The Long Detour: Foucault's History of Desire and Pleasure

Abstract

It is possible to identify a number of phases in Michel Foucault's work, associated with an apparently shifting focus of concern. We argue that, beneath the differences that distinguish these phases, he demonstrates a lifelong engagement with a small number of core concerns. The main focus of this article is Foucault's later work. Here we identify a shift from a focus on discipline/domination to aesthetics and desire/pleasure. We show how this apparently new concern—what Foucault himself called `a long detour'—was in fact a new way of thinking about his core concerns and in particular the problem of aligning discipline and desire. In conclusion, we briefly examine the implications of the later Foucault for organization theory, arguing that it opens the way for a rethinking of desire and pleasure in organizations as an antidote to the Foucault who is (over-)identified with organizational constraints based upon an ubiquity of discipline and punishment. In this way we seek to engage scholars of organization with the later work of Foucault, that has tended to be neglected in favour of the earlier work focusing upon discipline and the negative aspects of management and organization.