Michel Foucault
Poitiers, France (1926 – 1984)
“Do not ask who I am and do not
ask me to remain the same . . . Let us
leave it to our bureaucrats and
our police to see that our papers are
in order”.
(in The Archaeology of Knowledge)
Michel Foucault
• French philosopher who held a chair at the College de France,
which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought
(1969).
• Known for his critical studies of various social institutions,
including medicine, education, psychiatry, prison and his work on
the history of sexuality.
• Experimented with drug in 1975, considered it the best experience
of his life.
• Died of an AIDS-related illness on June 16, 1984; the 1st high
profile French personality to be reported as an AIDS victim.
Michel Foucault
• His work is often described as postmodernist or poststructuralist
by contemporary commentators and critics.
• Foucault’s writings have had an enormous impact on diverse
scholarly work: influence extends across the humanities and
social sciences, and across many applied and professional areas of
study.
• Foucault is famous for his works on general theories concerning
power and the relation between power and knowledge, as well
as his ideas concerning “discourse” in relation to the history of
Western thought.
• These have been widely discussed and applied across disciplines.
Michel Foucault: Academic life
(however not binding)*
• The first phase, when he called his historical studies archaeologies,
was the 1960s:
• The History of Madness in the Classical Age (1961): PhD thesis
published as Madness and Civilization (1988)
• The Birth of the Clinic (1963)
• The Order of Things (1966)
• The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969)
* Oksala, J. (2007) How to read Foucault. W. W. Norton & company London
Michel Foucault: Academic life
(however not binding)*
• The second phase is genealogical phase - genealogy being the
favoured term for Foucault’s studies of power - was in the 1970s:
• Discipline and Punish (1975)
• Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-
1977 (1980)
• The final, ethical phase, when Foucault turned to ancient ethics, was
in the 1980s:
• History of Sexuality (3 volumes): The will to Knowledge (1976);
The Use of Pleasure (1984); The Care of the Self (1984)
* Oksala, J. (2007) How to read Foucault. W. W. Norton & company London
Michel Foucault: Academic life
• The History of Systems of Thought:
He did not try to develop the most complete and accurate account
of how our ancestors thought. Instead, he mined the past
for examples of thinking that would challenge current
assumptions (Gutting, n.d.).
For him, philosophy was not a body of knowledge that
accumulated, it was rather a critical practice that relentlessly
questioned dogmatic beliefs and intolerable practices in
contemporary society.
Foucault hoped that his books would provide a
“toolbox of concepts and arguments”
that would help activists oppose the horrors posed by modern social
conditions and institutions.
Archaeology of knowledge
➢ is, a structuralist focus on language, to
suggest how “discourse” can be studied
and understood in its relationship with
power and knowledge.
➢ Discourse refers to ‘the general domain
of all statements’ that are controlled,
selected, organized and re-
distributed according to a certain number
of procedures.
➢There is no center, no core, no heart of a
discourse where true meaning resides.
Discourses must be understood by their
“external conditions of existence.”
Discipline and Punish
➢ (Human) Bodies are social, discursive
constructions.
➢ The body is a focal point of power.
➢ Move from repressive power to power
as diffuse.
➢ Power and knowledge are joined
through discourse.
➢ “The old ways of punishment assaulted
the body, but the new ways took control of
the soul”.
➢ The shifting ways that the body and the
social institutions related to it have entered
into politico-legal relations .
Biopower and Governmentality
➢ Bio-power refers to all the strategies born of the realization that
governments have to deal with a population of living beings
whose needs have to be met by (social) technologies that create as
well as meet their everyday needs.
➢ Foucault refers to it as the government of the living which is
always about power over a population.
➢ Also referred as the micro-physics of power in order to stress that
power struggles, and resistance struggles, are everywhere in
society.
➢ It is an important strategy of government apparatus that progresses
from modes of subjectivation towards modes of objectification.
Biopower and Governmentality
➢ Governmentality refers to the development of an essentially
modern, complex form of power that focuses on the population: it
is exercised through administrative institutions, forms of
knowledge as well as explicit tactics and strategies.
➢ It traces How power works, its departure from repressive power to
power that is diffuse.
➢ Highlights that Knowledge is never neutral and Power and
knowledge are interconnected by discourse.
➢ We live in society in which a complex managerial and
administrative apparatus governs a population with policies and
strategies.
Biopower and Governmentality
➢ The “dividing practices”, “individualization techniques”
achieved through biopower forms the basic premises of
governmentality.
➢ We are entering the age of the infinite and compulsory
objectification.
➢ The human body is extreme for exercise and making of biopower,
approached not directly in its biological dimension, but as an
object to be manipulated and controlled through “technologies”.
➢ They form the “disciplinary technology” of different settings,
such as workshops, schools, prisons, and hospitals.
https://foucault.info/
http://individual.utoronto.ca/bmclean/hermeneutics/foucault_suppl/f_bib_chronological.htm
