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INTRODUCING
Fbucault
INTRODUCING
0
Chris Horrocks and Zoran Jevtic
Edited by Richard Appignanesi
S fl
INTRODUCINGL INTRODUCING INTRODUCING
A
INTRODUCING INTRODUCING
C Mjsk
I, Michel Foucault...
First published in the United States in 1997 by Totem Books Do not ask 'N
Inquiries to P0 Box 223, Canal Street Station who I am and do not ask me
New York, NY 10013 to remain the same.
Reprinted 1998
ISBN 1 874166544
Or should we see Michel Foucault as the author, whose work combines Foucault gave us the term transdiscurslve, which describes how, for
brilliant insight and eccentric detail, uniting contemporary philosophical example, Foucault is not simply an author of a book, but the author of a
practice with the archaeology of the many documents he patiently retrieved theory, tradition or discipline.
from history? And what should we exclude, given the huge shifts in
theoretical position over his career?
We can at least say that he was
the instigator of a method of
historical inquiry which has had
major effects on the study of
Foucault himself problematized the subjectivity, power, knowledge,
-
meaning of authorship a discourse, history, sexuality,
function, he claimed, which madness, the penal system
resolved or hid many and much else. Hence the
contradictions. term, "Foucaldian".
4
Foucault's Project Foucault Fiction
Foucault sought to account for the But Foucault does not take the "in my books I do like to make fictional use of the materials I assemble or
way in which human beings have idea of subjectivity in with authentic
put together, and I deliberately make fictional constructions
historically become the subject philosophical isolation. It elements?'
and object of political, scientific, becomes linked with - and even
economic, philosophical, legal and produced by knowledge and Let's "fictionalize" Foucault's life by turning it into a biographical account of
social discourses and practices. power through - dividing Foucault and his oeuvre or work.
practices where, for example,
psychiatry divides the mad from each of my
My fundamental the sane. He was born Paul-Michel Foucault, on 15 works is a part
question: "What form of Scientific classification: where October 1926, to Anne Malapert and of my wn
reason, and which historical science classifies the individual wealthy surgeon Paul Foucault, in
cdition5,
on led to biogra thy. ,,
as the subject of life (biology), conservative Poitiers in France. Paul-
labour (economics) and language Michel Foucault had a sister
(linguistics). Francine and a younger
Subjectification: the way the brother, Denys.
individual turns himself into a
subject of health, sexuality,
conduct, etc.
Foucault had
brown hair, a
big nose and
blue eyes.
Foucault didn't
like the name Paul-
Michel, because
nasty children made it sound like Polichinello (Punch)!
He changed it to Michel - perhaps expressing love for his Mum, who'd
insisted on the name at his birth.
Camp Catholics and Choirboys
Foucault was of the Catholic faith. He moved into the Lyce proper
Later, he said he enjoyed its camp in 1932 and remained there until
ritual. He was even a choirboy for 1936- the year he saw refugees
awhile. arriving from the Spanish Civil
War.
1930. Paul-Michel was enrolled
early in elementary class at the He was an enthusiastic cyclist
Lyce Henri-I V. and tennis player, but he was
short-sighted, and often missed
the ball. He enjoyed trips to the
theatre, and occasionally the
cinema.
June 1943: Passes his baccalaurOat Argues with his father about his career.
Medicine? Michel Foucault thought not - he wanted to go to the prestigious
academic hothouse, the ENS (cole Normale Suprieure) in Paris.
Paris -The Top 100 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1 P0-1831)
is the
he world, theretor
us with a rational
process. C:
Hegel had started the attempt to explore the irrational and to integrate it
into an expanded reason. But was this still part of the modern task of
-
philosophy the search for a total system which would absorb unreason?
modern reading Philosopher Alexandre Kojeve
of Hegel shows us that (1900-68) had also rescued Hegel
P7
from the Romantic view of him
philosophy cannot see itself as a p reclated the
view of history which can achieve as the lumbering creator of
issues Hegel ral5ed ' but was
completion, but an endless task systems. 0t re st ed I n provI g a
carried out against the nintre al theo of histo
dirr y
ragene
backdrop of an infinite Hegel was now modern!
(A horizon!
r iOWJy I 11O1J
a predictable mechanism,
Foucault was not rejecting reason as such, but he did refuse to see it as a
but a site of often random
'way out" or inevitable outcome of history. His engagement with philosophy
struggle in a cruel world is not to provide a
system for the conditions in which knowledge or truth is
Possible or reliable (as Kant did), but to examine what reason's historical
effects are, where its limits lie, and what price it exacts.
Foucault the Student
But In
anger
Psycho rom \
went my 5hrink
At lwasgayand
day!
sexually active in my latE
Private "otm
Pita adolescence. But I had tc
be discreet about my lovc
of men.
Philosophical Currents... and Phenomenology
-
Foucault was interested in two dominant brands of philosophy in France. phenomenology is the investigation of the way that things objects,
-
images, ideas, emotions appear or are present in our consciousness.
The philosophies of experience, the subject, meaning and
consciousness -existentialism and phenomenology. Phenomenology does this without reference to the status of objects outside
our consciousness of them. It suspends the object "in itself", and only looks
The work of existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) asks at our experiencing of it.
what it is to exist as a human being, how individuals
experience their existence, how they make choices and deal
with freedom and authenticity. Some versions of pure We Must exclude e
phenomenology, such as all assumptions and theories
that of Edmund Husserl nts of consciousness in
meaning Martin Heldegger (1889-1976) (1859-1938), seek the order to discover innate structures or
in the world 15 not prior emphasized Being rather than grounds of human forms of consciousness which constitute
or innate, it derives from existence... knowledge. all possibilities Of mental
m
eAstence. It's a philosophy eXp ne C
xpenence5.
1~
based on the subject./ 51
CAny
%
&A
the usual distinction
between a thinking subject
and an objective, exterior
human beings inhabit Wrhe phenomenology
world. We are
J life - we pick up things, ask Maurice Merleau-Ponty
things, discuss things_ 61) attempts to describe
ns of individuals as they
e space, colour and light.
Foucauft would see how this Dasein analysis could provide a tool whereby
the Being of a psychiatric patient, for example, is central to an Phenomenologists have no interest in explanations.
They want the immediate experience!
understanding of the psychiatric world.
Science and its Epistemology Truth as Activity
n the most
convincing "truths" are ri
automatically accepted
the scientific communit';
I asked a simple
question: "What is Foucault's idea was to
psychology? Is this take some of the terms
and methods of the
history of science and
apply them to another
-
philosophical object
the human subject. the human subject took itself
as the object of possible
I owed a great debt knowledge?
/tom, and later close Through what
forms of rationality and
historical conditions?
And, finally, at what
price?
20
Foucau It's History of Experience
Political Currents
Foucault made the ink. No Foucault joined the Parti Communists Franais (PCF) in 1950 at the
longer would history be (1 suggestion of depressive Marxist mentor, Louis Althusser (1918-90). This
opposed to experience. was a Stalinist party at its most powerful because it still enjoyed credibility
from its activities in the wartime Resistance.
I L
-
The history of experience brings 7
together Foucarit the historian
and Foucault the philosopher.
Philosophy was not an inquiry into
itself, but an application of
philosophy to the human sciences:
linguistics psychology, sociology.
How was it that knowledge and
"
711
experience were incorporated into
an apparently objective view of
man as object? If we cannot take .
i experience as a given truth. liazily adopted
!T-'-'the Marxi5t x5t belief that economic
perhaps the questioning of r-
conditions determine social an
scientific method can force us to
t
ask: under which circumstances politic
It Ical~t~o
11iiIf..f e b u t wa5 critical of the
~01 anti-5emitic
should we see any knowledge (of FCF'5 propaganda and the
self or world) as tenaUe? What 551inster
1 r "proletarian"
p rol t rl 5 1 tiflc
5cientific
other factors apply? doctrine5 it supported. 7d
Such as? Stalinist biologist TD. Lysenko (1898-1976) who believed that
characteristics in the biological world were inherited and determined.
It would be several years before
those interests came to fruition in Foucault was beginning to see that scientific knowledge was linked to
Foucault's work. Meanwhile, he * power rather than truth.
M01
kept studying.
And according to Party dogma, his homosexuality would have been aligned
with "bourgeois decadence".
Foucault Blows It Towards Psychology?
In spring 1950, Foucault took his final exams and passed the
written stage. But his oral on "hypotheses" let him down. He had
tried to show off!
In 1951, he finally
passed but he was
furious that he had to At this point,
speak on "sexuality" in his hadn't yet founded
oral. Little did he know how
important this subject was to
3/ psychoanalysis on linguistic
theories.
'(
become I was presenting my ideas on
--
s ..
i,. identification by referring to the
After feigning depression to proclivities of locusts and
avoid military service in 1951, sticklebacks.
he went to research a doctoral
thesis at the alt-male
Fondation Thiers. He was
unpopular. He had an affair
there, and then escaped to the
University of Lille after one year
to take up an assistantship.
He
Foucault had been visiting Saint-Anne, the Paris psychiatric hospital.
"rational" basis for research -this basis had
had grown interested in the
To relax in the summer to be questioned.
hols, he visited his
Mum and helped her to He also grew obsessed with Rorschach tests and tried them out on
pickle gherkins and
college mates. 'That way, I'll know what's on their minds:'
water the garden.
25
Experimental Dreams? psychology meets Heidegger
r .
our existence is falling and
our
a fulfilment of a Wish,
Dreams are to be
but of fundamental
taken literally
structures.
27
Illness and Marx Love on the Rocks
In this Marxist reading, madness is a consequence of alienation from In the early 1950s, Foucault He knew historian Paul Veyne
oneself and history, because material conditions are unresolvable. was moving in the same circles (b. 1930), who would later become
as the young musical genius a huge influence on Foucault's
pierre Boulez (b. 1925). He history of sexuality.
It is not because one is ill that one
also met and had a passionate
is alienated, but because one is
affair with Jean Barraqu Veyne found Foucault too
alienated one is ill.
(1928-73), a young composer. misogynistic, while Foucault
They shared a taste for thought Veyne's heterosexuality
The social relations determined by
Heidegger and Nietzsche. was a bore!
the present economy, in the guise
Foucault gave him literary ideas
of competition, exploitation,
to turn into music. In December 1955, Foucault
imperialist wars and class returned to Paris for Christmas.
struggle, provide man with an The love affair with Barraqu was
experience of his human Listen to me,
in poor shape.
environment that is constantly leave loucault for
haunted by contradiction. your own good... This man will
destroy you when he has J
'N. destroyed himself. _Z
eat
Foucault was denying that mental illness should be seen in negative terms,
and stated that while psychology had moved from discussing evolution
(science) to man (history), it still relied on "metaphysical" or moral
prejudices.
Sweden! Foucault the Boozer
In August 1955, Foucault was invited to apply to the Department of Foucault was a great cook, and entertained friends. He also drank heavily
Romance Studies at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, at the to compensate for the long dark nights, and cruised men.
recommendation of Georges Dumzil - "le professeua'" -(1898-1986),
- -
specialist in Indo-European religions and mythologies. Dumezil employed ar He bought a brown Jaguar sports car using cash from his family which
he sometimes drove into ditches because he was so There were
early form of structuralism. pissed.
the stories and
frequent trips to Stockholm, where he enjoyed company,
His work concentrated on sets of universal, unchanging relations between songs of the suave Maurice Chevalier (1888-1972).
and within cultures.
Ma ncism is
the philosophy of an In 1957, students rioted against the
occupying force.. suppression of the press, and
Party membership declined.
He decided to submit it as
a doctoral thesis, but it
was too generalized and
literary a piece of work for
Uppsala's empiricism. In this climate of suspicion, Foucault fucked a young man who was working
Foucault ti for the police to pay for his university education. Foucault was advised by
his approai the ambassador to leave Warsaw.
32 33
Mudwrestling 1960-61 - Rapid Change
Foucault travelled with a lady inspector from the Foucault's Dad had died. Foucault used his inheritance to buy a modern flat
Ministry of Education on a visit to Cracow. She in rue du Dr Finlay with a view of the Se
-
inadvertently barged into the Fox's bedroom to
find him in the arms of a young bloke. This was the France of Charles de Gaul
atom bombs, the new currency, New WE
France, but also a troubled one.
Foucault later claimed this episode prevented him from stopping the events
I ntellectuals
ctu Is and
of the French student riots of May 1966, because the Ministry of Education A signed a petition in
did not take his reform plans seriously!
support of draft dodgers
F7:artl5t5
and deserters from the
)4e
Between all this, he finished his two Madness and Civilization was not a view of the history of madness from a
theses which he decided to submit The Enlightenment: psychiatrist's standpoint.
N
at the Sorbonne in Paris. the intellectual, philosophical, N
cultural and scientific spirit of
He first presented a complementary This would assume
the 18th century. A belief in
thesis on the Enlightenment that madness was a constant,
reason, progress, man's "maturity" - in
negative objective fact
philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724- and a general rejection of
other words, an account of
1804), in which he used the term tradition, religion and
mme
adne555 from
fror the point of view
"archaeology" for the first time, and
which indicated the period of history
authority. I f ,"scientific"
clel reason.
It spelt my
move beyond science, to
the point where philosophy
and science had something
k.. in common: reason. Later Foucault said his object was "knowledge invested in the complex
system of institutions". Authorities, their practices and opinions would be
studied to show madness not as a scientific or theoretical discourse, but as
Jury members then listened to Foucault's major work... a regular daily practice.
37
Folly and Unreason The Classical Era
Foucault instead proposed a close study of madness itself (Heideggerian Foucault refers to the "classical era" of the 17th and lath centuries in
strands here - of its "silence" beyond the language of reason). Europe to show that madness is an object of perception within a "social
space" which is structured in different ways throughout history. Madness is
an object of perception produced by social practices, rather than simply an
"To capture a space, words
object of thought or sensibility which could be analyzed.
without a language, the We must try to return
stubborn murmuring of a in history to that "zero point" in
language which seems to the course of madness when it was
-
speak quite by itself suddenly separated from reason That question
What is madness?
breaking down before it has both in the confinement of the insane is replaced by a new one: "Mow is
achieved any formulation and and in the conceptual isolation of the experience of madness put into
passing back without any fuss madness from reason,
into the silence from which it as unreason.
was never separated?'
In the medieval period - the 2. Renaissance Folly Madness was the 1ruth of knowledge,
Middle Ages - man's dispute with but the sane man's knowledge and
madness was a drama in which all Madness comes to the fore in learning were an absurd folly. The literary
the secrets of the world were at the late 15th century. charactert!Hhe Fool, in his wise idiocy,
stake. The experience of madness already knew this.
was clouded by images of the Fall, Man's life is no longer mad on
God's will, the Beast, the end of account of the inevitability of
time and the world. death, but because death ties at
I show how mad reason
the heart of life itself.
itself is.
Death was the dominant theme.
Man's madness was in not seeing
that death's reign was nigh. It was
The head From the 15th century onwards,
therefore necessary to bring him
will become a skull
back to wisdom with the spectacle through literature, philosophy and art,
5 already empty. the subject is tackled in different ways.
of death.
Madness now exists in man.
The experience of madness takes the
form of moral satire, rather than
threats of invasion by the madness of
the world which haunted painters like
Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516).
Folly points to the madness and error
of reason itself.
-1 Tj
Old, empty leper houses were used for a new purpose - to confine.
The age of reason banged up the insane as well as the poor. In 1656, a But spectacle played its part. At Bethlehem hospital in London, lunatics
decree founded the Hopital Gnral in Paris. One in a hundred Parisians were displayed to 96,000 people a year. Madness had once been mimed,
was locked up - the mad with the poor and the criminal. flow it was presented as flesh and blood - no longer a monster inside
oneself, but a thing to look at and to contain.
42
Treated Like Animals Reform, Asylums and Capture of Mir \
The confinement wasn't inspired by a desire to punish or correct - simply to Late 18th century psychiatric reformers saw punitive measures as ill-
treatment. The insane were physically liberated and placed under a moral
discipline and sever. So the insane had a beast-like existence behind bars,
chained to walls and gnawed by rats. educational and psychiatric discourse. But, in fact, they were now less free
because even their minds were subject to treatment.
Cures for madness were directed at the body of the insane person, as well
as his imagination. These were usually conducted outside the hospitals. ial failure
he asylum
Music, running, travel, immersion in cold water, purification with cleaning
agents and "soapy foods" - and even wounding - alleviated boiling spirits.
4.1900 and Freud the Divine Critical Reception
Personalities like Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) silenced condemnation of Foucault's work calls into
madness. He abolished regimes of silence that reformers had employed. question the origins of
He made the mad talk. But he also developed the structure which included psychology's scientific status,
the medical personage - him - as omnipotent and quasi-divine. without submitting to the
authority of historical sources of
For Foucault, the only way for madness to live "in itself", outside of information. It doesn't attempt to
authoritarian reason, is through art and philosophy. define madness. It shows ways
in which it was experienced,
The world that thought to measure and justify madness through psychology -
imagined and dispersed
must justify itself before madness - before the excess of works like those phenomenologically -with some
of Artaud, Van Gogh and Nietzsche. lip-service paid to structural
change (economics, society,
science).
Not all
madness is of
artistic interest.
But ma
( is best b
literat
47
Foucault vs. Derrida, 1963
psychiatry
Look at my In a lecture, post-structuralist roucault -
"Foucault sees a history which both deconstructed Foucault's three history of madness itself
Foucault's
'
structuralist
totalitarianism here
is similar to the
violences of the
classical age.
4
~
The two intellectuals
WRM.-
Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) by GlUes Deleuze (b. 1925)
and Felix Guattari (b. 1930). - fell out over this.
48
Clermont-Ferrand - Conflict Begins Language and Literature
Foucault had become a respected intellectual. He wrote articles and Foucault's interest in literature was at its height here, particularly in novels
attended conferences, reviewed literature and spoke on religious deviation. which explored the mad slippage between language, its sense and the
Canguilhem's report and Hyppolite's support led to a job offer from the worlds it made, such as the crazy Locus Solus (1914) by Raymond
University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1960. He taught psychology Roussel (1877-1933).
When Communist philosopher Roger Garaudy (b. 1913) moved there, with
the alleged influence of premier Georges Pompidou (1911-74), a bitter feud les Iettres du blanc sur lea bandes du
began. vieux billard (the letters in white around the The description is not
edges of the old billiard table) language's faithfulness to its
They came to blows. object, but the constantly
do you have renewed birth of an infinite
can be changed into
again 5t me? relationship between words
les Iettres du blanc sur les bandes du and things.
vieux pillard (the white man's letters about
4What
theold plunderer's gangs)
-7
7
cc0
Latin is a
made by
mm
to confuse
uLu
Y bandit5
I t5
people, and
from a frog
I've nothing
against you. Just
against stupidity.
50
Medicine and Methodology Medical Knowledge Mutates
In 1963, Foucault published The Birth of the Clinic: an Archaeology of The practice of medicine is a shaky mixture of rigorous science and
Medical Perception, based on his reading of every book of clinical uncertain tradition. As a system of knowledge, however, it finds its own
medicine produced between 1790 and 1820. "This book is about space, -
coherency. And this knowledge transforms over time from a language of
about language and about death; it is about the act of seeing, the gaze?' fantasy and myth
Clinical medicine was more than just opinions. It became linked to 19th
century sciences like biology, physiology and anatomy, as well as The patient has
institutions like hospitals and practices such as administrative inquiry.
membranous tissues like
Foucault wanted to account for the rules of this knowledge.
pieces of damp I'm speaking
parchment What is the the language of medical
matter with you? fantasy here. My medicine
I wondered has no perceptual basis.
how it was )I hatt know[
could have arisen, changed, 5
del
eveloped and offered
off r scientific
theory new fields of observations) to one which assumes objectivity.
a and how 5cientific
nd a
learning
I q had been imported
:objeCt5,
ANATO"Y.-
J4
Ft
52
Structuralism Knowledge as Classification
This is also a quasi-structuralist study of how medical discourses organize our perception of the body as Diseases were conceived as
themselves in relation to different structures - political, social, cultural and the natural "space of the origin transferring to the body when their
economic- and to each other, in order to demonstrate the changes that and distribution of disease", a qualities combine with the patient's
affected how things were spoken or seen, and space determined by the temperament.
what it was possible to see and say in a anatomical atlas, is merely one
historical period. of the various ways in which This was classificatory medical
process of improvement or
0
medical enlightenment.
14
a
tumour,
IThat's
Man and Death Barthes Gets Jealous
r.r
which privileges or
Death is a process which can be episteme. He is a product of 20th century French thought
- of visual perception, looking,
identified in failing organs and challenges ocular society philosophies
in promoting
.4 examining, painting, etc. He should look at his own premises -
r the eye as dominant principle:' Martin Gay, academic
We've sworn to
remain together forever!
. .;
---, - ,_
JI
The medical gaze is no longer that of the medical eye. but the gaze
of an eye that has seen death - a great white eye that unties the
knot of life:' FoLicault follows Georges Bataille (1887-1962).
-
Certainly Batailles erotic and death-fixated Story of the Eye
Apparently, Barthes fell out with Foucault
provided him with the eye as a viable concept.
because he coveted Defert, who was living
with Foucault in rue du Dr Finlay.
Nietzsche to the Rescue
Foucault had first read Nietzsche on a beach in Italy with his chum In a July 1964 conference on Nietzsche, Foucault discussed history and
Maurice Plnguet in August 1953.
interpretation, using the "three masters of suspicion": Priedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Karl Marx (1818-83).
in?
-
What interested Foucault in 1964 was the infinite nature of interpretation
Marx's interpretations of bourgeois ideological interpretations; Freud's of his
patients' interpretations of their neuroses; and Nietzsche's in his claim that
philosophy does not find knowledge but imposes endless interpretations.
Why was Nietzsche especially helpful to Foucault?
No More Knowledge Words and Things
possibility of a break
with Hegelian thought
and its contention that
history leads us to
Absolute and total
knowledge. This places
reason in doubt!
His project is to find the historical and fundamental codes of our culture -
Our present - not to reveal phenomenological perceptions of it.
63
Key Term No. 1: Archaeology Key Term No. 2: Episteme
W
the naturalists, economists and grammarians one period.
64
Taxonomy or Classification The Renaissance Episteme
Language is central to the book's project. Foucault presents a short story Words and things were united in their resemblance. Renaissance man
the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), about a Chinese thought in terms of similitudes: the theatre of life, the mirror of nature.
encyclopaedia. There were four ranges of resemblance.
Aemulation was
It divides animals according to an exotic classification
similitude within
distance: the sky
resembled a
"
(a) belonging to the emperor, N. face because it
(b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking \ had "eyes"- the
pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, sun and moon.
(g) stray dogs
way off look like flies.
"1
Convenientia
connected
tt- r \\ \'\2
This shows
things near to Analogy: a wider
the limitations of one another, range based less
What are the
our own systems
borders of our own way of e.g. animal and on likeness than
nf thouaht.
plant, making a on similar
thinking? How do we order th
world? Mow do cultural codes great "chain" of relations.
being.
Sympathy likened
anything to anything
else in universal
attraction, e.g. the
fate of men to the
course of the planets.
Analysis was born, heralded by Don Quixote, the knight created by Miguel
de Cervantes (1547-1616). Quixote is alienated by analogy in a world of
reason based on identities and differences, not signs and similitudes.
maybe a windmill.
And there is also taxinomia - a principle of
classification and ordered tabulation.
W
rubbish!
It definitely has the
identity of an airpowered
food-producing machine.
4Analogical
Classical Signs Representation Without a Subject
In the classical period, language is seen as transparent, with no need for
hidden or "occult" links. Signs are no longer placed upon things but are now
Maids of Honour (Las Meninas. 1656) by
"within" knowledge, signifying certainty and probability. Pictures and words
Diego Velasquez (1599-1660) is a
are not bound up with the order of things, but with representation itself. New
painting about representation. But of
empirical fields are now established.
whom? Of nothing but the system of
representation.
general grammar
/" Words represent N
There is an essential void. The people it
thought. Language is asked
how it functions as discourse. resembles (in the mirror. King Philip IV
Renaissance commentary and Queen Mariana) and the spectators
has yielded to classical who look at them are absent. Ar
criticism.
,efl /
natural histor
legend or fable.
-".
4 .
.-. 24
)nger the
/ ' Classical representation no longer needs a subject like royalty. It can only
Renaissance worries about
the "character" of metal in coinage. be made visible by its invisibility - by appearing in the mirror of
-
Now mercantilism treats gold and representation. The true subject is never to be found in the table or
- as a historical of life, labour and The classical
silver as a means to analyze all painting subject language.
kinds of wealth in a system episteme did not isolate a specific domain proper to man.
Lother A
Axiom: In the classical episteme the subject is bound to escape its own
representation
1800s: From Order to History Man as Modern Object
Biology
is the
o
butt great
great
trc e
force s v I0 hiddenhidden
The modern episteme bbasis developed
. on the
basiss ofof ttheir
he Ir Pr IM,
studies man in himself as and
an dln primitive
historical subject. It is inaccessible
a s s be
inaccessible
nucleus of
I
Of 0rIg
through man that knowledge c origin,~n
is possible in the empirical causalitya
ausalify
'story.
contents of human life:
man's body, his social
relations, his norms and
values.
73
Summary Man and His Double
means to organize or represent The classical era gave human beings a privileged position in the order of the
Language is no longer the sovereign
like others, to be investigated in the world. Man was not seen as a finite knowledge outlined by labour, language
knowledge. It is an object of knowledge
and body. In the modern episteme, instead, man is both a finite figure and a
same ways as living things, wealth, value and history.
strange empirico-transcendental doublet.
of
The question now is not what makes words possible, but are we capable
now is to make new links Knowledge has a
mastering them?The philosophical struggle He can -
physiological dimension
between language and being.
analyze his empirical such as brain neurons,
elf... etc.
And his
transcendental self ...
-
74 75
How Rational are Human Sciences? The End of Man - Is the Subject Finished?
- The last lines of The Order of Things: "Before the end of the 18th century,
But the human sciences - psychology, sociology, cultural history etc.
as an man did not exist. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is
pose a problem in the modern episteme. Can man take himself object
of science? Isn't the idea of man simply a projection of other sciences like an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end:'
be
biology? Aren't human sciences too empirical and too changeable to
thought of as anything other than irregular?
Me wrote in
u It proclaims 4 of the death of
the eclipse of man as a homo dialicus - man
Psychoanalysis ground of thought and who regains historical
or ethnology never get close suggests that knowledge itself truth. 1
to a general concept of man. They may be no more than our SimonedoBeauvoir '
unmake man, the dense object of the persistent self-delusion!
positive sciences like biology ...
But this has its good side.
1
1 16 1
One criticism of Foucault was that he made the break between classical Belgian Surrealist artist Rend Foucault in his reply and text of
and modern epistemes too stark, too block-like. What about epistemic Magritte (1898-1967) wrote a letter 1973 took as an example and title
overlaps or lags? And what about the role of mathematics and hard to Foucault, attempting to explain Magritte's This is Not a Pipe (1926)
sciences in history? the difference between similitude and The Two Mysteries (1 966).The
(of things, like the colour of peas) problem of resemblance - the
and resemblance (of thought, relation between words and things -
/ Foucault provides N which "resembles" the world it is studied in these paintings.
bourgeois consciousness with sees).
its best alibis. They suppress
You are so intent on
history, praxis, that is to say Let's look at their
progressive aspects of
commitment, and suppress heterotopic approach - meaning one or
history that you perceive
man. other - where the traditional bonds
any criticism of it as between language and image are
neo-capitalist!
disturbed, made different and in
tension.
p
. , ---o. -.
same way a fish exists in
water - it stops breathing
And we Catholic humanists
anywhere else!
think the death of man is
hard to stomach!-
Foucault traces two relevant principles in Western painting which lead from
the 15th century to Magritte's work.
79
Image and Text
esemblance was
always an affirmation of
/
an object. When an image is
a statement is assumed.
\painted,
"What you see is that."
80
Tunisia! 1966 Fights
Foucault took a post in the University of Tunis in Morocco. The In December 1966, a student
relaxed lifestyle suited him-good food, cannabis and rebellion began in Tunis, at first
handsome young men. He lived in Sidi Bou Said - then a colony because the police beat up a
of arty French expatriates -overlooking the sea. Defert visited student who would not pay for a
him often. bus ticket. It turned anti-Semitic
when Israel clobbered Arab armies
in the 1967 Six-Day War. Then
Foucault moved Foucaujt was ambushed by more
to a converted stable, police when driving a young lover
and slept on a mat on a (who'd been planted by the police)
raised platform. The locals home. Foucault was now disgusted
thought this philosopher and pliticized. He hid the
was a necromancer! dissenting students' seditious
A printing press in his back garden.
In Manet's work, the painted surface does not mask In 1975 they met by chance.
its materiality. It draws attention to its "paintedness".
Foucault gave him a slapping because of a ridiculous Foucault-like
Le Bar des FoIies-Bergere is one example. character that he'd put in a novel!
Structural Space The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969)
This new book provided the syntheses. Knowledge was an area between
opinion and scientific knowledge, and it was embodied not only in
theoretical texts or experimental instruments, but in a whole body of
practices and institutions.
Discourses are not linguistics systems or just texts - they are practices,
like the scientific discourse of psychoanalysis and its institutional,
philosophical and scientific levels.
-
By analyzing statements single units which constitute a discursive
-
formation we can see their constraints and where they situate the
speaker.
04
b- /
But we should
0
treat these documents like
monuments - not for their
5 reference to historical
87
Discourse Creates its Object Foucault and Aithusser
When medical, legal and judicial discourses refer to madness, they never
refer to a fixed object or experience, and they don't treat it as the same A statement does not
Foucault's idea of the
consist in analyzing relations
object. Yet there may be regularities between these discourses. statement corresponds
between the author and what he
to the term ideology, as
says ... but in determining the
used by the Marxist
position any individual can and
Links made by philosopher Louis must occupy in order to be the
Althusser (1918-90).
psychiatric discourse between :t of that statement.
criminal and pathological behaviour
don't imply a scientific and historical
88
Against Structuralism Reception of Archaeology
/1
/ Permanent
PerITla active 'discourse' take shape in the
and
relationships.,,," ( structures into which element of an 'outside' which is J
individuals are born. indifferent to my life and my death."/
Man is definitely
90
1968 - Paris in Turmoil Vincennes - on Show
92
January 1969: Vincennes Aggro Hyppolite Expires
When students at the Lyce Saint- Vincennes became notorious: Jean Hyppolite died in October 1968. His chair at the College de France
Louis were prevented by the police vandalism, graffiti, a market in was now vacant. Foucault was on the list of applicants. He had to submit
from watching films about May stolen books, drugs and a heav
1968, Vincennes students, joined police presence. Groups like the
by Defert and Foucault (dressed in Gauche Proletarienne wanted thE
a fetching corduroy suit) erected university to function on the
barricades in support and threw basis of worse is better.
rocks. Revolutionary Maoists spat on what constitutes a science when
Communist Party students. one wants to analyze it not in
When the police stormed the transcendental terms but in terms of
University, Foucault was arrested. to
history, to determine how knowledge
recorded the phenomena that until
Excellent for his credibility - but then were external to it.
he suffered the effects of tear gas!
94
New Term: Genealogy
desires, characterized by
ko
the will to dominate or
Kit
and violent.
,/ enealogy allows
for historical change,
Foucault's
is not bothered with
two-hour
finding a truth to history lectures at the
or describing neutral,
College were always
archaeological structures overcrowded. He felt lonely
of knowledge, but is on the lecture stage, surrounded
interested in history as by so many mikes linked up to
will to power. tape-recorders, even with a troop
of admiring young men curled
around his feet.
Genealogy Against History What is an Author?
An essay in honour of Hyppolite, entitled Nietzsche, Genealogy, History Everything is now a mask. For instance, the author's name is
(1971) indicated the relationship of genealogy to history and philosophy. The not so much about defining his
reference to Nietzsche's own Genealogy of Morals (1887) is obvious. In a lecture entitled "What is an identity, but is part of a discourse
Foucault states: 'The point is to make such use of history as to free it Author?" (1969), Foucault of the "author function" - involving
forever from the model, which is both metaphysical and anthropological, of examined the status of the appropriation, ownership and a
memory. The point is to turn history into a counter-memory?' author and his relation to texts. corresponding will to authenticate
All the conventions we use to or get back to the author's
"summon" the founding subject motives.
of the author are in doubt
Like NietZ5che'5
body of work. What
defines it -Just his
books? y
Jr
diiiiiiiiiiim
function acting to contain his
identity. 5houldn't we include his What difference
notes, drafts -and even laundry does it make who is
lists? 513eakinct?
"The author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle
by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, chooses and impedes the free
circulation of fiction?'
99
Tokyo 1970 Moving House
Foucault visited Japan before taking his post at the College. At Tokyo Foucault and Defert had moved to a bright eighth-floor flat in a modern
University he replied to Derrida's criticisms of Madness and block on rue de Vaugirard. They lined the living room with books, grew
Civilization, and attacked his deconstructionism - a strategy of close cannabis amongst the petunias, and entertained characters like Jean
reading of texts to reveal their contradictions and assumptions. Genet (b. 1910) and the lovely actress, Julie Christie (b. 1940). They had
nice views from the terrace, where Foucault enjoyed staring at a young
man who appeared each morning in an apartment opposite.
Derrida reduces
pedagogy
teaches the pupil
that there is nothing
outside the text
MThi5
Derrida has
misread Descartes' discout
on madness and failed t
At nine o'clocE
compare the French and
versions of the Mditatio he opens his window; he wears a
small blue towel, or blue underpants
I wonder what dreams his eyes found
in the fold of his arms, what words
or drawings are being /
born.
Where's
the make-up
room'
0
0
103
Political Engagement Political Allegiances
In December 1971, Foucault Foucault was now acting in support of Maoists, without sharing their belief
helped to found the GIP (Groupe in "cultural revolution" and a scenario of "imminent civil war".
d'information surles prisons).
The intellectual was now active! Some members of the GI P saw the prisoners as an ersatz proletariat.
- - as a form
Foucault sometimes described criminality including shoplifting
lUCy LC II U
The purpose of the GIP was to gather and disseminate information aboutthe
- not to reform it but to
prison system expose it via questionnaires sent to
prisoners and their families.
The GIP's first pamphlet attacked power's oppressive disguises: justice,
All this against a background of prison riots, hunger strikes by GIP prisoners technology, knowledge and objectivity. It argued that the "exploited class"
and an oppressive prison rgime! Can recognize its oppression and resist it, without needing intellectuals. But
by now, other classes were involved: social workers, lawyers and journalists
"The guillotine was merely the visible symbol of a system governed by death were joining the protests.
104
Attica The Miner's Murdered Daughter
The notion of "people's justice" - where a public court would put the
-
"system" on trial had become a worry to Foucault.
In April 1972, Foucault visited Attica Prison in the USA. The murder in 1972 of 16-year-old girl in
the mining town of Bruay-en-Artois led to
"A phony fortress like Disneyland, observation posts disguised as the population stoning suspect Pierre
medieval towers ... and behind this rather ridiculous scenery which
Leroy's fiance's house.
dwarfs everything else, you discover that it's an immense machine
for elimination?' The GIP became involved. Jean-Paul Sartre
turned up and made a speech - as usual.
'
I was dismayed by
the power the population
In November 1972, falsely-arrested Mohammed Diab was shot in a Foucault was keen to introduce
Versailles police station by a policeman who insisted he acted in self- homosexual issues to the
defence - and that he just happened to be carrying a machine-gun at the gauchisme (leftism) which had
time. hitherto ignored them. In early
1971, the FHAR (Front
A protest march was planned in the Paris district where 250 peaceful Homosexuel d'Action
Algerian demonstrators had been murdered by police in 1961.Their corpsi Revolutionnaire) was founded.
had floated in the Seine. Their article read: We've been
buggered by
The meeting exploded into violence. fl Arabs; we're proud
police charged, but only succeedec of it and
Cj Do IrAOIN,
injuring children queuing to wail
101
Dalmati4
Foucault's friend, the writer and artist Pierre Klossowski (b. 1905)
suggested a way to stop the police. Simply line up 30 gorgeous men ar
with sticks, and their beauty would stop the CRS in its tracks!
108
Discipline and Punish
The book is a genealogy of the soul and body in the political, judicial and
scientific fields, particularly in relation to punishment, and above all to
power over and within the body.
Foucault not only studies Foucault calls this dense web of Foucault charts the shift in punishment from the spectacle of public
institutions like the prison, power relations the micro- torture before the lBOOs to obsessive over-regulation in prisons (and
factory, hospital and school, or physics of power. elsewhere) by the 1830s.
power which bodies themselves simply as an obligation or a removed with pincers, his wounds covered in boiling liquid, and his limbs
adopt in relation to institutions. prohibition on those who "do not harnessed to four horses, stretched, hacked and pulled off. Then the rest
have it". It invests them, is of him was chucked on a bonfire - and all in front of the public!
transmitted by them and through
them. It places pressure upon
them, and they resist the grip it j wa5 a carefully
conducted
0 "game" of truth. It:5 purp05e:
O 5ecure
o I a confe55ion. But executions
were
r an opportunity for the condemned
rTorture
..nA
e the crowd to invert authority by
5ay sorry
to the King!
r
Puck off!
Carceral society was born. The object of the 18th-century reforms was not
to punish less but to punish or correct better -
everywhere!
Rules and Regulations Docile Bodies
Crime was now coded, and the power to punish comprised rule-bound And the prison system arrives, part of a disciplinary society! Punishment
signs.The new economy and technology together generated what followed new rules and resulted in detention, work (morally worthy activity,
Foucault calls a semlo-technique based on six rules. but also a source of cheap labour) and a regime of cleaning and praying.
This was moral reform. "Modern man is born of regulations?' The body is
now docile - subject to improvement and usefulness. Disciplines are
enforced everywhere.
wethke
-' i 111
! 1
Police surveillance
provides the prison with
offenders, whom the prison
transforms into delinquents.
7 Is it surprising
They become the target of Criticism: Foucault loads
that prisons resemble
the police, which regularly the question in order to
factories, and that schools,
sends back a certain arrive at his answer. It's a
barracks and hospitals all
number of them to prison. lazy argument.
resemble prisons? /
Power/Knowledge Compliments and Criticisms
Prisons are major industries of power/knowledge. Discipline and Punish attracted great attention. Most reviews were
favourable. 'This book will send shock waves through the prison system. It
Carceral society and its "sciences", such as psychiatry, criminology, will shake our faith in ethics."
psychology and even sociology, ensure that the judges of normality are
ilIes Deleuze said:
everywhere. 'The carceral network constituted one of the armatures of this.
a very different picture, with
power/knowledge that has made the human sciences historically possible.',
Knowable man (soul, individuality, consciousness, conduct, etc.) is the different characters and processes, to
object/effect of this analytical investment, of this domination/observation that which traditional history, even if it
has accustomed us."
1is,,rxist,
No power is
" exercised without the extraction,
appropriation, distribution or retention of
knowledge. At this level, we do not have roucault has
knowledge on the one hand and society on
simply given us thL
the other, or science and state; we
reverse of the
have the basic forms of
enlightenment path to
"power/knowledge". freedom: dystopian
120
Spanish Bio-Fascism 1976, Sexuality as History
In September 1975, ten freedom fighters from the Basque ETA and the Foucault's constantly reworked and unfinished project was published.
anti-fascist front FRAP were to be garrotted by Franco's The History of Sexuality is an attempt to understand the experience of
rgime. Two of the
condemned were pregnant. sexuality in modern Western culture - the birth and growth of "sex" and
sexuality" as historically given objects.
Foucault flew to Madrid with Yves Montand and others, but was prevented I
from speaking to the press. The police returned them to a plane of The self-awareness of the individual as the subject of a sexuality. The
Japane4
tourists. Franco generously allowed five militants to be shot rather than
project required historical inquiry into sexuality, pleasure and friendship in
garrotted. the Ancient, Christian and Modern Worlds. The first of three volumes, The
History of Sexuality: An Introduction, opened with a bombshell.
The gay dictator died 20 November 1975, having been kept alive for
years
by his doctors. This was a miniature version of Foucault's blo-power -
lifej
calculated technically in terms of population, health, national interests,
eti
Why do we say
that we are sexually
The man who had
repressed? What led us to show
the power of life and death
that sex is something we hide?
over hundreds of thousands of
people did not even notice that 1/4 -
And why do we talk about sex
j
Sex and Power The Confessional Animal
Since the Renaissance, Western culture began to develop new, powerful
Human sciences like psychology, medicine and demography seized on the
techniques for internalizing social norms related to morals and, in body as an object of social concern and governmental manipulation. This
particular, to sexual behaviour: a reinforcement of confession as a main was governmentality at large!
ritual of truth-production.
Sex-truth!
Biopolitics - the
'lanning of the popula a sophisticated and impersonal ars
health, etc
- through erotica, modern Western culture
developed a 5cientia sexualis more
intent on personalized control than
sexual pleasure. ..'
The Repressive Hypothesis Administering Sex
Was there ever a repression or censorship on sex? Foucault says there sex by the 18th century became something administered rather than just
was rather an apparatus for producing greater quantities of discourses on The policing of sex was linked to the emergent idea of population
judged.
sex. Foucault's point is not whether one says yes or no to sex, but to management. Sexual conduct was an economic and political problem.
account for the fact that it is talked about at all. Debauched rich people were no good to the country.
Foucault is not denying that sex has been And now children had a sexuality, expressed and organized by school
prohibited, but he is claiming that repression is a architecture, the layout of dormitories and the introduction of disciplined
factor which brings sex into discourse. In other physical and spiritual education to keep their minds off sex.
words, we talk about repression - and sex.
126
The Perverse Implantation Homospecies and the Etymology of Sex
The dispositif (apparatus) of sexuality refers to the relevant "Aberrations" like masturbation, homosexuality and sodomy are incorporated
heterogeneous body of discourses, philanthropic propositions, institutions -
by the medico-sexual rgime its focus being the bourgeois family milieu.
laws and scientific statements. The disposItif itself is the network that
binds them together. previously, homosexuality had just been a forbidden act. Now the
W
homosexual was a personage, with a case history, a childhood, and perhaps
a mysterious physiology. He was now a species.
19th-century
discourse on perversion in
psychiatry was etymologized
by Richard von Krafft-Ebing
(1840-1902) and others.
4The
What's wrong
with me doc?
tmii~WMJM
You're an
auto-monosexualist with
Christian morals and civil law performed this perverse Implantation. The sexoesthetic inversion and
deployment of normal and pathological sexuality had four objects: the a tendency to zoophilia. Take
hysterical woman, the masturbating child, the Maithusian couple (popula one of these every
growth), and the perverse adult. four hours.
20th Century: Reveal All! The Baudrillard Incident
Taboos and repressions were gradually lifted. Sex in the 20th century wea Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929), the transgressive French anti-theorist, published
re-conceived as liberation. Yet, at another level, we are still inciting sex ti a paper, dangerously entitled "Forget Foucault" (1977).
discourse. "People will be surprised at the eagerness with which we went
about pretending to rouse from its slumber a sexuality which everything -
our discourses, our customs, our institutions, our regulations, our
- to
knowledges was busy producing in the light of day and broadcasting
Foucault's discourse
noisy accompaniment?'
( is a mirror of the power
\... it describes.
Is Madonna the tail-end pop discourse of liberation and repression?
My seduction theory is
more subtle. It can make power
collapse by using appearances
to seduce.
j
RecepUon to FOLJCaLJItS
But Baudrillard had done Foucault a
favour. By "forgetting" him, he had
book was muted. shown how the sycophants and
hangers-on were turning Foucault into
a senseless caricature!
Foucault's America sado-Masochism: Beyond Desire
Foucault was invited to the University of Berkeley, California, in 1975. Bath-houses, leather and sado- Discussing homosexual practice in
-
Foucault loved California. He lectured on child sexuality, repression and masochism Foucault indulged subsequent interviews, Foucault
"abnormal" practices - sketching out his last major work. But there were himself in New York and San said S & M was not an aggressive
Francisco. He later said that
pleasures to be had beyond the lecture theatre. He found time to relax in practice, but created new
the desert on acid and extend his use of drugs - an expression of bath-houses with 800 blokes pleasures - like golden showers,
didn't have an equivalent in scatology and fistfucking.
pleasure beyond sex.
the heterosexual community.
Tough on heterosexuals,
-
(3D reveals this whole
univocal and a-categorical mei
to be rainbow-coloured, mobil
asymmetrical, decentred,
spiraloid and resonating.
Far out!
the medical and naturalistic
notions associated with the
latter, and its label of
He was familiar with opium, cocaine, poppers and LSD. One trip was so
-
rough he nearly entered a New York police station to ask for valium and' He Visited the Mineshaft in New York's
was knocked down by a car while on opium. "Cocaine de-anatomizes the meatpacking district to conduct his
research. "S & M is the eroticization of power. Ouch - nice!"
sexual localization of pleasure - which is now everywhere in the body?'
Blindspots Child Abuse - or Consent?
Foucault -always ambivalent about the state and its power - was in
Foucault was more circumspect about the question of child abuse and the
by a government commission to advise on censorship and sexuality. In !
sexual, psychological and legal apparatus that controlled it.With teenagers
series of subsequent discussions, the questions of
rape and child abusq at least, Foucault claimed that they could seduce adults.
rape was a mailer of
were posed. Feminists agreed with Foucault that
violence rather than sexuality.
I
demand for more serious
body (the sexual parts)
\ punishment for rapists is are more important than
N phallocentric.
(demand
. others.
The question of
And
although the current climate was against adult-child relationships, he
was unsure about whether the law should intervene. His
position, at best,
Was uncertain.
Zen Techniques
Philosophy could
power if the
philosopher abandoned his prophetic
role and began to think about
struggles rather
than universal 0 e5
ones.
136
The Iran Mistake Recidivism
He was now so
involved with issues that
he was accused of petitioning everything.
Was Foucault overreaching himself?
Against Socialism American Fame
In May 1981, the French elected the socialist
Franols Mltterrand
Foucault had achieved cult status in the USA. As visiting professor at
(1916-96) as President. Foucault's relationship to Socialism was torn
Berkeley, he lectured in his last years on key areas of his new interests,
apart by its refusal to act on the "internal affair" of martial law being
"Truth and Subjectivity". In October 1979, Foucault was invited to Stanford
declared in Poland. Foucault, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
(b. 1930), university in Palo Alto, California.
writer Marguerite Duras (b. 1914), and actor Yves Montand
(1921-91)
signed a petition. The Socialists replied that most intellectuals found it
Time magazine discussed this intellectual who needed police outside the
hard to stomach their election
victory of 10 May! lecture room to prevent overcrowding, but whose work was ignored by
traditional historians and philosophers.
Foucault later travelled to Poland in a minibus with members of
Modecins du Monde, with printing materials to
help the cause.
responsible for
unleashing "bag ladies"
onto the streets!
Ladisease
Back to the Enlightenment Towards Modernity
Autumn 1983, Berkeley. Foucault gives a lecture on Immanuel Kant's Wh What comes after the
is Enlightenment? In 1784, Kant saw the Enlightenment as a "way out" of Enlightenment? Is modernity
man's immaturity. For the first time, mankind was free from blindly obeyin its sequel? Foucault For the attitude
"'u e of
dogma or paying taxes. discusses the arch-modern modernity, the hihigh h value of
of
e French poet Charles the pr ent iis nd 1 0 ia~ble from a
Baudelaire (1821-67), who in desperate eagerness to
to
mdi2orimagine it, to
still have
his work strove to seize the imagine otherwise than itit I15,, and to
1magme it Otherwiotherwise to
a private duty, but they
"heroism" of everyday life - the
0
transform itit,, not by destroying
'11 g it,
are now free to reason
fashion of the present - in the but
ut by gr spi n g it
y gra
in public. This is a new
19th century. But it's not just Cpre5ent wt hat it is.
15
moment in history.
about seizing the moment.
VMen
In the present day, Foucault says, man hasn't yet reached maturity and
perhaps never will. But a critical project remains, which means we must The relationship to the self
ask what we are and analyze historically the limits imposed upon us - should, therefore, be one of
so that we may transgress them! creative and Nietzschean
activity of giving style to one's
Foucault renounces the quest for truth and plumps for a critical strengths and weaknesses, and
engagement with the present. not trying to reveal a "true" self.
Against Foucault Pleasure and its Uses
JJ;
We still need the
Lriy
enlightenment's ideal of a rational
critique of existing institutions, not just I'm a specc
negation. Foucault is neo-conservative, intellectual. I don't
because he supplies no justification for a stand as master of truth
theoretical alternative to advanced and justice, like you.
capitalism. Universal truth is a
mask of power.
144
Some Greek Buzzwords Ethical Concerns
askesis - exercises in self- The big question Foucault wanted 1. Dietetics. The body and health,
chresis -the use and control through meditation, to answer was a simple one. How or lack of it. Dietetics are rules of
management of sexual activity. fasting and walking the streets in did sexual behaviour come to be conduct. Baths, walking, food and
Diogenes (d. 320 BC). the silence, raised the self to a conceived of as a domain of moral vomiting helped correct excesses.
Cynic philosopher. Used to
stylization of existence. experience? He tries to identify But exercising for its own sake
masturbate in the market-place
to show the public that
Antiphon the Sophist (c. 480- .1 fields of ancient Greek practices was frowned upon. The
411 BC): "He is not wise who ha where the "stylization of the self" environment and temperature were
sexuality was a matter of not tried the ugly and the bad; fo, was at its most marked. important in regard to sex and to
basic need. then there is nothing that would the body's "qualities".
enkrate,a - mastery of oneself - -
enable him to assert that he Aphrodisia sensual pleasures
to become a moral subject. is virtuous?' are characterized by three
Its a relationship with oneself.
ethical concerns in
Socrates (469-399 BC):
philosophy and law.
being temperate,
aster of himself, ruling thi
pleasures and appetites
(
within him.__..-.
147
Households The Love of Boys
Strange, isn't it? Despite all of in 1982, Foucault lectured on the hermeneutics of the subject
Foucault's attempts to get rid of (hermeneutics means interpretation). This concerned itself with the care of
the human individual, to see the self and Plato's dialogue Alcibiades, in which Alcibiades debates with
everything as discourse,
apparatus, power and
institutions, he still refers to the
most anthropological of themes:
sexuality, the self,
individualization and self-control
or will. Is he having his cake and
eating it?
W (There was
too much realized
that he must care for
himself, if he
The Care of the Self became the title of Foucault's third - and as it turned
out, final - volume of the History of Sexuality. It focused on the first two
Foucault was totally against the notion that through sex you could
centuries AD in the Hellenic and Roman world - and the new importance of
discover the "true self" - hence his avowed anti-Californian stance
(despite the married couple, political roles and civic duties. The cultivation of the self
the fun he had in 'Frisco).
is a response to these changes in a new stylistics of existence.
The Cultivation of the Self Oneirocriticism: Looking at Dreams
I had a
dream of 5ex
wa slave ...
ithp
In Rome, public authority took hold / You cannot Retreat into the care of the self does not imply
of marriage. Adultery was still an believe how much I miss the loss of a wider political, social or civic
ethical concern, but was now you. I love you so much, scene and the individual's relationship to it.
under the jurisdiction of public and we are not used to The commitment of self to this area needed a
power, not familial conduct. N separations. greater understanding of how to balance
Marriage was less an economic "withdrawal" with "commitmenf', in order to find
and political strategy than a the purpose of a man's existence in and out of
voluntary union for all classes - the home.
including slaves. It was not a
public institution, yet it entailed One's commitment to politics, to the trappings
obligations between the married of power and status, were no longer hard and
couple, isolating them more fast. Power was not about fulfilling duties to
effectively. The conjugal others and to the state, or being born into
relationship was born. power, but about governing the self (constant
work!) through reason.
The earlier
areek habitual
functions of privilege
"
and status are out - this each man
is a love thing! acquires his character
_/
for himself, but
accident assigns his
duties.
This is a relational marriage - not just about power over oneself, but
relation to others.
156
The Body and the Self The Regimens
Medicine in Rome of the early Christian era was not just concerned with Foucault makes the point that although sexual acts were under a careful
illness and cure. It was a regimen of conduct in all areas: the house, bathing, regimen, they were not seen as moral issues. They were simply harmful
the environment, the time of day or season. One had to attend to oneself if improperly practised, according to Galen (131-200 AD), the physician.
and the state one was generally in.
5eual pleasures
and functions were
ambivalent.
1. Procreation. Take care to prepare the act in body and soul. Allow the
sperm to gather strength and have an image of your child in your mind
before you procreate.
Sex was neither a duty nor an evil. Our sperm allows us to cheat death, and 2. The age of the subject. Pleasure must not be continued at old
age or
sex is natural; yet ejaculation is wasteful and weakens. Like sickness. begun too early. Girls must menstruate before losing virginity.
158
The Work of the Soul
3. The favourable time. The soul had a dual role to play in sexual practice. It regulated the needs of
Plutarch (46-120 AD) advised not the body, according to its tensions, and worked to correct errors in itself.
to have sex in the morning.
The body did not live up to the purity of the soul. In fact, the soul had to
obey the natural mechanics of the body and not overreach the body's desire.
The animal is the best role-model because sex follows the dictates of the
may still be ill-digested
body - of excretion and discharge - not the doxa or (popular) belief that
food in the stomach - all
pleasure is good.
the 5uperflUitie5 have not
yet been evacuated - -
Images phantasia are distrusted, as they can stimulate empty desires in
through the urine and the soul.
f:e_
aece5.
05ecau5ethere
Satyriasis and nymphomania - the
male and female extremes of
-
overpowering sexual desire can be
overcome, if you take the advice of
Rufus of Ephesus.
7 Sleep on your
side rather than on
your back. That'll be
100 denarU please..
4. Individual
temperaments.
Constitutions should be
readied for sex through diet
(chick-peas for heat, grapes
for moisture) and exercises.
Plutarch's Dialogue on Love contrasts the love of boys with the love of The critical impact of the book A. 'That's hubris, that's excess.
women in marriage. The question: which one should one choose? In order was eclipsed by Foucault's The problem is not one of deviancy
to compare them, the debate assumes a common ground for love - a sudden illness. In a 1983 but of excess or moderation."
unitary erotica. interview with Paul Rabinow
and Hubert Dreyfus, Greek sex In Berkeley, Foucault discussed
Plutarch borrows from the love of boys its traditional Greek features - was discussed. AIDS with a student over coffee.
restraint and friendship - to show how they apply to the marriage
relationship alone. Q. 'What about someone who
had sex so much he damaged
Boy-love is now imperfect love. Why? his health?" nd jThi- t
Because the love of boys is
14
unharmonious: physical love
and true love are imbalanced.
Charis or consenting,
reciprocal, intimate love is
absent in the potentially
active-passive man-
boy relationship. The
old Greek idea of -'
restraint is not valid You too!
in this new ethics of Don't you be
mutual love. scared. A
Don't cry
w me if I die.
Foucault refused to allow a fourth Guibert died in 1991 by suicide Foucault had always been dogged
volume, Confessions of the Flesh, with an anti-AIDS drug. In the by criticism. Here are some
about desire in the early centuries novel, Stephane is Daniel Defer generally negative views. His work is ",
of Christianity, to be posthumously and Marine is actress lsabelle
spectacular, but has little
published, as well as work on Adjani. historical accuracy and
Manet. Give it time
shows patchy research. Me
After Muzil's death, Stphane
just goes on instinct.
Herve Guibert's novel, To The finds a bag full of whips,
Friend Who Did Not Save My Life, handcuffs, leather hoods and
was supposedly about Foucault's S & M gear.
life (as Muzil") with AIDS. The
novel describes San Franciscan
houses where men sat in baths
which doubled as urinals,
A cancer that
cannibalized trucks which became
would hit only
"torture chambers", and
homosexuals, no, that's
Foucault's realization too good to be true,
of his fate.
I could just die
laughing!
' -' The American "postmodern" philosopher, Richard Rorty (b. 1931):
Muzil adored
"Foucault subverts quasi-metaphysical comfort?'
violent orgies in
saunas.
Criticism: He tries to be faithful to each age, relies on documents to
support his thesis, yet has contempt for objective truth. But he was the first
to claim that the evidence was on his side!
Foucault Loses Contradictions
The American Marxist philosopher If Foucault believes that truth and reason are simply effects of power, and
Fredric Jameson: "Foucault has that there is no ground -just discourse, the apparatus, institutions, etc. -
a 'winner loses' logic. The more then he loses, because he wants his theories to be accepted as true. How
powerful the vision of a total can Foucault be true and history not be?
system becomes, the more
powerless the readerfeels.
Any resistance seems trivial:'
you di5pense
L
with the idea of man as
Foucault doe5, what i5 there
to fight for? Even Hietzsche
optimi tic
a55 more OptiMi5tiC
than r7 0 u cault on
roucault 0 thi5
t I
COnce Doint.
rou
oucault
ult 15is on
the horns 0of a dilemma: if
he is telling the truth about the too harsh o"
impossibility of detached truth, the enlightenment. Me saw
then all truth is suspect. But if this nothing good about the lath
7ft.-'w" Th.__ cerituIx its critical reflection
-
7 7j
It colours his view of modernity as well.
Naive Politics? Foucault In Memoriam
5 death?
Lo55 of confidence in his own genius.
Leaving the sexual aspects aside, the 1055
of the immune system 15 no more than the
biological transcription of the
CFoucault nFhr nrnrcc
V l only
wanted to be a
goldfish!
Selected Further Reading
Madness and Civilization - a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason; Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Hubert L.
USA: Random, 1988; UK: Routledge, 1990 Dreyfus & Paul Rabinow; UK: Harvester, 1982. Concerned with questions of
"subjection".
The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences; USA:
Random, 1994; UK: Routledge, 1990 Foucault, Marxism and History: Mode of Production Versus Mode of
Information, Mark Poster; USA & UK: Blackwell, 1984. A Marxist response
The Archaeology of Knowledge; USA: Pantheon, 1982; UK: Routledge, to Foucault's version of power.
1990
This is Not a Pipe; USA & UK: University of California Press, 1982 Chris would like to thank Zoran, Duncan, Richard and Toby for their help.
Zoran is indebted to all the anonymous cyberspace people for their research
Interviews and Essays and all the real people who helped or were patient with him.
The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow; USA: Pantheon, 1985; UK:
Zoran ,jevtic is an illustrator and multimedia author from London. He is
Penguin, 1986. A very useful selection from Foucault's major works, with a
clear introduction. involved in animation, Internet publishing and music projects.
Also available from Totem
an
IN TROD PC IN G rThTRODUCIn
INTRODUCING
INTRODUCING-
"iesiis
INTRODUCING
Ibucalt-
Michel Foucault's work was described at his
death as "the most important event of thought in
our century". As a philosopher, historian, and
political activist he most certainly left behind
an enduring and influential body ofwork, but is
this acclaim justified? Introducing Foucault
places Foucault's work in its turbulent
philosophical and political context, and
critically explores his mission to expose the
links between knowledge and power in the
human sciences, their discourses and
institutions.
Totem Books
USA $10.95
Distributed to the trade by
National Book Network Inc.
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