Review

Reviewed Work(s): Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. by Michel Foucault and Donald

F. Bouchard
Review by: Dalia Judovitz
Source: MLN , May, 1978, Vol. 93, No. 4, French Issue: Autobiography and the Problem
of the Subject (May, 1978), pp. 755-758
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2906605

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 756 REVIEWS

Already in The Order of Things, a work contemporaneous with some of

the early essays under discussion, Foucault distinguishes the field of his
study by describing it as non-teleological, insofar as it describes the
conditions of possibility of certain discursive formations, their historical a
priori. He is more interested in what renders possible a system of positivity,
as an epistemological field, rather than its determination and resolution as
an objective field of knowledge, which would imply the denial of its terms.
Foucault concentrates on the description of the conditions of possibility of
a discursive practice, whose value is not transcended by reference to a
system of values which goes beyond its terms. Unlike the nineteenth
century historians, who by reference to Fichte and Hegel conceived
history in teleological terms, as perfectible and continuous, Foucault
dispenses with the telos of the synthesis in dialectics. In fact, Foucault
excludes teleology as a "positive" term from his field of positivity. When
Foucault chooses "archeology" as the name of his discipline, he focuses on
the a priori conditions of possibility of a discursive field with no final
teleological reflection. He tries neither to coordinate nor to unify the strata
of the different ipistm6, either in terms of an original cause or finite
conclusion; he concentrates instead on their discrepancy, the moments of
break and division that define one layer against another. In his essays on
Nietzsche and Deleuze, history becomes "effective" history to the degree
that it introduces and produces discontinuities, for knowledge for
Foucault does not function as understanding, but as cutting, as an
affirmation of division. In "Theatrum Philosophicum" the affirmation of
division constitutes the effort to redefine the operation of negativity, as an
operation in the dialectic. Thus negativity is not permitted to function in
ways that would involve its being overcome. Consequently, archeology does
not function as a means for describing a history which overcomes its own
conditions of possibility and thereby defines its identity as a discipline.
Foucault refuses to derive self-recognition for archeology as a science, since
there is no final conception of objectivity with which it can identity itself to
ascertain its own status.
In describing "genealogy" in "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," Foucault
articulates his own conception of what constitutes history as a
counter-memory. Nietzsche's conception of genealogy as "wirkliche Historie" or
its more frequent characterization as historical "spirit" or "sense" is
described by Foucault as giving rise to three uses that oppose and
correspond to the three Platonic modalities of history. The first is parodic,
directed against reality, against history as reminiscence and recognition;
the second is dissociative, directed against identity and opposes history
given as continuity or representative of a tradition; the third is sacrificial,
directed against truth, and opposes history as knowledge. "They imply a
use of history that severs its connection to memory, its metaphysical and
anthropological model, and constructs a counter-memory-a transformation

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 M L N 757

of history into a totally different form of time." (p. 160) Foucault wants to
produce a "history" that severs its connection to memory, since it can no
longer function as either reminiscence or recognition and thus it breaks
down a certain anthropological and metaphysical construct inherent in the
notion of history. The counter memory that Foucault underlines implies a
different form of time, a time which is perceived in "sacrificial" terms, as
the sacrifice and abolishment of the subject of knowledge. Such a subject
opposes the institution of its own memory as history, and therefore, as
knowledge. In describing "genealogy" Foucault appropriates and
compares his own sense of history to Nietzsche's with some important
differences. Although Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals does construct a
history of morals, unlike Foucault's, this history does not function as a
prescriptive system of rules. Nietzsche's use of parody is partially over-
looked by Foucault, although he points out vivid parody in Deleuze's
"reversal" of Platonism. Rather than abolishing the category of the
subject, Nietzsche names it through the use of historically monumental
names. Instead of an "empty sign" (p.195) the Eternal Return appears
more as a means of designating Nietzsche's singular subjectivity, through
the punctuated rhythm of philosophical names, at once most singular
and yet, also most universal. The strategy of naming the subject of
knowledge, of attributing to it a genealogy of names constitutes a gesture
which seems to go against Foucault's intention to sacrifice the subject of
knowledge. The category of the "author-function" in "What is an Author?"
seems counter to the production of the subject in Nietzsche, whose
parodical pre-eminence, as a series of different subjects and names, places
him visibly forward as a representation in history.
In the literary essays on Bataille, Sade, Holderlin and Flaubert, Foucault
describes the author in relation to the manner in which discourse is
articulated on the basis of social relationships. The discursive practices that
he describes pretend to abolish the category of the "author" in order to
circumscribe and delineate more adequately the historical a priori or the
conditions of possibility of discursive practices. He thus reduces discourse
to an order that renders it anonymous, and consequently, these conditions
of possibility attain universality. Does this position not bring Foucault
really closer to Kant, than to Nietzsche? For in Nietzsche, discourse is
always re-inscribed into the body of its author, it constitutes that body by
naming it through history's most illustrious names. In Nietzsche, this
parody outlines more forcefully than ever the subject of knowledge, while
abolishing and circulating its "authority" over a corpus of knowledge, since
the parody designates itself physiologically as the diagnosis of that body of
knowledge. Foucault's insistence on the a priori conditions of possibility
and thus on a certain order or schemata of discursive practices places him
in a Kantian position. While continuity is excluded in Foucault in its
anthropological and metaphysical terms of memory and recognition, it

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 758 REVIEWS

re-appears in the intutitive dimension of the a priori which re-invents

temporality and therefore, if only an anonymous subject, through the
gesture of being posited.
As a collection of essays, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice combines
one of the most provocative reflections on the status of the "author" as a
function of discursive practices with an understanding of "history" that
redefines its disciplinary and institutional status.

The Johns Hopkins University DALIA JUDOVITZ

Jacques Lefrere, Le Visage de Lautreamont. Paris: Pierre Horay,

1977.

Two important discoveries in Jacques Lefrere's view have authorized

this new biography of the Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore Ducasse): an
edition of the Iliad annotated in Lautreamont's handwriting, and the long
sought-after photograph of the Chants de Maldoror's author. If the newly
revealed autobiographical material is recent, this attempt at Lautreamont's
biography must be situated at the forefront of a century-long battle of
letters. Due to an almost complete lack of biographical sources,
Lautreamont's previous biographers (P. Pia, A. Guillot-Munoz and Jean
and Mezei, to mention but a few) have had to make do.
In a certain way, the discovery of the first photograph of the enigmatic
author of Les Chants de Maldoror had to come sooner or later. Lautreamont
and his work have sustained interest ever since the first publication of
Chant I in 1868. The work's rapid censorship (approximately one year
later) under the Seconde Empire, and the mysterious death of its author left
a virtually untouched field open to numerous interpretations. Following a
first generation of readers, emerged Lautreamont as celebrated by the
Surrealists, then Lautreamont psychoanalysed, and eventually, having
passed through structuralism, Lautreamont "textualized." Thus we find
Lautreamont and his work in a curious position, not only because of the
work's lack of historical "foundation" (the vast speculation on the text's
sources induces one to conclude that Lautreamont used them all), but also
because of the virtual lack of an author. Ducasse seems to have made every
effort to erase his traces, not only concerning his life but his authorship as
well-witness the pseudonym. Les Chants de Maldoror thus hold a somewhat
privileged position in the French literary tradition. Caught between both
traditional and non-traditional readings, Lautreamont and his work have
managed to survive as a sort of cultural emblem; but we must wonder at
the same time if Lautreamont (choose whichever version you please) and
his text have survived without injury.
From a photograph, then, emerges a biography. Replacing the efforts at
forging a theoretical portrait for lack of a photograph, that which is more

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