Skip to main content
Log in

Foucault and Derrida: The Question of Empowering and Disempowering the Author

  • Research Paper
  • Published:
Human Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article focuses on Michel Foucault’s concepts of authorship and power. Jacques Derrida has often been accused of being more of a literary author than a philosopher or political theorist. Richard Rorty complains that Derrida’s views on politics are not pragmatic enough; he sees Derrida’s later work, including his political work, more as a “private self-fashioning” than concrete political thinking aimed at devising short-term solutions to problems here and now. Employing Foucault’s work around authorship and the origins of power, I show that Derrida is indeed fashioning himself. This self-fashioning is not merely private or fanciful. Rather, I argue that Derrida can be read as employing what Foucault would call “technologies of the self” to not only show the play of possibility and impossibility at work in all politics and thought, but also to use his savoir to create two important and potentially constructive power structures. First, there is the power of deconstruction itself as a “militant critique” that calls for a forceful and irreducible justice. Second, there is the power of Derrida himself, understood as leaving behind a legacy of himself as the “originator” of deconstruction and as a public intellectual.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. More recently, for example: Derrida and Foucault on madness: Harrison 2007; on friendship: Mclaren 2006; on feminism: Chanter 2006; on evil and morality: Ophir and Mazali 2005.

  2. This essay first appeared in the Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie (1969), 63(3), 73–104. It was also delivered as a lecture before the Society at the Collège de France on February 22, 1969.

  3. The archives for Derrida’s work can be accessed at http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/uci.html.

  4. Insister of Jacques Derrida (2008) is a stream of consciousness, poetic writing that Cixous addresses to her deceased beloved friend, Jacques Derrida.

  5. See Derrida’s discussion of the five foyers of the democracy to come in his Rogues (2004).

  6. This is significant because it demonstrates that Derrida was more powerful when alive and making appearances as opposed to now, when all we have are his words, his legacy.

  7. Famous and forceful because it was Derrida and not some unknown figure.

  8. I would very much like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of Human Studies who read a draft of this article. Their suggestions and critiques were very insightful and helped with the reworking of the article.

References

  • Abu-Jamal, M., & Derrida, J. (1999). En direct du couloirs de la mort. Paris: La Découverte.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barthes, R. (1990). Death of the author. In S. Heath (Ed.), Image, music, text (pp. 142–148). New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borradori, G. (2003). Philosophy in a time of terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (with Jürgen Habermas). Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borradori, G. (2004). Le “concept” du 11 septembre: Dialogues à New York (octobre-décembre 2001). Paris: Galilée.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burke, S. (1998). The death and return of the author: Criticism and subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calcagno, A. (2007a). Badiou and Derrida: Politics, events and their time. New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calcagno, A. (2007b). On the rates of differentiation: Derrida on political thinking. Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 11(1), 15–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chanter, T. (2006). Gender: Key concepts in philosophy. New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cixous, H. (2008). Insister of Jacques Derrida (P. Kamuf, Ed. Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  • Cixous, H., & Derrida, J. (2001). Veils (G. Bennington, Ed. Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  • Derrida, J. (1973). “Speech and phenomena” and other essays on Husserl’s theory of signs (D. B. Allison, Ed. Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

  • Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G. Spivak, Ed. Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

  • Derrida, J. (1978). Cogito and the history of madness. In Writing and difference (A. Bass, Ed. Trans.). (pp. 31–63) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Derrida, J. (1985). Difference. Margins of philosophy (A. Bass, Ed. Trans.). (pp. 1–34) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Derrida, J. (1994). To do justice to Freud”: The history of madness in the age of psychoanalysis. Critical Inquiry, 20(Winter), 227–266. In A. I. Davidson (Ed.), Reprinted in Foucault and his interlocutors 1997 (pp. 57–96). Chicago: University of Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (1996). Remarks on deconstruction and pragmatism. In C. Mouffe (Ed.), Deconstruction and pragmatism (pp. 77–87). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (1997). Politics of friendship (G. Collins, Ed. Trans.). London: Verso.

  • Derrida, J. (2000). Of hospitality (R. Bowlby, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  • Derrida, J. (2001a). Foi et savoir. Paris: Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (2001b). On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness (M. Dooley & M. Hughes, Trans.). London & New York: Routledge.

  • Derrida, J. (2002a). Acts of religion. New York & London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (2002b). Ethics, institutions, and the right to philosophy (P. P. Trifonas, Trans.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

  • Derrida, J. (2003). Voyous. Paris: Galilée.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, J. (2004). Rogues. (P.-A. Brault & M. Naas, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  • Enns, D. (2007). Speaking of freedom: Philosophy, politics and the struggle for liberation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher, J. S. (1999). What is an oeuvre? Foucault and literature. Configurations, 7(2), 279–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flynn, B. (1989). Derrida and Foucault. In H. J. Silverman (Ed.), Derrida and deconstruction (pp. 201–218). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1969). L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1970). L’ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1975). My body, this paper, this fire. Oxford Literary Review, 4 (Autumn), 5–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1977). What is an author? (D. Bouchard, D. Bouchard & S. Simon, Ed. Trans.). Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault. Ithaca (pp. 113–138) NY: Cornell University Press.

  • Foucault, M. (1994). Dits et écrits, IV. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1997). Writing the self. (A. I. Davidson, A. Hobart, Ed. Trans.). Foucault and his interlocutors (pp. 234–248). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Gordon, N. (1999). Foucault’s subject: An ontological reading. Polity, 31(3), 395–414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, W. C. (2007). Madness and historicity: Foucault and Derrida, Artaud and Descartes. History of the Human Sciences, 20(4), 79–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hobson, M., & Hostilities, hostages. (2006). On some part of Derrida’s reception. Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 10, 303–314.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawlor, L. (2002). Derrida and Husserl: The basic problem of phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawlor, L. (2007). This is not sufficient: An essay in animality and human nature in Derrida. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mclaren, M. A. (2006). From practices of the self to politics: Foucault and friendship. Philosophy Today, 50, 195–201.

    Google Scholar 

  • Naas, M. (1997). Derrida’s watch/Foucault’s pendulum. Philosophy Today, 41(1), 141–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ophir, A., & Mazali, R. (2005). The order of evils: Toward an ontology of morals (H. Carel, Ed. Trans.). New York: Zone Books.

  • Rorty, R. (1996). Remarks on deconstruction and pragmatism. In C. Mouffe (Ed.), Deconstruction and pragmatism (pp. 13–18). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sprinkler, M. (2008). Textual politics: Foucault and Derrida. Boundary 2, 8(3), 75–98.

  • Waldenfels, B. (1996). Order in the twilight (D. J. Parent, Ed. Trans.). Athens: Ohio University Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Antonio Calcagno.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Calcagno, A. Foucault and Derrida: The Question of Empowering and Disempowering the Author. Hum Stud 32, 33–51 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-009-9108-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-009-9108-2

Keywords

Navigation