Introduction

Judging from the dismissive tone of Habermas lecture on Foucault alone, one might infer that the two thinkers occupy diametrically opposed positions. And indeed, it would be hard to dispute the claim that Habermas and Foucault disagree in a very critical way about the status of reason and its relation to knowledge and power; while Foucaults rejection of Truth, in Discipline and Punish, was foundational to postmodernism, one could certainly read Habermas Theory of Communicative Action as an attempt to rework the concept of modernity. In this essay, however, I argue that possibilities for reconciliation between the two theorists exist, despite this fundamental disagreement. While strict adherence to either thinker would not permit the reconciliation we outline, I propose a less dogmatic perspective that acknowledges the shortcomings of each approach. Specifically, I argue that the similarity between Foucaults call for a release of subjugated knowledges and Habermas call for protection of the lifeworld suggests that both recognize the need for individuals to be maximally exposed if modern society is to avoid fostering certain pathologies in its members. This concept of exposure, which is our term, constitutes the crux of our proposal.1

Foucault on Knowledge
In his lecture entitled Some Questions Concerning the Theory of Power: Foucault Again, Habermas summarizes Foucaults thesis very aptly: [T]he formation of power and the formation of knowledge compose an indissoluble unity (272, Lecture 10). Before considering why
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For purposes of clarity, it may help to outline the structure of our argument. We begin by considering Foucaults argument that power subsumes all the epistemological conditions in modern society. We treat Habermas critique, specifically focusing on his accusations that Foucault suffers from presentism, crypto-normativism and relativism. This dialogue allows us to frame our larger argument: the concerns raised by Habermas lead us to pinpoint a latent egalitarianism in Foucault's position. We argue that because Habermas overestimates Foucault's pessimism, he himself fails to acknowledge Foucault's egalitarian streak. While we acknowledge that this fact does not resolve certain theoretical inconsistencies in Foucault, we argue that a wholesale rejection of Foucault's position does not follow (whereas Habermas seems to believe it does). Rather we argue that a limited reconciliation of the two thinkers through the aforementioned notion of maximal exposure is highly plausible.

Habermas finds Foucaults defense of such a strong thesis inadequate, it makes sense to consider Foucaults position in greater detail. Let us do so by expanding on the notion of knowledge. Foucault argues that power2 grounds forms of knowledge that appear intrinsically objective (science, for example). In his opinion, the value we accord to science has naught to do with its truthfulness or objectivity, but rather everything to do with the kind of clout it carries. For example, when writing about Marxist and Freudian ambitions to be considered scientific, he argues: Even before we can know the extent to which something such as Marxism or psychoanalysis can be compared to a scientific practiceit is surely necessary to question ourselves about our aspirations to the kind of power that is presumed to accompany such a scienceWhen I see you straining to establish the scientificity of Marxism I do not really think that you are demonstrating once and for all that Marxism has a rational structure and that therefore its propositions are the outcome of verifiable procedures; for me you are dong something altogether different, you are investing Marxist discourses and those who uphold them with the effects of a power which the West since Medieval times has attributed to science and has reserved for those engaged in scientific discourse. (84-85, Power/Knowledge). Foucault believes, then, that he is exposing the process which the label scientific masks. Bodies of knowledge achieve exposure due to the coercion of a theoretical, unitary, formal and scientific discourse (85, Power/Knowledge).3 Those who claim to disqualify certain sets of knowledge (or, equivalently, endorse certain sets over others) necessarily embrace these coercive techniques in the process; indeed, the role of disqualifier of knowledge implies an influence that is itself derived

Power ought not to be understood in a wholly conventional, relational sense. Rather, it is best understood as a technique. As Foucault writes, [t]he power in the hierarchized surveillance of the disciplines is not possessed as a thing, or transferred as a property; it functions like a piece of machinery. And, although it is true that its pyramidal organization gives it a 'head', it is the apparatus as a whole that produces 'power' and distributes individuals in this permanent and continuous field (177, Discipline and Punish, my emphasis). Foucault's characterization of the struggles that oppose the effects of power further elucidates the relation-less nature of power: They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and ideological state violence which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is (212, The Subject and Power). 3 As evidenced by the qualifier since Medieval times, these claims are grounded in a historical story. However, for our purposes, it will be sufficient to note that they apply to modern society, which is what we concerns us in this essay.

from the power intrinsic to privileged types of discourse, such as science.4 Fortunately, the solution (though Foucault might hesitate to term it that) suggests itself: those forms of knowledge that have been consigned to the status of nonscientific that have been subjugated must be freed and heard.5 Foucault sees this as the task of the genealogy he is attempting. In addition to this more conventional conception of what the term knowledge refers to, Foucault, in employing it, wants to discuss what we might call self-knowledge: how the individual comes to look at herself and her place in society how she experiences individualization. While many social theorists (Mill, for example) have located individual independence in this process, Foucault argues that, with the advent of modern society and its associated mechanisms of discipline, this process of individualization is directed in the final analysis by a disciplinary apparatus that distributes the individual in a permanent and continuous field of power (177, Discipline and Punish). This power is exercised...by comparative measures that have the 'norm' as reference (193, Discipline and Punish). Thus, far from choosing6 what norms she would like to adopt in a way that an independent individual freely would, the modern individual is constructed

Which speaking, discoursing subjects which subjects of experience and knowledge do you then want to diminish when you say: I who conduct this discourse am conducting a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist? (85, Power/Knowledge). 5 By comparison, then, and in contrast to the various projects which aim to inscribe knowledges in the hierarchical order of power associated with science, a genealogy should be seen as a kind of attempt to emancipate historical knowledges from that subjection, to render them, that is, capable of opposition and of struggle (85, Power/Knowledge). 6 It might seem that Foucault believes that the notion of freely choosing does not disappear. He writes, power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free (221, The Subject and Power). However, this point merely illustrates that the kind of power that modern society exercises upon individuals is not relational and does not thereby depend on overt constraint; the issue is not voluntary servitude (221, The Subject and Power). Rather, Foucault wants to stress that the modern disciplinary apparatus works in much less explicit ways. Having stressed that, we do note that the objection has its merits; Foucault does believe that the intransigence of freedom makes resistance possible (222, The Subject and Power).

through a subtle yet persistent disciplinary procedure.7 This apparatus molds her to a norm that, as a result, owes its pervasiveness entirely to the effects of power.8 Prior to reconstructing Habermas' response, it may be worth stressing that Foucault's critiques of purportedly objective knowledge and of what we have called self-knowledge are not disparate arguments, but rather highly interrelated. First, the power-dependence that Foucault chronicles in both forms of knowledge emerged as a result of the same historical development: as Foucault writes, [w]hen the normal took over from the ancestral, and measurement from status, thus substituting for the individuality of the memorable man that of the calculable man, that moment when the sciences of man became possible is the moment when a new technology of power and a new political anatomy of the body were implemented (193, Discipline and Punish). This historical simultaneity implies that the creation of one apparatus bears responsibility for both trends; its suggests that they are similar in a more significant way. Indeed, when Foucault describes the modern order that the disciplinary punishments must enforce as defined by natural and observable processes (179, Discipline and Punish), we begin to see that the kinds of abstractions that mediate the process of normalization also facilitate the task of a scientific discourse; science requires society and individuals to be natural and observable. This interpretation makes sense of Foucault's description of this historical development as the transition from the historico-ritual mechanisms for the formation of individuality to the scientifico-disciplinary mechanisms (193, Discipline and Punish, my emphasis). Thus, though we treated them distinctly, we stress that the two processes are largely contiguous.
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Moreover, this construction reaches into the individual in an extensive way: Through this micro-economy of a perpetual penality operates a differentiation that is not one of acts, but of individuals themselves, of their nature, their potentialities, their level or their value (181, Discipline and Punish). 8 In short, the art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power is aimed neither at expiation, nor even precisely at repression...The perpetual penality that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes (183, Discipline and Punish).

Habermas' Objections
Habermas, in response, levels three principal charges against Foucault's project. He argues that, because it attempts to describe practices of power in a nonparticipatory [and] ascetic way, Foucault's genealogical historiography encounters serious contradictions: it becomes precisely the presentistic, relativistic, cryptonormative illusory science that it does not want to be (275-276, Lecture 10).9 Here, for the purposes of this paper, it will only be worthwhile to treat the latter two points.10 Habermas' charge of relativism revolves around the central implication of Foucaults theory: namely, that the meaning of validity claims consists in the power effects they have (279, Lecture X). Certainly, the consequences of Foucault's claim are undeniably radical. Since the premises for validating bodies of knowledge have been exposed as power-dependent, it makes no sense to speak of objectivity any longer. Indeed, as discussed earlier, the very notion of Truth has to be discarded. In response, Habermas alleges that Foucault fails to account for a critical contradiction in his position: in attempting to emancipate subjugated knowledges and elevate them to the level of erudite knowledge, Habermas contends that Foucault is forced to accord his own perspective the very kind of privilege his genealogy seeks to undermine. In other words, because Foucault purports to transcend the power-dependence of validity claims, Habermas rightly argues that he claims a superiority which his own radical relativism would reject: even the
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As Habermas argues: His [Foucaults] putative objectivity of knowledge is itself put into question (1) by the involuntary presentism of a historiography that remains hermeneutically stuck in its starting situation; (2) by the unavoidable relativism of an analysis related to the present that can understand itself only as a context-dependent practical enterprise; (3) by the arbitrary partisanship of a criticism that cannot account for its normative foundations (276, Lecture 10). 10 I maintain that the first objection (presentism) cannot ground a more fundamental discussion of the sort we attempt in this paper. Habermas targets an internal problem with Foucault's methodology: namely, that while committed to a concept of history as meaningless changes of shape in discourse totalities that have nothing in common, Foucault can only explain the disciplinary mechanism of modern society by comparing it to those that preceded it (277, Lecture 10). While this charge has definite merit, it contributes nothing substantive to our larger argument beyond what the accusations of relativism and cryptonormativity already supply.

genealogy of knowledge cannot break out of this cycle while it activates the uprising of the disqualified modes of knowledge and mobilizes this subjected knowledgeThose who conquer the theoretical avant-garde of today and overcome the current hierarchization of knowledge, themselves become the theoretical avant-garde of tomorrow and themselves establish a new hierarchy of knowledge (281, Lecture 10). While this objection may seem convincing, I argue that what Habermas highlights need not merit a wholesale rejection of Foucault. Instead, we ought to reconcile the shortcomings of Foucault's radical relativism11 with his very defensible call for eliminating the role of disqualifier of knowledge. Given the intimate history of power and knowledge (as evidenced by the racist ideologies produced and affirmed by colonialism and imperialism, or even by the myths and stories that bind women to femininity) certain consequences that follow from Foucaults thesis seem highly legitimate. While we may retain a modicum of respect for objectivity and Truth, we must dismiss the notion that by virtue of their apparent objectivity certain bodies of knowledge have a greater claim to our attention. In other words, even though we do not dispute the claim that a concept like objectivity exists, we do object to the institution or technical apparatus that would seek to determine for us what warrants exposure on account of this criterion. Thus, we acknowledge the merits of Foucaults relativism and embrace its implications (on these marginally qualified grounds). In his claim that Foucault unwittingly transforms his own genealogy into a power complex which necessarily creates its own hierarchy and set of subjugated knowledges, Habermas fails to acknowledge that Foucault intends more than a reordering of hierarchies; as per his relativism, Foucault wants to abolish the very notion of hierarchies of knowledge itself. His genealogy implies a leveling of all knowledges because it exposes the means and ends of a metrics
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We will specify exactly what we mean in a later section (the idea that Foucault leaves us directionless). We do not intend to imply that we find Habermas' charge of internal inconsistency convincing, as this paragraph makes clear.

that tries to rank them. In contrast to the accusation that he privileges his own discourse, then, we detect a strong egalitarian presumption in Foucault. Habermas second objection is the aforementioned charge of cryptonormativity. He argues that while Foucaults genealogy purports to be completely non-normative and only descriptive in nature, his project ineluctably involves value claims: Foucault understands himself as a dissident who offers resistance to modern thought and humanistically disguised disciplinary power (282, Lecture 10). Habermas believes that as soon as Foucault opts to endorse the resistance and its project, he can justify his attitude solely on the basis of normative notions.12 While we acknowledge the legitimacy of Habermas argument (and we agree that Foucaults genealogy is anything but value-free), we disagree that Foucaults cryptonormativity warrants a total repudiation of his position. In fact, we argue that what Habermas highlights here further supports our claim that Foucault displays a latent egalitarian streak. In siding with those who have been disqualified by a hierarchy that an apparatus of power installs, Foucault predicates his genealogy on normative notions that we affirm; we endorse his attempt to create a multiplicity of discourses to which everyone is maximally exposed. It is this notion of exposure that we now explore.

Maximal Exposure
When Foucault claims that an emancipation of subjugated knowledges is in order, he quite clearly intends to moderate the sinister influence of official normalization - of the government of individualization (212, The Subject and Power, my emphasis). While it is certainly possible to contend that he presents us no fundamental solution to the issues he raises, it
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It makes sense that a value-free analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent is of use to one who wants to take up the fight but why fight at all? Why is struggle preferable to submission? Why ought domination to be resisted? Only with the introduction of normative notions of some kind could Foucault begin to answer this question. Only with the introduction of normative notions could he begin to tell us what is wrong with the modern power/knowledge regime and why we ought to oppose it. (284, Lecture X).

would be unwise to overestimate his pessimism. His genealogy releases subjugated knowledges in order to render power-dependent norms less imposing.13 In other words, he attempts to open up the field of possible modes of self-definition. With the appearance of knowledge that was previously marginalized (what we have called a multiplicity of discourses), it becomes easier for individuals to refuse normalization: we have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get rid of this kind of political double bind, which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures (216, The Subject and Power, my emphasis). The norms inspired by subjugated knowledges undermine more standard, state-inspired forms of normalization (and undermine each other, as well). Foucault wants this kind of maximal exposure in order to salvage the process of individualization as much as is possible.

Reconciliation
As alluded to in the introduction, this notion of maximal exposure allows us to reconcile our qualified reconstruction of Foucault with Habermas radical democratic thinking. Habermas pinpoints the potential colonization of lifeworld by system as the challenge which modern society must address. Crudely put, he fears that instrumental rationality (success-oriented thinking) will supplant communicative rationality as producer of norms14; individuals will no longer negotiate and formulate principles among themselves in some sort of free, public discourse, but will act
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He sums up our task as such: The conclusion would be that the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state, and from the states institutions, but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries (216, The Subject and Power). 14 In the end, systemic mechanisms suppress forms of social integration even in those areas where a consensusdependent coordination of action cannot be replaced, that is, where the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld is at stake. In these areas, the mediatization of the lifeworld assumes the form of a colonization (196, The Theory of Communicative Action). One of the three parts of the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld is socialization, which Habermas describes as the formation of personal identities (137, The Theory of Communicative Action). The similarity, in terms of subject matter, between this process and the process of individualization as described and discussed by Foucault should be self-evident; to some extent, they are talking about the same thing. This indicates that our proposed reconciliation is more substantive than a merely formal similarity between their theories would be. Even so, we address the differences between Habermas' and Foucault's pictures of individualization in the next paragraph.

according to imperatives provided to them by the state and the market.15 His solution suggests itself: prevent system from colonizing lifeworld by preserving system-independent, intersubjective interactions in a robust form. I argue that this proposal recalls Foucaults call for maximal exposure. Indeed, when Habermas derides the systematic restrictions on communication that occur as a consequence of system interfering in lifeworld (specifically, when systemic integration intervenes in the very forms of social integration (187, The Theory of Communicative Action), he employs Foucaultian vocabulary16: The subjective inconspicuousness of systemic constraints that instrumentalize a communicatively structured lifeworld takes on the character of deception, of objectively false consciousness. The reproductive constraints that instrumentalize a lifeworld without weakening the illusion of its self-sufficiency have to hide, so to speak, in the pores of communicative action. This gives rise to a structural violence that, without becoming manifest as such, takes hold of the forms of intersubjectivity of possible understanding. (187, The Theory of Communicative Action) For Habermas, the virtues of the lifeworld lie in its intrinsically free nature, which is itself grounded in the critical potential of speech (195, The Theory of Communicative Action). Since norms17 can only be properly created in an intersubjective context, the systematic restrictions on communication between people constitutes a closing of the types of norms available to the individual. Therefore, given that Habermas opposes this closing by resisting the imposition of these systematic restrictions, it follows that Foucault's call for a multiplicity of discourses may be highly relevant. In fact, we suggest that substantive reconciliation is plausible. At the very least, it
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In Habermas' reflections on Weber, he argues that, in modern society, capitalist modernization follows a pattern such that cognitive instrumental rationality surges beyond the bounds of the economy and state into other, communicatively structured areas of life and achieves dominance there at the expense of moral-political and aestheticpractical rationality (304, The Theory of Communicative Action). This produces disturbances in the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld (305, The Theory of Communicative Action). 16 Though we understand that he is directly addressing the issue of social integration here and not the formation of individual identities, I still argue that his use of the term structural violence merits our attention. 17 Habermas complicates use of this term by arguing that developments in the moral consciousnesses of individuals ultimately mean that in the lifeworld people act according to principles, and not norms (178, The Theory of Communicative Action). Nonetheless, the reader should see that the crux of the issue remains unchanged; thus we do not bother with drawing the same distinctions. We use the terms norms and principles interchangeably.

would be difficult to object to the claim that both Habermas and Foucault seek to salvage the process of the formation of individual identities by maximizing the possibilities to which each individual is exposed. Both agree that normalization - the seizure of this process by institutional imperatives represents a grave danger to the modern individual. In order to sharpen the notion of reconciliation, it will be important to stress what it does not entail. Certainly, there still exist critical dissimilarities between Foucault and Habermas. These imply certain limits to our proposed synthesis. Most notably, Foucault and Habermas disagree quite fundamentally on the precise purpose that discourse serves. Whereas for Habermas, as discussed, the concept of communicative rationality makes discourse itself the locus of normgeneration and of an appropriate, system-independent socialization, Foucault does not accord the same creative power to intersubjective communication. Rather, whatever creativity Foucault salvages relies upon the individual's ability to resist the norm. Because he lacks Habermas' appraisal of humankind's intrinsic intersubjectivity, salvation, for Foucault, is centered around the individual.18 An environment that encourages a multiplicity of discourses merely makes this task easier for each of us; it does not alter its incontrovertibly personal basis. Moreover we also note that because of Foucault's radical relativism, he cannot resist the charge that his type of maximal exposure leaves the individual directionless. Since Foucault does not prioritize one mode of individualization over another, it follows that he cannot provide the individual with criteria upon which to base a choice between norms. Indeed, he would completely dispute the premise upon which these criteria would be envisioned, let alone implemented. Again, it is entirely up to the individual to choose.19 Habermas, on the other hand, grounds the prospects for direction in his
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We see this distinction in the very nature of the way in which Habermas and Foucault refer to the process: whereas Habermas refers to it as socialization, Foucault calls it individualization. 19 One begins to see why Foucault was attracted to Hayek. Both thinkers fervently distrust attempts to coerce the individual, be it in any direction or by any means.

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concept of communicative rationality; individualization ought to be directed by consensus-based discourse. We see how this much more optimistic philosophy recovers the notion of progress, in both individual and social terms.

Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper sought to demonstrate that Habermas and Foucault, despite certain fundamental differences, both call for a similar kind of maximal exposure in order to remedy the process of individualization. The fact of this shared point, we argued, constitutes plausible grounds for exploring more substantive ways to reconcile them. It is not entirely unreasonable to imagine that both theorists could agree on certain kinds of institutional reforms that would create environments which embrace a multiplicity of discourses. However, we stress that a critically irreconcilable dissimilarity remains in the different role that each theorist accords to discourse. For Habermas, discourse has intrinsic value; individuals who communicate affirm both their intersubjectivity and the critical potential of speech through consensus-based norm-formation and decision-making. Foucault remains enormously more skeptical. While I concede that it is difficult to endorse the concept of communicative action as exuberantly as Habermas does20, I also suggest that, through the fact that he partially manages to salvage a (radically altered) modernity, he offers a vision of society that is very defensible and even highly desirable. The fact that he recovers a direction towards which we can coordinate our efforts ultimately attracts us to his proposal.

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I would contend that the effects of power and status can distort discourse between individuals, even in an uncorrupted lifeworld that has not yet been affected by system imperatives. However, fully engaging Habermas on this topic is far beyond the scope of this paper.

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