Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan were two towering figures in 20th-century French thought, but their personal interactions were minimal and their intellectual relationship was complex, characterized by both influence and divergence. While Lacan’s psychoanalysis and Foucault’s work on power, discourse, and subjectivity overlap in significant ways, Foucault was generally critical of Lacan’s theoretical framework and the psychoanalytic tradition as a whole.
Foucault and Lacan: Personal Interaction
1. Limited Direct Engagement:
• Foucault and Lacan were part of the same intellectual milieu in Paris in the mid-20th century, but there is little evidence of extensive personal interaction between the two.
• Lacan, older than Foucault by two decades, was already an established figure in psychoanalysis when Foucault began his academic career. Foucault likely attended Lacan’s seminars at some point, as many intellectuals of his generation did, but no substantial dialogue between them is recorded.
2. Mutual Acknowledgment:
• Lacan did not engage directly with Foucault’s ideas in his seminars or writings.
• Foucault mentioned Lacan sparingly in his works, focusing more on Freud when critiquing psychoanalysis.
Foucault’s Intellectual Relationship to Lacan
Foucault’s relationship to Lacan’s theory is characterized by points of convergence and divergence:
1. Convergences:
• Role of Language and Discourse:
• Both Foucault and Lacan shared an interest in language and its role in structuring subjectivity and society. Lacan’s psychoanalysis, influenced by structural linguistics, emphasizes the symbolic order, which governs the unconscious and human behavior.
• Foucault, particularly in The Archaeology of Knowledge, explores how discursive formations shape knowledge, truth, and power.
• Critique of the Subject:
• Lacan’s famous dictum, “the subject is decentered,” aligns with Foucault’s rejection of the Enlightenment notion of an autonomous, self-transparent subject.
• Both thinkers challenge the idea of a unified subject, emphasizing instead how subjectivity is constructed through external systems (the symbolic order for Lacan; power and discourse for Foucault).
• Critique of Humanism:
• Lacan and Foucault both critique humanist traditions that center the subject as the master of its own destiny, with Lacan focusing on the subject’s alienation through language and Foucault on the subject’s subjection to power.
2. Divergences:
• Psychoanalysis and Power:
• Foucault was critical of psychoanalysis, seeing it as an institution complicit in the broader networks of disciplinary power that regulate bodies and shape subjectivities. In Madness and Civilization, he critiques psychoanalysis as part of the “medicalization” of madness, which marginalizes and pathologizes certain experiences.
• Lacan, in contrast, viewed psychoanalysis as a means of revealing the alienating effects of societal structures, particularly the symbolic order.
• Different Views on Power:
• For Lacan, the symbolic order and the unconscious are the primary forces shaping human behavior and subjectivity. Power, while important, is secondary to these deeper structures.
• For Foucault, power is pervasive and operates through all societal structures, including language and institutions. He would likely critique Lacan’s symbolic order as insufficiently attentive to the material and historical conditions that shape discourses.
• The Role of the Unconscious:
• Lacan places the unconscious at the center of his theory, interpreting it as structured like a language and governed by desire and lack.
• Foucault rejects the Freudian and Lacanian emphasis on the unconscious, focusing instead on how subjectivity is historically constructed through practices, institutions, and discourses.
• Epistemology vs. Ontology:
• Lacan’s psychoanalysis is ontological in nature, dealing with fundamental questions about human existence, desire, and lack.
• Foucault’s work is more epistemological and historical, examining how specific regimes of knowledge and power produce certain truths and subjectivities.
Foucault’s Critique of Psychoanalysis
Foucault’s critique of psychoanalysis (and, by extension, Lacan) can be summarized as follows:
1. Complicity with Power:
Foucault saw psychoanalysis as part of the broader apparatus of power that disciplines individuals, particularly through its institutionalization in clinical practices.
2. Historical Contingency:
Foucault’s genealogical method emphasizes the historical contingency of discourses. He would critique Lacan’s psychoanalysis for positing universal structures (e.g., the symbolic order) without sufficient attention to their historical origins.
3. Limits of Interpretation:
Foucault rejects psychoanalysis’ focus on interpreting the unconscious in favor of examining practices and technologies that shape subjectivity.
Summary
Foucault and Lacan occupy overlapping intellectual terrains but diverge significantly in their approaches:
• Shared Themes: Both challenge traditional notions of subjectivity, critique humanism, and highlight the centrality of language and discourse in shaping human experience.
• Key Divergences: Foucault critiques psychoanalysis, including Lacan’s, for its complicity in systems of power and its universalizing tendencies, while Lacan emphasizes the symbolic and unconscious structures that govern human behavior.
In short, Foucault maintained a critical distance from Lacan’s theory, appreciating its contributions to decentering the subject but rejecting its psychoanalytic framework in favor of his own historical and materialist analysis of power, discourse, and subjectivity.
