Following Foucault
Howard Richards. Following Foucault: The Trail of the Fox. Cape Town: Sun Press, 2018. ISBN 978-1-928357-62-9, 978-1-928357-63-6 (ebook). Pages: 267. Cost not mentioned.
The book is the printed form of a collection of lectures given by Howard Richards in Pretoria, South Africa, back in 2013, under the auspices of the South African Research Chair in Development Education hosted at the University of South Africa. His lectures were based on the French philosopher Paul-Michel Foucault (1926-1984). It tries to offer an analysis of Foucault’s thought from a pragmatic (neodeweyan), economic-cultural (neokeynesian) and, above all, critical realist point of view. Through these lectures, he endeavors to reassess and highlight the key themes that Foucault addresses throughout his active philosophical career and to highlight the relevance of his ideas and conclusions to the world today. Richards, offers a fresh and interesting reading of Foucault, which has garnered praise (see back cover) undeterred by its limitations and risks.
There are fifteen lectures, each followed by a discussion between the speaker and two well-known academics, Evelin Lindner and Catherine Odora Hoppers, except for the last two lectures which only have a brief commentary written by Lindner. The initial discussions, though brief (in terms of volume), come off on a tangent, as they arise from the vested interests of the participants. Later, as one settles into the mode of presentations, one can better locate the discussions that follow. Although it must be said that the discussions, although they have something pertinent to offer, especially in terms of practical application, hide their wealth like needles in a haystack. One must sift through multitudes of words to find those few slivers of gold that lie silent among them. The afterword is provided by Hoppers, who brilliantly and succinctly summarizes Foucault’s key ideas, not all of which were made explicit in the course of the lectures, notes his positive and constructive contributions, and finally offers some pointers to the ongoing areas of research, development, and implementation of Foucault’s thought. Lectures are untitled and simply dated, which is a negative in my book, as a title would help situate the lecture while highlighting the key focus. The lack of a title leaves one searching for what exactly is the crux of the lecture. Given Howards’ style, the fact that these are lectures, and the nature of the discussions that followed each lecture, it would certainly have helped to provide a title.
Richards is well aware both of his own prejudices against Foucault and of the limitations of his presentations. Regarding the points of contention, he lists: “Foucault is against authority. I am for authority. Foucault blatantly favors spending one’s life in the pursuit of pleasure… I am for social norms… Foucault sides with the sophists; I side with Plato. He sides with Nietzsche; I side with religion… I believe there is an objective basis for ethics in physical reality; he believes that discourse defines its objects. I believe in the truth. To a considerable extent in terms of rules. He explains it in terms of power. I have countless proposals to solve the main problems of humanity. Foucault has none” (p. 20).
Crain Soudien’s foreword provides a good opening and introduction to what follows (considering that the book does not have an introduction of its own). It selects the key concepts, terms, and ideas from the lectures, as well as from the discussions, and presents them to the reader at a glance. Magnus Haavelsrud, who gives the foreword, seems to be walking a slightly different path than Richards will take later. He attempts to show how Foucault’s concepts of ‘power’ and ‘knowledge’ have influenced world views and formed the foundations of ‘multi-paradigm science’. Haavelsrud’s prologue, while not perfectly in sync with the rest of the work, does have something interesting to say. Foucault’s ‘hermeneutically suspect’ reading of him leads him to ask pertinent questions, questions that have deep meaning and vital relevance to our time.
The title of the book is interesting. Almost no explanation is offered until about halfway through the book. While the title is relatively easy to follow, the subtitle isn’t all that revealing. Perhaps that can be explained by personal ignorance. I was wondering why he referred to Foucault as a fox and found the answer on page 173, where Richards notes that his nickname is “the fuchs“(the fox) probably because, as his (Foucault’s) close friend Georges Dumézil commented, he ‘always wore a mask’ and ‘always changed masks’.
The cover art is imaginative but rather bland; however, it illustrates the title quite well. There are a fair number of typographical and grammatical errors scattered throughout the book. Richards, for the most part, has used the literal words of the authors he quotes. So, in the case of Foucault, there are many words in French. While sometimes a translation is provided, sometimes it is not. This is likely to upset an unassuming reader who is not well versed in the thought of the authors or in their mother tongues.
The book offers an interesting perspective on Foucault’s mind and times. Richards constantly compares, contrasts, and strengthens Foucault’s ideas with quotes from a variety of authors, mostly social thinkers and economists, as well as contemporaries of his time and those he drew inspiration from. Thus, you will find a good number of references to the work of Heidegger and Nietzsche, both characters whom Foucault idolized at different moments in his life and from whom he drank deeply. Just a brief glance at the 15-page long list of reference material is enough to give an idea of the kind of material one can expect to find within. The last few chapters deal specifically with individual books by Foucault, his most famous works, Discipline and Punish (1975) and History of sexuality, vol. YO: The Will to Know (1976). The last chapter is a study of Foucault’s fundamental concept: power. Richards not only traces the emergence of the concept, but also verifies its relevance both in Foucault’s time and in the present.
