Michel Foucault (1926-1984) |
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Madness and Civilisation, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, History of Sexuality Power, Biopolitics, Biopower, Critique, Actualité, Eventalization Kant, Althusser, Sartre, Bataille, Levi Strauss, Deleuze, Negri 'My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper- and pessimistic - activism.' 1983 'Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force. (Introduction to the non-fascist life) Annales School, Formalism, 1968 uprising at Vincennes, founding member of GAP |
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Foucault is mostly remembered for his theory of power and his analysis of disciplinary society. His studies cover a wide range of disciplines and topics. They could be broadly divided into genealogical histories (of the clinic, the human sciences, madness, the penal system, biopolitics and sexuality) and methodological reflections (on structuralism, archaeology, heterotopia, the writing of history). Foucault places a special emphasis on the institutional expression of knowledge production. Critics of his work tend to dismiss it as a form of neo-positivist conservativism, a post-modern attack on Enlightenment Reason and an anarcho-identity politics of quietism. Others have used his insights into the relation between power and knowledge to develop sociological analyses of the workings of state institutions in disciplinary societies. The Anglo-American reception of Foucault’s work, especially of his history of sexuality, has given strenght to a form of identity politics and fulfilled the need for a theoretical justification for dandyism-like forms of cult of the self. In his latest essay called The Subject and Power, Foucault identifies three axes as being constitutive of the subject: knowledge, power and ethics. In his ouvre he claims to have followed them respectively with the main underlying concern for the ‘subject’. Are these issues addressed at the level of epistemology or ontology?A historicised ontology of the present (which he opposes to an analytics of truth) redefines critique as the modernist attitude of self-reflexivity the content of which can only be resuscitated at the expense of the modernist ethos. |
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Introduction to Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1961) English - French What is an author?Polemics, Politics and Problematisation |
Society must be defended - Chapter XI Human Nature: Justice Versus Power. Foucault and Chomsky.Intellectuals and Power. Foucault and Deleuze.Thomas Lemke summarizes and comments on Foucault's Lectures on Governmentality (click on publications in English) |
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Resources |
Biopolitics and Bioeconomics: a politics of multiplicity (M. Lazzarato )From biopower to biopolitics (M. Lazzarato) Antonio Negri's contribution on Foucault (October 2004) (Negri comments on Foucault's legacy today) Notes on desire and pleasure (AB) Notes on an ontology of the present (AB) Notes on Foucault's dissertation (AB) Virno and Revel comment the Foucault/Chomsky debate on "Human Nature: Justice VS Power" |
Thomas Lemke summarizes and comments on Foucault's Lectures on Governmentality (click on publications in English) ‘Being and Power: Heidegger and Foucault' (Article by H. Dreyfus) Deleuze and Foucault: Series, Event, Genealogy (Article by C. Colwell) Foucault Info (range of primary and secondary online texts) The Archaeology of Knowledge (first three chapters online) Very close commentary and exposition of the arguments in 'the Birth of the clinic'. and lots more The foucauldian: another collection of resources, online texts and a better bibliography |
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Bibliography |
Foucault, M., 1986. ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics, (Spring). |
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