Foucault's writing is best understood in terms of its political purpose and of the political question it puts to philosophy, history, and the human sciences. Foucault is not looking for a "method" which will be superior to other methods in objectivity but is forging tools of analysis which take their starting point in the political-intellectual conflicts of the present. His method is really an antimethod, "genealogy," which seeks to free us from the illusion that an apolitical method is possible. A (...) genealogy of the human sciences examines the intimate connection of the knowledge they represent with the relations of power which produced them. Such a genealogy shows how the human sciences emerged from the tactics or microtechnologies of power by which various groups and individuals attempted to give structure to the field of behavior of others, seeking to increase the economic utility of the body while decreasing its political danger. Genealogy attempts to restore the "subjugated" knowledge of the patient, the prisoner, the worker. (shrink)

Like the latter, it unites into one and the same function the possibility of giving things a sign, of representing one thing by another, and the possibility of causing a sign to shift in relation to what it designates. The four functions that define the ...