Michel Foucault
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== Biography == | == Biography == | ||
| + | [[File:Foucaulta01.jpg|250px|left|thumb|http://www.michel-foucault.com/gallery/pictures/foucaulta01.html Source: Foucault in 1976 (Pruszkowski studio)In Jean-Marie Auzias. (1986). Michel Foucault, Collection 'Qui suis-je?' Lyon: La Manufacture, p. 6]] | ||
"''Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same.''" - Michel Foucault in the introduction to L'Archaeologie du Savoir. | "''Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same.''" - Michel Foucault in the introduction to L'Archaeologie du Savoir. | ||
| - | Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was born in the small town of Poitiers in France to a well-established, outwardly Catholic medical family. His father was a surgeon, and probably this linked to his later writings on the political authority of doctors and the medical profession. But Foucault was indeed interested in the broader workings of power relations beyond the medical field and for reasons outside his relation with his father. Foucault was a bright but not an outstanding student. In his early years he experienced the political uncertainties in France, especially of the German occupation. He gained entry to the L'école normal supérieure in 1945 where he studied philosophy and psychology. He spent his time here mostly as a solitary and troubled figure, having attempted suicide more than once and was even referred to a psychiatrist.Later he gained first-hand experience of positivist, experimental, psychology in a mental hospital as both technician and an intern with an undefined role | + | [[Michel Foucault]] (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was born in the small town of Poitiers in France to a well-established, outwardly Catholic medical family. His father was a surgeon, and probably this linked to his later writings on the political authority of doctors and the medical profession. But Foucault was indeed interested in the broader workings of power relations beyond the medical field and for reasons outside his relation with his father. Foucault was a bright but not an outstanding student. In his early years he experienced the political uncertainties in France, especially of the German occupation. He gained entry to the ''L'école normal supérieure'' in 1945 where he studied philosophy and psychology. He spent his time here mostly as a solitary and troubled figure, having attempted suicide more than once and was even referred to a psychiatrist. Later he gained first-hand experience of [[positivism|positivist]], experimental, psychology in a mental hospital as both technician and an intern with an undefined role (Simons, 1995, pp.8-9). |
However, Foucault was still searching for his niche intellectually and politically. After his graduation he joined the French Communist Party for about two years. But more significant was his friendship from 1952-55 with a group of experimental musicians, especially Jean Barraqué, with whom he had a stormy relationship - who were working on the limits of their art. He read avant-garde authors such as Robbe-Grillet, Beckett, Sade, Bataille, Blanchot and Nietzche to think in ways other than the dominant modes of thinking that were present then such as existentialism, phenomenology, or Marxism and Hegelianism. He took up positions as a cultural official in the French institutes at Uppsala, Warsaw and Hamburg. During this period till the end of the 1950s, Foucault wrote ''Madness and Civilization'' as his doctoral dissertation. In the meanwhile he indeed missed the political controversies at this time in France surrounding Algeria. (Simons, 1995, pp.9) | However, Foucault was still searching for his niche intellectually and politically. After his graduation he joined the French Communist Party for about two years. But more significant was his friendship from 1952-55 with a group of experimental musicians, especially Jean Barraqué, with whom he had a stormy relationship - who were working on the limits of their art. He read avant-garde authors such as Robbe-Grillet, Beckett, Sade, Bataille, Blanchot and Nietzche to think in ways other than the dominant modes of thinking that were present then such as existentialism, phenomenology, or Marxism and Hegelianism. He took up positions as a cultural official in the French institutes at Uppsala, Warsaw and Hamburg. During this period till the end of the 1950s, Foucault wrote ''Madness and Civilization'' as his doctoral dissertation. In the meanwhile he indeed missed the political controversies at this time in France surrounding Algeria. (Simons, 1995, pp.9) | ||
| - | Arriving back in France Foucault was mostly absorbed in finding a position for himself, and he even sat on a government commission to implement university reforms in 1965. He published several pieces of literary criticism about avant-garde authors and began working on ''Birth of the Clinic'' (1973a) and his best selling ''The Order of Things'' (1973b). Till the latter was published in 1966, Foucault was associated with anti-communism. (Simons, 1995, pp.9) His radical initiation to political resistance occurred in Tunisia (1966-8) when he illicitly aided students opposed to the political regime. At the same time he was working on The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972a). In the 1970’s Foucault threw himself into political and social activism and he strived for the acceptance of homosexuals and for reformation in prison. He became instrumental in establishing the ''Groupe d'information sur les prisons'', in the wake of prison revolts in 1971. While the aim was to give voice to the prisoners'protests, the impetus of the agitation came from imprisoned Maoist militants who refused to dissociate themselves from the common criminals. From this refusal and a visit to Attica prison in 1972 developed the thesis for his next book, ''Discipline and Punish'' (1979a), that disciplinary power is exercised over everyone in modern society. He was also involved, alongwith Sartre and Jean Genet, in anti-racist, pro-immigrant campaigns, and in the establishment of a new press agency and newspaper, Libération, which was to be based on the principle of ordinary people's testimony. In 1975, along with the actors Yves Montard and Simone Signoret, Foucault protested against the execution of eleven prisoners in Spain. He then came around to writing ''The History of Sexuality'' around this time. These were but only some instances of his socio-political activism but he withdrew from it for a while | + | Arriving back in France, Foucault was mostly absorbed in finding a position for himself, and he even sat on a government commission to implement university reforms in 1965. He published several pieces of literary criticism about avant-garde authors and began working on ''Birth of the Clinic'' (1973a) and his best selling ''The Order of Things'' (1973b). Till the latter was published in 1966, Foucault was associated with anti-communism. (Simons, 1995, pp.9) His radical initiation to political resistance occurred in Tunisia (1966-8) when he illicitly aided students opposed to the political regime. At the same time he was working on The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972a). In the 1970’s Foucault threw himself into political and social activism and he strived for the acceptance of homosexuals and for reformation in prison. He became instrumental in establishing the ''Groupe d'information sur les prisons'', in the wake of prison revolts in 1971. While the aim was to give voice to the prisoners' protests, the impetus of the agitation came from imprisoned Maoist militants who refused to dissociate themselves from the common criminals. From this refusal and a visit to Attica prison in 1972 developed the thesis for his next book, ''Discipline and Punish'' (1979a), that disciplinary power is exercised over everyone in modern society. He was also involved, alongwith Sartre and Jean Genet, in anti-racist, pro-immigrant campaigns, and in the establishment of a new press agency and newspaper, Libération, which was to be based on the principle of ordinary people's testimony. In 1975, along with the actors Yves Montard and Simone Signoret, Foucault protested against the execution of eleven prisoners in Spain. He then came around to writing ''The History of Sexuality'' around this time. These were but only some instances of his socio-political activism but he withdrew from it for a while(Simons, 1995, pp. 9-11). |
| - | Soon he became associated with the neo-liberalism of the New Philosophers, such as André Glucksmann, who had been disillusioned by the failure of post-1968 radical politics. By this time, Foucault was visiting the USA more often, enjoying popularity and discovering new ways of enjoying himself. Indeed, the focus of his intellectual work shifted away from sexuality per se to the more general notion of the human as the subject of desires. His studies of Christianity led him to characterize it as a mode of governing desire by renouncing it, in contrast to the Greeks and Hellenists, who moderated pleasures through techniques and arts of the self. At the same time, Foucault was teaching and lecturing about technologies and modes of government of polities | + | Soon he became associated with the neo-liberalism of the New Philosophers, such as André Glucksmann, who had been disillusioned by the failure of post-1968 radical politics. By this time, Foucault was visiting the USA more often, enjoying popularity and discovering new ways of enjoying himself. Indeed, the focus of his intellectual work shifted away from sexuality per se to the more general notion of the human as the subject of desires. His studies of Christianity led him to characterize it as a mode of governing desire by renouncing it, in contrast to the Greeks and Hellenists, who moderated pleasures through techniques and arts of the self. At the same time, Foucault was teaching and lecturing about technologies and modes of government of polities (Simons, 1995, pp.11). |
| - | However, the main work in his last years can be said to be himself and his pleasures. With his first mind-blowing LSD trip in the Death Valley of California, Foucault took better to the free gay subculture of California that France could not offer.Here he explored the anonymity of sexual encounters, the strategic reversals of relationships and intense experiences of sadomasochism, and spoke about the construction of a gay lifestyle on the basis of a form of friendship between men that had been suppressed since the 17th century. Here he was practising an art of the self, living the philosphy he believed in. Yet his interests in politics and social activism did not totally die. | + | However, the main work in his last years can be said to be himself and his pleasures. With his first mind-blowing LSD trip in the Death Valley of California, Foucault took better to the free gay subculture of California that France could not offer. Here he explored the anonymity of sexual encounters, the strategic reversals of relationships and intense experiences of sadomasochism, and spoke about the construction of a gay lifestyle on the basis of a form of friendship between men that had been suppressed since the 17th century. Here he was practising an art of the self, living the philosphy he believed in. Yet his interests in politics and social activism did not totally die. |
| - | Sometime in 1983 he knew that he would die of AIDS, ye he continued visiting American bathhouses. It is not clear whether he was taking risks with others willing to participate in a suicidal orgy, or was irresponsibly placing his pleasures above the lives of others. Back in France, he finally put his energies to write his last two works, dying on 25th | + | Sometime in 1983 he knew that he would die of AIDS, ye he continued visiting American bathhouses. It is not clear whether he was taking risks with others willing to participate in a suicidal orgy, or was irresponsibly placing his pleasures above the lives of others. Back in France, he finally put his energies to write his last two works, dying on 25th June 1984. The true cause of his death was not mentioned (Simons, 1995, pp. 11-12). |
| + | == Key concepts == | ||
| - | + | * On History | |
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| - | Foucault critiqued the way in which history is ordered (Philo, 2000, p. 209-211). He was against what called [[ | + | Foucault critiqued the way in which history is ordered (Philo, 2000, p. 209-211). He was against what he called [[total history vs general history|total history]] that assumes one central core in the social world governing all things. You may think for example of great leaders, approaches etc. According to Foucault total history was not concerned with the social structures and processes that created history. History wasn’t a continuity of events, but it was a timeline divided into periods, stages and phases that had barely relations to other distinct periods. |
| - | Foucault rejected this way of structuring history and tried to see history as a flow of events without a single world-view. These ‘places of dispersion’, may be seen as small spatial cells which move around each other and may be related. In this way it’s possible to make a network of causality with all relations turning round one core centre. Their relation depends on their distance to each other. He called this his ‘[[general history]]’. | + | Foucault rejected this way of structuring history and tried to see history as a flow of events without a single world-view. These ‘places of dispersion’, may be seen as small spatial cells which move around each other and may be related. In this way it’s possible to make a network of causality with all relations turning round one core centre. Their relation depends on their distance to each other. He called this his ‘[[total history vs general history|general history]]’. |
According to Foucault it was not the approaches, discourses or great leaders that created history, but he was searching for the conditions in which these approaches, discourses or great leaders may arise. He searched for the ‘moments of change’ in the knowledge of people which effect history and which gave society a new direction. | According to Foucault it was not the approaches, discourses or great leaders that created history, but he was searching for the conditions in which these approaches, discourses or great leaders may arise. He searched for the ‘moments of change’ in the knowledge of people which effect history and which gave society a new direction. | ||
| + | He insisted on the importance of space, place and geography within historical thinking. To Foucault, phenomena, events, processes, and structures of history are always fragmented by geography, by the complicating reality of things that are always more or less different in different places, thus leading him to embrace a spatial perspective in his own works of history (Philo,2000, pp. 209) | ||
| + | Foucault embarked on a history because of his judgment that certain current social circumstances are "intolerable". His motive was to understand the past in order to understand that which is intolerable in the present. In this process he dismissed the idea of historical events as inevitable. Foucault himself referred to his historical analyses as "histories of experience". His histories of experience is mainly concerned to describe the basic categories that structure the way a given age perceived and thought about objects such as madness or disease (Gutting, 2005, pp.10-15). | ||
| - | + | * Power, discourse, and knowledge | |
| - | + | [[File:Panopticon.jpg|400px|right|thumb|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon Source: The works of Jeremy Bentham vol. IV,1843(1751), 172-3]] | |
| - | Foucault was also concerned about the power issues and wrote several books about it. Foucault suggested that power isn’t something you can see and neither can be found in a personality. Power can only ‘exist’ in actions and relations between persons, institutions, groups etc. ( | + | Foucault was also concerned about the [[Power (according to Foucault)|power]] issues and wrote several books about it. Foucault suggested that power isn’t something you can see and neither can be found in a personality. Power can only ‘exist’ in actions and relations between persons, institutions, groups etc. (Foucault, 1983, p.217). Power can only be exercised over free subjects (Foucault, 1983, p. 221). Power is always present, and may become an intrinsic feeling that makes people act in an ‘appropriate’ way. (His concept of the [[panopticon]] became one of his most famous examples) (Sharp, 2000, p.78). |
Foucault also thinks knowledge is a good condition for power relations. The more knowledge the more power, one can have on another. | Foucault also thinks knowledge is a good condition for power relations. The more knowledge the more power, one can have on another. | ||
| - | A discourse is a set of reasoning, which put a subject in a certain perspective. A discourse is formed by written or spoken texts around a subject. It tells people in an indirect way what is normal and what is not. In this way it also exercises power because it tells people how they should behave and it may give power relations to different institutions and people. Discourse is therefore embedded in culture and knowledge. | + | A discourse is a set of reasoning, which put a subject in a certain perspective. A discourse is formed by written or spoken texts around a subject. It tells people in an indirect way what is normal and what is not. In this way it also exercises power because it tells people how they should behave and it may give power relations to different institutions and people. Discourse is therefore embedded in culture and knowledge. According to Foucault nothing can exist without [[discourse]] (Hall, 2006, p. 279). |
| - | + | * Bodies and Biopower | |
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Foucault is interested in the relation between politics and bodies. He points out how bodies are trained to be socially productive. Management of bodies is important for economic and social development, for healthy and docile bodies can be productive. This is the reason why capitalist states promote life and try to control their population. The main means of control are statistics and probabilities. Life and living are at the center of the modern political battles. | Foucault is interested in the relation between politics and bodies. He points out how bodies are trained to be socially productive. Management of bodies is important for economic and social development, for healthy and docile bodies can be productive. This is the reason why capitalist states promote life and try to control their population. The main means of control are statistics and probabilities. Life and living are at the center of the modern political battles. | ||
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Public hygiene, psychiatry and assistance to the poor are examples of this kind of power, introduced in the 18th century in the modern surveillance society. A whole population is controlled through discipline and regulatory controls. But when life and health become so important to the state, this justifies eradication of groups threatening life or humanity . This realization makes Foucault warn for genocide ''“ because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of the population.”'' (Foucault. (1984). The history of sexuality volume 1. p. 137) | Public hygiene, psychiatry and assistance to the poor are examples of this kind of power, introduced in the 18th century in the modern surveillance society. A whole population is controlled through discipline and regulatory controls. But when life and health become so important to the state, this justifies eradication of groups threatening life or humanity . This realization makes Foucault warn for genocide ''“ because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of the population.”'' (Foucault. (1984). The history of sexuality volume 1. p. 137) | ||
| + | * Subject | ||
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| + | In one of his afterwords , Foucault (1983) claimed that his works in the from 1960’s to 1980’s was not to analyze power, nor was it to work out an foundation of such an analysis. His objective was to create a history of the various modes by which people are turned into subjects. His work consisted of three modes of objectification: modes of inquiry, dividing practices and turning into subject. First of all modes of inquiry is the mode which try to give itself the status of sciences. Secondly the dividing practices is the objectification of the subject in dividing practices. The subject is either divided in himself or divided from other people. And the final mode of objectification is that human turn himself into a subject. | ||
== Written works == | == Written works == | ||
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'''Madness and Civilization''' (1961) | '''Madness and Civilization''' (1961) | ||
| - | + | ''Folie et déraison'' is the original title of Foucault's book about examination of the cultural, political, philosophical and medical construction of madness in European history. It's the first book in line where Foucault describes his exposition of his concept of history, the so-called general history. Furthermore, he describes the 'madness' from a phenomenological point of view, while he attributes the change in this experience over time to specify structuralism. | |
'''The birth of the clinic''' (1963) | '''The birth of the clinic''' (1963) | ||
| - | + | As an sequel to his previous book Foucault wrote about the development of the medical profession in ''Naissance de la clinique''. Again Foucault is very critical about the writing of history, in this book the emphasis is on the existence of diseases. This book sheds new light on the origins of our current notions of health and sickness, life and death. | |
'''The Order of Things''' (1966) | '''The Order of Things''' (1966) | ||
| - | + | ''Les Mots et les choses'' is the third book of Foucault where he grasps to an alternate view on history. In this book Foucault describes that all periods in history have possessed certain conditions of truth, which were considered as acceptable. Foucault argues that discourses in different fields have changed over time, from one period's episteme to another. Foucault manifests a history which is not that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility (Foucault, 1966). | |
'''The Archaeology of Knowledge''' (1969) | '''The Archaeology of Knowledge''' (1969) | ||
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'''Discipline and Punish''' (1975) | '''Discipline and Punish''' (1975) | ||
| + | Primarily, ''Surveiller et punir'' describes a history in punishments. It is written to challenge the idea that prisons are the consistent form of punishment. Foucault describes the prison as a form of technological power. In the book section about discipline Foucault begins to describe his fascination about what he calls ''panopticism''. In this observation, discipline doesn't exist through excessive force but through careful observation: in modern life we can use the example of camera security in shopping malls, the cameras create a safety feeling because visitors are being fully but discretely observed and therefor automatically act in norms of discipline (Kramsch, 2011). Finally, Foucault's concludes that over the years imprisonment punishes the body of a condemned person while Foucault advises to punish the mind. | ||
| + | '''The Courage of Truth''' (1983-1984) | ||
| + | The [[Courage of truth]] is the last course that Michel Foucault delivered at the Collège de France. Here, he continues the theme of the previous year’s lectures in exploring the notion of “truth-telling” (also read [[parrhesia]]) in politics to establish a number of ethically irreducible conditions based on courage and conviction. His death, on June 25th, 1984, tempts us to detect the philosophical testament in these lectures, especially in view of the prominence they give to the themes of life and death. | ||
'''The History of Sexuality''' (1984) | '''The History of Sexuality''' (1984) | ||
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== Contributions to Geography == | == Contributions to Geography == | ||
| - | + | Foucault did not especially examine geography and actually did not precisely define space, but in all his works he refers to the role played by spatial relations within a complex working of knowledge, power and discourse (Philo, 2000, p. 225). | |
| - | Foucault did not especially examine geography and actually did not precisely define space, but in all his works he refers to the role played by spatial relations within a complex working of knowledge, power and discourse (Philo, 2000, | + | |
For Foucault space was bound up in history. His spaces of dispersion are things that are scattered across a landscape and are related to another through their geography (Soja, 1989, p.16). | For Foucault space was bound up in history. His spaces of dispersion are things that are scattered across a landscape and are related to another through their geography (Soja, 1989, p.16). | ||
| - | The only order is the distance to another and being positioned in locations or being associated with a type of environment (Philo, 2000, p.221). | + | Further, Foucault's concept of the [[heterotopia]] can be said to be a postmodern geographical thinking through heterogeonous spaces of sites and relations between them, rather than space blinded by history. (Soja, 1989, pp 17) |
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| + | The only order is the distance to another and being positioned in locations or being associated with a type of environment (Philo, 2000, p.221). Foucault tended to think of space in terms of orders and forms of spatial reasoning that classifies and categorizes inherited knowledge. For example a historical map is a presentation of facts in history which may be used to shape the future; it imposes control of the future (Crampton & Elden, 2007, p. 55). | ||
For Foucault (social) space could be found in ‘enclosures’ of society, which means that people are locked away in institutional spaces, which in turn can be classified into smaller partitions and so on. This gave also form to a chain of power and commands which is designed to physically maintain this organized social space. | For Foucault (social) space could be found in ‘enclosures’ of society, which means that people are locked away in institutional spaces, which in turn can be classified into smaller partitions and so on. This gave also form to a chain of power and commands which is designed to physically maintain this organized social space. | ||
| - | “Foucault opens the way in which historical processes involving discourse, knowledge and power are always at work and (re)shaped by the real-world space ‘criss-crossed by trade routes, valleys, highlands, mountains and rivers (Philo, 2000, p.227).” | + | “Foucault opens the way in which historical processes involving discourse, knowledge and power are always at work and (re)shaped by the real-world space ‘criss-crossed by trade routes, valleys, highlands, mountains and rivers (Philo, 2000, p. 227).” |
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| + | == Spatial turn of Foucault == | ||
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| + | For more information about Foucault also read: [[Discourse]], [[panopticon]], [[power of institutions: Foucault]], [[Total history vs general history]], [[strategic]], [[There is Nothing Outside Discourse]], [[Genealogy]], [[Discursive Formation]], [[Michel Foucault's Geography]], [[Spatial turn]] | ||
== Interpretations on Foucault == | == Interpretations on Foucault == | ||
| - | Foucault is a hard figure to pin down and he himself has often criticised the efforts of academicians to box him within certain ideologies or disciplines. As Gutting rightly points, any general interpretation of Foucault denies the two most valuable things in his voice, i.e. specificity and marginality (Gutting, 2009, | + | Foucault is a hard figure to pin down and he himself has often criticised the efforts of academicians to box him within certain ideologies or disciplines. As Gutting rightly points, any general interpretation of Foucault denies the two most valuable things in his voice, i.e. specificity and marginality (Gutting, 2009, p. 3). In fact, Foucault himself did not refer back to his previous works in his books, and saw himself mostly experimenting rather than developing concrete methodologies as is reflected in the following quote. |
| - | "''I am perfectly aware of having continuously made shifts both in the things that have interested me and in what I have already thought. In addition, the books I write constitute an experience for me that I'd like to be as rich as possible. An experience is something you come out of changed....In this sense I consider myself more an experimenter than a theorist; I don't develop deductive systems to apply uniformly in different fields of researcher''." (Foucault, (Remarks on Marx, 1991) in Kelly, 2009 | + | "''I am perfectly aware of having continuously made shifts both in the things that have interested me and in what I have already thought. In addition, the books I write constitute an experience for me that I'd like to be as rich as possible. An experience is something you come out of changed....In this sense I consider myself more an experimenter than a theorist; I don't develop deductive systems to apply uniformly in different fields of researcher''." (Foucault, (Remarks on Marx, 1991) in Kelly, 2009 p .3) |
He preferred his work to be used rather than studied. (Kelly, 2009) | He preferred his work to be used rather than studied. (Kelly, 2009) | ||
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=== '''Post-structuralism''' === | === '''Post-structuralism''' === | ||
| + | Foucault was a [[post-structuralism|post-structuralist]]. He focused on how certain knowledge and meanings became normalized and accepted as the truth (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p.99). In this process, power has a lot of influence on the construction of meaning. According to Foucault, [[discourse]] is formed by a set of meanings within a knowledge system as well as institutions and social practices that produce and maintain these meanings. By his work poststructuralists focused on how different forms of power intersect with knowledge production so that certain valorized conceptions of the subject in any historical subject could be created (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p.100). | ||
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| + | Foucault is influenced by the work of [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]] about [[genealogy]] (Harrison, 2006, p.124). Genealogy is about the origin, the history of facts or things. It’s not about an identity that has to be recovered but about a difference, about understanding history as a productive, differential field. | ||
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| + | Foucault’s writing has a certain paradox in it that is quite common to most poststructuralist thought, namely the “the denial of any external standard of reason and truth on the one hand while attempting to critique and convince on the other” (Harrison, 2006, p.125). | ||
=== '''Existentialism''' === | === '''Existentialism''' === | ||
| + | Although Foucault embibed [[Existentialism]] in his younger years, during the 60s Foucault became part of a group authors (including Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan) who rejected the existentialism theory. The gap between the existentialism, where the emphasis is on the meaning of individual practices, and Foucault's way of argue is considered to be immense. One of Foucault's points of view is is that a certain power is exercised over everyone in modern society which means that that no human being is free in making choices in life. | ||
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| + | Foucault was sceptical regarding the works of Jean Paul Sartre. Foucault ridiculed Sartre's centralization of the subject (putting the individual experience at the center, or starting point, of investigation), calling it "transcendental narcissism" (Flynn, 1997, p.247). | ||
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| + | == Foucault and Action-Theoretical tradition: Some overlaps? == | ||
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| + | [[Discourse]] being central to Foucault's analysis on [[space]], [[Power (according to Foucault)|power]] and [[knowledge]], a link can be made to the centrality of human action as also seen in [[action-theoretic]]al tradition. [[Discourse]] being conducted through the actions and relations between individuals in a society one can indeed see an overlap for instance, in the concept of [[speech act]] s in the [[Language Pragmatics]] action theoretical approach that focuses on the analysis of communication and interaction as coordination mechanisms driving social order/coordination (Zierhofer, 2001). | ||
| + | Further human [[action]] is central to Foucault's analysis of [[Power (according to Foucault)|power]]. He says that power exists only when put into action, and mainly in power relations rather than purely a powerful act. A relationship of power is defined by him as nothing but an action upon an action. Additionally, human agency is not totally muted in Foucault's analysis of the subject and power. He claims that power is exercised only over free subjects, free subjects being individuals or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving may be realised. To him, freedom is a condition for the exercise of power (Foucault, 1983). In fact it could even be argued that the subject of foucault seems rather more alive, less-defined or framed, faced with a wider range of possibilities than the rationalised, ideal-typical agent of [[Max Weber]] or the consensus-seeking agent of [[Jürgen Habermas]]. | ||
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| + | Thus the centrality of discourse and human action to Foucault and the centrality of human [[action]] and interaction in the action-theoretic tradition can be seen as overlapping lines of thought. | ||
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| + | == Foucault and Action theoretical tradition: Divergences? == | ||
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| + | '''Foucault's region and Werlen's region?''' | ||
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| + | "''[[Region]] is a fiscal,administrative, military notion.''" | ||
| + | - Michel Foucault (Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, in Crampton &Elden, 2007) | ||
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| + | "...''In an action-centered perspective, the region signifies the result of [[everyday regionalisation|everyday regionalisations]] as one of the key forms of everyday [[geography-making]].''" | ||
| + | - [[Benno Werlen]] (Werlen, Everyday Regionalizations, 2009, Glossary G0020) | ||
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| + | From the above definitions of region by Foucault and Werlen it is clear that there is a marked difference in the thinking of Foucault to that of the everyday regionalisations of Werlen within action-theoretic tradition. While Foucault emphasizes the overarching power of structure and political control, Werlen's region emphasizes human agency and [[everyday regionalisation]] s of individuals. | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Foucault and Deleuze == | ||
| + | Apart from being friends, Michel Foucault and [[Gilles Deleuze]] were indeed engaged with each other's work. Deleuze on Foucault can be explicitly found in his book ''Foucault'', apart from interviews on Foucault's work in ''Negotiations'', as well as his notes to Foucault concerning the first volume of the ''History of Sexuality'', "Desire and Pleasure". Further, Foucault in his review essay "''Theatrum Philosophicum''", looked at Deleuze's ''Difference and Repetition'' and ''The Logic of Sense'', which was published in ''Critique'' in November, 1970. Another published dialogue between the two authors can be found in a special issue of L'Arc (No. 49, pp. 3-10), the same also published in "language, counter-memory,practice: selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault" (1977, Bouchard) | ||
| + | |||
| + | Jeffrey Nealon's essay "Foucault's Deleuze.." is an interesting juxtaposition of Foucaultian Deleuzianism - of the lines of thoughts of the two authors. He traces the notion of 'incorporeal' as seeping through their works in different but pervasive ways. Another diffusing concept is 'intensification'. While intensity to Deleuze is "paradoxical"... both difference and repetition...an attribute of being itself; 'intensification' to Foucault is a quality not of being but of power, and how it spreads throughout the socius. | ||
| + | (Binkley, Capetillo, 2009 pp.139-150) | ||
| + | |||
| + | Another striking coincidence, as mentioned by Giorgio Agamben (Khalfa,2003), is the centrality of the concept of life in the last texts published by Foucault and Deleuze before their deaths. The last works of the two philosophers indeed gestures towards the concept of life though quite independent in their trajectories. Foucault's text is entitled 'Life: Experience and Science', published in January-March issue of Revue de Métaphysicque et de Morale) and Deleuze's text 'Immanence: A life...', appeared in the journal Philosophie two months before his death. (Khalfa, 2003) | ||
| + | |||
| + | One can also find a similar way of viewing space in the concepts of ' [[spaces of dispersion]]' by foucault and '[[assemblage]]' by Deleuze, in that both these concepts refer to a viewing of space as heterogenous and dynamic rather than predefined and fixed. | ||
| + | |||
| + | == Foucault and Said == | ||
| + | |||
| + | [[Edward Said]]'s [[Orientalism]] comes very close to Foucault's carceral system in their analysis of discursive regimes of power and [[knowledge]] within imaginative geographies, as noted by [[Derek Gregory]] (Crang & Thrift, 2000). Gregory identifies three points of overlap across the two authors' maps of [[power]], knowledge and geography, namely: | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Division: That both Foucault and Said discuss the discursive construction of exclusionary geography. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Detail: That they both highlight the attention to detail, the micro-physics of power in the histories of division. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Visibility: That both argue that the discipline of detail depends on 'spaces of constructed visibility', be it the all-encompassing [[Panopticon]] view of [[Jeremy Bentham]]'s prison design, or the Orientalist gaze capturing from above the panoramic stretches of oriental lands. | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | == Foucault and Giddens == | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''Notions of decentralised power''': [[Anthony Giddens]] looks at power as constituted within the structure agency dialect. Along similar lines, Foucault too emphasizes that there is no single source of power but power lies in action upon action, through the development of a series of practices. | ||
== Critique == | == Critique == | ||
| + | Numerous authors, philosophers and scientists post critique on the work of Foucault. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Well known is the discussion between the American philosopher Noam Chomsky. They debate about [[Power of institutions: Foucault]]. Where Foucault mainly points at the strong power exercised by institutions and governments and the direct effect it has on the life of human beings Chomsky sees the systems in (Western) societies having a positive effect on the life of human beings. Where Foucault points at the restrictions made by institutions Chomsky says that people living in Western society are able to fully expose their agency. ''human beings do not have to be forced into the position of tools, of cogs in the machine, There is no longer any social necessity for human beings to be treated as mechanical elements in the productive process; that can be overcome and we must overcome it by a society of freedom and free association, in which the creative urge that I consider intrinsic to human nature, will in fact be able to realise itself in whatever way it will'' (Chomsky, 1971). In the same context true existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre] is an opponent of Michel Foucault. Sartre describes that a human being itself develops an own identity, it's free to give meaning to their own life by making own choices. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Chomsky is not the only author who doubt the work of Foucault. For instance, [[Richard Rorty]] accused Foucault for only being negative towards the traditional reading of history. Instead of put forward alternative, new readings of history he centralized his critics on the restrictions: | ||
| + | "''all Foucault has to offer are brilliant redescriptions of the past, supplemented by helpful hints on how to avoid being trapped by old historiographical assumptions. These hints consist largely of saying: do not look for progress or meaning in history; do not see the history of a given activity, of any segment of culture, as the development of rationality or of freedom; do not assume that the way this activity is presently conducted gives any clue to the goals it served in the past"'' (Rorty, 1986) | ||
| + | |||
| + | In [[Jürgen Habermas]], Foucault finds another opponent. Although Habermas approves several of Foucault's ideas, he lacked the excessive prejudice of Foucault's act against systems and their power. He picks on the fact that, according to Foucault, systems and power apply on nearly everything: Foucault speaks exclusively with dissaproval of systems. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Next one in line for giving critique is [[Anthony Giddens]], famous for his structuration theory. Giddens says that Foucault draws too close an association between prisons and factories regarding to power. Giddens argued that there are essential differences: the workplace is not a place where people are forced to do labour, in fact they enter the gates of the work-place as free wage-labour. This is not the deal in a prison, where the prisoner is forced to live in enclosed institutions. Prisoners are denied all those rights which the remainder of the population formally possess. Thus the exercise of power over prisoners or non-prisoners, as laborers have to considered as being two completely different actions (Giddens, 1993). | ||
| + | |||
| + | Even Philo (Philo, 2000, p.224) is asking questions about the work of Foucault. Philo sees it as a problem that Foucualt's geography arises in the way that he treats place in his substantive historical enquiry. It also occurs to Philo that in much of Foucault's historical writings he doens'nt show the concern for the associations of particular phenomena with particular meterial places, environments and landchapes that might be expected given his theoretical stress on the importance of empirical details and differences. Foucault began, as a response to this, adressing the difficulties associated with piecing together an analysis from documents in geographically dispersed archives. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Also we make a notion of the French writer Jean Baudrillard who published a little book called ''Oublier Foucault'' (Forgetting Foucault). | ||
== References == | == References == | ||
| - | + | * Binkley, Sam. & Capetillo, Jorge. eds. (2009). "A Foucault for the 21st century: Governmentality, Biopolitics & Discipline in the New Millenium". Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK. pp.139-150. | |
| - | * Crampton, J. & Elden, S. (2007). Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography. Hampshire: Ashgate publishing limited | + | |
| + | * Bouchard, Donald, F. (1977). ''Language, counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault''. Cornell University. USA. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Bowring, John. (1843). The works of Jeremy Bentham, Volume IV. Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843. 11 volumes. volume 4. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Cassell, P. (1993). ''The Giddens Reader'': ''Critique on Foucault'' (p. 228-235). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Crampton, J. & Elden, S. (2007). ''Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography''. Hampshire: Ashgate publishing limited | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Crang, Mike & Thrift, Nigel. eds. (2000). Thinking Space. Routledge. London | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Flynn, M. (1997). ''Sartre, Foucault and historical reason (p. 247). London: The University of Chicago Press. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Foucault, M. (1983). Afterword: the subject and power. In: Dreyfus, H.L. & Rabinow, P. (Eds.) ''Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics'' (pp. 208-226). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. | ||
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| + | * Foucault, M. (1966). ''The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences'' (p. 15-24). London: A Division of Random House, Inc. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2000) Poststructuralist interventions. In, E. Sheppard & T. Barnes (eds.) ''A Companion to Economic Geography''. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 95-110. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Gutting, Gary. (ed). (2005). ''The Cambridge Companion to Foucault''. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press. USA. | ||
| - | * | + | * Hall,S. (2000). ''Representation and discourse''. In Smith, M. Social science in question (p. 279). London: Sage. |
| - | * | + | * Harrison, P. (2006). Poststructuralist Theories. In: Aitken, S. & Valentine, G. (2006) (eds.). ''Approaches to human geography''. Sage, London. |
| - | * Kelly, | + | * Kelly, M.G.E. (ed). (2009). ''The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault''. New York: Routledge. |
| - | * Khalfa, J. ( | + | * Khalfa, J. (2003). "An Introduction to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze". Continuum. London. |
| - | * | + | * Khalfa, J. (2006). ''History of madness''. London: Routledge. |
| - | * | + | * O’farell, C. (2007). ''Key Concepts''. visited 18 september 2011, on Michel-foucault.com on http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/index.html |
| - | * | + | * Philo, C. (2000). Foucaults’geography. In: Crang, M. & Thrift, N. (Ed.) ''Thinking Space'' (p. 205-238). London: Routledge. |
| - | * Simons, Jon. (1995). Foucault & the political. London: Routledge. | + | * Rorty, R. (1986). ''Foucault and Epistemology'' in Hoy, D ''Foucault: A critical reader'' Oxford: Basil Blackwell. |
| + | |||
| + | * Sharp, J. (2000). ''Entanglements of power: geographies of domination/resistance''. New York: Routledge. | ||
| + | |||
| + | * Simons, Jon. (1995). ''Foucault & the political''. London: Routledge. | ||
| - | * Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern Geographies: The reassertion of space in Critical Social Theory | + | * Soja, E. (1989). ''Postmodern Geographies: The reassertion of space in Critical Social Theory''. London: Verso. |
| + | * Werlen, B. (2009). "Everyday Regionalisations."Elsevier. Germany. | ||
| + | * Zierhofer, W. (2001). ''Speech acts and space(s)"language pragmatics and the discursive constitution of the social''. University of Nijmegen. Nijmegen. | ||
== Contributors == | == Contributors == | ||
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* Published by Marjolein Selten and Fleur van der Zandt | * Published by Marjolein Selten and Fleur van der Zandt | ||
| - | * Interpretations on Foucault, | + | * Overlaps and divergences with action-theoretic approach, Foucault & Deleuze, Foucault & Said,Foucault & Giddens, Interpretations on Foucault, Biography enhancements, addition to 'On History' by Kolar Aparna--[[User:KolarAparna|KolarAparna]] 11:25, 18 October 2011 (CEST) |
| - | * Main overview edited by Sander Linssen | + | * Main overview edited by Sander Linssen (4115597) |
* Bodies and biopower and enhancements biography and interpretations by Judith Nijenhuis | * Bodies and biopower and enhancements biography and interpretations by Judith Nijenhuis | ||
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| + | * Post-structuralism created and reference enhancements by Aafke Brus --[[User:AafkeBrus|AafkeBrus]] 08:31, 30 September 2011 (UTC) | ||
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| + | * Existentialism created by Peter de Boer (4119711), Oktober 2011 | ||
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| + | * Critique on Foucault created and edited by Peter de Boer (4119711), Oktober 2011 | ||
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| + | * Page edited in 'written works' by adding The Courage of Truth. Enhanced by Stan Crienen. --[[User:StanCrienen|StanCrienen]] 12:45, 24 October 2011 (CEST) | ||
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| + | * Links added by Isis Boot | ||
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| + | * Page added to the category [[Post-structuralism]] by Anke Janssen | ||
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| + | * Page edited and added category key thinkers by Michiel van Rijn --[[User:MichielVanRijn|MichielVanRijn]] 13:58, 26 October 2012 (CEST) | ||
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| + | [[Category: Post-structuralism]] [[Category: Key Thinkers]] | ||
Latest revision as of 12:00, 26 October 2012
Biography
"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same." - Michel Foucault in the introduction to L'Archaeologie du Savoir.
Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was born in the small town of Poitiers in France to a well-established, outwardly Catholic medical family. His father was a surgeon, and probably this linked to his later writings on the political authority of doctors and the medical profession. But Foucault was indeed interested in the broader workings of power relations beyond the medical field and for reasons outside his relation with his father. Foucault was a bright but not an outstanding student. In his early years he experienced the political uncertainties in France, especially of the German occupation. He gained entry to the L'école normal supérieure in 1945 where he studied philosophy and psychology. He spent his time here mostly as a solitary and troubled figure, having attempted suicide more than once and was even referred to a psychiatrist. Later he gained first-hand experience of positivist, experimental, psychology in a mental hospital as both technician and an intern with an undefined role (Simons, 1995, pp.8-9).
However, Foucault was still searching for his niche intellectually and politically. After his graduation he joined the French Communist Party for about two years. But more significant was his friendship from 1952-55 with a group of experimental musicians, especially Jean Barraqué, with whom he had a stormy relationship - who were working on the limits of their art. He read avant-garde authors such as Robbe-Grillet, Beckett, Sade, Bataille, Blanchot and Nietzche to think in ways other than the dominant modes of thinking that were present then such as existentialism, phenomenology, or Marxism and Hegelianism. He took up positions as a cultural official in the French institutes at Uppsala, Warsaw and Hamburg. During this period till the end of the 1950s, Foucault wrote Madness and Civilization as his doctoral dissertation. In the meanwhile he indeed missed the political controversies at this time in France surrounding Algeria. (Simons, 1995, pp.9)
Arriving back in France, Foucault was mostly absorbed in finding a position for himself, and he even sat on a government commission to implement university reforms in 1965. He published several pieces of literary criticism about avant-garde authors and began working on Birth of the Clinic (1973a) and his best selling The Order of Things (1973b). Till the latter was published in 1966, Foucault was associated with anti-communism. (Simons, 1995, pp.9) His radical initiation to political resistance occurred in Tunisia (1966-8) when he illicitly aided students opposed to the political regime. At the same time he was working on The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972a). In the 1970’s Foucault threw himself into political and social activism and he strived for the acceptance of homosexuals and for reformation in prison. He became instrumental in establishing the Groupe d'information sur les prisons, in the wake of prison revolts in 1971. While the aim was to give voice to the prisoners' protests, the impetus of the agitation came from imprisoned Maoist militants who refused to dissociate themselves from the common criminals. From this refusal and a visit to Attica prison in 1972 developed the thesis for his next book, Discipline and Punish (1979a), that disciplinary power is exercised over everyone in modern society. He was also involved, alongwith Sartre and Jean Genet, in anti-racist, pro-immigrant campaigns, and in the establishment of a new press agency and newspaper, Libération, which was to be based on the principle of ordinary people's testimony. In 1975, along with the actors Yves Montard and Simone Signoret, Foucault protested against the execution of eleven prisoners in Spain. He then came around to writing The History of Sexuality around this time. These were but only some instances of his socio-political activism but he withdrew from it for a while(Simons, 1995, pp. 9-11).
Soon he became associated with the neo-liberalism of the New Philosophers, such as André Glucksmann, who had been disillusioned by the failure of post-1968 radical politics. By this time, Foucault was visiting the USA more often, enjoying popularity and discovering new ways of enjoying himself. Indeed, the focus of his intellectual work shifted away from sexuality per se to the more general notion of the human as the subject of desires. His studies of Christianity led him to characterize it as a mode of governing desire by renouncing it, in contrast to the Greeks and Hellenists, who moderated pleasures through techniques and arts of the self. At the same time, Foucault was teaching and lecturing about technologies and modes of government of polities (Simons, 1995, pp.11).
However, the main work in his last years can be said to be himself and his pleasures. With his first mind-blowing LSD trip in the Death Valley of California, Foucault took better to the free gay subculture of California that France could not offer. Here he explored the anonymity of sexual encounters, the strategic reversals of relationships and intense experiences of sadomasochism, and spoke about the construction of a gay lifestyle on the basis of a form of friendship between men that had been suppressed since the 17th century. Here he was practising an art of the self, living the philosphy he believed in. Yet his interests in politics and social activism did not totally die. Sometime in 1983 he knew that he would die of AIDS, ye he continued visiting American bathhouses. It is not clear whether he was taking risks with others willing to participate in a suicidal orgy, or was irresponsibly placing his pleasures above the lives of others. Back in France, he finally put his energies to write his last two works, dying on 25th June 1984. The true cause of his death was not mentioned (Simons, 1995, pp. 11-12).
Key concepts
- On History
Foucault critiqued the way in which history is ordered (Philo, 2000, p. 209-211). He was against what he called total history that assumes one central core in the social world governing all things. You may think for example of great leaders, approaches etc. According to Foucault total history was not concerned with the social structures and processes that created history. History wasn’t a continuity of events, but it was a timeline divided into periods, stages and phases that had barely relations to other distinct periods.
Foucault rejected this way of structuring history and tried to see history as a flow of events without a single world-view. These ‘places of dispersion’, may be seen as small spatial cells which move around each other and may be related. In this way it’s possible to make a network of causality with all relations turning round one core centre. Their relation depends on their distance to each other. He called this his ‘general history’.
According to Foucault it was not the approaches, discourses or great leaders that created history, but he was searching for the conditions in which these approaches, discourses or great leaders may arise. He searched for the ‘moments of change’ in the knowledge of people which effect history and which gave society a new direction.
He insisted on the importance of space, place and geography within historical thinking. To Foucault, phenomena, events, processes, and structures of history are always fragmented by geography, by the complicating reality of things that are always more or less different in different places, thus leading him to embrace a spatial perspective in his own works of history (Philo,2000, pp. 209) Foucault embarked on a history because of his judgment that certain current social circumstances are "intolerable". His motive was to understand the past in order to understand that which is intolerable in the present. In this process he dismissed the idea of historical events as inevitable. Foucault himself referred to his historical analyses as "histories of experience". His histories of experience is mainly concerned to describe the basic categories that structure the way a given age perceived and thought about objects such as madness or disease (Gutting, 2005, pp.10-15).
- Power, discourse, and knowledge
Foucault was also concerned about the power issues and wrote several books about it. Foucault suggested that power isn’t something you can see and neither can be found in a personality. Power can only ‘exist’ in actions and relations between persons, institutions, groups etc. (Foucault, 1983, p.217). Power can only be exercised over free subjects (Foucault, 1983, p. 221). Power is always present, and may become an intrinsic feeling that makes people act in an ‘appropriate’ way. (His concept of the panopticon became one of his most famous examples) (Sharp, 2000, p.78).
Foucault also thinks knowledge is a good condition for power relations. The more knowledge the more power, one can have on another. A discourse is a set of reasoning, which put a subject in a certain perspective. A discourse is formed by written or spoken texts around a subject. It tells people in an indirect way what is normal and what is not. In this way it also exercises power because it tells people how they should behave and it may give power relations to different institutions and people. Discourse is therefore embedded in culture and knowledge. According to Foucault nothing can exist without discourse (Hall, 2006, p. 279).
- Bodies and Biopower
Foucault is interested in the relation between politics and bodies. He points out how bodies are trained to be socially productive. Management of bodies is important for economic and social development, for healthy and docile bodies can be productive. This is the reason why capitalist states promote life and try to control their population. The main means of control are statistics and probabilities. Life and living are at the center of the modern political battles.
Biopower was the term Foucault used for the technology which is used for managing populations. It manages births and deaths and the reproduction and illnesses of a population. The modern western societies start to consider humans as a species which can be controlled, measured and counted.
"By this I mean a number of phenomena that seem to me to be quite significant, namely, the set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of power, or, in other words, how, starting from the 18th century, modern Western societies took on board the fundamental biological fact that human beings are a species. This is what I have called biopower" (Foucault. (2007). Security, territory, population. p. 1)
Public hygiene, psychiatry and assistance to the poor are examples of this kind of power, introduced in the 18th century in the modern surveillance society. A whole population is controlled through discipline and regulatory controls. But when life and health become so important to the state, this justifies eradication of groups threatening life or humanity . This realization makes Foucault warn for genocide “ because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of the population.” (Foucault. (1984). The history of sexuality volume 1. p. 137)
- Subject
In one of his afterwords , Foucault (1983) claimed that his works in the from 1960’s to 1980’s was not to analyze power, nor was it to work out an foundation of such an analysis. His objective was to create a history of the various modes by which people are turned into subjects. His work consisted of three modes of objectification: modes of inquiry, dividing practices and turning into subject. First of all modes of inquiry is the mode which try to give itself the status of sciences. Secondly the dividing practices is the objectification of the subject in dividing practices. The subject is either divided in himself or divided from other people. And the final mode of objectification is that human turn himself into a subject.
Written works
In Foucaults work three main issues or topics can be distinguished. He focussed on truth (1960's), on power (1970's) and on lust and the self (1980's).
Madness and Civilization (1961) Folie et déraison is the original title of Foucault's book about examination of the cultural, political, philosophical and medical construction of madness in European history. It's the first book in line where Foucault describes his exposition of his concept of history, the so-called general history. Furthermore, he describes the 'madness' from a phenomenological point of view, while he attributes the change in this experience over time to specify structuralism.
The birth of the clinic (1963) As an sequel to his previous book Foucault wrote about the development of the medical profession in Naissance de la clinique. Again Foucault is very critical about the writing of history, in this book the emphasis is on the existence of diseases. This book sheds new light on the origins of our current notions of health and sickness, life and death.
The Order of Things (1966) Les Mots et les choses is the third book of Foucault where he grasps to an alternate view on history. In this book Foucault describes that all periods in history have possessed certain conditions of truth, which were considered as acceptable. Foucault argues that discourses in different fields have changed over time, from one period's episteme to another. Foucault manifests a history which is not that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility (Foucault, 1966).
The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969)
Discipline and Punish (1975)
Primarily, Surveiller et punir describes a history in punishments. It is written to challenge the idea that prisons are the consistent form of punishment. Foucault describes the prison as a form of technological power. In the book section about discipline Foucault begins to describe his fascination about what he calls panopticism. In this observation, discipline doesn't exist through excessive force but through careful observation: in modern life we can use the example of camera security in shopping malls, the cameras create a safety feeling because visitors are being fully but discretely observed and therefor automatically act in norms of discipline (Kramsch, 2011). Finally, Foucault's concludes that over the years imprisonment punishes the body of a condemned person while Foucault advises to punish the mind.
The Courage of Truth (1983-1984) The Courage of truth is the last course that Michel Foucault delivered at the Collège de France. Here, he continues the theme of the previous year’s lectures in exploring the notion of “truth-telling” (also read parrhesia) in politics to establish a number of ethically irreducible conditions based on courage and conviction. His death, on June 25th, 1984, tempts us to detect the philosophical testament in these lectures, especially in view of the prominence they give to the themes of life and death.
The History of Sexuality (1984)
Contributions to Geography
Foucault did not especially examine geography and actually did not precisely define space, but in all his works he refers to the role played by spatial relations within a complex working of knowledge, power and discourse (Philo, 2000, p. 225). For Foucault space was bound up in history. His spaces of dispersion are things that are scattered across a landscape and are related to another through their geography (Soja, 1989, p.16).
Further, Foucault's concept of the heterotopia can be said to be a postmodern geographical thinking through heterogeonous spaces of sites and relations between them, rather than space blinded by history. (Soja, 1989, pp 17)
The only order is the distance to another and being positioned in locations or being associated with a type of environment (Philo, 2000, p.221). Foucault tended to think of space in terms of orders and forms of spatial reasoning that classifies and categorizes inherited knowledge. For example a historical map is a presentation of facts in history which may be used to shape the future; it imposes control of the future (Crampton & Elden, 2007, p. 55).
For Foucault (social) space could be found in ‘enclosures’ of society, which means that people are locked away in institutional spaces, which in turn can be classified into smaller partitions and so on. This gave also form to a chain of power and commands which is designed to physically maintain this organized social space.
“Foucault opens the way in which historical processes involving discourse, knowledge and power are always at work and (re)shaped by the real-world space ‘criss-crossed by trade routes, valleys, highlands, mountains and rivers (Philo, 2000, p. 227).”
Spatial turn of Foucault
For more information about Foucault also read: Discourse, panopticon, power of institutions: Foucault, Total history vs general history, strategic, There is Nothing Outside Discourse, Genealogy, Discursive Formation, Michel Foucault's Geography, Spatial turn
Interpretations on Foucault
Foucault is a hard figure to pin down and he himself has often criticised the efforts of academicians to box him within certain ideologies or disciplines. As Gutting rightly points, any general interpretation of Foucault denies the two most valuable things in his voice, i.e. specificity and marginality (Gutting, 2009, p. 3). In fact, Foucault himself did not refer back to his previous works in his books, and saw himself mostly experimenting rather than developing concrete methodologies as is reflected in the following quote.
"I am perfectly aware of having continuously made shifts both in the things that have interested me and in what I have already thought. In addition, the books I write constitute an experience for me that I'd like to be as rich as possible. An experience is something you come out of changed....In this sense I consider myself more an experimenter than a theorist; I don't develop deductive systems to apply uniformly in different fields of researcher." (Foucault, (Remarks on Marx, 1991) in Kelly, 2009 p .3)
He preferred his work to be used rather than studied. (Kelly, 2009)
'My role - and that is too emphatic a word - is to show people that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have been built up at a certain moment during history, and that this so-called evidence can be criticized and destroyed.' (Foucault. (1988). 'Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault October 25 1982'. In Luther H. Martin and Patrick Hutton (eds.), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, p.10.)
'It can be difficult to think of Foucault as a philosopher. His academic formation was in psychology and its history as much as in philosophy, his books were mostly histories of medical and social sciences, his passions were literary and political. Nonetheless, almost all of Foucault's works can be fruitfully read as philosophical in either or both of two ways: as a carrying out of philosophy's traditional critical project in a new (historical) manner; and as a critical engagement with the thought of traditional philosophers.' (The encyclopedia of philosophy on Michel Foucault)
Post-structuralism
Foucault was a post-structuralist. He focused on how certain knowledge and meanings became normalized and accepted as the truth (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p.99). In this process, power has a lot of influence on the construction of meaning. According to Foucault, discourse is formed by a set of meanings within a knowledge system as well as institutions and social practices that produce and maintain these meanings. By his work poststructuralists focused on how different forms of power intersect with knowledge production so that certain valorized conceptions of the subject in any historical subject could be created (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p.100).
Foucault is influenced by the work of Nietzsche about genealogy (Harrison, 2006, p.124). Genealogy is about the origin, the history of facts or things. It’s not about an identity that has to be recovered but about a difference, about understanding history as a productive, differential field.
Foucault’s writing has a certain paradox in it that is quite common to most poststructuralist thought, namely the “the denial of any external standard of reason and truth on the one hand while attempting to critique and convince on the other” (Harrison, 2006, p.125).
Existentialism
Although Foucault embibed Existentialism in his younger years, during the 60s Foucault became part of a group authors (including Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan) who rejected the existentialism theory. The gap between the existentialism, where the emphasis is on the meaning of individual practices, and Foucault's way of argue is considered to be immense. One of Foucault's points of view is is that a certain power is exercised over everyone in modern society which means that that no human being is free in making choices in life.
Foucault was sceptical regarding the works of Jean Paul Sartre. Foucault ridiculed Sartre's centralization of the subject (putting the individual experience at the center, or starting point, of investigation), calling it "transcendental narcissism" (Flynn, 1997, p.247).
Foucault and Action-Theoretical tradition: Some overlaps?
Discourse being central to Foucault's analysis on space, power and knowledge, a link can be made to the centrality of human action as also seen in action-theoretical tradition. Discourse being conducted through the actions and relations between individuals in a society one can indeed see an overlap for instance, in the concept of speech act s in the Language Pragmatics action theoretical approach that focuses on the analysis of communication and interaction as coordination mechanisms driving social order/coordination (Zierhofer, 2001). Further human action is central to Foucault's analysis of power. He says that power exists only when put into action, and mainly in power relations rather than purely a powerful act. A relationship of power is defined by him as nothing but an action upon an action. Additionally, human agency is not totally muted in Foucault's analysis of the subject and power. He claims that power is exercised only over free subjects, free subjects being individuals or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving may be realised. To him, freedom is a condition for the exercise of power (Foucault, 1983). In fact it could even be argued that the subject of foucault seems rather more alive, less-defined or framed, faced with a wider range of possibilities than the rationalised, ideal-typical agent of Max Weber or the consensus-seeking agent of Jürgen Habermas.
Thus the centrality of discourse and human action to Foucault and the centrality of human action and interaction in the action-theoretic tradition can be seen as overlapping lines of thought.
Foucault and Action theoretical tradition: Divergences?
Foucault's region and Werlen's region?
"Region is a fiscal,administrative, military notion." - Michel Foucault (Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, in Crampton &Elden, 2007)
"...In an action-centered perspective, the region signifies the result of everyday regionalisations as one of the key forms of everyday geography-making." - Benno Werlen (Werlen, Everyday Regionalizations, 2009, Glossary G0020)
From the above definitions of region by Foucault and Werlen it is clear that there is a marked difference in the thinking of Foucault to that of the everyday regionalisations of Werlen within action-theoretic tradition. While Foucault emphasizes the overarching power of structure and political control, Werlen's region emphasizes human agency and everyday regionalisation s of individuals.
Foucault and Deleuze
Apart from being friends, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze were indeed engaged with each other's work. Deleuze on Foucault can be explicitly found in his book Foucault, apart from interviews on Foucault's work in Negotiations, as well as his notes to Foucault concerning the first volume of the History of Sexuality, "Desire and Pleasure". Further, Foucault in his review essay "Theatrum Philosophicum", looked at Deleuze's Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense, which was published in Critique in November, 1970. Another published dialogue between the two authors can be found in a special issue of L'Arc (No. 49, pp. 3-10), the same also published in "language, counter-memory,practice: selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault" (1977, Bouchard)
Jeffrey Nealon's essay "Foucault's Deleuze.." is an interesting juxtaposition of Foucaultian Deleuzianism - of the lines of thoughts of the two authors. He traces the notion of 'incorporeal' as seeping through their works in different but pervasive ways. Another diffusing concept is 'intensification'. While intensity to Deleuze is "paradoxical"... both difference and repetition...an attribute of being itself; 'intensification' to Foucault is a quality not of being but of power, and how it spreads throughout the socius. (Binkley, Capetillo, 2009 pp.139-150)
Another striking coincidence, as mentioned by Giorgio Agamben (Khalfa,2003), is the centrality of the concept of life in the last texts published by Foucault and Deleuze before their deaths. The last works of the two philosophers indeed gestures towards the concept of life though quite independent in their trajectories. Foucault's text is entitled 'Life: Experience and Science', published in January-March issue of Revue de Métaphysicque et de Morale) and Deleuze's text 'Immanence: A life...', appeared in the journal Philosophie two months before his death. (Khalfa, 2003)
One can also find a similar way of viewing space in the concepts of ' spaces of dispersion' by foucault and 'assemblage' by Deleuze, in that both these concepts refer to a viewing of space as heterogenous and dynamic rather than predefined and fixed.
Foucault and Said
Edward Said's Orientalism comes very close to Foucault's carceral system in their analysis of discursive regimes of power and knowledge within imaginative geographies, as noted by Derek Gregory (Crang & Thrift, 2000). Gregory identifies three points of overlap across the two authors' maps of power, knowledge and geography, namely:
- Division: That both Foucault and Said discuss the discursive construction of exclusionary geography.
- Detail: That they both highlight the attention to detail, the micro-physics of power in the histories of division.
- Visibility: That both argue that the discipline of detail depends on 'spaces of constructed visibility', be it the all-encompassing Panopticon view of Jeremy Bentham's prison design, or the Orientalist gaze capturing from above the panoramic stretches of oriental lands.
Foucault and Giddens
Notions of decentralised power: Anthony Giddens looks at power as constituted within the structure agency dialect. Along similar lines, Foucault too emphasizes that there is no single source of power but power lies in action upon action, through the development of a series of practices.
Critique
Numerous authors, philosophers and scientists post critique on the work of Foucault.
Well known is the discussion between the American philosopher Noam Chomsky. They debate about Power of institutions: Foucault. Where Foucault mainly points at the strong power exercised by institutions and governments and the direct effect it has on the life of human beings Chomsky sees the systems in (Western) societies having a positive effect on the life of human beings. Where Foucault points at the restrictions made by institutions Chomsky says that people living in Western society are able to fully expose their agency. human beings do not have to be forced into the position of tools, of cogs in the machine, There is no longer any social necessity for human beings to be treated as mechanical elements in the productive process; that can be overcome and we must overcome it by a society of freedom and free association, in which the creative urge that I consider intrinsic to human nature, will in fact be able to realise itself in whatever way it will (Chomsky, 1971). In the same context true existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre [1] is an opponent of Michel Foucault. Sartre describes that a human being itself develops an own identity, it's free to give meaning to their own life by making own choices.
Chomsky is not the only author who doubt the work of Foucault. For instance, Richard Rorty accused Foucault for only being negative towards the traditional reading of history. Instead of put forward alternative, new readings of history he centralized his critics on the restrictions: "all Foucault has to offer are brilliant redescriptions of the past, supplemented by helpful hints on how to avoid being trapped by old historiographical assumptions. These hints consist largely of saying: do not look for progress or meaning in history; do not see the history of a given activity, of any segment of culture, as the development of rationality or of freedom; do not assume that the way this activity is presently conducted gives any clue to the goals it served in the past" (Rorty, 1986)
In Jürgen Habermas, Foucault finds another opponent. Although Habermas approves several of Foucault's ideas, he lacked the excessive prejudice of Foucault's act against systems and their power. He picks on the fact that, according to Foucault, systems and power apply on nearly everything: Foucault speaks exclusively with dissaproval of systems.
Next one in line for giving critique is Anthony Giddens, famous for his structuration theory. Giddens says that Foucault draws too close an association between prisons and factories regarding to power. Giddens argued that there are essential differences: the workplace is not a place where people are forced to do labour, in fact they enter the gates of the work-place as free wage-labour. This is not the deal in a prison, where the prisoner is forced to live in enclosed institutions. Prisoners are denied all those rights which the remainder of the population formally possess. Thus the exercise of power over prisoners or non-prisoners, as laborers have to considered as being two completely different actions (Giddens, 1993).
Even Philo (Philo, 2000, p.224) is asking questions about the work of Foucault. Philo sees it as a problem that Foucualt's geography arises in the way that he treats place in his substantive historical enquiry. It also occurs to Philo that in much of Foucault's historical writings he doens'nt show the concern for the associations of particular phenomena with particular meterial places, environments and landchapes that might be expected given his theoretical stress on the importance of empirical details and differences. Foucault began, as a response to this, adressing the difficulties associated with piecing together an analysis from documents in geographically dispersed archives.
Also we make a notion of the French writer Jean Baudrillard who published a little book called Oublier Foucault (Forgetting Foucault).
References
- Binkley, Sam. & Capetillo, Jorge. eds. (2009). "A Foucault for the 21st century: Governmentality, Biopolitics & Discipline in the New Millenium". Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK. pp.139-150.
- Bouchard, Donald, F. (1977). Language, counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault. Cornell University. USA.
- Bowring, John. (1843). The works of Jeremy Bentham, Volume IV. Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843. 11 volumes. volume 4.
- Cassell, P. (1993). The Giddens Reader: Critique on Foucault (p. 228-235). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
- Crampton, J. & Elden, S. (2007). Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography. Hampshire: Ashgate publishing limited
- Crang, Mike & Thrift, Nigel. eds. (2000). Thinking Space. Routledge. London
- Flynn, M. (1997). Sartre, Foucault and historical reason (p. 247). London: The University of Chicago Press.
- Foucault, M. (1983). Afterword: the subject and power. In: Dreyfus, H.L. & Rabinow, P. (Eds.) Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208-226). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Foucault, M. (1966). The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (p. 15-24). London: A Division of Random House, Inc.
- Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2000) Poststructuralist interventions. In, E. Sheppard & T. Barnes (eds.) A Companion to Economic Geography. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 95-110.
- Gutting, Gary. (ed). (2005). The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press. USA.
- Hall,S. (2000). Representation and discourse. In Smith, M. Social science in question (p. 279). London: Sage.
- Harrison, P. (2006). Poststructuralist Theories. In: Aitken, S. & Valentine, G. (2006) (eds.). Approaches to human geography. Sage, London.
- Kelly, M.G.E. (ed). (2009). The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault. New York: Routledge.
- Khalfa, J. (2003). "An Introduction to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze". Continuum. London.
- Khalfa, J. (2006). History of madness. London: Routledge.
- O’farell, C. (2007). Key Concepts. visited 18 september 2011, on Michel-foucault.com on http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/index.html
- Philo, C. (2000). Foucaults’geography. In: Crang, M. & Thrift, N. (Ed.) Thinking Space (p. 205-238). London: Routledge.
- Rorty, R. (1986). Foucault and Epistemology in Hoy, D Foucault: A critical reader Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- Sharp, J. (2000). Entanglements of power: geographies of domination/resistance. New York: Routledge.
- Simons, Jon. (1995). Foucault & the political. London: Routledge.
- Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern Geographies: The reassertion of space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso.
- Werlen, B. (2009). "Everyday Regionalisations."Elsevier. Germany.
- Zierhofer, W. (2001). Speech acts and space(s)"language pragmatics and the discursive constitution of the social. University of Nijmegen. Nijmegen.
Contributors
- Published by Marjolein Selten and Fleur van der Zandt
- Overlaps and divergences with action-theoretic approach, Foucault & Deleuze, Foucault & Said,Foucault & Giddens, Interpretations on Foucault, Biography enhancements, addition to 'On History' by Kolar Aparna--KolarAparna 11:25, 18 October 2011 (CEST)
- Main overview edited by Sander Linssen (4115597)
- Bodies and biopower and enhancements biography and interpretations by Judith Nijenhuis
- Post-structuralism created and reference enhancements by Aafke Brus --AafkeBrus 08:31, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Existentialism created by Peter de Boer (4119711), Oktober 2011
- Critique on Foucault created and edited by Peter de Boer (4119711), Oktober 2011
- Page edited in 'written works' by adding The Courage of Truth. Enhanced by Stan Crienen. --StanCrienen 12:45, 24 October 2011 (CEST)
- Links added by Isis Boot
- Page added to the category Post-structuralism by Anke Janssen
- Page edited and added category key thinkers by Michiel van Rijn --MichielVanRijn 13:58, 26 October 2012 (CEST)
