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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Michel Foucault, une pensée de la résistance

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This thesis focuses on Michel Foucault’s thought of resistance. There is a dual idea: on the one hand, to offer a critical and systematic study of the Foucaldian use of resistance, in order to shed light on the important analyses, theses and concepts of his work; on the other hand, to understand how Foucault renews the thought of resistance in his contemporary context, and in an explicit or implicit discussion with Marxism, Sartre, Deleuze or the Frankfurt School. The challenge is to show that it is in virtue of some thought on resistance, and on some visible but decisive aporias, such as a normless or subject-deprived resistance, that Foucault redirects his methodological eye towards an analysis of power, government and subjectivity. At least three specific resistances can thereby be distinguished: a literary resistance against the anthropological illusion, a collective resistance against political norms - sovereign, disciplinary, bio-political powers -, and finally an ethical and subjective resistance to what, in itself, accepts, desires and reestablishes ways to govern oneself. Besides, Foucault’s relationship to Nietzsche is subject to a specific attention: it is about showing how Foucault frees his genealogical work, whose inspiration is of resistance, from a Nietzschean philosophy focused on the will to power, that is to say the overtaking of resistances. In that, it is possible to show that the Foucaldian resistance, which is played at the crossroad of thought, freedom, and truth, constitutes a privileged way to philosophically answer to the critics of historicism, relativism, or nihilism addressed to Foucault.