Abstract
Proposing to examine syntheses of manifold experiences of the contemporary philosophical panorama, Michel Foucault’s “critical ontology of actuality” culminates in the elaboration of an epistemology of the human sciences starting from their irreversible modern twist. Among the various possible ways of characterizing this epistemology—equipped with its own modus operandi: the archaeological-genealogical method—is to see it as the result of a reflection on the topic of temporality. In particular, it is a reflection on historical temporality as «knowledge of time», that is organized into two different yet complementary modalities, two historical heterochronies that can be defined as evenemential time and epistemic time. The first, acephalous and atelic, proves discontinuous, traced back to pure becoming. The second corresponds to the necessary disciplining of this original shapeless material by means of the solidification of structures that each time produce an equilibrium (an episteme) among the instances of knowledge and power. Yet these structures, too, remain subjected to that historic-temporal change to which they have attributed an order. Such an interpretation of time implies a metamorphosis of the notion of subject that, within an overall anti-humanistic perspective, goes from its death as the cogito to its rebirth in the form of an ethical-aesthetic subject: no longer the atemporal guarantor of the order of the real, but rather something committed to a risky exercise of its own freedom as care of the Self.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
On the concept of ontology of actuality—that survey that questions the current field of possible experience—see a short but dense essay of the last Foucault (Foucault 1984 3: 32–50).
- 2.
As is known, the Foucaultian journey presents an internal evolution in terms of methodology. A first purely archaeological phase (whose important moments are: The Order of Things, 1966, and The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1969) takes as its object episteme, understood essentially as a discursive regime, as an archive. It is followed by a second (the turning point is the essay: Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 1971), where his approach to the Nietzschean genealogy corresponds to his interest for the device (an expansion of the concept of episteme, which for its part can be defined as a specifically discursive device) and the centrality acquired by the theme of power, culminating in the world-famous analysis devoted to biopolitics.
- 3.
“My aim was to analyse this history, in the discontinuity that no teleology would reduce in advance; to map it in a dispersion that no pre-established horizon would embrace; to allow it to be deployed in an anonymity on which no transcendental constitution would impose the form of the subject; to open it up to a temporality that would not promise the return of any dawn. My aim was to cleanse it of all transcendental narcissism; it had to be freed from that circle of the lost origin, and rediscovered where it was imprisoned” (Foucault 1969: 224–225, the italics are mine).
- 4.
“The role of such a discourse […] does not set out to be a recollection of the original or a memory of the truth. On the contrary, its task is to make differences: to constitute them as objects, to analyse them, and to define their concept” (Foucalt 1969: 227).
- 5.
In this regard, Foucault had already affirmed: “If philosophy is memory or a return of the origin, what I am doing cannot, in any way, be regarded as philosophy; and if the history of thought consists in giving life to half-effaced figures, what I am doing is not history either.” (Foucault 1969: 228).
- 6.
Later on Veyne further defines this positivity, as “nothing is negative, everything is positive, nothing is lacking” (162, note 20).
- 7.
Hazarding a consideration on a terrain that Foucault was not fond of frequenting, the image just described suggests an ontological layout of Heraclitan inspiration (according to the famous fragment B 53) even more than Nietzschean, since this idea of the primacy of contention underlies not so much a will to power, as a fundamental modality of relation. As a result, power as «the mothertonge of the polemos» (in its turn, the originary link between things) should not be considered and interpreted as a destructive element, but a producing and productive force.
- 8.
To make the schematization proposed in these pages more concrete, let us take as an example the general layout of The Order of Things. The individual examinations that read from within the devices in force in the Renaissance, the classical age and modernity belong to an epistemic temporality, while the horizon that looks panoramically, synthetically and simultaneously at the totality (discontinuous and differential) of such devices is evenemential.
- 9.
Faithful to the Nietzschean model, which he even radicalizes, Foucault's genealogy makes the teaching of history its own, according to which things “have no essence”. In this way, the myth of the origin is substituted by the concrete elements of the descent (“to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion”) and of the emergence (“the principle and the singular law of an apparition”). On this topic see Foucault 1971: 78, 81, 83.
- 10.
The model of authentic historical knowledge is that “della guerra e della battaglia. La storicità che ci trascina e ci determina è bellicosa […] la relazione di potere, non la relazione di senso. La storia non ha «senso»; il che non vuol dire che sia assurda o incoerente. Essa è al contrario intelligibile […] ma secondo l’intelligibilità delle lotte, delle strategie e delle tattiche” (“of war and of battle. The historicity that drags us along and determines us is bellicose […] the relation of power, not the relation of meaning. History has no «meaning»; which does not mean that it is absurd or incoherent. It is on the contrary intelligible […] but according to the intelligibility of the fight, of strategies and of tactics”) (Foucault 1977: 9).
- 11.
For Foucault, “the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days” is “to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries” (Foucault 1982: 216).
References
Becker, H. (1987). The ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom. an interview with Michel Foucault on January 20, 1984. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 12, 112–131.
Foucault, M. (1966). Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard. English edition: Foucault, M. (2005). The order of things. An archeology of the human sciences. London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1969). L’Archeologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard. English edition: Foucault, M. (2004). The archaeology of knowledge. And the discourse on language (A. M. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Smith & Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1971). Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire. In Hommage à Jean Hyppolite, ed. Suzanne Bachelard et al., 145–172. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. English Edition: Foucault, M. (1984). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader, (pp.76–100). New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1977). Intervista a Michel Foucault. In Foucault, M. Microfisica del potere, interventi politici, (pp. 3–28), ed. Alessandro Fontana e Pasquale Pasquino. Torino: Einaudi.
Foucault, M. (1982). Why study power: the question of the subject. In H. L. Dreyfus, P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault. Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, (pp. 208–226). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, M. (1984). Histoire de la sexualité (Vol. 2). L’usage des plaisirs. Paris: Gallimard. English edition: Foucault, M. (1990). History of sexuality (Vol. 2). The use of pleasure (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (19842). Histoire de la sexualité (Vol. 3). Le souci de soi. Paris: Gallimard. English edition: History of sexuality (Vol. 3). The care of the Self (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (19843). What is enlightenment? In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader, (pp. 32–50). New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1988). In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the Self. A seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachussets Press.
Foucault, M. (2001). L’Herméneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France 1981–1982. Paris: Gallimard. English edition: Foucault, M. (2005). The hermeneutics of the subject. Lectures at the Collège de France (1981–1982) (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Veyne, P. (2008). Michel Foucault: sa pensée, sa personne. Paris: Albin Michel. English edition: Veyne, P. (2010). Foucault. His thought, his character (J. Lloyd Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cera, A. (2016). Historical Heterochronies: Evenemential Time and Epistemic Time in Michel Foucault. In: Santoianni, F. (eds) The Concept of Time in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24895-0_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24895-0_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-24893-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-24895-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)