2. Feminist standpoint theories: between objectivity and relativism?

Feminist standpoint theories had their heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, when feminist theorists developed methodologies committed to addressing and challenging the power relations and forms of knowledge that exemplify the patriarchal sex-gender system (Harding Reference Harding2004a, 1). Feminist standpoint theories not only contest the positivist, objectivist, and “scientifist” epistemologies dominant in most traditional scientific methodologies, but also found inspiration in feminist activist practices such as consciousness raising. Consciousness raising aimed to make the domination exercised by the patriarchal sex-gender system visible to women outside of academic and activist circles. They found their model in the Marxist strategy of stimulating class consciousness among workers to counteract the power of bourgeois ideology and increase the revolutionary force needed to overthrow the capitalist social order. As such, feminist standpoint theories were never only theoretical. Like Marxist theorization, feminist standpoint theories sought to change the world, rather than merely interpret it.

Initially, feminist standpoint theories proposed an application of the Marxist model of class antagonism to gendered relations. The standpoint-theoretical intuitions in Marx’s writings were developed in the early twentieth century, most notably in Georg Lukács’s work (cf. Mills Reference Mills1988; Vervoort Reference Vervoort2021, Reference Vervoort2025). Indeed, many feminist standpoint theorists explicitly refer to Lukács’s work as their class-oriented precursor (e.g. Hartsock Reference Hartsock1997, 395). Even Miranda Fricker argues that feminist epistemology found inspiration in “the concept (from Lukács) of a standpoint (of the proletariat), which was epistemically privileged” (Reference Fricker, James Kidd, Medina and Pohlhaus2017, 55). Or, as Charles Mills summarizes it, “late twentieth-century feminist epistemology and feminist standpoint theory … were themselves indebted to late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Marxism and its claims, most famously in Lukács, about ‘bourgeois’ and ‘proletarian’ perspectives on social reality” (Reference Fricker, James Kidd, Medina and Pohlhaus2017, 101). Just as Lukács argues that class oppression gives rise to an epistemic advantage for the proletariat, feminist standpoint theorists claim that women’s subordinate position in patriarchal societies gives rise to a privileged position for understanding and questioning the mechanisms of patriarchal domination.

Later feminist scholarship, however, has called into question the “explanatory power” (cf. Rubin Reference Rubin2012, 35) of the Marxist model of antagonism beyond class relations. Post-structuralist critiques, for example, suggest that many feminist standpoint theories risk reproducing the gender regime they seek to challenge (cf. Butler Reference Butler1999; Vervoort Reference Vervoort, Christine and Morelock2024), whereas Black feminists have pointed out that a univocal feminist standpoint theory risks being color blind (Collins Reference Collins1990, vii). Accordingly, work such as that of Donna Haraway has shifted attention from women’s knowledge to the situatedness of knowledge, moving away from the implicit essentialist claims prominent in early feminist scholarship (Haraway Reference Haraway1988, Reference Haraway1991). Generally speaking, however, feminist standpoint theory’s initial appropriation of the Marxist model of class struggle to understand gendered relations never assumed the promise of an “end of history” resulting from feminist struggle against patriarchy, a strawman-like teleology that can be found in anti-Marxist works rather than in those of proponents of (feminist-)Marxist critiques of capitalism and patriarchy.

Parallel to the debate about essentialism (Fricker Reference Fricker1999), however, feminist standpoint theorists diverge in their assessment of scientific objectivity and truth. Some feminist standpoint theorists claim that their methodologies result in more valid, more “scientific,” or more true claims (Toole Reference Toole2024). Others categorically reject objective truths as masculinist abstractions, and argue that feminist standpoint theories aim to undo the universalization of truth claims (Haraway Reference Haraway1991; Harding Reference Harding2009). Although both positions reject “the reduction of knowledge to a simple reflection of its social basis” (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis Reference Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis2002), standpoint theorists differ to the extent that they deem marginalized viewpoints to have access to an objective (albeit dialectical or practical) truth (Hartsock Reference Hartsock1997, 370; Lukács Reference Lukács1971; Teixeira Reference Teixeira and Gregory2020), or a more relative situated set of discursive resources allowing the contestation of hegemonic claims of positivist objectivity (Hekman Reference Hekman1997; Ashton Reference Ashton, Lasonen-Aarnio and Littlejohn2023).

Drawing on the debate that has occurred in recent decades, several attempts have been made to systematize the theses upon which feminist standpoint theories rely (cf. Ashton Reference Ashton, Alana Ashton, McKenna, Anna Sodoma and Kusch2020a, Reference Ashton, Crețu and Massimi2020b, Reference Ashton, Lasonen-Aarnio and Littlejohn2023; Anderson Reference Anderson and Edward2000; Intemann Reference Intemann2010, Reference Intemann, Jane Disch and Hawkesworth2016; Tanesini Reference Tanesini, Miranda Fricker, Graham and Pedersen2021; Stahl Reference Stahl2023). Despite minor differences, three theses stand out as representing the most central characteristics of standpoint theories:

4. Subjugated knowledge

In the 1978 text “What is critique?”, Foucault connects the question of subjugation to social critique. He argues that if “governmentalization is a movement that subjugates individuals through the reality of a social practice with mechanisms of power that claim to be based on truth,” then “critique is the movement that enables the subject to take up the right to question truth on its effects of power and to question power about its discourses of truth” (Reference Foucault, Fruchaud, Lorenzini, Arnold and O’Farrell2024, 26). Foucault thus defines critique “as the suspension of the combined effects of power and truth, by the person who is subjected to it,” but also as “an experience, in the full sense of the word, whether or not it is conducted as a first-person discourse or follows the path of deduction or empirical research” (Reference Foucault, Fruchaud, Lorenzini, Arnold and O’Farrell2024, 27). The 1978 text indicates that critique is an epistemological strategy that takes the effects of truth enmeshed in power relations as its object, based on an experience within that power relation that is either personal or scientific. Hence, critique, envisaged as such, creates or builds on a resistance-knowledge that opposes the dominant regime of power-knowledge. Whereas feminist standpoint theory prioritizes first-person discourses to critique, we’ll see that Foucault’s genealogical method follows a different, third-person path of research.

In the lecture series “Society must be defended,” Foucault reflects more substantially on the connection between critique and subjugation. There, he claims that the possibility of critique arises precisely from the local knowledges that emerge from subjugated positions. He argues that “the essentially local character of the critique in fact indicates something resembling a sort of autonomous and noncentralized … theoretical production that does not need a visa from some common regime to establish its validity” (Reference Foucault2003, 6). It is suggested that genealogical critique is made possible by the reoccurrences of local and marginal kinds of knowledge, that is, by the creation or recirculation of resistance-knowledge. This is testified by Foucault’s introduction of the notion “subjugated knowledge” to approximate these local kinds of knowledge, but also by his invocations of “counter-histories” (Reference Foucault2003), “counter-memories” (Reference Foucault2020a), and “counter-conducts” (Reference Foucault2009). In all these cases, Foucault discusses certain forms of subjugated knowledge as being points of reference to expose relations of power and their entanglement with discourses of knowledge.

More precisely, Foucault’s notion subjugated knowledge refers to two kinds of knowledge. First, he has in mind “historical contents that have been buried or masked” by the historical development of scientific discourse (Reference Foucault2003, 7). These blocks of knowledge encompass “historical, meticulous, precise, technical expertise” (Reference Foucault2003, 8) that has been at the forefront of scientific discourse, but which has become marginalized over time. Foucault suggests that these “historical contents,” which have lost their significance, “allow us to see the dividing lines in the confrontations and struggles that functional arrangements or systematic organizations are designed to mask” (Reference Foucault2003, 7). Hence, buried kinds of historical knowledge are also typically the kinds of knowledge that Foucault’s archeological studies were interested in. Although they were “present in the functional and systematic ensembles,” over time, they became “masked,” until the point at which “critique was able to reveal their existence by using … the tools of scholarship” (Reference Foucault2003, 7). The function of masked discourses of knowledge within genealogical critique, however, not only testifies to the historical break between scientific epistemes (as Foucault’s archeological works would emphasize) but also underlines that these breaks and changes are subject to struggles over power relations.

Secondly, however, Foucault also uses the notion of “subjugated knowledge” to capture discourses that have been disqualified as “nonconceptual,” “insufficiently elaborated,” “naïve,” “hierarchically inferior,” or “below the required level of erudition or scientificity” (Reference Foucault2003, 7). These “singular, local … noncommonsensical knowledges” (Reference Foucault2003, 8) come “from below” (Reference Foucault2003, 7) vis-à-vis dominant scientific discourses, stemming from “the psychiatrized, the patient, the nurse, the doctor” or other local positions (Reference Foucault2003, 7). Moreover, like the “masked” discourses of the past, local knowledges can reappear to the forefront of social life. Their reappearance is often invoked by the power asymmetries in present social constellations, within which they testify to differential and local discourses emerging from the margins of dominant discourses. Again, Foucault explicitly suggests that local and marginal knowledges “made … critique possible” (Reference Foucault2003, 7).

Taken together, Foucault understands subjugated knowledge as both historically forgotten knowledge practices and as knowledge systems that were never considered worthy of the label of proper knowledge. Hence, Medina rightly notes that, for Foucault, “subjugated knowledges are forms of experiencing and remembering that are pushed to the margins and rendered unqualified and unworthy of epistemic respect by prevailing and hegemonic discourses” (Reference Medina2011, 11).

Given Foucault’s comments about the importance of resistance for genealogical critique, genealogy can be understood as a model of critique that utilizes disqualified and marginalized resistance-knowledges to problematize the emergence and stabilization of regimes of power-knowledge. Indeed, Foucault explicitly emphasizes that (genealogical) critique is only possible “thanks to the reappearance of these knowledges” (Reference Foucault2003, 7–8). As such, subjugated knowledges are precisely the “chemical catalyst” (Foucault Reference Foucault1982, 778, 780) that Foucault mentions elsewhere. Reflecting on subjugated knowledges, he suggests that genealogical critique relies on the confrontations that subjugated points of view face when they resist their marginalization and argues that it was “the coupling together of the buried scholarly knowledge and knowledges that were disqualified by the hierarchy of erudition and sciences that actually gave the discursive critique … its essential strength” (Reference Foucault2003, 8).

Moreover, Foucault attests that reference to subjugated knowledge makes it possible to set free “a historical knowledge of struggles” that contains “the memory of combats,” “struggles” and “fights” (Reference Foucault2003, 8). Subjugated knowledges are not simply different paradigms of knowledge, they also always already contain moments of resistance that are embedded within predominant webs of power. Hence, genealogy does not merely serve as an epistemological exercise; it mobilizes “the insurrection of knowledges … against the centralizing power-effects that are bound up with the institutionalization and workings of any scientific discourse organized in a society such as ours” (Reference Foucault2003, 9).

I have already suggested that Foucault’s archeological commitments imply that he understands orders of knowledge as being historically situated. However, when Foucault explains genealogy as an “attempt to desubjugate historical knowledges … to enable them to oppose and struggle against the coercion of a unitary, formal, and scientific theoretical discourse” (Reference Foucault2003, 10), he mobilizes a more specific kind of situatedness. Indeed, Foucault approaches subordinated knowledges from the perspective of the aforementioned correlation between power-knowledge and power-resistance. He recalls that “archaeology is the method specific to the analysis of local discursivities,” whereas genealogy “brings into play the desubjugated knowledges that have been released from them” (Reference Foucault2003, 10–11).

By approaching the antagonism between power and resistance in terms of their mobilization of marginalized knowledge claims, it becomes possible to draw a comparison with the approach to knowledge typical of standpoint theories. My claim is that genealogical critique assesses the relationship between hegemonic discourses of power-knowledge and subjugated knowledge in a manner analogous to the way in which standpoint theories rely on the inversion thesis, albeit on a different level. We have seen that the inversion thesis suggests that the marginalizing effects of dominant relations of power create the condition of possibility for those affected by regimes of power and domination to have an epistemologically relevant insight into their operations. Increasingly, Foucault’s genealogies refer to the subjugation of marginalized resistance-knowledge to problematize dominant regimes of power. This gesture mimics the inversion thesis as far as the situated knowledge stemming from marginalized social strata conditions the genealogist’s exposure of hegemonic discourses of knowledge as regimes of power. In the case of genealogical critique, the existence of subjugated resistance-knowledges, which are the other of the power relation with power-knowledge, testifies that hegemonic knowledge formations (which are also regimes of power) are inverted and contested. Differing from standpoint theory, then, genealogical critique does not participate in bringing this inversion into being (or “achieving” it) but brings marginalized knowledges back into memory.

Although Foucault only uses the term “subjugated knowledge” in “Society must be defended,” there is reason to commit to the definition of genealogy as “this coupling together of scholarly erudition and local memories … to make use of that knowledge in contemporary tactics” (Reference Foucault2003, 8). Over the course of his life, Foucault has provided other definitions of genealogy, however. Still, whichever definition one refers to, they share two interconnected aims, namely (1) to “show the specific ways in which social institutions, forms of recognition, and ways of life have come to be as they are and how they in some instances oppressively marginalize other people,” and (2) “to develop interruptive knowledge that can lead to liberating options for those marginalized people and those who unwittingly oppress themselves” (Scott Reference Scott, Lawlor and Nale2014, 165). Even according to Foucault’s very first definition, in “Nietzsche, genealogy, history,” genealogy “must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history—in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts” (Foucault Reference Foucault2020a, 369). Although Foucault does not explicitly reflect on subjugated knowledges there, he does more generally note that genealogy is interested in “the accidents, the minute deviations—or conversely, the complete reversals—the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things which continue to exist and have value for us … to discover that truth or being lies not at the root of what we know and what we are” (Foucault Reference Foucault2020a, 374).

Scholarship has acknowledged, moreover, that from 1976 onwards, genealogy has arrived at a “possibilizing” moment, which beyond mere problematization of dominant discourses showcases “important moments in which the focus is not on normalising or subjugating power/knowledge mechanisms, but squarely on critical attitudes or ‘counter-conducts’, that is, struggles ‘against the processes implemented for conducting others’” (Lorenzini Reference Lorenzini2020, 9) Indeed, in the 1978 text “What is enlightenment,” Foucault notes such a possibilizing moment of genealogical critique, stating that “critique will be genealogical in the sense that it will not deduce from the form of what we are what it is impossible for us to do and to know; but it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think” (Reference Foucault2020c, 315–16).

Hence, even in the cases where Foucault’s genealogies focus primarily on regimes of power-knowledge rather than resistance-knowledge, the existence of deviations and resistance(-knowledges) is pivotal for the genealogical analysis of regimes of power. Insofar as genealogy shows how apparatuses of power-knowledge are the outcomes of contingent turns in history, it makes sense to understand the contingency of history as dependent on the myriad of ways in which the other pole of the power relation resists it. The fact that power is always a relation to potential nodes of resistance is testified to by a vast array of examples throughout Foucault’s oeuvre (see Lorenzini Reference Lorenzini2020; Vervoort 2025b). Although the mass of Foucault’s genealogical analyses hinges on archival research on the functioning of the power apparatuses (doctrines, theories, jurisprudence, reporting on examinations, statistics, etc.) all these forms of power would not have been perceivable if there hadn’t been subjectivities (prisoners, insurrectionists, deserters, sexual minorities, etc.) resisting power listed in those archives. Indeed, in one of his earliest texts on genealogy, Foucault points out that genealogy “disturbs what was previously considered immobile; it fragments what was thought unified; it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself” (Reference Foucault, Thompson and Zurn2020a, 374). In a 1977 lecture, he suggests that the role of the critical philosopher is to “analyse, clarify, and make visible, and thus intensify the struggles that develop around power, the strategies of the antagonists within relations of power, the tactics employed, the foyers of resistance, on the condition in sum that philosophy stops posing the question of power in terms of good and bad, but rather poses it in terms of existence” (Reference Foucault2018, 192; cf. Sonderegger Reference Sonderegger2019, 149).

To take just one preliminary example, referring to the modern discourse on homosexuality, Foucault writes:

Thus, Foucault does not only address the (disciplinary and biopolitical) power effects of modern discourse on sexuality; rather, he immediately notes that the same discourse of power-knowledge also produces the possibility of an inverted vocabulary that allows those most affected by a certain kind of power relation to speak against power. Put differently, discursive power does not marginalize without residue. Rather, marginalized subjectivities produce their own situated knowledge, their own discourses, so that “discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy” (Reference Foucault1998, 98). Genealogical critique brings those standpoint knowledges back into memory.

In sum, Foucault understands his own critical project as being conditioned by the existence of moments of resistance which are fundamental to the possibility of critique. He admits that practices of resistance do not rely on the theorist to achieve the inversion of power relations, but at the same time suggests that the theorist can contribute to the intensification of their struggles. Accordingly, Foucault’s genealogies not only possess a problematizing (Koopman Reference Koopman2013; Allen Reference Allen2016) effect that denaturalizes existing power relations, but also a transformative moment. Indeed, genealogical critique does more than simply unearth the contingency behind naturalized relations of power. Rather, critique also “opens up new possibilities for action, as well as for personal and social transformation” (Lorenzini Reference Lorenzini2020, 6) by turning to “moments in which men and women actually tried ‘no longer being, doing, or thinking’ what they (were told they) were or had to do or think” (Lorenzini Reference Lorenzini2020, 11). The task of theorist, then, is to be “the one who, in the inertias and constraints of the present, locates and marks the weak points, the openings, the lines of power, who incessantly displaces himself, doesn’t know exactly where he is heading nor what he’ll think tomorrow because he is too attentive to the present” (Foucault Reference Foucault and Lotringer1996, 225).

To provide another telling example of Foucault’s third-person approach to genealogical critique, I will revisit his engagement with Groupe d’information sur les prisons (GIP), a French anti-prison activist collective. First, however, I will look at Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct as a form of resistance-knowledge.

5. Counter-conduct and “taking the floor”

In his lectures at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault uses the terms “governmentality” (gouvernementalité) and “regimes of truth” (régimes de vérité)—rather than the notion “power-knowledge”—to explain the relationship between discourses of knowledge, relations of power, and their effects on subjects. Foucault develops the latter term in The birth of biopolitics, but had previously introduced it in a 1977 interview.Footnote ¹ In this interview, he states that he has always been interested in “the politics of the scientific statement” (Reference Foucault2020b, 114). He also reiterates that his early archeological work focused rather on “systematicity,” “theoretical form,” and “something like a paradigm,” such that, as a consequence, the regime character of truth and the “power peculiar to the game of statements” were still “missing” (Reference Foucault2020 Reference Foucaultb, 114–15). Like the notion of power-knowledge, then, the notion “regime of truth” seeks to underscore that formations of truth are inseparable from techniques of power. Indeed, Foucault argues that “each society has its regime of truth,” which he defines as “the types of discourse it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances that enable one to distinguish true and false statements” and “the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth” (Reference Foucault2020b, 131). Accordingly, the notion of a regime of truth addresses the question of knowledge from within an economy of power.

In The birth of biopolitics, Foucault uses “regime of truth” to explicitly address political power in his genealogy of the modern state. As said, Foucault also introduces the concept of governmentality to denote a form of state power that seeks to promote the well-being of a population by relying on “a particular regime of truth that finds its theoretical expression and formulation in political economy” (Reference Foucault2008b, 18). In short, Foucault redefines the traditional notion of government to include “the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed.” As such, governmentality comes to mean “to structure the possible field of action of others” (Reference Foucault1982, 790), or to “conduct the conduct” of individuals and populations by acting on the conditions of their behavior.

A regime of truth, then, is the matrix of power-knowledge that governmental interventions implement to influence social conduct. Although Foucault mostly refers to regimes of truth in the context of his genealogy of the modern state, he also suggests that the term can be applied to his earlier studies. Like the politico-economic regimes of truth, other power formations utilize regimes of knowledge revolving around sexuality, madness, illness, or criminality to govern over populations. With respect to these regimes, Foucault’s genealogical approach aims to show “by what conjunctions a whole set of practices—from the moment they become coordinated with a regime of truth—was able to make what does not exist (madness, disease, delinquency, sexuality, etcetera), nonetheless become something, something however that continues not to exist” (Reference Foucault2008b, 19). As a result, regimes of truth constitute the grid of intelligibility according to which subjects and their actions are integrated in an economy of power.

Again, Foucault makes clear that governmental intervention must leave room for practices that do not conform. Whereas sovereign power only intervenes to the extent that its legal prohibitions are violated, governmental power productively interferes in the conditions of social conduct as far as it is free. Consequently, Foucault’s question “have there not been forms of resistance to power as conduct?” (Reference Foucault2009, 195) suggests a different kind of resistance from traditional revolutions, insurrections, and other forms of protest that target the rule of law (Cf. Vervoort Reference Vervoort2025b). Rather, resistance to the governmental conduct of conduct seeks to contest the regime of truth according to which social life is organized. Foucault refers to these revolts of conduct as “counter-conducts.” In the same way that he understands power and resistance to be inseparable correlates, Foucault argues that “there [is] an immediate and founding correlation between conduct and counter-conduct” (Reference Foucault2009, 196). Because counter-conducts are “revolts of conduct,” they form “an alternative to governmental direction in the form of another form of conduct” (Reference Foucault2009, 199). Foucault describes a variety of religious communities that have wanted to be “led differently, by other leaders (conducteurs) and other shepherds, towards other goals and forms of salvation” (2009, 194). As a result, anti-pastoral counter-conducts develop “a whole new attitude, religious behavior, way of doing and being, and a whole new way of relating to God, obligations, morality, and civil life” (Reference Foucault2009, 204). Like the well-known return to scripture proposed by Luther, many anti-pastoral counter-conducts sought to challenge the pastor’s role as mediator between the religious community and the truths of Christianity. As counter-conducts, they challenged the regime of truth on which the authority of the pastor rested. As such, anti-pastoral counter-conducts could be said to reverse the power relationship between pastor and flock by developing—achieving—a different regime of truth making possible the contestation of pastoral power.

Foucault also provides more contemporary examples, since his argument in the lectures on governmentality is to show how pastoral power gradually shaped the governmental strategies of the modern state. Indeed, his claim that liberal and neoliberal governmentality can be genealogically traced back to pastoral power underscores the importance of his exploration of counter-conduct as a form of resistance. Today, Foucault’s reference to medical dissent as a kind of counter-conduct is particularly relevant (Reference Foucault2009, 199). Despite its disastrous consequences, we saw during the COVID pandemic that anti-vaxxers—a practice of medical counter-conduct Foucault mentions explicitly—not only rejected mainstream medical rationality, but also appealed to a variety of alternative medical rationalities to contest the governmental power of public health institutions. Indeed, anti-vaccination discourses often claim that infection actually strengthens the immune system, especially if the body is responsibly managed (through diet, fitness, etc.). In addition to skepticism based on the alleged inefficacy and health hazards of vaccines, anti-COVID-vaccinationists also disseminated bewildering conspiracy theories, suggesting that the vaccination campaign only served the pharmaco-industrial complex or even a covert state elite (cf. Fisher Reference Fisher2020).

As with other forms of counter-conduct, anti-vaxxers rely on an alternative regime of truth, albeit not one that is necessarily any more truthful than the hegemonic sanitary regime. Rather, the recent example of anti-COVID-vaccinationism underlines the fact that counter-conducts challenge “the way in which knowledge circulates and functions, its relations to power” by asserting “the right to be different” (Reference Foucault2009, 211–12), rather than by being more truthful. Hence, Foucault’s reference to counter-conducts indicates that his genealogical method refers to different (rather than more valid) subjugated knowledge in unearthing power relations. As opposed to some standpoint theories, Foucault’s genealogical method does not regard marginalized perspectives as having access to a more accurate form of truth per se. Instead, Foucault’s method highlights that struggles from the margins of society mobilize forms of knowledge, so that, consequently, they are helpful to lay bare the regimes of truth that are dominant.

Consequently, Foucault’s genealogical approach suggests that, as far as struggles from the margins of society resist dominant mechanisms of power, they also counter the epistemic discourse on which power is based. According to his approach, genealogical critique relies on discourses of subjugated knowledge to expose the mechanisms of power and knowledge which stratify society. Thus, Foucault suggests that marginalized standpoints can problematize dominant mechanisms of power because they are engaged in an alternative regime of truth.

Another good example of Foucault’s critical engagement with marginalized knowledges is the Groupe d’information sur les prisons (GIP), an anti-prison activist collective he co-founded around the time he was working on Discipline and punish. As Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn argue, the GIP aimed at “opening a space within which prisoners … could speak and act for themselves” (Reference Thompson and Zurn2020, 5). As Foucault is one of the main initiators and authors of the texts of the GIP, the latter’s published works can be taken as one of Foucault’s main efforts to engage with practices of resistance (cf. Ilott Reference Ilott2022a, Reference Ilott2022b).

The idea behind the GIP’s interventions was that those incarcerated had already acquired the situated knowledge to critique the prison system. The complementary task of the GIP was therefore to provide the infrastructure to share and disseminate the knowledge that would otherwise remain literally imprisoned in individual cells. As the “GIP Manifesto” states: “we seek it from those who, in whatever capacity, have an experience of prison or a connection with it” (2020a, 64–65). Just as feminist standpoint theories rely on the everyday lived experiences of female subjects, the GIP prioritized the lived experiences of incarcerated people. By disseminating information, however, the GIP did not aim to “raise consciousness” in the traditional sense. Nor did it assume that knowledge of the forms of domination typical for the prison system resided in the minds of intellectuals (such as Foucault) who studied the carceral system. In fact, the preface to the GIP publication Intolerable 1 (Reference Foucault2020c, originally published in 1971), which Foucault supervised, explicitly states that “these inquiries are not made from the outside by a group of specialists: the inquirers, here, are the inquirees themselves. It is for them to take the floor [prendre la parole]” (Foucault, Reference Foucault, Thompson and Zurn2020c, 90). Thus, the work of the GIP aimed to actualize the possibility of resistance existing in fragmented situated knowledge of individual prisoners.

In other words, the prison revolt could be said to build on prisoners’ situated knowledge as an “inversion” of the power relations in which they found themselves. As in the case of standpoint theories, however, this inversion still had to be “achieved,” for example, through activist strategies like those the GIP aimed to intensify. Again, the achievement Foucault’s political commitment had in mind here was never intended to be achieved by him, himself, as a theorist, nor by the GIP as an organization. Foucault’s work with the GIP, too, takes on a third-person perspective, advancing that the inversion of power relations into an epistemic advantage regarding those relations of power to be achieved by those being subjected to these power relations. As such, the role of the theorist cannot be anything but a humble one catalyzing and supporting practices of critique already emerging from within marginalized standpoints. The public announcement “On prisons,” written by Foucault, testifies to the same relation between the GIP and the prisoners it sought to support, by stating that “it aims to let those who have an experience of prison speak. Not that they need us to help ‘raise consciousness’: awareness [conscience] of oppression is crystal clear there; they know the enemy well” (Foucault, Reference Foucault, Thompson and Zurn2020b, 66). Instead, the idea was “to enable them … to transmit what they know” so that their “experiences, these isolated revolts” can be “transformed into common knowledge and coordinated practice” (Foucault, Reference Foucault2020b, 66).

In an interview from the same year, Foucault again summarized the goals of the GIP as “giving the floor [donner la parole] to prisoners” (Reference Foucault, Thompson and Zurn2020d, 77). The extent to which Foucault was committed to the possibility of achieving resistance from inverted, subordinated, situated knowledges is demonstrated by another interview (with Pierre Vidal-Naquet), in which he argues that prisoners “had this awareness [conscience] for a long time, but it has not had the means to express itself. Knowledge, reactions, indignations, reflections on the penitentiary situation—that all exists on an individual level but still is not coming to light” (Foucault and Vidal-Naquet Reference Foucault, Vidal-Naquet, Thompson and Zurn2020, 110). Thus, Foucault explicitly endorses the idea that subjugated knowledge only achieves its resisting power by transcending the isolation of individual experience. As in the case of the achievement thesis central to standpoint theories, what is to be achieved is not the consciousness of a political group from the outside, but from within the perspective of the marginalized group itself. Indeed, Foucault argues that “when the prisoners began to speak, they possessed an individual theory of prisons, the penal system, and justice. It is this form of discourse which ultimately matters, a discourse against power, the counter-discourse of prisoners and those we call delinquents—and not a theory about delinquency” (Foucault and Deleuze Reference Foucault, Deleuze and Lotringer1996, 76).

However, the GIP’s emphasis on the inversion of subjugation into contestation brings Foucault closest to the standpoint theorists. His emphasis on the antagonistic character of resistance, and on the practices of contestation as building on counter-discourses that emerge from the margins of society, testifies to a comparable approach to the achievement of standpoint knowledge typical of feminist standpoint theories. Foucault is interested in these situated knowledges because they expose the regimes of power-knowledge to which they are immanent, and because they are positioned to resist them.