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Foucault: PTCI Ch 2

Background on Foucault

Philosophical Theory

society, knowledge, discourse, power

Historical Topics

psychiatry, medicine, punishment, human science

Influences

Nietzsche (power/knowledge relation, systematizing is reductive, knowledge is subjective and requires multiple perspectives), 

Bataille (anti-enlightenment reason, normalizing force of social practices)

Biography

switched from philosophy to study of psychiatry due to dislike of abstractness in philosophy

worked observing mental hospitals in the 50s

doctorate in History of Science in 60s

College of France “history of systems of thought” chair 70s until his death

Critique of Modernity

Definition of Modernity

Classical Era 1660 to 1800 (powerful mode of domination)

Modern Era 1800 to present (refinement of domination through institutions, discourses, practice, reason)

Critique of Rationality

human experience becomes discursively reconstituted from a scientific/rational perspective

enlightenment was to multiply the political power of reason and saturate new domains 

Methods of Analysis

willingness to accept incommensurability, difference, fragmentation, discontinuity

cover subject from multiple perspectives to give a rich perspective not a unified one

does not construct a philosophical system

draws upon his academic backgrounds (structuralism, marxism, psychiatry, philosophy, history) but is not beholden to them if deviation produces interesting results

Archaeology & Discontinuity

Archeology differentiated from

hermeneutics which searches for underlying truth

history which ascribes evolution or progression

Archeology wants to find

determining rules lying beneath intention

how rules influence configuration of knowledge and social practice

how rules are historically changing and discontinuous

works influenced by archeology

Madness & Civilization; discursive evolution of ‘madness’ to allow for exclusion and confinement

Birth of a Clinic; empirical medicine and ‘scientific gaze’

The Order of Things; human sciences and renaissance / classical / modern era and the development of ‘man’ as a subject

Archeology of Knowledge; reflection on his theory, contrasts general history to total history

Nietzsche and Genealogy

Genealogy different from Archeology in that 

expansion to include institutions and workings of power

how ‘will to knowledge’ creates power

Genealogy focuses on

discursive vs non discursive domains

power targets to produce knowledge and subjectivity

how subject is materially constructed and its political consequences

Discipline & Punish

disciplinary matrixes school, prison, hospitals, workshops

formation of soul, body, subject within these institutions

practices seek to construct the individual

normalization and elimination of irregularities is the goal

History of Sexuality

goal is not to repress but to territorialize

sexuality and sexual nature are constructed

body becomes inscribed within scientific discourse

Power / Knowledge / Subjectivity

Rejection of modern power theories

economic power, ie marxism, is reductionistic to class relations

judicial power, ie law rights political systems, is reductionistic to assuming that underlying rules mirror political structure rather than power evolving from ground up in multiple contexts

Genealogical works point to this concept of power

discipline & punish; disciplinary systems derive power not from physical force or repression but by their power to construct and expand hegemony of norms, political technologies, and construction of the body and soul

history of sexuality; concept of bio-power which is (1) disciplinary power involving increasing politicization of the human body (2) creation of the ‘species body’ wherein population is understood as an accumulation of phenomena like health, life expectancy, fertility, patterns of habitation

Subjectivity is a byproduct of power

moral consciousness is a strategy and effect of power wherein one internalizes social control

unified free subject and agency that proceeds social operations does not exist

subject is defined historically and by a specific matrix of power relations by which it is created

Power is disperse and evolving

power is a purely structural activity for which subjects are conduits or byproducts

operates independent of conscious subjects

ascending from micro-state to macro-state and de-centered field of networks which is only taken up by macro-structure like class or state after the fact