Potere-sapere, giustizia e architetture giuridiche. Michel Foucault di fronte a un’ipotesi di riforma della Costituzione francese

This article analyses the theses through which Foucault criticizes a proposal for constitutional reform put forward by the French Socialist Party in the 1970s, which attached great importance to Foucault’s reflections on power and in whose elaboration the philosopher had been invited to participate. These theses have so far gone unnoticed, even in the most attentive scholarship. After an introduction aimed at showing the way in which Foucault worked on the relationship between law and truth, the article historically and theoretically contextualizes these theses by analyzing the philosopher’s relationship to this project and to French socialism, his position with respect to the contemporary debates on justice in France, the relationship between these theses and the reflections Foucault developed on the relationship between law and truth, as well as ones he was developing in that period on neoliberalism. In this way, the article accounts, for the first time, for the reasons why, in this project, which sought to constitutionalize the judiciary as a counter-power, Foucault saw not so much a juridical limitation of power as a new veridictional function of the judiciary.