On the urgency of Michel Foucault’s thought

Abstract

In Introdução à analítica de poder de Michel Foucault, João Paulo Ayub aims to explain how the Foucaultian concept of power trespasses almost all of his bibliographic production, since his initial archeological and discursive studies, passing through his genealogical method and the composition of complex apparatuses of power, always articulated in non-static networks. In his last and early interrupted studies, Foucault started investigations about the subjectivization processes, returning to some aspects of the Greek ethics, discussing how individuals can act upon themselves through a “care of the self”. Ayub also analyzes some of the most famous critiques of Foucault’s work, made by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas and in Brazil by José Guilherme Merquior.