Chaput, C., 2009
Knowledge … is the process through which the subject finds
himself modified by what he knows, or rather by the labor
performed in order to know.
Remarks on Marx
Subjectivity: He argued that there is no self-identical
subjectivity, i.e., no one person has a single identity through
out life.
His various theoretical productions:
http://www.protevi.com/john/Foucault/Foucault_Historical_Chart.html
• Archeology of discourse institutional
formations tell you about how the related
knowledge was produced
• Power/knowledge relations: how power
regulates the body using knowledge
• Discourse formations discipline ways of
thinking, and thus relating to others
• Power acts on bodies: disciplines through one’s
practices
• Governmentality and biopower are the means to
shape population’s practices
• Institutions are designed to normalize individual’s
subjectivities
• A historical analysis of discourses show how these
institutions monitored normal/abnormal activities of
individuals and bell-curved the society’s normalcy.
• Madness and civilization: institutionalized people for
being different from the ‘normal’- mental hospital is to
normalize them
• A particular kind of reason that fits the political economic
regime specify the limits of society’s acceptance of certain
practices. Madness label is for the outlier or abnormal and
therefore must be normalized through institutionalization.
• The Birth of the Clinic: Episteme: http://www.michelfoucault.com/concepts/( Foucault introduces in his book The
Order of Things, refers to 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.
It has often been compared to T.S Kuhn's notion of paradigm).
(Alan Sheridan’s) ‘medical gaze’ – F notes that modern medical
(interpretations of ) knowledge comes from a break in the
episteme in knowledge formation- it is not through a gradual
growth from accumulating medical evidence.
• Medical gaze and prevailing medical knowledge (med gaze)
rather than the patient’s explanation, determine what exists and
how to understand it.
The Order of Things: F critiques all human sciences as not
objective in their pursuits but are interested and implicated through
the discursive practices of various epistemes. i.e., human is
invented through discourses.
He criticizes the various knowledges produced though discourses
on the human . As he sees knowledge as an ‘index of power,’
whether human or cyborg or animal, all exist in its own regime of
discourses. i.e., all have rules for existing and being within the
boundaries of that society.
Chaput: p 95: ‘Foucault later clarifies that men ‘constitute
themselves in an infinite and multiple series of different
subjectivities that would never reach an end’ (Remarks on Marx
123). A particular version of the human– the being coextensive
with capitalism’s rationality – is a recent invention and not
necessarily the form the human must take’.
• F’s object of study shifts from discourse (that forms
institutional and disciplinary knowledge) to power (that
forms the body that is subjected to differing epistemes)
• F connects different events from analyzing the different
interpretations that emerge on the event – these are
perspectives not ‘transcendental truth’. Certain powers
are connected to certain practices that shape the body.
• Discipline and Punish (1975; trans. 1977): study
of Prison- docile bodies and constant surveillance
• The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1976;
trans. 1978) and retitled as The Will to
Knowledge. The Uses of Pleasure (1984; trans.
1985) and The Care of the Self (1984; trans.
1986). Sexuality and repression – powerrepresses but also produces- power also generates
resistance
• Biopower and biopolitics: discussed in F’s Lectures on
‘governmentality’ (Collège de France ).
• Society Must Be Defended (lectures from 1975 to 1976).
individual practices and institutional processes maintain
capitalism – defends the society, i.e., using biopower (“birth
and death rates, literacy rates, insurance rates, inter-est rates,
and forecasts that enumerate future projects and quantify
normalcy within statistical averages. This form of ‘power has
no control over death but it can control mortality’ (Society
248).”Chaput, p.100 ). Political logic is used is policies to
regulate population, poverty, etc., so that govts let some die
and forces others live , e.g., cuts to food stamps.
• F challenges:
1. How does the society maintain freedom vis-àvis its power that produces unfreedom
2. How does society resolve the paradox of a
secure society that is the paradoxes generated
by a security society the basis of which is
premised on insecurity of life and freedom.
Foucault’s ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’ offers three theories
for establishing counter-memory: parody, disassociation, and
sacrifice
‘Parodic repetition’ of the traditional court that would expose
the policing problems. Parody is thus a political practice and
not an academic matter with a theoretical solution. Parody
opens up one’s assessment of the police for public discussion
instead of repeating the courtroom procedures that would
reinforce the previous practice of injustice . This will reject the
logics of the courtroom as an institution that reinforced the
unjust practice.
• F argued that we don’t need to change people’s
consciousness (what one thinks) to arrive at the
truth. But, we must change the political,
economic, institutional regime of the production
of ‘truth’.