Foucault and the truth produced by power

• Grant number: 19/03382-8
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): June 01, 2019
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal researcher: Pedro Paulo Garrido Pimenta
• Grantee: Rodrigo de Oliveira Figueiredo
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

At the first conference of the Truth and Juridical Forms, Foucault claims to have as one of its objectives show that political and economic conditions do not constitute a kind of obstacle to the subject of knowledge, but rather, that even through the That it is formed, and therefore the condition for the production of truth. For the French author, all knowledge is produced from the political conditions - that is, from power relations - and not in spite of them. We will begin by addressing the Foucaultian design of a "history of truth", a kind of historical analysis that distances itself from the search for origin through the Nietzschean conception of knowledge as an invention. We will see how this conception allows Foucault to formulate the idea that the truth has a history, namely, the history of the formation of the domains of knowledge from social practices. From this, the project will have as its central objective to show how, in its analytical power, Foucault approached the theme of truth to be taken in relation to the practices related to it. We will raise some passages of the first volume of the History of Sexuality and of the course Society Must be Defended, highlighting the Foucaultian defense of the mutual implication between power and knowledge in the production of subjects and objects. Finally, it is intended to emphasize the distaining of Foucault from a type of thought called "academic Marxism", a tendency that conceit power as a factor that obscures the relationship of the subject with the truth.