The humanist turn in Foucault's rhetoric of inquiry

Abstract

The authors discuss the relationship of Michel Foucault's work to the humanist perspective. They argue that Fisher is inaccurate in characterizing Foucault as an “anti‐humanist.” Instead, Foucault is properly read as sympathetic to the humanist perspective, and his concept of the “statement” and method of critique turn the humanist perspective away from an institutionalized, perhaps ideological, form that legitimizes the extant social order, and toward a liberating, activist form that allows for change within the status quo.