A Nietzschean reading of Foucauldian thinking: constructing a project of the self within an ontology of becoming

Thibaut Bardon () and Emmanuel Josserand
Additional contact information
Thibaut Bardon: DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: As influential as Michel Foucault may be in organization theory, several critics have seriously questioned the epistemological foundations of the Foucauldian philosophical project (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1995, 1999; Caldwell, 2007; Habermas, 1990; Newton, 1994, 1998; Reed, 2000; Thompson, 1993). If these remain unanswered, the Foucauldian approach could be relegated to a self-contradictory, ultra-relativist and partial reading grid of ‘reality'. In this article, we develop a Nietzschean reading of Foucault's thinking that offers answers to these criticisms, and reinstates it as an independent philosophical project grounded in epistemological assumptions that are coherent with its ontology and methodology. Finally, we suggest that, following Nietzsche, the whole Foucauldian project can be approached as a genealogy of morals. Subsequently, we call on scholars to further explore the ‘third generation' of Foucauldian studies which would study management practices as morals understood as an ‘art de vivre'.

Keywords: epistemology; ethics; Foucault; genealogy of morals; methodology; Nietzsche; knowledge; project of the self (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Organization, 2011, 18 (4), pp.497-516. ⟨10.1177/1350508410384758⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00662432

DOI: 10.1177/1350508410384758

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().