چکیده:
This paper briefly examines the debate between Foucault and Derrida, which
Jocuses on Foucault's Madness and Civilization, and copes with madness
and reason through Descartes. Foucault maintains that modern reason has
Sounded itself. historically, as a leading type of knowing through the orderly
exclusion of its other: non-reason or madness. He argues that Descartes
supported the philosophical instant in this exclusion. Derrida not only
criticizes Foucault for having misconstrued Descartes’ thoughts on madness,
but also, in "Cogito and the History of Madness,” objects to Foucault having
periodised the exclusion of madness as something exacting to the modern
period. This paper compares Foucault's response to Derrida in his article
“My body, this paper, this fire” with Derrida’s response to Foucault,
delivered in a lecture titled “To Do Justice to Freud: The History of Madness
in the Age of Psychoanalysis.” I consider the oft-repeated view crediting
Michel Foucault with the “destruction” of subjectivity. As stated by
Foucault, we can talk about subjectivity merely with the meaning of that
which is itself comprised by and through miscellaneous forces. I argue that
attributing the destruction of subjectivity to Foucault needs some
clarification. It is not all in all wrong given that Foucault places himself
against the philosophical notion of a self-governing thinking subject. Neither
is it altogether right since Foucault's scrutiny is still concerned with a
variety of ways individuals are constituted. I suggest that Foucault
sidestepped Derrida accusations and instead went on the counter-offensive,
hammering away at Derrida’s method of public discourse. The peculiar thing
about Derrida’s position, however, is that it appears as though to repudiate
the significance of the Cartesian idea of subjectivity simultaneously as it
persists that we are not able to think without it.