FOUCAULT

Michel Foucault

(1926-1984)

Foucault’s LifeBorn: 1926, France

Degrees: Philosophy, Psychology & Psychopathology

Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at College de France

Books: Madness and Civilization (1961), The Birth of the Clinic (1963), The Order of Things (1966), The Archeology of Knowledge (1969), Discipline and Punish (1975), The History of Sexuality (1984)

Personal Life: Activism, Travel, Gay scene

Died: 1984, due to HIV/AIDS

POWER/KNOWLEDGEPOWER/KNOWLEDGE

POWER/KNOWLEDGEPOWER/KNOWLEDGE

Power produces knowledge…

Power and knowledge

directly imply one another…

There is no power relation

without the correlative

constitution of a field of

knowledge, nor any

knowledge that does not

presuppose and constitute at

the same time power

relations. (1977, 27-28)

“‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and [linked] to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of truth” (133).

genealogygenealogy

These “power-knowledge” relations are to be analyzed…not on the basis of a subject of knowledge who is or is not free in relation to the power system, but on the contrary, the subject who knows, the objects to be known and the modalities of knowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental implications of power-knowledge and their historical transformations. In short, it is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but power-knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it and of which it is made up, that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge (1977, 27-28).

genealogy

genealogygenealogy

Let us give the term

genealogy to the union of

erudite knowledge and

local memories which

allows us to establish a

historical knowledge of

struggles and to make use

of this knowledge tactically

today (P/K, 83).

disciplinediscipline

disciplinediscipline

The individual is not to be

conceived as a sort of

elementary nucleus, a primitive

atom, a multiple and inert

material on which power comes

to fasten or against which it

happens to strike…it is already

one of the prime effects of

power that certain bodies,

certain gestures, certain

discourses, certain desires,

come to be identified and

constituted as individuals …The

individual which power has

constituted is at the same time

its vehicle (98).

ASSESSMENTAssessment

ASSESSMENT

Assessment1. See what Foucault

sees2. Ask Foucaultian

questions3. Shape discipline

within the Christian meta-narrative

Helpful Resourcesfor summary and Christian analysis