MICHEL FOUCAULT LANGUAGE, COUNTER-MEMORY, PRACTICE Selected Essays and Interviews Edited with an Introduction by DONALD F. BOUCHARD Trandated from the French by DONALD F. BOUCHARD and SHERRY SIMON Cornell University Press ^ITHACA, ^NEW YOBK Copyright © 1977 by Cornell University Al rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the pub­ lisher. For information address CorneH University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1977 by Cornell University Press. Second printing 1980. First printing, ComeU Paperbacks, 1980. Eighth printing 1996. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (For library cataloging purposes only) Foucault, Michel. Language, counter-memory, practice. Includes bibliographical references and index. CONTENTS: ^Language and the birth of“literature.” A preface to transgresrion. Language to infinity. The father's "no." Fantasia of the library. [etc.J 1. Languages—Philosophy—Collected works. 2. Literature—Philosophy— Collected works. 3. Difference (Philosophy)—Collected works. I. Title. P106.F67 401 77-4561 ISBN 0-8014-0979-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-8014-9204-1 (pbk.) @The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American Na­ tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Li­ brary Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it offends or r^econciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates, unites or re­ unites; it c^mot help but liberate and enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what murt be done, even before exho^bg or merely sounding an al^m, thought, at the level of its ^exisence, in its very da^wning, is in itseH an action— a perilous act. Foucault The fact is that every writer c;reates his own pr^ecursors. His work modifies our conception of the part, as it modify the future. Borges & P r e f a c e This coliection arose out of the desire to come to teerms with the already considerable accomplishment of Michel Foucault. I had hoped that an examination of his essays on the writers who have inBuenced ^m would resolve the difRculties of his books. Not unexpectedly, the essays reveal some continuity of intention and the persirtence of certain preoccupations, but hardly the security of an origin. What could have s ^ e d in the past as solid foundations had b ^ ^ e , through Foucault’s archaeological retrospective, an open site: the. clewing away • of a new space for investigation and the opening of new questions. ^Where I sought a guide to the perplexity of Foucault's language and an understanding of the ' often lyrical enterprise that sustains his historical perspective, I witnessed instead the emergence of a form of language that questiorui present experience. The seven essays that make up the major portion of this book reB.ect Foucault’s attitudes toward language. Taken together, they exhibit the complexity and variety of the experience . of language, the insistence of those questions generated by lan* guage. Yet, because of. the richness of Foucault's response to language, I' faced a n ^ b e r of practical ^difRculties' in selecting essays. ^This was especially true for the ■ first group of' essays in which Foucault’s sense of language evolves out of the detailed analysis of literary authors and their works. My worlWfg prin- dpl^—to which I have made exceptions—was to omit essays deling with authors whose works are unavailable in tr^ la - 8 Pl\EFACE tion: hence the absence of Foucault's essays on Maurice Blanchot and Pierre Klossowski ("La Pensee du dehors” and “La Prose d'Act£on”). Moreover, the attitude informing those two essays is fully represented by the lead essay, “A Preface to Transgresrion.” I can only hope that if my choices appear arbitrary at times, the range and importance of the essays that are included offset the omissions. Following the essays, a brief concluding section records Foucault's most recent activities at the CoUege de France and his involvement in penal reform. In choosing a title, I adopted the descriptive labels that identify the three separate sections: e a ^ is meant to gain force and precision from its contextual relation to the other two. According to Foucault; the historical experience of language underwent a fundamental shift toward the end of the eighteenth cen^ry, when language took on a life of its own and became an “ob­ jectivity.” This new form of language compelled a series of com­ pensations, the two most important being the creation of the modem human sciences and the b^fc of ‘'literature" as a dis­ tinctive language in its own right. In fact, it is within literature that language finds itself embodied for the first time, and the writer now finds himself subjected to its alien logic. The h ^ a n ' sciences, on the other hand, arise from the elision of this ''liter­ ary” experience of language and from the subjection of language for the p^urpose of determ^ing the nature of h ^ a n identity, or for the fabrication of human memory. In developing a totaly opposed relationship to language, literature has been transformed, since the nineteenth century, into a counter-memory; and the subjects that naturaUy evolve from this language manifest the history of our otherness: violence, transgression, madness, sexu­ ality, death, and finitude. In the second section of essays, Foucault examines the ways in which this experience of language pene­ trates into the domain of discursive thought. Our understanding of counter-memory evolves in a practical fashion from Foucault’s reconsideration of the nature of the author, from Nietesche's exploration of the "long hieroglyphic record” of man's moral PREFACE 9 past, and from Giles Deleeuze’s "reversal of Platonism.” While counter-memory may superficially appear to be a form of nega­ tion, it becomes—with Foucault, Nietzsche, and Deleuze—the affirmation of the particularities that attend any practice, and perhaps the activity that permits new practices to emerge. Lon- guage, Counter-Memory, Practice is the name of an action that defines itself, that recognizes itself in words-—in the multiplica­ tion of meaning through the practice of vigilant repetitions. The task of translating these essays began in a straightforward way, but because of unexpected detours and often belated recognitions, it too experienced its own multiplication—of pos­ sibilities, debts, sources, meanings, cross references, friendly assistance. ^Throughout the preparation of the book, I have profited from Michel Foucault’s advice and assistance. Without his generosity, I doubt that it could have been completed. Bernhard Kendler, at CorneU University Press, has my apprecia­ tion for his patience and direction throughout the ^difrent stages of my undemanding of Foucault, as does Lisa for the final editing of the manuscript. Peter O^in, Donald Theal, and David W ilams, colieagues at McGil University, were always available for discussion and advice..Eugene Vance, at the Uni­ versity of Montreal, helped with an especialy troublesome essay. Eugenio Donato, at SUNY at Buffalo, initiaUy proposed this project and he is largely responsible for my original interest in . Foucault My ^wife, Bebe^m, helped with the final draft of the manuscript and in countless other ways. The McGil Graduate Faculty Fund provided a grant that assisted me in preparing the manuscript, and a Canada Council FeUowship afforded me the leisure to complete the book. Don^ ^ F. Bou^ ^ ot Montreal, Quebec C o n t e n t s Introduction 15 PABT I SLANGUAGE BIRTH OF A Preface to Transgression 29 language to InftDity 53 The Father's “No" 68 Fantasia of the Library 87 n CO^UNTEB^^^OHT: THE of What Is an Author? 113 Nietesche, Genealogy, History 139 Thea^trum Philosophi^cum 165 FAl\T m PRACl1CB: AND POWER History of Systems of Thought 199 InteUectuals and Power 205 Revolutionary Action: "Until Now" 218 Index 235 LANGUAGE, COUNTER-MEMORY, PRACTICE Selected Essays and Interviews Introduction Michel Foucault’s reputation was established in the nineteen sixties, at a time when Structuralism became, in Roland Barthes’ words, an essential “activity” of French intellectual thought.1 The publication of The Order of Things was seen, in this context, as one of many signs that structuralism had come of age.11 In its brief history dating from the tum of the cen^tury it had achieved early successes in linguistics, ^ethnology, and psychoanalysis, in precisely, those sciences of man which evolved as structural disciplines at their most rigorous level; and during the sixties, it appeared revitalized if for no other reason than its having found a fertile soil in France. It extended its range and seemed to promise, through the application of sound methods, an even more general integration of the ‘l ^ a n sciences": in the cultural and literary studies of Barthes, in the work of the Tel Quel group, in Critique, and in the publication of a series of ap­ parently structuralist texts such as De la grammatologie and L'6criture et la difference. Foucault's task, it seemed, was to 1. Roland Bathes, “The Structuralist - Activity," European Literary Theory and Practioe, ed. Vernon W. Gras (New York: Deli Publish­ ing, 1973), pp. 157-163. 2. See Ed^ward Said, “Abecedary Culturae: Structuralism, Ab­ sence, Writing,” Tri-Quarterly, 20 (1971), 3^^1. 'This essay - in a substantially revised form, which modifies and . extennds. Said’s .under­ standing of Foucault, is now an important chapter of Beginnings.* Methods and Intentions (New York: Basic Books, 1975). See also Said's “An Ethics of Language,” Diacritics, 4 (1974), 2^^7. 16 ^INTRODUCTION subdue structuralism’s most resistant foe: thus, those histories that are not history, the historical trilogy that Foucault, in a play on words, called archaeology—Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic, and The Or<ler of Things.* Given this contextual domain, this revitalized cultural space, it now s^eems quite natural that some were led to speak of the consolidation of the h ^ a n sciences as an active possibility.