy of the twentieth century. An excellent introduction and guide, but comprehensive enough to warrant FIVE stars. Trust me. Dreyfus and Rabinow have written a surprisingly original book here; their view and support of Foucault as "beyond structuralism and hermeneutics" is brilliantly explained.

Having read most of Foucault and some of the jargon-laced incoherence that passes for scholarship on his work, I'd say this is the clearest, most coherent text you will find on Foucault. Dreyfus is a great explainer and clarifier of other philosophers (if he can rescue Heidegger from the being-in-the-swamp of his own verbiage, he can rescue anyone), and in this case, he makes Foucault clearer than I thought possible. Also, Dreyfus knew Foucault at Berkeley and was invited by Foucault to lecture in France, so I'm sure this personal connection gave him additional insight into Foucault's project.

I have never been a fan of Foucault or the cult that has sprung up around him in seemingly every corner of the academic world, but Dreyfus and Rabinow at least convinced me that Foucault had something to say and explained what that was more clearly than Foucault ever managed to himself. I highly recommend this book, but it would help to have some background in philosophy (i.e. Kant) before you read it -- probably not required, but it would be helpful.

This is a superb commentary. And as stated elsewhere, the brevity and clarity of the exposition has no peer in the "discourse" on Foucault. There are rarely commentaries that are as enjoyable to read regardless of its object of interpretation. The solid, brief prose is a case study on commentary techne as it illuminates his inspired creativity while "faithfully" unwrapping his concepts. The afterword and interview (second edition) exposes the partial dissonance between the interpretation of Foucault's work by Dreyfus and Rabinow and Foucault's own reflections on his "central theme", Bio-Power. For a book about the problem of interpretation, it does well to expose its own interpretedness.

Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rainbow have written a lucid explication of the major ideas of the late Michel Foucault with this brief volume. This is primarily a methodological assessment of Foucault's work, from his archaeological inquiries of asylums, clinics, and prisons, to his brilliant work assessing the 'discursive formations' of the Enlightenment in 'The Order of Things.' There are also excellent chapters regarding Foucault's work in 'The History of Sexuality,' from his interpretation of bio-power to the care of the self. This is not a totally positive appraisal of Foucault's challenging body of work, whose disparate projects failed to be unified in an intelligible and overarching theory of power. However, Foucault comes across as an immensely brilliant and provocative thinker and historian who refused to naively accept reductive programs of social change. This is a very clear and thorough work of scholarship.

I haven't yet read all of this book but I think this book is very useful and helpful to understand the thought of Foucault that is hard to understand. There are many authers' insightful consideration about Foucault's thought and they explain it chronologically. So readers of this book can easily follow the development process of Foucault's thought. Although readers must have the knowledge of European philosophy, I recommend this book for all readers who want to know the overall thought of Foucault.

This book has been numbered as the most authoritative interpretation of Foucault. The main question of the book is how to classify Foucault¡¯s thought. Foucault has been characterized as a typical structuralist. But as the subtitle of this book implies, he is not a structuralist, authors argue. He attempted to overcome the dichotomy of structuralism and hermeneutics. Early works like ¡®The Order of Things¡¯ and ¡®The Archaeology of Knowledge¡¯ might be seen as a breakthrough in structuralist line. But late works like ¡®Discipline and Punishment¡¯ and ¡®The History of Sexuality¡¯ have some flavor of hermeneutics. In this regard, Foucault could not be classified as structuralist or hermeneutist. Then Foucault¡¯s thought, one might guess, seemed to shift from structuralism to hermeneutics. To clear the confusion, we should visit Foucault¡¯s conception of discourse. The discourse is actually how the human-being understand and construct its world. Then the question of ¡®what is discourse?¡¯ is translated into ¡®what is understanding the world?¡¯ the most dominant approaches to that question are phenomenology, hermeneutics and structuralism. But they hasn¡¯t presented satisfactory solution. In Husserlian approach, the world is understood by meaning-giving transcendental subject. In structuralist approach, both meaning and subject give way to objective law (structure). Structure governs the subject. Hermeneutics is a bit subtler than them. Human-being is a meaning-giving subject, but meaning is located in the social practices like tradition or convetion, routine. (for more details, see my review on Eagleton¡¯s ¡®Literary Theory: An Introduction) Foucault gyrates along those three positions, which makes Foucault hard to be pinpointed. The trajectory Foucault traced reveals how he attempted to set up his own solution.
The questions raised by hermeneutics and structuralism converges into the question, ¡®What lies beyond discourse?¡¯ structuralism answers ¡®it¡¯s the structure.¡¯ In the world of structuralism, the concept of meaning is altogether eliminated. Hermeneutics, according to Gadamer, answers ¡®it¡¯s the profound understanding of Being embedded in traditional linguistic practices.¡¯ They all focus on linguistic practices, the discourse. It seems that in the early works, ¡®The Archaeology of Knowledge¡¯ and ¡®The Order of things¡¯, Foucault followed the structuralist doctrines: the discourse appears as self-regulating and autonomous. The methodology he hired, archaeology is indifferent to the meaning in the discourse, just as ethnologists methodically distantiate themselves both from one¡¯s own culture and from the culture under investigation. With the method of structuralist archaeology, Foucault could achieve such a distanciation. Discourse in mere object to be dissected. But the influences from social institution, which is the essential to Foucualt¡¯s conception of discourse, couldn¡¯t be seen. According to Giddens, discourse has always some intended effect to bring about. So it plays some role in social life. As demonstrated in vivid manner on ¡®Madness and Civilization¡¯, discourse not only talks about object-being-there, but also makes it. Madness emerged as the effect of discourse. It was not naturally there. Here comes the conception of power. Early method of archaeology serves to isolate and analyze discourse. But it doesn¡¯t mean that Foucault turned to hermeneutics. Actually, he denied the meaning-giving subject with advocating the disappearance of the subject. Unlike Wittgenstein or Giddens, power is the attribute not of individual social actors but of dominating system. So discourse is not the business of individuals. In the ¡®History of Sexuality¡¯, he showed how the deep meaning like identity is related to social dominance, in other word practices of power. The subject speaking deep truth or meaning is actually the product of power. But it makes it the elusive question, where the power resides in or what the power is at all. The authors are right when saying Foucault is neither structuralist nor hermeneutist. But Foucault¡¯s position is inherently ambiguous: he seems stuck in middle, I think.

Like the interviews and lectures this book clears up any misunderstanding in Foucault. It is really better than Foucault's own works for insight.