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Foucault and Mamardashvili: The Critique of Modernity and the Heritage of the Enlightenment (Towards a Sociology of the 21st Century)

Foucault and Mamardashvili: The Critique of Modernity and the Heritage of the Enlightenment (Towards a Sociology of the 21st Century)

Author(s): Deyan Deyanov / Language(s): English / Issue: Special/2002

Keywords: Traditions and Transitions in Sociology; Philosophical discourse of Modernity; critic of modernity and heir of the Enilghtenment; critique of progressism; the chances of a reason

The article raises the problem of the conditions of possibility under which we can be in the same time critics of modernity and heirs of the Enilghtenment. In the beginning, the conviction of Foucault is criticized that we face a philosophical choice between the two modes of analytical interrogation originating in Kant: analytic of truth and critical ontology of the present. Philosophy as a discourse of modernity does not in fact stand before such a choice: the critical interrogation of the contemporaneity, i.e. the interrogation of the critical ontology of the present, is there placed in the framework of the analytic of truth. However, the critic of modernity who wants also to be a heir of the Enlightenment does not renounce to the analytic of truth but reverses this relation: he puts the analytic of truth in the framework of the ontology of the present. Hence it becames already possible to pass from the critique of progressism (e.g. Weber, the Frankfurt school, Foucault) to a positive elucidation of regress – regress here being conceived not as a decline or as a return to the noble savage but as a passage back on the steps of modernity and a resolving of the contradictions it has left after itself. The regress so elucidated requires to retain the quantitative expansion of the modern capitalism, therefore a new economical ethos, and hence, to follow Weber, a new religious ethics. This is why the article finishes by raising the problem of the chances of a reason (and a freedom) within the limits of religion: it is these chances that represent the deep condition for the critic of modernity to stay a heir of the Enlightenment.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER: ALBERT CAMUS, MICHEL FOUCAULT AND AN ETHICS OF THE SELF

PUTTING IT TOGETHER: ALBERT CAMUS, MICHEL FOUCAULT AND AN ETHICS OF THE SELF

Author(s): Geoffrey Parkes / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/2008

Keywords: Michel Foucault; Albert Camus; ethics of the self; self transformation; absurdity

Throughout modernity, the postmodern, and its aftermath, the self, its forms of existence and its very existence have been questioned. But what if, as Jonathan Dollimore writes, “the neuroses, anxiety and alienation associated with the self in crisis are not as much the consequences of its recent breakdown as the very stuff of its creation, and of the culture – Western European Culture – which is sustains?” And what if we review the works of Albert Camus and Michel Foucault in this context, analysing their works as both works on the self (oeuvre) and works on their selves (travailler)? What are the parallels between these dissimilar icons of post-Holocaust French thought and how might their being read together aid our understanding of what it means to craft an ethics of the self?This paper draws on my research into the possibilities of a post-Holocaust ethics of the self, using two writers whose work has been marginalised in the “turn to ethics”. By viewing their work in relation to events of their own time and their engagement with debates about the self, we see their importance in contemporary discussions and the value of their self-reflexive action and radical scepticism in crafting our selves.

Foucault and political science: Conceptual motives for political theory and science

Foucault i politička znanost: konceptualni motivi za političku teoriju i praksu

Author(s): Krešimir Petković / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 2/2014

Keywords: Foucault; power; political science; politics; subject

The work shows the importance of Foucault's thinking for political science. After the contextualizing introduction that illustrates the different possibilities of access to Foucault's work and sets forth one of the possible understandings of political science, in its central part the paper discusses several related motifs of Foucault's theorizing that are important both for political thought and analysis. These are, in order of their appearance: (1) the politicization of non-political, (2) genealogy as one of the research methodologies of political science, (3) the politicization of knowledge, (4) analytics of power, (5) governmentality, (6) analysis of subjectivation paired with ontological shift towards technology and (7) the hyperactive pessimism as a guide for political engagement. This incomplete, but at the same time representative series of problem-solving foci and research ideas brings a paradoxical conception of politics: both historically sensitive and oriented towards the future; deeply radical in its implications, but also conservative; erudite and suspicious towards knowledge; skeptical about the autonomy of the subject and disposed towards engagement when it comes to political action. Through the reflection on these paradoxes, Foucault emerges as stimulating political theorist who has not lost topicality thirty years after his death.

POWER, HISTORY AND GENEALOGY: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND MICHEL FOUCAULT

GALIA, ISTORIJA IR GENEALOGIJA: FRIEDRICHAS NIETZSCHE IR MICHELIS FOUCAULT

Author(s): Andrius Bielskis / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 75/2009

Keywords: genealogy1; philosophy of history2; power3; discourse4;

Straipsnyje aptariamos Friedricho Nietzsche’s ir Michelio Foucault genealogijos sampratos. Teigiama, kad genealogija gilinasi į istoriją ne dėl įvykių, mūšių ir karų aprašymo, bet dėl diskursyvių režimų ir praktikų, kurios formuoja mūsų tapatybę. Glaudus pažinimo/tiesos bei galios saitas yra esminis tiek Nietzsche’s, tiek Foucault genealogijai. Foucault dispositive (suprantamumo režimas) yra viena iš esminių sąvokų tiek istoriškumo sampratai, tiek studijuojant pačią istoriją. Nyčiška valios galiai idėja transformuojama į pažinimo tipais grindžiamą ir besiremiančią galios santykių strategijų idėją. Daroma išvada, jog Foucault genealogija redukuoja prasmę į galios santykius. Taip pat teigiama, kad Foucault sampratoje istorija yra pažini ne dėl jos vidinio prasmingumo, bet dėl to, jog žinios ir diskursyvios praktikos, būdamos esminės istorijos vyksmo procesui, yra suvokiamos kaip taktikos ir strategijos.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FOUCAULT’S IDEAS IN EDUCATION: UNMASKING OF DISCIPLINING SCHOOL

FOUCAULT IDĖJŲ SKLAIDA ŠVIETIME: DISCIPLINUOJANČIOS MOKYKLOS DEMASKAVIMAS

Author(s): Lilija Duoblienė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 75/2009

Keywords: panoptikumas1; švietimas2; mokinių kontrolė3; drausminimas4; diskursas5; galia6; autonomija7;

The article deals with the idea of education, which is understood as a system used for social control and social reproduction. Tthis notion is based on the philosophy of M. Foucault and his explanation of Bentham’s Panopticon. The main concepts of Foucault’s theory  – punishment, control, power, governmentality, construction of knowledge, and discourse – are used to define the education instruments for disciplining students. Foucault’s idea of a social system helps to perceive education policies and reforms as the practices that lead students and teachers to a one-way thinking and unreflected ritual behavior. This disciplining contradicts to the declarations of education policy-makers who emphasize the importance of developing a new democratic and self-governing school as well as promoting personal autonomy. Tthe instruments of control are investigated from the educational philosophy perspective, mostly in the tradition of critical pedagogy. Edwards, Usher, Apple, McLaren, Giroux, Burbules, Torres, Popkewitz, etc.   – the authors who rethink the problems of education in the framework of Foucault’s philosophy – are also presented in this article. Their works are used as a basis for criticizing the idea of liberalization and marketization of schools. article criticizes both the autonomy simulation process and the protection of the traditional moral values used by conservative forces to ensure the status quo at school.

What's Left: Marx, Foucault and Contemporary Problems of Social Change

What's Left: Marx, Foucault and Contemporary Problems of Social Change

Author(s): Paul Wapner / Language(s): English / Issue: 1+2/1989

Foucault and the Analysis of Power: Political Engagement withour Liberal Hope of Comfort

Foucault and the Analysis of Power: Political Engagement withour Liberal Hope of Comfort

Author(s): David R. Hiley / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/1984

The Master Thinker and the Ayatollah: Michel Foucault Iranian Adventure

A mestergondolkodó és az ajatollah: Michel Foucault iráni kalandja

Author(s): Jörg Lau / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 02/2005

Keywords: Michel Foucault; Iranian revolution;

The Hungarian translation of Jörg Lau's essay on Michel Foucault and his Iranian sympathies.

THE ETHICAL AND POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MICHEL FOUCAULT’S ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY OF THE CARE OF THE SELF

THE ETHICAL AND POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MICHEL FOUCAULT’S ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY OF THE CARE OF THE SELF

Author(s): Maria Kli / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

Keywords: subject; care of the self; technologies of the self; ancient Greek philosophy; spirituality; ethics; science; politics; freedom

The ethical constitution of the subject in Michel Foucault’s work relies on the way truthis perceived, and on the way the knowledge of truth is produced. Foucault understandssubjectivity as constituted socio-historically by means of particular techniques, whichhe refers to as “Technologies of the Self.” The main focus of this paper is to present theway in which two different kinds of approaching the truth, the modern scientific and theancient Greek one, develop different kinds of technologies as ways of forming the subjectivity.It is maintained that the ancient technology of the care of the self can be especiallymeaningful in contemporary society from an ethical and political perspectives.

One Concept Two Thoughts: The Transformation of Biopolitics from Foucault to Agamben

Bir Kavram İki Düşünce: Foucault’dan Agamben’e Biyopolitikanin Dönüşümü

Author(s): Efe Baştürk / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 3/2013

Keywords: Foucault; Agamben; Biopolitics; Governmentality; Bare Life;

The term Biopolitics could be thought as a “deviation moment” from the classical understanding of the doctrine of Sovereignity. Unlike the understanding of the sovereignity which was built on a belief revealing the force of power to subject the bodies to death, according to biopolitics, the very influence of power is not to subject the bodies, but to make them to be governmentalised. Governmentality, for Foucault, is not the objectification of life against power; on the contrary, it is a process of re-production of the life itself. Understanding life as a re-productible form reveals a new governance strategy whose main function is to makes lives live. But, the Agambenian paradigm of biopolitics focuses on the surrounding effect of the power in terms of the “state of exception”. Exception means a threshold that power can release itself among legal and non-legal. Agamben posits that the state of exception make biopolitics to be functionalized as a power configuration between life and death.

Canalizing and Coding: the Notion of “Milieu” in Foucault’s Lectures On Governmentality

Canalizing and Coding: the Notion of “Milieu” in Foucault’s Lectures On Governmentality

Author(s): Thomas Lemke / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4 EN/2016

Keywords: milieu; Foucault; governmentality; biopolitics; liberalism

This article seeks to analyze the significance and the dimensions of the notion of “milieu” in Foucault’s lectures on governmentality at the Collège de France. After reconstructing Foucault’s brief genealogy of the term, I will put forward two arguments. First, I will show that the “milieu” constitutes a strategic element in the emergence of a liberal governmentality in the 18th century. Secondly, I will argue that mobilizing the “milieu” not only enables the government of humans but also makes possible a “government of things” (Foucault) that addresses complexes or assemblages of humans and non-humans.

Self-Documentation as Counter-Discipline in the Ethical Works of Michel Foucault

Self-Documentation as Counter-Discipline in the Ethical Works of Michel Foucault

Author(s): Strand Sheldahl-Thomason / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4 EN/2016

Keywords: care; discipline; document; knowledge; self-aesthetics

This paper examines the role of self-documentation in the care of the self. As is well known, Michel Foucault exposes how disciplinary power functions in hospitals, schools, prisons, and other institutions to train the living for productive use. An important tool of disciplinary power is documentation, or the recording and cataloguing of the living that constitutes them as objects of knowledge. I show how documentation creates and extends knowledge to individuals. At the same time, documents become physical appendages of the lives they record, which, while separable from those lives, nevertheless affect those lives. Despite these apparently negative functions, Foucault finds that documentation can also be the means by which the living take over their own disciplining. In writings about both fiction and ancient ethics, Foucault points to self-documentation as a way of objectifying the self before the self, so that the self may train itself according to self-imposed standards. Although disciplinary power may be inescapable, self-documentation offers a technique of counter-discipline that functions alongside and against institutional discipline.

Foucault’s Analysis of Knowledge as Radicalisation of Bachelard’s Temporal Rupture of the Ego

Foucault žinojimo tyrimas kaip Bachelard’o laikinio ego pertrūkio radikalizacija

Author(s): Daina Habdankaitė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 12/2017

Keywords: Bachelard; epistemology; Foucault; knowledge; time;

The paper claims that Michel Foucault’s thinking belongs to the tradition of French epistemology, represented by such thinkers as Georges Canguilhem and Gaston Bachelard. Previously little analysed temporal aspect of rupture, best developed in Bachelard’s thinking, is showcased to constitute the axis directing Foucault’s thinking. Both the temporal rupture in Foucault and levels of ego cogito in Bachelard are showcased to be organized by the same logic of historical orientation towards the future which is aimed at surpassing the Cartesian–Kantian understanding of the ego.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault – on the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

Friedrichas Nietzsche ir Michelis Foucault – apie istorijos naudą ir žalą gyvenimui

Author(s): Linas Jokubaitis / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 12/2017

Keywords: history; life; perspectivism; relativism; metaphysics; power;

The article examines the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on the thought of Michel Foucault. The paper is focused on the German philosopher’s early essay – “On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life”. The article provides an analysis of Nietzsche’s critique of historicist relativism and his attempt to overcome this relativism by “relapse” into metaphysics. Foucault clearly stated on many different occasions that he was a Nietzschean. However, his genealogical and archeological studies are based on a relativistic perspectivism, which is completely foreign to the hierarchical and aristocratic perspectivism of Nietzsche. This difference between the two thinkers is inseparable from their radically different positions towards “power”. The article reveals that the influence of Foucault’s researches only increased what the German philosopher had diagnosed as the modern sickness – the “overdose” of history.

Edward W. Soja – reader of Michel Foucault's heterotopias

EDWARD W. SOJA – CITITOR AL HETEROTOPIILOR LUI MICHEL FOUCAULT

Author(s): Viorella Manolache / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: Edward W. Soja; Michel Foucault; Heterotopology; Heterotopias; Thirdspace; the problem of space;

The present study admits the observation, the analysis, and comments upon how Edward W. Soja's interpretive filter is applied to the work that reflects Michel Foucault's thinking system, approaching the geo-spatial valences, recalling in the foucault-ian concept of heterotopia as well as in Soja's third space, the different rethinking of the meanings attached to space/spatial concepts. The effect thus imprinted is one that tests both the old (still in use) forms/formulas and the amplification of the critical sensitivity to the expanded spatial-geographic imagination.As reader of Foucault's heterotopias, Edward W. Soja follows a semantic and a philosophical direction, which the present study highlights through a guiding preposition – Foucault's lecture with Lefebvre and a reading with Foucault (in the footsteps of Derek Gregory and Cornel West) – in order to extract from here both the coordinating report – Soja and Foucault – as well as the observations regarding Soja's heterotopology of the third space.

Digital power: Self-tracking Technologies through Michel Foucault Lens

Digital power: Self-tracking Technologies through Michel Foucault Lens

Author(s): Anna Lifková / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2019

Keywords: Foucault;power;self-tracking technologies;digital health;

From a traditional political perspective, power has always been linked to force, domination, and sovereignty issues. In this article we outline the Foucauldian concept of power, (self) surveillance and the panopticon in relation to digital self-tracking devices. These self-tracking devices are supposedly designed for self-improvement and self-enhancement of an individual. As the new devices come to light, a new frontier of power emerges in the digital sphere – power that is exercised with subtlety and disguised as a voluntary. Self-tracking wearables produce a huge body of information, so that life itself is broken into data. The data claim to represent a body-related knowledge and individuals are expected to live according to this knowledge. In regards to this, we illustrated how the health and corporate sector integrate these wearables into their structures and are able to observe if citizens meet the established health norms. The presence of these devices silently coerces individuals to behave in the way the healthcare and corporate sectors desire. This shows how these sectors expand surveillance practises over the individuals and manifest a certain control over their lives, where health becomes a key mode of biopower by these enterprises.

Foucault Panopticism and Self-Surveillance: from Individuals to Dividuals

Foucault panoptizmas ir (savi)priežiūra: nuo individų prie dividų

Author(s): Aušra Kaziliūnaitė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 97/2020

Keywords: panopticism; Foucault; individual; dividual; Deleuze;

The paper analyses the concept of panopticism formulated in Foucault’s works and its possibilities of relevance in contemporary power and (self)surveillance studies. In the book “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison”, Foucault, applying Jeremy Bentham’s idea of a panoptical prison, writes about the power of the sovereignty that is replaced by the society of discipline. Foucault discusses panopticism in order to unfold the concept of the society of discipline. Here the essential measure of the society of discipline and panopticism becomes the concern for the individual per se. Deleuze in his text “Postscript on the Societies of Control” states that we no longer live in a society of discipline, but rather in a process, where we switch from the society of discipline to the society of control. In these changed circumstances, according to Deleuze, there are no longer individuals, rather dividuals. In these circumstances, is it possible to talk about panopticism? The paper shows that panopticism is still relevant while switching to the society of control. Also, it states that the currently unfolding scheme of the society of control has been programmed in the asymmetry of the panoptical gaze. Precisely in the processes produced in the asymmetry of the gaze gain its flexible totality in the society of control.

CONFESSION AS A MEANS OF PRODUCING TRUTH AND SEXUALITY IN MICHEL FOUCAULT'S PHILOSOPHY

CONFESSION AS A MEANS OF PRODUCING TRUTH AND SEXUALITY IN MICHEL FOUCAULT'S PHILOSOPHY

Author(s): Kushtrim Ahmeti / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2019

Keywords: truth; sexuality; confession; postmodernism;

The French thinker Michel Foucault is considered as postmodernist and poststructuralist, while he regarded himself as a product of modern tradition, although his works represent a comprehensive and original critique of specifically this way of thinking. With his ideas he wanted to make a clear distinction from other prior propensities, by joining the other postmodern theorists voice, who put efforts to show the alternatives, offered by the thitherto known modern philosophical systems, as extremely humanistic. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the treatment of confession as a means of producing truth and sexuality, which takes a central place in Foucault’s works. The fact itself that he is the author of a three-volume history of sexuality says a lot about this. The interpretation will be conducted through the content analysis technique-data reduction by categorizing or reduction of any type of qualitative material in order to identify certain consistent meanings.

From the Editors. Critically with Foucault: Anarchaeology of Education and Public Spaces

From the Editors. Critically with Foucault: Anarchaeology of Education and Public Spaces

Author(s): Helena Ostrowicka,Justyna Spychalska-Stasiak / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2021

Notes on Bio-History: Michel Foucault and the Political Economy of Health

Notes on Bio-History: Michel Foucault and the Political Economy of Health

Author(s): Xenia Chiaramonte / Language(s): English / Issue: 96/2021

Keywords: bio-history; social medicine; Michel Foucault; public health; institutions; COVID-19 pandemics

In October 1974, Foucault gave three lectures in Rio de Janeiro on the archeology of the cure. This piece will comment on the first two, published a few years later in France with the original titles: Crise de la médicine ou crise de l’antimédicine? and La naissance de la médicine sociale. Bio-history is the term Michel Foucault initially uses – in the second lecture – to refer to the effect of the strong medical intervention at the biological level that started in the eighteenth century and has left a trace that is still visible in our society. It is on this occasion that Foucault introduces the concept, or rather the prefix “bio-” in his analysis, and it is here – as my reflections intend to demonstrate – that we may trace the original meaning of a term that today seems rather abused and find a valuable analytical framework for a cogent approach to the relationship between medicine and power dynamics.