So okay Foucault was a little previous when he announced the death of man, but only by forty years or so. He also made his famous pronouncement knowing two things. firstly that humanity the world would be defended as a category by those who are actually undermining it silently - but also that the change here is deeply historical and complex- a history he new so well.
the old category of man- man the heroic traders and chooser, man the doyen of the free market and the fee society, man the free - the end of his history - as a strange creature forged within the fires of the struggles in Europe and its New word from say the fifteenth century to the nineteenth.
it was not a self evident affair- but rather one that gathered its paradigm, is container for what humanity was in the margins - a margin that then exploded in a sequence of voilient revolution about the nature of consciousness, conscience knwoeldge and freedom; a struggle with is heros (Cromwell, Locke, Hue, Kant, Rousseau, St just Napoleon etc) and its villain (sundery kings). A conflict that then had two rather different ends. the model for wht himanity was was worked out pretty much in full by the end start of the nineteenth century, and in Hegel's remark that this was the end of history itself- this version of Man the free.
The second part of the history here was far more complicated it has taken far longer for the version of humanity espoused in this freeedom to bleed across the world. it took ling enough in Britian ( a century before the poor and women were trusted with the vote), and simply has not happened elsewhere. nor is it that simple in the West - where we long ago realized democracy is not necessarily a great for government, so much as it is a humane way to ritually slaughter a monarch who feels no longer lucky. Election by definition are meant to usher in the new - and do so regardless of actual possibility.
and yet - and foucault of course new this very well -there was always other threads ripping across this freedom. Individuals were being coerced into being free- that is they were regulated an monitored to ensure they fitted the paradigm for freedom - freedom had its cost. a cost that grew and developed over the years - in the rulebook and the instituition. Moreover this A secondary take on humanity that Foucault knew was likely to gain in power in the passing of the years. And indeed it of course has. Economics, selling goods,politics even has ceased to be about anything free - and politics of rationa lchoice. it has rather become all about nudging- using subtle cues to communicate to individuals or bits of individuals, to show that you are on their side, or point their mind in this or that direction. Power is slipping away then from the abstract domain of man the chooser, and into the shadow world or brainwave, and eye candy. we are coming then a problem for mentalists and psychologists to solve. Policies then slip way from actual policy,and become rather catch all phrase big-societies or the squeezed middle which we are all asked to project our meaning onto. Likewise i the world of half-dreaming it becomes difficult to mange ones desires or tell then apart from the world;we are connived with after all to believe our greeds are worthwhile and worth serving - and that we have in some sense a right to shiny thing. we become then implausibly wealthy, and yet that wealth is based on smoke and mirriors and nothing much more than desire and manipulation....
so much foucault knew: he knew that once the rules of psychology and microeconomics spread out of large institution and across society,sot that manipulation of individuals understood and Hunan the eye-catcher not Man the chooser - then the entire political edifice on which abstract-humanity-as-the-end-of-history was formed stars to look shaky and suspect. What price a democracy after all or a consumerism where these means you cannot make rational choices?
the problem is actually not why Man is dead so much as why we have not hard it yet - why Foucault is treated as the mad man in the market a still - by we who have killed humanity and yet worship his ghost.
Four types of reason come to mind. Firstly the prime murders of the human, the manipulater of minds rather need us to believe in humanity as a category- it makes their job easier if it is hidden.
Secondly humanity is of course flattered by supposing themselves to be rational humans. the Abstract category is then appealing as it allows us to claim we are kings of our own minds at least. We get then to be boss in theory....
Thirdly due to lack of alternatives. for those who reject oppression and rule by blood, humanity is the only apparent alternative hypothesis. It sticks because no one has an alternative view point - that is when all is said and done we would rather invent a human and then undermine that thought (which was abstract) and submit it to an whole range of different micro tortures (pulling this nature hither and thither) than actually pull individuals apart. a sentiment that is absolutely sound
Finally it is a mistake to understand the life and death of humanity as things apart. The system that is robust is the hypocracy itself- which undermines and propagates humanity. A system of shiny beads, abstract liberality and material prosperity and occasional choice: a fun in the hypocracy of pretending one has power while one has actually surrended it, while one feels smug in relation to the rest who do not have this thing, this freedom you have. an entire package of delightful delusion and cod morality that is very durable.
The realization of the death of man becomes then a political rally cry- a demand that we jolt out of the abstract and tittilating politics of today, a politics that has ushered greater poverty and great wealth, more slaves and yet less slavery - great plagues and yet also cures to plague, and endless little hypocracy and lip service to a justice actually no one believe in (if believe is to be defined by action at last). We must then allow abstract humanity to die - murder him - morn and move one, so free ourselves from the meaningless trap of cod humanity we caught in. that is Foucalt real gambit here. an idea that has not dated or lost its power. we need to kill 'MAN' we need to find other song to sing - and yet the problem still lies where to find them ( A problem Foucault was worming one when he died thirty years ago or so)? The Death of man is coming- but can we make it matter, make it significant or will be like the deaths of god protracted and eternal- and catch all in its endless restaged and pointless little drama?
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