Foucaultian choices in literature

Abstract

This text proposes an investigation concerning some aspects of Michel Foucault's literary conception. It used as references works of Raymond Roussel, Maurice Blanchot, and Georges Bataille. This study is based on Michel Foucault's analytical tools, which, in archaeology, are characterized by the articulation of different discursive events. However, along this writing, they are guided by themes such as madness, the image of the "outside" of language, and the influence of French literary movement Nouveau Roman on its literary conception. It aimed at understanding how literature influenced Foucault as a complex and heterogeneous field of knowledge that follows the most important transformations that occurred in literary works up from the end of 19^th century onwards, characterized by a profusion of meanings, a plurality of voices, multiple readings, and interrelationships of discourses. The analysis has revealed that his approach to literature was marked by epistemological breaks in his philosophical work, illustrating a closed, simulated, and self-centred structure, as well as how it served him as a field of practices with critical and strategic possibilities, as a counterpoint to his early archaeological texts.