ABSTRACT
One of the many voices of Michel Foucault allows people to address productively important aspects of Cultural History in relation to interpretations of the Enlightenment and French Revolution. This chapter utilizes "political-historical" Foucault to comment on the weaknesses of some prominent cultural-historical approaches before suggesting how some of his concerns may help people to understand crucial dimensions of the Revolution. Foucault suggests that "truth" may be vividly disclosed in situations of violence than in the more ordered realm of rationality and debate, government and administration. Foucault's concept of writing as a passionate intervention in politics, his anxious search for the possibility of a historical truth which could have a political effect, is particularly appropriate for those who wrote, read (and spoke) in eighteenth-century France, both before and after 1789. The Revolution professed "transparency" which meant, political and economic terms, accountability — a disclosure of power to surveillance from below, on the part of citizens as voters, taxpayers and state creditors.
