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might have raised more profound questions about the desertion of
the political, the atomization of social life , and the end of com–
mon reference to universal, agreed upon norms. If one recog–
nizes that the destruction of "the public space" and the extinction
of republican values in favor of "self-concern" are challenges to
democracy today, one must conclude that by refusing to "think
what it is" (and "what it is" is modern individualism), French
philosophy in the 1960s was a failure.
A second type of critique, more properly philosophical, is
rooted in a reevaluation of the idea of the subject. This critique
began in Germany in the works of Jurgen Habermas and
Karl–
Otto Apel, but it is also beginning in France . To understand it we
must return to the idea of "genealogy" and consider its effects. If
one considers all discourse to be a symptom of a deeper uncon–
scious (psychological, social, even on tological), one will be less
concerned with assessing the truth of what is said than in mak–
ing out the identity of the "hidden" spokesman. In short, it will
be less important to pay attention to
what
someone says than to
determine
who
he is, in order to know what he is really saying.
One can imagine what strange idea of intellectual debate flows
from this presupposition. The content of speech will be replaced
by the person speaking and the determination of "where he's
coming from." Once the "real motives," unacknowledged and
unacknowledgeable by the speaker, have been uncovered, the
genealogy then threatens to legitimize a disturbing brand of in–
tellectual terrorism. As Foucault himself did not hesitate to ac–
knowledge , "From now on interpretation will always be inter–
pretation by means of the question,
who?
One will not ask what
there is in the thing signified, but essentially one will ask: who
has put the interpretation forward?" This is a detective's concep–
tion of dialogue that becomes an interrogation, whose aim is not
to discuss a topic, but to grill an author in order to know with
whom one is dealing.
If this account of genealogy's effects seems somewhat exag–
gerated , we need only examine two examples of the now
"incriminated" practice . In his 1968 lecture
Lenin and Philosophy,
Althusser asserted, "Professors of philosophy are professors. That
is, they are intellectuals employed in a given educational sys–
tem, subjected to that system, and exercising as a group a social
function, which is to inculcate the values of the dominant ideol-
