MICHEL FOUCAULT: KUASA VERSUS RASIONALITAS MODERNIS (REVALUASI DIRI SECARA KONTINU)

This paper presents Michel Foucault's thoughts on historical events in the past as they impact on the constitution of the self in the present. Thus, Foucault is known as an historian of the present. An expert in the history of the system of thought, he analyses how people thought and behaved throughout the history of philosophy from the Rennaisance to the classical period (17 th-18 in Foucault's classification) and onto the 20thth century. As a postmodernist (and post-structuralist) thinker, he critiques modern rationality based mainly on the ego, subject, and consciousness, as passed down to present day thinking by René Descartes. He analyses critically this exclusive rationality and confronts it with his notion of discourse. This paper also presents ways of reading important historical events which were, and are, influential in human life in line with Foucault's criticism.