Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)

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Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)

• Discourse, Power and Subjectivity

Image source
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Outline

• Power
• Discipline Punish
• The History of Sexuality
• Subject and Subject Position

• Starting Questions
• General Ideas
• Discourse
• Definition
• From Language to Discourse
• Power and Knowledge (Truth)

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Starting Questions 1 Discourse, Truth Power

• What is discourse and how is an individual (such
  as an author or a reader) related to a discourse?
  
• Do you agree with Foucaults argument that
  --"nothing has any meaning outside of discourse?

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Starting Questions 1 Discourse, Truth Power

• What discourse, or its the regime of truth,
  makes the following statements valid?
• Madness is a mental illness.
• Masturbation causes sexual impotence.
• sodomy gay homosexual queer ??
• What are the examples of societys carceral
  system? How does it function?
• Do we question disciplinary powers such those of
  the teachers, judges and doctors? Or to what
  extent should they be questioned?

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Foucault General Ideas

• Two periods
• Archaeology of knowledge-- rules and strategies
  for formation of subject-positions, knowledge and
  episteme.
• (e.g. Man as a product of modernity.)
• What is an Author 1969 transitional article
• 2) Genealogy of power/knowledge extends his
  discussions to a variety of institutions and
  non-discursive practices mutual support of power
  and knowledge.
• e.g. Discipline and Punish, History of Sexuality.
  

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Central concerns

• The "other"
• historical fragments, accidents interruptions
  (vs. official history)
• madness (vs. reason),
• sickness (vs. health),
• crime (vs. law)
• abnormal sex (vs. normal sex).

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Central concerns (2)

• subjectification/objectification of individuals
  
• -- production of those bodies of knowledge
  which appear to be sciences (e.g. the speaking
  subject in linguistics the authors in
  literature)
• -- differentiation those practices which
  install a division of subjects of differing
  qualities (e.g.the sane vs. the mad)
• -- discipline knowledge and techniques by means
  of which individuals turns themselves into
  subjects. (e.g. sexualized subjects)

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Discourse Definition

• Discourse is "a group of statements which provide
  a language for talking about ...a particular
  topic at a particular historical moment."
• Three major procedures
• Definition Prohibition ? defining statements
  Rules about the sayable and thinkable
• Division and rejection ? subject positions
  exclusion of other statements
• Opposition between false and true ?
  Authority/Power of knowledge (Truth)
• discursive practices within institutions
  discursive formation over time.

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From Language to Discourse

• Saussure Barthes Derrida Foucault

Language Or Langue/ Parole Semiotics-wider fields of languages Textual Play, Open text, Meaning undecidable and fluid History Social practices texts discourse
Structure, Communication and Signification Scientific (text, but not subject) Structure, Communication and Signification Scientific (text, but not subject) Signification traces Knowledge power Subject position
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From Language to Discourse

Structuralism Focuses on language and fixed structure Foucault Language (statements) as well as social practices
Marxism Materialist view of history and society -- scientific Foucault p. 48 --not limited to class --every knowledge is contingent.
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Power and Knowledge/Truth

• power
• both repressive, controlling and productive
• -- not just top-down it circulates, working in
  multiple direction like capillary movement.
• e.g. the operation of power in a hospital
  exertion of power through spatial arrangement,
  the doctors examination, the posters, pamphlets,
  the different examination room, registration
  system, pharmacy, insurance co., etc.
• -- producing Truth with a discursive
  formation sustaining a regime of truth.

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Discipline and Punish

• Main purpose -- not so much the birth of the
  prison as disciplinary technology
• Three major images
• A. The carceral forms of discipline which
  exercise over individual a perpetual series of
  observation and modes of control of conduct

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Discipline and Punish (2) B. Penopticon

A circular building with the central control
tower ? control internalized.
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Discipline and Punish (3) C. Disciplinary Society

• C. Carceral power opens up the entire fabric of
  society to a normalizing regulation. (Miller
  200-01)

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Discipline and Punish

• 4 Parts
• Torture
• -- soul born out of methods of punishment,
  supervision and constraint the prison of the
  body (29-30)
• -- torture -- part of truth-production mechanism
  (35-37)

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Discipline and Punish

• 4 Parts
• 2. Punishment -- gentler forms public works and
  incarceration
• 3. Discipline
• Docile Bodies (135-69)
• -- The aim of disciplinary technology is to forge
  a docile body that may be subjected, used,
  transformed and improved (136)

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Discipline and Punish

• 3. Discipline
• 2. The Means of Correct Training (170-194)
• --Discipline makes individuals it is the
  specific technique of a power that regards
  individuals both as objects and as instrument of
  its exercise (170)
• 3. Panopticism (195-228)

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The History of Sexuality

• We Other Victorians
• put the repressive hypothesis back within a
  general economy of discourses on sex since 17th
  century
• --central issue how sex is put into
  discoursetechnology of power, will to knowledge

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The History of Sexuality

• Part Two The Repressive Hypothesis
• regulated and polymorphous incitement to
  discourse ? policing of sex e.g. the Christian
  pastoral, childrens school education and silence
  on the sex of children and adolescent population
  issue medicine (e.g. nervous disorder, etc.)

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The History of Sexuality

• Part Two The Repressive Hypothesis
• 2. Perverse implantation
• Exclusion of sexual pleasures which are not
  amenable to reproduction ? two modifications
• 1. A centrifugal mov. With respect to
  heterosexual monogamy
• 2. Putting under scrutiny the sexuality of
  children, madmen, women and criminals.
• 1) Surveillance (vice as a support but not an
  enemy) 2) incorporation of perversions. E.g.
  homosexuality (HS p. 43)

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The History of Sexuality

• Part Two The Repressive Hypothesis
• 2. Perverse implantation
• a natural order of disorder (44)
• 3. Medicalization of the sexually peculiar
• A discursive power which needs constant,
  attentive and curious presences, and physical
  proximity.
• Related support psychiatric investigation,
  pedagogical report, family controls.

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The History of Sexuality

• Part Two The Repressive Hypothesis
• 3. Medicalization of the sexually peculiar
• Interaction between pleasure and power
• Spiral of power and pleasure 1. The pleasure
  that comes of exercising a power to question . .
  .The power that lets itself be invaded by the
  pleasure it is pursuing and opposite it, power
  asserting itself in the pleasure of showing off,
  scandalizing, or resisting.

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The History of Sexuality

• Part Two The Repressive Hypothesis conclusion
  perverse implantation
• Isolation, intensification and consolidation of
  peripheral sexualities ? power over sex branched
  out and multiplied, measured the body and
  penetrated modes of conduct
• Sexualities regidified, become stuck to a certain
  categories.

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Subject and Subject Position

• Representation (Representation p. 55 56)
• Two ideas of subject 1. Conscious autonomous
  subject
• 2. Subject to someone elses control.
• Foucault 1. Constituted by a discourse to
  represent it (hysteric woman) 2. Subject
  positions.

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Subject and Subject Position Victorian
Women--Hysteria

• Foucault Hysterization of womens bodies
• HS 104
• Pedagogization
• of childrens sex
• Sexuality is
• produced

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Subject and Subject Position Victorian
Women--Hysteria

• portrait of Augustine  Amorous supplication

Showalter in Representation 73-74
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Las Meninas by Velaquez analyzed by Foucault
in The Order of Things
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References

• Miller, Peter. Domination Power. Routledge
  12/01/1987.
• Representation Cultural Representations and
  Signifying Practices.  Ed. Stuart Hall.  London
  Sage, 1997