O PROBLEMA DA OBJETIVAÇÃO PARA MICHEL FOUCAULT

UMA ANÁLISE ARQUEOGENEALÓGICA DO EXAME E DA CONFISSÃO

Abstract

This work intends to argue for the centrality of the problem regarding the forms of objectification of knowledge in Michel Foucault's thought. As a first step, we will identify the first two obstacles to our undertaking: the positions that, positively, characterize Michel Foucault as the philosopher of subjectivity, and those that, negatively, ignore any of his contributions to the field of forms of objectification of knowledge. After this, we will analyze the notions of statement and discursive formation to indicate that, already in archaeology, Foucault takes discursive objectification as his major theoretical concern. Next, we move on to analyzing the procedures at play in the exam, a mechanism specific to disciplinary power, and then to confession practices. This objective analysis, in the redirection of an analysis of knowledge to an analysis of subjectivity, reinforce the argument that not only does the concern with objectivity persist in the different phases of Foucault's thought, but also that the philosopher constructs an objective reading key for the analysis of what has always emerged as a domain most refractory to objectification, namely, the scope of subjectivation processes.