Michel Foucault has become a major reference on the critical left, but was he always really left-wing? ? It is this embarrassing question that J.L. Mr. Pestaña confronts, returning to the tortuous political trajectory of the great philosopher, and in particular to his relationship to (neo)liberalism.
After so many volumes and articles devoted to the work of Michel Foucault, and in particular to his political thought, reading this little work has something refreshing: it avoids both veneration and what the author calls THE “ scholastic danger », the decontextualized exegetical commentary, the endless interpretation of sacred texts, all things with which Foucault precisely wanted to break. Already the author of a sociological biography of Foucault, José Luis Moreno Pestaña applies the same anti-scholastic requirement to him, however with instruments slightly different from those of the philosopher and historian: the sociology of intellectual production. In this exercise, he demonstrates great independence of mind, even if we can have reservations with regard to some of his conclusions.
Pestaña begins with a questioning of Foucault’s relevance in the field of critical thought. In the 1970s, Foucault valiantly committed himself to causes neglected or despised by proponents of historical materialism, such as prison or psychiatric power. He had thus contributed to broadening the field of political problematization. But J.L. Mr. Pestaña goes further, and has the courage to confront a hypothesis that haunts left-wing Foucauldians today: would their leftist hero not have initiated a liberal turnaround in the last years of his life? ? Because, not only can the content of his analyzes of liberalism seem ambiguous, but also some of his disciples have become downright ideologues of employers, insurers and the risk society.
Hence a doubt which can touch the mind, and upset lovers of Foucault (including the author of these lines), as evidenced by a certain indignant reception of this book: now that capitalism and the social question have returned to the center of the political game after three decades of neoliberal globalization, what can Foucault now be used for from an activist and critical point of view ? A possibly immediate answer to this question would consist of pointing out that never the comments and reappropriations of his analyzes of (neo)liberalism, of which we only took the full measure with the publication of his courses on the subject, have been as diverse and prolific, independently of the “ intentions » by the author.
To be fair to Foucault
But Pestaña takes another path: reinscribing the work in Foucault’s inseparably social, academic and political trajectory. The result is not necessarily flattering for the philosopher on this last ground, which is hardly coherent: communist at the École Normale Supérieure, then related Gaullist, leftist after May-68, then close to the second left or even seduced by liberalism at the end of the journey. However, Pestaña seeks to understand these detours rather than denouncing them as opportunism, which presupposes the fiction of a rational agent calculating the effects of his political positions. This political versatility, almost claimed by Foucault, is notably linked to the receptivity of a figure who has become dominant in the intellectual field to variations in political fashions and circumstances. J.L. Pestaña also argues that Foucault never descended into Stalinism or fascism, which is to his credit. We will add that, apart from his brief communist period, he always demonstrated vigorous resistance to Marxist hegemony, including when he integrated the class struggle into his analysis. Less out of anti-communism, moreover, than out of a desire to offer an alternative model of analysis of power that escapes both (Marxist) economism and (liberal) legalism. An element can also be put forward, a little neglected by the sociologist on this point: the stigma of homosexuality perhaps led Foucault to initially favor a strategy of notabilization with the Gaullist power, before May-68 disrupts the situation and opens up a new horizon of academic possibilities.
Pestaña here demonstrates a rather healthy relationship with Foucault: despite all the legitimate admiration he may have for him, he refuses to make him an icon and intends to study him like any object of the sociology of intellectuals. It’s still the best way to be. just with Foucault », to divert a formula that he reserved for Freud. This point of method acquired, there is no reason to suppose that everything is “ LEFT » (nor “ RIGHT “) at home, despite everything he brought to critical thinking. There is even no reason to believe in advance that everything is political in his work, particularly the first Foucault, tinged with an ambiguous mysticism (The History of Madness, Words and Things), and the third and last Foucault (that of The History of Sexuality), which marks a certain withdrawal towards ethics. So what about the second ? We can regret that the author hardly addresses Monitor and punish (1975) and prefers to insist on the presence, then the disappearance, of the motif of class struggle in some of his public declarations. If “ Foucault opened the horizons of political thought » (p. 132), it is firstly because of the very new analysis of power that he offers in this seminal book, that he has moved away from state-centrism and extended it to all social sectors. Foucault extended this reflection in the following years with the concept of “ governmentality », promised a delayed but considerable fortune ; it cannot therefore be seen as a fleeting moment of leftist warming up.
Neoliberal Foucault ?
There remains one outstanding problem: Foucault’s relationship to (neo)liberalism. According to Pestaña, “ Without the reference to the class struggle and considering the State as a disciplinary institution, the defense of freedom can only bring Foucault closer to liberalism » (p. 98). Certainly, courses on the subject perhaps betray a certain fascination for its object, which historically represents an alternative to the disciplinary system. To this is added a “ Olympian indifference » (p. 40) of the intellectual for social inequalities. Is this a rallying point, as sometimes suggested J.L.Mr. Pestana ? Let us argue a little differently. Regarding his public positions, Foucault has never handed over his weapons and baggage to the man he considers to be the real importer of neoliberalism in France, namely President Giscard d’Estaing. If he has slipped to the right, it is by remaining on the left wing of the political field, through his rapprochement with the CFDT and the Rocardians.
Fundamentally, his reading of liberalism seems very far from the enchanted vision of liberals: any more than he reduces it to a bourgeois ideology, Foucault never makes it a simple philosophy of freedom and the rights of individuals. If liberalism emerges enhanced from his analyses, it is first of all because it appears as a true “ art of governing “. Which just as well means that it is a power devicea political technology that is all the more formidable because it is more insidious, because it relies on (negative) freedom to regulate populations and individuals through the extension of calculating rationality. It therefore seems difficult to assess the degree of Foucault’s adherence to neoliberalism, and Pestaña sometimes imprudently takes the plunge by confusing his clinical description of neoliberal political rationality (which Foucault also describes as “ Utopian “) with unreserved approval. The author ends up concluding with caution on this point by ensuring that “ Foucault’s judgment on this process is not very clear » (p. 122), especially since he could not then measure all the practical consequences. Furthermore, Pestaña curiously ignores the reappropriations of these analyzes in contemporary criticism of neoliberalism, now common (for example among Wendy Brown, David Harvey, Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot): without revealing the truth a posteriori of the text, these reveal at least certain possible potentialities, completely removed from the supposed enthusiasm or complacency of the master.
It is true that Foucault compares liberalism favorably to socialism, which would suffer from a lack of governmentality “ autonomous »: socialism would have administrative, economic and historical rationality, but no real politics. He even proclaimed (in 1977) the need to throw overboard the entire “ socialist tradition » 150 years old. The diagnosis is terse, the order expeditious, and the injustice of the statement is due to the political context in which it is made (the Common Program and the alliance between the P.S. and the PCF). But does he not also consider that this “ socialist governmentality, we have to invent it » ? Foucault, libertarian and socialist ? If the demystifying look of J.L. Mr. Pestaña allows us to dream a little longer.