Michel Foucault

1
Michel Foucault

• Born October 15th, 1926
• Died June 16th 1984, aged 58 of an
• AIDS related illness.
• Education
• Saint-Stanilas School
• Lycee Henri-IV, Paris
• Ecole Normale Superieure
• (4th highest student)
• Qualifications
• Philosophy License, 1948
• Psychology License, 1950
• Diploma in Pschopathology, 1952
• PhD, 1960
• Positions Held
• Various teaching positions in France, Sweden,
• Germany and Poland. Was Head of Philosophy
• at the University of Clarmont-Ferrand.

2
Who was Michel Foucault?

• Michel Foucault was French Philosopher. His
  writings
• have had an enormous impact on many fields
  including
• the history of science (particularly medicine),
  critical
• theory, history and the sociology of knowledge.
  Foucault
• is considered a postmodernist and a
  poststructuralist by
• many spectators of his work. He considered
  himself to be
• a follower modernity. Foucault is the main
  influence for a group who
• declare themselves as the New Philosophers, a
  status that
• Foucault had mixed feelings about.

3
Historian or Philosopher?

• He has been labelled a genealogist, a philosopher
  and a historian.
• Born a philosopher he has become a historian in
  order to remain a philosopher., (Phillippe
  Aries, 1973)
• Foucault cannot be easily classified. He has been
  a philosopher, a historian, a sexologist, a
  penologist, a structuralist, and an
  anti-structuralist. These just touch on the
  surface of his work.

4
Influences on Michel Foucault's life.

• Karl Marx Foucault opposed Marxists, but claimed
  he still quoted him without acknowledging him.
• ..I am neither an adversary nor partisan of
  Marxism, I question it
• about what it has to say about the experiences
  that asks questions of
• it..
• Friedrich Nietzsche Influenced Foucault's ideas
  of knowledge and
• power.
• Gilles Deleuze French Philosopher and friend to
  Foucault.
• Martin Heidegger Who Foucault called the
  essential philosopher
• Daniel Defert As Foucaults partner, Deferts
  political activism would
• exercise a major influence on Foucaults
  development.

5
Simplistic Genealogy of Texts

• His works are split under 5 main sub headings
• The death of the subject and role of history.
• The role of theory.
• Power, knowledge and the body.
• Sexuality and resistance.
• The construction of the self.
• In each of these headings Michel Foucault has
  written many texts, visit www.csun.edu/hfspc002/f
  oucault2.html for more!

6
Foucaults Work

• His entire work could be seen as an attempt to
  define the same and other and how these lines
  are drawn in history.
• The same is the known, familiar or ordered
• The other is the mysterious , the unexplained
  something that lies outside and defines the
  limits of the known, It is exterior and foreign.

7
3 main research areas

• Madness (1960)
• Punishment (1975)
• Sexuality (1976-78)
• He tries to analyse the relations among science,
• politics and ethics.
• The object of this exercise was to see how far
  the examination of history could expose
• some of the unspoken assumptions and foundations
  of thought and enable people to
• think in some other manner. (Ofarrell 1989)

8
Foucault on Science

• All science is an ideological function
• By establishing a connection between science and
  ideology, questions of validity and truth are
  suspended.

9
Power

• If there is one thing that Foucault might be said
  to have achieved it is the redefinition of
• how we think about power in contemporary society.
  (Moss 1998)
• His most common concern is with the idea of
  power, its relation with knowledge (the sociology
  of knowledge) and how it manifests in a given
  historical context.
• Power is not just physical. It also exists in the
  ways in which social orders are arranged.
• Being recognised as having knowledge is also a
  form of power.
• Power is a normatively neutral concept.
• Power is not possessed it is exercised.
• Within power, there is pleasure.

10
Knowledge

• Knowledge needs and helps power, and power needs
  and helps knowledge.
• Knowledge is the effect of a specific regime of
  power.
• Power and knowledge directly imply one another.

11
Bio-Power

• Bio-power is a specific form of power that
• emerges in the modern period (post-18thCentury)
• as a part of the larger technology of modern
• societies.
• Power operates through bodies as bio-power
• Bio-power is a dispersed form of power.
• Bio-power gets us to regulate ourselves.

12
Subjectivity and Objectivity

• The subject becomes the object of knowledge.
• The subject experiences himself in a game of
  truth where he relates to himself.
• He is led to observe himself, analyse himself,
  interpret himself, recognise himself as a domain
  of possible knowledge.

13
Subject and Truth

• Truth is produced by the operations of power.
• In psychological knowledge, truth games were
  formed through which the subject became an object
  of knowledge.
• Systematic scepticism toward all anthropological
  universals.
• Nothing of that order must be accepted that is
  not strictly indispensable
• Everything in our knowledge which is suggested to
  us as being universally valid must be tested and
  analysed.

14
Controversy!

• man, will be erased, like a face drawn in sand
  at the edge of the sea. (Foucault 1966)
• Humanism pretends to resolve problems it cannot
  pose.
• It is the human heart which is abstract and it
  is our research which wants to link man to his
  science, to his discoveries, to his world, which
  is concrete.
• The soul is the prison of the body" (Foucault
  1975)
• Construct of sexuality can be delineated by
  explicit forms of suppression of thought and
  surveillance.
• Offers new insight into how we should understand
  some of the key issues in political thought.

15
In conclusion

• Foucaults aim is to isolate,
• identify, and analyse the web of
• unequal relationships set up by
• political technologies which
• underlies and undercuts the
• theoretical equality posited by
• the law and political
• philosophers. Bio-power
• escapes from the representation
• of power as law an advances
• under its protection

16
Bibliography

• OFarrell, C. (1989). Foucault Historian or
  Philosopher?. Macmillan
• Press Ltd. London.
• McNay, L.(1994). Foucault A Critical
  Introduction. Blackwell
• Publishers, UK.
• Moss, J. (1998). The Later Foucault. SAGE
  Publications Ltd, London.
• Kritzman, L. (Ed.) (1988) Michel Foucaults
  Interviews and Other
• Writings 1977-1984. Routledge, London.

17
Webliography

• www.theory.org.uk
• www.csun.edu/hfspc002/foucault.home.html
• http//foucault.info/foucault.biography.html
• www.wikipedia.com
• www.thefoucauldian.co.uk
• http//mypage.siu.edu/hartmajr/pdf/jh_fouccirc_03.
  pdf