Foucault News

Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, Aurélie, ‘Foucault and Phenomenology, a Tense and Complex Relationship: From Anti-Phenomenology to Post-Phenomenology’, in François-Xavier de Vaujany, Jeremy Aroles, and Mar Pérezts (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenologies and Organization Studies, Oxford Handbooks (2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 26 Jan. 2023),
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192865755.013.13

Abstract
In line with observers that have recently reconsidered the relationship between Foucault and phenomenology, this chapter argues that Foucault’s philosophy inevitably falls within the scope of phenomenology, by rediscovering and extending its potentialities (Legrand, 2008). To do justice to the real nature of the relationship between Foucault and phenomenology, this chapter aims to highlight the possible affiliation and peculiar significance that phenomenology has taken in Foucault’s approach, and to show how Foucault extended the potentialities and richness of phenomenology towards a new approach of phenomenology, known as ‘post-phenomenology’. To that end, we consider Foucault’s three main theses (Burrell, 1988) through the prism of phenomenology: we first consider the relationship between the young Foucault and the phenomenology developed by Husserl, in terms of historicity and archaeology; we then analyse Foucault’s relationship with phenomenology through the prism of the historicization of the transcendental, expressed in Foucault’s genealogy of the subject, revealing unexpected resemblances between Foucault’s and Merleau-Ponty’s views; last, we explore Foucault’s reconsideration of the subject, through his developments of the hermeneutics and ethics of the self, revealing an active mode of experimentation largely influenced by Heidegger’s approach, and further inscribing his work in the wake of Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty.

Keywords: Foucault, phenomenology, post-phenomenology, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Merleau-Ponty
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