michel foc v3
TRANSCRIPT
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Michel Foucault (19261984)Foucault tries to develop powerful
critiques of the dominant paradigm
within which we do our politics, we
run our educational institutions, ourprison systems, hospitals, psychiatric
disciplines, etc.
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Foucault was a critic of the human
sciences like psychiatry, penology (the
study of crime, punishment and prison)He explored how these human sciences
have been used to define deviants and thensegregate humans in order to construct a
notion of normal selfhood/ identity.philosophical critique of the present,
especially the modes of subjectivity or
forms of identity to which we are tied.
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subjectivity and identity
subject and subjectivity refers to the
thinking, conscious self
Enlightenment subject: an autonomous
subject endowed with capacities ofreason, consciousness and agencythe
capacity for action
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inner core or essenceThis essence or inner core unfolds
with time or is realized with time.
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This essence or inner core unfolds
with time or is realized with time.
Postmodern Subject: not biologically
defined, it is historically definedIt is determined not by essences, butby the contingent forces of culture and
history.
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Postmodernism moves away from the term
self or identity because they traditionally
evoke the idea of identity as a privatepossession and a notion of the individual as
unique and autonomous.emphasize that the subject is not a free
consciousness or stable human essence but
rather a construction of language, politicsand culture.prefer the term subject because it is more
ambiguous.
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we are free to say and do what we like to
the degree that we accept the rule of the
cultural norms/rules in which we arelocated.Foucaults primary interest:- critique of the present paradigms within
which we work
- critiques of the modes of subjectivity
available to us
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Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)there are no facts, onlyinterpretationsFoucault believes that there are no
bare facts in history which is
separate from the interpretationwithin which these facts are
embedded.
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The term history within the
Western Civilization is necessarily acontinuous narrative about progress.Foucault rejects the Hegelian
teleological model of history, inwhich one epoch flows dialectically
out of other.
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archaeology and genealogy
- the reversal of perspective also called as
perspectivism
history is not written from a single
perspective/ standpoint of power, authority or
influence, but from the standpoint of the
masses, who do not occupy such positions of
influence of power and authority.
the masses who produce large and
significant movements that has changed social
formations.
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take that which is left out of
official authoritative histories, anduse that as your clue to write history
of suspicionthat something hasbeen left out.This reversal of perspective, alsocalled perspectivism
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an attempt to recover and focus on
the marginal and local narratives,
events, phenomena or voices.Traditional or total history inserts
events into grand explanatory systems
and linear processes; it celebrates grand
moments and tries to document a pointof origin.
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Genealogy favours the discredited, the
neglected, the marginal, which havebeen denied a history
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There is an attempt to preserve their
singularity, by making sure that they are not
absorbed into the dominant and grandexplanatory systems and events that
traditional history focuses on.- they make clear that traditional history
has recorded the voice of the dominant and
excluded the marginal discourses- they show clearly what the assumptions
of dominant or elite history are.
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an insurrection of subjugated knowledges,
nave, local knowledges located way below
on the heirarchy a whole set ofknowledges that have been disqualified in
the past as inadequate.- genealogical analysis does away with the
assumption that history is teleological and
continuous, where one epoch flowing outof another.
- Genealogical analysis accepts that history
is material
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For Foucault, history is a complex
interrelationship of a variety of
discourses.Discourse is a common pattern ofculturally internalized expectation
rather than some pure or essential truththat people traditionally refer to when
they use the term knowledge.
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does not simply mean languages
and systems of representationsIt naturalizes certain cultural
assumptions and expectations.
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Through repetition, these complex
arrangements of signs and practices
organize our social existence and
reproduce knowledge.
Both serves to define us andconstrain us as subjects.
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The interaction of discourses in agiven historical period is not random
it is dependent upon a unifying
principle or pattern that Foucault calls
the episteme.
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Episteme : through language and thought, each period in
history develops its own perceptions about the nature of
reality or truth
- sets up its own standards of acceptable and
unacceptable behavior
- criteria for judging what it deems good or bad
- which group of people can talk, articulate, protectand defend the yardstick of truth and values that
would be applicable to all.
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Foucault borrows techniques from archaeology
in order to unearth the episteme of any given
historical period.- the genealogical critic should dig deep and
expose each layer of discourses that cometogether to shape an eras episteme.- the genealogical critic pieces together the
various discourses and their interconnections
among themselves.
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epistemes change from one historical
period to another
Eg. - the change from the
Enlightenment Age of Reason to
Romanticism
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This archeological uncovering of thevarious discourses will not unearth a
monolithic episteme
a single, overarching political vision
or design
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It will uncover a set of inconsistent,
irregular and often contradictorydiscourses
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Nietzsches On theGenealogy of
Morals (1884)
genealogy of the subject
how humans came to develop a
conscience and became moral beings
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it was by means of the morality of
custom and the social strait jacket that
man was really made calculable
Things never proceeded without blood,torture and victims, when man thought
it necessary to forge a memory forhimself. (The Genealogy of Morals II)
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Nietzsches genealogy of modern culture:
- the modern morals of the western
Civilization is a culmination of 2000 year
process of decline
- posits a pre history to westerncivilization, a culture with two distinct
character typesnobles and slaves
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each class have their own moralityour present morals have evolved from
slave mentality
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Nietzsches example of the Jewishculture
- The Jews had a very a religiousreinterpretation of their history which
allowed them to explain their misfortunes
as the consequence of sin
J d h i l b f i
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Jews saved their culture by transforming
itthey found purpose in defeat
projected values which affirms lifesuch as strength, power, beauty as evil
negate dynamism of life, of will topower and prefer eternal stasis or life
after death.
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a form of history which is opposed to a
search for a historical universal
foundations and metaphysical essencesit does not believe in constants
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genealogy is a form of research whose
purpose is to activate subjugated historical
knowledges
archaeology is the process of unearthing
the subjugated knowledges
genealogy is the method of disseminatingsuch knowledge so that it can be effective
for peoples struggle
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Archaeology is about the conditions of
possibility which gives rise to knowledge
genealogy is about the constraints that
limit the orders of knowledge
- the regimes of power that determine in a
given historical period what is true andwhat is false
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Genealogical critics:
begin with the presentmove backward in time until a difference
is located
then they will move forward again,
tracing the transformation
preserve the discontinuities and
continuities.
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Foucault often uses the term
genealogy to refer to the union of
erudite knowledge and local memories.
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genealogy focuses on :
local, discontinuous, disqualified
knowledges
is against the claim of a unitary
concept of history
that would filter and create hierarchies
in the name of knowledge.
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Genealogy is a form of critique that rejects:
the pursuit of pure origins in favour of
a conception of historical beginnings asslowly, complex and contingent
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multiplicity of factors behind an event
the fragility of historical forms.- no constants, no essences, no
immobile forms of uninterruptedcontinuities that structure the past
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Foucaults main interest:
- to study construction of the humansubject by disciplines which are
collectively known as the human sciences
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how the human subject is constructed
how the human sciences are constituted
what are the consequences of theirexistence
knowledge and power
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knowledge and power.Power and knowledge directly imply one
anotherKnowledge is controlled in every societythrough mechanisms of powerpower relationships and scientific
discourses mutually constitute one another
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knowledge transforms the subject it
studies into an object.
man becomes both the subject andobject of the scientific discourses
Eg. the discourses about labour, life and
language
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as objects, they are
defined
constructed
governed by those discourses
these scientific knowledge are discourseswhich define us as subjects
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Knowledge / power in government
methods of government transformphenomena into objects that can be
studied scientifically
scientific knowledge provides
knowledge of these objects that makesthem more agreeable to government
docile
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power disguises itself by presenting the
truths of human sciences as advances inobjective knowledge about human beingsMadness and Civilizationthe discourse of reason has excluded
from it the mad and the irrational
disappearance of leprosy in the medieval
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disappearance of leprosy in the medieval
period created a moral void
void filled by madness and madnessbecame a stigma
the mad were driven out of city limits orwere handed over to mariners and this led
to the rise of ship of fools
mad ships were replaced by mad houses
and instead of embarkation we had
confinement or correction
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Confinement became the method of the
state to suppress social and political
agitationit absorbed the unemployed in order to
mask their povertyit avoided the social and political
disadvantages of agitation
Asylums where
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Asylums where
there was partial abolition of physicalconstraint
efforts to constitute self-restraint in thepeople
Instead of repression, there was
surveillance and judgment by authority
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the clinic is not a free realm ofobservation, diagnosis and therapeutic, they
are juridical space where people were
accused, judged and condemnedthey became instruments of moral
uniformity
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reformers of madness created a whole new
disciplinary matrix around madnessit created a new form of control
The birth of the asylum can be seen as an
allegory on the constitution of subjectivity
D l d P h
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Discipline and Punish
The body of the condemned
Power of the church and the Kinginscribed on the body of the
condemned
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The spectacle of the scaffold
The suffering docile body of the
criminal is subversive
spoke about the violence of
institutional rule
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Panopticon a prison designed by the
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Panopticon a prison designed by the
utilitarian philosopherJeremy Bentham
Panopticon
principlethat
allows the gaze todirected unilaterally
Panopticism is afeature of our
modern society
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Europeans repressed non-whites to
construct their own racial class identityas a preferred category
Males repressed women to construct
the notion of masculinity as therepository of political power
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Sandra Harding
Susan Bordo
Modern philosophers have expressed a
gendered conception of knowledge
Susan Bordos The Cartesian
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Susan Bordo s The Cartesian
Masculinization of Thought
reason, rationality and thought projected
as masculine and body, experience as
feminine
Cartesian modernity inherently linked to
a flight from the feminine motivated by
fear and revulsion of mundane bodily
experience
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Human subjects defined in terms that are
primarily western
Cornel West
notions of reason and rights of the
Enlightenment were used by the ruling
class of the west as a tool to repress racialminorities
Ed d Si d
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Edward Siad
Orient is the racial other of Europe
European culture was able to manage and even reproducethe Orient
politically, sociologically, militarily,
ideologically, scientifically, and
imaginatively during the post-
Enlightenment period Orientalism a discourse that produced
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Orientalism a discourse that produced
knowledge about the orient in terms of
lack, stagnation and inferiorityOrient portrayed in terms ofcivilizational stagnation, technological
backwardness, limited intellectual
attainments, irrationality, despotic system
of government, weakness of character,