Foucault’s history of the will to knowledge and the critique of the juridical form of truth

Contemporary Foucauldian research generally considers that our present is characterized by a positive type of power that invests life and posits a radical distinction between sovereign power and discipline/biopolitics. At the heart of this distinction is the supposed incompatibility between the law and the norm. However, a closer study of Foucault’s history of truth lends itself to a rereading of that perspective. The defining feature of contemporary society no longer resides in the innovations that marked the eighteenth century, but are rooted in a fundamental experience of truth: the juridical form of truth. Therefore, sovereign power, discipline, and biopolitics must all be considered as manifestations of a same form of truth which both objectifies and produces effects of domination. The study of this form of truth allows us to consider Foucault’s critical project from a new perspective and highlights the inherent unity of Foucault’s work on power–knowledge apparatuses and to his later works on ethics.