Bearing the lightning of possible storms: Foucault's experimental social criticism

This paper argues that Michel Foucault explicitly rejected the model of critique by which he is often understood-by both his defenders and detractors. Rather than justifying norms that could be said to represent "the people;" judging institutions, norms, and practices accordingly; and creating programs for others to enact, he theorized and practiced an experimental social criticism in which specific intellectuals help people work through "intolerable" situations by multiplying the ways they can think about and act upon them. As Foucault's work with the prisons in France shows, one way intellectuals can be part of the experimental transformations social bodies carry out upon themselves is through genealogical work describing the ways problems have come to be identified-and can thus be transformed. This account of criticism undercuts the problem of justifying a standpoint of critique that has plagued philosophers and suggests a few concrete means of better aligning theory and practice.