Law, norm, antinorm: Foucauldian perspectives

Abstract

The work of Michel Foucault, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, is generally divided into three specific moments: the archaeological, the genealogy of power and the genealogy of ethics, comprising, respectively, the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. . There is almost a consensus, however, that this division was not watertight, as a subsequent topic was generally addressed previously or was indicated there. This article starts from this investigative line, and seeks to establish a relationship between some of Foucault's reflections on law, up to the most privileged aspect of the normative issue. In other words, instead of focusing on the aspect of laws or formal codes of conduct, although this cannot be discarded in the configuration of contemporary societies, Foucault was interested, since his first great work, the History of Madness, in understanding how the Normative control of individuals was more fundamental. And it didn't matter if this control was disguised by the mask of science. Moral or ideological questions often took the place of supposed epistemological inclinations. From the issue of law to that of the norm, History of Madness will refer to an anti-normative instance, related to art, which will never be absent in Foucault's work.