关键词: 权力, 俄狄浦斯, 真理, 福柯, 知识

Abstract:

The thematic relationship between knowledge and power is of great importance through the whole of Foucault's theoretical thought. Thus his interpretation of the Greek tragedy Oedipus the King should not be neglected, because it can be treated as a supplement to his early writing on this "knowledge-power" relationship. In his analysis of Oedipus the King, Foucault introduces the concept of will to know. Through that concept, he attempts to replace the traditional causal chain, which is prima facie natural, between knowledge and the will to know, with a more complicated relationship between knowledge and power so as to account for the birth of modern systematized institutions of true discourse. Foucault's begins his own interpretation with a critique of Freud. He argues that, though Freud's psychological interpretation of Oedipus the King breaks off the traditional understanding of universal form of desire, it has overvalued the status of sexuality in human culture. On the contrary, what Oedipus the King exactly shows, according to Foucault, is the manifestation of truth and the operation of power institutions in discursive knowledge. Foucault establishes his "Oedipal Knowledge" in three levels. On the first level, the Oedipus fable reveals how some certain types of self-knowledge come into being, and how these different types of knowledge confront each other and finally fit together. On the second level, the Oedipus complex is not about sex, but the complicated interweaving of power-knowledge relation linked with Oedipus's identity:he is both at the same time a king, a criminal and incestuous. On the third and the last, the fable manifests a particular kind of juridical form of truth which originated in ancient times, and figures out how this juridical form of knowledge operates in the modern. Finally, I argue that Foucault's multi-level analysis of Oedipus the King suggests a transition of his research interest, which shifts from investigations of specific institutions of power to ancient thoughts on power.

Key words: Foucault, Oedipus the King, knowledge, power, truth