Foucault’s analysis of subjectivity and the question of philosophizing with words or things

Abstract

This article examines how Foucault analyzes subjectivity within the frame of his approach concerning power and discourse, and the concepts of archaeology and problematization as all discursive and non-discursive practices that constitute the subject and subjective experience. The article investigates the philosophical and political implications occurring as a result of Foucault’s rejection of the idea of natural, ahistorical, founding and constituting subject at the outset and his emphasis on the history of the constitution of subjectivity, i. e. the very historicity and historical singularity of subjective experience. Pursuing an answer to the question whether Foucault philosophizes with words or things, the present study claims that Foucault does not philosophize either by words or things in Durkheimian sense but does so by analyzing discourse as practices forming the object of which they speak systematically.