michel_foucault

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:26:27 GMT

The notion of repression is quite inadequate for capturing what is precisely the productive aspect of power. In defining the effects of power as repression, one adopts a purely juridical conception of such power, one identifies power with a law that says no...If power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey it?

-"Truth and Power"

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:21:34 GMT

"Today when a periodical asks its readers a question, it does so in order to collect opinions on some subject about which everyone has an opinion already; there is not much likelihood of learning anything new. In the eighteenth century, editors preferred to question the public on problems that did not yet have solutions. I don't know whether or not that practice was more effective; it was unquestionably more entertaining. "

-"What is Enlightenment?"

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:30:21 GMT

"Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation - thus avoiding words that are already overladen with conditions and consequences, and in any case inadequate to the task of designating such a dispersion, such as 'science' 'ideology', 'theory', or 'domain of objectivity'. The conditions to which the elements of this division (objects, mode of statement, concepts, thematic choices) are subjected we shall call the rules of formation. The rules of formation are conditions of existence (but also of coexistence, maintenance, modification, and disappearance) in a given discursive division."

-"Archaeology of Knowledge"

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 23:43:17 GMT

"I believe that the political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population."
- "Truth and Power"

The "gap" of the author

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:15:07 GMT

"it is an empty function that can be filled by virtually any individual when he [sic] formulates the statement; and in so far as one and the same individual may occupy in turn, in the same series of statements, different positions, and assume the role of different subjects."

- The Archaeology of Knowledge

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 03:09:19 GMT

"After examining these problems and the discussions they give rise to, it is simple enough for the historians to reconstruct the great controversies that are said to have divided men's opinions and passions, as well as their reasoning. By these means they believe that they can discover the traces of a major conflict between a theology that sees the providence of God and the simplicity, mystery, and foresight of his ways residing beneath each form and in all its movements, and a science that is already attempting to define the autonomy of nature. They also recognize the contradiction between a science still too attached to the old pre-eminence of astronomy, mechanics, and optics, and another science that already suspects all the irreducible and specific contents there may be in the realms of life. Lastly, the historians see the emergence, as though before their very eyes, of an opposition between those who believe in the immobility of nature - in the manner of Tournefort, and above all Linnaeus - and those who, with Bonnet, Benoit de Maillet, and Diderot, already have a presentiment of life's creative powers, of its inexhaustible power of transformation, of its plasticity, and of that movement by means of which it envelops all its productions, ourselves included, in a time of which no one is master."

--"The Order of Things"

Easter

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 04:08:56 GMT

"Cynic preaching, however, had its own specific characteristics, and is historically significant since it enabled philosophical themes about one's way of life to become popular, i.e., to come to the attention of people who stood outside the philosophical elect. From this perspective, Cynic preaching about freedom, the renunciation of luxury, Cynic criticisms of political institutions; and existing moral codes, and so on, also opened the way for some Christian themes. But Christian proselytes not only spoke about themes which were often similar to the Cynics; they also took over the practice of preaching.

Preaching is still one of the main forms of truth-telling practiced in our society, and it involves the idea that the truth must be told and taught not only to the best members of the society, or to an exclusive group, but to everyone.

There is, however, very little positive doctrine in Cynic preaching: no direct affirmation of the good or bad. Instead, the Cynics refer to freedom (eleutheria) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) as the basic criteria by which to assess and kind of behavior or mode of life. For the Cynics, the main condition for human happiness is autarkeia, self-sufficiency or independence, where what you need to have or what you decide to do is dependent on nothing other than you yourself. As, a consequence -since the Cynics had the most radical of attitudes- they preferred a completely natural life-style. A natural life was supposed to eliminate all of the dependencies introduced by culture, society, civilization, opinion, and so on. Consequently, most of their preaching seems to have been directed against social institutions, the arbitrariness of rules of law, and any sort of life-style that was dependent upon such institutions or laws. In short, their preaching was against all social institutions insofar as such institutions hindered one's freedom and independence."

- "The Cynic Philosophers and Their Techniques" (from Foucault.info)

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 15:57:13 GMT

"So let's see what there is to say in favor of suicide. Not so much in support of legalizing it or making it 'moral'. Too many people have already belabored these lofty things. Instead, let's say something against the shady affairs, humiliations, and hypocrisies that its detractors usually surround it with: hastily getting boxes of pills together, finding a solid, old-fashioned razor, or licking gun store windows and entering some place pretending to be on the verge of death...

The philosophies that promise to teach us what to think about death and how to die bore me to tears ."

-"The Simplest of Pleasures"

Governmentality

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 19:34:02 GMT

"We need to see things not in terms of the replacement of a society of sovereignty by a disciplinary society and the subsequent replacement of a disciplinary society by a society of government; in reality one has a triangle, sovereignty-discipline-governement, which has as its primary target the population and as its essentail mechanism the apparatus of security."

-"Governmentality"

How to study the army

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 14:25:58 GMT

"One theme I would like to study in the next few years is that of the army as a matrix of organisation and knowledge: one would need to study the history of the fortress, the 'campaign', the 'movement', the colony, the territory. Geography must indeed necessarily lie at the heart of my concerns."

-"Questions on Geography" in "Power/Knowledge"

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:28:39 GMT

"We are talking about two things here: the gaze and interiorisation. And isn't it basically the problem of the cost of power? In reality power is only exercised at a cost. Obviously, there is an economic cost, and Bentham talks about this. How many overseers will the Panopticon need? How much will the machine then cost to run? But there is also a specifically political cost. If you are too violent, you risk provoking revolts...In contrast to that you have the system of surveillance, which on the contrary involves very little expense. There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorisation to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercizing this surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be minimal cost."

-"The Eye of Power"

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:51:36 GMT

"The archive is the first law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statement as unique events…also that which determines that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear a the mercy of chance external accidents; but they are grouped together in distinct figures….it is that which defines the mode of occurrence of statement-thing; it is the system of its functioning"
- "The Archaeology of Knowledge"

Discipline, Individuality and Techniques

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:00:30 GMT

"It might be said that discipline creates out of the bodies it controls four types of individuality, or rather an individuality that is endowed with four characteristics: it is cellular (by the play of spatial distribution), it is organic (by the coding of activities), it is genetic (by the accumulation of time), it is combinatory (by the composition of forces). And in doing so, it operates four great techniques: it draws up tables; it prescribes movements; it imposes exercises; lastly, in order to obtain the combination of forces, it arranges 'tactics'."

-"Discipline and Punish"

heterotopias

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 14:17:39 GMT

"There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias. I believe that between utopias and these quite other sites, these heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint experience, which would be the mirror. The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there."

-"Of Other Spaces"

Discontinuity

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 13:30:10 GMT

"Discontinuity - the fact that within the space of a few years a culture sometimes ceases to think as it had been thinking up till then and begins to think other things in a new way - probably begins with an erosion from outside, from that space which is, for thought, on the other side, but in which it has never ceased to think from the very beginning. Ultimately, the problem that presents itself is that of the relations between thought and culture: how is it that thought has a place in the space of the world, that it has its origin there, and that it never ceases, in this place or that, to begin anew?" -"The Order of Things"

Fri, 18 Mar 2005 16:11:10 GMT

"We must locate the space left empty by the author's dissappearance, follow the distribution of gaps and breaches, and watch for the openings that this dissappearance uncovers."
- "What is An Author?"