Foucauldian Critique: Kantian Anthropology and the Pragmatic Subject

What is Foucault’s conception of critique? In this paper, I argue that Foucauldian critique should be situated in the ‘metacritical’ tradition begun by Kant’s interlocutors and German Idealist antecedents. However, I suggest that this tradition takes on two historical forms: one Foucault conceives as negative (anthropology) and the other positive (pragmatic). Using little-known archival materials that have only recently been made available in France, I argue that both of these ‘metacritical’ dimensions can be traced back to Foucault’s analysis of Kant’s Anthropology in the 1950s, at the very outset of his career. Situating Foucauldian critique in this fashion enables us, first, to posit a continuous analytical thread throughout his life’s work, uniting the archaeological, genealogical, and ethical phases; second, to respond to the charges of internal incoherence and cryptonormativity that have been used to dismiss Foucauldian approaches; and third, to begin to articulate what such a critique might look like as a form of contemporary critical theory, against the Hegelian and Neo-Kantian approaches that are currently dominant.