미셸 푸코의 역사사상 = Michel Foucault's thought of history

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Michel Foucault is widely regarded as one of the most original thinkers in our time. Among others, his originality which differentiates him from other thinkers consists in the fact that he has combined philosophy and history in a practical critique of the present. His critique of the present is based on historical methods called 'archaeology', 'genealogy', and 'ethics' respectively. Through these methods, Foucault explored such unfamiliar terrains as madness(Madness and Civilization), clinical medicine(The Birth of the Clinic), human science(The Order of Things), prison(Discipline and Punish), and sexuality(The History of Sexuality, vols. 3).
The main concern of 'archaeology' is the discourse and its conditions of formation, and 'genealogy' concerns the relationship between knowledge and power. Foucault's archaeology attempts to constitute a general approach to the history of thought that does not presuppose the continuity and progress of history and the centrality of the transcendental subject. For this, he assumes a kind of the concept of periodical self-definition called episteme, or formation discursive. According to his The Order of Things, for example, classical natural history and modern biology are very different modes of thought because the discursive rules governing their statements are very different.
Foucault argues that history can not be perceived, described and expressed in the same way. Instead he proposes the 'perspectivism' which derives from Nietzsche. By perspectivism, he means that history is so complex a reality that we must approach it at different levels, from different perspectives, and by different methods.
Genealogy moves beyond the earlier method into more explicit stress on the power/knowledge and power/body. The center of genealogical inquiry lies in the mutual relations between systems of truth and modalities of power, and in the way in which there is a 'political regime' of the production of truth. For he assumes that the condition of our knowledge is concerned with power. On the other hand, genealogy focuses on the social body, which is, according to Foucault's analysis, the object of sciences and control.
In Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, Foucault argues that industrial society, beginning in the late eighteenth century, generated a disciplinary power based on regulating individuals and controlling their thoughts and movements. While disciplinary power has a coherent strategy of normalization, its mechanisms are hetermorphous and diffused throughout the various institutional networks comprising society. As a result, Foucault claims that modern power produces and fabricates the subjective individual by means of surveillance, discipline and training.
Although the main objects of analysis are different, archaeology and genealogy ultimately converge into the question of 'subject'. Foucault, that is to say, inquires into the question of subjectification through history. The fact that his entire work concerns subject is presented in his stage of 'ethics'(or genealogy of ethics). In this stage, he pronounces that "if one wants to analyze the genealogy of the subject in Western civilization, one has to take into account not only techniques of domination, but also techniques of the self. . . . I would like to study power relations starting from techniques of the self."
For this, Foucault investigates how Greeks and Romans using ethics called 'technology of the self' in classical antiquity constituted themselves the subject of their lives. Men from the Greek and Roman ruling classes set down rules for regulating their behaviors in the realms of diet, family relations and sexuality. The ultimate goal of ethics was aesthetic, for stylizing one's life and transforming it into a work of art. Foucault finds in ancient ethics the possibilities that an individual could produce oneself as a free and creative agent to escape from repressive power relations.
In sum, Foucault's entire work focuses on how subject's thought was constituted by discursive formations, how subject's act was controlled by power relations, and how subject's self could be established by the self.
Through these methods, Foucault shows that there is no historical transcendence and no a priori subject. Further, since all things which have existed through history are changeable, he claims, we can change the present order that conditions our thought and controls our practice. Foucault's distinctive achievement lies in showing the fact that, through the analysis of history, the overcoming of our repressive present is possible.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 목차
• 머리말 = 1
• Ⅰ. 푸코의 전체사 비판과 다전망주의 = 9
• Ⅱ. 푸코의 역사연구방법 = 19
• 1. 지식의 고고학 = 20
• 2. 권력의 계보학 = 30
• 3. 윤리의 계보학 = 39
• Ⅲ. 현재적 역사와 근대성 비판 = 46
• 맺음말 = 53
• 참고문헌 = 56
• Abstract = 63