De los usos teóricos de Michel Foucault

Abstract

What is an author? Michel Foucault asked himself this question in 1969. Now, the objective of this article is to answer a similar question: What has ever been of Foucault, seeing, as it was, that he has become and author? That is to say, what would happen if we were to apply to Foucault his own historic research criteria? In answering this question, it is shown how Fou¬cault has become an object of "knowledge" of the academic disciplines instituted in the West, from philosophy to the so called "humanistic studies," taking as a reference the main centers producing such knowledge: from Italy to the United States, from Great Britain to Germany. Hence the title of this work: "On Michel Foucault's theoretical usages," designating the aca¬demic practices through which Foucault has been read, interpreted, and assimilated by the various disciplines that segment man's knowledge. This article puts forward, as a thesis, that the different historic ways in which philosophy and humanistic studies have been constituted as national research traditions mediate "Foucault's usages." In addition, that, unfortunately, few of such "usages" make use of him to question the established practices of production and reproduction of human knowledge -to de-discipline themselves, it is valid to say. As a conclu¬sion, the article acknowledges it as necessary to engage in a similar historic research work in order to explain the processes that the introduction of Foucault in Latin America and the reception of his ideas have undergone .