rio wrote:
Going to read up on Foucault as it turns out I'm going to be leading seminars on him over the next couple of weeks
And I don't really know much about him at all... time for some revision.
Quote:
foucault essentially asks: how is nietzsche's ubermensch possible within the world of heidegger's enframing (ge-stell) which alienates (pace hegel / feuerbach / marx) us from ourselves (as "dasein")? rolling eyes
foucault's project:
homoerotic "care of self" as resistance to the discipline-effects of norm / deviance structures generated by systems of institutions (e.g. clinic, prison, asylum, school, factory, etc) which constitute a well-regulated, panoptically administered (bourgeois) 'society'; the development of these norm / deviance structures (aka epistemes) can be approximately recovered as layers / strata via an archeological method; and resistances to the discipline-effects of norm / deviance structures can be historicized via a genealogical method which interprets practices & accounts of "desire" as a hermeneutics of subjectivity; both methods applied concurrently can inform ad hoc, decentralized, local strategies of opposition by uncovering temporarily accessible fissures in the regimes & apparatuses of social control.
this is what i take from foucault (sans jargon & rhetoric), but certaintly it's not all there is. as far as i'm concerned his project begins with "a politics of subversion" (radical relativism) and culminates in "an ethics of desire-as-transgression" (polymorphic perversity) as opposition to authoritarian mentalities (e.g. fascism, puritanism, legalism, scientism, etc).
Foucault says that it is indeed futile to expect a complete revolution which will make everything perfect. All systems are dangerous because all systems have an inherent repressive element. But at the same time all systems have pockets of resistance to the system. These are driven by an untheoretic awareness of there being something wrong ('intolerable', he once said).
He primarily attacks those philosophers who believe that truth and science will help liberation, by showing how those very sentiments have led us to be less free in certain respects (or at least have led to some people, the outsiders, to be less free).
I found this off a philosophy forum a while back. So what aspect of his thought are you focusing on? The genealogical method, revolutionary prospects, the panopticon and control, sexuality and the formation of knowledge, the scientific/medical/male gaze? My two professors at community college were Foucault experts so I was given a solid dose of it.
The panopticon and control is the focus. It's for this "sociology of work" module, and we're discussing how hierarchies at work "manufacture consent" by making people view very intrusive control methods (i.e. making people force themselves to find dull work interesting, making them reorientate their social lives to one more acceptable to their bosses) appear to people as pragmatic decisions for getting ahead in their career. Very interesting stuff, really. So long as I can remain a few steps ahead of the students it will be fine.
