Michel Foucault

1
Michel Foucault

• French Philosopher and Historian
• 1926-1984

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Biography

• Born Paul-Michel Foucault in Poitiers, France on
  October 15, 1926
• Father was a surgeon who hoped Michel would
  follow in his footsteps
• Known for his critical studies of various social
  institutions, including medicine, education,
  psychiatry and his work on the history of
  sexuality
• Influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant
  and Georges Dumézil
• Experimented with the drug LSD in 1975,
  considered it the best experience of his life

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Education and Career

• attended École Normale Supérieure earned degrees
  in both psychology and philosophy
• Was a member of the French Communist Party from
  1950-1953 later it was said he never was an
  active participant
• Taught psychology at the University of Lille from
  1953-1954
• 1954-1958 - served as a cultural delegate to the
  University of Uppsala in Sweden
• Also held teaching posts at Warsaw University,
  the University of Hamburg and the University of
  Tunis throughout the late 1950s and 60s
• Also earned his doctorate in philosophy
• 1970- elected to France's most prestigious
  academic body, the Collège de France as Professor
  of the History of Systems of Thought
• First visited the U.S. in 1970- lectured at the
  University of Buffalo and UC-Berkeley

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The Imitation of Life

• Foucaults writings on sexuality are thought to
  have been influenced by his homosexuality
• In the 1970s and 80s, Foucault participated in
  anonymous lifestyle in San Francisco. It is
  suspected during this time, he contracted HIV
• Died of an AIDS-related illness on June 16, 1984
  the 1st high profile French personality to be
  reported as an AIDS victim
• Originally slated to be a six-volume project, his
  work The History of Sexuality was never fully
  published due to restrictions within his estate.

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The History of Sexuality

• Michel Foucault

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Right to Life

• Right to Life goes hand in hand with Right to
  Die
• Whoever controls right by deduction has means to
  take it away

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Power of Life and Death

• Whoever controls the wealth, taxes, products,
  good, services, labor and blood controls life and
  death in a society
• Examples kings, lords, land owners, slave
  owners- any sovereign
• Control food, war and peace and labor- can let
  live or die at will

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Power Today

• In a rational society, power usually does not
  come from control over life and death
• Ex death penalty
• Less common
• Seen as a protection for the rest of society
• Importance of quality of life
• New power comes from Bio-Power

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Power Today

• What are some examples of modern societies that
  have been controlled by direct power over life
  and death?

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Bio-Power

• Bio-power is a technology of power
• Uses different techniques to allow for control of
  the entire population

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Bio-Power

• Anatomo-politics of the human body
• Idea of the body as a machine- it is productive,
  useful, etc
• Appears in the military, education ,work to make
  the population more disciplined

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Bio-Power

• Regulatory controls a bio-politics of the
  population
• Body is part of the mechanics of life-
  propagation, births and deaths, health, life
  expectancy and longevity
• Used in demography, wealth analysis, etc to
  control population statistically

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Bio-Power

• Bio-power is responsible for
• Capitalism
• Controlled input of people into labor and
  adjustments to the population
• The Judicial System
• Threat for disobedience is ultimately death
• But not death by a sovereign, death becomes a
  norm upheld by society as punishment
• Power held within society is more stable and
  accepted

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Bio-Power and Sexuality

• The right to life, to ones body, to health,
  to happiness, to the satisfaction of needs, and
  beyond all the oppressions or alienations, the
  right to rediscover what one is and all that
  one can be, this right- which the classical
  juridical system was utterly incapable of
  comprehending- was the political response to all
  these new procedures of power which did not
  derive, either , from the traditional right of
  sovereignty. The History of Sexuality

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Bio-Power and Sexuality

• Link between control of the body and power makes
  sexuality a political issue in 2 ways
• Discipline of the body
• Controlling and distributing people and their
  energy
• Regulation of population
• Affects medical and psychological fields, as well
  as public policy

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Politics of Sex

• Foucault highlights 4 lines of attack that the
  politics of sex play upon
• The sexualization of children
• The hysterization of women
• The solidity of the family institution
• The safeguarding of society

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Politics of sex

• Do you agree with Foucaults assessment that our
  society is based on bio-power?
• Based on Foucaults writing, what issues does our
  society currently face that may be seen as
  threats to the current nation state based on
  bio-power?

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Truth and Power

• Michel Foucault

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Truth and Power

• An interview in which Foucault speaks on power,
  truth, phenomenology, ideology, as well as
  touches on societys repression of sexuality
• Is there a definition of power or truth? Although
  Foucault speaks extensively on the subject
  matter, he does not give a definition of what
  power is.
• Speaks on the political problem

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Power

• Power is exercised concretely and in detail (in
  regards to specificity, techniques and tactics)
• Power is visible
• Is power simply a means of repression? According
  to Foucault, the answer is no. What makes power
  acceptable is that is produces goods, induces
  pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse.
• Power should be viewed as a productive network
  versus a negative instance which represses

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Truth

• The important thing here, I believe, is that
  truth isnt outside power, or lacking in power
  contrary to a myth whose history and functions
  would repay further study, truth isnt the reward
  of free spirits, the children of protracted
  solitude, nor the privilege of those who have
  succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a
  thing of this world it is produced only by
  virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it
  induces regular effects of power.

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Truth continued

• Is said to have been influenced by Nietzsches
  statement that knowledge functions as an
  instrument of power
• Truth is subject to economic and political
  incitement
• Is an object of diffusion and consumption
• Is transmittable through the control of the
  dominant political and economical instutitions
  (e.g. academic institutions, military, media,
  writing)
• The three-fold specificity of the intellectual
• a) class position
• b) conditions of his life and work
• c) the specificity of the politics of truth in
  our societies
• The political problem is not changing the minds
  of peoples thinking, but the production of truth
  on political, economic and institutionalized
  levels
• Truth is power (but would power be considered as
  truth?)

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Foucault Discussion Questions

• Foucault states that sexuality is far more of a
  positive product of power than power was ever
  repression of sexuality. What do you think is
  meant by that?
• Is truth socially constructed? If so, what would
  contribute to constructing truth in modern
  society?

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Jean Baudrillard

• July 29, 1929 March 6, 2007

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Jean Baudrillard

• Born in Reims, France on July 29, 1929 to a
  peasant family.
• He studied German at Sorbonne University in
  Paris.
• He taught German in France from 1958 to 1966.
• During that time, he worked as a translator and
  critic and studied sociology and philosophy.
• He completed his doctoral thesis, Thesis of the
  Third Cycle The System of Objects, in 1966.
• From 1966 to 1972 he was a Professor of
  Sociology.

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Jean Baudrillard

• He finished his habilitation, The Other, by
  oneself, in 1972.
• He was a Sociology Professor at the University of
  Paris-X Nanterre.
• From 1986 to 1990, he was the Scientific Director
  at IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information
  Socio-Économique) at the University of Paris-IX
  Dauphine.
• He was the Satrap at the University of
  Pataphysics until he died.
• He died in Paris on March 6, 2007 because of
  illness at age 77.

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Jean BaudrillardMain Themes

• He is frequently associated with
  post-structuralism.
• He often made arguments based on the idea that
  systems of meaning could only be understood in
  terms of their interrelation.
• The line between reality and simulation is false.

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Jean BaudrillardMain Themes

• All of his theories were based on the same basic
  principle that meaning is interpreted by absence.
• Example The word desk means desk not because
  of what the word itself says, but because of what
  it does not say chair, person, duck, etc.

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Jean BaudrillardMain Themes

• He was critical of Foucalt.
• He developed theories based on the concepts of
  hyperreality, seduction, and simulation rather
  than knowledge and power.

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Jean BaudrillardInfluences

• Karl Marx
• Nietzsche
• Freud
• Lévi-Strauss
• Marcel Mauss
• Andy Warhol
• Roland Barthes
• Georges Bataille
• Theodor Adorno

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Jean BaudrillardWorks

• Baudrillard Live Selected Interviews (Edited by
  Mike Gane) (1993)
• The Perfect Crime (1995)
• Paroxysm Interviews with Philippe Petit (1998)
• Impossible Exchange (1999)
• Passwords (2000)
• The Singular Objects of Architecture (2000)
• The Vital Illusion (2000)
• Au royaume des aveugles (2002)
• The Spirit of Terrorism And Requiem for the Twin
  Towers (2002)
• Fragments (interviews with François L'Yvonnet)
  (2003)
• The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact
  (2005)
• The Conspiracy of Art (2005)
• Les exilés du dialogue, Jean Baudrillard and
  Enrique Valiente Noailles (2005)
• Utopia Deferred Writings for Utopie (1967-1978)
  (2006)

• The System of Objects (1968)
• The Consumer Society Myths and Structures (1970)
  
• For a Critique of the Political Economy of the
  Sign (1972)
• The Mirror of Production (1973)
• Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976)
• Forget Foucault (1977)
• Seduction (1979)
• Simulacra and Simulation (1983)
• In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1982)
• Fatal Strategies (1983)
• America (1986)
• Cool Memories (1987)
• The Ecstasy of Communication (1987)
• The Transparency of Evil (1990)
• The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991)
• The Illusion of the End (1992)

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Jean BaudrillardSimulacra and Simulation

• Published in 1983
• He talks about how society has replaced the real
  with signs and symbols and that what we now know
  as reality is only a simulation of reality.

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Jean Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation

• The present age is one of hyperreality where
  meaning is eradicated and reality has been
  superseded by the signs of its existence.
• Example of the desk. (Desk does not mean chair,
  person, or duck, etc.)

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Jean BaudrillardIdea of the Precession of
Simulacra (From his 1976 writing Symbolic
Exchange and Death)

• the era of the original
• to the counterfeit
• to the produced, mechanical copy
• to the simulated "third order of simulacra",
  whereby the copy has replaced the original.

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Jean BaudrillardExample of the Empire and the map

• He used a fable based on a writing by Jorge Luis
  Borges, in which a powerful Empire created a map
  so large and detailed that it became the size of
  the Empire itself. The map would grow or decay as
  the Empire gained or lost territory. When the
  Empire collapsed, all that was left was the
  rotting map.

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Jean Baudrillard Example of the Empire and the
map

• If the fable were to be revived today, the
  territory would be rotting, not the map, because
  of the precession of simulacra -the map now
  precedes the territory.
• In contemporary society the simulated copy has
  replaced the original object just like the map
  came to precede the geographic territory.

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Jean Baudrillard Example of the Empire and the
map

• According to Baudrillard, we are living in the
  map (the simulation of reality) and reality is
  decaying because it has been abandoned.
• He used this same idea later to argue that the
  first Gulf War did not occur. The image of war
  preceded real war.

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Jean BaudrillardThe Divine Irreference of Images

• Dissimulate-to feign not to have what one has.
• Simulation- to feign to have what one hasnt. Not
  simply to feign.
• Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to
  bed and pretend he is ill. Someone who simulates
  an illness produces in himself some of the
  symptoms.
• Dissimulating leaves room for the principle of
  reality and so the difference is clear and only
  masked.
• Simulating produces true symptoms and the line
  between real and imaginary and true and false
  is threatened. The simulator cannot be treated as
  ill or not ill because symptoms are now being
  produced.
• Medicine stops at this point because symptoms are
  no longer natural or capable of being treated
  because there are no longer objective causes or
  true illnesses.

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Jean BaudrillardThe Divine Irreference of Images

• I forbade any simulacrum in the temples because
  the divinity that breathes life into nature
  cannot be represented.
• Iconoclasts- did not see images as distorted
  truths, but as perfect simulacra.
• They went on a rage to destroy images because
  they thought that images of God would erase God
  from the consciousness of people and suggest that
  there has never been any God that only God has
  only ever been his own simulacrum.

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Jean BaudrillardThe Divine Irreference of Images

• A sign could refer to the depth of meaning or
• A sign could exchange for meaning
• Representation-the sign and the real are
  equivalent.
• Tries to absorb simulation and interpret it as
  false representation.
• Simulation-the sign is a form of deterioration of
  the real.
• Envelopes the whole structure of representation
  itself as a simulacrum.

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Jean BaudrillardThe Divine Irreference of Images

• Successive phases of the image
• It is the reflection of a basic reality.
• The image is a good appearance- order of
  sacrament.
• It masks and perverts a basic reality.
• The image is an evil appearance- order of
  malefice.
• It masks the absence of a basic reality.
• The image plays at being an appearance- order of
  sorcery.
• It bears no relation to any reality whatever it
  is its own pure simulacrum.
• The image is no longer an appearance- order of
  simulation.

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Jean BaudrillardHyperreal and Imaginary

• Disneyland is a perfect model of all the
  entangled orders of simulation.
• The imaginary world is what is supposed to make
  it successful, but it is made successful through
  its miniaturized social representation of real
  America.

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Jean BaudrillardHyperreal and Imaginary

• The objective profile of America can be traced
  throughout Disneyland, down to the morphology of
  the crowd.
• Third-order simulation (where the copy replaces
  the original) Disneyland exists to cover up the
  fact that it is all of real America that is
  Disneyland.
• Disneyland is presented as imaginary so that we
  will think that the rest of the country is real,
  when actually the rest of America is no longer
  real but made up of simulation and the hyperreal.
  
• There is no longer a question of false
  representation of reality, but of hiding the fact
  that the real is no longer real.

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Jean BaudrillardHyperreal and Imaginary

• Disneyland is supposed to make its visitors
  believe that adults and the real world are
  elsewhere.
• It is meant to hide the fact that real
  childishness is everywhere.
• Los Angeles and the rest of America are only a
  network of continuous, unreal circulation.

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Jean BaudrillardDiscussion Questions

• He talks about how what we know as reality now is
  actually a simulation of reality. Do you agree or
  disagree? Do you think that there is a line
  between what is real and what is imaginary? Do
  you think that reality can actually be replaced
  by the existence of symbols of reality?

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Jean BaudrillardDiscussion Questions

• What is another modern example, besides
  Disneyland, that would stand as a model of
  simulation?

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Jean BaudrillardDiscussion Questions

• As of this past Friday, gays and lesbians are now
  able to participate in fairy tale weddings in
  Disneyland whereas before only couples with valid
  marriage licenses were allowed to participate in
  these ceremonies. How does this coincide with
  Baudrillards example of Disneyland as a social
  representation of real America? What other
  examples can you think of?