Foucault's genealogical normative stance

This article explores Michel Foucault's genealogical approach and its potential for grounding a normative stance. Criticisms and further developments on genealogy within critical theory denote that, despite counterarguments, Habermas's critique of Foucault's theory of power remains influential. By analyzing Foucault's conceptual choices —such as the dispositif (apparatus)— and his historical critiques, the article demonstrates how power and freedom are intertwined; it proposes an immanent, performative normativity, where freedom is both a precondition for power relations and a dynamic criterion for critique. The normativity emerges through critical engagement with historical contingencies. Foucault's works—from Madness and Civilization to The History of Sexuality—demonstrate this process, exposing how norms are historically constituted. Ultimately, Foucault's genealogy offers a normative stance grounded on freedom as power's counterpart and as a meta-normative standard.