Hystorical Critique

Chapter 2 “Hystorical Critique”, introduces Foucault’s lecture course “The Will to Know” (1971–72) as a necessary supplement to his essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History” (1971) in which he develops a problematic of genealogy centered on a particular epistemological pre-disposition. Highlighting the contrast Foucault establishes in his lecture course between two conflicting paradigms of the will to know, I present the Nietzschean model as an analysis of the ‘de-implication’ of knowledge and truth. This provides an interpretive frame for Foucault’s provocative claim that “knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting” (NGH 154). When applied to historical critique, the concept of ‘de-implication’ brings into focus an elided reality of Western discourse by placing a maximal distance between subject and object. Drawing on Gérard Wajcman’s (2003) account of the riddle of hysteria, I show how the hysteric subject embodies this structural division, revealing the violence inherent in all discourse, through a castrating game that systematically subverts existing modes of explanation and rationalization. Chapter 2 conceptualizes the epistemological thrust of Foucault’s genealogical critique from the perspective of the Hysteric’s discourse.