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A review & critique of works by Michel Foucault on power in modern society. Foucault's methodology is genealogical, centered on identifying the origins & development of power/knowledge regimes while setting aside questions of epistemic & normative justification. He conceives modern power as local, continuous, productive, capillary, & exhaustive, & as constituting a self-amplifying regime. This view rules out social change strategies centered on ideology or seizure of state &/or economic power; it stresses the universal presence of power throughout society. Foucault rejects both the radical contrast of repression vs liberation & the liberal contrast of legitimacy vs illegitimacy as constituting parts of the normative framework of domination. A tension is evident between his critical account of the workings of power & his suspension of the question of legitimacy; concepts of legitimacy & illegitimacy appear to persist beneath the surface of his analysis. His lack of careful distinctions among various forms of power leaves his theories devoid of any means of clarifying his position. W. H. Stoddard.

Presented are highlights of an interview, conducted by Bernard-Henri Levy, with Michel Foucault. Sex has always been related to the future of the human species, & the search for truth & the history of Western civilization cannot be separated from the way that it produces truth. It is necessary to examine the positive mechanisms that determine the manner of sexuality & in Western society have produced sexual misery. Modern power systems cannot ignore sexuality, but prohibitions reveal only the limits of power. Essentially, power relations are productive & the effects of power, especially on the production of truth, must be studied. As soon as power relations exist, there is the possibility of resistance. Currently, there are only two frameworks for analyzing power, the legal & the military, the first of which has serious drawbacks. Marxist analysis has spent too much effort studying class & not enough consideration is given to the nature of the struggle. M. Migalski.

Istilah politik dan kebenaran telah secara umum dipergunakan bersama-sama dan dipadankan di masyarakat tanpa suatu pendefinisian yang jelas. Hal ini membuat penggunaan kedua term atau istilah ini menjadi ambigu dan tumpang tindih. Selain itu, dari sisi teori dan praktiknya sendiri, hubungan antar politik dan kebenaran masih belum dapat ditelaah oleh masyarakat luas. Sebagai tindak lanjut dari isu ini, paper ini menguraikan konsep kebenaran (truth) dan politik (politics) dari Hannah Arendt dan teori kekuasaan (power), pengetahuan (knowledge) dan kebenaran (truth) dari Michel Foucault. Setelah itu, paper ini melakukan perbandingan antar kedua teori ini dengan tujuan untuk mengetahui gambaran yang tepat mengenai hubungan antara politik dan kebenaran serta sejauh mana keduanya dapat dipisahkan satu sama lain. Melalui analisis perbandingan kedua teori terkait hubungan antara politik dan kebenaran ilmiah atau kebenaran rasional, dapat disimpulkan bahwa seberapa jauh kebenaran ilmiah dapat dipisahkan dari politik akan ditentukan melalui cara kebenaran tersebut didapatkan. Jika suatu kebenaran ilmiah didapatkan sendiri atau secara independen, tanpa suatu proses penelitian yang melibatkan pihak lain serta institusi, maka kebenaran tersebut tetap dapat berada di luar wilayah politik, jika tidak, kebenaran tersebut pasti akan menjadi elemen hubungan manusia yang bersifat politis.

The analysis of the confession in Foucault's work based on the comparison between Les anormaux, Mal faire, dire vrai and Les aveux de la chair shows one of the most relevant displacements in Foucault's work, which constitutes a good part of the essence of what has been called the last Foucault: the relation of the subject and the truth. An attempt will be made to account for this turn, analyzing the look at primitive Christianity of the last Foucault and the relationship of such reflection in the analysis of the hermeneutics of the self. The last reflections on the confession in Les aveux de la chair will show the meaning of the ethical inquiry of the last Foucault that reproduces the double critical and ontological character of anarcheology.

Mitte der 1960er Jahre hat Michel Foucault die Methode der "Diskursanalyse" in die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften eingeführt. Besonders in der Archäologie des Wissens hat er dafür plädiert, die Geschichte des Wissens und der Wissenschaften zum Gegenstand diskursanalytischer Untersuchungen zu machen. Über ein halbes Jahrhundert später ist im Bereich der Informatik ein zunehmendes Interesse an der Diskursanalyse zu verzeichnen. In der Regel spielt Foucault dabei aber keine Rolle. Fern von jeder Archäologie setzen auch die Digital Humanities vermehrt auf die Analyse von historischen und gegenwärtigen Diskursen. Angesichts dieser Konjunkturen ist es an der Zeit, die Archäologie des Wissens neu zu lesen. Denn schon 1968 behauptete der französische Historiker Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie "Der zukünftige Historiker wird Programmierer sein, oder er wird nicht sein." Ein Jahr später gibt Foucault mit seinem Buch auf eben diese Herausforderung eine ebenso informierte wie nuancierte Antwort. Diese Antwort ist in ihrer Aktualität und Relevanz erst noch zu entdecken.

The present text has as objective not only to define the concepts of "moral", "ethics" and "aesthetics of existence", in the periods studied by Michel Foucault, but also to capture their significant differences, in view of the orientation towards the possibility of an ethical-political in and of the present time. Such arche-genealogical studies of Classical Greece (4th century BC), of the Greco-Roman period (1st and 2nd century AD) and of Christianity (3rd and 4th centuries AD), show that these concepts maintain their mark, by the use of techniques aimed at achieving temperance and an increasing and detailed care of itself. The stylization of life gained forms of the most varied in this historical process, based on practices that sometimes approached the moral attitude of the ethical attitude. This flexibility of the uses of concepts, consequently of historical and cultural practices, brings in Foucault the opening of thought in the search for a political attitude towards acts, thoughts and freedom.

An interview concerned marginally with poststructuralism but more often with Michel Foucault's views on French intellectual history since WWII. Topics discussed include: Nietzsche, Marxism in conjunction with other schools of thought, Foucault's books, & the notion of postmodernism. Structuralism is interpreted as merely one aspect of a broader twentieth-century tendency toward formal thinking. The interrelation between phenomenology & structuralism is briefly noted, & it is suggested that the major intellectual currents of the 1960s occurred as a result of dissatisfaction with the phenomenological theory of the subject. Foucault's own central problematic is revealed to be the problem of wahr-sagen (saying the truth), & the attempt of the subject to speak the truth about itself. The history of reason & rationality is pondered, & the recent history of the French Left is considered. The question of the continued validity of the Marxist paradigm is posed, & it is noted that French thought after WWII involved repeated attempts to integrate Marxism with other philosophical positions, including phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, & Nietzschean theories. J. Weber.

Eine Kritik des "Verflüssigungsprimats" - Antinormativität und Antiinstitutionalismus - der poststrukturalitischen politischen Theorie