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Michel Foucault

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( Phillippe Aries, 1973) Foucault cannot be easily classified. ... 'man, will be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.' ( Foucault 1966) ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: 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
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