The insurrection of subjugated knowledges
In the lecture he gave on 7 January 1976, Foucault focused his attention on returns of knowledge that descend from what he calls “insurrection of subjugated knowledges”.
With this expression he refers to two
specific factors: 1) the ‘knowledges’ that
derive from historical contents, which he
deems buried, and thus adequate to be
subjected to a rediscovery attributable, to
a ‘sumptuous’ research linked, in a way, to
“typical secret societies of the West” since
ancient times and emerged at the time of
early Christianity: the “great warm and
tender Freemasonry of useless erudition” –
here, with his peculiar and subtle humour,
Foucault introduces his own analysis and
the one of his rhizospheric fellows just
like modern variations of the struggle and
insurrection of Alexandrine gnosis related
to the idea of salvation through knowledge.
The French rhizosphere is, according to
the malicious Foucaultian antichristian-
Nitzschean-accelerationist interpretation,
a sort of secular and revolutionary neo-gnosis which hands its wisdom and
research over from one generation to the
next, following the Hellenic-Alexandrine
tradition.
2) those ‘knowledges’ that are assumed to lay on the opposite side of “dusty and useless” erudition, that is, those disqualified and inadequate knowledges – here, once again, presented in an extraordinary way. In this category of “naïve knowledges located low down on the hierarchy” beneath the required academic and scientific levels, Foucault includes popular knowledge (“le savoir des gens”) – which must not be confused with “general common sense” – like those of criminals, crazy people, ill persons, psychiatric patients, detainees. The direct knowledge of these subjects, merged with the specific knowledges of specialised workers, like nurses, doctors and soldiers, will not result in a “general common-sense knowledge”, but in a “a differential knowledge incapable of unanimity and which owes its force only to the harshness with which it is opposed by everything surrounding it” (PK, 82)
Foucault does not miss the paradox of enclosing in the same rhizomatic framework of subjugated knowledges both “the academia and the street”: nonetheless he finds in this well-marked disparity the essential leverage of the critique promoted with those discontinuous discourses. According to Foucault this is “historical knowledge of struggles”: “In the specialised areas of erudition as in the disqualified, popular knowledge there lay the memory of hostile encounters which even up to this day have been confined to the margins of knowledge. What emerges out of this is something one might call a genealogy, or rather a multiplicity of genealogical re- searches, a painstaking rediscovery of struggles together with the rude memory of their conflicts. And these genealogies, that are the combined product of an erudite knowledge and a popular knowledge, were not possible and could not even have been attempted except on one condition, namely that the tyranny of globalising discourses with their hierarchy and all their privileges of a theoretical avant-garde was eliminated” (PK, 83) . In this passage, Foucault attempts an early outline of his overall plan, where he
2) those ‘knowledges’ that are assumed to lay on the opposite side of “dusty and useless” erudition, that is, those disqualified and inadequate knowledges – here, once again, presented in an extraordinary way. In this category of “naïve knowledges located low down on the hierarchy” beneath the required academic and scientific levels, Foucault includes popular knowledge (“le savoir des gens”) – which must not be confused with “general common sense” – like those of criminals, crazy people, ill persons, psychiatric patients, detainees. The direct knowledge of these subjects, merged with the specific knowledges of specialised workers, like nurses, doctors and soldiers, will not result in a “general common-sense knowledge”, but in a “a differential knowledge incapable of unanimity and which owes its force only to the harshness with which it is opposed by everything surrounding it” (PK, 82)
Foucault does not miss the paradox of enclosing in the same rhizomatic framework of subjugated knowledges both “the academia and the street”: nonetheless he finds in this well-marked disparity the essential leverage of the critique promoted with those discontinuous discourses. According to Foucault this is “historical knowledge of struggles”: “In the specialised areas of erudition as in the disqualified, popular knowledge there lay the memory of hostile encounters which even up to this day have been confined to the margins of knowledge. What emerges out of this is something one might call a genealogy, or rather a multiplicity of genealogical re- searches, a painstaking rediscovery of struggles together with the rude memory of their conflicts. And these genealogies, that are the combined product of an erudite knowledge and a popular knowledge, were not possible and could not even have been attempted except on one condition, namely that the tyranny of globalising discourses with their hierarchy and all their privileges of a theoretical avant-garde was eliminated” (PK, 83) . In this passage, Foucault attempts an early outline of his overall plan, where he
generously includes and aligns the French
components of the rhizosphere and, above
all, the authors of the Anti-Œdipe, although
the detailed description of the “returns
of knowledge” fits perfectly his research
style. That style which he adopted at the
beginning of his lectures at the Collège de
France (1970) and carried on until the end
of that period, 1975-1976, the year before
the crucial 1977 when he entered a period
of crisis and suspended his course. It was
Foucault’s annus horribilis, during which
he received attacks from multiple fronts
– such as Baudrillard’s Forget Foucault –
and started a profound reformulation of
his thought, his analysis and his political
approach, which in turn would end his
friendship with Deleuze and destroy the
underground empathy within the French
Nietzschean revolutionary community.
What seems extraordinary is the way
in which Foucault linked his research to
the fight and critique of his rhizospheric
fellows, attributing the essential leverage
of the critique and of the “success” of
those years precisely to the discontinuity
and de-centralisation of practices and
discourse advocated by Klossowski,
Deleuze and Guattari, Blanchot and
Lyotard, among others. In 1976, Foucault
is able to advance this critique: “Let us give
the term genealogy to the union of erudite
knowledge and local memories which allows
us to establish a historical knowledge of
struggles and to make use of this knowledge
tactically today” (PK, 83) . During the same
lecture, Foucault links the genealogy to the
struggle against the alleged “scientificity”
of the new sciences, namely Marxism and
Psychoanalysis, guilty of bearing “power
ambitions”, not even concealed, and thus
of pursuing those “effects of power” that
usually institutions assign to enthroned
sciences. According to Foucault, “By
comparison, then, and in contrast to the
various projects which aim to inscribe
knowledges in the hierarchical order of
power associated with science, a genealogy
should be seen as a kind of attempt to
emancipate historical knowledges from that
subjection, to render them, that is, capable
of opposition and of struggle against the
coercion of a theoretical, unitary, formal
and scientific discourse. It is based on a
reactivation of local knowledges – of minor
knowledges, as Deleuze might call them – in
opposition to the scientific hierarchisation
of knowledges and the effects intrinsic
to their power: this, then, is the project
of these disordered and fragmentary
genealogies. If we were to characterise it in
two terms, then 'archaeology' would be the
appropriate methodology of this analysis of
local discursivities, and 'genealogy' would
be the tactics whereby, on the basis of the
descriptions of these local discursivities,
the subjected knowledges which were thus
released would be brought into play” (PK, 85)
In Foucault’s works, within the genealogy/ archive relation mentioned above, special attention is reserved to money, ever since the first lectures of his inaugural course in 1970-71, directly after the re-emergence in Klossowski and Deleuze of Nietzschean
In Foucault’s works, within the genealogy/ archive relation mentioned above, special attention is reserved to money, ever since the first lectures of his inaugural course in 1970-71, directly after the re-emergence in Klossowski and Deleuze of Nietzschean
topics such as will to power, formations
of sovereignty, impulse and value.
Indeed, an early taste of the strong and
innovative critical capacity on this front –
which includes aspirations, will to power,
universal rhizomatic economy, physical and
noologic subconscious – comes from the
debut of Deleuze and Guattari as authors,
under the sign of Klossowski. La synthèse
disjunctive is the title of their first essay
dedicated to Klossowski and published
in the 43rd issue of the journal L’Arc,
precisely in the third term of 1970. The text
is presented already as the abstract of a
book titled Capitalism and schizophrenia.
The writing style is already the imaginary,
transverse, aggressive, humoristic and
“genealogic” one of the Anti-Œdipe. La
synthèse disjunctive is an incisive prelude
to an announced explosion: Foucault
immediately grasps the collateral effects
that it would have on the style and content
of his own research.
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