Michel Foucault: Key Concepts (review)

Given Foucault’s own méfiance towards those who, during his lifetime, tried to pin him down about various facets of his work, particularly his conception of power and disdain for identity politics, any attempt to reduce the philosopher’s work to a series of ‘key concepts’ must inevitably be met with suspicion. Moreover, the pressing need to add yet another tome to the already buckling bookshelf of introductory texts on Foucault seems somewhat questionable. Aimed very clearly at undergraduates studying Foucault for the first time, the collection comprises a series of short essays by different scholars that circle around three main themes: ‘Power’, ‘Freedom’, and ‘Subjectivity’. While these categories do offer scope for a range of topics, almost no attention is paid to Foucault’s work before Surveiller et punir. Madness and archaeology are absent, and discourse, which should really constitute an entire section in itself, is given very short shrift. Contributors appear to have been invited to supplement straightforward commentaries with contemporary examples and critical engagements with other thinkers. While this has the potential to keep Foucault fresh, the choice of examples is occasionally patronizing (high-school dress codes), frequently underdeveloped (Islamic feminism), and invariably a lost opportunity (Foucault’s non-Western encounters). Where the sections on ‘Power’ and ‘Subjectivity’ include some serviceable discussion, that on ‘Freedom’, which indeed seems to constitute the overarching narrative of the publication, is less strong. Perhaps this is because too much emphasis is placed on a notion that is largely alien to, or at least absent from, Foucault’s own project. This is demonstrated most forcibly in Todd May’s essay ‘Foucault’s Conception of Freedom’, which is a shadow of his earlier work bringing Foucault and Merleau-Ponty together. Like several of the contributors, May, who once insightfully described Foucault’s take on freedom as the ability ‘to build our own private prison’, is denied the critical space to do any serious justice to the topic with which he has been charged. Yet, despite fundamental flaws, the book also has some merits. Unlike earlier introductory texts, contributors make full use of Foucault’s recently published lectures, along with interviews, in addition to the staples of Surveiller et punir and La Volonté de savoir. Richard A. Lynch’s opening chapter on ‘Foucault’s Theory of Power’ provides excellent close analysis of some of the more tricky passages from the ‘Méthode’ section of La Volonté de savoir with which students so often struggle. Similarly, in a chapter dedicated to ‘Subjectivity and Truth’, Brad Elliott Stone provides a rich account of parrhēsia and its radical potential, incorporating some astute criticisms of contemporary appropriations of a Stoic model of care of the self. As editor, Diana Taylor concludes the collection appropriately with her discussion of critique as emancipatory practice, thus providing further food for thought. Foucault once claimed that ‘j’écris pour des utilisateurs, non pas pour des lecteurs’. This is also where the specific value of this collection lies: in its invitation to use rather than simply read Foucault.