The Kantian Sleep: On the Limits of the “Foucault Effect”

Abstract

This paper analyzes the connection, established by Michel Foucault in The Order of Things, between the appearance of "man" as an anthropological presupposition of scientific and philosophical discourses, and the construction of a transcendental dispositif of thought. In accordance with this presupposition, the notion of life is conceived by Foucault as a by-product of Kantian modernity and inscribed within a Heideggerian ontotheology. By stressing the vitalist alternatives to this paradigm, the essay questions the hegemony of Western transcendentalism and proposes a naturalistic reorientation of Foucault's intellectual project.