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"It is not so much power that interests me," muses the philosopher of power, "but the history of subjectivity. My problem is to make a history of this society of normalization." His critics justifiably argue that his research is too narrowly limited to French history and his theories somewhat derivative from earlier thinkers. Even his admirers raise some basic objections. Says Columbia University Professor of English Literature Edward Said:
"Foucault has never been able to explain historical change, how things get done. There is also no role in his scheme for such things as justice, freedom, beauty, those positive ideals." Adds Princeton Philosophy Professor Richard Rorty: "His obviously sincere attempt to make philosophical thinking be of some use is not going to get anywhere unless he ... can join the bourgeois liberals he despises in speculating where we go from here."
Foucault shrugs off such criticisms as a matter of differing philosophical systems.
Says he: "Among the reasons it is truly difficult to have a dialogue with the Americans and English is that for them the critical question for the philosopher is, 'Is it true?' whereas the German-French tradition consists basically of posing the question, 'Why do we think as we do? What effect does it have?' I consider the problems that I pose to be those of modern man."
That may be why Foucault exerts such a strange fascination on a growing cult of students. This is a time when the young, especially, see themselves enmeshed in a thousand invisible wires of social control. If Foucault's theories often seem inconsistent or incomplete, that is partly because they are still evolving in his head. The main point is that he is thinking boldly about problems that need thought.
—By Otto Friedrich. Reported by Sandra Burton/Paris