Abstract

Michel Foucault refers to his work as "Instrumental and Dreamlike," indicating its "usefulness" as genealogical/archaeological criticism and at the same time its tendency to articulate structures and images that are the product of "imagination." In relation to this description, this dissertation is a study of what Foucault calls "a positive unconscious of knowledge." I argue that the image of a "positive unconscious" can be understood in conjunction with Foucault's relationship with psychoanalysis and that this relationship is important to an understanding of his work. Foucault's studies of madness and of the human sciences are formed in and through his engagement with psychoanalysis, and "a positive unconscious" is indicative of this engagement. Not only does the image of an "unconscious" dimension of knowledge allow Foucault to interrogate psychiatry and the human sciences, it also puts his own work into question as it is itself formed unconsciously by discourses and practices that he investigates. ;Foucault's "positive unconscious" thus plays a critical role. This dissertation attempts to explicate that role, and the meaning of "critical" in Foucault. This meaning is discussed in relation to the critical philosophical tradition represented by Kant. First I show that Foucault's own relation to Kant is "reactive" as well as "active," which indicates that Foucault's concern with Kant is with Kant as a name for a tradition that "unconsciously" informs Foucault's own "enlightened reaction." Secondly, I argue that Foucault's relation to Kant is best understood in the context of Heidegger's retrieval of Kant, a retrieval that ends where this dissertation begins: with an interpretation of "imagination" and of the coming-to-meaning of the dream image as it is discussed in Foucault's early essay on Ludwig Binswanger's "Dream and Existence."