Discontinuity and device: a crisis in the thought of Michel Foucault

This article acknowledges that Foucault's two great methodologies (archeology and genealogy) arose at two different moments in his methodological approach, and argues that the concept of dispositif developed in the philosopher from the 1970s onwards due to a discontinuity in his research. It is argued that this problem arose as a result of a series of situations: the discovery of a new research problem and its relationship with the occurrence of a specific sociopolitical conjuncture (failure of the social mobilizations of the French May in 1968). The foregoing led Foucault to ask the question of how power is exercised and what is its relationship with knowledge? instead of the old question about what is power? This transformation of the question was fundamental in Foucault, since it allows him to conclude that every device presupposes the existence of a power and that all power is exercised through the use of knowledge. The article closes with a reference to Jurgen Habermas, an author who specifies the crisis generated in Foucault by the failure of the social mobilizations that occurred during the so-called French May. The present work was elaborated from a qualitative research method and a bibliographic search technique.