Topics in French Philosophy II (PH9A6):
“The Government of Desire: Foucault and the Trials of Liberalism”
Term 2, 2015-16, Prof. Miguel Beistegui
The task of philosophy, Foucault famously claimed, is not to think what is eternally
and necessarily, but to understand who we are today. It is, he says elsewhere, to
arrive at an “ontology of our own present.” In the course of a discussion at The
University of Berkeley in 1983, he also claimed, somewhat enigmatically, that the
western civilisation is the civilisation of desire. This claim is perhaps less surprising,
if we bear in mind that, since his 1975 lecture course Abnormal and the publication of
the first volume of History of Sexuality in 1976, Foucault was busy understanding
how and why desire had become such a crucial problem and concern in western
culture, and laying the foundations for a “genealogy of the western subject” as “the
subject of desire.” This project is one that he never completed, but for which he left a
number of important clues, which this module will follow. The hypothesis that will
drive the module as a whole is that our own desiring subjectivity is framed by three
different theoretical and practical spaces: that of political economy, which constructs
desire as interest and utility; that of sexuality, which constructs desire as instinct and
drive; and that of the symbolic, which constructs desire in relation to Recognition.
They are the three main channels through which subjects recognise and govern
themselves, as well as others, as subjects of desire. By focusing on Foucault’s
writings and lecture courses at the Collège de France between 1975 and 1979, this
module will offer a critical assessment of the nature of contemporary subjectivity.
Programme of lectures:
Week 1:
Introduction and Problematisation: Desire in the Age of Biopower
Week 2: From Sovereign Power to Liberal Governmentality
Reading:
M. Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” 14 January + 17 March 1976
M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 11 January-1 February 1978 + 5 April
1978 (pp. 349-358)
M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, Lectures 10 and 17 January 1979
Week 3: The Liberal Technology of Desire: Self-Interest and Utility
M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, Lectures 17 and 14 January 1979
Week 4: The Neoliberal Technology of Desire, or the Birth of the Homo Economicus
Reading:
M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, Lectures 14, 21, 28 March 1979.
Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe, eds., The Road From Mont Pèlerin: The Making
of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard
University Press, 2009), Introduction.
Week 5: The Sexual Regime of Desire: Normal and Abnormal Instincts
Reading:
M. Foucault, Abnormal, 8 January-12 February 1975 + Discipline and Punish, Parts
One and Two.
M. Foucault, History of Sexuality I, Part Five.
Week 6: Reading week
Week7: The Birth of the Sexual Pervert:
Reading:
M. Foucault, History of Sexuality I, Parts Three and Four.
M. Foucault, Abnormal, 5-19 March 1975
Week 8: Instincts or Drives? From Psychiatry to Psychoanalysis
Reading: S. Freud, Three Essays on Sexuality [1905], in The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Vintage, 2001).
Week 9: The Symbolic Order of Desire: Recognition (I)
Week 10: The Symbolic Order of Desire: Recognition (II).
Bibliography:
Works by Foucault:
Les anormaux: Cours au Collège de France, 1974-1975 (Paris:
Seuil/Gallimard, 199). Translated by Graham Burchell as Abnormal: Lectures at the
Collège de France, 1974-1975, (New York: Picador, 2003).
“Il faut défendre la société:” Cours au Collège de France, 1975-1976. Edited
by Alessandro Fontana and Mauro Bertani (Hautes Etudes/Gallimard/Seuil, 1997).
Translated by David Macey as “Society must be defended”: Lectures at the Collège
de France (London: Penguin Books, 2003).
Sécurité, territoire, population: Cours au Collège de France, 1977-1978.
Edited by Michel Senellart (Hautes Etudes/Gallimard/Seuil, 2004). Translated by
Graham Burchell as Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de
France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France, 1978-1979. Edited
by Michel Senellart (Hautes Etudes/Gallimard/Seuil, 2004). Translated by Graham
Burchell as The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).
Translated by Alan Sheridan as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
(London: Penguin, 1991).
Histoire de la sexualité I. La volonté de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976).
Translated by Robert Hurley as The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction
(New York: Random House, 1978).