Exit: Challenges for a Diagnosis of the Present

Abstract

The conditions for diagnosis. In his critical analysis, Foucault takes an outset in the experience of a specific, current movement. His diagnosis of the present begins by observing the present as a special disruption that takes place as an event in which we participate so as to examine what that present involves for us.¹ Here, the present takes on a relational existence that we are involved in and whose consequences we must unfold or explicate. For a diagnosis of the present, the present appears as a yet to be settled score that needs further examination in order to elucidate what is at stake for us and where it might lead us.