Cultural Studies: Two New Views of Foucault
Reviewed by Donna HancoxFor many, the prospect of reading and reviewing two books on French philosopher and activist Michel Foucault would be an onerous one. However, as someone who has a poster of Foucault on her office wall, I was excited to dip into these new assessments of Foucault and his work. I had been particularly looking forward to Clare O’Farrell’s book simply titled Michel Foucault. O’Farrell is a Queensland University of Technology lecturer whose Phd thesis was on the works of Foucault; she has written three books on Foucault, as well as editing the online Foucault Studies Journal and running the Foucault resources website - http://www.michel-foucault.com
O’Farrell’s latest book is refreshing amongst the many secondary texts on Foucault. The breakdown of chapters is inspired and original. Rather than simply going through Foucault’s oeuvre in chronological order, or investigating each of his major theories one by one, she approaches Foucault head-on, grappling with the big picture immediately: Foucault himself, and problem of where he is situated in academia. As O’Farrell points out ‘it is cultural studies sections of sociology, history and literature departments that run courses on Foucault not traditional philosophy departments’ (15). This point encapsulates one of the difficulties for Foucauldian scholars. To use or discuss Foucault as simply a philosopher (if there is anything simple about that) is to diminish the scope of his work; the astonishing celebrity attached to Foucault means he is often viewed as a famous thinker rather than the creator of strategies of thinking that can used across a variety of disciplines.
O’Farrell states that ‘Foucault’s complex iconic status is merely the beginning of the problems faced by anyone wishing to come to grips with his work’ (3). By tackling the problem of Foucault as a cultural icon, O’Farrell first illuminates the difficulty for researchers in untangling Foucault’s methodologies from Foucault the superstar. Many people know who Foucault is, his name and a version of his ideas are bandied around constantly in contemporary culture, but this has little to do with actually using Foucauldian techniques and methodologies. O’Farrell highlights this distinction excellently and lucidly, without appearing to be pedantic or patronising to those who are still attempting to understand Foucault’s work or influence. She interrogates the complexities and contradictions inherent in Foucault’s work, and the subsequent difficulty in managing these for researchers. Rather than simply pointing out how slippery Foucault can be, O’Farrell acknowledges this and then uses direct quotes from Foucault to map a path through the contradictions.
This book is a fascinating exploration of the phenomenon of Foucault and the cultural context in which he existed, however the real achievement of O’Farrell’s book is that she manages to combine both an overview of Foucault’s work and life and a detailed analysis of how to best approach his work.
Mark Olssen – a professor of Political Theory and Education at the University of Surrey - in Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education, in contrast to O’Farrell’s work, struggles to escape from the often impenetrable language of academia that itself is stolid and at times dull. More than once he robs Foucault of the poetry of his thoughts and the lyricism of his words. O’Farrell is content to write clearly and concisely, in doing so breathing new life into Foucault’s work and managing to explain profoundly difficult concepts in a way that is understandable but never simplifying the work itself. It is in this that her expertise and years of studying Foucault particularly shine through.
These are two very different books; the strength of Olssen’s book is that he systematically unpacks Foucault’s work and presents detailed critiques by other theorists such as Marx, Gramsci and Habermas. In doing so, he shows us how controversial Foucault’s work was (and still is) and provides alternative readings of it. However, the constant emphasis on other theorists throughout the book tends to cause some confusion; while reading a comparison of one theorist to another can be enlightening, an entire book that continues to pit Foucault against, at times, quite disparate theorists becomes convoluted. It is difficult by the end of this work to ascertain what exactly Olssen was hoping to achieve. That said, his grasp of the philosophical tradition in which Foucault was writing is truly awesome; and the chapter on Foucault and Marx is important contribution to understanding the similarities and differences between these two important theorists.
Olssen’s book is clearly marketed for educators and theorists of pedagogy, and this focus becomes clearer towards the end. However, reaching this point at times feels arduous and unnecessarily difficult; in doing so, Olssen drains some of the energy out of Foucault’s work. This is disappointing, as much of the appeal of Foucault is the energy and verve with which he approached his work and his life. When discussing his writing Foucault said ‘…what I have written doesn’t interest me. What interests me is what I could write and what I could do’ (O’Farrell, 11). All students, academics and philosophers influenced by Foucault are trying to harness this momentum of what we could write and what we could do, and how do we question and challenge the status quo in whatever field we are in. The legacy of Foucault continues to excite and confound, and it is O’Farrell who helps us to glimpse the heart of this enigma and the possibilities he created. Michel Foucault
2005
by Clare O'Farrell
Sage Publications in Australia through Footprint
ISBN: 9780761961642
224pp AUD$63.00
Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education, Updated Edition
(2007)
by Mark Olssen
Footprint
ISBN: 9781594511691
288pp AUD$46.95
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