Abstract

How is it possible for Foucault to present the body at the same time as the foundation and the result of history, as condition and horizon of the theory that takes hold of it ? One has to pay attention to the various registers in which Foucault distributes the acceptations ordinarily confused with the general notion of the body : from "my body" (as it appears in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology) to "the body' (as it is understood by modern medicine) ; from this body as an object for positive explanation and disciplinary, to the speaking and spoken body described in The Will of Knowledge ; and from those acceptations, which take place in an history of the individual body, to the plurality of bodies that intervene, as a background, in Foucault's ethics