Michel Foucault

1
Michel Foucault

• A Brief Overview

2
His Work

• His writings have had an enormous impact on other
  scholarly work Foucaults influence extends
  across the humanities and social sciences and
  across many applied and professional areas of
  study.
• Hes well known for his critiques of various
  social institutions most notably psychiatry
  medicine and the prison system and also for his
  ideas on the history of sexuality.
• His general theories concerning power and the
  relation between power and knowledge as well as
  his ideas concerning discourse in relation to
  the

3
Brief Overview

• history of Western thought have been widely
  discussed and applied.
• Foucault was also opposed to all social
  constructs that implied an identity which
  included everything from the identity of
  male/female and homosexuality to that of
  criminals and political activists.
• His work is often described as postmodernist or
  post-structuralist by contemporary commentators
  and critics.

4
Brief Overview

• During the 1960s however he was more often
  associated with the structuralist movement.
• Although he was initially happy to go along with
  this description he later emphasized his
  distance from the structuralist approach arguing
  that unlike the structuralists he did not adopt a
  formalist approach.
• Neither was he interested in having the
  postmodern label applied to his own work saying
  he preferred to discuss how modernity was
  defined.

5
Criticisms

• Many thinkers have criticized Foucault ranging
  from Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida to
  Slavoj iek.
• While each of them takes issue with different
  aspects of Foucaults work all of these
  approaches share the same basic orientation
• Foucault seems to reject the liberal values and
  philosophy associated with the Enlightenment
  while simultaneously secretly relying on them.
• They argue that this failure either makes him
  dangerously nihilistic or that he cannot be
  taken seriously in his disavowal of normative
  values and in fact his work ultimately
  presupposes them.

6
Criticisms

• Some historians as well as others have also
  criticized Foucault for his use of historical
  information claiming that he frequently
  misrepresented things got his facts wrong or
  simply made them up entirely.
• Perhaps the most notable of these was Jacques
  Derridas extensive critique of Foucaults
  reading of Rene Descartes Meditations on First
  Philosophy.
• Derridas criticism led to a break in their
  friendship and marked the beginning of a fifteen
  year-long feud between the two.

7
Criticisms

• It is important to note that there has been
  considerable debate over both these sets of
  criticisms and they are not universally accepted
  as valid by all critics.
• on a number of occasions Foucault took issue with
  the first kind of criticism noting that he
  believed strongly in human freedom and that his
  philosophy was a fundamentally optimistic one as
  he believed that something positive could always
  be done no matter how bleak the situation.
• In relation to the second criticism Foucault on
  a number of occasions refuted charges of
  historical inaccuracy particularly in relation to
  Madness and Civilization.

8
The History of Sexuality

• Three volumes of The History of Sexuality were
  published before Foucaults death in 1984.
• The first and most referenced volume The Will
  to Knowledge translated in 1977 focusing
  primarily on the last two centuries and the
  functioning of sexuality as a regime of power
  and related to the emergence of biopower.
• In this volume he attacks the repressive
  hypothesis the very widespread belief that we
  have particularly since the 19th century
  repressed our natural sexual drives.

9
The History of Sexuality

• The second two volumes The Use of Pleasure and
  The Care of the Self dealt with the role of sex
  in Greek and Roman antiquity.
• Both were published in 1984 the year of
  Foucaults death with the second volume being
  translated in 1985 and the third in 1986. A
  fourth volume dealing with the Christian era
  was almost complete at the time of Foucaults
  death but there is as yet no indication that it
  will be published.

10
Basic Tenets of Power

• The operation of power cannot be separated from
  the treatment of knowledge and discourse.
• Forms of domination are built into the very
  understanding of the common activity or goods
  sought or whatever forms of the substance of a
  relationship.
• All individuals exercise and are subjected to
  power through a net-like organization.
• Power requires the abandonment of the legal view
  that defines power as the enforcement of the law.

11
How Power is Enacted

• The effectiveness of power increases as the
  visibility decreases.
• Humans are unaware of the extent to which power
  affects lives.
• Bio-power a power over life exerts a positive
  influence on life that drives to control it.
• Power is productive and creative not only
  repressive or prohibitive.
• Power operates as a creative force that
  facilitates produces and increases qualities and
  conditions.

12
How Power is Enacted

• Opposition to existing order occurs through the
  specific intellectual rather than the universal
  intellectual.
• Specific intellectuals are ordinary people who
  have knowledge of their circumstances and are
  able to express themselves independently of the
  universal theorizing intellectual.
• Universal intellectuals is a defender of natural
  rights an advocate of humanity.

13
How Power is Enacted

• Resistance is discourse that both creates and
  constrains.
• Critique is a major tool of resistance by saying
  things are not right as they are.
• Only through resistance can reform be found in
  places where a particular battle needs to be
  fought and won.