“The Last Refuge of the Scoundrel”: Debating between History and Theory

When “History” is called to represent silence, its metaphysical position is symptomatically felt . Tracing what F asolt calls “the historian's revolt”, this paper identifies the political impetus behind it as the symptom dictating Foucault's own silences/silencings (regarding D errida's intervention in his H istory of M adness ). In naming such a symptom/silence – in taking “ D errida's position” – this paper performs its own violence/decision by, both “justifying,” and betraying, this position; by installing itself in , instead of “above,” this curious “debate”. “The last refuge of the scoundrel” appears then as the reflective exteriority of a political antagonism that's based on a metaphysical difference with regards to the legitimate “seat” of authority (in F asolt, an antagonism between the historian and the C atholic C hurch). Finally, this trajectory is installed within a wider – metaphysical and historical – context, where H egel's famous saying, that the U niversity is the P rotestant's C hurch, might yet echo that distant metaphysical decision – still looming, like a “genealogical specter,” over A cademia and its S ocial S ciences.