Colin Koopman - Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity

Genealogy as Critique

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

John J. Stuhr, editor

EDITORIAL BOARD

Susan Bordo

Vincent Colapietro

John Lachs

Nolle McAfee

Jos Medina

Cheyney Ryan

Richard Shusterman

Genealogy as Critique

Foucault and the Problems of Modernity

Colin Koopman

Indiana University Press

BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS

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2013 by Colin Koopman

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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Koopman, Colin.

Genealogy as critique : Foucault and the problems of modernity / Colin Koopman.

p. cm. (American philosophy)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-00619-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-00621-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-00623-3 (electronic book) 1. Foucault, Michel, 19261984. 2. Genealogy (Philosophy) 3. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804. I. Title.

B2430.F724K66 2013

194dc23

2012033557

1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13

If Foucault is indeed perfectly at home in the philosophical tradition, it is within the critical tradition of Kant, and his project could be called the Critical History of Thought.

Michel Foucault in Foucault, Michel, 1926 from 1984

The notion common to all the work that I have done since History of Madness is that of problematization.

Michel Foucault in The Concern for Truth from 1984

Contents

Acknowledgments

Viewed in one way, persons are bundles of debts and creditswho we are is a function of a complex assemblage of affordances offered to us by those who hold us in their various ways and who we, if we are fortunate, are able to hold for a time ourselves. The occasion of completing a book offers the opportunity to look at oneself according to this perspective. Seeing myself in this way, it is clear that the debts that I myself have incurred in the process of this endeavor are many. It is my hope, perhaps an overly ambitious one, that the publication of that for which I have indebted myself will repay in some small way those to whom I owe, with joy, so many thanks.

The material that went into this book has profited enormously from conversations, discussions, and exchanges with a great many persons. The entire manuscript, though in some cases a much earlier version, benefited from careful readings by Amy Allen, Barry Allen, David Couzens Hoy, Ladelle McWhorter, and anonymous press reviewers. Amy Allen and David Hoy were especially involved in many stages of the development of this bookI could not find a way to thank you both enough for your conversation, your stimulation, and your faith in this project. It helps immeasurably much to be able to rely on the credits extended by those to whose work one is directed.

That said, the argumentation and interpretation herein are addressed to many others as well. It is my fortune to be able to acknowledge many of those to whom this work is addressed for having read portions of the manuscript. Paul Rabinow has been particularly generous and characteristically provocative at almost every stepI have benefited immeasurably from both. Others who have been generous in discussing portions of the material herein deserve many thanks: Jim Clifford, Arnold Davidson, Penelope Deutscher, Christoph Durt, Jeff Edmonds, Dan Guevara, Ian Hacking, Lynn Huffer, Carly Lane, Jeremy Livingston, Tomas Matza, Edward McGushin, Paul Patton, Paul Roth, Jana Sawicki, Richard Shusterman, Hans Sluga, Brad Stone, John Stuhr, Ronald Sundstrom, Joseph Tanke, Dianna Taylor, Kevin Thompson, Zach VanderVeen, Christopher Voparil, and Roco Zambrana. My thanks to you all, and most especially for the maintenance of your disagreements.

This book has been traveling along the West Coast with me for a few years now. Gratitude is therefore due to a not-small and still-growing list of colleagues, interlocutors, and philosophical friends in California and Oregon. While all of those named above have contributed directly to this work in some form, many others were participant with me in the conversations that made this manuscript the book that it now is.

This book began as part of my postdoctoral project at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing the invaluable opportunity of that uninterrupted research time. I thank David Couzens Hoy for mentorship during my three years at UCSC. I also thank Paul Roth and Jocelyn Hoy for support in a variety of ways, both intellectual and practical, during my tenure at UCSC. Various other philosophical and institutional supports made this time both productive and enjoyable: thanks are due to Jim Clifford, Christoph Durt, Carla Freccero, Dan Guevara, Ian Hacking, Jake Metcalf, and Abe Stone. I would be remiss to leave unacknowledged the students from my Spring 2009 senior seminar on Foucault (in particular I thank Jesse Grove and Jimmy Hardwick); I cannot imagine a more generative seminar than this one, which came at just the right time in the final stages of revision of the first complete draft of this manuscript. Lastly, my most generative venue at UCSC was the Foucault Across the Disciplines reading group; among my steadiest collaborators there were Noriko Aso, Tomas Matza, and Daniel Narey.

During the tenure of my post-doc in Santa Cruz, I lived up the coast a little stretch in that romantic neverland called San Francisco. This afforded me ample time over at the University of California at Berkeley, where this book has benefited enormously from a great many conversations and philosophical friendships. I have already mentioned Paul Rabinow, whose example and insight continue to afford much instruction. I would also like to thank other members of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory from whom I have learned immeasurably much about Foucault, social science, anthropology, the life sciences, emerging technologies, and much more: Gaymon Bennett, Stephen Collier, Jim Faubion, Chris Kelty, Andrew Lakoff, Mary Murrell, Tom Schilling, Meg Stalcup, and Anthony Stavrianakis. My weekly visits also afforded opportunities for enriching conversations on matters related to this project with others over at Cal, including Mark Bevir, Martin Jay, Chris Tenove, and most especially Hans Sluga.

I finished the first versions of this manuscript down in Northern California, and then began the process of polishing it up after pushing northward to the University of Oregon. On my first day on campus a pair of bright graduate students approached me about my work on Foucault. That was the beginnings of the migration of the Foucault Across the Disciplines project up to Oregon, where it subsequently became the Critical Genealogies Collaboratory. My sincere thanks to the steady participants in that group during my first two years in Oregon: Vernon Carter, Elena Clare Cuffari, George Fourlas, Greg Liggett, Katherine Logan, Ed Madison, Nicolae Morar, and Thomas Nail. My recent endeavors have been immeasurably enriched by my colleagues in Oregon. Mark Johnson and Scott Pratt have enriched my understandings of pragmatism (as well as the pragmatics of faculty life)the material on pragmatism in the final chapter already bears the mark of our shared conversations on Dewey. A philosophical friendship around critical theory with Roco Zambrana has been my immense good fortune, and the final chapter here bears, I should hope, its stampI already know that future work will show an even deeper impression. Thank you all.