april 1983, berkley
Foucault at berkleys
Audio files:
Historian first and
foremost.
Shift in the methodological
focus from the earlier archaeological perspective to what you describe a
genealogical perspective. Is it a radical break?
Hard question: I used these
two words in different meanings in order to indicate two different sets of
problems
Archeological research
differentiates what I am doing from social history sicne I don’t want to
analysse sociwety but facts from discourses and sicourses and I wanted to
disaccosiate this analysis of discourses from philosopjical hermeneutics which
is something like interpretations of whathas been said oir inferring of
womthinge that hasn’t been ssaid
What I am fdealing with is a
set of dioscourses which has to e analyse as an event or as a set of events in
this discourse there are events but there are special effects that are not
similar to what can be economic events law or demographical change. Archaeology
is the methodologixcal framwerwrek of my analyssi.
Geneaology is both the
reason and the target of the analysis of discourses and events have determined
in a certain way what constitutes our present and ourselves. Our knowledges our
proactices our ratonality
Geneaology is the finalite
of the analysis and the archaoleogy is the material and methidoological
framworks
No the general theme is
history of thought how can we make a history of thout thought casnnot be
disaccociated from hostory of discourses and our own thought. We cannot have
access to the thought of previous periods but we can have access to their
discourses this is archaeol. consideration. That has nothing to do with
continuity or discontinuity
For instance now when I look
at the disocurse of sexual ethics we have to recognise that we find the same
formulation in the IV c and now. So you have continuity ther ebiut in others
for instance scientific discourse you find discontinuite
This is strkingin
In ethics you find
continuity and ins cience some very quick changes drastic changes,m medicine
youc annot figure out what they are speaking about what disease and you need all the translation to understand. But
if you look at a book at the beginning of the XIXc even if your ecognise
everything is wrong yiou know what theyre talking about. Before youc annot weven
say if theyre qwrong or not because you look. It is not a universal pricniple,
that of continuity and disco,
One of the critical responses concersn the lack of explanation for change in the archeological method.
Yes I am aware that I havent
been clear enough on this problem of discontinuity that for me is not
important. When you look at the hostory of some of sciences from the end of
XVIc to beginning of XVIIIc you see important changes in medicine natural
history and economics. Dramatic changes. It’s a fact. This fact could be
explained or reduced by some changing society. I have never read explanations
of those dramatic scientific changes through correlative parallel and similar
changes in society nobody has ever convinced me that changes in capitalist
society is good explanation for the change in natural history of XVIc. I think
that scientific thought has a type of historicity which is specific and which
ahs this type of posiibility of changing and the necessity of doing so
drastically.
When something is changing
at some point you are obliged to change other things. Youifferent levels of
changes you change theory or patterns (Kuhn) sometiems you have to change the
ojects theory the field the type of rationality those dramatic changes where
nearly everything changes (the fielsd) are found in the history of scienc.e for
instance hostiry of genetics.
Still used by darwin, the
genetics he uses is completely strange foreign to our genetics. Not only
changed pattern but new field of research that appeared. Order of things I
tried ot show what was how had those empirical sciences developed int eh XVIIc
with some dramatic changes and there is no external explanation for it or at
least nobody who could give me an external explanation. But it is not a
principle for me to refuse these kinds of explanations. In the book on madness
I tried to see how in certain situations, relations to madness or at least to
mad people have changed formt he XVI to beginning of XVIII those changes have
been determined by some socila processes, like problem of unemployement, cause
of construction of general hospital. You cnanot understand why those scientific
theories have been developed on madness but why mad people were treated such.
The change in scientific rationality cannot be explained through social
processes but on the contrary the fact that something becomes a scientific
problem and emerges as a problem society has to deal with can be explained by
social processes as in the case of madness. Whyy diseases and physical illness
has become a real social problem at the end of the XVIIIc at that pointthey
have been obliged to organise hospital. But reasoins are social demographical
development of towns, epidemics etc. that’s why disease becoma social and
political problem. Youc an see it in great books like that the 8 volumes german
book on politics of health. This was a great sign of emergence of physical
illness as social and political problem for society, but few years after bichat
used a type of rationalite to analyse certain symptoms you find the same type
of rationalite used for analysing social systems.
Geneaology defined the
target and aim fo work archaeology indicates the field in order to make
geneaology
I have chosen to work on
this field. My idea was that the development of historical studies in france
was very important at the end of the XVIIc beginning of XVIIIc when the
aristocracy and monarchy came to compete about the foundations of their own
rights. Is monarchy only the expression of an aristocratic social structure or
is monarchy somwthing that has its roots in the nation in the third estate in
the bourgeoisie? That was an important problem. Youc an see when the great
administrative monarchy began to decline you find a real explotion of these
historical researcher, bith juridical and historical (clearly linked). Now I
have found soemthing else all those scholarly researchers, the benedictines in
the beg of 17 c who were the most important roots of the countereform and it is
very interesting to see. That is a simple schema but we could say that for the
reformation the problem was to get back to the first text, THE text and
historical researchers about this text but
much more than the historical researcher that of hermeneutics. The
problems of the countereformation was to find and justify a historical
continuity to give the historical justification for this continuity this is the
schema you can see between the hermeneutical tradition (reformation) and
historical continuity (catholic).
Century as historical
unit, typical technique notion of temporal unit through which to write history.
researchers both juridical and historical and the link between the two
is very clear. that was my hypothesis. erudites research. scholarly researches
done by the monks and the benedictines in the beginning of the 17C which seem
to have been the most important routes and in the climate of the
counterreformation. thats only a schema much too simple. but we could say that
in the reformation the prolem was to get back to the first text, the thext and
the research of this text wa simpoprtant but much more th eproblem f
hermeneutics how to interpret this text since it is the text for which we have
to find the meaning for today. the problem of countereformation was to find a
historical continuity from the beginning to now and to find a historical
justification of this continuity and so you can see the kind of spliut between
the hermeneutical orientation (reformation) and historical justification
(typical of catholocism).
first usage of the century as a historical unit in the reformation.
temporal unit as a notion the question is these internal kinds of changes in
the discourse of history the idea that you can't look outside.
I didn't say that you can only have a conception of the self only
through writing. of course well all the problme of the collecting the sources
that has been important and that is relatively related to this problem of
constituting a continuity, the catholoics started because they wer in this
conflict with the reformation started collecting all these documents to justify
this continuity. there was a great collection, it is a technique. the problem
of writing itself, the problem of chronicles of administrative archives is also
very important the great administrative archivist starts in the XVIIc, there
are temporal techniques which have been developed and which are the technical
and material conditions of the development of historical knowledge.
discipline and punish. criminal law and system whether today they
continue to have an important role.
first of all what I meant in this prison book was not that the
disciplinary society stats with the development of prison I would say the
contrary since the problem which struck me when I was studying this was when
you read the books written by the reformers in the XVIIIc you notice a strong
aggressivity against any system of imprisoning. because prison was in france
italian and german was not at all a punishment it was an administrative measure
taken against people outside of the law, juridical system and institutions when
the administration of monarchic power used to get rid of someone by puttin them
in jail.
the criticism of prison is generalised in the mid 18C. then you look at
what happened and what was organised and istitutionalised at the end of the 18C
with the new penal code you find prisons everywhere. it was the major means of
punishment. that was the theme of the book: why the prison? despite the fact
that prison was the symbol of monarchic arbitrariness they found that prison
and unprison could be a very good means not only to punish but to reform
prisoners and inmates and this changed in the minds and attitudes the image of
disciplinary ethics. where did they find it? schools army, where they have been
used since the mid of the 17C. they built prison institutions on the model of
school army etc, they are the expression, one of the last consequences of this
disciplinary system. as it often happens, this final application of the
disciplinary system became a model for a new development of these disciplinary
techniques in other fields. the panopticon is interesting cause bentham had
this idea in order to organise good prisons, where people could be reformed as
in a disciplinary institution and after having this dea he had the idea that
this panopticon could be used also for factories schools etc. so when I say
disciplinary system I don't mean that society has been organised this way.
Disciplinary system is more a kind of rationalite' than a total institution.
prison is only a part of this system, that's the difference with that gothman
has described as real instituitons with internal organisation. disciplinary
system is a rationalite how can we govern people? which are the best means,
most economical and efficient to govern people? that is disciplinary
rationality. after one century people thought that it was not the most
economical means, that there are much more efficient and discrete and implicit
ways for informing and leading people than disciplinary techniques. for
example. when you see how the great factories had been organised in France at
the beginning of the 18C they had as model disciplinary rationality, when the
great mines have been exploited in france in the second half of the 18C the
idea of the gov was to use soldiers as miners or to transofrm miners as
soldiers cause they thought of the army as a good disciplinary organisation
butin the mid 19C (1830) people saw that it was not a good means, that a system
like the insurance saving banks etc was much more efficient than this
disciplinary regime. new kind of organisation developed: the insurantial
control system which is much more efficient than the discilinary system. The
disc system which is a technique, technology specific of a certain age, you can
find now means much more sophisticated to obtain that people behave in a
certain way. even in the army, which has always been the focus of disc
techniques, they have changed a lot. in one of the most efficient armies in the
world, the israelian one, you find discip techniques but very little in
comparision to what was in the world war armies.
when I opposed the kind of relation to oneself described in alcibiade to
thehistoric one I didnt oppopse them as the external to the internal.` the
contrary, since in alcibiade, which is not typical of platonism, in this text
when he analyses the notion of taking care of oneself he says that alc. had to
do so because he had to rule others as a political leader, and that in order to
take care of himself he had to know what he was and what his soul was and how
could we know our soul if we do not comntemplate it in its essentail and divine
element. it is not an internal relationship with oneself because you have to
turn your eyes toqwards the light the supercelestial. you have to move form
what is closest to you, what is your body sensations etc in order to go
beyondthe wolrd and then youdiscover whaht you are. so it is not an internal
relation, even if memory is important it is memory that takes you somewhere
else.
in the case of the stoics is it not external., you have to care of your
life ot be ready to die. the idea of the stoic is to live every day as if it
was the last one, seneca's letter is veryinteresting text. the day is every
season of the year the small image of life spring is childhood summer is youth
which is pytagorean idea anyway, those correspondences, you have to live
everyday as if it was a year and as if it was your all life. everymorning
youhave to recognise yourself as a child and to know that the evening will be
your old age and you must be ready to
die at the end of the day. it is not the attitutde turning from the past memory
to the future. it is to look at your life as if it was completely achieved, to
have it all under your eyes and its perception as memorisation. in the case of
the stoics this anticipaion towards death is a kind of memorising integration
of whatever can happent o you. so it is not the opposition between external and
internal.
what I wanted to show in a short lecture is that this kind of attention
that the stoics wanted people to have towards themselves, conformity between
what they had to do and what they had done. starts a new kind of relationship
to oneself a permanent attention but the problem was not at all to decide what
people were really. what they were was not important, the problem of whether
the things thye had been doing was conformed to the law. it is a new
relationship that becomes important in christianity. people started to ask the
questions the ideas and things I have been doing can I recognise what is the
reality of myself, the real degree of
purity of my soul since the problem of christianity is to attain a degree of
purity so that one could be saved, the problem between purity salvation you
cannot find in the stoics where you have a problem of conformity and perfection
in this world. In thsi stoic relationship theres a kind of preparation to
christianity, the attention to oneself has been used in monastrey,
self-examination is found in seneca is apparently the same formula whihc was
used in christianity till now but i think in fact the quesiton asked by seneca
to hiumself are rather different.
target int he benedicts is different, memorising the deeds of the day
trying to recognise which is the degree of purity of the soul.
what is the most striking int he greco romanic culture is that they have
something which seems to be a real autonomous culture of the self, in the sense
that people (some of them in the upper classdes) decided if they want to take
care of themselves, as for instance some people today decide whether to visit
painting exihibitions etc., it was something not obligatory but proposed to
them as soemhing valuable, which would give them capacity of attaining a better
life, new tyope aof existence. it was a question of personal choice. this
culture of the self was not at all related to religion. (not this
simplistically, see pytagoras) bu for instance seneca it was not religious reasons
that made him, or plutarch was very religious but in taking care of the self,
the techniques of the self were not embedded in religious political or
educational institutions. this is what I mean by autonomous. this culture of
the self has its own literature, techniques etc, people wrote letters
exchanging techniques. (see plutarch treaties and notebooks of advices about
personal books sent to political figures) it is a small world of techniques and
practices, circulated amongst. I dont remember the question.
autonomy
culture of the self appears after the development of christianity since the
formation of the self and the way poeple have to take care of themselves then
became embedded in religious social and educational institutions. for instance
christian confession is interesting cause to confess is to examine yourself
your deeds. this technique became first obligatory for people to do that every
year at least
this technique became obligatory for people to so this every month or
day (for a monk) when confession became obligatory in christianity you had to
confess to the parish and nobody else, first you have to answer to a set of
questions that were always the same and impose to you the penalties (the
priest) it is a way for you to let somebody take care of yoruself. the
educational system and the problem of the constitution of the self that is not
from this autonomous culture.
you say the individual had the choice. to do one or the other. to be
able to go to church or not
did I say that? I am sure I said that if you say I did but I was wrong.
whether the archaeology is one way of devaluing or make more contingent
the modern culture of the self. do you see ancient way as stll a possibility
its always the simple questions. b4 I came here I had no idea of this
quesiton and I didn't feel this difficulty of this question. no possibility for
the culture of the self? it is not at all Paul let me take and become aware
ofthat which is not clear in my book. it is not the presentaion of a golden age
when everything was okay and people had the leisure of taking care of themself
far from christianity and bourgeois society and industrialisation...it is not
at all. one could show how horrible sexual ethics of antiquity can be. it is
only a dream, a hegelian one maybe that the greek society has been a golden age
there was no beautiful totality. but I htink someting is important that in our
society nowadays we know well that our morals as been linked with religion for
centureis and with civil laws and juridical organisaton and morale took the
form of a kind of juridical structure, think of Kant, you know that ethics has
been related to science, medicine, psychology ect. I think these great
references: to religion, law and science, have now worn out. we know well that you
need an ethics and we cannot ask religion science and law to give us this
ethics, we have an example in greco roman society where a great ethcis existed
without these three references. the problem is not to come back to this ancient
age but we know that it is possible to make research in ethics to build a new
etchis to give place to what has been called the ethical imagination without
any reference to religion law and science. thats why I think this analysis of
greco roman ethics as an aesthetics of existence is interesting.
relation between discipline and care of the self
I would say I cannot answer directly cause Im not sure but Id say that
the care of the self at the very beginning was very diffenret form discipline.
discipline was (at least very strong discipline you find in prussian army in
17c) has nothing to do with care of the self, it is something that deals with
behavious bodies attitudes etc.
it is the fatc that there have been at certain times links between care
of self and disciplinary techniques. for intsance middle ages and monastry and
benedictine institutions ou find interesting relations betwen care of self and
iscipline. as you know benedictines derive directly from the roman army and it
is an organisaiton that took roman legions as model. and they have tried to use
both these discipl model and techniques of the self which has developed the
orerintal asceticism. you could see also in19c how in some pedagogical
insitutions relationships and links between the two. the great colleges for boys
in 18C.
power is everywhere
no power relations are everywhere!
one of the consequences..hope...main source resistence pleasure
the reason of those resistence is the pursuit of pleasure? ahahah
well, Im not sure that I can answer this question I think one thing
struck me when I was reading books (many years ago) about sexualiy or
psycholanalitic books, is the fact that people seem to be so uncomfortable when
speaking about pleasure. the literature about desire theory repression of
desire is huge, but when people have to speak about pleasure they seem to
become mute. when you compare that to what was the grecoroman literature about
the same problems sex ethics etc they made no differences between epitamaleus
and hedone. formula, to be slave or free from desire/pleasure. which is an
entity that casnnot be disassociated. in psycholanlists speak about desire, to
speak of pleasure is vulgar.
how to understand how and why the problem of desire became so important
whilst the problem of esire and pleasure was so important in grecoroman. for
them the question was what to do with our pleasure. problem of the use of
pleasure. if you read books of the chinese erotic art you see their problem was
not that of desire but that of pleasure. how to use, which intensity etc. I
think that we are a civilations maybe the civilisation where the problem of
desire became much more important than the probolem of pleasure. whats the
reason? why do we recognise ourselves as subject of desire and not as agent of
pleasure? why our theory of sexuality theory of human being existance
philosophical anthropology deals with problems of desire (nature of male and
female desire etc) and the problem of pleasure has the smallest part in our
theorisation and ethics, thats what I wanted to analyse and the slow move from
the conception of mastership you can find in the 4C as the main problem of
ethics as to the deciphering of the self in christianity is the move through
which deciphering of the self where the problem is what is my desire what is
the orientation of desire. the rise of the hermeneutics of the self and
prevalecnce of desire as main feature of human sexuality and being and
existence is really important whereas for the greeks of 4c the problem was the
mastery of oneself and limitation of pelasure. they are two different not just
theories of desire but realtionships to oneself.
confessions becomin material for social theory or psychologial theory
which in turn can determine how to govern people better. dosn the culture of
the self becuase we want to comply enhance the possibility of rationality of
discipline?
you ask me if the development of techniques of the self is not
improvement on disciplines?
whether cult of self where we are very interstd in finding ways to know
ourselves doesn it give place for disci
sure it depends on the way you do this deciphering of the self, when it
takes the shape of catholic demands the discipl effects are very explicit and
strong., when the psychoanalitical practice and techniques disciplinary effects
are not so evident, I don't say that they do not exist but I dont know if it
answers your question.
how much your work on sexuality will illuminate different geneaologies
the question is very important, first of all the greek period was not
golden age for sex life even for gay people (if you could use this category for
greek people which I doubt a lot) the second point is what I want to do in this
study is not the history of the pattern of behavious of the rules its not the
social history of sexual behavious it is the way by which our civilisaiton has
integrated the problem of sex into the problem of truth,. how they have been
linked to gether this leads of course to psychanalysis but also to christianity
when they see the flesh, soul and desires as linked to////
its not social history it is a problem of thought, sex in history and
truth.
the main role has been run by males the hteory of sex the rules for the
techniques of the self has been imposed by male society and by masculinatin I
htink this history of linkage of truth and sex has to be done frm the point of
view of male. it canalso be done to see the effect of that on women but htat
would be soemthing else.
why sould we believe you?
there is no reason.