L’iperbole del presente.

Tornare alla querelle Foucault/Derrida

Abstract

In 1963, Derrida initiated a significant debate with Foucault. He reproached the author of Folie et déraison for having, through his project of radical historicization, imprisoned within a historical totality that «temporal originality in general» which exceeds history while also founding it. However, the real issue at stake in the controversy emerges as controversy itself: not as an idea belonging to one side or the other, but precisely as the space of dissent. Indeed, it is the present (rather than history) that constitutes the true theme of the debate: the possibility of conceiving a present in which to situate oneself and of which to have a full experience. Foucault, influenced by Derrida’s critique and, above all, by his encounter with Deleuze, would eventually abandon the idea of transgressing rational limits in the direction of the original and uncontaminated ground of madness. Thus, the querelle, in its very polemical and differential form, remains highly relevant in a historical phase where even the left attempts to compensate for a vast political deficit through a mere libidinal investment. Today more than ever, the anxiety for a presence to be enjoyed generates sad and reactive passions.