Thinking as disorder: repercussions of the foucauldian legacy

Abstract

After three decades of the disappearance of Michel Foucault, his work seems to continue generating controversy. Hence the triggering question of the considerations presented here: being averse to controversy, what has made the French intellectual a constant target of it? Refraining from biographism, this text aims at setting up a general picture of the impact of Foucauldian thinking, especially among his critics. To do so, it focuses on the statements of a group of authors who have taken Foucault either as an interlocutor or as a rival. This article then advocates the Foucauldian proposal of a critical onthology and its possible effects on the educational field, among which a critical-creative attitude towards the cultural heritage, as well the attaining of a certain distancing from the present itself.

Michel Foucault; onthology of the present; education