Michel Foucault

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Michel Foucault

1. Dialectic Materialism -- Marx and Vulgar Marxism
2. Literature, Society Ideology Althusser and
   Gramsci
3. Marxist Literary Theorists Macherey, Eagleton
   and Jameson
4. Foucault ????????????

and Girl, Interrupted
Image source Foucault
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Outline

• Q A Literature, Ideology, Power Discourse
• Michel Foucault
• Power and Knowledge Surveillance (Panopticon)
  and Control Grid
• Knowledge and Discourse
• References
• Girl, Interrupted
• (next time Sociology of Literature
• ??s novels and films)

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Q A Literature, Ideology, Power Discourse

• 1. Marxist reading
• How do we do a Marxist reading of a story or a
  poem?
• 2. Ideology
• How do we detect and analyze the ideology(ies) of
  a text?
• Is a texts ideology the same with authorial
  ideology? Is authorial ideology the authors own
  ideas?
• Is there anything outside of ideology? (In other
  words, is it possible to stand outside of
  ideology and resist it?)
• 3. Why Foucault?
• How is the control of ideology similar to or
  different from that of hegemony, power and
  discourse?

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Q A Literature, Ideology, Power Discourse (2)

• How do we do a Marxist reading of a story or a
  poem?
• Capitalist relations of production (class
  relations, consumerism) in the text itself or in
  the production of the text
• Ideology study
• 3 Steps Intrinsic study (form content,
  structure) ? Ideology study ? history of
  capitalism

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Q A Literature, Ideology, Power Discourse

• How do we detect and analyze the ideology(ies) of
  a text?
• With the support of some knowledge of society and
  history, examine and explain the texts
• Contradictions (between the said and the unsaid,
  the characters, form and content, or different
  parts of the text) gaps
• Distortion and disguise of economic reality
  and/or relations
• Thus analyzed, the texts ideology should be
  related to its contemporary social reality.

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Q A Literature, Ideology, Power Discourse

• Is a texts ideology the same with authorial
  ideology?
• No. A text is a conjuncture of multiple
  ideologies (of literary production, general
  production, aesthetic ideology, etc.)
• Is authorial ideology the authors own ideas?
• No. Ideology is not, for Althusser, false
  consciousness it is imagined relations produced
  by many ISA. The author lives in his ideologies,
  but not generating them. (This is an example of
  Althussers anti-humanism.)

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Q A Literature, Ideology, Power Discourse

• Is there anything outside of ideology? (In other
  words, is it possible to stand outside of
  ideology and resist it?)
• No, except for Marxism as a science.
• No, but we can resist some ideologies (or
  hegemony) with the support of some others.

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Q A Ideology, Power Discourse

• How is the control of ideology similar to or
  different from that of hegemony, power and
  discourse?

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Q A Ideology, Power Discourse

• Similarity (Ref. Textbook chap 7 152-53)
• Invisible, non-violent and pervasive control by
  consent (e.g. interpellation, containment and
  discipline)
• more complicated views of social relations
• Differences
• social formation ? network or grids
• As Ideology structural perspective ignores
  agency
• Gs Hegemony counter-hegemonies formed by
  coalition
• Fs power and discourse denies economic
  determinism, ignores agency focused on
  knowledges role

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Why Foucault?
Theorists Society Material Control
Althusser ISA vs. RSA relative autonomy and, overdetermination interpellation
Gramsci Competing hegemonies containment
Foucault Discursive formation Penopticism (????) carceral (???) society Knowledge (productive) power, biopower and its technologies ? Over our bodies
Psychoanalysis as a Discourse Institutionalization of literature (Cultural Studies) analysis of social discourses Psychoanalysis as a Discourse Institutionalization of literature (Cultural Studies) analysis of social discourses
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Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)

• Has impact on areas such as --
• Sociology, Historiography,
• Gay and Lesbian Studies,
• Marxism, Cultural Studies
• and Literary Studies ( New Historicism)
• Some Major Poststructuralist Claims
• -- Man is a product of modernity.
• -- Knowledge is not Truth, but power.
• -- Sexuality does not exist except as part of
  discursive formation.

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Foucault General Ideas

• Two periods (ref. chap 7 148)
• 1) Archaeology of knowledge ?????
• ? Discourse rules and strategies for the
  formation of subject-positions and knowledge.
  (e.g.Medicine, Madness)
• 2) Genealogy of power/knowledge ?????
• examines a variety of institutions and
  non-discursive practices to show how
  power/knowledge is pervasive (e.g. Prison,
  Sexuality)

Major target psychiatry, biology, medicine,
school, criminology
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Power and Knowledge/Truth

• Power (e.g. plague or SARS control? health pp.
  148-49)
• -- disciplinary and normalizing power
• both repressive, controlling and productive
• Operation
• -- a perpetual series of observation and modes of
  control of conduct
• Effects
• -- induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces
  discourse (1980 119 chap 7 153-quote)
• ? producing Truth normal subjects docile
  bodies ? excluding or punishing abnormal ones.

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Power Control Grid

• Power pervasive
• -- not just top-down it circulates, working in
  multiple direction like capillary (???)
  movement.
• e.g. control and regulation of our health,
  sexuality (as reproductive mechanism) or any
  other forms of social production.

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Panopticon (????) a metaphor for social control

Detailed regulation constant surveillance Chap
7 p. 150
A circular building with the central control
tower ? control internalized.
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Panopticon

• (textbook 150)
• Total Visibility of the prisoners, invisibility
  of guard, or anybody taking the position in the
  central control tower (subject position)
• Isolation cannot see the other prisoners in the
  other cells
• internalize the control
• disciplined when not watched.(151)
• Society as ???? carceral archipelago
• Prison, penitentiary, rehabilitation center,
• Hospital, social worker, school, etc.
• Combining punitive system with normalizing
• practices

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Panopticon as a metaphor

• (textbook 149-51)
• ? an individual is distributed, located and
  examined in their fixed position.
• e.g. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Net
• -- the patients as willing subjects of medical
  science (since they are excluded from the world
  of normality).
• -- ways of discipline and surveillance
• -- public confession moralism clip 1, 2 what
  else?

-- control of their space, schedule, value
standard, and deprivation (of freedom,
pleasuresgambling, sex, smoke--and self-decision)
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Q Power and Knowledge/Truth

• Which types of social or self surveillance are
  legitimate, and which types, unnecessary?
• How about the quarantine of SARSa modern
  plague--patient?
• Do we really live in a prison-like penopticon?

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Example of surveillance

• ?????,????????????????????,??????????. . .
  ???????????,??????????????????A??????????????
• A????????--?SARS?????????SARS???????,
• B??????--???????????????????,???????????????
  http//epochtimes.com/b5/3/5/10/n310098.htm

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Examples of surveillance

• Polices petrol and criminal records
• Traffic Control System
• Electronic Game
• Domicile Registration System and Census
• IC card

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Other Systems of surveillance and discipline

• Any system which includes and connects us (esp.
  through numbers) telephone, computer, student
  no., banking system (account, credit card),user
  account no., educational platform,
• The schools merit/de-merit system
• Discourse e.g.
• A. ????,?????????,?????,
• self-discipline self-imposed home quarantine,
  wearing a mask
• B. normal sex the forbidden ?
  self-disciplined, normal sexual subjects

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Power Control Grid e.g. (1)

• Power Grid Hospital as a regime of health
  supported by various institutions
• 1) hospital spatial arrangement nursery
  station ? waiting room? clinic ? examination
  room doctors
• -- 2) ideological control the posters,
  pamphlets.
• -- 3) pharmacy, insurance co., etc.
• -- 4) government
• -- 5) school

authorities
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Power Control Grid e.g. (2 3)

• Educational Systems Production of Knowledge
• (In the past) inspectors ??
• Evaluation and reports e.g. 1, 2.
• (Always) exams
• Is it bad? No, it helps produce knowledgebut of
  certain forms.
• Are you producing knowledge which is meaningful
  for yourself, too?

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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."
• Constructed through some discursive practices
• Three major procedures of discursive formation
• 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)
• (Ref. Textbook 154)

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Discourse Power Definition (2)

• Influences
• -- productive produces knowledge
• -- regulative (not unlike penopticon) offers us
  subject positions which is hierarchical.
• -- controlling and discriminatory discipline the
  subjects and punish or exclude those who do not
  follow the rules.

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Literary Discourse example (1)

• The discourse of Romantic Poetry
• -- values imagination, nature, ? Truth
• -- methodology quest poem, use of common
  language,
• -- discursive practices walking in nature,
  writing poetry, reviews, prefaces, etc.
• -- inclusion the six poets
• -- hierarchy and exclusion the poetesses
• the formation of literary
  canon.
• hiring, examination and
  curriculum

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Q Discourse and Truth

• Which of the following statements truth or part
  of a certain discourse, and what possible effects
  do they have?
• William Wordsworth creates the Immortality Ode.
• Our sexual desire is the source of our energy
  which can be both constructive and destructive.
• Any English major should know Shakespeare.
• Necrophilia, pedophilia, and sex with animal
  should not be allowed.
• We are born to be male or female, and taught to
  be man or woman.

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Discourse example (2)

• Sexuality as a discourse
• Discourses of sexuality have increased and become
  a science since the 17th century, when sex in the
  West became a taboo. ? for normlization and
  regulation. (Freudian Psychoanalysis included.)
• Produces different subject positions and objects
  of gaze and control. The sodomite had been
  temporary aberration the homosexual was now a
  species. (1979 43)
• Sexual identities regulatory fictions
  inscribed on our bodies.

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Discourse Sexuality (For reference)

• Two Foucauldian views of sexuality and our body
• Sexuality not something hidden but a great
  surface network in which the stimulation of
  bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the
  incitement to discourse, the formation of
  knowledges, the strengthening of controls and
  resistances, are linked to one another.
• modified Body as an interface between internal
  forces (psychic, physiological) and the external
  social forces.
• extensions ? biopolitics (biology economy
  politics) ? the pervasive control and
  regulation of our bodies as part of a population
  (Biopolitics is concerned with population as a
  political and scientific problem source )

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Literary Discourse Implications

• No fixed boundaries between literature and other
  social practices ? popular fiction such as those
  of ?? can be discussed with some literary work.
• The author is not the creator of his work. S/he
  serves as a label to put on a group of works
  related to him. (e.g. Wordsworth discourse??s
  discourse of Romantic love)
• Defining some subject positions (of the author,
  the reader, etc.)

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References

• Miller, Peter. Domination Power. Routledge
  12/01/1987.