Abstract
This chapter deploys Barthe’s notion of the “baroque” to argue for a Foucauldian œuvre that establishes a field of inquiry of critical history, which defines its form, while its content is characterised by disjunctions of knowledge, power and ethics. Their intersection as regimes of truth is also highlighted. For critics like Habermas and Taylor, who define an œuvre by the continuity of its content, it means any Foucauldian œuvre is an oxymoron. Likewise, on their singular path to enlightenment that demarcates truth from power, Foucault becomes more of a foe than a friend. The chapter then outlines the history of critique in France to explain the misinterpretations of Foucault’s critics and why critical history provides an alternative mode of critique.
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Dalgliesh, B. (2017). Introduction. In: Critique as Critical History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61009-2_1
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