Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

generally agreed that his views were dangerously nihilistic, and not to be taken seriously.
Historians frequently criticize Foucault for misrepresenting things, getting his facts
wrong, or making them up entirely. Foucault attempted to defend himself against the
critics of his historiographic methods, but never really succeeded. Perhaps his most
notable critic was Jacques Derrida, whose extensive critique of Foucault’s reading of
Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, ended their friendship and marked the
beginning of a fifteen year long feud between the two.
Key terms used by Foucault were: biopower and biopolitics, episteme (épistémè),
genealogy, governmentality, parrhesia and power. Parrhesia, for instance, can mean
‘free speech,’ or ‘to speak everything.’ Foucault re-fashioned parrhesia, which he
borrowed from the Greek, as a conceptual discourse in which one speaks openly and
truthfully about their opinions and ideas without employing rhetoric, manipulation, or
generalization. Foucault described the Ancient Greek concept of parrhesia as such:
More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in
which a speaker expresses his personal
relationship to truth, and risks his life because
he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve
or help other people (as well as himself). In
parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and
chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth
instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of
death instead of life and security, criticism
instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of
self-interest and moral apathy (Foucault,
1983).
Foucault is considered difficult to study, for his views changed over time. David
Gauntlett says of this Foucauldian characteristic:
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Foucault
changing his approach; in a 1982 interview, he
remarked that “When people say, ‘Well, you
thought this a few years ago and now you say
something else,’ my answer is... [laughs] ‘Well,
do you think I have worked [hard] all those
years to say the same thing and not to be
changed’” (Gauntlett, 2000: 131).
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa