Understanding and Misunderstanding Foucault - Andrew J. …

1 Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultSociology 250 April 9, 2013 Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20131 / 26 Michel Foucault1926 1984 Born 1926, Poitiers, Frenchcountryside1946 50: Ecole NormaleSup erieure, ParisDiscovers own homosexualityAlong with many Frenchintellectuals, joins theCommunists1953: Leaves the CommunistParty.. becomes a crucial Frenchintellectual, finishes career atColl`ege de France (1969 84)1984: Dies from complicationsof AIDSS ociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20132 / 261968 in Modern HistoryChicagoSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20133 / 261968 in Modern HistoryNew YorkSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20134 / 261968 in Modern HistoryPragueSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20135 / 261968 in Modern HistoryParis My work had nearly no echo with the exception of a very small circle,before 1968 Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20136 / 261968 in Modern HistoryHow to be a Radical:1848 1968: Critique within modernism (Marx)1968 present: Critique of modernism (Althusser Foucault postmodernism)Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20137 / translate as knowledge Connaissance.

2 Objectified knowledge; materialized and communicable, , mathematical, linguistic, philosophical, :a more intimate direction of the subject towards the objectconsidered. One speaks about self-knowledge, of knowledge of a givensubject, which implies the experiment, the intimisation, which isimpossible to a relation of intimacy to the 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20138 / 26 Foucault s Life ProjectThe problem is to determine what the subject must be, to what conditionhe is subject, what status he must have, what position he must occupy inreality or in the imaginary, in order to become a legitimate subject of thisor that type of knowledge [connaissance].Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 20139 / 26 Michel FoucaultMajor Works1965:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age ofReason1970:The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the HumanSciences1972:The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse onLanguage1973:The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of MedicalPerception1975:I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister,and my brother.

3 : A Case of Paracide in the 19th Century1978:Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison1978:The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction1985:The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 21986:The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3 Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201310 / 26 The Birth of the ClinicHistorical connection between science, social reform, andtechnological prowessAn institution for the knowledge of the human bodyAn institution for the reform of the human bodyAn institution for the discipline of the human bodyMedicine is not sinister or underhanded; it is discursive andhistorically contingentSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201311 / 26 MadnessModernization is about the enforcement of a discourse of reasonMadness is the resistance to this enforcementThe asylum/hospital is the institutional expression of this resistanceSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201312 / 26 I, Pierre Riviere.

4 The extraordinary story of a brutal crime in a small nineteenth-centuryFrench village is movingly and strikingly told in the first half of the book,through the actual documents of the case, and in the words of itsparticipants and observers witnesses, judges, doctors, lawyers, 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201313 / 26 The Birth of the Prison18th 19th century prison reform movements bring Reason topunishmentNote the three meanings ofdiscipline:1 The treatment suited to a disciple or learner; education; developmentof the faculties by instruction and exercise; training, whether physical,mental, or to rule; submissiveness to order and control; habit ofobedience; severe training, corrective of faults; instruction by means ofmisfortune, suffering, punishment, subject matter of instruction; a branch of reform brings the rational gaze and control of the body tocrime controlSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201314 / 26 The PanopticonPerfection of the rational disciplinary gazeSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201315 / 26 The PanopticonPerfection of the rational disciplinary gazeSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201316 / 26 The History of SexualityDoes sexuality really have ahistory?

5 The transformation of sex into discourse.. the disseminationand reinforcement of heterogeneous sexualities, are perhaps twoelements of the same deployment: they are linked together withthe help of the central element of a confession that compelsindividuals to articulate their sexual peculiarity no matter .. it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined,through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201317 / 26 Power and SexualitySex is placed by power in a binary system: licit and illicit,permitted and forbidden.(The 20th-century reformist view of the regulation of sex)Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201318 / 26 The Paradox of Reform (Perrin)Social systems characterized by more freedom may not actuallyprovide greater individual autonomyPresent in some classical social theory, , Marx and WeberFoucault explores and expands this ideaBecause power infuses everything even reform reform rearrangespower but does not overcome itSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201319 / 26 Foucault s Grand ProjectCentral metaphorsGenealogyArchaeologySociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201320 / 26 Foucault s Grand ProjectExample: The Practice of OpiningWhat is expected of the modern citizen?

6 Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201321 / 26 The Production of DiscourseProblems DiscourseSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201322 / 26 Foucault on GovernmentalityI think people in both [the Western and socialist] worlds arefeeling more and more discomfort, difficulty, and impatience withthe way they are led..We are, I believe, at the beginning of a huge crisis of awide-ranging reevaluation of the problem of government..[And] the political parties, for sample, don t seem to grasp thegenerality of the questions at 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201323 / 26 Misunderstanding FoucaultFoucault is not a postmodernistFoucault is not a grand theoristSome of Foucault s insights and claims underwrite grand andpostmodern theorySociology s approach to Foucault needs to improve!Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201324 / 26 PerformativityAn interesting extension to FoucaultSociologists don t think economics s idea of human nature is true,but.

7 Economics seems pretty good at predicting how people behave, atleast 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201325 / 26 PerformativityAn interesting extension to FoucaultPeople learn how to behave from economic theoryThe Black-Scholes-Merton storyFoucauldian idea: powerful discourses and systems evoke the kinds ofsubjectsthey needSociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding FoucaultApril 9, 201326 / 26