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This review has been accessed times since July 27, 2008

Paras, Eric. (2006). Foucault 2.0: Beyond Power and Knowledge. NY: Other Press. Pp. vii + 240     $29     ISBN 1-59051-234-0

Reviewed by Sam Rocha
Ohio State University

July 27, 2008

Foucault 2.0: Beyond Power and Knowledge (Paras, 2006) is a short, accessible—and exhaustive—book. The lengthiest section is the reference material. Notes, bibliography, and index are just shy of one hundred pages. This is a telling sign of the project. Eric Paras presents an erudite intellectual biography of Michel Foucault that, along with painting a careful historical portrait, makes a remarkable argument. Paras’ archival study reveals that Foucault ended his life recovering the free subject he so famously (or infamously) put to rest. This recovery should be of special interest to educational theorists as it tenses and relieves a perennial question of learning: who?

Paras’ account resists, and ultimately repudiates, describing the Foucauldian corpus as one dressed in a seamless garment. Instead he casts Foucault clothed in patchwork. These patches are presented chronologically with careful attention to Parisian intellectual culture and the major socio-political trends significant to Foucault’s life. Paras splits the book into three major periods: Discourse, Power, and Subjects. This serves to depict three seemingly different Foucaults.

The first is the Foucault of The Order of Things (1966) and Archeology of Knowledge (1969). This is the vehemently anti-Sartre, post-human, epistemologically concerned, systematist of discourse. This first Foucault, when impacted by the changes of 1968 and the lukewarm (at best) reception of Archeology of Knowledge and the prison reform movement of early 1970’s, began to transition from archeology to genealogy, from discourse to power, which birthed Discipline and Punish (1975) and the emergence of the second Foucault.

This second Foucault was deeply impacted by the Iranian Revolution (1978-79) and the nouveaux philosophes. Where the previous period was moving “beyond Sartre” this one was getting “beyond Marx.” While the previous was epistemologically driven, this one was political. While the previous Foucault marked the death of “man,” this one marked the birth of the gulag. Yet, at the end of this period, Paras notes that Foucault admitted, in the 1980 Howison Lecture at Berkeley, that he had ”insisted maybe too much on the techniques of domination.” (p. 94) Instead he proposed a description of government as the tension within the formation of self. This was the meaning of his course taught the previous year, The Birth of Biopolitics. In this shift the individual was no longer determined, she was now, at least, somewhat free. This anticipated the third Foucault.

This third, and final, Foucault, is the one who took up the study of the ancient world, religious practice, and the arts of living. Paras remarks; “Choice, freedom, reflection, experience, agency: these were the undisguised hallmarks of Foucault’s last philosophical interventions.” (p. 147) Yet this period was not a new one altogether, Paras concludes. He describes this final Foucault as a pendulum. That is, while Foucault began in complete opposition to Sartre and phenomenology’s free human subject, he ends saying in June 1984 (the year of his untimely death) that “I believe solidly in human liberty” (p. 147). While he used “experience” in Madness and Civilization (1961), only to abandon it for nearly two decades, he recovers it in the end. “Man” was reborn and its life, its living—itself was free—to be a work of art.

There is no substitute for Paras’ moving recapitulation of his project that ends the book:

Foucault created the twentieth century’s most devastating critique of the free subject—and then, in a voice that by the end trembled from pain and debility, liquidated it. For the notion of the end of subjectivity had offered a kind of cold clarity, as well as an immensely thought-provoking lens through which to view the world. But ultimately, only the notion of strong subjectivity proved warm enough to accommodate an overwhelming passion for life and an inextinguishable belief in the primacy of human liberty. (p. 158)

Paras’ contention cannot be discredited as questionably researched. I can hardly imagine a more thoroughly investigated, and meticulously cited, argument. The question is one of intent and interpretation. That is, does Paras intend to transfigure Foucault into something shockingly new and beyond? Does he attempt to tell us who Foucault really is and what he really meant? Prima facie, this seems to be the case. Paras appears to propose a new version of Foucault that moves beyond the old ones. This newer Foucault, seen through the recently available lens of his lecture courses at the Collège de France, seems more appealing, less troubling, and likely to stay the same. This is a Foucault who had no singular project, and, yet, somehow, ended his work much like he started it.

This runs into the danger of deciding that the way Foucault died was, in fact, the way he was/is. A simple-minded reading might be lead to think that the later Foucault is somehow better, more authentic—beyond—all the others. Or, perhaps, an insecure reading might feel threatened that if Foucault somehow “turned out” differently than was previously suspected, he might resist being used in the other, older, ways and that former work might be discredited. Paras’ book might be deceiving in certain ways, but not for these reasons. Foucault 2.0 does not present itself as a new idol for Foucauldian worship. Instead, it serves as a brief sketch of Foucault to be added to the icons already begun. None of these will ever be Michel Foucault. He is dead.

Within educational research, Foucault has and will continue to prove insightful in addressing a variety of topics. It seems that only the imagination can limit the possible uses of Foucault. It is, however, especially difficult to resist co-opting Foucault’s expansive corpus and colonizing it for a specific use and interpretation that, in many cases, can prove idolatrous. This book is, at the very least, an antidote for that tendency. It will challenge any “user” to consider Foucault’s own freedom to change and contradict himself without absolutist preference. Considering the special attention given to the free subject, Paras also opens the door for Foucauldian approaches from educational theorists who may have felt alienated by other exclusively post-human interpretations. This should be especially welcome in education where “subject(s)” take special priority. We should not, however, think that these different Foucauldian opportunities correspond to a “new” Foucault.

If Paras was offering a “new Foucault” we should be alarmed. However, if this Foucault is nothing more and nothing less than the difficult, paradoxical, and contradictory one we already “know,” albeit fleetingly and mysteriously (and I think it is), than this book should only add to the complex irony of his short, yet potent, life. Images of a seamless, anti-subject-power/knowledge-systematist, who began his journey with one project in mind and saw it through to the end, are, instead, the ones that we should consider suspect.

Paras seems to understand—and agree with— the inevitability of a 2.01 and beyond. What should be daunting are the archival resources, not unlike that of Foucault’s own work, that Paras shows to be required. In the end, whether right or wrong (and that seems to be such a silly question), Foucault 2.0 introduces another not-so-new Michel Foucault who continues to remind us: “Do not ask me who I am and do not tell me to remain the same.” (Foucault, 2002)

Reference

Foucault, M. (2002). Archeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge.

About the Reviewer

Sam Rocha is a doctoral student in Philosophy of Education at Ohio State University, and a Gates Millennium Scholar. His research interests include phenomenology, pragmatism, and aesthetics as they pertain to, and critique, education and schooling. He can be reached at rocha.8@osu.edu.

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Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman

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