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    Michel Foucault

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    Michel Foucault was a 20th century French philosopher known for his works on the relationship between power and knowledge. Some of his most influential books include Madness and Civilization, The Order of Things, and Discipline and Punish. In Madness and Civilization, Foucault argues that madness is a social construct that has been defined differently throughout history based on the dominant discourses of the time. He also examines how systems of confinement and psychiatry have exercised power over the mentally ill. In The Order of Things, Foucault introduces the concept of "epistemes," which are historically defined frameworks that determine what knowledge and truths are considered valid in a given era. Fouc

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    Michel Foucault

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    jonbert
    112 views24 pages
    Michel Foucault was a 20th century French philosopher known for his works on the relationship between power and knowledge. Some of his most influential books include Madness and Civilization, The Order of Things, and Discipline and Punish. In Madness and Civilization, Foucault argues that madness is a social construct that has been defined differently throughout history based on the dominant discourses of the time. He also examines how systems of confinement and psychiatry have exercised power over the mentally ill. In The Order of Things, Foucault introduces the concept of "epistemes," which are historically defined frameworks that determine what knowledge and truths are considered valid in a given era. Fouc

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    Michel Foucault was a 20th century French philosopher known for his works on the relationship between power and knowledge. Some of his most influential books include Madness and Civilization, The Order of Things, and Discipline and Punish. In Madness and Civilization, Foucault argues that madness is a social construct that has been defined differently throughout history based on the dominant discourses of the time. He also examines how systems of confinement and psychiatry have exercised power over the mentally ill. In The Order of Things, Foucault introduces the concept of "epistemes," which are historically defined frameworks that determine what knowledge and truths are considered valid in a given era. Fouc

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    112 views24 pages

    Michel Foucault

    Uploaded by

    jonbert
    Michel Foucault was a 20th century French philosopher known for his works on the relationship between power and knowledge. Some of his most influential books include Madness and Civilization, The Order of Things, and Discipline and Punish. In Madness and Civilization, Foucault argues that madness is a social construct that has been defined differently throughout history based on the dominant discourses of the time. He also examines how systems of confinement and psychiatry have exercised power over the mentally ill. In The Order of Things, Foucault introduces the concept of "epistemes," which are historically defined frameworks that determine what knowledge and truths are considered valid in a given era. Fouc

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    of 24

    Full name: Michel Foucault

    Michel Foucault Born: 15 October 1926


    Poitiers, France
    Died: 25 June 1984 (aged 57)
    (1926-1984) Paris, France
    Era: 20th-c philosophy
    Region: Western Philosophy
    School: Continental philosophy,
    structuralism, post-structuralism
    Main interests: History of
    ideas, epistemology,
    ethics, political philosophy
    Notable ideas: "Archaeology",
    "genealogy", "episteme",
    "dispositif", "biopower",
    "governmentality", "disciplinary
    institution",panopticism
    1/20/2016 1
    Structure of this Lecture
    1. Michel Foucault: The Man and His Work
    2. The Discursive Construction of Madness:
    Foucaults Madness and Civilization: A History of
    Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961)
    3. Epistemes: Foucaults The Order of Things: An
    Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966)
    4. The Panopticon: Foucaults Discipline and
    Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)

    1/20/2016 2
    1. Michel Foucault: The Man and His Work

    Michel Foucault (1926-1984): historian, philosopher,


    (psychologist)
    1969-1984: Professor of the History of Systems of
    Thought at the Collge de France
    Foucault studies systems of thought (vs. individual thoughts)
    terms for systems of thought: discourse, episteme
    Foucaults two methods of inquiry
    archaeology: excavation of past systems of thought
    genealogy: study of the emergence and development of
    systems of thought
    political activist: advocacy for patients in mental
    institutions, homosexuals, prisoners, immigrants
    1/20/2016 3
    2. The Discursive Construction of Madness:
    Foucaults Madness and Civilization: A History
    of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961)

    Foucaults Ph.D. thesis: Madness and Civilization


    history of the concept of madness from the
    Middle Ages to the 19th century
    history of the exclusion of madness from reason-
    based societies
    madness is not a psychological but a social
    phenomenon:
    Madness exists only in society. It does not exist
    outside the forms of sensibility that isolate it, and
    the forms of repulsion
    1/20/2016 4
    a. Madness in the Late Middle Ages (14th and
    15th Centuries)

    variety of approaches to
    the mad
    locked away in towers
    sent away on ships
    admitted to hospitals
    tolerated within normal
    society
    no strict separation
    between reason and
    madness
    the mad symbolized
    the dark side of culture
    the atmosphere of unrest Hieronymus Bosch, The Ship
    at the end of the Middle of Fools (c. 1490-1500)
    Ages
    1/20/2016 5
    b. Madness in the Age of Reason /
    Enlightenment (17th and 18th Centuries)
    Age of Reason /
    Enlightenment: strict
    separation between
    reason and madness
    madness as the
    negation of reason -
    internment
    exclusion and silencing
    but no treatment
    the mad, beggars,
    vagabonds, criminals,
    and the sick interned
    Anon. Madness, or a
    together Man Bound with
    the mad held in chains Chains (1808)
    1/20/2016 6
    The Birth of Modern Psychiatry: Philippe Pinel
    Releases The Mad from Their Chains in 1793

    Tony Robert-Fleury. Pinel Releasing Lunatics at


    the Salptrire in 1795 (c. 1795)

    1/20/2016 7
    c. Madness in Modern Society (19th Century
    Onward)
    From the 19th century onward, madness came to be
    seen as
    a mysterious phenomenon that deserves to be studied
    an illness that must be treated
    scientific approach to madness:
    observation
    analysis
    documentation
    classification
    goal: treatment
    the mad are no longer chained but still locked away in
    mental institutions, where they are studied and
    treated for their illness
    mad(wo)man as a specific type of human being
    1/20/2016 8
    Foucault vs. Modern Psychiatry
    Foucault argues that modern
    psychiatry
    excludes and locks the mad away
    exercises power by subjecting the mad to:
    the codes of scientific classification and
    documentation
    the codes of bourgeois rationality, morality,
    and family structures
    continuous observation

    1/20/2016 9
    Madness as Discursive Construct
    madness as social construct (vs. psychological
    condition)
    madness as discursive construct
    discourse: three examples
    Enlightenment discourse
    modern scientifc discourse
    psychoanalytic discourse
    DEF: Discourses
    are practices that systematically construct the objects
    (e.g. madness, the mad) they talk about
    determine what counts as true and what can be said,
    thought, and known at a specific historical moment
    are networks of power/knowledge
    assign subject positions
    1/20/2016 10
    3. Epistemes: Foucaults The Order of Things:
    An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966)

    The Order of Things charts the birth of the human


    sciences (sociology, psychology, philology, and so
    on) from the Renaissance to the 19th century
    Foucaults central insight: history is a succession of
    radically different orders of knowledge that define
    what counts as true
    DEF: epistemes (Gr. knowledge)
    are historically specific, supraindividual orders of
    knowledge
    define what counts as true
    provide the basis for the sciences
    define how signs relate to things
    1/20/2016 manifest themselves in discourses 11
    Foucaults Definition of Episteme
    DEF episteme: The episteme [...] is the totality
    of relations that can be discovered, for a given
    period, between the sciences when one analyses
    them at the level of discursive regularities.
    (Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge)

    1/20/2016 12
    3 Successive Epistemes
    a. The Renaissance Episteme
    15th/16th century
    (Renaissance): signs and
    things resemble each
    other and are
    interchangeable
    microcosm/macrocosm,
    e.g. blood/air, yellow
    bile/fire, black bile/earth, Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi
    phlegm/water maioris scilicet et minoris
    Metaphysica, physica atque
    technica Historia (1617-1619)

    1/20/2016 13
    3 Successive Epistemes
    b. The Enlightenment Episteme
    17th/18th c.
    (Enlightenment / Age of
    Reason): signs and things
    disconnected: signs
    represent things
    e.g. scientific labeling and
    classification of plants in
    botanical gardens

    1/20/2016 14
    3 Successive Epistemes
    c. The Modern Episteme
    19th c. (Modernity):
    signs become
    interesting in their
    own right
    human sciences, e.g.
    philology and modern
    linguistics,
    anthropology,
    psychology, sociology,
    Literaturwissenschaft,
    and so on
    1/20/2016 15
    Foucault on the Death of Man
    Man is an invention of recent date. And one
    perhaps nearing its end [...] one can certainly wager
    that man would be erased, like a face drawn in
    sand at the edge of the sea. (Michel Foucault, The
    Order of Things)
    man is an invention of humanism and the Enlightenment
    man = autonomous, self-determined individual; source
    of truth and knowledge
    language, discourses, and epistemes as sources of truth
    and knowledge
    subjects are constructed and subjected by discourses
    e.g. biological discourse

    1/20/2016 16
    4. The Panopticon: Foucaults Discipline and
    Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)
    From Torture to Prisons I
    A. Torture
    e.g. the quartering of Robert Franois Damiens in 1775

    "On 1 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned 'to


    make the amende honorable before the main door of the
    Church of Paris,' where he was to be 'taken and conveyed in a
    cart, wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning
    wax weighing two pounds;' then, 'in the said cart, to the
    Place de Grve, where, on a scaffold that will be erected
    there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and
    calves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife
    with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with
    sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn
    away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and
    sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and
    quartered by four horses and his limbs and body consumed
    by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds'
    1/20/2016
    (Pices originales, 372-4). [...] 'Finally, he was quartered,' 17
    recounts the Gazette dAmsterdam of 1 April 1757.
    From Torture to Prisons II
    'This last operation was very long, because the horses used
    were not accustomed to drawing [...]. [...] 'After two or three
    attempts, the executioner Samson and he who had used the
    pincers each drew out a knife from his pocket and cut the body at
    the thighs instead of severing the legs at the joints; the four
    horses gave a tug and carried off the two thighs after them,
    namely, that of the right side first, the other following; then the
    same was done to the arms, the shoulders, the arm-pits and the
    four limbs; the flesh had to be cut almost to the bone, the horses
    pulling hard carried off the right arm first and the other
    afterwards. When the four limbs had been pulled away, the
    confessors came to speak to him; but his executioner told them
    that he was dead, though the truth was that I saw the man move,
    his lower jaw moving from side to side as if he were talking. One
    of the executioners even said shortly afterwards that when they
    had lifted the trunk to throw it on the stake, he was still alive. The
    four limbs were untied from the ropes and thrown on the stake
    set up in the enclosure in line with the scaffold, then the trunk
    and the rest were covered with logs and faggots, and fire was put
    to the straw mixed with this wood. [] In accordance with the
    decree, the whole was reduced to ashes.'" (Michel Foucault,
    1/20/2016 Discipline and Punish) 18
    From Torture to Prisons III
    B. Prisons
    e.g. Lon Fauchers rules for young prisoners in Paris of 1837:
    Art. 23. At twenty minutes to one, the prisoners leave the
    school, in divisions, and return to their courtyards for
    recreation. At five minutes to one, at the drum-roll, they
    form into workteams.
    Art. 24. At one o'clock they must be back in the
    workshops: they work until four o'clock.
    Art. 25. At four o'clock the prisoners leave their workshops
    and go into the courtyards where they wash their hands and
    form into divisions for the refectory.
    Art. 26. Supper and the recreation that follows it last until
    five o'clock: the prisoners then return to the workshops.
    (qtd. in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish)

    1/20/2016 19
    From Torture to Prisons IV
    feudal-sovereign power (18th century: Damiens
    execution)
    torture
    public spectacle
    complete destruction of the offenders body
    disciplinary power (19th century: Fauchers prison
    rules)
    reform as goal
    (self-)disciplining of the prisoners body
    restoration of the (self-)disciplined subject to
    society

    1/20/2016 20
    The Panopticon
    Stateville Correctional Center, Illinois
    J Benthams Panopticon

    Jeremy Benthams panopticon


    total surveillance
    prisoners self-disciplining
    modern, soft power (vs. the hard power of torture)

    1/20/2016 21
    1/20/2016 22
    The Carceral Society
    disciplinary power:
    panopticon as a model
    for all of society (prisons,
    schools, factories,
    hospitals, and so on)
    power invisible and
    anonymous
    self-disciplining:
    techniques of the self
    surveillance

    1/20/2016 23
    Three Disciplinary Techniques
    Three disciplinary techniques in prisons, factories, hospitals, schools,
    universities, and so on
    1. hierarchical observation
    2. normalizing judgment
    3. examination

    1/20/2016 24

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