Truth and Consequences: Political Judgment and Historical Knowledge in Foucault and Althusser

Abstract

This article considers the connections between Foucault's work and Althusser's ideas in the early 1970s, when Foucault was delivering the lectures that would result in the publication of Discipline and Punish in 1975. The central claim is that Foucault's critique of the rationalist aspirations of the Althusserians, especially with regard to knowledge of the past, is inextricable from his effort to articulate a political alternative to their work. But in targeting the Althusserians' pretensions to yield something like "true ideas" about economic exploitation, Foucault deprives himself of a sound epistemological base in which to ground and orient his own political judgments. Various ambiguities ensue, relating not least to Foucault's obscure relationship to neoliberalism in the last years of his career.