Foucault : a critical introduction /

From Foucault's project of a "psychology of genesis" to his aesthetic-ethical conception of the self, McNay discusses the development of--as well as the twists and turns of--Foucault's thought. Focusing on the notion of the subjugation of "the subject," she points to the problem that Foucault created for himself by his emphasis on domination by virtue of the hegemony of the power/knowledge discursive framework in what he thought of as a "historical a priori." Because he stressed the panopticon-like nature of a powerful control over the body even in the form of a humanistic, Enlightenment orientation towards existence, Foucault, McNay maintains, undermined his own later theme of the liberation and cultivated autonomy of a "new subjectivity" he envisioned, particularly in his multivolume The History of Sexuality (CH, Feb'79; Apr'86; Oct'87). McNay's exposition of the major works is sound and lucid. She turns Foucault's commitment to the neglected "others"--ignored or suppressed minorities--against him by superimposing feminist critiques of his complicity with a masculine concept of "self-mastery" (in his ethics) and his silence on the issue of the suppression of women in the dominant Western values embedded in rationalist philosophy. She sees the one-sidedness of his placing too much stress on "disciplinary practices." Though missing the obvious connection between Nietzsche's reduction of ethics to aesthetics and Foucault's ideal of transforming individuals into autonomous, sovereign "works of art," McNay offers accurate exposition and telling criticism. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate; faculty. G. J. Stack; SUNY College at Brockport