GENEALOGY AND DECONSTRUCTION
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Abstract
In this paper, we explore the Foucault/Derrida debate on Descartes’ First Meditation. In Madness and Civilization, Foucault argues that Descartes excludes madness from the meditative process and that this move is paradigmatic of the whole classicist era. Derrida, however, believes that Descartes only seemingly does so in order to satisfy the natural, non-philosophical attitude and that with the appearance of the Evil Genius (in the Second Meditation) qualified doubt begins and, with it, the affirmation of madness as a precondition for the emergence of a meditative subject. Derrida claims that Foucault did not make a simple oversight, but that his misunderstanding of Descartes means that he separates the cogito in the same manner that the classicist era separated and excluded madness. These few pages on Descartes, he believes, call into question the entirety of Madness and Civilization. Foucault, on the other hand, thinks that Derrida does not understand that the madness of the Evil Genius is simulated and that it is irresponsible to expect that these three pages on Descartes can discredit the remaining six hundred. Interestingly (and this is the topic of the second part of this paper), the similarities and differences between the Foucauldian archeology/genealogy and Derridean deconstruction are manifested through these two different approaches to the Meditations. The key for this can be found in the notion of the margin, which Foucault counts on when he thematizes the unconscious of knowledge (seen as being emancipated through genealogical interventions) and which is determined by Derrida as the starting point for a deconstructive reversal. In the end, however, we will demonstrate that they conceptualize the margin differently and that this reveals the differences between their respective endeavors.
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