Let me first excuse myself for my inability to post over the last couple of weeks, due to an incredibly large amount of work. Looking back over the readings, these weeks have been extremely important for me in terms of seeing the connections between Foucault's writings and the currents that run through all of the selections we have read this quarter. In particular, I would like to focus on the text, "What is Enlightenment?" which was really the most significant for my understanding.
In this text, Foucault tries to establish the relation of his philosophy to the Enlightenment. He does so, not surprisingly, by first trying to get us to see this question from an entirely new angle. This new angle is the "philosophical ethos" of the Enlightenment, which is more of an attitude than anything else. It involves a continual critique of the limits within which we are placed. However, this is where Foucault inverts Kant's form of the critique. Instead of searching for universal limits of reason, we now must take what are supposed to be fundamental truths and discover what is contingent about them. Instead of establishing limits, as he says, we must discover where it is possible to transcend supposed ones. Now, with regard to the question posed in class of whether Foucault effectively traces himself back to Kant and the Enlightenment: it seems fairly clear that he has isolated a common drive and mindset, which is the critique of knowledge. This seems to be the important thing, because he calls attention to a similar starting problem and common task, which nevertheless is answered very differently. However, this characterization seems almost irrelevant because one could say (especially regarding Foucault's stance on thought itself) that Kant's problematic is inescapable, and he cannot avoid being influenced by it. Therefore, the common drive would lose its importance as a distinguishing characteristic, and the differences in theory would show a larger gap than Foucault would want to admit.
What I found even more significant about this article was the way in which it outlined so much of Foucault's methodology, purpose, and themes. The fact that Foucault wants to examine the limits that determine a possible range for thought and action is no surprise. However, looking back on this I now see one essential point that I repeatedly missed: the idea of looking to areas of resistance that have proven possible and learning from them, to apply the theory in an "experimental" manner. I know this came up in the last class, and it definitely came up sometime before that. It really clarifies a lot for me, especially in terms of how Foucault expects us to critique our bounds, and then apply that critique (which I had brought up doubts about in the last class, as being too vague). This essay is also saturated with the problems of power, knowledge, and the subject, which are essential to his ideas, yet I found hard to relate at some points. It shows his complex characterization of power and how to resist it, in the posing of the idea that capability and freedom do not go together, so we must figure out another way to alter power relations without augmenting them. It then also explains his intent to study the constitution of subjects within a study of problematization. These three areas also kept coming up in the last class, and also help to put a lot of his writings in perspective.
I would also briefly like to examine the connections between this reading and the ones on Care of the Self. It is easy to see how Foucault's concern with subjectification (or subjectivation, or whatever) carries over to his analysis of moral codes--he makes that clear in "Morality and Practice of the Self," in which he places emphasis on examining how the subject relates to moral codes instead of simply the codes themselves. This is also clear in his analysis of the mode of life involved with the mindset of the epimeleia heautou. However, I was interested in the relation of the care of the self to Foucault's characterization of the modern aestheticism and Baudelaire. It seems as if this modern mindset has some of the same characteristics of close attention and ascetic exercise, but I am not grasping at the moment how these two forms may relate. He talks in the second hour of Care of the Self about the reappearance of this idea in the 19th century, but does he relate his own conception to this trend?
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Presentation- "The Human Sciences"
In this culminating chapter of The Order of Things, Foucault explains the development of the Western episteme, or the body of ideas that influence knowledge and the perception of the world within a specific historical context. His intent, more specifically, is to trace the changes in the configurations of knowledge from the Classical period to the modern period, which allowed, and even required, the development of the modern conception of man. This modern conception of man is what Foucault terms the “empirico-transcendental subject,” one who is confined by the limitations (the finitude) of his experiences and his perceptions, but at the same time is able to examine how he perceives and knows what he does. He explains this knowledge of “man” as fundamentally different from all other systems of knowledge throughout history, and describes the order of the human sciences that made it possible. Finally, at the end of all this, Foucault argues that the episteme surrounding the modern conception of man is beginning to give way, and that once it does, our present idea of man will itself fade away. Let us first start with his description of the shift that gave way to the modern episteme.
Foucault describes the order of the Classical sciences as being one of formalisms, classifications, and “long chains of order that...create a path leading necessarily form the very simplest and most evident of ideas to the most composite truths” (346). However, he says, at the beginning of the 19th century, the field of knowledge lost this unity of the establishment of order, and in fact branched out into three different areas: the deductive sciences, the empirical sciences, and philosophical reflection. These three dimensions interacted to form what Foucault titles the “epistemological trihedron” (347). The human sciences, not to be confused with the empirical sciences, exist within “the volume defined by [the] three dimensions” (347). They borrow forms, techniques, and domains from the three configurations of knowledge, but take as their object the peculiar ability of man to know. The concept of man as a finite being who is able to create representations of the things and processes in the world around him, and eventually is able to represent that world and that life itself, becomes the great problem of the human sciences. They must study not man’s nature, but, “an analysis that extends from what man is in his positivity (living, speaking, laboring being) to what enables this same being to know what life is, in what the essence of labor and its laws consist, and in what way he is able to speak” (353). This is what constitutes the fundamental difference between the human and empirical sciences, and gives them their “‘ana-’ or ‘hypo-epistemological’ position” (355).
Foucault then goes on to describe the three surface models of the human sciences: psychology, sociology, and literary analysis/myths. He says that they more or less divide up the realm of human knowledge, but that they do not solve the problem of “the form of positivity” (356), or the structures which make them function as knowledge; nor the “relation to representation” (356), by which he means the problem of reconciling representation and unconscious mechanisms. He therefore goes about describing the “particular arrangement in the epistemological space” (356), and more specifically, the models taken from empirical sciences and transferred to human sciences, thus creating different categories. These models are function/norm, conflict/rule, and signification/system, taken from biology, economics, and the study of language, respectively, and all of which interact within the human sciences. He describes a great shift in these models, centered on Freud and psychoanalysis, and consisting in a change of emphasis from the first term in each pair to the second. This shift brings in the problem of how unconsciousness, or “unthought,” can create representation, and thus the examination can illuminate the possibility of human knowledge. The human sciences are inherently based upon representation, and thus they constantly examine the basis of knowledge, which, in turn, serves as their own basis. Foucault therefore answers the question of how “scientific” the human sciences are by saying they are not sciences at all, but merely “other configurations of knowledge” (366), within the modern episteme that necessarily result from its structure.
Foucault then moves on to write of the complex relation between history and the human sciences. From the Classical conception of history, in which a “vast historical stream” carried everything along, the 19th century destroyed this unity, so that forms of nature, and even human processes themselves, had their own historicity and their own development independent of any general flow. However, with the foundation of these various histories, he says that the modern age became aware of the historicity of the concept of man himself, or the idea that “man as such is exposed to the event” (370). History becomes defined through different interpretations using the human sciences, because we now have the concept of the man who carries out certain processes, but it also means that the human sciences must lose their claim to universality, because they in turn are determined by their own history.
Finally, Foucault moves on to analyze the particular modes of psychoanalysis and ethnology in the system of knowledge, because of the fact that both are able to elude representation and instead speak on a more fundamental level as to what makes representation itself possible. For psychoanalysis, he says that Freud’s three figures of Death, Desire, and Law form the basis for all knowledge about man, the unconscious finitudes that represent the limits of human knowledge. On the other hand, ethnology represents a way of figuring out the rules of knowledge, and thus figuring out the laws by which the human sciences establish themselves within a specific historical context. Psychoanalysis represents a way past representation by looking towards those “outer confines of representation” (378), whereas ethnology eludes representation by looking at the relations of the West with other cultures, and by doing so, understanding the norms, rules, and systems that lie underneath all representation. They both form the knowledge of the unconscious. They form the “counter-sciences” (pg. 379), which are the basis of all the human sciences, but at the same time which cannot achieve a conception of the nature of man, and in fact avoid the concept of man himself by examining the limits of knowledge and thinking.
This privileged position allows for a level of interaction between ethnology and psychoanalysis, in which “the structure proper to individual experience finds a certain number of possible choices… in the systems of society; inversely, at each of their points of choice the social structures encounter a certain number of possible individuals” (380). Thus, he develops the idea of a new way of analyzing knowledge, combining limit analysis and the structures that proliferate in society, by which one can analyze the episteme itself. He sees the “formal model” for this form of analysis in language, and goes on to explain the reemergence of the problems of language. This, according to Foucault, is a sign that the whole mode of knowledge in the modern episteme is about to change. With this he concludes that “man” as we know him is simply a manifestation of a particular mode of knowledge, and that with the fall of that mode, man himself will disappear and give way to the analysis of discourse.
Foucault describes the order of the Classical sciences as being one of formalisms, classifications, and “long chains of order that...create a path leading necessarily form the very simplest and most evident of ideas to the most composite truths” (346). However, he says, at the beginning of the 19th century, the field of knowledge lost this unity of the establishment of order, and in fact branched out into three different areas: the deductive sciences, the empirical sciences, and philosophical reflection. These three dimensions interacted to form what Foucault titles the “epistemological trihedron” (347). The human sciences, not to be confused with the empirical sciences, exist within “the volume defined by [the] three dimensions” (347). They borrow forms, techniques, and domains from the three configurations of knowledge, but take as their object the peculiar ability of man to know. The concept of man as a finite being who is able to create representations of the things and processes in the world around him, and eventually is able to represent that world and that life itself, becomes the great problem of the human sciences. They must study not man’s nature, but, “an analysis that extends from what man is in his positivity (living, speaking, laboring being) to what enables this same being to know what life is, in what the essence of labor and its laws consist, and in what way he is able to speak” (353). This is what constitutes the fundamental difference between the human and empirical sciences, and gives them their “‘ana-’ or ‘hypo-epistemological’ position” (355).
Foucault then goes on to describe the three surface models of the human sciences: psychology, sociology, and literary analysis/myths. He says that they more or less divide up the realm of human knowledge, but that they do not solve the problem of “the form of positivity” (356), or the structures which make them function as knowledge; nor the “relation to representation” (356), by which he means the problem of reconciling representation and unconscious mechanisms. He therefore goes about describing the “particular arrangement in the epistemological space” (356), and more specifically, the models taken from empirical sciences and transferred to human sciences, thus creating different categories. These models are function/norm, conflict/rule, and signification/system, taken from biology, economics, and the study of language, respectively, and all of which interact within the human sciences. He describes a great shift in these models, centered on Freud and psychoanalysis, and consisting in a change of emphasis from the first term in each pair to the second. This shift brings in the problem of how unconsciousness, or “unthought,” can create representation, and thus the examination can illuminate the possibility of human knowledge. The human sciences are inherently based upon representation, and thus they constantly examine the basis of knowledge, which, in turn, serves as their own basis. Foucault therefore answers the question of how “scientific” the human sciences are by saying they are not sciences at all, but merely “other configurations of knowledge” (366), within the modern episteme that necessarily result from its structure.
Foucault then moves on to write of the complex relation between history and the human sciences. From the Classical conception of history, in which a “vast historical stream” carried everything along, the 19th century destroyed this unity, so that forms of nature, and even human processes themselves, had their own historicity and their own development independent of any general flow. However, with the foundation of these various histories, he says that the modern age became aware of the historicity of the concept of man himself, or the idea that “man as such is exposed to the event” (370). History becomes defined through different interpretations using the human sciences, because we now have the concept of the man who carries out certain processes, but it also means that the human sciences must lose their claim to universality, because they in turn are determined by their own history.
Finally, Foucault moves on to analyze the particular modes of psychoanalysis and ethnology in the system of knowledge, because of the fact that both are able to elude representation and instead speak on a more fundamental level as to what makes representation itself possible. For psychoanalysis, he says that Freud’s three figures of Death, Desire, and Law form the basis for all knowledge about man, the unconscious finitudes that represent the limits of human knowledge. On the other hand, ethnology represents a way of figuring out the rules of knowledge, and thus figuring out the laws by which the human sciences establish themselves within a specific historical context. Psychoanalysis represents a way past representation by looking towards those “outer confines of representation” (378), whereas ethnology eludes representation by looking at the relations of the West with other cultures, and by doing so, understanding the norms, rules, and systems that lie underneath all representation. They both form the knowledge of the unconscious. They form the “counter-sciences” (pg. 379), which are the basis of all the human sciences, but at the same time which cannot achieve a conception of the nature of man, and in fact avoid the concept of man himself by examining the limits of knowledge and thinking.
This privileged position allows for a level of interaction between ethnology and psychoanalysis, in which “the structure proper to individual experience finds a certain number of possible choices… in the systems of society; inversely, at each of their points of choice the social structures encounter a certain number of possible individuals” (380). Thus, he develops the idea of a new way of analyzing knowledge, combining limit analysis and the structures that proliferate in society, by which one can analyze the episteme itself. He sees the “formal model” for this form of analysis in language, and goes on to explain the reemergence of the problems of language. This, according to Foucault, is a sign that the whole mode of knowledge in the modern episteme is about to change. With this he concludes that “man” as we know him is simply a manifestation of a particular mode of knowledge, and that with the fall of that mode, man himself will disappear and give way to the analysis of discourse.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Methodology
More on methodology to come later, as the material was extremely dense and I would like to read it again before offering my thoughts.
Psychology, Power, and Subjectivity
The three articles on "What is Psychology?" by Canguilhem, "The Birth of the Asylum, " and Abnormal by Foucault, illustrate several essential aspects of the critical perspective taken towards psychology. These include: the insubstantial basis of psychology, which nonetheless presents itself as authoritative and exact; the consequences of this shaky foundation when applied to areas such as the law (which transforms the juridical nature of the law almost completely to one of normalization); and the strict moral and psychological confinement given to subjects in "reformed" mental institutions under the guise of greater liberty and humanity. What is remarkable to me is the magnitude of the social critique and condemnation of society's practices (especially in Abnormal), whereas in much of what we have read Foucault remains primarily descriptive and refrains from accusation. Some of this could be due to his first-hand, extremely negative experiences with psychology. However, I also think that there is much truth to the idea that psychology, a very insecure discipline, can be and has been used to much detrimental effect when it is taken as authoritative. Here more than in most places, I agree with Foucault's and Canguilhem's characterizations of its abilities to deceive us and take us in.
In "What is Psychology?", Canguilhem calls into question the coherence of psychology as a discipline, examining different trends to see if he can isolate any one thing that can be seen as a basis for its study and its accountability--as opposed to just a "pact of peaceful coexistence between professionals" (38). He criticizes the conception of the nature of man as a tool in what he deems "instrumentalism." This conception naturally and inevitably leads to application of its principles on real behavior, and in the end those who determine how it is to be applied are no more than "a corporate elite of specialists equipped with a self-appointed mission" (49). Thus, we can see in his views the power of psychology in shaping relations, and its ability to be easily manipulated by those acting on their own prerogatives. This will figure in to a large extent in Foucault's analysis.
Turning to the other two readings, I was interested in a dual process of justice that seemed to be brought out. On the one hand, psychology was used to develop "a psychologico-ethical double" (Abnormal, 16) in the judicial process, and on the other hand used to create an "awareness of his guilt, the madman was to return to his awareness of himself as a free and responsible subject," ("Asylum," 146) a never-ending cycle of guilt that replaced strict confinement in the mental institution. In some ways these processes could be seen to be connected, as for instance if the psychological double was used to convict someone of a crime and he was then subjected to this treatment. However, I am interested in what seems to me like a description of two different artificial and psychological worlds created on the authority of the psychologist, one internal and one external.
Let's first start with the external world. This construction of psychology replaces the true defendant and the true acts of the crime with a character profile of a delinquent and a picture of minor deviances that seem to progress up to the crime itself. Thus, the crime itself is not judged, the juridical aspect dissolves, and the justice system becomes a system of normalization. All of this is done on the authority of the psychologist, his reputation and his credentials, which deceive the judge, jury, and general public.
Compare this now with the internal world. This takes the constant threat of punishments and corrections from without, and places the system strictly inside of the patient's own mind. Where he seems free and unbounded because of the structure of Pinel's or Tuke's new asylums, he is actually trapped in a never-ending cycle of guilt that was implanted by the psychologist. Once again, where does the psychologist derive his power to do so? By his authority as a moral father-figure, not by any of his specific knowledge of any type of truth in madness.
So we have what seem to be two artificial worlds, one which acts upon the public to create for them a portrait of a delinquent, and one which acts on the mind of a madman to create an internal check that at once controls his behavior and constantly torments him. Both are thoroughly imbued with moral condemnations and their possibilities of normalization. Finally, both are proliferated with the aid of what seems to me a kind of comfort and reassurance in seeing the psychologist as an authority figure or exemplar of moral conduct. Two powerful examples of the possibility for abuse in psychology that Foucault and Canguilhem fight against. It seems to me that the subjectification created by psychology is perhaps one of the most entrenched and powerful processes in the world that Foucault has described. I'm not quite sure if psychology has this much power any more, and once again this could simply be because of the passage of 30 years and the need to reexamine these changing power structures. However, I am sure that Foucault illustrates some compelling reasons why we must constantly be vigilant and analyze those power structures, especially when an inexact science holds a position of power.
In "What is Psychology?", Canguilhem calls into question the coherence of psychology as a discipline, examining different trends to see if he can isolate any one thing that can be seen as a basis for its study and its accountability--as opposed to just a "pact of peaceful coexistence between professionals" (38). He criticizes the conception of the nature of man as a tool in what he deems "instrumentalism." This conception naturally and inevitably leads to application of its principles on real behavior, and in the end those who determine how it is to be applied are no more than "a corporate elite of specialists equipped with a self-appointed mission" (49). Thus, we can see in his views the power of psychology in shaping relations, and its ability to be easily manipulated by those acting on their own prerogatives. This will figure in to a large extent in Foucault's analysis.
Turning to the other two readings, I was interested in a dual process of justice that seemed to be brought out. On the one hand, psychology was used to develop "a psychologico-ethical double" (Abnormal, 16) in the judicial process, and on the other hand used to create an "awareness of his guilt, the madman was to return to his awareness of himself as a free and responsible subject," ("Asylum," 146) a never-ending cycle of guilt that replaced strict confinement in the mental institution. In some ways these processes could be seen to be connected, as for instance if the psychological double was used to convict someone of a crime and he was then subjected to this treatment. However, I am interested in what seems to me like a description of two different artificial and psychological worlds created on the authority of the psychologist, one internal and one external.
Let's first start with the external world. This construction of psychology replaces the true defendant and the true acts of the crime with a character profile of a delinquent and a picture of minor deviances that seem to progress up to the crime itself. Thus, the crime itself is not judged, the juridical aspect dissolves, and the justice system becomes a system of normalization. All of this is done on the authority of the psychologist, his reputation and his credentials, which deceive the judge, jury, and general public.
Compare this now with the internal world. This takes the constant threat of punishments and corrections from without, and places the system strictly inside of the patient's own mind. Where he seems free and unbounded because of the structure of Pinel's or Tuke's new asylums, he is actually trapped in a never-ending cycle of guilt that was implanted by the psychologist. Once again, where does the psychologist derive his power to do so? By his authority as a moral father-figure, not by any of his specific knowledge of any type of truth in madness.
So we have what seem to be two artificial worlds, one which acts upon the public to create for them a portrait of a delinquent, and one which acts on the mind of a madman to create an internal check that at once controls his behavior and constantly torments him. Both are thoroughly imbued with moral condemnations and their possibilities of normalization. Finally, both are proliferated with the aid of what seems to me a kind of comfort and reassurance in seeing the psychologist as an authority figure or exemplar of moral conduct. Two powerful examples of the possibility for abuse in psychology that Foucault and Canguilhem fight against. It seems to me that the subjectification created by psychology is perhaps one of the most entrenched and powerful processes in the world that Foucault has described. I'm not quite sure if psychology has this much power any more, and once again this could simply be because of the passage of 30 years and the need to reexamine these changing power structures. However, I am sure that Foucault illustrates some compelling reasons why we must constantly be vigilant and analyze those power structures, especially when an inexact science holds a position of power.
Governmentality/Postscript on Control Societies
In the article on governmentality, Foucault traces the transition from a form of government in which the demands of a transcendant sovereign ruled to a form in which the "art of government" and the "political economy" take precedence. His analysis of the trend is at the same time illuminating and obvious. By this I mean that the specific events Foucault chooses to analyze are no big surprise (as for instance the history of sexuality, in which he analyzed different trends than I was expecting, such as the confession). However, the labels and analysis that he provides for this history seem to suggest a perspective of analysis that I never would have seem. Therefore, this article at once seems to bring obvious yet elusive trends to light, and fits well into Foucault's overall theme of offering new ways of looking at societal institutions and the power relations that come with them.
One aspect that caught my interest was the tension Foucault highlights between sovereignty and the art of government, as the latter did not simply replace the latter. He writes, "instead, given that such an art now existed and was spreading, it involved an attempt to see what juridical and institutional form, what foundation in the law, could be given to the sovereignty that characterizes a state" (218). As I was reading this I thought of something like the utilitarian ideas in contrast to the social contract theories. Whereas the former developed an idea of the legitimacy and form of sovereignty abstractly, the latter seem to take the same type of maximization and intensification of desired ends, and to build a system of government off of this. Am I reading this correctly, and is this part of what Foucault is describing?
Another aspect I found interesting was Foucault's analysis of the transition of the family unit from the model of government to "an element internal to population, and a fundamental instrument in its government" (216). This he connects especially with sexuality, as a unit that can both provide information about sexual behavior and demographics, and also a unit that helps to instill discipline. This connected directly to the importance Foucault described in The History of Sexuality, as it is a cross-roads between individual discipline and processes of population, etc. I think the concept of governmentality served to better illustrate his ideas on bio-power and sexuality in the previous readings.
At the end of the lecture and as a nice transition to Deleuze's article, Foucault talks about "The excessive value attributed to the problem of the state" that "renders it absolutely essential as a target needing to be attacked and a privileged position needing to be occupied" (220). Thus, the state is not as unified and singularly powerful as one (especially one advocating revolution) might suppose. It is here that we are reminded how governmentality fits into Foucault's overall goal in reevaluating all of these traditions: to better understand the relations of power that take place in our everyday lives and to use this understanding to our benefit. Deleuze takes on the same purpose with regards to control societies, saying "It's not a question of worrying or of hoping for the best, but of finding new weapons" (178). These new weapons will come from an analysis of the fluid ways in which power manifests itself, marketing influences us, and businesses and education operate. This seems to take Foucault's analysis one step further, applying it to trends occurring 30 years later. However, I feel uneasy about this article and I do not really know how to explain it. There is something in me that simply does not acknowledge the power Deleuze wants to fight. It seems to me that these new fluid institutions do have an influence on us, but our society recognizes and studies these influences and we seem to be generally well aware of it. This may just be that the ten years from the article until now have revealed the way these processes work. Also, it seems to me that the ways in which our behavior is influenced is relatively minor in comparison to disciplinary societies, and that he talks a lot about superficial levels of control. Any feedback on this would help clarify my unsure ideas about this.
One aspect that caught my interest was the tension Foucault highlights between sovereignty and the art of government, as the latter did not simply replace the latter. He writes, "instead, given that such an art now existed and was spreading, it involved an attempt to see what juridical and institutional form, what foundation in the law, could be given to the sovereignty that characterizes a state" (218). As I was reading this I thought of something like the utilitarian ideas in contrast to the social contract theories. Whereas the former developed an idea of the legitimacy and form of sovereignty abstractly, the latter seem to take the same type of maximization and intensification of desired ends, and to build a system of government off of this. Am I reading this correctly, and is this part of what Foucault is describing?
Another aspect I found interesting was Foucault's analysis of the transition of the family unit from the model of government to "an element internal to population, and a fundamental instrument in its government" (216). This he connects especially with sexuality, as a unit that can both provide information about sexual behavior and demographics, and also a unit that helps to instill discipline. This connected directly to the importance Foucault described in The History of Sexuality, as it is a cross-roads between individual discipline and processes of population, etc. I think the concept of governmentality served to better illustrate his ideas on bio-power and sexuality in the previous readings.
At the end of the lecture and as a nice transition to Deleuze's article, Foucault talks about "The excessive value attributed to the problem of the state" that "renders it absolutely essential as a target needing to be attacked and a privileged position needing to be occupied" (220). Thus, the state is not as unified and singularly powerful as one (especially one advocating revolution) might suppose. It is here that we are reminded how governmentality fits into Foucault's overall goal in reevaluating all of these traditions: to better understand the relations of power that take place in our everyday lives and to use this understanding to our benefit. Deleuze takes on the same purpose with regards to control societies, saying "It's not a question of worrying or of hoping for the best, but of finding new weapons" (178). These new weapons will come from an analysis of the fluid ways in which power manifests itself, marketing influences us, and businesses and education operate. This seems to take Foucault's analysis one step further, applying it to trends occurring 30 years later. However, I feel uneasy about this article and I do not really know how to explain it. There is something in me that simply does not acknowledge the power Deleuze wants to fight. It seems to me that these new fluid institutions do have an influence on us, but our society recognizes and studies these influences and we seem to be generally well aware of it. This may just be that the ten years from the article until now have revealed the way these processes work. Also, it seems to me that the ways in which our behavior is influenced is relatively minor in comparison to disciplinary societies, and that he talks a lot about superficial levels of control. Any feedback on this would help clarify my unsure ideas about this.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The Body of the Condemned
After juxtaposing an excruciatingly detailed description of the torture of Robert-François Damiens with an utterly sterile list of prison regulations, Foucault begins this essay with the statement, "We have, then, a public execution and a time-table" (pg. 7). It is clear from the introduction, which is used to considerable dramatic effect, that his objective will be to retrace this sharp transformation and the sterilization of the penal system. This development is no secret of history, and is in fact studied in any general European history class. It is easy to look back on this period and see nothing but a normal and obvious progression of reforms. I think, however, that Foucault's dramatization here allows us to more fully comprehend how drastic and revolutionary the discursive evolution must have been to produce these two events.
The first process that Foucault looks at is the cessation of punishment as a spectacle. He explains how violence on the part of the state became undesirable, "an additional shame that justice is ashamed to impose on the condemned man" (pg. 9). For me, this observation brings immediately to mind the question of cruel and unusual punishment. Framed to prevent penal excesses such as in the Damiens incident, this phrase is now used to question the legitimacy of the death penalty in general, and it is obvious that the meaning of "cruel and unusual" has been significantly altered. Even for a convict who has murdered scores of people in cold blood, many hold to the belief that Foucault outlines: namely, that the execution of this person would be as hideous as his crimes and that the state would merely be perpetuating violence. With regards to the "bureaucratic concealment" (pg. 10) which acts to kind of hide this problem, I also was struck by the anonymity of the whole process today. For instance, the old idea of a firing squad composed of several men with blanks and others with real bullets so no one would know which person actually carried out the execution, the separation of the person administering lethal injections from the condemned by a one-way mirror, and even the proposal to have an automated injection, activated when two people simply press a button and a computer randomly chooses which button actually activates the system. It is remarkable to me the care with which our penal system goes about the whole process.
The second process is the shift away from punishment of the body, so that, "From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of suspended rights" (pg. 11), to a denial of one's right to exist within a society. Foucault goes on to explain how the actual death of a person was made quick and as painless as possible. He brings up the example of the Guillotine, and it is hard not to remember how Guillotin himself described the experience as simply a nice, cool sensation on the back of the neck. I think the general characterisation of the "economy of suspended rights" is accurate for the prison system as a whole, and can even possibly extended to rights regained. Prisons now have their own judicial system to deal with infractions and misconduct while within the system, and prisoners with records of good behavior are granted privileges such as limited television, recreation, and even parole. The entire system utilizes a concept of rights and privileges regranted.
With regards to Foucault's analysis of the judgment of the individual and his normalization rather than strict judicial punishment, I am less convinced. First of all, to say that the process involves a significant moral normalization is a bit of a stretch. This is not to say that it doesn't exist at all. However, I would argue that in most cases the corrective nature of the penal system is geared entirely towards the other aspect that he acknowledges, the future protection of society. I think that the most visible element of moral normalization is in the case of sexual crimes, and the illegality of things such as child pornography involves a moral judgment. However, it also serves to protect a portion of society from predation. This idea is even further emphasized by violent offenders. The object of their rehabilitation is not to rid them of perversions or to make them more like ordinary people, but to eliminate the violent impulses that directly lead to the physical harm of others. Foucault seems to make much about society considering an individual's future actions, but I didn't quite see why this was so striking to him, as society always needs to protect itself. I understand Foucault's issues with the legitimacy of psychiatry, but at the same time, the psychiatrists play a smaller role than he gives them credit for. Multiple opinions are often considered, and there often has to be a fairly significant incapacity that is noticeable anyways. In sum, I would agree that a change has taken place in the judicial system, but it seems to me that he has mischaracterized and generalized it, when he goes as far as to label it an "exorbitant singularity" (pg. 23).
This said, I am not trying to refute that the criminal system is not an apparatus of the "political technology of the body" that Foucault talks about near the end. I would agree that it aims at subjecting the body to make it productive (the rhetoric of the whole prison system bears this out entirely, saying that we want to make our prisoners into 'productive members of society'). I guess to clarify the last paragraph, I disagreed with the whole emphasis on moral normalization. I think however that his characterization of the multiple and constantly interacting "micro-powers" is interesting and more endearing that a simple bipolar relationship.
Just on the subject of punishment in general, I think that the study of its development is highly interesting because I do not buy into any of the activist rhetoric about making prison systems more humane. The reason for this is that these people claim the true goal of the penal system is not simply retribution but rehabilitation and correction, and that punishment as we have seen in history is completely unjustified. This brought to mind a passage from Nietzsche, in which he criticizes the historical sense of philosophers writing in his day, tracing the origin and purpose of punishment by simply making inferences based upon its use in their own day. He explains how a concept, once created, goes through a myriad of reinterpretations and reversals so that all of its meanings become entangled and we cannot simply assume that our current perception bears on the original meaning. Foucault takes up this idea by analyzing the transition of concepts through different, and sometimes even the same, discourses. Just as Nietzsche criticized the blindness of his day, I think Foucault is right to re-evaluate our blindness about the development of punishment, and I would be interested in reading more fully his analysis of power in this area.
The first process that Foucault looks at is the cessation of punishment as a spectacle. He explains how violence on the part of the state became undesirable, "an additional shame that justice is ashamed to impose on the condemned man" (pg. 9). For me, this observation brings immediately to mind the question of cruel and unusual punishment. Framed to prevent penal excesses such as in the Damiens incident, this phrase is now used to question the legitimacy of the death penalty in general, and it is obvious that the meaning of "cruel and unusual" has been significantly altered. Even for a convict who has murdered scores of people in cold blood, many hold to the belief that Foucault outlines: namely, that the execution of this person would be as hideous as his crimes and that the state would merely be perpetuating violence. With regards to the "bureaucratic concealment" (pg. 10) which acts to kind of hide this problem, I also was struck by the anonymity of the whole process today. For instance, the old idea of a firing squad composed of several men with blanks and others with real bullets so no one would know which person actually carried out the execution, the separation of the person administering lethal injections from the condemned by a one-way mirror, and even the proposal to have an automated injection, activated when two people simply press a button and a computer randomly chooses which button actually activates the system. It is remarkable to me the care with which our penal system goes about the whole process.
The second process is the shift away from punishment of the body, so that, "From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of suspended rights" (pg. 11), to a denial of one's right to exist within a society. Foucault goes on to explain how the actual death of a person was made quick and as painless as possible. He brings up the example of the Guillotine, and it is hard not to remember how Guillotin himself described the experience as simply a nice, cool sensation on the back of the neck. I think the general characterisation of the "economy of suspended rights" is accurate for the prison system as a whole, and can even possibly extended to rights regained. Prisons now have their own judicial system to deal with infractions and misconduct while within the system, and prisoners with records of good behavior are granted privileges such as limited television, recreation, and even parole. The entire system utilizes a concept of rights and privileges regranted.
With regards to Foucault's analysis of the judgment of the individual and his normalization rather than strict judicial punishment, I am less convinced. First of all, to say that the process involves a significant moral normalization is a bit of a stretch. This is not to say that it doesn't exist at all. However, I would argue that in most cases the corrective nature of the penal system is geared entirely towards the other aspect that he acknowledges, the future protection of society. I think that the most visible element of moral normalization is in the case of sexual crimes, and the illegality of things such as child pornography involves a moral judgment. However, it also serves to protect a portion of society from predation. This idea is even further emphasized by violent offenders. The object of their rehabilitation is not to rid them of perversions or to make them more like ordinary people, but to eliminate the violent impulses that directly lead to the physical harm of others. Foucault seems to make much about society considering an individual's future actions, but I didn't quite see why this was so striking to him, as society always needs to protect itself. I understand Foucault's issues with the legitimacy of psychiatry, but at the same time, the psychiatrists play a smaller role than he gives them credit for. Multiple opinions are often considered, and there often has to be a fairly significant incapacity that is noticeable anyways. In sum, I would agree that a change has taken place in the judicial system, but it seems to me that he has mischaracterized and generalized it, when he goes as far as to label it an "exorbitant singularity" (pg. 23).
This said, I am not trying to refute that the criminal system is not an apparatus of the "political technology of the body" that Foucault talks about near the end. I would agree that it aims at subjecting the body to make it productive (the rhetoric of the whole prison system bears this out entirely, saying that we want to make our prisoners into 'productive members of society'). I guess to clarify the last paragraph, I disagreed with the whole emphasis on moral normalization. I think however that his characterization of the multiple and constantly interacting "micro-powers" is interesting and more endearing that a simple bipolar relationship.
Just on the subject of punishment in general, I think that the study of its development is highly interesting because I do not buy into any of the activist rhetoric about making prison systems more humane. The reason for this is that these people claim the true goal of the penal system is not simply retribution but rehabilitation and correction, and that punishment as we have seen in history is completely unjustified. This brought to mind a passage from Nietzsche, in which he criticizes the historical sense of philosophers writing in his day, tracing the origin and purpose of punishment by simply making inferences based upon its use in their own day. He explains how a concept, once created, goes through a myriad of reinterpretations and reversals so that all of its meanings become entangled and we cannot simply assume that our current perception bears on the original meaning. Foucault takes up this idea by analyzing the transition of concepts through different, and sometimes even the same, discourses. Just as Nietzsche criticized the blindness of his day, I think Foucault is right to re-evaluate our blindness about the development of punishment, and I would be interested in reading more fully his analysis of power in this area.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Foucault, Repression, and the Scientia Sexualis
In the chapter "We 'Other Victorians,'" Foucault examines the interests which support the discourse on sexual repression. He writes, "The affirmation of a sexuality that has never been more rigorously subjugated than during the age of the hypocritical, bustling, and responsible bourgeoisie is coupled with the grandiloquence of a discourse purporting to reveal the truth about sex , modify its economy within reality, subvert law that governs it, and change its future." He identifies the pleasure obtained by the deliberate transgression of society's laws and norms, as well as that obtained by the promise of an ideal world in the future. This observation appears fairly accurate and can illustrate the ways in which power induces pleasure.
If we look at the discourse on sexual repression that is contemporary with Foucault, we see the importance of sexual liberation, free love, and otherwise defying cultural norms in the '60s and '70s. What is striking to me is how often the rhetoric from this time period deals with transcending bounds, freeing oneself, and achieving individual expression. It is as if sex became not a pleasure in its own right, but instead a pleasure because of its rebellion. It is here that we find the pleasure of power. Inherent in the rebellion, the liberation, and the defiance, is a sensation of power that we have control over ourselves and our world, and no one else is able to influence us. The sensation can be so strong as to overwhelm our perceptions of the world and distort them. This leads to the ironic idea that, in our quest for liberation, we are almost completely determined by the society around us. Non-comformity becomes the norm for many people, and even though they think they are becoming their own individuals, they are simply falling into the stereotype that has been created for them. I believe that people so adamant and ostentatious about contradicting society are not genuine in their examination of values, but instead they are influenced by the overwhelming sensation of pleasure derived from their false impression of individual power. Where there is strong emotion and rhetoric, there also tends to be strong personal interest, and hence blindness to any other form of examination than one's own. Therefore I think Foucault is right to step back from the strong condemnations of the repressive hypothesis and examine the problem from a different point of view.
Foucault also analyzes the idea of pleasure with regards to the confession in the following reading, "Scientia Sexualis," and what he calls "the specific pleasure of the true discourse on sex." This pleasure derives from the knowledge we can obtain from sex, and even from the process of obtaining and analyzing that knowledge itself. There is no doubt that a large number of people receive a pleasant sensation from getting something off their chest, and the teasing out of our inner feelings. However, I remain unconvinced that the process of the confession is directly linked to this development. His argument is entirely logical, but I do not know enough about the history of the sexuality discourse to refute it. It is true that Foucault strives to find similarities and differences throughout discourses that can describe their development, but in so doing he still must apply his own interpretation as to what facts are most important and then necessarily leave out the rest. Therefore, his analysis of the discourse is limited, although examined in much more depth than is a commonly accepted idea. The only thing I keep going back to is that Foucault's analyses can provide a basis for further thought and offer an alternative to a current view, and that he may outline some interesting developments that one would only be able to verify or refute if he conducted his own thorough examination.
If we look at the discourse on sexual repression that is contemporary with Foucault, we see the importance of sexual liberation, free love, and otherwise defying cultural norms in the '60s and '70s. What is striking to me is how often the rhetoric from this time period deals with transcending bounds, freeing oneself, and achieving individual expression. It is as if sex became not a pleasure in its own right, but instead a pleasure because of its rebellion. It is here that we find the pleasure of power. Inherent in the rebellion, the liberation, and the defiance, is a sensation of power that we have control over ourselves and our world, and no one else is able to influence us. The sensation can be so strong as to overwhelm our perceptions of the world and distort them. This leads to the ironic idea that, in our quest for liberation, we are almost completely determined by the society around us. Non-comformity becomes the norm for many people, and even though they think they are becoming their own individuals, they are simply falling into the stereotype that has been created for them. I believe that people so adamant and ostentatious about contradicting society are not genuine in their examination of values, but instead they are influenced by the overwhelming sensation of pleasure derived from their false impression of individual power. Where there is strong emotion and rhetoric, there also tends to be strong personal interest, and hence blindness to any other form of examination than one's own. Therefore I think Foucault is right to step back from the strong condemnations of the repressive hypothesis and examine the problem from a different point of view.
Foucault also analyzes the idea of pleasure with regards to the confession in the following reading, "Scientia Sexualis," and what he calls "the specific pleasure of the true discourse on sex." This pleasure derives from the knowledge we can obtain from sex, and even from the process of obtaining and analyzing that knowledge itself. There is no doubt that a large number of people receive a pleasant sensation from getting something off their chest, and the teasing out of our inner feelings. However, I remain unconvinced that the process of the confession is directly linked to this development. His argument is entirely logical, but I do not know enough about the history of the sexuality discourse to refute it. It is true that Foucault strives to find similarities and differences throughout discourses that can describe their development, but in so doing he still must apply his own interpretation as to what facts are most important and then necessarily leave out the rest. Therefore, his analysis of the discourse is limited, although examined in much more depth than is a commonly accepted idea. The only thing I keep going back to is that Foucault's analyses can provide a basis for further thought and offer an alternative to a current view, and that he may outline some interesting developments that one would only be able to verify or refute if he conducted his own thorough examination.
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