Oedipal knowledge

pp. 229-261

in: Michel Foucault, Lectures on the will to know and Oedipal knowledge, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

IN OEDIPUS THE KING, recognition, anagnōrisis,¹ by which the one who does not know becomes one who knows and by which the one who thought he did not know realizes that he already knew—has two particular characteristics. First of all, that of being "reflexive": the one who seeks is the object of the search;² the one who is ignorant is the one it is a question of knowing about; he who unleashed the dogs is himself the prey; the trail on which he set them takes them back to the point where he is waiting for them.