1.

Notes on Foucault
Key concepts:
Power
Power in no unidirectional - it manifests itself everywhere, in differing combinations and
directions. He says "power is not evil. Power is games of strategy. “
Power and power relations are everywhere and is internalized through discipline by the
individuals. Therefore, the power should be studied as relation with individuals.
'How' of power, then 'where' and 'what'
Mechanisms of power: disciplinary mechanisms and discourse
 
Governmentality
the process of how all of these classification taxonomy, psychologizing about sexuality,
discipline, health - all had an effect on the body through Biopolitics, he was interested in how
modern power is productive on bodies,
 
Modernism
the view that reason assures ever-increasing progress in developing an objective account of
reality
 
Discourse
the material verbal traces left by history, a set of statements that exhibit some degree of
regularity. Discourse studies should focus on the language, changes and constants/continuities
 
Episteme
the orderly ‘unconscious’ structures underlying the production of scientific knowledge in a
particular time and place. It is the ‘epistemological field’ which forms the conditions of
possibility for knowledge in a given time and place.
 
Normalization
individuals' constant self-discipline and compliance to social norms, individual as social and
cultural product
 
Foucault’s Aims
 Knowledge and power are intimately linked 
o Exploration of how power functions, and how the power/knowledge duality changes
shape over time
o Knowledge regulates individuals and such discourse makes individuals comply with
societal normality, or want to be socially accepted. This can be a more effective
way of governance and is made use by policy makers
 Very influenced by Nietzsche 
o He challenged the ideas that
 Human nature is universal and unchaining 
 History is progressive, linear, progressing towards a goal, having a ground
narrative
o History is contingent, is open ended 
o For both philosophers Power is power in a neutral sense - power as in influence, the
power to

3 most Important works:

1 The order of things
  Renaissance (the world ordered by resemblance and similitude), the classic (measured,
classified, taxonomies, ordering - observation to define object) and the modern era
(question the hidden inner secrets of the object)
 Archeology → unconscious rules and their change over time
 In these 3 human sciences: economics, biology, and linguistics, Foucault argues, we can
see man emerge as an object of study for the first time.
 Then, we may look at the renaissance way of ordering by similitude as ridiculous to our
modern eyes, but then it wasn’t.
 Episteme - the orderly ‘unconscious’ structures underlying the production of scientific
knowledge in a particular time and place. It is the ‘epistemological field’ which forms the
conditions of possibility for knowledge in a given time and place.
2 Discipline & Punish 
 Genealogy - how we get where we are now, what effect has history had on our own
minds.
 The way we are educated, punished, and governed, all have an effect on our constitution
on our makeup.
 For Foucault the walls of the prison reach far beyond their physical boundaries - they
become part of the psychology of the mind, dictating the rules of what is and what is not
acceptable - what;’s authorized, and what’s forbidden. 
 how tortures and ways of being punished change over time
 Discipline becomes about creating citizens, and Punishment is not just punishment, but
social control - a strategy of politics, what Foucault later calls Biopolitics. 
 The uses the image of the Panopticon, a prison designed by Jermey Bentham in 1791 to
illustrate how this power has the effect of being hidden. 
3 The History of Sexuality
 Geological and ethical perspective
 He points out that sexuality and attitude to sexual practices have fluctuated dramatically
over time. 
 as the Episteme shifted to the modern one that tried to uncover the hidden secret, sex
became more intimately tied to the question of who we really are, what your desires are.
 
More on: Governmentality
 Two sides: Governing (‘gouverner’) and modes of thought (‘mentalité’), or the political
rationality
 Representation + Intervention => the government elaborates strategies to solve a
problem by defining a discursive field.
 Can be used to analyse macro-level topic as an instrument. 
 New shifts in the power-structures and political powers beyond the state
 
Neoliberalism
 Foucault focuses on two forms of neoliberalism:
1) German post-war liberalism
=> radical anti-naturalistic conception of the market and of the principle of competition
=> history of capitalism is an economic-institutional history
=> irrationalities and dysfunctionalities of capitalist society can be overcome by politico-
institutional ‘inventions’
2) Liberalism of the Chicago School
=> re-define the social sphere as a form of the economic domain
=> human action is governed by a unique economic rationality 
 
Lecture
 
1. Discipling the economy

 
 
2. Foucauldian approach:
 You conceive a power in something more than just a government intervention
 Neo-liberalism and market capitalism: more intervention than ever
 When something is described by economics as "the only practical way" to regulate
 He talks about separating the state from the economy
 
2. Conclusions on Foucault

 He focuses mainly on binary divisions: sad/mad/insane/rational/irrational

Economy/State
  Power is not necessarily a good things. How power normalize society and limits our behavior.
Power is productive and sometimes productive, but can have a negative side.
 Governmentality - very broad concept
 State : state has a lot of power/ state does this (we want to avoid mentioning this in the
exam) - power on the level of the state in terms of the governmentality.
 Liberal governmentality
 
 
3. Studying discourses

 Before, it was widely acceptable to sanction on crime by death sentence

 He focus on LANGUAGE not actions, more specifically on discourse in language.
 How people formulate, truth claims
 CSR policy in some companies
 Discourse: Before the state was responsible for sustainability. But now there is a shift to have
a cooperation between the state and society.
 
4. Critiques
  If everything is constructed, then how do we construct it differently? (…) Foucas' work is a
deconstructive project, Fuocau doesn't give a positive view on how the society should look like.
Cripto-normativity (Habermann's critique as Habermanns was really into normative approach)
 
5. Exam question - Egg freezing
 
Article: (Time)
 Freezing eggs to prolong the fertility
 Companies like Apple, Fb wanting to cover the procedure for the employees = less cost for
maternity leave
 Were these companies simply putting even more pressure on women to keep working and
put their personal lives on the back burner?
 
 
Foucault Workshop
 
Recent years have seen an increased trend in social egg freezing as an insurance policy in balancing
career building and family planning. Discuss the reasons behind the trend and how different actors
accept it, promote it, or challenge it.
 Normalization - what is right to do or think as society promotes it, is this the new way of
taking control of your body? of moving towards a more egalitarian society?
o Different periods, what Foucault called Epistemes, have different underlying
assumptions, codes and rules - mostly unconscious or at least structural, about how to
think of things in the world 
o It offers a new way of the different ways in our culture that humans develop
knowledge about themselves: in this case biology, equality, choice, maternity, and
fertility. 
o Archeology - unconscious rules and their change over time → the archeology of
feminism
o New knowledge:  new ways of approaching choice, fertility, motherhood, biology,
etc. 
 Power
 o Biopolitics - "a new technology of power...[that] exists at a different level, on a
different scale” 
o Power relation between
 women and her biology (being able to stop the “countdown”
 work and women: “The revelations appeared to unleash more immediate
questions than they answered: Were these companies simply putting even
more pressure on women to keep working and put their personal lives on the
back burner?”
 Sexuality
o Fluctuation of sexuality over the years (women having more power over their bodies)
o “issue of equality: a potential solution to the so-called myth of opting out. An
equalizer among both gender – men don’t usually worry about their sperm going bad, or
at least not with quite the same intensity or cost – and class (the procedure has typically
only been available for those who could afford it)”
o the discourse of sexuality is changing → with the rise of the bourgeoisie, the controls
they placed on sex were primarily intended to ensure their own health and longevity. 
 As the episteme shifted to this modern period sex became more intimately
tied to the question of who we really are, what your desires are
 Discourse - “these last three centuries is the variety, the wide dispersion of
devices that were invented for speaking about [sex] [...] and distributing what is
said about it” (Foucault)
 
Why is Foucault relevant to answer this question?:
 Discourse change