The mutation of language in Foucault's discourse

This dissertation presents a description and analysis of two mutations of language which occur in Foucault's discourse. In his early works, Foucault gives an account of the mutation of language from Classical representation to Modern self-referentiality. The key to understanding this transformation is the shift in language's functioning. During the Classical period, statements functioned as representations of objects in the world. During the Modern period, statements operated in reference to the Modern self--to man, the subject who speaks and the object spoken about. Foucault calls the shift which occurred between these two periods a mutation of language, because the primary functional characteristics of language have changed such that language no longer operates in the same way. This type of radical transformation occurs a second time in Foucault's middle works. Here I trace the movement away from Modern self-referential language to the language of genealogy. Whereas Modern language is subject-centered (in constant reference to man), genealogical language is disrupted, fragmented, and not in reference to any unified subject. The result of this second mutation could be viewed as a transformation of philosophy out of its Modern constraints--the limits of the subject--and into a different type of thought, antimodern or postmodern. However, I show that Foucault was wary of claiming that this second mutation of language had fully occurred. Throughout his middle period, Foucault refers to Hegel and raises the question of whether we can truly escape Modern language/Modern philosophy. I address this issue in an attempt to show to what extent Foucault's discourse remains within the constraints of Modernity and disrupts those constraints. In other words, I show to what extent genealogy is a non-Modern discourse--a mutation of language out of its Modern functioning. Thus, based upon the earlier mutation Foucault describes, I analyze this later transformation, in order to determine whether or not genealogy is indeed a mutation out of Modern language.