http://hhs.sagepub.

com/
History of the Human Sciences
http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/3/1/55.citation
The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/095269519000300108
1990 3: 55 History of the Human Sciences
Paul Rabinow
Truth and society

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at: History of the Human Sciences Additional services and information for

http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

http://hhs.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:

What is This?

- Feb 1, 1990 Version of Record >>

by Pepe Portillo on July 28, 2014 hhs.sagepub.com Downloaded from by Pepe Portillo on July 28, 2014 hhs.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Truth and
society
PAUL RABINOW
HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 3 No. 1
It is self-evident that the full
publication
of Foucaults work is
salutary.
Colin
Gordon and his
colleagues
are to be commended for
furthering
the
public
availability
of his material. The main effect of
making
Foucaults works more
fully
accessible I believe will be on future readers and those effects will be
unpredictable,
one of the reasons for
promoting
them. It is doubtful that their
publication
will end
controversy
about the
meaning
of Foucaults
writing
or the
uses to which it can be
put.
This is
equally salutary.
Efforts to establish the
real,
true,
and
unique
Foucault - either to
praise
or to blame -
should,
in
my opinion,
be resisted. This
hardly implies
that
anything goes
but it does mean that a more
complex understanding
of what is an author and what is truth have now been
introduced into the
practices
and debates
concerning
how we do
inquiry.
Foucault
gave
us tools to use not an
agenda
to follow.
Gordons
piece
is commendable for another
reason,
its lack of
polemic. By
not
directly addressing
the obvious
malice,
wilful
distortion,
complacent ignorance,
and
political agendas present
in some of the Foucault
criticism,
by resolutely
posing
the debate on
questions
of fact and
interpretation,
Gordon
joins
Foucault
in a stance which is both an ethic and a
strategy.
In one of his last
articles,
Foucault
explained why
he
attempted
to avoid
polemic (demonstrating
on a new
register
his skills as a master rhetorician of a
unique sort).
The
polemicist,
Foucault
wrote,
proceeds
encased in
privileges
that he
possesses
in advance and
will never
agree
to
question.
On
principle
he
possesses rights
to
wage
war and
making
that
struggle
is a
just undertaking;
the
person
he confronts is not a
partner
in the search for
truth,
but an
adversary,
an
enemy
who is
wrong,
who is
harmful and whose
very
existence constitutes a threat.&dquo; Gordons
piece skilfully
documents some of these
polemical
moves in the
early Anglo-Saxon reception
of
Foucault without his
engaging
in
polemic
himself. Gordon elsewhere has
insightfully analysed
the
specially English reception
of
Foucault;
a similar
essay
for
Germany
would be most
helpful.
Such work does not reveal the real Foucault
by Pepe Portillo on July 28, 2014 hhs.sagepub.com Downloaded from
56
nor does it serve to unmask the hidden motives of humanism but
only
to
explore
concretely
how truth circulates in modern
society.
Foucault did not leave a will. In French law this means that his
family
became
the
legal
inheritors and
protectors
of his estate. A letter written a
year
before his
death
expressing
a desire not to have
posthumous manuscripts published
has
been
recognized
as
carrying legal authority.
The
point
is
largely
moot, however,
as Foucault did not leave behind a
body
of
unpublished manuscripts.
The one
major exception
is the fourth volume of the
History of Sexuality,
about which
there seems to be an
agreement
to
publish
it
eventually.
A fabled
manuscript
on
Manet no
longer
seems to exist. Gallimard is in the
process
of
bringing
out the
complete published essays
and interviews which should
go
a
long way
to
making
available
many pieces
found in not
easily
available
journals
in
Japan,
Brazil,
and
the like. Foucaults courses at the
College
de France circulate on
tape
in Paris and
elsewhere;
an audio edition is
being prepared
for commercial distribution. This
should clear the
way
for a
scholarly
edition to see the
light
of
day
either in French
or another
language (there
has been resistance to the idea in
France).
These
documents as well as Foucaults thesis on Kant and
many tapes
of
interviews,
radio broadcasts and the like are
being
collected at the Foucault archives in Paris:
Foucault
Archive,
Bibliotheque
du
Saulchoir,
43 bis Rue de la
Glaciere,
75013
Paris.
Foreign
scholars are invited to visit the archives
although
there are
restrictions as to who
may
use them. No
reproduction
of materials is allowed. A
parallel
archive,
perhaps
not
quite
as
complete,
but with fewer
restrictions,
is in
the works in California.
University of California, Berkeley
NOTES
1
Politics,
polemics
and
problematizations:
an interview with Michel
Foucault,
in Paul
Rabinow
(ed.) (1984)
The Foucault
Reader,
New York: Pantheon
Books,
p.
382.
by Pepe Portillo on July 28, 2014 hhs.sagepub.com Downloaded from