Experience without Subject: Rule-Governed Practices and the Possibility of Critical Historiography in Foucault Público

Abstract

Abstract
Experience without Subject: Rule-Governed Practices and the Possibility of Critical
Historiography in Foucault
By A. Özgür Gürsoy

I propose to articulate a concept of experience according to which it is
already limit-experience, where "limit" and "experience" are understood in terms of rule-
governed and spatio-temporally indexed practices criterial for both cognitive and
practical interactions with ourselves and with the world. Moreover, I propose to locate
this concept in the historiography of Foucault and construct its dimensions using
Foucauldian conceptual tools. Finally, I discuss Foucault's division of his
"methodologies" over the course of his trajectory, avoiding their strict separation-as
archaeology, genealogy, and problematization-in favor of their articulation in terms of
discursive and nondiscursive practices, where "articulation" stands for neither a purely
linguistic, nor logical, nor even causal relation, but traces the contours of an ensemble of
historically constitutive and therefore criterial practices. I want to call that "genealogy".

Standard objections gain their motivation and strength from the constitutive divide
between the transcendental and the empirical. Against this position, and at times against
the grain of some of Foucault's own formulations, a more faithful characterization of
Foucault's trajectory is not so much the conversion into the domain of contingency and
particularity of what would otherwise be necessary and universal conditions-
historicizing the transcendental-as it is giving up the transcendental in the forms it has
taken since Kant, and pressing the consequences of this abandonment for a reflection on
history, and by extension subjectivity. The result is a problematic and problematizing
notion of critique: Foucault's giving up of the transcendental standpoint is not a
repudiation of reflection; it is rather motivated by the conviction that the moment of self-
relation entailed by reflection cannot be anchored in any unreflected given.

Experience without Subject: Rule-Governed Practices and the Possibility of Critical
Historiography in Foucault
By
A. Özgür Gürsoy
B.A., Trent University, 2000

Advisor: Thomas R. Flynn
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of The James T. Laney School of Graduate
Studies of Emory University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in Philosophy
2010

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1
1. From the Theater of Ideas to the Black Box Emitting Sentences ....................................... 20
1.1 Justification: Transcendental or Historical? ...................................................................... 24
1.11 Dependence of the Subject.................................................................................................... 26
1.12 Independence of the Subject ................................................................................................. 30
1.2 Phenomenology, or How Do I Simply Look On? ................................................................ 49
1.21 We Think, Therefore I Am Not ............................................................................................ 53
1.22 Seeing Things (Disappear) .................................................................................................... 63
2. Giving Up the Transcendental: Critical and Empirical Discourse? .................................. 76
2.1 Analytic of Finitude: Kant and the Order of Things ......................................................... 80
2.11 What is an empirico-transcendental double? ........................................................................ 82
2.12 Rights vs. Facts of Knowledge ............................................................................................. 96
2.2 Conditions of Possibility vs. Conditions of Existence ...................................................... 109
2.21 Logos in Archaeology. ........................................................................................................ 111
2.22 Criteria, Rules, and Tribes .................................................................................................. 117
3. Reasons, Causes, Madness: The Articulation of Discursive and Nondiscursive
Practices. ................................................................................................................................... 133
3.1 Madness in the First Person ............................................................................................... 137
3.11 Mental Illness: Explanation or Description?....................................................................... 138
3.12 How Fundamental Is Experience? ...................................................................................... 147
3.2 Madness in the Third Person ............................................................................................. 156
3.21 Habermas and the Transcendental Site Where We Meet .................................................... 157
3.22 Derrida and What We Mean When We Say "Lock Them Up!" ......................................... 172

4. Experience of Freedom: Speaking for Oneself. .................................................................. 185
4.1 Talking Sex .......................................................................................................................... 187
4.11 The Body and its Sexuality ................................................................................................. 188
4.12 A Critical Ontology? .......................................................................................................... 193
4.2 Am I Free Not to Take Up a Standpoint? ......................................................................... 214
4.21 Subjects without Experience ............................................................................................... 216
4.22 Subjects, Objects, and Mere Plants ..................................................................................... 234
Limit-Experience: Hegel (without the Absolute) Again? ...................................................... 254
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 285

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Philosophy
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Philosophy Sociology, Theory and Methods
Palabra Clave	Wittgenstein Adorno Han Transcendental Foucault Genealogy Critique Kant Subjectivity Historiography Practice Rule
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Flynn, Thomas R, Emory University
Committee Members	Huffer, Lynne R, Emory University Sullivan, Michael, Emory University Bennington, Geoffrey, Emory University Risjord, Mark, Emory University

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