Topics: F’s conceptual Themes for your Essays P 1 & P 2
For all topics: use the link for F’s concepts: http://www.michelfoucault.com/concepts/index.html
Topic2
Science on Body: Is it
‘Knowledge/Power’ or ‘Truth’?
Knowledge/power: Power of experts
shapes knowledge that makes the body
docile (see how docility is formed in the
my FW notes on Body)
What is Science or Knowledge or
Expertise on the ‘Body” ? What is
the ‘Body’ as it is presented in image
media vs. critical media?
Find movies or shows that show beauty
or youth as scientifically modified by
experts in surgery or those in Art (e.g.,
photographic expertise)
Each society creates a "regime of truth" according to its beliefs, values, and mores.
Foucault identifies the creation of truth in contemporary western society with five
traits: the centering of truth on scientific discourse, accountability of truth to
economic and political forces, the "diffusion and consumption" of truth via societal
apparatuses, the control of the distribution of truth by "political and economic
apparatuses," and the fact that it is "the issue of a whole political debate and social
confrontation." Individuals would do well to recognize that ultimate truth, "Truth,"
is the construct of the political and economic forces that command the majority of
the power within the societal web. There is no truly universal truth at all; therefore,
the intellectual cannot convey universal truth. The intellectual must specialize,
specify, so that he/she can be connected to one of the truth-generating apparatuses
of the society. As Foucault explains it:
'Truth' is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production,
regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements.
'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and
sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of
truth. (Cite source: http://www.wdog.com/rider/writings/foucault.htm)
Topic 3
Schools: Does it go beyond teaching
the necessary disciplines for gaining an
education? Does it use its power to
teach obedience to simply controlling
students ?
How is the school portrayed in the
media? What is the freedom gained
through self-discipline in seeking true
education? ( use TV or video shows or
movies where Univ or schools are
portrayed as disciplinarians or as
training grounds for life of
work/partying to escape the thinking
about ethics and shaping the freedom of
the self)
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Foucault see my notes on F’s themes on knowledge/info…
• Process of Constructing the Docile Bodies through Disciplines, the new political
technology of the body (137) :
1. Cellular (located bodies in enclosures)
2. Organic (Specified repetitive activities)
3. Genetic (Trained and timed in hard work of production)
4. Combinatory (Division of labour and organizing ranks & classes as units
of production- Marx, Capital, vol. 1. 311-12) (isolation)
See how I have applied to our readings: e.g., Morrison, Giroux,… in my notes on F’s
themes on knowledge/info…
F’s care of the self: Truth telling and technologies of the self Why truth? … and why must
the care of the self occur only through the concern for truth? [This is] the question for the
West. How did it come about that all of Western culture began to revolve around this
obligation of truth…? (Foucault 1997a, p 281).
As Foucault indicates, the compulsion to tell the truth is highly valued in our society. It is
enshrined in how our laws operate. For instance, in court witnesses are required to swear
an oath to tell the truth and they may be charged with perjury if they lie. Similarly,
insurance will be cancelled if we do not tell the truth or disclose relevant information.
Societal values certainly operate in the disciplinary regimes of schools and how they pursue
regimes of ‘truth’. In doing so, schools shape the student’s self and their identities. Yet
schools seldom formally perform this task or even consciously attempt it, despite
government educational goals often referring to the type of person they are trying to form,
citing variations on the theme of a ‘good’ citizen.
In ‘Technologies of the self’ (1988b), … To him, liberation is not enough and the practices
of freedom do not preclude liberation, but they enable individuals and society to define
‘admissible and acceptable forms of existence or political society’ (Foucault 1997a, p 283).
He rejected Sartre’s idea that power is evil, stating instead that ‘power is games of strategy’
(Foucault 1997a, p 298) and that the ways of avoiding the application of arbitrary,
unnecessary or abusive authority ‘must be framed in terms of rules of law, rational
techniques of government and ethos, practices of the self and of freedom’ (Foucault 1997a,
p 299).
Foucault’s main aspects of the self’s relationship to itself or ‘ethical self- constitution’
point to various ways that education of young people can help them to ethically constitute
themselves: by ethical work that a person performs on their self with the aim of becoming
an ethical subject; the way in which individuals relate to moral obligations and rules; and
the type of person one aims to become in behaving ethically.
(Cite Source http://www.sciy.org/2011/03/31/foucault-truth-telling-and-technologies-ofthe-self-in-schools-by-tina-besley/)
Topic 4
Are consumers prisoners?
Consumers and power of media, .e.g., in
popular advertising vs. critical media
Movies, Ads, TV shows: How
Hollywood, univ branding and
commercial corporate ads entrap
customers/students – ‘discipline’ the
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body to unconsciously imbibe the
‘truths’
See my notes on F’s concepts on the Body…
Foucault :
Foucauldian arguments as applied to Stereotypes: Power vs. racial/gender issues
External factor: Power
Internal factor: Self
o Individual social bodies unconsciously acknowledge and accept the disciplinary
power (internalized surveillance)
o Certainty of control is constructed by the self who spontaneously designs own
subjection
Mechanisms of discipline:
•
Surveillance
•
Surveyed and legitimized
•
Described, judged, measured
•
Essentialized
•
Classified, organized, and labeled
•
Power/knowledge created by this ‘science’ comes from statistical analysis and
qualitative groupings made by experts
• Viewed and scrutinized, itemized, measured and enumerated in data banks
• Very different relationship to space and time and to existential experience
Foucault’s arguments on how power operates in the construction of a Docile Body
through the three stages:
1. Objectified Body
2. Controlled Body
3. Disciplined body
Topic 5
Uses of Social Media in everyday life
or in social or political mobilization
OR
Facebook and Privacy
Choose one of the following 3:
1. Use and limitations of social media
for social or political mobilizing ; 2.
Student activities as portrayed on the
social media; 3. Voyeurism on the
social media. How does critical media
portray them?
Subjectification (Fr. Subjectivation): the construction of the individual subject construction of one’s identity – individuation vs. dividuation (see lec 5 notes )
Read article: http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/015/3/01533.HTML
CONSTITUTING FEMININE SUBJECTIVITY IN CYBERSPACE by Mairi Pileggi
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SM and privacy – self-exposure vs. care of the self
Social networks and popularity of one’s identity
On You tube, and other SM images: explore for e.g. voyeuristic postings by
individuals and explore F’s subjectification process - How student-identities are
constructed on SM – role of ‘confessions’
Topic 7
Truth Regimes: Law, TQM,
Management designs vs. Truth to
Personal Autonomy?
Discipline and Punish in the
work/Business world and Personal
autonomy/privacy See Kelly’s articles
how corporations manage and discipline
their workers – find shows/movies/ you
tube videos that you can show as
examples related to your your
arguments
See topic 2 info above
Also download the article The Concept of Truth Regime, by L Weir, (2008) from:
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=
0CCwQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fejournals.library.ualberta.ca%2Findex.php%2F
CJS%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F608%2F2369&ei=E4t5ULfMPOH50gGduYCIDA&u
sg=AFQjCNEC6EGlj2WC4m6bDU3JCJmUJj98iA
Topic 8
Propositional knowledge (Codes, rules,
obedience and conformity) vs. Personal
knowledge/Knowledge of self
Examples of rules and laws that claim
our obedience vs. truth and personal
integrity – popular media vs. critical
media portrayals of popular/famous
people’s court cases. Collect visual
materials and cartoon/lyrics on how
TV ‘court reality shows ‘ use
pronouncements and propositional
judgments
Aesthetics, Method, And Epistemology:
by Michel Foucault ed paul robinow and james faubion
Fouc’s savoir:
To know or to be known – to know as well as knowledge
a theorem, a continent, atom, etc
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It can be quite abstract or concrete – such knowledge is not genuine if its object is
nonexistent or false - it need not be the product of a reliable method or pedagogy –it
need not be precise or fully justified – it can fall short of proof—a domain not of things
known or things to be known –
Connaissance: relatively superficial mode of knowledge, grounded in incomplete
information or incomplete research or knowledge of minimal degree- it could only be
translated as cognition or learning or a body of learning or expertise – tied to highly
developed apparatuses of justification , modes of competence supported by wellcrystallized apparatuses of background training.
Non-propositional knowledge i.e., knowledge by acquaintance –
“This cultural crisis had a devastating personal impact on both Nietzsche and
Foucault, for both of whom philosophy was not a matter of propositional statements
about the “real” world. It was rather an act of self-disclosure , as Nietzsche wrote to
Carl von Gersdorff about his Zarathustra , so that – as he also explained to Peter Gast
– “some pages seem to be almost bleeding.”10 And, as Foucault pointed
out, in describing his own work, what he writes is always an experience book.”
Source:
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=13&ved=0CCs
QFjACOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.parrhesiajournal.org%2Fparrhesia02%2Fp
arrhesia02_milchrosen.pdf&ei=MZZ5UMaGLe2K0QGQwoH4Bg&usg=AFQjCNHvMN
GNLTJhmJNFoLmuNua6rs4jHQ
Look up this easy explanation: http://www.doceo.co.uk/tools/forms.htm
Also read: http://www.alcoff.com/content/foucphi.html
For F’s Archeology of Knowledge Summary:
http://www.comm.umn.edu/Foucault/ak.html
Also read:
http://www.academia.edu/420127/Foucault_and_the_Origins_of_Human_Knowledg
e
Topic 9
Internet, plagiarism and academic
quality
Instances of media encouragement of
plagiarism or cheating – examples from
popular media : shows, movies, etc. vs.
critical media - Collect visual materials
and cartoon/lyrics on how cheating is
viewed favourably in the business
world, by students, by other
professionals who believe in not getting
caught as the criteria of success.
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See resources for Topics 4 and 8 above- your focus is F’s concepts of how power
shapes the truth and thus the absence of ‘care of the self’ and ethics of the self.
Topic 10
What is the purpose of the university?
Does the university shape the intellect
or tailor the students for jobs?
Popular media vs. critical media
portrayals of education, students,
faculty, university and other
educational issues or personalities.
Collect visual materials and
cartoon/lyrics on how students. Univ.,
profs are portrayed in pop movies and
TV shows
F and knowledge: see my notes on F’s conceptual themes on Knowledge and info
F and the Intellectual:
Read: http://libcom.org/library/intellectuals-power-a-conversation-betweenmichel-foucault-and-gilles-deleuze
Also look up: http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/bertolivier/2008/09/23/foucaulton-intellectuals/
Topic 11
Docility and Commodification of the
body
Popular and critical media portrayals of
commercialized versions of the Body:
women or/and men
- collect visual materials and
cartoons/lyrics from TV shows on
Extreme Makeovers or Hollywood
portrayals of docility as feminine
Build your framework from my notes on F’s themes –concepts on body
Topic 12
Technologies of modification of bodyparts
Popular vs. critical media versions of
the Body, definition of beauty, surgical
modifications, Tattooed body, etc.
Build your framework from my notes on F’s themes –concepts on body
Topic 13
Students’ Knowledge and preferences
on gender/ race
Popular vs. critical media images on
racialized/ sexualized body and its
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expressions – collect visual materials
from
TV or Hollywood movie portrayals of
discrimination against women/
minorities- cartoon/lyrics opposing
such stereotypes
Build your framework from my notes on F’s themes –concepts on body
e.g., Docile body concepts- use race/gender of students affecting their choice of
discipline or their stereotypes in education/workplace. Add some of the elements of
how power shapes the knowledge that they have and their oppositional forces have
- see my lec 5 on Power
Topic 14
Power vs. Truth
Content and influences of TV ‘Reality’ shows vs.
critical media’s take on them
You may use TV reality shows, read:
http://philosophynow.org/issues/32/The_Truman_Show
Also: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article2153071/Cases-Truman-Show-delusions-rise-peoplebelieve-theyre-stars-reality-TV-programs.html
Also read: http://www.cjconline.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1252/1247
Draw your framework from my F’s Knowledge/information conceptual themes
Topic 15
Expertise vs. Self-knowledge
Power and influence of Experts,
Technologists, professional and other
specialists in various fields of
knowledge. Is it controlling or freeing
one from popular notions of the Self?
Find movies/TV shows that have
representations of experts/professionals
with power and how that power shaoe
the individual who is the object
Five factors in power relations:
1) System of differentiations: status, wealth, social differences, expertise, etc.
2) Types of objectives pursued by those acting on others' actions
3) Instrumental modes of that action
4) Forms of institutionalization
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5) Degrees of rationalization
from "The Subject and Power"
Outline by John Protevi / Permission to reproduce granted for academic use
protevi@lsu.edu / http://www.protevi.com/john/Foucault/SubjectPower.pdf
source for the quotation below explaining Expertise: Gutting, G ary(2005) The
Cambridge Companion to Foucault , CUP. Cambridge, UK.
“The examination also reveals the new position of the individual in the modern nexus of
power/knowledge. It situates individuals in a ‘network of writing’ (DP, 189). The results
of examinations are recorded in documents that provide detailed information about
the individuals examined and allow power systems to control them (for example absentee
records for schools, patients’ charts in hospitals). On the basis of these records, those in
control can formulate categories, averages, and norms that are in turn a basis
for knowledge. The examination turns the individual into a ‘case’ – in both senses of the
term: a scientific example and an object of care (and, of course, for Foucault, caring
implies controlling). This process also reverses the polarity of visibility. In the
premodern period, the exercise of power was itself typically highly visible (military
presence in towns, public executions), while those who were the objects of knowledge
remained obscure. But in the modern age the exercise of power is typically invisible, but
it controls its objects by making them highly visible. And the highest visibility now
belongs to those (criminals, the mad), whose thick dossiers are maintained and
scrutinized by armies of anonymous and invisible functionaries.
He begins by outlining the contrasts between modern and premodern approaches. There
are four major transitions: (1) punishment is no longer a public display, a
spectacular demonstration to all of the sovereign’s irresistible force majeure, but rather a
discrete, almost embarrassed application of constraints needed to preserve public
order. (2) What is punished is no longer the crime but the criminal, the concern of the law
being not so much what criminals have done as what (environment, heredity, parental
actions) has led them to do it. (3) Those who determine the precise nature and duration of
the punishment are no longer the judges who impose penalties in conformity with the
law, but the ‘experts’ (psychiatrists, social workers, parole boards) who decide how to
implement indeterminate judicial sentences. (4) The avowed purpose of punishment is no
longer retribution (either to deter others or for the sake of pure justice) but the reform
and rehabilitation of the criminal.
A large part of the history of modern sexuality is the secular adaptation and expansion of
these religious techniques of selfknowledge. Confession may no longer be made to a
priest but it is surely made to one’s doctor, psychiatrist, best friend, or, at least, to oneself.
And the categories that define the possibilities of one’s 93 Modern sex sexual nature are
not self-chosen but accepted on the authority of ‘experts’ in the new modern sciences of
sexuality: the Freuds, the Kraft-Ebbings, the Havelock Ellises, the Margaret Meads.
Such experts present as discoveries about human nature what are actually just new social
norms for behaviour.
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what Foucault came to call a ‘history of the subject’. This had already begun to emerge in
Discipline and Punish, where Foucault occasionally noted how the objects of disciplinary
control could themselves internalize the norms whereby they were controlled and so
become monitors of their own behaviour. In the context of sexuality, this phenomenon
becomes central, since individuals are supposed to discern their own fundamental
nature as sexual beings and, on the basis of this self-knowledge, transform their lives. As
a result, we are controlled not only as objects of disciplines that have expert knowledge
of us; we are also controlled as self-scrutinizing and self-forming subjects of our own
knowledge”
Topic 16
Is surveillance and piracy being
perpetrated by IT users (individuals) or
do IT corporations spy on individuals
(Facebook, PC corps., Media corps,
etc)? If so why?
Popular vs. critical media examples of
the power of IT corporations, content
of the web and individuals engaged in
piracy – find internet piracy instances
and popular views on them- cartoon
that depict such issues
How surveillance turns the body docile – use the framework concepts from my
notes on F’s themes on the Body.
How corporate power , e.g., Samsung’s piracy of patented Apple codes, is easily
pirates others brand name products , while individuals are threatened by corporate
power against downloading movies, music, etc.
Topic 17:
Biopower & the Corporate Media (J.A. Persaud’s topic)
Source: http://www.ru.ac.za/politicalinternationalstudies/staff/academic/louisevincent/
Biopower essentially means power over bodies. The idea comes to us from the work of Michel Foucault. In
the mid-1970s, Michel Foucault outlined a programme of seminars to be delivered over the following five
years at the Collège de France. These seminars were all intended to address the question of biopolitics. The
last lesson of his 1975-76 seminar, later published under the title Society Must Be Defended (2003),
provides an introductory commentary on this new direction in his work. As is characteristic of much of his
work, Foucault here provides a dense amalgam of questions and propositions that raise issues such as the
state and liberalism; the genealogy of biological conceptions of race; and the difference between
sovereignty-based and liberal accounts of political constitution, life and law. Foucault himself never
followed through with this ambitious research project but we are now beginning to recognise that his
formulation encapsulates many of the most pressing intellectual, political and social problems and
challenges of our time.
Foucault was interested in a very specific articulation of political power and the biological, which he
glossed as 'state biopolitics': the convergence of state racism, practices of public health and evolutionary
biology in the late nineteenth century. But Foucault was, as always, writing a history of the present, and his
'now' was the novel conjunction of vital practices and state power of the mid-twentieth century welfare
state, the lingering colonialisms of the post-World War II era and the invention of human rights. In
Foucault’s formulation of the concepts of biopolitics, biopower and governmentality we are able to see the
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connection between issues as diverse as the implications of the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’, the human
genome project, food, sexualities, reproduction, abortion, maternity, HIV/AIDS, the trade in human body
parts, human trafficking, prostitution, race politics, crime and policing and much else.
Within this intellectual framework we are able to take up the dominant challenges of our time in a way that
brings together South African issues and questions with a dynamic contemporary international conversation
about human life in all its complexity, about death, and about the relation of both to politics. This work will
place us in a position to reformulate in powerful ways the terms of articulation between biology and politics
-- their exercise and operation at micro and macro levels. While the idea of 'biopolitics' risks turning into a
catch-all generality, the diversity of knowedges and practices with which the term engages is indicative of
the questioning force the biopolitical problematic possesses.
Also read this webpage: http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcbiopolitics.htm
Also view: http://www.slideserve.com/Pat_Xavi/michel-foucault-biopower
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