Michel Foc v3

7/27/2019 Michel Foc v3

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Michel Foucault (19261984)Foucault tries to develop powerful

critiques of the dominant paradigm

within which we do our politics, we

run our educational institutions, ourprison systems, hospitals, psychiatric

disciplines, etc.


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Foucault was a critic of the human

sciences like psychiatry, penology (the

study of crime, punishment and prison)He explored how these human sciences

have been used to define deviants and thensegregate humans in order to construct a

notion of normal selfhood/ identity.philosophical critique of the present,

especially the modes of subjectivity or

forms of identity to which we are tied.


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subjectivity and identity

subject and subjectivity refers to the

thinking, conscious self

Enlightenment subject: an autonomous

subject endowed with capacities ofreason, consciousness and agencythe

capacity for action


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inner core or essenceThis essence or inner core unfolds

with time or is realized with time.


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This essence or inner core unfolds

with time or is realized with time.

Postmodern Subject: not biologically

defined, it is historically definedIt is determined not by essences, butby the contingent forces of culture and

history.


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Postmodernism moves away from the term

self or identity because they traditionally

evoke the idea of identity as a privatepossession and a notion of the individual as

unique and autonomous.emphasize that the subject is not a free

consciousness or stable human essence but

rather a construction of language, politicsand culture.prefer the term subject because it is more

ambiguous.


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we are free to say and do what we like to

the degree that we accept the rule of the

cultural norms/rules in which we arelocated.Foucaults primary interest:- critique of the present paradigms within

which we work

- critiques of the modes of subjectivity

available to us


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Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)there are no facts, onlyinterpretationsFoucault believes that there are no

bare facts in history which is

separate from the interpretationwithin which these facts are

embedded.


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The term history within the

Western Civilization is necessarily acontinuous narrative about progress.Foucault rejects the Hegelian

teleological model of history, inwhich one epoch flows dialectically

out of other.


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archaeology and genealogy

- the reversal of perspective also called as

perspectivism

history is not written from a single

perspective/ standpoint of power, authority or

influence, but from the standpoint of the

masses, who do not occupy such positions of

influence of power and authority.

the masses who produce large and

significant movements that has changed social

formations.


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take that which is left out of

official authoritative histories, anduse that as your clue to write history

of suspicionthat something hasbeen left out.This reversal of perspective, alsocalled perspectivism


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an attempt to recover and focus on

the marginal and local narratives,

events, phenomena or voices.Traditional or total history inserts

events into grand explanatory systems

and linear processes; it celebrates grand

moments and tries to document a pointof origin.


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Genealogy favours the discredited, the

neglected, the marginal, which havebeen denied a history


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There is an attempt to preserve their

singularity, by making sure that they are not

absorbed into the dominant and grandexplanatory systems and events that

traditional history focuses on.- they make clear that traditional history

has recorded the voice of the dominant and

excluded the marginal discourses- they show clearly what the assumptions

of dominant or elite history are.


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an insurrection of subjugated knowledges,

nave, local knowledges located way below

on the heirarchy a whole set ofknowledges that have been disqualified in

the past as inadequate.- genealogical analysis does away with the

assumption that history is teleological and

continuous, where one epoch flowing outof another.

- Genealogical analysis accepts that history

is material


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For Foucault, history is a complex

interrelationship of a variety of

discourses.Discourse is a common pattern ofculturally internalized expectation

rather than some pure or essential truththat people traditionally refer to when

they use the term knowledge.


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does not simply mean languages

and systems of representationsIt naturalizes certain cultural

assumptions and expectations.


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Through repetition, these complex

arrangements of signs and practices

organize our social existence and

reproduce knowledge.

Both serves to define us andconstrain us as subjects.


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The interaction of discourses in agiven historical period is not random

it is dependent upon a unifying

principle or pattern that Foucault calls

the episteme.


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Episteme : through language and thought, each period in

history develops its own perceptions about the nature of

reality or truth

- sets up its own standards of acceptable and

unacceptable behavior

- criteria for judging what it deems good or bad

- which group of people can talk, articulate, protectand defend the yardstick of truth and values that

would be applicable to all.


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Foucault borrows techniques from archaeology

in order to unearth the episteme of any given

historical period.- the genealogical critic should dig deep and

expose each layer of discourses that cometogether to shape an eras episteme.- the genealogical critic pieces together the

various discourses and their interconnections

among themselves.


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epistemes change from one historical

period to another

Eg. - the change from the

Enlightenment Age of Reason to

Romanticism


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This archeological uncovering of thevarious discourses will not unearth a

monolithic episteme

a single, overarching political vision

or design


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It will uncover a set of inconsistent,

irregular and often contradictorydiscourses


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Nietzsches On theGenealogy of

Morals (1884)

genealogy of the subject

how humans came to develop a

conscience and became moral beings


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it was by means of the morality of

custom and the social strait jacket that

man was really made calculable

Things never proceeded without blood,torture and victims, when man thought

it necessary to forge a memory forhimself. (The Genealogy of Morals II)


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Nietzsches genealogy of modern culture:

- the modern morals of the western

Civilization is a culmination of 2000 year

process of decline

- posits a pre history to westerncivilization, a culture with two distinct

character typesnobles and slaves


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each class have their own moralityour present morals have evolved from

slave mentality


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Nietzsches example of the Jewishculture

- The Jews had a very a religiousreinterpretation of their history which

allowed them to explain their misfortunes

as the consequence of sin

J d h i l b f i


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Jews saved their culture by transforming

itthey found purpose in defeat

projected values which affirms lifesuch as strength, power, beauty as evil

negate dynamism of life, of will topower and prefer eternal stasis or life

after death.


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a form of history which is opposed to a

search for a historical universal

foundations and metaphysical essencesit does not believe in constants


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genealogy is a form of research whose

purpose is to activate subjugated historical

knowledges

archaeology is the process of unearthing

the subjugated knowledges

genealogy is the method of disseminatingsuch knowledge so that it can be effective

for peoples struggle


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Archaeology is about the conditions of

possibility which gives rise to knowledge

genealogy is about the constraints that

limit the orders of knowledge

- the regimes of power that determine in a

given historical period what is true andwhat is false


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Genealogical critics:

begin with the presentmove backward in time until a difference

is located

then they will move forward again,

tracing the transformation

preserve the discontinuities and

continuities.


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Foucault often uses the term

genealogy to refer to the union of

erudite knowledge and local memories.


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genealogy focuses on :

local, discontinuous, disqualified

knowledges

is against the claim of a unitary

concept of history

that would filter and create hierarchies

in the name of knowledge.


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Genealogy is a form of critique that rejects:

the pursuit of pure origins in favour of

a conception of historical beginnings asslowly, complex and contingent


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multiplicity of factors behind an event

the fragility of historical forms.- no constants, no essences, no

immobile forms of uninterruptedcontinuities that structure the past


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Foucaults main interest:

- to study construction of the humansubject by disciplines which are

collectively known as the human sciences


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how the human subject is constructed

how the human sciences are constituted

what are the consequences of theirexistence

knowledge and power


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knowledge and power.Power and knowledge directly imply one

anotherKnowledge is controlled in every societythrough mechanisms of powerpower relationships and scientific

discourses mutually constitute one another


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knowledge transforms the subject it

studies into an object.

man becomes both the subject andobject of the scientific discourses

Eg. the discourses about labour, life and

language


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as objects, they are

defined

constructed

governed by those discourses

these scientific knowledge are discourseswhich define us as subjects


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Knowledge / power in government

methods of government transformphenomena into objects that can be

studied scientifically

scientific knowledge provides

knowledge of these objects that makesthem more agreeable to government

docile


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power disguises itself by presenting the

truths of human sciences as advances inobjective knowledge about human beingsMadness and Civilizationthe discourse of reason has excluded

from it the mad and the irrational

disappearance of leprosy in the medieval


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disappearance of leprosy in the medieval

period created a moral void

void filled by madness and madnessbecame a stigma

the mad were driven out of city limits orwere handed over to mariners and this led

to the rise of ship of fools

mad ships were replaced by mad houses

and instead of embarkation we had

confinement or correction


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Confinement became the method of the

state to suppress social and political

agitationit absorbed the unemployed in order to

mask their povertyit avoided the social and political

disadvantages of agitation

Asylums where


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Asylums where

there was partial abolition of physicalconstraint

efforts to constitute self-restraint in thepeople

Instead of repression, there was

surveillance and judgment by authority


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the clinic is not a free realm ofobservation, diagnosis and therapeutic, they

are juridical space where people were

accused, judged and condemnedthey became instruments of moral

uniformity


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reformers of madness created a whole new

disciplinary matrix around madnessit created a new form of control

The birth of the asylum can be seen as an

allegory on the constitution of subjectivity

D l d P h


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Discipline and Punish

The body of the condemned

Power of the church and the Kinginscribed on the body of the

condemned


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The spectacle of the scaffold

The suffering docile body of the

criminal is subversive

spoke about the violence of

institutional rule


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Panopticon a prison designed by the


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Panopticon a prison designed by the

utilitarian philosopherJeremy Bentham

Panopticon

principlethat

allows the gaze todirected unilaterally

Panopticism is afeature of our

modern society


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Europeans repressed non-whites to

construct their own racial class identityas a preferred category

Males repressed women to construct

the notion of masculinity as therepository of political power


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Sandra Harding

Susan Bordo

Modern philosophers have expressed a

gendered conception of knowledge

Susan Bordos The Cartesian


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Susan Bordo s The Cartesian

Masculinization of Thought

reason, rationality and thought projected

as masculine and body, experience as

feminine

Cartesian modernity inherently linked to

a flight from the feminine motivated by

fear and revulsion of mundane bodily

experience


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Human subjects defined in terms that are

primarily western

Cornel West

notions of reason and rights of the

Enlightenment were used by the ruling

class of the west as a tool to repress racialminorities

Ed d Si d


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Edward Siad

Orient is the racial other of Europe

European culture was able to manage and even reproducethe Orient

politically, sociologically, militarily,

ideologically, scientifically, and

imaginatively during the post-

Enlightenment period Orientalism a discourse that produced


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Orientalism a discourse that produced

knowledge about the orient in terms of

lack, stagnation and inferiorityOrient portrayed in terms ofcivilizational stagnation, technological

backwardness, limited intellectual

attainments, irrationality, despotic system

of government, weakness of character,

Michel Foc v3

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