foucault lecture 1
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FOUCAULT
Michel Foucault
(1926-1984)
Foucault’s LifeBorn: 1926, France
Degrees: Philosophy, Psychology & Psychopathology
Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at College de France
Books: Madness and Civilization (1961), The Birth of the Clinic (1963), The Order of Things (1966), The Archeology of Knowledge (1969), Discipline and Punish (1975), The History of Sexuality (1984)
Personal Life: Activism, Travel, Gay scene
Died: 1984, due to HIV/AIDS
POWER/KNOWLEDGEPOWER/KNOWLEDGE
POWER/KNOWLEDGEPOWER/KNOWLEDGE
Power produces knowledge…
Power and knowledge
directly imply one another…
There is no power relation
without the correlative
constitution of a field of
knowledge, nor any
knowledge that does not
presuppose and constitute at
the same time power
relations. (1977, 27-28)
“‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and [linked] to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of truth” (133).
genealogygenealogy
These “power-knowledge” relations are to be analyzed…not on the basis of a subject of knowledge who is or is not free in relation to the power system, but on the contrary, the subject who knows, the objects to be known and the modalities of knowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental implications of power-knowledge and their historical transformations. In short, it is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but power-knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it and of which it is made up, that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge (1977, 27-28).
genealogy
genealogygenealogy
Let us give the term
genealogy to the union of
erudite knowledge and
local memories which
allows us to establish a
historical knowledge of
struggles and to make use
of this knowledge tactically
today (P/K, 83).
disciplinediscipline
disciplinediscipline
The individual is not to be
conceived as a sort of
elementary nucleus, a primitive
atom, a multiple and inert
material on which power comes
to fasten or against which it
happens to strike…it is already
one of the prime effects of
power that certain bodies,
certain gestures, certain
discourses, certain desires,
come to be identified and
constituted as individuals …The
individual which power has
constituted is at the same time
its vehicle (98).
ASSESSMENTAssessment
ASSESSMENT
Assessment1. See what Foucault
sees2. Ask Foucaultian
questions3. Shape discipline
within the Christian meta-narrative
Helpful Resourcesfor summary and Christian analysis
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