Transcript Genealogy as critique.

TWENTIETH CENTURY
PHILOSOPHY:
Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes
LECTURES
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II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
The pariah as rebel.
The hope of the hopeless.
Message in a bottle.
Absolute free.
Human flourishing.
Genealogy as critique.
GENEALOGY AS CRITIQUE
1. POWER AND KNOWLEDGE
What are the possibilities for resistance?
2. SEX AND POLITICS
How to make a subject out of the individual?
3. SEEING WITHOUT BEING SEEN
Is there a possibility to hide from the eye of
power?
1. POWER AND KNOWLEDGE
THE CATEGORIZATION OF
PEOPLE
One can’t not categorize people.
The question is when does the categorization
harms people.
The categorization of people has become more
and more a scientific enterprise.
Example: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders.
These kind of categorizations can humiliate
people.
Example: the story of Herculine Barbin.
IDENTITY POLITICS
 Herculine Barbin (1838-1868) > a
French hermaphrodite.
 First treated as a female.
 After an affair and a physical
examination by experts she changed
her sexual identity.
 Pointe > the power-knowledge nexus
has serious consequences for an
individual as Herculine Barbin.
 Scientific research becomes more and
more involved in the determination of
the sexual identity of individuals.
 Foucault focuses on the changes in the
power-knowledge of science.
MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984)
BIOGRAPHY:
 Born: October 15, 1926 in Poitiers.
 1936-1945: secondary school.
 1946-1950: studies philosophy and
psychology at the École Normale
Superiéure.
 1950-1953: member of the French
communist party.
 1951: master philosophy.
 1960-1962: lecturer psychology at
the university of Clermont-Ferrand.
 1961: PhD.
 1962-1966: professor philosophy at
the university of Clermont-Ferrand.
 1967: visiting professor in Tunis.
 1969: professor at the Collège de
France.
 Death: June 25, 1984.
IMPORTANT WORKS
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Maladie mentale et personnalité (1954).
Folie et Déraison (1961).
Naissance de la clinique (1963).
Les Mots et les Choses (1966).
L’Archéologie du savoir (1969).
L’Ordre du discours (1971).
Surveiller et Punir (1975).
Historie de la sexualité, 1. La volonté de savoir (1976).
Historie de la sexualité, 2. L’usage des plaisirs (1984).
Historie de la sexualité, 3. Le souci de soi (1984).
HISTORY OF THE PRESENT
Foucault’s work > mainly historical research.
Not the figure out the historical facts, but to get a
better understanding of the present.
The books of Foucault are in fact histories of the
present.
To decipher the historical material in such a way
that phenomena become visible that where
invisible, such as possibilities to change the status
quo.
GENEALOGY
 Concerning the history of the present Foucault was inspired
by Nietzsche, especially his ‘Genealogie der Moral’ (1887).
 Genealogy is a kind of research method, but not in the strict
scientific sense of the word.
 Aspects from the genealogical criticism:
- To generate a radical new perspective on an object by
using rhetorical tools.
- To show that we shouldn’t take something for granted
by going back to the beginning of a specific way of
thinking.
- Genealogy is a form of criticism because the
problematic sides of the object of historical research
will be expounded.
INNOVATION IN THE RESEARCH ON
POWER
 The focus of Foucault’s historical research > the analyses of
power relations.
 Foucault radically changed the research on power.
 Shift of emphasis:
1. From the macro-physics of power (the relation between
the individual and the state) to the micro-physics of
power (the way individuals are made to an object or
subject within institutions like the hospital, the prison,
the school or the asylum).
2. From a negative conception of power to a positive
conception of power > power is not only destructive,
but also productive.
 In the later work of Foucault: again an interest in the macrophysics of power (gouvernementalité).
A CONTESTED CONCEPT
 Two concepts of power:
1. Power-over someone or something (> pouvoir).
2. Power-to realize something (> puissance).
 The first concept prevails in the social sciences.
 Max Weber: “the probability that one actor within a social
relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will
despite resistance.”
 Foucault accents the second concept.
 Power has a linguistic and a non-linguistic component > this
implies: 1) discourse analysis and 2) the analysis of the
effects of architecture, urban development and the gaze.
DISCOURSE ANALYSES
 Discourse > the way people talk and write.
 Every discourse is based on specific norms.
 People are often not aware of these norms.
 These norms are constitutive for the way how people
conceive of the world.
 Every discourse mobilizes knowledge that gives expression
to certain power relations.
 Power and knowledge are intrinsically connected to each
other.
 Scientific knowledge is constitutive for the way an
individual is made to a subject or an object.
 Discourse analyses > making the power relations explicit
that underlie discourses.
MECHANISMS OF EXCLUSION
The institutions that carry specific discourse can be
characterized by specific mechanisms of exclusion.
The order of a discourse determines what will be
excluded and what not.
Important questions:
1. Who has the authority to say or write something?
2. What can be said or written and what not?
3. Which rhetoric is allowed?
4. Are there any presuppositions of the spoken and
written word that have never been made explicit?
POWER AND THE TRUTH
Foucault > what are the effects of the truth
embodied by the sciences?
The power of the social sciences > to generate
concepts with whom people talk about themselves
(for example psychotherapy as a talking cure).
Scientists have the capability to define a problem
in a certain way; they can mobilize intellectual
resources to intervene very easily in public
debates.
AGENCY AND STRUCTURE
 Power is a potential that is determined not only by
contingent factors but also by structurally defined
capabilities and resources.
 Foucault > power relations generate resistance.
 There are possibilities for resistance, because power is not
monolithic and centralized.
 Practices of liberation > to figure whether it is possible an
individual has to undermine the identity given by others.
 Foucault is a source of inspiration for those who are
involved in identity politics > those who are in prison,
homosexuals, transsexuals, etc.
TYPES OF INTELLECTUALS
Foucault was a public intellectual.
He criticizes the classical type of intellectual.
Two types of intellectuals:
1. The universal intellectual > a master of truth and
justice who is the spokesman of the universal.
2. The specific intellectual > an expert (for instance
an engineer, a doctor or a teacher) who provides
detailed responses to concrete problems.
Foucault prefers the specific intellectual and argues
that the universal norms don’t provide adequate
answers to the problems of modern societies.
TELLING THE TRUTH FORTHRIGHTLY
Intellectuals should, according to Foucault,
embody a specific political and moral virtue:
parrhesia.
Parrhesia > truthful speaking.
This praxis implies telling powerful people the
truth they don’t want to hear.
Classical examples: philosophers who, like
Socrates, criticize political rulers and take the
risk that they will become the victim of their
power.
Contemporary example: Anna Politkovskaja.
2. SEX AND POLITICS
FROM A NEGATIVE TO A
POSITIVE CONCEPT OF POWER
Classical way to exercise power > repression.
The presupposition of this form of power > some
possess power and others not.
Foucault analyzes a new way to exercise power.
Since the 18th century > power is not (negatively)
primarily direct to prohibition (injunction), but
(positively) to create something by the disciplination
and normalisation of people.
FORMS OF POWER
CLASSICAL FORM:
SOVEREIGN POWER
MODERN FORM:
DISCIPLINARY POWER
Negative
Positive
Repressive
Productive
Possession of power
Power relations
THE WILL TO KNOW
 Foucault wrote a history about the way people write and
talk about sex.
 Sex is related to a quest for the truth, the will to know.
 Foucault doesn’t deny that in a capitalist world sex is
repressed via moral norms.
 However, it is exaggerated to say that the discourse about
sex is only repressed.
 Just the opposite > since the 16th century there is an
increase in discourses about sex.
 Foucault analyses the relations between power and the will
to increase the knowledge about sex.
BEYOND THE REPRESSION
THESIS
The exercise of power was a long time a question
of repression (by the sovereign power).
Freud developed the thesis of the repression of sex.
The power over sex is determined by that what is
forbidden: the law distinguishes between sexual
actions that are allowed and not.
Nevertheless > sex is a handsome mean to make
individuals to specific subject.
A society that is characterized by denomination.
3. SEEING WITHOUT BEING SEEN
DISCIPLINARY POWER
Power is not only a question of repression, but also
of the transformation of individuals into subjects
with appropriate motives and desires.
Normalisation: Individuals become socialised
members of the society because they internalise
specific norms.
Discipline > system of productive social control.
Bentham developed such a system, which is called
the Panopticon!
FROM UTOPIA TO DYSTOPIA
The Panopticon was for Bentham a utopian (i.e. an
ideal) solution to social problems.
However, the same Panopticon has for Foucault
distinctly dystopian undertones!
Surveillance > power based upon ‘seeing without
being seen’.
Nowadays > computer databases are used to store
and process personal information about different
kinds of populations.
SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY
Many scholars discuss the emergence of a so-called
surveillance society, i.e. “a society that collects
precise details of our personal lives, stored, retrieved
and processed every day within huge computer
databases belonging to big corporations and
government departments” (David Lyon).
After September 11, 2001 > intensifying
surveillance, automating surveillance, integrating
surveillance and globalizing surveillance.
The argument > security.
Question: is privacy threatened?
PRIVACY UNDER PRESSURE
 The surveillance society imposes pressure upon one of the
core values of democracy: privacy.
 Privacy implies a number of restrictions:
- Not being observed by others.
- Restricting others’ knowledge of oneself.
- Restricting others form publishing knowledge of
oneself.
- Not being in a position to observe certain actions of
others.
- Not allowing others to meddle in one’s affairs, to take
decisions for one.
- Not allowing one’s affairs to be a subject of discourse,
and preventing comment on the decisions one
makes.
ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE
 Aim of electronic surveillance > to gather information
about the private life of citizens in order to control them
and maintain the governing power.
 Computer databases are used to monitor the private life of
citizens to control them and maintain the governing power.
 Electronic surveillance has panoptic features: the
invisibility of the inspection, the constant monitoring of
consumer behaviour, etcetera.
 The familiar distinctions between the public and private
sphere dissolve as both the state and companies ignore old
thresholds and gather of the most intimate information.
SUSPICION AND SEDUCTION
 The surveillance society categorizes people in
many ways.
 Two important types of categorization:
1. Categorical suspicion > surveillance that is
concerned with identification of threats to law
and order – with malcontents, dissidents and
terrorists.
2. Categorical seduction > modern marketing
which endeavours to identify behaviour of
customers that they might be more effectively
persuaded to continue as consumers.
PETS AND SOUSVEILLANCE
In search of a solution of the privacy problem.
PETs > privacy-enhancing technologies.
They can only be part of the solution of the privacy
problem.
Sousveillance > the observation of the observation,
i.e. the surveillance of individuals, corporations and
states making from citizens the object of
surveillance.
A legitimisation to undermine the surveillance
society > crucial values of modern democracies are
threatened , such as autonomy and privacy.
DARK ROOMS
Le Monde once published an article called
‘philosophe masqué’.
The philosopher didn’t want to say who he or she
is; anomaly would guarantee that they would take
him seriously.
This philosopher was Michel Foucault.
The ‘dark room’ as a metaphor to withdraw form
the ‘society of denomination’ and the ‘surveillance
society’.
Create more dark rooms!
RECOMMENDED
1. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir
[translations in several languages].
2. Michel Foucault, Historie de la sexualité, 2.
L’usage des plaisirs [translations in several
languages].
3. Barbin, Herculine (1980), Herculine Barbin:
Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a
Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite
[translations in several languages].