Understanding and Misunderstanding Foucault - …perrin.socsci.unc.edu/stuff/foucault-slides.pdf · Understanding and Misunderstanding Foucault Sociology 250 April 9, 2013 Sociology

Understanding and Misunderstanding Foucault

Sociology 250

April 9, 2013

Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding Foucault April 9, 2013 1 / 26

Michel Foucault1926–1984

Born 1926, Poitiers, Frenchcountryside1946–50: Ecole NormaleSuperieure, ParisDiscovers own homosexualityAlong with many Frenchintellectuals, joins theCommunists

1953: Leaves the CommunistParty

. . . becomes a crucial Frenchintellectual, finishes career atCollege de France (1969–84)

1984: Dies from complicationsof AIDS


1968 in Modern HistoryChicago


1968 in Modern HistoryNew York


1968 in Modern HistoryPrague


1968 in Modern HistoryParis

“My work had nearly no echo with the exception of a very small circle,before 1968”


1968 in Modern History

How to be a Radical:

1848–1968: Critique within modernism (Marx)

1968–present: Critique of modernism (Althusser → Foucault →postmodernism)


Connaissance vs. Savoir

Both translate as “knowledge”

Connaissance: objectified knowledge; materialized and communicable,e.g., mathematical, linguistic, philosophical, etc.

Savoir: 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 formulate. Savoir is a relation of intimacy to the object.


Foucault’s Life Project

The 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 this

or that type of knowledge [connaissance].


Michel FoucaultMajor Works

1965: Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age ofReason

1970: The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the HumanSciences

1972: The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse onLanguage

1973: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of MedicalPerception

1975: I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister,and my brother ...: A Case of Paracide in the 19th Century

1978: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

1978: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction

1985: The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2

1986: The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3


The Birth of the Clinic

Historical connection between science, social reform, andtechnological prowess

An institution for the knowledge of the human body

An institution for the reform of the human body

An institution for the discipline of the human body

Medicine is not sinister or underhanded; it is discursive andhistorically contingent


Madness

Modernization is about the enforcement of a discourse of reason

Madness is the resistance to this enforcement

The asylum/hospital is the institutional expression of this resistance


“I, Pierre Riviere. . . ”

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, peasants.


The Birth of the Prison

18th–19th century prison reform movements bring Reason topunishment

Note the three meanings of discipline:1 The treatment suited to a disciple or learner; education; development

of the faculties by instruction and exercise; training, whether physical,mental, or moral.

2 Subjection to rule; submissiveness to order and control; habit ofobedience; severe training, corrective of faults; instruction by means ofmisfortune, suffering, punishment, etc.

3 The subject matter of instruction; a branch of knowledge.

Prison reform brings the rational gaze and control of the body tocrime control


The PanopticonPerfection of the rational disciplinary gaze


The PanopticonPerfection of the rational disciplinary gaze


The History of Sexuality

Does sexuality really have a history?

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 howextreme.. . . it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined,through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an individualsecret.


Power and Sexuality

Sex is placed by power in a binary system: licit and illicit,permitted and forbidden.

(The 20th-century “reformist” view of the regulation of sex)


The Paradox of Reform (Perrin)

Social systems characterized by more “freedom” may not actuallyprovide greater individual autonomy

Present in some classical social theory, e.g., Marx and Weber

Foucault explores and expands this idea

Because power infuses everything—even reform—reform rearrangespower but does not overcome it


Foucault’s Grand ProjectCentral metaphors

Genealogy Archaeology


Foucault’s Grand ProjectExample: The Practice of Opining

What is expected of the modern citizen?Sociology 250 () Understanding and Misunderstanding Foucault April 9, 2013 21 / 26

The Production of Discourse

Problems ⇐⇒ Discourse


Foucault on Governmentality

I 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 stake.


Misunderstanding Foucault

Foucault is not a postmodernist

Foucault is not a grand theorist

Some of Foucault’s insights and claims underwrite grand andpostmodern theory

Sociology’s approach to Foucault needs to improve!


PerformativityAn interesting extension to Foucault

Sociologists don’t think economics’s idea of human nature is true,but. . .

Economics seems pretty good at predicting how people behave, atleast economically.

Why?


PerformativityAn interesting extension to Foucault

People learn how to behave from economic theory

The Black-Scholes-Merton story

Foucauldian idea: powerful discourses and systems evoke the kinds ofsubjects they need


Documents

Understanding and Misunderstanding Foucault - …perrin.socsci.unc.edu/stuff/foucault-slides.pdf · Understanding and Misunderstanding Foucault Sociology 250 April 9, 2013 Sociology