ABSTRACT
Previous chapters have been oriented toward general methodological concerns of the statement of the conditions of an effective and critical form of historical study. They have also sought to define histories of the present against reflections on historical-sociological writing and in relation to various key thinkers. In so doing, they have tended to downplay the placement of such study within particular, substantive, domains. The final three chapters seek to balance this earlier emphasis by examining aspects of the critical histories offered by Foucault and their convergence and divergence with similar problems taken up within historical sociology. These chapters address issues arising in Foucault’s work of historical forms of power and government, on the one hand, and his history of sexuality, ethics, and the self, on the other. These, it should be noted, are not unrelated dimensions of Foucault’s later thought. Taken together, they retrospectively situate his archaeological and genealogical projects in a triple concern for government, ethics, and rationality.
