Variations within Constructivism and Interpretive Theory - Modern and Postmodern (Friedrich Wilhelm

Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger)

INTERPRETIVISM
• Definition
o the term interpretivism refers to theories about how the human mind can obtain
knowledge of the world.
o it is a philosophical doctrine which holds the belief that reality and knowledge are
socially constructed by human beings.
o knowledge for the interpretivist relies mostly on interpretations of the meaning that
humans attach to their actions.
▪ example: in the history of sexuality, the people just consider sex as an act which
wastes energy but as time progress, it is seen as a way for reproduction. Then
branded the act as sinful when done outside of marriage or sinful when done by
the same gender. Moreover, the act was not just considered as a sin but also the
label (identity) attached to same sex people that gave sex.
• Interpretivism vs Positivism
o Positivism – positivism holds the belief that only those objects or events that can be
experienced directly should be the object of scientific inquiry.
▪ There are facts about the human world which are objectively true and that they
can be discovered and understood through a scientific method.
▪ There is an objective knowledge out there that can be discovered by the
human mind.
o Interpretivist – there is no objective knowledge out there waiting to be discovered
▪ Knowledge is socially constructed by humans which in most cases realize one's
interpretation.
• Social sciences and humanities research (Interpretivism vs Positivism
o Positivism
▪ Assumes the belief that researchers simply find or observe research findings
o Interpretivism
▪ The belief that the meaningfulness of research findings is dependent on the
interpretation of the researcher.
▪ Focus: analytically disclosing the meaning of the findings while showing how this
meaning configures to generate observable outcomes.
▪ Attempts to reach an understanding of a phenomenon through an
interpretation of the elements of the study.
▪ Interpretive researchers believe that access to reality is possible only through
social constructions such as language consciousness shared meanings
documents and other artifacts

CONSTRUCTIVISM
• Definition
o Constructivism is based on the idea that people actively construct or make their own
knowledge and that reality is determined by one's experiences as a learner.
o Learners use their previous knowledge as foundation and build on it with new things
that they learn. Everyone's individual experiences make their learning unique to them.
 o Constructivism is about construction – the construction of reality and knowledge
• Constructivism vs Positivism
o Positivism – There is one reality out there to be discovered, just as it is and objective
knowledge out there to be gained.
o Constructivism – Constructivism looks at the interplay of forces that bring reality and
knowledge into being.
▪ Used interchangeably with constructionism and social constructionism.
• Constructivism’s Ontology (ontology seeks the classification and explanation of entities.)
o Constructivism's ontology or understanding of being is generally classified as relativist
there is not one reality rather there are many relative realities specific to and co-created
in the context they are part of.
▪ Example: constructivist would likely say that my reality will not be the same as
your reality because we have each constructed our realities together with our
communities, our societies, and other forces.
• Formation of Reality
o It is not just people and our cultures, conventions and institutions that constructivists
see as forming reality; rather the interaction between people as individuals or groups
with the physical world around them construct reality.
o Constructivists generally therefore do not deny the existence of a world outside of
human perception, rather that external world has a place as one of the forces that bring
reality into existence through interaction.
o Constructivists believe that objects have existence but not meaning outside of human
perception
• Knowledge
o The epistemology or understanding of knowledge and constructivism is often classified
as a relativist one, though not as fully relativistic as some perspectives.
o A constructivist sees the varied nuanced understandings that different people bring into
being as enriching our knowledge of the world, and within these varied perspectives
there are still criteria for getting to truth.
o Meaning – For constructivists meanings are not all equally valid. There is not one right
or objective meaning but meanings vary on how relevant or fulfilling they are. Their
value can be informed by how attentive they are to the object they reflect or how well
they balance the dialectical process of mediating the interaction between subject and
object.
• As researchers’ constructivists may take many paths however, they all acknowledge the role
that subjective experience and values play on knowledge in the research process many will
attempt to harness these opportunities that arise from subjectivity.
• As an educator
o Constructivism is crucial to understand as an educator because it influences the way all
of your students learn. Teachers and instructors that appreciate the constructivist
approach to learning understand that their students bring their own unique experiences
to the classroom every day. (Every day background and previous knowledge impact on
how they are able to learn.)
• Elements and principles of constructivism
o 1. Knowledge is constructed – this is the basic principle in constructivism which means
knowledge is built upon another knowledge. (Important foundation for continued
learning)
 o 2. People learn to learn, as they learn – this means learning involves constructing
meaning in systems of meaning. (Example: if a student is learning the chronology of
dates for a series of historical events at the same time, they are learning the meaning of
chronology. [chronology - the arrangement of events or dates in the order of their
occurrence.])
o 3. Learning is an active process – learning involves sensory input to construct meaning
the learner needs to do something in order to learn it's not there for a passive activity
learners need to engage in the world so they are actively involved in their own learning
and development one cannot just sit and expect to be told things and learn the student
needs to engage in discussions, reading, activities, and the like.
o 4. Learning is a social activity this means that learning is directly associated to our
connection with other people our teacher’s family or peers and our acquaintances
impact our learning. [Peer involvement is one of the keys in learning | Other input is
present]
o 5. learning is contextual – students don't learn isolated facts and theories separate from
the rest of our lives. We learn in ways connected to things we already know and what
we believe. In other words, the things we learn and the points we tend to remember are
connected to the things going on around us.
o 6. Knowledge is personal – Because constructivism is based on one's own experiences
and beliefs knowledge becomes a personal affair. Each person will have their own prior
knowledge and experiences to bring to the table. So, the way and things people learn
and gain from education will all be very different.
o 7. Learning exists in the mind – This means that hands-on experiences and physical
actions are necessary for learning but engaging the mind is the key to successful
learning. Learning needs to involve activities for the minds not just our hands therefore
mental experiences are needed for retaining knowledge.

MODERN AND POST-MODERN

• The 20th century can be divided into two distinct periods one characterized by the modernist
movement and the other by post-modernism.
• Modernism – It segues into post-modernism came about because of a basic difference in the
way of looking at society and progress.
• Post-modernism – It was a response in many ways to modernism and hence they can be
considered to be two aspects of the same movement but there are major differences between
modernism and post-modernism.
• The difference lies in two approaches towards life
• Background
o Modernism and post-modernism are a reaction to the Enlightenment the Enlightenment
was a period in European history during the 17th century when science and reason
supposedly triumphed over faith and tradition as a societal guiding principle of progress.
o Origins of the scientific revolution:
▪ The scientific revolution has its origin in the renaissance, humanism, and the
Protestant reformation.
▪ The movement sought to understand the world on its own terms rather than
the teachings of the church.
o Two central tenets of the Enlightenment:
▪ The perfectibility of human nature
 ▪ The belief in human progress through the development of human knowledge,
especially the sciences.
o Start of Modernism
▪ The Enlightenment is often considered by many historians but not all to be the
beginning of the modern period in human history. By the 19th century the
Enlightenment impact was assessed by intellectuals and artists and it was
reaffirmed. In the 20th century, scientific findings like quantum physics seriously
undermined the possibility of a deterministic model of the world. As a guiding
principle, reason was still affirmed as was the belief in human progress.
Technology encroached into all aspects of life and was seen as evidence of the
capacity of calculated reason to improve human life.
▪ The project of modernism was to examine the impediment still holding society
back. (Example: Similarly, modernism in music referred to a period of change
and development when composers made a break from past conventions in
music by experimenting with altering organizing and approaching harmonic
melodic and rhythmic aspects of music.)
▪ As with music and art in architecture and literature this experimentation and
other unorthodox approaches across the creative genres generated hostile
criticism from the public.
▪ During the modernist era art and literary works were considered unique
creations of artists these works were believed to possess deep meaning it was
an era dominated by novels and books.
o Postmodernism
▪ During the post-modernist era with the onset of microchips digitization and
other technological advancements television and computers became dominant
in society art and literary works began to be copied and preserved by means of
digital media.
▪ Individuals ceased to believe that art and literary works bore one unique
meaning rather post modernists believed in deriving their own meanings from
works of art and literature.
▪ Interactive media and the internet led to distribution of knowledge music by
people like Mozart and Beethoven, which was appreciated during modernism
became less popular in the postmodern era world. Music DJs and remixes
characterized post-modernism architectural forms that were popular during
modernism were replaced by a post mix of different architectural style.
• Modernism Overview
o Modernism describes a collection of cultural movements of the late 19th and early 20th
century. It was an emancipatory project whose main idea was that traditional values
and institutions were oppressive, divisive, and inefficient and should therefore be
replaced by rational values and institutions.
o Modernism was characterized by a dramatic change of thought whereby individuals
used intellect to improve the human environment. Modernism brought about a reform
in all spheres of life including philosophy, commerce, art, and literature with the aid of
science, technology, and experimentation. This led to progress in many spheres of life
by changing the approach of mankind towards them.
o Ultimately modernism attempted to free humanity from its historical baggage through
the use of philosophy and science.
 ▪ For instance, liberalism and socialism, communism are prominent forms of
modernist politics.
▪ In architecture, art, and music, mo dernist tried to produce timeless products
that were not tied to tradition but instead relied on formal mathematical rule.
• Postmodernism Overview
o Post-modernism means after the modern. It was a reaction to modernism and was
influenced by disenchantment brought on by the Second World War. Post-modernism
refers to the state that lacks a central hierarchy and one that is complex, ambiguous and
diverse.
▪ Example: development in society economy and culture of the 1960s were
impacted by post-modernism. Post-modernism can be thought of as a nihilistic
(rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless.)
response to modernism which was a positive and constructive ideology.
o Post modernists ascribed to the notion that modernist ideals can never be attained
because of differences among cultures and human beings in general.
o Heidegger – In other words post modernists like Heidegger Derrida and leotard attacked
the modernist belief in rationality, objectivity, and universalism in favor of relativism
(the view that there is no objective truth) as well as identity.
o Grand narratives like freedom societal progress scientific progress were criticized by
post modernists who instead emphasized that difference rather than forced unity
should be celebrated.
▪ This way of thinking came about because of some setbacks in the modernist
agenda. Like World War one, World War two, colonialism, and the failure of
both liberal capitalism and Stalinism to deliver what had been promised by
modernity, mainly wealth and freedom.
o Post-modernism is a backlash against modernity.
▪ Post modernists believed that the monstrosity of the wars was enabled by
modernism which they saw as the brainchild of the Enlightenment.
o Calculated reason and technology
▪ This belief dissipated faith in human progress and the perfectibility of human
nature. The collapse of tradition created a frightening situation whereby,
meaning became difficult to discern amid the horror of societal breakdown.
o After the wars, a return to the modernist project tradition was no longer a viable option.
This led to serious questioning of humankind's place in the universe. Post-modernism
hence represented a loss in faith, in human reason, post-modernism provides a bleak
prognosis of the human condition and offers no real solutions.
• Conclusion
o Modernism and post-modernism were both movements that emerged from an analysis
of events within the modern period from the perspective of the values of the
Enlightenment. But whereas, modernism offered a qualified endorsement of
Enlightenment ideals. Post-modernism was an unequivocal denunciation of them
modernism developed into an ideology of a unified world they unified humanity with
the shared vision and shared goals post-modernism on the other hand was a counter
movement to modernism post modernists argued that humankind may never reach its
goal of a unified humanity.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
• Friedrich Nietzsche is generally considered the precursor of postmodern philosophy (Erickson
2001: 84), the basis of which are: Antichrist (rejection of all attachment to God) and a call for a
re-evaluation of all values, a negation of conventional metaphysics, an insistence on
perspectivism, a rejection of ...
• Friedrich Nietzsche is generally considered the precursor of postmodern philosophy (Erickson
2001: 84), the basis of which are: Antichrist (rejection of all attachment to God) and a call for a
re-evaluation of all values, a negation of conventional metaphysics, an insistence on
perspectivism, a rejection of Enlightenment rationality and the advocation of will to power.
Nietzsche’s postmodern philosophy and his thought on translation play a fundamental role in
postmodern translation studies, uncrowning the author as God of the text, liberating the
translator, and enlarging the space of multi interpretative signifiers. Meanwhile, his insights
have helped extricate translators from ethical questions about their re-creativity, encourage
them to develop a translator’s subjectivity and consequently broaden the horizon of translation
studies. Such radical thoughts as perspectivism in interpretation, re-evaluation of Christian
values, a historical sense of the past, and the conquest of the Ancient, especially by translation,
can also be applied to his thoughts on translation (studies), though not so systematic as they
are, initiating an inspiring postmodern approach to translation studies, and exerting a lasting
and profound influence on his followers like Heidegger, Gadamer, Benjamin, Pound, Derrida,
Steiner, Lefevere, Venuti, etc. An elaborative review of Nietzsche’s insightful ideas as such
should clarify the genealogy of postmodern translation studies in general.

Rather, Heidegger's postmodernism lies in his sense that the late modern technologised epoch in which
we live hides within itself the possibility of 'another god', a paradigm shift that takes us beyond the
modern into a future we cannot yet envision."

Nietzsche – There, he came across Nietzsche's book "Untimely Meditations" which contains an essay
called "On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life". In the essay, Nietzsche argued that academics had
poisoned our sense of how history should be read and talked. They made it seem as if one should read
history in some sort of a disinterested way in order to learn how it all was in the past. But Nietzsche
rejected this with sarcastic fury. There was no point learning about the past for its own sake, the only
reason to read and study history is to dig out from the past ideas, concepts and examples which can help
us to lead a better life in our own times.

***

BOOK 1: Foucault, Michelle – Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

PASCAL: "Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of
madness"."

SUMMARY [What does it mean to be mad?]

• Foucault begins the book by saying that it is difficult to write about madness because people
who are deemed mad don’t usually write their own stories. Instead, doctors and other experts
 write down what they believe about madness. This creates a situation where there isn’t a
dialogue between these two experiences of being mad versus not being mad. The discourse is
monopolized by those who aren’t considered mad, so it’s hard to understand how one becomes
or remains mad during this time period called “the classical age.”
• Foucault can be criticized for his analysis of leprosy, which did not vanish entirely. He frequently
uses such flamboyant contrasts to point out the contrast between classical madness and its
predecessors.
• The discussion centers around the [classical age]: the end of the sixteenth and the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries
o The author discussed the concept of madness as they must have existed in their time,
place, and proper social perspective and not just connected the concepts of madness
from the past to what is relevant in the present. [The discussion shies away from looking
at the past in the light of the present; singling out only what has positive and direct
relevance to present-day psychiatry.]
• The reason as to why it was titled as Madness and Civilization is because it discussed the
changes on how Madness was treated all throughout the changing civilizations. The way
madness was also treated and how it manifested before was contrasted against how it is seen
today, hence, A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.
• This book uses history to enrich, deepen, and reveal new avenues for thought and investigation.
• Dispel more effectively than many previous attempts the myth of mental illness, and re-
establishes folly and unreason in their rightful place as complex, human-too human-
phenomena.
• Madness – it is a manifestation of the soul.
o It has come to be known as the ‘unconscious part of the human mind’ after Freud.
o Cure for madness: This sobering re-creation of yesteryear's madness and the ineffective
attempts of humanity to treat it by amputation, projections, prejudices, and
segregation.
o The madman possesses a kind of forbidden knowledge that relates to the end of the
world. The end of the world is the triumph of madness.
• Examining Madness through different facets:
o aspects – folly is brought back to life as a complex social phenomenon, part and parcel
of the human condition.
▪ Folly – lack of good sense; foolishness.
▪ Folly is so human that it has common roots with poetry and tragedy; it is
revealed as much in the insane asylum as in the writings of a Cervantes or a
Shakespeare, or in the deep psychological insights and cries of revolt of a
Nietzsche.
▪ Folly exists in psychology, medicine, and sociology and still very present in art,
religion, ethics, and epistemology.
▪ Freud's death instinct – stems from the tragic elements which led men of all
epochs to worship, laugh at, and dread folly simultaneously.
❖ Death instinct – the human tendency to destructive, risky or otherwise
negative behavior.
❖ Fascinating as Renaissance men found it – they painted it, praised it,
sang about it-it also heralded for them death of the body by picturing
death of the mind.
o End of Middle Ages – tragic aspect of madness, as in Tristan and Iseult
 o Renaissance – Erasmus's Praise of Folly; demonstrated how fascinating imagination and
some of its vagaries were to the thinkers of that day.
▪ Foolishness brings people happiness and keeps people productive, whereas too
much wisdom and prudence bring pain, depression, doubt, and lower levels of
productivity
o The French Revolution, Pinel, and Tuke – emphasized political, legal, medical, or
religious aspects of madness;
o (Today) objective medical approach – in spite of the benefits that it has brought to the
mentally ill, continues to look at only one side of the picture.

[STULTIFERA NAVIS – Narrenschiff]

• Shift from Leprosy to Madness (1200-1400)
o The disappearance of leprosy, perhaps was related to the shift of societal attention to
madness. Due to the isolation of lepers and its vanishment, there was a void to find
another scapegoat to use as reasons for non-contribution to the society. Mental illness
and unreason attracted that stigma to themselves, but even this was neither complete,
simple, nor immediate.
• Three Phases of Cultural Revolution of Insanity
o *Middles Ages [apocalypse]
▪ The increase of lepers that were segregated into their own colonies or leper
houses.
▪ They gradually disappear, most probably due to segregation.
▪ Narrenschiff, or ship of fools – Is a symbol of the changing status of madness,
which is linked to a wider network of symbols. The fifteenth century book from
which the Narrenschiff is drawn, written by Sebastian Brandt, mixes woodcut
images of madness with text. Many readers have pointed out that this is
Foucault's only source for the ship of fools; there is little evidence that the ship
actually existed.
▪ Religion – madness was linked to the end of the world according to
Christian/catholic beliefs. – Foucault feels that madness was a way of expressing
and locating concerns about the darker side of life and fear about the end of the
world.
▪ Madness as Life and Death – This is how Foucault can see madness as both
replacing and resembling death. Madness resembled death because it was a
frightening phenomenon that threatened life and reason. But it also replaced
death as a concern because people's concerns changed.
o Renaissance Period [limit human experience]
▪ Literary representation of madness – by Shakespeare and Cervantes
❖ Essential truth – Madness in King Lear and Don Quixote becomes a kind
of ultimate limit. Being mad is the worst thing that can happen to
anyone, partly because it destroys humanity. But Foucault recognizes
that this is an image of madness that reverses and alters reality. It is a
"trompe d'oeil" (French for an image that deceives the eye) because it
misleads the audience about its essential truth.
▪ Foucault feels that madness was a way of expressing and locating concerns
about the darker side of life and fear about the end of the world.
 ▪ Madness moves from being one of many vices to being the key human
weakness. This concept has little to do with the dark world. No mystery is
concealed. Knowledge is linked to madness; madness is the truth of knowledge
because knowledge is absurd. Fake learning leads to madness
▪ Presence of leper/leprosy colonies in the Middle Ages – these where colonies
[leper houses] wherein people with leprosy were separated and isolated from
the rest of society [isolation method].
▪ The isolation method continued until the renaissance and classical periods.
▪ As the isolation method progresses along with civilization, people that were
seen as ‘mad’ by society were also put though this isolation method [there was
a shift in societal interest – from leprosy to madness].
▪ Since the colonies [isolation structures] were already built, that was first
intended for lepers, it was easier to shift it to people who were mad since it was
already built.
▪ Ships of Fools – term used to address the affinity between folly, water, and sea.
Use in the hopes that they were taken away from the city to find their sanity.
❖ Ships of fools was the way of dealing with mad denizens (occupants) in
the renaissance. [it is an isolation method]
❖ The ships of Fools traveled the seas and canals of Europe with their
cargo of souls.’
❖ Different effect of ships of fools – some of them found pleasure and
even a cure in the changing surroundings, in the isolation of being cast
off, while others withdrew further, became worse, or died alone and
away from their families.
❖ Ships filled with lunatics were treated as a sideshow by cities and
villages as they dock at harbors.
▪ The mad were seen as those with unique sources of wisdom. Madness was
considered as the underside of humankind; where it magnified frailties, dreams,
illusions, and imagination gone wild.
▪ It was also considered that madness was a sign of God’s hand, concluding that
they might be good reasons for it. [we can connect it to Quaker Tuke’s thinking
that the mad need divine intervention and that their actions caused their
madness].

[THE GREAT CONFINEMENT]

• Classical Age [forefront of human consciousness
o In this period, the focus shifted to the ‘great confinement’.
o The discussion of the great confinement centers around with a general hospital located
in Paris wherein it was more of a prison rather than a hospital, hence, ‘confinement’.
o Madness was linked to confinement
o 1656 – establishment of Hospital General on Hospital
• Hospital – it was semi-juridical (questionable legality) and administrative (business or
organization rather than a medical establishment
o Great Confinement – the idea came from the fact that they used hospitals to confine
people who were ‘seen’ as ‘threats to society’
 ▪ Not just criminals, but also poor people(indigents), and mad
people(demented). [Separation and Isolation from the renaissance period is
still evident with the Great Confinement of the classical Age].
• Unreason or the Irrational – this group consisted of the mad, the poor, and the criminal.
o The Poor, the Mad, and the Moral
▪ Poor – The poor were forced to work as idleness was seen as root of evil and
that poverty was a sign of wrongdoing. Work and labor was seen as a way back
to God.
▪ These institutions where they were confined weren't medical or humanitarian
but moral institutions that is they were defined and organized by the moral and
ethical attitudes religious or otherwise of the time and place
• Social deviancy – part of the wide group abnormal
o All of these phenomena express a desire to control, and to define people
• Economic Crisis – It involved high inflation, harvest shortages and was matched by political
crises in many countries. Confinement was a one response to these problems. An age that tried
to define "normality" in terms of economic productivity attempted to isolate and exclude
those who could not or would not produce.
o Morality and work were closely linked, and so those who were confined became bad
people.
o madness in the classical period was silenced and isolated. It was not allowed to speak,
and was seen as a moral and economic evil. Similarly, the concept of unreason was
extended include a wide range of "dangerous" people.
• Confinement became an amalgam of various elements, but at the beginning a certain unity must
have existed. A particular group was chosen to replace the leper in places of confinement; we
need to discover what constituted this group. Various themes are important in this new attitude
to madness: a new attitude to poverty, new reactions to the economic problems of
unemployment and idleness, a new work ethic and a new vision of the city in which moral
obligation and civil law are linked within authoritarian constraint. These themes were present in
the city of confinement and explain how the classical period perceived madness. [the changes
were more centered on how the society or the people that don’t belong in “that” group react.
What were there reactions to the changes or how do they treat the people in the confined
group]
o Great confinement of people who were ‘seen’ as ‘threats to society’ boils down to
whether or not they can contribute to society.
▪ Due to much social unrest and economic depression, which they tried to solve
by imprisoning the indigents with the criminals and forcing them to work – they
were treated poorly as they were deemed to have no contribution to society.
▪ Poor People as Moral Failures – they were included in the great confinement
because they thought that poor people did not contribute to society thus, they
were a threat. [Poor People are not seen as economic threats but as moral
failures that needs fixing].
❖ Mad people were included to the great confinement because they were
also seen as someone who do not contribute anything to society.
• Imperative labor and police – the police played a key role in ensuring that people are
continuously working since they say that the mad, poor, and criminal are guilty of idleness. Since
confinement was established to condemn idleness. In fact, confinement was the solution to the
economic problems; to get rid of beggars in the streets and towns.
 o The idea of confinement was being taken advantage of since it was first, introduced as a
way to cure the mad. Then, it was introduced to lessen idleness which caused madness;
they made people work. Lastly, it was to reduce labor cost, people were not
compensated for it.
o They were not confined because they need medical attention, or out of humanitarian
concern, but because the power of the state needs to control them. It needs to do this
because by separating them from "normal" society the state helps to define itself. Only
by controlling the abnormal can the "normal" exist
• Analysis – Madness and Civilization is organized around key shifts in the status of madness
within society. The Great Confinement is one of these shifts. Confinement involves a series of
measures—building houses of confinement and prisons, the creation of a new kind of social
space, and the realignment of madness within this space. Buildings were important as the
means by which confinement was achieved. They also have great symbolic value. The Hospital
General represents the beginning of confinement and the only place of confinement that
Foucault analyzes. Taking one building or text as representative of a whole movement is typical
of Foucault's approach.

[THE INSANE]
• The age of reason confined all sorts of irregular and abnormal people. In doing so, it created its
own profile of the experience of unreason. Confinement was primarily concerned with scandal;
it imposed secrecy in order to avoid scandal.
o During the classical age, madness was publicly shamed and publicly forced to
confinement, however, in the age of reason, anything that eads to unreason must be
hidden in secrecy.
• *Enlightenment Period – the Great Age of Reason [Modern Error/Era]
o The age of reason began the discovery of science of rationalism and careful study.
However, it led to the fear of madness instead of studying it to reduce madness to
silence.
o Great medicalization of madness – great medicalization was the term used when
doctors shifted to using new scientific methods borrowed from biology and medicine to
study militant mental illness.
▪ Example: Doctors founded their ideas on madness based on observations such
as linking depression and anxiety to bodily locations within organs and nerves
[physical problems and bodily functions too].
o The rise of modern mental institutions.
• Public Exhibition of madmen – the mad were also publicly shamed in the Renaissance, as they
were seen everywhere. However, the public shaming of the insane during the classical age was
intentional.
o Lunatic hospital, such as Bethlehem in London, the mad was exhibited behind bars to
show organization
• Insanity – if reason determined what was unreasonable what reasons were there for dealing
with insanity? [The mad were confined for the sole purpose of avoiding public scandal].
o Focault describing the mad: screech owls with toad-like bodies mingle with the naked
bodies of the damned in Thierry bout's hell. In fact, the work of Stefan Lochner pollutes
with winged insects, cat-headed butterflies, and cervixes with mayfly wing cases, and
birds with handed wings that instill panic and while it fascinates mankind with its
 disorder, its fury, and its plethora of monstrous impossibilities, it also serves to reveal the
dark rage and sterile folly that lurks in the heart of mankind.
▪ social disorder of course is the opposite of an ordered society, and so scandal
along with idleness and poverty should be locked away.
o Animality of the mad – The insane were also likened to animals since it was rationality
as Aristotle had argued, that made man something more than animal the lower beasts
had passions, fears, and desires but not reason. But animality could still be traced in
civilized man, it sometimes got the better of people. [Madness was born from
animality].
▪ Madmen were similar to beasts, and were treated as such. The animality of
madness takes away what is human
▪ In the classical period, the madman was not a sick man. Animality protected the
madman from whatever was fragile in man. It made him oblivious to cold,
hunger or pain.
▪ Confinement glorified the animality of madness but tried to avoid the
immorality of the unreasonable [the guilty innocence of the animal in man.]
▪ By removing his humanity, madness makes the madman dangerously free. He
cannot be bound by human laws, and so has to be confined.
• Irrationality of animals – The "animal" is not part of nature because the order of nature implies
a rational order. In a way, the practices of confinement are justified by this conception of
madness; they attempt to hide away this irrationality.
o Madness and the way the mad were treated made sense only against a background fear
of absolute liberty. Confining madness, Foucault argues, was the eighteenth century's
way of dealing with this fear.
• Pinel on animality – the farmer’s method “consisted in forcing the insane to perform the most
difficult tasks of farming in using them as beasts of burden as servants in reducing them to an
ultimate obedience with a barrage of blows at the least act of revolt.”
o In pure animality madness was to find its truth and its cure as madness becomes reason
and humanity becomes unreason. Unchained animality could be mastered only by
disciplining and brutalizing.
• Rene Descartes (father of enlightenment) – If men are reasonable then madness must be
banished. Madness, insanity became a problem in the 17th century. Madness was placed into a
zone of exclusion; a threat in theory and in practice that the period didn't know what to do with.
o In fact, the hospitals lied between assistance and imprisonment and was often built on
the sites of leprosy communities.
o Back then, even if there was breakthroughs in medicalization, confinement of the mad
was a police matter who was designated for isolation for segregation from reasonable
society.
• Analysis – Foucault explores the changing relationship between madness and unreason.
Irregular and abnormal people were the lazy, wife-beaters, tramps, the work-shy and the mad.
Foucault says that that these people were defined as abnormal by their society. They were not
inherently odd, but were seen as such by society. Foucault uses the example of these people to
show how a split emerged between madness and unreason. Evil unreason, such as those who
committed terrible crimes, or pornographers and libertines such as the Marquis de Sade, were
hidden away out of shame, and to protect society. Madness, however, had to be revealed. This
was partly to separate it from other forms, but more importantly so that it could be observed.
The idea that observation is a form of control and organization is important to Foucault, and is
repeated in his later work. The public who paid to see madmen helped to set them in their
 place, and by being observed the insane could be placed in a particular social space within
unreason. An important distinction is drawn between this situation of observation, and the
Renaissance experience. Foucault's image of the Renaissance has madness present as a force in
society. It was part of everyday experience, not observed in particular situations. Experiencing
madness in this way did not involve controlling it.

[PASSION AND DELIRIUM]

• The passions were also important in classical madness; because they unite body and soul, they
allow madness to occur. Foucault analyses the concept of delirium, which is a discourse that
essentially defines madness. Classical madness is a discourse that departs from the path of
reason. The link between madness and dreams was also an important part of the classical
conception of madness. There were four key themes within the classical conception of madness:
melancholia/mania and hysteria/hypochondria. They were located within medical and moral
debates, and were eventually seen as mental diseases as time progressed.
• Passion is not the cause of madness but they were linked together – Madness was related to the
very possibility of passion.
• *Classical Error/Era – Society started to view madness differently due to an increase in scientific
and philosophical knowledge
• People started to associate insanity to a build up of fluid called humor in the body
o Discarded theory of the four bodily humors—blood, bile, melancholy, and phlegm.
[Shakespeare] – These four humors were understood to define peoples’ physical and
mental health, and determined their personality, as well. The language of the four
humors pervades Shakespeare's plays, and their influence is felt above all in a belief that
emotional states are physically determined. Carried by the bloodstream, the four humors
bred the core passions of anger, grief, hope, and fear—the emotions conveyed so
powerfully in Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies. Today, neuroscientists recognize a
connection between Shakespeare's age and our own in the common understanding that
the emotions are based in biochemistry and that drugs can be used to alleviate mental
suffering. [Anger, envy, and lust are all passions. Passions are experienced in the mind,
but have a physical effect, provoking bodily movement. The passions link mind and
body, because they begin in the mind and lead to action.]
• Passion was the place where the body and soul met. The medicine of spirits and humors
explains how passions and the body's movements interacted. Passion offers the possibility for
madness because it allows diseases like madness in which the body and soul are affected.
Passion makes madness possible.
o Madness was not just the consequence of passion; it was created by the unity of body
and soul, and put that unity into question.
• Circle of non being – hallucination and error
o Madness beginning in passion is also the suspension of passion and the dissolution of
the unity of body and soul. This is because, the human becomes out of touch with his
train of thoughts.
o Beginning with passion, madness is an intense movement of the unity of body and soul.
• Imagination and Madness – Imagination is not madness. Madness is beyond imagination
because it asserts that imagination is truth, but yet it is rooted in imagination. Madness has its
own strange logic. It takes an image, undermines it and organizes it around a segment of
language. The ultimate language of madness is reason, but reason enveloped in the importance
of the image. [There is reason when we imagine, our thoughts run through and we start to
 think. Therefore, madness is rooted in imagination, it is where it starts. However, madness is
beyond imagination and reorganizes what he imagines and asserts that it is the truth]
• Classical Madness
o 1. a perfectly organized surface discourse, which is a kind of reason in action, - Classical
madness is essentially the existence of delirious discourse, not a change in mind or
body.
o 2. second delirium of pure reason which makes it truly madness. In the classical
conception of madness, there are two forms of delirium.
▪ 1. The first is a special form that is linked to certain diseases of the mind such
as melancholia. This delirium is part of the signs of madness.
▪ 2. The second is implicit delirium, which exists in all alterations of mind. –
Delirium comes from the Latin word deliro, meaning to move out of the proper
path.
• Madness and Dreams – Madness occurs when the madman deceives himself about dream-like
images. Madness begins where access to the truth is clouded.
o deliria alter the relationship to truth in perception, hallucinations alter representation,
and dementias weaken the faculties that afford access to the truth.
o Blindness comes close to the nature of classical madness.
o Madness, which includes blindness and sight, night and day, is ultimately nothing
because it unites negative things. Classical madness is always retreating but always
visible in the figure of the madman.
• Truth in Madness – However, for Foucault the key difference between madness and these
unreal images is truth. Foucault says that madness exists when someone believes that fantastic
images are true. Madness involves a distortion of the truth as the mad person experiences it. It
has its own language, and the delusion of the madman makes sense within his distorted world.
• Art – Foucault argues madness is expressed and explored through art. Tragedy and madness are
the outer limits of reason for Foucault, and in tragedy the tragic figure and the madman
confront each other. The two limits come together. A final shift occurs at the end of the section.
Whereas the animal nature of classical madness took away the humanity of the madman, now
the idea of non-being takes away everything. Madness ultimately becomes an expression of
nothing and non- existence.

[ASPECTS OF MADNESS]
• Aspects of Madness
o a disequilibrium of the passions and emotions could lead
o to madness. City life for example in its unnatural rhythms and multiplicity of excitations
could drive men insane, but how that disbalance was conceptualized, determined not
just who was considered mad but how fuco argues madness itself was experienced
o Again, rather than being outside of reason it had a logic to it the ultimate language of
madness. [The situation argues that madness or unreason stems from reason itself
and that, to cure madness, was to experience full animality. Considering beings, the
only thing that separates man from animals is reason and therefore, to bring the
reason and humanity and not act out of order, the mad must be brutalized into
obedience].
▪ Example: the father blames himself of killing his own son by taking him to the
beach where he had drowned. The father believed that homicide was
 punishable by God and there is a logic a belief that becomes so powerful that it
manifests its truth in all experience a delirious discourse.
• Madness and Melancholia
o Melancholia – Its symptoms were the ideas that a delirious person formed about
himself. From 16th-17th century, melancholia was linked to the four humors of the body.
The theme of partial delirium disappeared, and was replaced by qualitative data like
sadness, solitude and immobility.
▪ Foucault's definition of melancholia is unique, and does not refer to depression.
A melancholic person could have a range of delirious symptoms, including
unreal or false beliefs, combined with an otherwise normal personality.
▪ Doctors believed that there were four humors—blood, phlegm, choler and
black bile—which corresponded to the four elements of fire, water, air and
earth. Different personality types had a different balance of humors; the
melancholic personality had too much black bile. The doctor's task was to
balance out the humors.
▪ The shift that Foucault describes is a subtle one. Instead of believing that
melancholia was caused by an imbalance of physical substances (humors) within
the body, classical doctors now believed that melancholia could be caused by
the patient's mental state. Foucault describes the narrowing down of a
condition and the establishment of firm definitions.
o Mania – Mania was opposed to melancholia, but both were believed to be due to a
movement of animal spirits. In the 18th century, images of animal spirits were replaced
by nerve fibers. Objects did not present themselves as "real" to the maniac. A
psychological explanation replaced ideas of humors and tension
▪ A similar process occurred with the concept of mania. Whereas melancholics
could have a range of symptoms, maniacs were highly excitable, wild and
uncontrollable. Doctors came to realize that mania was the exact opposite of
melancholia
• Hysteria and Hypochondria – slowly began to be seen as the same disease
o Both were seen as a mental disease in the classical period
▪ 1. It was united to form the concept of disease of nerves
▪ 2. integrated into "diseases of the mind."
o The disordered movement of hysteria and hypochondria was believed to result from the
disordered movement of animal spirits.
o Hysteria – hysteria is essentially a disease of spasm, convulsion and over-excitement. It
is particularly common in women.
▪ Hysteria was a deceptive disease because it had various symptoms. Doctors said
that it affected women more because they had "softer" bodies. The idea that
the womb "rose" above its place was replaced by the belief that spirits moved
chaotically within the body.
▪ This problem haunted eighteenth century medicine. It would make hysteria and
hypochondria diseases of the general agency of all sympathies. The nervous
system was used to explain the body's sensibility with regard to its own
phenomena. The sympathetic sensibility of women predisposed them to the
"vapors" and nervous disease.
▪ The word hysteria is derived from the Greek word for "womb".
▪ Hysterical people were blinded by experiencing too much. This blindness left the
way open for madness.
 o Hypochondria - Hypochondria is falsely believing yourself to be ill
o On the threshold of the nineteenth century, the view that hysteria and hypochondria
were mental diseases remained. However, by the distinction between sensibility and
sensation, they were associated with unreason, characterized by blindness.
o The discussion of hysteria and hypochondria centers on the idea of mental disease.
Mental disease is a condition affecting the mind that is treated by doctors and that has
recognized symptoms.
• Sympathy – It was believed that too much sensibility resulted in unconsciousness or nervous
shock. One could fall ill from too much exposure to outside, worldly stimulation.
o As a result, people were both more innocent and more guilty. They were guilty because
their lifestyle and passions irritated their nerves. The innocence of the nervous sufferer
was seen as evidence of a deeper guilt and its punishment.
• Madness – Madness, on the other hand, is a state of being linked to unreason that has a
complex relationship with reason itself.

[DOCTORS AND PATIENTS]

• Cures for madness in the classical period aimed to cure the entire individual. Physical cures
developed from moral perception and a therapeutics of the body.
o 1) Consolidation. Madness has elements of secret weakness, a lack of resistance. A
force needs to be found in nature to reinforce nature.
o 2) Purification. Madness elicits a series of therapeutics that are intended to purify. The
ideal is total purification.
o 3) Immersion. Two themes are present; ablution (washing) and immersion, which
modify liquids and solids. Plunging madmen into water offers a chance to return to
purity.
o 4) Regulation of movement. Madness is the irregular agitation of spirits, and also the
immobility of limbs and ideas. Walking, running and sea voyages all help to restore
movement. The subject must be returned to his original purity and initiated back into
the world from pure subjectivity
• These techniques lasted longer than their efficacy; when madness received psychological and
moral meaning, they remained. Cures change direction, and start to act on the body or the soul;
they are addressed to the various elements that make up a disease.
o Passion is still used in curing madmen. It represents the acceptance of a reciprocal
symbolism of body and soul.
o Fear is a particularly useful tool. The difference between physical and psychological
treatments becomes valid only when fear is no longer used, when the nineteenth
century has brought madness and it cure into the arena of guilt.
o Psychology as a tool for curing becomes organized around punishment. A difference
exists between the physical and the moral in modern medical thought.
• Two technical universes always existed in the treatment of madness; addressing madness as
passion and seeing madness as a mistake of language and image, or delirium. Three essential
configurations exist:
o 1) Awakening. A need existed to tear the delirious from waking sleep. Descartes tried to
achieve absolute awakening, but in madness it is medicine that intervenes to awaken.
The physician reproduces the moment of the Cogito in relation to madness. Awakening
can be violent, or proceed from wisdom. Slowly, authoritarian awakening became only a
return to the good or moral law.
 o 2)Theatrical representation. This is opposed to awakening. Here, therapy operates in
the imagination. It continues the delirious discourse, and maintains the grammar and
meaning of hallucination. Theatrical representation drives out the madness of delirium.
3)The return to the immediate. If madness is an illusion, the cure of madness can also be
brought about by its suppression. To give madness to a nature that cannot deceive
because it does not acknowledge non-being is to give it to its own truth.
• Nature has a fundamental power in the suppression of madness; it can force man from his
freedom. In nature man is freed from social constraints and passion, but he is bound by a
system of natural obligations. A liberation of madness is possible in which madness is opened to
the constraints of nature. But the return to the immediate is effective only if the immediate is
controlled.
• Psychology was born as a sign that madness was detached from its truth (unreason) and was
adrift. What belonged to disease became organic and what pertained to unreason became
psychological. Freud studied madness at the level of its language. He restored the possibility of
dialogue with unreason. Psychology was not involved with psychoanalysis; rather, it was the
experience of unreason that psychology was supposed to mask.
• Analysis: After his discussion of the various aspects and conditions that form madness, Foucault
examines their treatments. He analyzes a central part of the process of confinement, and the
development of the idea of curing or treating madness. Initially, madness was not seen as an
illness or something that could be treated. But Foucault suggests that even when the idea of a
cure developed, it was not a medical development. Madness was still seen in terms of morality
and the links between body and soul that come from a theory of the passions. The initial cures
that he discusses (consolidation, purification, immersion and regulation of movement) all relate
to the body, but affect both body and soul, such as purification. There is a great difference
between this and nineteenth century techniques which center on the moral improvement of the
madman. These techniques force the madman to face up to his abnormal or "bad" behavior.
The doctor or warder encourages the madman's conscience to operate; he is made to fear both
his captors and the consequences of bad behavior. Earlier, Foucault discussed the idea of
madness as a punishment for immoral behavior; here, immoral behavior provoked by madness
is punished. The introduction of punishment and guilt into the treatment of the madman
represents a more sophisticated kind of confinement. Valuing and using the madman's guilt
indicates a certain ideal of sanity and good behavior—the "normal" person observes recognized
standards of good behavior and obeys his conscience.
• Science and Morality
o The idea of madness as moral evil is still a central theme. The relationship between
madness and morality is characteristic of nineteenth century psychology. Psychology for
Foucault is more about morality than science. Only when morality and madness are
completely linked is psychology possible. Although classical physicians may talk to or
reason with their patients, and appear to treat their minds, this is not a truly
psychological approach. Reasoning is not enough; only moral judgment and an attempt
to use guilt as a treatment represents a truly psychological approach.
• Psychoanalysis
o Finally, Foucault's discussion of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis is important. Foucault
sees psychoanalysis, which involves the idea of deciphering the symbols and language of
madness and mental disease in a dialogue with the patient as a way of restoring contact
with unreason. The absence of moral judgment and punishment in psychoanalysis
means that it can access areas closed to nineteenth century psychology.
[THE GREAT FEAR]
• Reason and Unreason:
o Unreason reappeared with a new power of interrogation. But the eighteenth century
only noticed its social effects. For the first time since the Great Confinement, the
madman became a social individual. For the first time, he was questioned. But yet
madmen were only caricatures or silhouettes; their status is unsure. By letting madmen
back into the light, classical reason admits its closeness to unreason. Reason allowed its
double to drift onto the margins. But fear and anxiety were close. [Reason comes with
individuality; of having the chance to speak, to get to known. The thing that goes
against that is unreason]
• Confinement
o People were afraid of being confined. Confinement became a place of evil. A medical
fear inspired by moral myth arose. People feared disease spread from houses of
confinement. Houses of confinement were seen as sites of corruption and corrupted air,
as with leprosy. The old fears about leprosy seemed to synthesize unreason and the
medical universe. But the doctor entered the world of unreason as a guardian, not to
decide who was mad or sane. [Confinement, instead of curing the mad became a
symbol of fear and isolation for the mad]
o reform movement aimed to organize and purify the houses of confinement. Morality
and medicine tried to defend themselves against the dangers of confinement. The
horrors confined in such places were fascinating, as de Sade's work shows. The classical
period confined not only madmen and criminals, but also the fantastic. Fortresses of
confinement separated reason from unreason on the surface, but also preserved places
where they mixed. Confinement preserved forbidden imagery intact from the sixteenth
to the nineteenth century. But in the darkness these images mutated. [confinement
• Madness and Unreason – In the classical period, awareness of madness and unreason had not
separated from each other. Madness nearly disappeared in unreason. The fear of madness
grew at the same time as the fear of unreason, so the two reinforced each other. Concern grows
that man becomes more delicate as he perfects himself. Nervous diseases are growing. The
threat of madness is ever-present. [Madness and unreason are two different things]
o Madness and unreason intertwine at this point; it becomes difficult to divide the two
concepts. But madness increasingly becomes a cultural phenomenon, related to society,
time and human lifestyles. The relationship between madness and civilization emerges
as a theme, madness is related to external factors, and becomes a disease of society.
• Madness and Liberty – Montesquieu says that there is an English tendency toward suicide,
which is brought on by their climate. A political and economic solution is being sought, in which
progress and institutions explain madness. Madness is seen by other writers as the result of the
liberty enjoyed in England. Liberty alienates man from himself and his world
• Religion – Religious belief prepares the ground for madness. It involves the satisfaction or
repression of the passions. The organization of the believer's time by priests is beneficial. Old
religion is a positive force, but modern religion eventually allows madness to function freely.
• Civilization – Civilization is the milieu suitable for the development of madness. The progress of
knowledge allows a mania for study and a dangerous excitement of the mind to develop.
Sensibility also detaches men from feeling; a sensibility that is controlled by the demands of
social life is dangerous. Novels and theater excite people in a dangerous way. The novel perverts
sensibility because it leads the soul into a world of imaginary sensibility.
 • Fear of Madness – Fear developed at the same time, however. The fear of leprosy with which
Foucault begins Madness and Civilization mutated into a fear of the whole structure of
confinement, not just of the madman. The fact that they were partly fears of the diseases that
madmen could transmit involved doctors in the process of confinement. Again, however,
Foucault emphasizes that madness was not a medical matter. The doctor protected madmen
and the public, but did not create or define madness in any way.

[THE NEW DIVISION]

• Condemnation of the treatment for the Madmen
o Age of positivism claimed that they were the first to separate the mad from the
criminals
o In the 19th century, society thought that the mad men should be treated better than
prisoners; Vice versa to 18th century, they believed that prisoners should not be treated
as the mad.
• Awareness for Madness
o The awareness did not start because of humanitarian movement or scientific need. The
changes and awareness came from confinement.
o Protesters saw that some of the confined were different from the mad
o Punishing Power – The confinement of poor, criminal and the mad was a sign of
punishment sand punishing power since being confined among the mad was seen as a
punishment
• Confining Power
o Mixing of the mad and the sane
o Madness became the symbol of confining power and became the object of
confinement. Madness became the only reason for confinement.
o The presence of the mad was an injustice for others
• Economy and Poverty
o Poverty – Poverty was slowly freed from its former moral confusions. Poverty became
an economic phenomenon. A certain kind of poverty was a permanent feature of life. It
had a necessary role in society. [before, poverty was seen as a moral problem, now, it
became an economic problem]
o First was poverty, an economic situation related to commerce, agriculture and industry.
o Second was population, a force contributing to the state of the nation. The two were
inter- related.
• Confinement as an economic error
o Confinement was an economic error because poverty had to be suppressed by removing
or maintaining a poor population. There was a need to utilize a pool of poor labor. [it
was an economic error because instead of helping the poor, they were hidden and
exploited. The use of the confined people for labor educed labor costs and the
finances on managing the confinements was mismanaged]
• The necessity of confinement disappeared in the eighteenth century. Madness was set free
before Pinel, not from its actual constraints but from the power of unreason. Even before the
French Revolution, madness was free. Left alone within confinement, madness was a problem.
Legislators no longer knew where to situate madness; this was reflected in pre-Revolutionary
measures. After the Revolutionary reforms, the era of confinement was over. Imprisonment
shared by criminals and the mad remained. There was a need to separate the insane from
 criminals. An ambiguous need existed to protect the population from madness and to give it
special treatment.
• Analysis – The "new division" that Foucault discusses here is the split that emerges between
madness and other forms of confinement in the late eighteenth century. The nineteenth
century division between madmen and criminals puts considerable value on the madman. But
it does not do so simply because society feels that the madman deserves sympathy. Foucault
always denies such humanitarian motives. Instead, he sees structural changes in the nature of
confinement as more important. Within confinement, madness mutated into something
different. Foucault emphasizes that the voices of the mad are silenced in confinement, but
that these changes show how powerful their voice can be. Foucault is generally concerned to
allow the voices of the confined, prisoners and the mad to be heard.
• Changes of confinement are due to two factors:
o first, a change in the status of madness and second, economic change. It was no longer
appropriate for madmen and otherwise sane deviants to be mixed together; therefore
madness had to be isolated. It was separated from other social ills to become a special
category.
o The second cause was perhaps the most powerful. In the second section of Madness
and Civilization, Foucault explains how confinement was structured by the seventeenth
century economic crisis and changing attitudes to labor. The role of confinement within
society depended to a great extent on its economic value. When its economic value
disappeared, its profile had to change.
• Segregation of criminals and indigents from fools/madman
o Legislation was considered for their segregation back in the 1780s. The initial purpose
that aided this legislation was the desire to protect the poor, the criminal, the man
imprisoned for debts, and the juvenile delinquent from the frightening bestiality of the
madman.
o From lepers to madman – the madman had replaced the leper. They were now the
center of isolation and used as scapegoat; hence the need to protect others. .

[BIRTH OF THE ASYLUM]

• Asylums act as evidence that madness was finally treated properly. Pinel's liberation of the
insane from Bicetre and Tuke's asylum, are also famous. They reveal a series of operations that
organized the asylu
• Development of the Asylum
o Foucault analyzes two people that he finds that represents the development of the
asylum system. Both of which were labeled as the saviors of the mentally ill.
▪ Samuel ‘William’ Tuke
▪ Philippe Pinel
o Samuel ‘William’ Tuke – the Tuke Retreat in England
▪ The Tuke retreat offered treatment for the insane.
▪ Since Tuke was a quaker, the treatment for madness involved and was guided
by religion
❖ Quakers believed that there was a bit of god in everybody and that
everybody has their own unique worth [historically Protestant Christian
set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of
Friends].
 ▪ Guilt and Actions – Samuel wanted the insane people to come face to face with
their own guilt and actions – he thought that by doing so the insane could then
function properly
❖ The main rule of the treatment then was that patients would be
constantly observed/watched and judged. Samuel ‘William’ Tuke hoped
that through this setup, the insane would be repaired and will learn
from themselves too
▪ Familial Feel structure of the Asylum – Samuel ‘William’ Tuke
❖ The mad people were like children that had to be disciplined by a father
figure. Therefore, due to this structure, madness started to look like a
act of rebellion against the family instead of a disease.
❖ The dynamics, therefore, since the mad are seen as children it is
assumed that they must learn to obey; they are dependent on their
families and that they are not meant to be locked up.
❖ Therefore, since they serve as children, they have physical freedom to
move around but at the same time, they have to follow a strict system
of norms
❖ According to Foucault this is not the liberation of madness from chains
but the mastery of magnus by norms.
▪ Retreat used as conversion – While the Quaker Tuke applied his religious
principles, first to demented "friends" and later to foes also, partly to convert
them.
o Philippe Pinel – skeptical of religion
▪ He had a moral explanation that he stuck to for madness as he saw magnus as a
moral failure.
▪ Pinel’s view – people should be productive and that they should contribute to
society [madness is a social failure].
▪ Disciplined into norms structure of the Asylum – Philippe Pinel
❖ It would be logical to have the asylum set up in such a way that people
would be disciplined into these norms into these social norms.
▪ Three Main Principles of Pinel’s Asylum [aim: achieve social conformity]
❖ First: silence – The mad people were left alone to themselves which
would allow them to self-reflect and come face to face with the so-
called social failures
❖ Second: observe themselves – they were asked to look at themselves in
the middle mirror rather than being observed by others
❖ Third: compare the actions with the social norms – looking at oneself in
the mirror caused the mad people to feel as if they were always
watching themselves. So, this became a learned trait and so the mad
men will always analyze themselves and compare the actions with the
social norms that were being set upon them.
▪ Pinel’s confusion in dealing with sick people – Pinel was not sure at times that
he was dealing with sick people; he often marveled at their unbelievable
endurance of physical hardship, and often cited the ability of schizophrenic
women to sleep naked in subfreezing temperatures without suffering any ill
effects. Were not these people more healthy, more resistant than ordinary
human beings? Didn't they have too much animal spirit in them?
• Rise of Medical Personage
 o Philippe and Samuel used different technique but the one thing they had in common
was that they contributed to the rise of medical personage
o Both type of Asylum was run by a physician wherein it gave way for the mad to be
managed by doctors.
▪ It is stressed that it was important that they were not put into a system of
criminal reform but in a system of medical knowledge and the requirement of
having asylums run by a medical doctor was continued on
• Western Culture: Art and Madness
o In western culture people tend to be very attracted to artists who we believe are insane
▪ Example: Vincent van Gogh but van Gogh himself believed that his insanity and
his art had nothing to do with each other.
o There is no madness in the work of art itself but that it just exists in the relationship
between the work of art and the world that judges it.
• Types of Madness
o Madness by romantic identification – Cervantes;
▪ For Shakespeare and Cervantes, madness was beyond appeal; it is situated in
ultimate regions. But madness becomes the image of punishment rather than
the real thing. It is deprived of dramatic seriousness because it is fake. Madness
takes one thing for another. It establishes a kind of false equilibrium.
o madness of vain presumption – present in all men to an extent
o Madness of just punishment;
o Madness of desperate passion – Ophelia and King Lear.
• Conclusion
o The standard view is that we now treat people with mental illness in so much more of a
humane way than we ever did in the past. After all, we put them in hospitals, give them
drugs and get them looked after by people with PhD's. But this was exactly the attitude
that Foucault wished to demolish in "Madness and Civilization." In the book, he argued
that things way back in the Renaissance were actually far better for the mad, than they
subsequently became. In the Renaissance, the mad were felt to be different rather than
crazy. They were thought to possess a kind of wisdom because they demonstrated the
limits of reason. They were revered in many circles and were allowed to wander freely.
But then, as Foucault's historical researches showed him, in the mid-17th century, a new
attitude was born that relentlessly medicalized and institutionalized mentally ill people.
No longer were they allowed to live alongside the so-called sane, they were taken away
from their families and locked up in asylums and seen as people one should try to cure
rather than tolerate for just being different.
o Madness and Civilization dived simultaneously into the debates over phenomenology
and the debates over the history of ideas. Foucault's 'history of experience' brought
history and metaphysics together in an explosive mix that sought to trace the history of
madness not as a clearly extant thing, but as an 'experience' that is constituted as a
thing by certain forms of discourse.

*****
BOOK 2: Foucault, Michel – The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language:

[GENERAL SUMMARY]
• Relation of History of Knowledge and Historical Time Period
• This book is used to describe the format on how the books (Madness and Civilization, The Birth
of the Clinic, and The Order of Things) were discussed and analyzed. A description of a specific
kind of approach to history (a 'way of speaking' about history). [. (Each of these works, he
notes, had a flaw owing to the then- undeveloped nature of the theoretical ideas published
here: the first came too close to 'admitting a general subject of history, the second threatened
specificity by being too structural, and the third may have implied a 'cultural totality').]
• Rather, his method sought to describe the full range of contingency and variation in the history
of the knowledge of words and things. Foucault devotes part of the Conclusion to the
Archeology to refuting claims that he is a structuralist.
• Archaeology – In a sense, “the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of
sites and the analysis of artifacts and other physical remains.” However, it is not how Foucault
worded his book about Archaeology.
o Foucault used the idea and processes of ‘Archaeology’ to explain knowledge and the
discourse on language. Basically, studying pieces of information from the past to better
understand its connection in the present. [Using the idea of Archaeology as excavating]
o Uncovering the conditions of clinical knowledge as those conditions take shape in
discourse.
• Discourse – ‘the set of 'things said'
o Archeological analysis seeks to describe the history of discourse, in all its interrelations
and transformations. These processes occur at a very specific level, which is neither the
level of the events of history, nor the level of a teleological 'progress' of ideas, nor the
level of an accumulation of formal knowledge, nor the level of the popular or unspoken
'spirit of the times.' The analysis of discourse abandons all preconceptions about
historical unity or continuity, describing instead the processes of discourse in all their
disruptions, thresholds, differences, and complex varieties.
• Polemic Introduction Part I – noting recent shifts in historical method, relating these shifts to
the newly uncertain status of the historical document, and critiquing histories that depend on
loose notions of continuity as unhelpful and outdated. He says that these histories are also
narcissistic, because what they really seek in forms of historical continuity is the assurance that
history depends on the constant present of a transcendent human consciousness.
• Discursive Regularities Part II – asks what kinds of unities really do exist in the history of
discourse. Foucault tries four hypotheses, in which unity is based on the [1] object of discourse,
[2] the author(s) of discourse, [3] the concepts used in discourse, or [4] the theories and
themes of discourse. The four hypotheses do yield four specific levels at which discursive
formations can be analyzed, however: the formation of objects of discourse, the formation of
enunciative positions or modes, the formation of theoretical strategies, and the formation of
concepts. [Each discursive theory is complex and is not only the single basis for unity]
• The Statement and the Archive Part III – Foucault takes a step back from the level of discursive
unities and attempts to describe the discursive field from its smallest elements to its most
general totality. The smallest units are statements; although they have no single, stable unit
(they change size according to their field of use), they form the most detailed level at which
discourse can be analyzed. 'Statement' really refers more to a specific aspect of articulated
language than it does to a unit of language. The statement is the level of the active, historical
 existence of a set of signs. The rest of Part II is devoted to maintaining the rigorous description
of the statement as a positive, describable, specific aspect of history as Foucault moves up to
the level of the archive.
o Statement - 'Statement' really refers more to a specific aspect of articulated language
than it does to a unit of language. The statement is the level of the active, historical
existence of a set of signs.
o Archive – ‘the general system of the formation and transformation of statements.
• archeological method and that of the history of ideas Part IV – For the four issues of
originality, contradiction, comparison, and change, Foucault shows that his method replaces
broad continuities and generalizations with specific, describable relations that preserve the
differences and irregularities of discourse. Foucault concludes with an intriguing, often poetic,
dialogue between himself and a hypothetical critic of his method. In it, he defends archeology
against charges that it is essentially structuralist and that it invests discourse with transcendence
over other elements of history.
o Science and Knowledge – deals with the reasons that archeological analysis has focused
on the history of the sciences, and with the details of how this focus is carried out.

[CONTEXT]
• Context – these are the set of factors that motivate or cause a statement
o Foucault rejected the idea of context/biographical context that he believed are
outdated notions and sought to replace it with descriptions of discourse which did not
depend on psychologized author. He wanted to replace context with discourse.
▪ Discourse – a much more detailed account of how specific statements become
possible. [Discourse – written or spoken communication or debate. | The
exchange on how things came to be.]
• Foucault’s Caveat (Replacing context to discourse)
o 'I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am
and do not ask me to remain the same…' [This was the main explanation of what
Foucault meant regarding discourse. He rejects the idea of a statement to have its
context as its face but rather, have its discourse on how it came to be. | Foucault’s
belief is that outright disappearance of authors amidst changing discourse.]
• Short Context regarding Foucault and why his works centers in political engagement
o Because so much of his work destabilized accepted principles of authority and power
(notably those surrounding prisons and restricted sexuality). Back when he was a child
as well, he was diagnosed with depression after committing suicide. The doctor cited
that most of his pent-up emotions is due to his hidden sexuality as being a gay man. He
remained a committed leftist for his entire life, supporting causes that he thought might
stand to question or subvert restrictive power regimes. Foucault continued to engage
with contemporary issues in direct relation to the historical issues he pursued in his
academic work.
• Phenomenology – philosophical method which set out to study only experience itself,
o He treated his historical project as ‘history of experience.’
o Heideggerian phenomenology – which sought to describe Being itself rather than mere
subjective experience.
▪ Hegelian thought – approaches history through the lens of rational
metaphysics, was enjoying a resurgence (in connection with Marxism), and the
 traumas of the two World Wars had lent a good deal of urgency to the question
of whether history was chaotic or meaningfully ordered.
o He studied under Jean Hyppolite, a Hegelian who showed Foucault the closeness of
philosophy and history. Foucault also studied under the historian of science Georges
Canguilhem, whose work revealed the conditions and structures which sciences like
psychology depend on but take for granted.
o Conditions of Possibility of Scientific Discourses – Foucault attempted to reveal
• Traditional history – historians tend to focus on the ‘continuities – the long periods of history
which tried to show the supposed indestructible and stable structures and systems. When in
reality, shifts and changes exists among this seemingly unchanging system. [The focus shifted,
there was a reversal on the way we look at history]
o Tools that historians used to analyze the shifts in history:
▪ Examples: models of economic growth, quantitative analysis of market
movements, accounts of demographic expansion and contraction, the study of
climate and its long-term changes, the fixing of sociological constants, the
description of technological adjustments and of their spread and continuity.
▪ Levels of analysis – Historians used these tools to identify the sedimentary
strata. [Sedimentary rocks are laid down in layers called beds or strata] It is
metaphorical in comparison since the idea behind identifying these strata is the
observation from the ‘surface – general’ like political mobility to ‘deeper –
broader’ or the material civilization [The European space studied through the
flow of energy and raw materials, communication networks, and the mobility
of merchants, marchandise, consumers, and citizens | how civilization cam to
be].
• Unmoving histories – the situation that connects disparate events together. What is the causal
relationship between them?
o First recent trend: Great silent, motionless bases – historians addressing the 'great
silent, motionless bases' that lie beneath the political successions, wars, and famines
with which traditional historical practice has been concerned. Examples include studies
like 'the history of sea-routes, the history of corn or of gold-mining, the history of
drought and of irrigation, the history of crop rotation, the history of the balance
achieved by the human species between hunger and abundance ' which seek to address
the deeper, underlying processes of history. This trend has led to a shift in the theory of
history as well, with older questions about the unifying causal connections between
events giving way to questions about the isolation of certain 'strata' of history and about
the possible 'systems of relations' in which those strata may be understood. [The great
silent or the motionless bases are the usual processes that lie beneath important
historical situation. Example of a historical situation, what is the connection between
the Korean army and the Korean army stew? Originated shortly after the Korean War
when food was scarce and many Koreans were starving. Food was smuggled from
American military bases, and then local Koreans used the American ingredients to
create a stew. Korean war]
o Second recent trend: Shift in disciplines that address the history of ideas (of science, of
philosophy, of literature, etc) – The shift focuses on the moments of transformation or
threshold when ways of thinking have undergone large-scale changes. The shift
occurred when the focus changed from ‘continuities of thought’ to ‘disruptions/.’
[Nagkaroon ng pagbabago] Away from general concepts of ‘periods’ o centuries to
interrupted events phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity.
 ▪ Beneath the homogeneous manifestations of a single mind or the ‘continuities
of thought’ one is now trying to detect the incidence of interruptions due to the
shift in focus. These interruptions are vastly different from each other.
▪ Bachelard’s epistemological acts and thresholds – this is the suspension of the
continuous thought, interrupts its development and force it to enter a new
time; cut it from its origin. [Events kung saan nagbigay o nagkaroon ng
changes]  They direct historical analysis away from the search for silent
beginnings, and the never-ending tracing-back to the original precursors,
towards the search for a new type of rationality and its various effects.
• Displacements and transformations of concepts by Georges Canguilhem – a concept’s history is
not entirely about its progressive refinement or its continuous journey to actual rationality. It
also talks about its successive rules of use, and context where it developed and matured. [It’s
not a linear progression but follows successive order of events. The moments where it matured
and developed]
o microscopic vs macroscopic scales of the history of the sciences – their events and their
consequences are not arranged in the same way thus a discovery, the development of a
method, the achievements, and the failures, of a particular scientist, do not have the
same incidence, and cannot be described in the same way a t both levels; on each of the
two levels, a different history is being written.
o Recurrent redistributions – reveal several pasts, several forms of connexion, several
hierarchies of importance, several networks of determination, several teleologies, for
one and the same science, as its present undergoes change [There is no similarities
since historical descriptions are necessarily ordered by the present state of knowledge
(what we can comprehend), they increase with every transformation and never cease
to break with themselves.]
o Architectonic Unities (M. Gueroult) – concerned not with the description of cultural
influences, traditions, and continuities, but with internal coherences (logic), axioms
(statement or proposition), deductive connexions (relationship or association),
compatibilities.
o Radical discontinuities – these are the breaks that occurred because of theoretical
transformation – ‘which establishes a science by detaching it from the ideology of its
past and by revealing this past as ideological'. These discontinuities focus on the
particular structure of a given oeuvre (structure), book, or text. Not the not the spirit or
sensibility of a period, nor 'groups', 'schools', 'generations', or 'movements', nor even
the personality of the author
o Answer: the problem is no longer one of tradition. of tracing a line, but one of division,
of limits; it is no longer one of lasting foundations, but one of transformations that
serve as new foundations, the rebuilding of foundations. Not how continuities are
established, how a single pattern is formed and preserved. what substructure is implied
by the interplay of transmissions, resumptions, disappearances. and repetitions.
• History today: What one is seeing, then, is the emergence of a whole field of Questions. how is
one to specify the different concepts that enable us to conceive of discontinuity (threshold,
rupture, break, mutation, transformation.
o In short, the history of thought, of knowledge, of philosophy, of literature seems to be
seeking, and discovering, more and more discontinuities, whereas history itself appears
to be abandoning the irruption of events in favour of stable structures. [History of
disciplines focus more on the disruptions, on the discourse of how things came to be
 while history itself focuses on the linear line of origin – the context; the surface and
vast levels of descriptions]
• The interchange of continuous and discontinuous – it’s not to say that all of historical
disciplines have moved from the continuous to the discontinuous, while others have moved
from the tangled mass of discontinuities to the great, uninterrupted unities; we must not
imagine that these two great forms of description have crossed without recognizing one
another.
o the analysis of politics, institutions, or economics, we have become more and more
sensitive to overall determinations – continuity
o analysis of idea and knowledge – discontinuity
o the problem of crossing each other is called as the ‘questioning of the document.’
• Reconstitution (reconstruction) – reconstitution of the missing past where they come from
based on what the documents say.
o The document is the language of a voice since reduced to silence, its fragile, but possibly
decipherable trace. [The documents try to tell us something, it tells a story from its
missing past, of its origin.]
o History does not anymore, finds its decipherable trace (its history). It is history’s task to
work on it from within and to develop it: history now organizes the document, divides it
up, distributes it, orders it, arranges it in levels, establishes series, distinguishes between
what is relevant and what is not, discovers elements, defines unities, describes relations.
o Reversal – the document is not an inert material that tries to reconstitute history of
what men have said or done but it is history that tries to define within the documentary
material itself unities, totalities, series, relations.
▪ “History must be detached from the image that satisfied it for so long” – What
history is cannot be described or demanded its meaning from or knowledge of
the present based on the materials present because history is the work, the
actual reality that was only expanded though material documentation.
▪ The document is not the fortunate tool of a history that is primarily and
fundamentally memory; history is one way in which a society recognizes and
develops a mass of documentation with which it is inextricably linked.
o Traditional history – it memorizes the monuments of the past, transform them into
documents, and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal,
or which say in silence something other than what they actually say; history
deciphered the traces left by men [archaeology, as a discipline devoted to silent
monuments, inert traces, objects without context, and things left by the past, aspired to
the condition of history, and attained meaning only through the restitution of a
historical discourse;
• Consequences | Tables – the rapid increase of discontinuities in the history of ideas and the
emergence of long periods in history proper. o in its traditional form, history proper was
concerned to define relations (of simple causality, of circular determination, of antagonism, of
expression) between facts or dated events : the relationship of one element to another.
o First consequence : The problem now is to constitute series: to define the elements
proper to each series, to fix its boundaries, to reveal its own specific type of relations, to
formulate its laws, and, beyond this, to describe the relations between different series,
thus constituting series of series, or 'tables': hence the ever-increasing number of strata,
and the need to distinguish them ▪ The appearance of long periods is the effect of the
methodologically concerted development of series
o Second consequence: the notion of discontinuity assumes a major role in the historical
disciplines. For history in its classical form, the discontinuous was both the given and
the unthinkable: the raw material of history, which presented itself in the form of
dispersed events - decisions, accidents, initiatives, discoveries; the material, which,
through analysis, had to be rearranged, reduced, effaced in order to reveal the
continuity of events.
▪ Its role is threefold. First, it constitutes a deliberate operation on the part of the
historian (and not a quality of the material with which he has to deal) : for he
must, at least as a systematic hypothesis, distinguish the possible levels of
analysis, the methods proper to each, and the periodization that best suits
them. Secondly, it is the result of his description (and not something that must
be eliminated by means of his analysis) : for he is trying to discover the limits of
a process, the point of inflexion of a curve, the inversion of a regulatory
movement, the boundaries of an oscillation, the threshold of a function, the
instant at which a circular causality breaks down. Thirdly, it is the concept that
the historian's work never ceases to specify (instead of neglecting it as a
uniform, indifferent blank between two positive figures); it assumes a specific
form and function according to the field and the level to which it is assigned:
one does not speak of the same discontinuity when describing an
epistemological threshold, the point of reflection in a population curve, or the
replacement of one technique by another.
o Third consequence: the theme and the possibility of a total history begin to disappear,
and we see the emergence of something very different that might be called a general
history. The project of a total history is one that seeks to reconstitute the overall form of
a civilization, the principle -material or spiritual - of a society, the significance common
to all the phenomena of a period, the law that accounts for their cohesion - what is
called metaphorically the 'face' of a period. Such a project is linked to two or three
hypotheses; [These are the postulates that are challenged by the new history when it
speaks of series, divisions, limits, differences of level, shifts, chronological specificities,
particular forms of rehandling, possible types of relation.
▪ 1. it is supposed that between all the events of a well-defined spatio-temporal
area, between all the phenomena of which traces have been found, it must be
possible to establish a system of homogeneous relations: a network of causality
that makes it possible to derive each of them, relations of analogy that show
how they symbolize one another, or how they all express one and the same
central core;
▪ 2. it is also supposed that one and the same form of historicity operates upon
economic structures, social institutions and customs, the inertia of mental
attitudes, technological practice, political behaviour, and subjects them all to
the same type of transformation;
▪ 3. lastly, it is supposed that history itself may be articulated into great units -
stages or phases - which contain within themselves their own principle of
cohesion. The problem that now presents itself-and which defmes the task of a
general history -is to determine what form of relation may be legitimately
described between these different series; what vertical system they are capable
of forming ;
o Fourth and last consequence: the new history is confronted by a number of
methodological problems, several of which, no doubt, existed long before the
 emergence of the new history, but which, taken together, characterize it. ▪ These include:
the building-up of coherent and homogeneous corpora of documents (open or closed, exhausted or inexhaustible
corpora), the establishment of a principle of choice (according to whether one wishes to treat the documentation
exhaustively, or adopt a sampling method as in statistics, or try to determine in advance which are the most
representative elements); the definition of the level of analysis and of the relevant elements (in the material studied, one
may extract numerical indications; references - explicit or not - to events, institutions, practices; the words used, with
their grammatical rules and the semantic fields that they indicate, or again the formal structure of the propositions and
the types of connexion that unite them); the specification of a method of analysis (the quantitative treatment of data, the
breaking-down of the material according to a number of assignable features whose correlations are then studied,
interpretative decipherment, analysis of frequency and distribution); the delimitation of groups and sub-groups that
articulate the material (regions, periods, unitary processes); the determination of relations that make it possible to
characterize a group (these may be numerical or logical relations; functional, causal, or analogical relations; or it may be
the relation of the 'signifier' (signifiant) to the 'signified' (signifie,). All these problems are now part of the methodological
field of history. This field deserves attention, and for two reasons. First, because one can see to what extent it has freed
itself from what constituted, not so long ago, the philosophy of history, and from the questions that it posed (on the
rationality or teleology of historical development (devenir) , on the relativity of historical knowledge, and on the
possibility of discovering or constituting a meaning in the inertia of the past and in the unfinished totality of the present).
Secondly, because it intersects at certain points problems that are met with in other fields - in linguistics, ethnology,
economics, literary analysis, and mythology, for example
• Epistemological mutation – its is not complete, nor a recent origin since t can be traced back to
Marx. [def. a theory that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection.]
o It is as if it was particularly difficult, in the history in which men retrace their own ideas
and their own knowledge, to formulate a general theory of discontinuity, of series, of
limits, unities, specific orders, and differentiated autonomies and dependences.
o Reason: There is a reason for this. If the history of thought could remain the locus of
uninterrupted continuities, if it could endlessly forge connections that no analysis could
undo without abstraction, if it could weave, around everything that men say and do,
obscure synthesis that anticipate for him, prepare him, and lead him endlessly towards
his future, it would provide a privileged shelter for the sovereignty of consciousness.
• Making historical analysis the discourse of the continuous and making human consciousness the
original subject of all historical development and all action are the two sides of the same system
of thought. To the decentring operated by the Nietzschean genealogy, it opposed the search for
an original foundation that would make rationality the telos of mankind, and link the whole
history of thought to the preservation of this rationality, to the maintenance of this teleology,
and to the ever-necessary return to this foundation. Lastly, more recently, when the researches
of psychoanalysis, linguistics, and ethnology have decentred the subject in relation to the laws
of his desire, the forms of his language, the rules of his action, or the games of his mythical or
fabulous discourse, when it became clear that man himself, questioned as to what he was, could
not account for his sexuality and his unconscious, the systematic forms of his language, or the
regularities of his fictions, the theme of a continuity of history has been reactivated once again;
a history that would be not division, but development (devenir); not an interplay of relations,
but an internal dynamic; not a system, but the hard work of freedom; not form, but the
unceasing effort of a consciousness turned upon itself, trying to grasp itself in its deepest
conditions: a history that would be both an act of long, uninterrupted patience and the vivacity
of a movement, which, in the end, breaks all bounds. One is led therefore to anthropologize
Marx, to make of him a historian of totalities, and to rediscover in him the message of
humanism; one is led therefore to interpret Nietzsche in the terms of transcendental
philosophy, and to reduce his genealogy to the level of a search for origins; lastly, one is led to
leave to one side, as if it had never arisen, that whole field of methodological problems that the
new history is now presenting. For, if it is asserted that the question of discontinuities, systems
and transformations, series and thresholds, arises in all the historical disciplines (and in those
concerned with ideas or the sciences no less than those concerned with economics and society),
how could one oppose with any semblance of legitimacy 'development' and 'system', movement
 and circular regulations, or, as it is sometimes put crudely and unthinkingly, 'history' and
'structure'? The same conservative function is at work in the theme of cultural totalities (for
which Marx has been criticized, then travestied), in the theme of a search for origins (which was
opposed to Nietzsche, before an attempt was made to transpose him into it), and in the theme
of a living, continuous, open history. The cry goes up that one is murdering history whenever, in
a historical analysis - and especially if it is concerned with thought, ideas, or knowledge - one is
seen to be using in too obvious a way the categories of discontinuity and difference, the notions
of threshold, rupture and transformation, the description of series and limits.
• what is being bewailed is the 'development' (devenir) that was to provide the sovereignty of the
consciousness with a safer, less exposed shelter than myths, kinship systems, languages,
sexuality, or desire; what is being bewailed is the possibility of reanimating through the project,
the work of meaning, or the movement of totalization, the interplay of material determinations,
rules of practice, unconscious systems, rigorous but unreflected relations, correlations that
elude all lived experience; what is being bewailed, is that ideological use of history by which one
tries to restore to ma.n everything that has unceasingly eluded him for over a hundred years. All
the treasure of bygone days was crammed into the old citadel of this history; it was thought to
be secure; it was sacralized; it was made the last resting-place of anthropological thought; it was
even thought that its most inveterate enemies could be captured and turned into vigilant
guardians. But the historians had long ago deserted the old fortress and gone to work
elsewhere; it was realized that neither Marx nor Nietzsche were carrying out the guard duties
that had been entrusted to them. They could not be depended on to preserve privilege; nor to
affirm once and for all- and God knows it is needed in the distress of today - that history, at
least, is living and continuous, that it is, for the subject in question, a place of rest, certainty,
reconciliation, a place of tranquillized sleep.
• discontinuity is both an instrument and an object of research; because it divides up the field of
which it is the effect; because it enables the historian to individualize different domains but can
be establishedonly by comparing those domains.
• One of the most essential features of the new history is probably this displacement of the
discontinuous: its transference from the obstacle to the work itself; its integration into the
discourse of the historian, where it no longer plays the role of an external condition that must
be reduced, but that of a working concept; and therefore the inversion of signs by which it is no
longer the negative of the historical reading (its underside, its failure, the limit of its power) , but
the positive element that determines its object and validates its analysis.
• Continuous history is the indispensable correlative of the founding function of the subject: the
guarantee that everything that has eluded him may be restored to him; the certainty that time
will disperse nothing without restoring it in a reconstituted unity; the promise that one day the
subject - in the form of historical consciousness - will once again be able to appropriate, to bring
back under his sway, all those things that are kept at a distance by difference, and find in them
what might be called his abode
• At this point there emerges an enterprise – An enterprise by w hich one tries to measure the
mutations that operate in general in the field of history; an enterprise in which the methods,
limits, and themes proper to the history of ideas are questioned; an enterprise by which one
tries to throw off the last anthropological constraints; an enterprise that wishes, in return, to
reveal how these constraints could come about.
• This book is the result. In order to avoid misunderstanding, I should like to begin with a few
observations. My aim is not to transfer to the field of history, and more particularly to the
 history of knowledge (connaissances),2 a structuralist method that has proved valuable in other
fields of analysis.
• My aim is to uncover the principles and consequences of an autochthonous transformation that
is taking place in the field of historical knowledge. It may well be that this transformation, the
problems that it raises, the tools that it uses, the concepts that emerge from it, and the results
that it obtains are not entirely foreign to what is called structural analysis. But this kind of
analysis is not specifically used; 2 The English 'knowledge' translates the French 'connaissance'
and 'savoir'. Connaissance refers here to a particular corpus of knowledge, a particular discipline
- biology or economics, for example. Savoir, which is usually defmed as knowledge in general,
the totality of connaissances, is used by Foucault in an underlying, rather than an overall, way.
He has himself offered the following comment on his usage of these terms: 'By connaissance I
mean the relation of the subject to the object and the formal rules that govern it. Savoir refers
to the conditions that are necessary in a particular period for this or that type of object to be
given to connaissance and for this or that enunciation to be formulated.' Throughout this
translation I have used the English word, followed, where the meaning required it, by the
appropriate French word in parenthesis (Tr.).
• in so far as my aim is to define a method of historical analysis freed from the anthropological
theme, it is clear that the theory that I am about to outline has a dual relation with the previous
studies. It is an attempt to formulate, in general terms (and not without a great deal of
rectification and elaboration) , the tools that these studies have used or forged for themselves in
the course of their work. But, on the other hand, it uses the results already obtained to define a
method of analysis purged of all anthropologism. In short, this book, like those that preceded it,
does not belong – at least directly, or in the first instance - to the debate on structure (as
opposed to genesis, history, development) ; it belongs to that field in which the questions of the
human being, consciousness, origin, and the subject emerge, intersect, mingle, and separate off.

[PART 1: INTRODUCTION]
• Unmoving histories – the situation that connects disparate events together. What is the causal
relationship between them?
o First recent trend: Great silent, motionless bases – historians addressing the 'great
silent, motionless bases' that lie beneath the political successions, wars, and famines
with which traditional historical practice has been concerned. Examples include studies
like 'the history of sea-routes, the history of corn or of gold-mining, the history of
drought and of irrigation, the history of crop rotation, the history of the balance
achieved by the human species between hunger and abundance ' which seek to address
the deeper, underlying processes of history. This trend has led to a shift in the theory of
history as well, with older questions about the unifying causal connections between
events giving way to questions about the isolation of certain 'strata' of history and about
the possible 'systems of relations' in which those strata may be understood. [The great
silent or the motionless bases are the usual processes that lie beneath important
historical situation. Example of a historical situation, what is the connection between
the Korean army and the Korean army stew? Originated shortly after the Korean War
when food was scarce and many Koreans were starving. Food was smuggled from
American military bases, and then local Koreans used the American ingredients to
create a stew. Korean war]
o Second recent trend: Shift in disciplines that address the history of ideas (of science, of
philosophy, of literature, etc) – The shift focuses on the moments of transformation or
 threshold when ways of thinking have undergone large-scale changes. The shift
occurred when the focus changed from ‘continuities of thought’ to ‘disruptions/.’
[Nagkaroon ng pagbabago] Away from general concepts of ‘periods’ o centuries to
interrupted events phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity.
▪ Beneath the homogeneous manifestations of a single mind or the ‘continuities
of thought’ one is now trying to detect the incidence of interruptions due to the
shift in focus. These interruptions are vastly different from each other.
▪ Bachelard’s epistemological acts and thresholds – this is the suspension of the
continuous thought, interrupts its development and force it to enter a new
time; cut it from its origin. [Events kung saan nagbigay o nagkaroon ng
changes]
❖ They direct historical analysis away from the search for silent
beginnings, and the never-ending tracing-back to the original
precursors, towards the search for a new type of rationality and its
various effects.
• Both kinds of historical practice pose 'the same problems,' and they have only 'provoked
opposite effects on the surface.' In fact, all of the new problems that Foucault has just outlined
stem from one process: 'the questioning of the document.' Instead of its traditional role as a
mere vehicle for history as a kind of memory, the document is now becoming important in and
of itself.
o Questioning of the document – disciplines such as history used documents which have
been questioned and have given rise to question. [What do they mean or are they
telling the truth? Sincere or misleading? Well informed or ignorant? Authentic or
fake?]
▪ These critical concerns pointed to reconstitution.
• This change stands to redefine the entirety of the historical practice: 'history is one way in
which a society recognizes and develops a mass of documentation with which it is inextricably
linked.' This new view of history, in which documents become artifacts or 'monuments,' means
that history now aspires to be a kind of 'archeology.'
• Four Major Consequences of Changes
o First, there is an intensive questioning of received ideas about the various kinds of
series that constitute history; rather than taking for granted certain kinds of progressive
series (primarily the assumption of a 'continuous chronology of reason … invariably
traced back to some inaccessible origin') and then fitting events into that series,
historians are questioning the series themselves. This process has resulted in the
'surface effects' detailed above in history and in the history of ideas. [the historians are
questioning the ‘series’ wherein these are the ‘continuous chronology reason’ which
traces back to its inaccessible origin. Historians places emphasis on the series, the
progress, on how something came to be. How did the series come to be]
o Second, the notion of discontinuity assumes a major and pervasive role in historical
practice across the board [discipline]. Discontinuity precedes the work of the historian,
as he or she tries to select between discontinuous levels of analysis and types of
periodization in which to address their (documentary) material; and, paradoxically, it
also results from their description, because they are showing historical limits and
moments of breakdown. [these are the breaks that occurred because of theoretical
transformation – ‘which establishes a science by detaching it from the ideology of its
past and by revealing this past as ideological'. These discontinuities focus on the
particular structure of a given oeuvre (structure), book, or text. Not the not the spirit
 or sensibility of a period, nor 'groups', 'schools', 'generations', or 'movements', nor
even the personality of the author]
o Third, there ceases to be any possibility of a 'total history,' a history that depends on a
united frame for all history or on the essential spirit or 'face' of a given period.
Totalizing history is replaced by 'general history,' in which no continuities are presumed
in the open field of documentary evidence. We cannot even posit the traditional
'parallel histories' of law, economics, the arts, etc.; we must rather accept a much more
heterogeneous 'form[s] of relation.' [there is no such thing as total and continuous
history. The continuity does not exist due to the discontinuities in history]
o Finally, this 'questioning of the document' raises a host of new methodological
problems for the historian: how should one construct and delimit bodies ('corpora') of
documents? What levels of analysis and what 'principles of choice' inform such
constructions? What kinds of limits should be drawn to define groups, regions, or
periods? These problems existed before in the field of the philosophy of history, but
they now characterize the methodological field of history itself. [new methodological
way of studying history was to question the document, whether its is true or valid]
• Foucault’s answer to massive and pervasive change – the idea of an ordered, teleological, and
continuous history serves to make 'human consciousness the original subject of all historical
development and all action.'
• Human subject and continuous history goes hand in hand
o Marx (by founding a purely relational analysis)
o Nietzsche (by replacing original rational foundations with a moral genealogy),
o Freud (by showing that we are not transparent to ourselves) all challenged this tradition
of keeping history in a 'tranquilized sleep' by introducing a radical discontinuity to
history and its human subject.
• Analysis
o The introduction pertains to Foucault’s historical project in relation to the contemporary
state of historical studies.
o Whose understanding of history posits an intimate link between the practice of the
historian and the subject matter of history; this is clear from the definition of history
cited above,
▪ History – ‘history is one way in which a society recognizes and develops a mass
of documentation with which it is inextricably linked.'
o Documents – The historian does not simply study history as a kind of memory, but adds
to and alters the accumulation of and relation between documents that constitute
history. [historians give emphasis on the documents about history and their relation to
each other – on what constitutes history]
o The historian does not think in a vacuum, but owes what he or she is able to enunciate
in part to what has been enunciated before. [there is input on the side of the
historians. On how they will explain or interpret the historical document]
o Reason: In light of Foucault's mention of Freud in relation to his project (both introduce
'discontinuity' to their respective fields), we might note that this critique of the historian
is linked to a critique of the human subject in general: just as the historian is not a
detached, self-transparent consciousness passively observing past events, neither is
the human subject a totally independent entity passively observing the field of
memory. This interlocking of human subject and human history is used to explain why
the historical changes Foucault observes here have not been observed before: we resist
 them because our old, continuous, rational story of history guarantees that we don't
have to confront ourselves as anything but fully-independent, rational subjects.
o The Historian as subject of history – changes the conception of what constitutes
history.
▪ Key component of the change is the document (questioning of the document)
▪ how to interpret historical materials, how to put them in relation to each other
in terms of causality and in terms of their place in an overall schema. The
primary characteristic of this complication is that it rejects large-scale narratives
about the progression of history.
o One primary target in the background here is Hegel, who nonetheless is only the most
exhaustive and influential exemplar of the idea that all of history fits into a single overall
schema and tends toward a single end (in his philosophy, this end is the total earthly
realization of the rational Spirit).
o Teleological narrative (shifts in contemporary historical practice) – has been a turn
away from sequences of political events (successions, wars, the stuff of classical history)
toward highly specified, underlying histories (like that of corn).
▪ This is a history with new specificity, focused less on the interpretation of the
decisions and actions of men than on the movements of material.
▪ the implication is that this kind of deep, specific history is much more closely
tied to the document and less to historical 'events' as such, and that it therefore
resists grandiose speculation about the teleology of human history
▪ discontinuities – This is a history of breaks, eruptions, of radical shifts in the
limits of possible thought; in short, a history of discontinuities (though Foucault
points out that these discontinuities are 'positive,' that they are not simply
absences but can be and are described).
o Two sets of change in document – a renewed questioning of what a document is and a
consequent elevation of its status to part of history.
▪ He does not claim to have initiated these changes on his own (though his three
previous books certainly participated), but neither is he simply a passive
observer that will simply 'explain' them.
o As he says at the end of the Introduction: 'I am no doubt not the only one who writes
in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same.'
o history is suddenly shifting from a progressive, linear story written by historians to a
expansive field comprised of endless micro-stories, each with their own multi-leveled
relations (whether affinitive or disruptive) to the contingencies of their past and future,
and each with their own material existence: the document

[PART II: THE DISCURSIVE REGULARITIES CHAPTER 1: THE UNITIES OF DISCOURSE]

• Problems to be examined:
o Discontinuity
o Rupture
o Threshold
o Limit
o Series
o Transformation
• Negative work – dismantling various received forms of continuity on historical works
o Tradition – sameness, permanence, and origin (idea of innovative 'genius')
 o Influence – linking ideas over time
o Development of evolution
o Spirit – serves to associate a period with a collective consciousness, as in 'spirit of the
times'
• Replace history as it is structured by these 'ready-made syntheses' with a mere 'population of
dispersed events.'
• Two of the most important categories to dismantle are those of the book and of the oeuvre.
o Book – The book is a false unity because its boundaries are unstable and permeable. Is
the unity of the book the same, for example, in the case of an anthology, a volume of a
history of France, a transcript of a trial, or a novel? Do two books by two authors have
the same relationship to each other as two books in a single cycle by the same author?
What about the relationship between Joyce's Ulysses and Homer's Odyssey (on which
Joyce's novel is structured)?
▪ 'The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut,' Foucault writes. Every book 'is
caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other
sentences: it is a node within a network…its unity is variable and relative.' Again,
the idea of the book as a free-standing work is itself an effect of the field of
discourse of which it is a part.
▪ TENDENCY: The first is a tendency always to avoid 'the irruption of a real event'
by implying or asserting a vague, fundamental, 'secret origin' that precedes it,
'an ever- receding point that is never itself present in any history.
o Oeuvre – The œuvre (the totality of texts by a given author) is subject to even greater
instability and complexity. The name of the author is a sign attached to each of the
texts, but it signifies in different ways if the text is, for example, published under a
pseudonym, extant only in unfinished form, or merely a notebook. the end, the idea of
an œuvre depends on the imagination of a certain 'expressive function,' a process that is
highly variable.
▪ TENDENCY: The second is a tendency to take actual statements and 'manifest
documents' to be expressions of a deeper, silent 'already-said' that makes
statements possible. In contrast to origin, we must look for irruption; in contrast
to silent movements of collective thought or spirit, we must look to actual
statements, 'as and when [they] occur.'
o These forms of continuity are not simply to be thrown out as such, but to be
interrogated as effects within 'the totality of all effective statements…in their dispersion
as events.' This field of statement-events is the field of Foucault's investigation. This
project is not like that of linguistics, which is concerned with finite statements only as
instances of general, 'infinite' rules of language. Nor is it aligned with the history of
thought, which seeks out generalized 'discursive totalities.' Rather, Foucault seeks to
'grasp the statement in the exact specificity of its occurrence,' to account for the
reasons why a given statement had to be that precise statement and no other.
• Statement
o First, we will have advanced the understanding of what a statement is, showing how it
is linked to writing and speech, to its own repetitions and transformations in future
statements, and to a wide range of other statements that precede or follow it, even
while focusing our attention on the unique, irruptive specificity of the statements
themselves.
 o Second, we will have removed links between statements from linguistics and from
conjectural histories of thought, avoiding restrictive links between the statement and
the speculations about the psychology of the author.
o Finally, this new project will leave us free to discover new forms of continuity, this time
via a set of 'controlled decisions' rather than a blind acceptance of 'secret' wholenesses.
• Analysis – right and wrong ways to approach history.
o The first is an image of history as a realm of silence and darkness, the space in which all
of the immaterial, spiritual, 'secret' notions of history posited by traditional historians
are supposed to move and function. The two such notions addressed here specifically
are the 'linked, but opposite' ones of origin and the 'already-said.' Both of these notions
point beyond the actual, specific, material statements of the historical archive toward
the 'real' but unexpressed ideas or spirit that underlie them.
o Part of Foucault's point is that such an origin always recedes: that same historian will
trace Aristotelian philosophy back through a lineage of human awakenings, perhaps
back to Homer or to ancient Sumer. The origin always remains recessional, obscure, and
'silent'; it is something un-stated that specific statements only imply or point to. The
already- said is a similar notion, in which actual statements are seen to be
manifestations of an idea or spirit of the times that was 'in the air' before coalescing into
an actual articulation. Again, Foucault rejects all of these versions of history, which place
what 'really counts' about history in the realm of the mysterious, invisible, and abstract
('a voice as silent as breath').
• Archaeology and Genealogy
o the early works of foucault are what could be described as his archaeological work and
the later works could be described as his genealogical works
o archaeological method (archive) – Archive for foucault is not like these static texts that
you retrieve. archive is intersectional for foucault it can have elements of everything but
archive itself how it is organized how it is read how it is articulated is discursively
produced
▪ any given archive is not naturally there, it's an act of human will and is produced
through discourses; what we consider respectable and not what we consider
not respectable sources
o Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals, there is a passage where Nietzsche says what if
someone wrote a history of senses a history of ideas
• Discourse (bruised knowledges) – the Foucault who's doing archaeology is the fuco who is still
tracing within the archive how dominant discourses are shaped are there any buried
knowledges or what he calls bruised knowledges that either have been silenced or do not form
of that given discourse
+
• Archaeology – archeology is a search for the rules that organize discourses and discourses are
taken by Foucault as complex practices and not as a binary between true and false
o It is not something that represents objects this course is part of the production of
objects
o Archeology is a way of understanding the formation of discourses and how they are
always present in what they present
o Example: gender, man: discursive and practical productions
• Discourse – discourse is not tied to what is already there so to speak discourses produce are
part of the production of objects
 o in what they present it distances itself from the forms of metaphysical knowledge; be it
knowledge that seeks to systematize reality or that seeks to show how reality works. far
from these representative forms of the conception of language and knowledge and in a
way against them archeology will question the will to truth that operates within
discourses, it will also restore discourse to its event character and it will in the end
abolish this the sovereignty of the signifier.
o every mode of language or representative knowledge is shown by the way they work in
relation to other discourses and practices in a web of relations of discourses with other
discourses and practices
• Sovereign Signifier/Sovereign Truth
o behind every language and practice there is a sovereign signifier or sovereign truth or a
sovereign subject. It seeks to domesticate the flow of events to a static image of what
it calls reality but it denies its own production of that reality through its metaphysical
discourse, as it does not recognize other forms of discourse than the metaphysical, the
representative, the one that posits things in themselves, our origin and cause of
everything.
• Confrontational and Alliance
o as a counterpoint and attempt to open thought in relation to the dominant
metaphysical way of thinking. Archaeology seeks to show that in practice, we have
constant clashes between discourses and practices; that we cannot think of any
discourse without a confrontational or alliance type of relation to other discourses.
• Archeology comes to question the unity of time, the sovereignty of the subject, and the
possibility of total knowledge that are so dear to metaphysics.
• Archaeology as a way of looking at the dynamics of history is a look at the historical conditions
of possibility of knowledge against metaphysical thinking which understands knowledge
particularly that knowledge that manages to be labeled scientific as a universal product.
• Knowledge
o archeology sees knowledge as a historical product within conditions of possibility and
not as a single evolutionary line through each ever better and more evolved
knowledge would be built citation
• Archaeology – In sum, archaeology is the study of a cross-section of artifacts in a particular time.
It is unlike mainstream history because it analyzes a variety of artifacts in one time period rather
than tracing the development of one thing over a period of years.” (p. 38)
• Genealogy – However, by most reckonings, genealogies are based on archaeologies. While
archaeology works to understand how artifacts fit together in a historical moment, genealogy
works to figure out what kind of people would fit into that set of artifacts. Foucault’s
genealogies are generally based on archaeological-type studies. That is, he examined a cross-
section of artifacts (archaeology), and then asked questions like:
o What kind of people would live in such a way? Given those artifacts and epistemes, how
did people think of themselves in the world?”
• Three major features distinguishing foucault’s historical work from mainstream approaches to
history:
o First, Foucault’s historical work challenges both continuist and discontinuist historical
accounts.
▪ Continuous histories emphasize how much things stay the same
❖ An epigram of continuous history is: ‘Every day in every way, I am
getting better and better.’
 ❖ Example: If you read a history of science in which science is depicted as
a continuous series of improvements, then that is an example of
continuous history because it emphasizes how science is basically the
same; it just gets better.
▪ discontinuous histories emphasize how much things change
❖ An epigram of discontinuous history is: `It is not possible to step twice
into the same river.’ It is a matter of preference whether we emphasize
how things stay the same or how things change; just as it is a matter of
preference whether we see the glass as half-empty or half-full.
❖ Example: In contrast, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (1970) is an example of discontinuous history because it
emphasizes how science has undergone revolutionary changes.
▪ In cases when mainstream histories assume continuity, Foucault’s history was
likely to emphasize differences, and when mainstream histories assume
discontinuity, Foucault’s history was likely to show similarities.
❖ For example, mainstream histories usually portray modernity as a
continuation of the Enlightenment. These mainstream histories
emphasize the continuous developments in reason, science, and
democracy around the world. In his critical spirit, Foucault’s history
challenged that continuity. He emphasized how modern
institutionalization and industrialization constituted a break from earlier
Enlightenment intellectual debates between rationalism and
empiricism.
o Second, Foucault’s approach to history does not try to be objective, but rather it aims to
be a critical history of the present. Mainstream historians have been interested in
objectivity; their approach to studying history was to find and record ‘how it really was’
in the past. Just as modern philosophers have generally been focused on finding the
truth about our lives, mainstream historians have generally been focused on finding the
truth about what happened in the past. Foucault’s study of history was not focused on
finding the truth about the past, and therefore many historians assert that his work is
not really history.
▪ Foucault did noy disregard facts. Rather, the focus and emphasis of his
historical analysis was shaped by concerns about the present. Here is a sketch
of Foucault’s argument about objectivity in history:
❖ 1. No history can include everything that happened in every day in every place. In our own lives, we
see that every day is filled with thousands of ordinary events, happenings, and incidents. No history
includes everything about everything, so no history is really objective.
❖ 2. Millions of people have been born, lived their lives and died. The vast majority of things that
have occurred in the past have never been recorded or included in any historical account.
❖ 3. Only a small selection of things has been included in any historical record. Sometimes the things
that have been included are those that historians believed to be interesting or worth writing about;
other times things have been included by habit, custom, and convention.
❖ 4. Some kinds of things (like certain aspects of wars and particular kinds of heroes) have been
regularly included in historical records, and other things (like housekeeping and child-raising) have
been regularly omitted from historical records.
❖ 5. Since it is not possible for any historical record to include everything that has ever happened, it
must be the case that all histories exclude a great deal. All selections lead to exclusions.
❖ 6. Since all histories are selective, it is intellectually ethical to take responsibility for selection bias,
rather than to pretend that histories are objective.
▪ History of the present – Foucault wanted to question our assumptions about
the present. He made his selection biases explicit. He wrote history in order to
 help us gain surprising insight into our present circumstances. That is what
‘history of the present’ means.
o Third, Foucault’s approach to history is influenced by Nietzsche’s ‘effective history.’
Foucault did not write objective history; he wrote ‘critical and effective history.’ He
used the term ‘effective history’ after Nietzsche’s Wirkungsgeschichte. One helpful tool
for understanding the difference between objective history and effective history has
been provided by two educational historians from Belgium, Marc DePaepe and Frank
Simon (1996). They use the metaphor of mirror and lever to capture political and
pedagogical differences between objective history and effective history. DePaepe and
Simon’s metaphor helps us understand that history can serve multiple and complex
purposes.
▪ Objective history is meant to function like a mirror that provides us with a
reflection of the past. In contrast, effective history is meant to function like a
lever that disrupts our assumptions and understandings about who we think we
are.
▪ Foucault’s history, with its provocative and ironic stance, conveys the message
that mirrors make the best levers.
o Finally, Foucault tended to celebrate the role of chance in human lives. As he wrote,
the job of genealogy is to restore chance to its rightful place in history. Recognizing
that reason has been one of the disciplinary technologies of modern societies, Foucault
repeatedly reminded us that much of history cannot be explained by anything other
than ‘the iron hand of necessity shaking the dice-box of chance’ (Nietzsche’s Dawn
quoted in Foucault 1998, p. 381). Foucault celebrated the role of chance in history
because chance makes change easier to imagine. If we do not think of history as
proceeding in some inevitable or predictable manner, then history is not so
deterministic, and it is easier for us to imagine that things might be different in the
future.
• In summary, Foucault’s historical work:
o Challenges both continuist and discontinuist accounts of history.
o Does not try to be objective, but is a critical history of the present.
o Is strongly influenced by Nietzsche’s ‘effective history.’
o Allows for the possibility of chance.”

he Archaeology of Knowledge is Foucault’s statement on historiography: how to do history. Over the

course of five Parts, Foucault explains how he has been doing history, in particular how he has
constructed a history of social structures by way of “discourse,” or the statements left in the historical
record.

In Part 1, Foucault explains what he sees as the current crisis in the study of history. This is that history
has recently had to confront discontinuity, including gaps in the historical record and gaps between
histories of different things. It is no longer possible to construct a single history of a civilization, reading
as a timeline of its important events. Rather, historians have to make decisions over what events even
go together, and in doing so, which archives they will draw upon to tell their story. In fact, Foucault
argues, historians need to stop paying so much attention to events at all. Instead, we should look at how
people talk about the world at a particular time, in order to understand how social structures work at
that time. And to understand how societies change, we should look at how the way people talk about
them changes. This means treating documents not as records of what has happened, but rather as texts
that indicate the assumptions underlying a larger social order. The ways things are talked about in
historical documents tell us more than the events they refer to.

Part 2 of The Archaeology of Knowledge is on “Discursive Regularities,” or how to deal with a historical
record that is fundamentally discontinuous. Foucault invites us to reject any pre-given way of organizing
the documents of history, for instance according to theme, author, discipline, or “tradition.” These
categories have to be proven, not assumed from the beginning. Instead, we should look at the mass of
statements made in documents and see what patterns and connections naturally emerge. When a
particular kind of statement keeps showing up, for instance, we should ask when, where, and under
what conditions it shows up. Foucault calls this a “discursive formation,” and the task of history is to
unpack the “rules of formation” under which a certain kind of statement has achieved regularity.
Foucault lists the kinds of things we should pay attention to in learning these rules. Who gets to speak a
statement? In what institutions or contexts are the statement intelligible? And how do these statements
construct different concepts and relate them in a common “field”? By exploring such questions, we
learn how a discourse emerges as if of its own force. This is not a history of geniuses who invented new
concepts, but a history of how particular concepts and ideas emerge within particular social and cultural
contexts, as many people begin to talk about the same thing in the same way.

Part 3 turns to the analysis of the “statement,” the fundamental unit of discourse analysis. Foucault
argues that a statement is defined by its “function,” in particular the fact that it brings into existence
rules for ordering different concepts. What matters are these rules, the unspoken constraints on what it
is possible to speak at a given time. What does not matter is the particular individual who speaks a
statement. No individual owns the rules of a discourse, just like no individual is in charge of the language
of a society. As a related consequence, it does not matter where statements come from, but how
statements “accumulate.” This means how statements begin to refer to and build on one another. By
exploring statements in this way, we can explain how a social order transforms in terms of the ways in
which a world is understood and organized at a given time.

In Part 4, Foucault expands his analysis to explain how this method, of studying statements in order to
describe discursive formations, is different from the ways in which others are doing history, especially in
the history of ideas. Foucault calls what he is doing, not history, but archaeology. Foucault considers
documents to be “monuments” that have to be excavated, rather than mere records of other
monumental things, like the events of a war or the series of inventions and discoveries that led to the
light bulb. Archaeology does not study discourse in order to understand something else; rather, it
studies documents in order to understand the documents themselves, how they emerge within a field of
unspoken rules of what it is possible to think and speak at a given time. This means Foucault is not
looking for coherent, singular narratives, or for general truths. He is interested as much in the gaps in
discourse as in the continuities. And he is not interested in individuals, or the inventors and discoverers
of ideas. He is interested in discourse, with its own autonomy and rules of organization.

In his Conclusion to The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault answers possible critiques of his method.
Most importantly, he explains that his archaeology is not just another “structuralism.” In structuralism,
the elements of a society or language can be described in relation to a master system. The concern is
that such an emphasis on a system makes it impossible to see historical change or the role of individuals
within the system. Foucault says he eliminated neither individuals nor history, however. Instead, he
proliferated the different subject positions that individuals can take in discourse, which means he
actually enriched and deepened our understanding of individual speaking subjects. Rather than focus on
any one individual, he looks at the conditions under which individuals speak in the first place. Similarly,
Foucault does not reject historical change, but approaches change in terms of how discourses develop
and accumulate. This may not be a history of dates and events, but it is still a history of social change.

***

Historian of Ideas
For Foucault, the Historian of Ideas is essentially the mainstream historian. These are historians who are
also the major antagonist for Foucault’s own method. In Chapter 4 of Archaeology of Knowledge,
Foucault spells out the major tendencies of historians of ideas. They tend to study the sudden
emergence of something inventive or new; they are interested in continuity so that every event leads to
or causes another; they try to eliminate contradiction in what they study by finding an underlying
principle to cohere opposites; and they are interested in large and general categories like “science” or
“culture.” Most importantly, historians of ideas approach discourse as a document. That means
discourse is a record of something else, like the slow march of technological progress, rather than an
object of study in its own right.

Archaeologist
In contrast to the historian of ideas, Foucault wants archaeologists of discourse. That means treating
discourse as a “monument” in its own right, a totality worthy of its own study. In particular, Foucault
wants to understand the rules and conditions under which discourse comes into being the way it is, with
some things said in a certain way and other things not said at all. In contrast to the historian of ideas,
the archaeologist does not resolve contradictions or build unified narratives about progress, but instead
explains all the discontinuities and gaps in the discourse.

Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher and economist best known for his theories of class
struggle and capitalism. For Foucault, Karl Marx was the first—and until now really the only—person to
conceive of history beyond the terms of individual agency. Rather than tell the story of kings or
geniuses, Marx told the story of classes of people and successions of “modes of production,” or the ways
in which a society’s economy was organized. This is a kind of “impersonal” history, because it is a history
of groups and structures rather than persons. Foucault is inspired by this decentering of “anthropology”
or the study of people.

Authorities of Delimitation
The “authorities of delimitation” emerge in Foucault’s discussion of the formation of objects. Foucault
says that when studying their emergence, we should pay special attention to who is authorized to talk
about them. For instance, in the case of madness as it formed in the 19th century, medical professionals
were the ones who were able to write and speak about the object. These professionals are the
“authorities of delimitation.” To delimit means to determine the limits or boundaries of something. In
this case, medical professionals are determining the shape of this new object. With the emergence of
any object, Foucault says we need to pay attention to the institutions authorized to shape it.

***

Archive
For Foucault, an archive is not a collection of documents, but a “general system of the formation and
transformation of statements,” or in other words, the archive is Foucault’s term for the conditions and
rules of discourse itself
Cogito
A thinking subject

Correlative Space
Foucault's term for the way statements integrate (or correlate) different entities (people, places, things)
into a single comprehensible whole, or statement. Such integration "happens" in what Foucault calls the
statement's "correlative space"

Delimitation
The boundaries or limits of a discourse

Discourse
Foucault’s term for when a number of statements belong to the same discursive formation

Discursive Formation
A certain way of thinking about and doing things, part of a specific discourse

Document
A part of discourse that represents a historical event

Empiricism
The theory that knowledge comes from what is presented to the senses. Foucault calls his archaeology
empirical because it begins with what is right in front of you: written statements

Epistemology
The branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge

General History
In contrast to total history, general history does not unify events under a single principle, but explores all
the different relations between very different and simultaneously unfolding timelines and domains

Inadequation
Non-compatible; Foucault uses the term to discuss contradictory approaches to studying the same
object

Non-Discursive Domain
Foucault’s term for institutions and political events that might influence discourse but are not within the
discourse itself

Oeuvre
The collected works of an author

Original
Foucault’s preferred term for the “new” in discourse, which he thinks historians of ideas overemphasize

Referent
What a word denotes or represents, like the real-world tree referred to by the word “tree”
Regular
Foucault’s preferred term for the “old” in discourse, or the repeated and relatively stable statement
over time

Sovereignty of the Subject

Foucault’s phrase for actions or statements that are the product of a conscious individual in control of
his or her own will

Statement
In Foucault’s technical definition, a statement is an “enunciative function” that manifests different rules
for ordering different concepts

Total History
A history that groups everything under a single theme or logic, like the march of a civilization or of
science

Transcendental
Something that goes beyond ordinary limits, especially those of the human world; a transcendental
history goes beyond all specific people, events, things, and discourses, as if history is controlled by
something like the hand of God instead

*****

BOOK 3: Foucault, Michelle. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings

• Relationship between power and knowledge

• In this collection of interviews, lectures, and essays, we see Foucault touch on the core issues
and political underpinnings of his works.
• Gorgio Agamben on Foucault
o “one of the most persistent features of Foucault’s work is its decisive abandonment of
the traditional approach to the problem of power which is based on juridico institutional
models the definition of sovereignty the theory of the state in favor of an unprejudiced
analysis of the concrete ways in which power penetrates subjects very bodies and forms
of life.”
▪ so essentially what Agamben is saying is that Foucault’s work takes the whole
tradition of political philosophy and turns it upside down and this is partly why
Foucault is hard for us to understand because when we first read him he seems
to be thinking about things upside down and backwards.
• Traditional Modes of Political Thought (Aristotle’s Theory of Six Regimes)
o All governments, all regimes can fit into one of six categories. Governments are
differentiated from each other in a couple of ways:
NUMBER PUBLIC INTEREST SELF-INTEREST
 RULE BY ONE MONARCHY TYRANNY
RULE BY FEW ARISTOCRACY OLIGARCHY
RULES BY MANY POLITY DEMOCRACY
o The traditional way to think about politics is to focus on ‘Who Rules?’
o Everything then follows from what kind of power structure a community has in place;
different regimes will have different laws and will produce different types of citizens.
• Foucault flips everything around
o Instead of focusing on the ruler, he consistently focuses our attention on the ruled.
• Foucault on Traditional Power
o Our traditional accounts of power are reductive, they're too simple.
o Power is not this hierarchical, one-way force, that moves from the top down.
• Foucault on power – Power circulates, it moves all around us, and even through us.
o Where is power visible?
▪ Oversimplification of power is when one thinks that power only exist, for
example, inside a courtroom or parliament.
▪ Visible Power Dynamic – Foucault says that power can be seen in other kinds of
spaces like prisons or hospitals. It's in these places where Foucault argues power
dynamics are most clearly visible.
• Truth and Power
o Foucault is less interested in rulers, lawmakers, and forms of government, he wants to
move beyond the state “…first of all because the state, for all the omnipotence of its
apparatuses, is far from being able to occupy the whole field of actual power relations,
and further because the state can only operate on the basis of other, already existing
power relations. The state is super structural in relation to a whole series of power
networks that invest the body, sexuality, the family kinship, knowledge. Technology, and
so forth.”
o Example: SCHOOL [Foucault wants us to focus on the whole apparatus of a school
system
▪ What is education? We typically think about well what are students studying.
Are they studying math or science history?
▪ Power Dynamics – the teacher serves as the ruler
• Power: why do classrooms so often have rows? Why do schools have
bells and meticulously worked out daily routines and schedules?
• Foucault’s Discipline and Punish
o Those kinds of structures produce a person. They discipline you into being the sort of
person who responds to bells, who responds to schedules, who responds to a particular
mode of authority, not only that but schools incentivize us and reward us in ways that
prompt us to internalize these power structures.
o Through, school, we internalize power structure – we want to excel by obedience.
• Relationship between power and knowledge (Ancient Greece)
o Ship of State (Metaphor) – used to illustrate the importance of political expertise.
Philosophers like Plato linking governing a city to piloting a ship. In both situations,
lacking the proper knowledge, the right kind of expertise will doom you, doom the ship
or the state’s failure.
▪ Socratic argument – It is a Socratic argument that our political leaders much like
ships captains or carpenters or doctors, need to know what they're doing and if
they don't have the proper knowledge, then they will use power badly.
• This is the conventional way of thinking about power and knowledge
• Radical relationship of power and knowledge according to Foucault:
o Key Term: Power dictates the form of knowledge.
o Power decides what things there are and in what ways they can be known.
o *This is an extension of what Aristotle said: “For it is the one that prescribes which of
the sciences ought to be studied in cities, and which ones each class in the city should
learn, and how far[.]“
▪ Politics is the master science and it determines what all the other sciences can
do: what ought to be taught in school, how much ought to be known, what
ought not to be studied – that's just the business of politics
• Foucault’s question on power:
o Foucault extends this argument and suggests that: if power dictates what can be
studied; how much should be known, what cannot be known. Then doesn't power in a
sense, dictate what is true and maybe even more what can even be knowable.
▪ Example: Wellness – it is relaxation, rest; and we’ve taken and codified it to
become a whole industry of discipline.
o Power actually has a kind of appetite for knowledge: because a knowable thing is
something categorizable. It has definite limits and if it can be known, it can be
controlled.
• Traditional – Adversarial relationship between truth and power (by conflict or opposition):
o We might think of figures like Socrates or Galileo as these lovers of knowledge who
speak truth to power.
• Fuconian sense of the relationship of power and knowledge:
o Power actually produces knowledge. Power is not interested in the suppression of
knowledge or the suppression of truth. Power actually wants the proliferation of
knowledge; power wants more and more things to be identified, to be categorized to be
defined.
• once we become objects of knowledge, we become subject to power
o power has an appetite for knowledge and increasingly fine distinctions increase powers
reach
• there are serious problems with Foucault’s argument:
o Problem one: If power does produce knowledge, how is it possible to know anything
and in particular how is it possible to know anything about power?
▪ Wouldn't studying power then just be participating in power? We are studying
things that power wants us to study and we're learning about the categories
that power has already defined for us. And if all that's the case what is Foucault
doing as a thinker and a writer how does he understand his own project, if
knowledge is subject to power.
o Problem two: what is power? Where does it come from? What does it want? Does it
want anything? Does it have agency does it have an agenda?
▪ Foucault never really answers this question and it threatens to invalidate his
whole argument.
• In Foucauldian terms, it may not be possible to overthrow an unjust regime
o Political change just means power endlessly reconstituting itself in different forms.
▪ The whole idea of overturning a government or a power structure = in order to
establish a more just power structure becomes kind of suspect. Aren't we just
substituting one power formation for another power formation?
 ▪ If you think there are political models that are better or more just than others
then I think we might have some problems with Foucault.

[CHAPTER 1: ON POPULAR JUSTICE: A DISCUSSION WITH MAOISTS]

• Foucault debates the notion of a people’s court as a fair model of “popular justice.” He holds the
idea of the court as inappropriate for dispensing justice and traces its false neutrality;
genealogically speaking, entities that claim to act as neutral institutions generally function under
the ideology of the oppressor. He maintains that it is the masses that must themselves have the
discretion of pronouncing popular justice.

[CHAPTER 2: PRISON TALK]

• This interview is one of several in which Foucault discusses the core issues of Discipline and
Punish (chapters 3 and 8 also address ideas central to this work). In the interview, he comments
on penal labor, the dearth of historical studies on certain prisons, the shift of the prison from
punitive to surveillance-centered, and the relations between class and criminality—the latter
leading to the conclusion that the medical system has always served as an auxiliary to the penal
system.

[CHAPTER 3: BODY/POWER]
• In this interview, Foucault discusses the body and its relations of power. He touches on the
sovereign body as a political reality in the seventeenth century, the phenomenon of the social
body as material power that controls and regulates individual bodies, and the revolt of the
sexual body as it continues to be a site of conflict. He separates himself from Marxist and para-
Marxist interpretations of the body by first examining the body—not as a site of ideology but as
a site of power.

[CHAPTER 4: QUESTIONS ON GEOGRAPHY]

• Foucault tackles The Archaeology of Knowledge and its radical methodology. Foucault’s
discursive method of focusing on the dispersed formation of a number of statements rather
than a particular object, style, or theme enabled the formation of a geographical mode of
discourse.

[CHAPTER 5: TWO LECTURES]

• Foucault discusses his two methodological tools: archaeology and genealogy. In the first lecture,
he presents a viewpoint of history as a network of random minor events and consequent results
rather than a line of constant progression. In the second lecture, he asserts that to interpret
history in this way leads to the conclusion that power is an inextricable part of its causality.

[CHAPTER 6: TRUTH AND POWER AND CHAPTER 7: POWERS AND STRATEGIES]

• In chapters 6 and 7, Foucault discusses the core concepts of Madness and Civilization. In the
former, he outlines the structural aspect of his methodology, the implications of his works on
everyday political struggles, and his progression from studying madness to studying criminality
and delinquency. In the latter, Foucault denounces the parallelisms made between internment
and the Marxist Gulag and expounds on fascist techniques of power.
[CHAPTER 8: THE EYE OF POWER]
• Foucault discusses his infamous use of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon in Discipline and Punish.
The architectural structure was used as a metaphor to explore the internalized coercion in
prisons, which is achieved through constant observation and isolation.

[CHAPTER 9: THE POLITICS OF HEALTH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY]

• Foucault outlines the materiality and medico-politics of the eighteenth century and how this
proved instrumental in the reemergence and transformation of the hospital.

[CHAPTER 10: THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY AND CHAPTER 11: THE CONFESSION OF THE FLESH]
• In these chapters, Foucault touches on The History of Sexuality. Outlined in these chapters is the
history of the confession. Once exclusive to the Christian Church, the confession became
diffused to secular culture—where it, as a form of knowledge, produced other forms of
knowledge as it was practiced. The knowledge produced through that practice (e.g., desires,
identities, emotions, etc.) produced more knowledge (e.g., ideas of sexual identity) which, in
turn, was monitored, cultivated, and controlled, and so gave birth to a new form of power (the
field of psychoanalysis).

[THEMES]
• Foucault is perhaps most known for his unique perspective on how to understand power.
Foucault traces a shift from sovereign power—the traditional model of power in which power is
held by an individual such as a king—to a more nebulous, decentralized form of power. Key to
Foucault's conception of power is the idea that individuals do not hold power. Rather, power
acts on individuals and exists in the relationships between them and in institutions.
• One of the questions that serves as the backdrop for the work of Foucault and other politically
radical social theorists in his era is how to understand the failure of twentieth-century
revolutions to produce the kind of radical change they promised. Part of how Foucault
answers this question is by noting that deposing a monarch from power matters little if that
monarch as an individual does not hold real power. If, instead, power rests in institutions, in
knowledge, in discourses, and so on, then we can understand how replacing a monarch might
change little. This perspective also gives support to the argument that which specific politicians
are elected to lead the United States matters little and the general class structure, racial
stratification, and American imperialism are constants. Additionally, Foucault argues that while
most people think of power as repressive (that is, power can act to prevent individuals from
acting on their desires), it should instead be understood as productive (that is, power
produces the desires and ideas that shape individuals live). [Repressive Power vs Productive
Power]
• Epistemology – Foucault is particularly interested in epistemology—that is, the study of how
ideas are produced. Foucault argues that power produces knowledge. Putting himself at odds
with traditional Western frameworks that position knowledge as objective, Foucault pays great
attention to the ways in which structures of power affect the production of knowledge. We can
think of this at the micro level in terms of the way in which governments and corporations (with
their own agendas) will often fund research, allowing them to influence what kinds of ideas are
created. Example: We can also think about the way in which the power of a teacher and their
ability to wield power over these students (for example by choosing what grades they receive,
whether or not to write them letters of recommendation, etc.) shapes the ideas their students
conceive and develop. On a larger scale, we can see the way in which imperialist and colonial
 systems of knowledge suppress Indigenous systems of knowledge, for example, the history in
North America of forcing Indigenous children to go to Western boarding schools where white
people had the power to control what ideas they were taught and where they could be forcibly
separated from Indigenous systems of knowledge.
• Individuality and Identity – Foucault's ideas on knowledge and power lead him to radical
conclusions about the nature of individuality and identity. Foucault argues that individuals and
their identities are produced by discourses of power (discourses here meaning, roughly, the
kinds of macro-level conversations backed by power that determine the dominant ideas on a
topic; for example, the discourses of psychology that determine the way individuals are
constructed as "crazy"). Foucault also argues that the kinds of identities based on sexuality
that arose throughout the mid-twentieth century were not based in some essential, absolute
truth about individuals, but rather were products of political power. For example, the "born
this way" understanding of same-sex attraction and transgender existence suggests that at an
essential level individual are gay or straight, cisgender or transgender. A Foucauldian
perspective might note that throughout history and across culture, gender and sexuality have
been understood in a myriad of ways. The idea that same-sex attraction is limited to a specific
class of people and that those people are defined by it is in no way a constant.
• While many of these ideas might suggest that power is an all-determining force, Foucault is
surprisingly optimistic about the possibilities of individuals resisting power. He famously claims
in History of Sexuality Volume I that "where there is power, there is resistance." Foucault wants
readers to be mindful of the fact that we do not exist in a vacuum, and he argues against the
idea that there exists any sort of authentic, true self that is separate from the ways power acts
on us. He sees power as acting in all kinds of directions, varying across contexts, and where
power acts in one direction, resistance acts in opposing directions.

*****

BOOK 4: Foucault, Michel – The History of Sexuality.

• History of Sexuality was the muti-volume last work of Foucault.

• We are not really liberated – In the manoeuvres he performed in relation to sex are again very
familiar. Foucault rebelled against the view that we're all now deeply liberated and at ease with
sex.
o Once again, modernity was blamed for pretending there'd been progress when there
was in fact just the loss of spontaneity and imagination.
• Scientia Sexualis – He argued that since the 18th century, we have relentlessly medicalized sex,
handing it over to professional sex researchers and scientists. We live in an age of what Foucault
called "scientia sexualis" ("science of sexuality")
• Ars Erotica – But Foucault looked back with considerable nostalgia to the cultures of Rome,
China and Japan, where he detected the rule of, what he called, an "ars erotica" ("erotic art"),
where the whole focus was on how to increase the pleasure of sex rather than merely
understand and label it.
• **Foucault wrote the last volume of this work while dying of AIDS, that he had contracted in a
San Francisco gay bar. He died in 1984, age 58.
• Foucault and History – Foucault's lasting contribution is to the way we look at history. There are
lots of things in the modern world that we're constantly being told are "fantastic," and were
apparently very bad in the past; for example education or the media or our communication
systems. Foucault encourages us to break away from optimistic smugness about now and to go
back and see in history many ways of doing things which were perhaps superior. Foucault wasn't
trying to get us to be nostalgic, he wanted us to pick up some lessons of way back in order to
improve how we live now. Academic historians have tended to hate Foucault's work. They think
it inaccurate and keep pointing out things he hadn't quite understood in some document or
other, but Foucault didn't care for total historical accuracy. History for him was just a storehouse
of good ideas, and he wanted to raid it rather than keep it pristine and untouched. We should
use Foucault as an inspiration to look at the dominant ideas and institutions of our times, and to
question them by looking at their histories and evolutions. Foucault did something remarkable:
he made history life-enhancing and philosophically rich again. He can be an inspiring figure for
our own projects.
• Repressive Hypothesis (Sigmund Freud) – it is the very odea of being sexually repressed [in a
person or society]
o In fact, back in the 17th century, in the rise of the bourgeoisie (work hard, get rewarded)
sex was only considered/treated as waste energy.
▪ Since Foucault linked sex to capitalism or the work hard, get rewarded idea; and
that sex is considered as a waste energy then, sex was considered as non-
productive in terms of producing goods and was only viewed as a way of
reproductive purposes even specially in the Victorian era (19th century).
• Repressive theory – it is the relationship between sexual liberation and repression. The idea
being that social forces have repressed sexuality.
o Liberation can be achieved if sex is talked about openly and enjoyed more frequently
amidst that repression.
o Foucault argues against this logic.
• Sigmund Freud’s View
o Sexual desires are repressed by the demands of civilization
o Patient’s neuroses are manifestations of their desires that are emanation behind
society’s repressive barriers, therefore, if those desires are revealed then they can be
fixed.
▪ [Neuroses are characterized by anxiety, depression, or other feelings of
unhappiness or distress that are out of proportion to the circumstances of a
person's life.]
o For Freud the psyche is composed of two major components conscious thoughts and
o unconscious thoughts. Freudian psychoanalysis states that we need to get those
thoughts and beliefs and feelings that are unconscious to the surface, so it can
understand why it is we act the way we act and why it is we desire the things that we
desire. Because Freud believes that the forces of society and civilization are repressing
those things and it's the very thing that produces neuroses.
o Sexual desire is a secret, as repressed by the society, that needs to come out. Sex has
been repressed and has been made into something that needs to be private because it
is what’s been demanded by civilization.
• Michel Foucault’s View
o The repression of sex has paradoxically led to the intense scrutiny of it by that very
repressive society. In other words, the socially imposed secrecy of sexuality has turned
sexuality into something that is always being confessed and examined.
 ▪Confess – relegated to the private sphere of a catholic confessional but also
bearing intense scrutiny the desire to confess and examine and focus on that
which society tells us to not focus on.
o 19th century sexual repression - diagnosing women as hysterics, punishing children's
sexual behavior, and pathologizing non-normative sexualities which continued up until
the 20th.
▪ It is not sexual repression but the construction of normative sexuality that
emerges as a result of policing sexuality in particular ways.
• POWER: Repressive Power (Negative) vs Normalizing Power (Productive)
o The repressive hypothesis is wrong – sex is not repressed but rather, in society telling
us to keep it private, it is actually producing something as opposed to pushing against
something.
o “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from
everywhere.” – “Power," insofar as it is permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-
reproducing, is simply the over-all effect that emerges from all these mobilities, the
concatenation that rests on each of them and seeks in turn to arrest their movement.
o The omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything
under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at
every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another.
o 1. Repressive Power (Negative) | Progressive Power – its is power that stops us from
doing what we want. It is the power that tells you what to do and what not to do.
▪ (ie. Dictator, police, boss).
▪ “a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the
citizens of a given state. By power, I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugation
which, in contrast to violence, has the form of the rule. Finally, I do not have in
mind a general system of domination exerted by one group over another, a
system whose effects, through successive derivations, pervade the entire social
body.”
▪ Terminal forms of power – The analysis, made in terms of power, must not
assume that the sovereignty of the state, the form of the law, or the over-all
unity of a domination are given at the outset; rather, these are only the
terminal forms power takes.
o 2. Normalizing Power (Productive/Normative) – it is insidious as it gets you to want to
do things. This is not the power that threatens you but the power that seeps into your
unconscious; the very power that influences you to have certain beliefs and desires. [the
more that it is being repressed, the more it influences us to give in to our desires or to
do something]
▪ (ie. Like the desire to get married to produce offspring to have a heterosexual
union)
▪ It's still power because it influences you but it’s not repressive because it rarely
takes the form of violence.
▪ One needs to be nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a
structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name
that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society
▪ Victorian Era – Victorian ideals of sexuality didn't lead to sexual oppression.
They normalized and produced certain codes of sexuality. They continued to
turn sex, something that just people tend to do, in various ways into “sexuality,”
a discourse full of concepts and identities.
o politics is war pursued by other means? If we still wish to maintain a separation between
war and politics, perhaps we should postulate rather that this multiplicity of force
relations can be coded-in part but never totally--either in the form of "war," or in the
form of "politics"; this would imply two different strategies (but the one always liable to
switch into the other) for integrating these unbalanced, heterogeneous, unstable, and
tense force relations.
o Power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on
to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of
nonegalitarian and mobile relations. [Power is not something you own but something
that is acted out]
o Relations of power are not in a position of exteriority with respect to other types of
relationships (economic processes, knowledge relationships, sexual relations), but are
immanent in the latter; they are the immediate effects of the divisions, inequalities,
and disequilibrium which occur in the latter, and conversely they are the internal
conditions of these differentiations; relations of power are not in superstructural
positions, with merely a role of prohibition or accompaniment; they have a directly
productive role, wherever they come into play. [Power exists within relationships and
is not only an after effect to it.]
o Power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition
between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations, and serving as a general
matrix-no such duality extending from the top down and reacting on more and more
limited groups to the very depths of the social body. One must suppose rather that the
manifold relationships of force that take shape and come into play in the machinery of
production, in families, limited groups, and institutions, are the basis for wide-ranging
effects of cleavage that run through the social body as a whole. These then form a
general line of force that traverses the local oppositions and links them together; to be
sure, they also bring about redistributions, realignments, homogenizations, serial
arrangements, and convergences of the force relations. Major dominations are the
hegemonic effects that are sustained by all these confrontations.
o Power relations are both intentional and non-subjective. If in fact they are intelligible,
this is not because they are the effect of another instance that "explains' them, but
rather because they are imbued, through and through, with calculation: there is no
power that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives. But this does not mean
that it results from the choice or decision of an individual subject; [power is intentional
because it is already a part of the process/relationship. It is intentional since there is
an aim. However, it is not a result of choice of decision because it is already imbued
within the relationship]
o the rationality of power is characterized
o Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this
resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power. Should it be said that
one is always "inside" power, there is no "escaping" it, there is no absolute outside
where it is concerned
o This would be to misunderstand the strictly relational character of power relationships.
Their existence depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of
adversary, target, support, or handle in power relations. These points of resistance
represent everywhere in the power network. Hence there is no single focus of great
Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary.
Instead there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case: resistances that
 are possible, necessary, improbable; others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary,
concerted, rampant, or violent; still others that are quick to compromise, interested, or
sacrificial; by definition, they can only exist in the strategic field of power relations.
Resistances do not derive from a few heterogeneous principles; but neither are they a
lure or a promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of
power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite. Hence they too are
distributed in irregular fashion: the points, knots, or focuses of resistance are spread
over time and space at varying densities, at times mobilizing groups or individuals in a
definitive way, inflaming certain points of the body, certain moments in life, certain
types of behavior.
• Machiavelli’s Prince – And if it is true that Machiavelli was among the few-and this no doubt
was the scandal of his "cynicism"-who conceived the power of the Prince in terms of force
relationships, perhaps we need to go one step further, do without the persona of the Prince,
and decipher power mechanisms on the basis of a strategy that is immanent in force
relationships.
• Questioning the discourses of sex – In a specific type of discourse on sex, in a specific form of
extortion of truth, appearing historically and in specific places (around the child's body, apropos
of women's sex, in connection with practices restricting births, and so on), what were the most
immediate, the most local power relations at work? How did they make possible these kinds of
discourses, and conversely, how. were these discourses used to support power relations? How
was the action of these power relations modified by their very exercise, entailing a
strengthening of some terms and a weakening of others, with effects of resistance and
counterinvestments, so that there has never existed one type of stable subjugation, given once
and for all? How were these power relations linked to one another according to the logic of a
great strategy, which in retrospect takes on the aspect of a unitary and voluntarist politics of
sex? In general terms: rather than referring all the infinitesimal violences that are exerted on
sex, all the anxious gazes that are directed at it, and all the hiding places whose discovery is
made into an impossible task, to the unique form of a great Power, we must immerse the
expanding production of discourses on sex in the field of multiple and mobile power relations.
[Instead of focusing on the scrutiny that the discourse of sex goes through due to the
supposedly repressive acts of the society, the more that it should be talked about and
expounded since the way we think about sex is mobile and changing. One moment it is just an
act of production, gradually it changed into some sort of sin specially directed to the same sex
individuals and later on; sex was not just an act anymore and the sin connected to act
transformed into an identity which is also now sinful. These are greatly influenced by the
normalizing power of the society, as the more that sex is alienated, the more that there is a
need to have a discourse about it; therefore, normalizing it.]
o Which leads us to advance, in a preliminary way, four rules to follow. But these are not
intended as methodological imperatives; at most they are cautionary prescriptions:
• I. Rule of immanence [lies within something] – One must not suppose that there exists a certain
sphere of sexuality that would be the legitimate concern of a free and disinterested scientific
inquiry were it not the object of mechanisms of prohibition brought to bear by the economic or
ideological requirements of power. [There is no one or central topic regarding the discourse of
sex. Therefore, when the discourse on sex occurs, its supposed that there will be a vast
conversation about it] If sexuality was constituted as an area of investigation, this was only
because relations of power had established it as a possible object; and conversely, if power was
able to take it as a target, this was because techniques of knowledge and procedures of
discourse were capable of investing it. [sexuality became an area of investigation due to
 relations of power is because of the” repressive” part of power. The more it was repressed,
the more labels were put into sexuality and the more the need to talks about it arises]
Between techniques of knowledge and strategies of power, there is no exteriority, even if they
have specific roles and are linked together on the basis of their difference. [power lies within
these relationships] We will start, therefore, from what might be called "local centers" of
power-knowledge: for example, the relations that obtain between penitents and confessors, or
the faithful and their directors of conscience. Here, guided by the theme of the "flesh" that
must be mastered, different forms of discourse-self-examination, questionings, admissions,
interpretations, interviews-were the vehicle of a kind of incessant back-and-forth movement of
forms of subjugation and schemas of knowledge. Similarly, the body of the child, under
surveillance, surrounded in his cradle, his bed, or his room by an entire watch-crew of parents,
nurses, servants, educators, and doctors, all attentive to the least manifestations of his sex, has
constituted, particularly since the eighteenth century, another "local center" of power
knowledge.
• 2. Rules of continual variations [refers to characteristics like weight or height, which change
gradually] – We must not look for who has the power in the order of sexuality (men, adults,
parents, doctors) and who is deprived of it (women, adolescents, children, patients); nor for
who has the right to know and who is forced to remain ignorant. We must seek rather the
pattern of the modifications which the relationships of force imply by the very nature of their
process. [seek the changes] The "distributions of power" and the "appropriations of
knowledge" never represent only instantaneous slices taken from processes involving, for
example, a cumulative reinforcement of the strongest factor, or a reversal of relationship, or
again, a simultaneous increase of two terms. Relations of power-knowledge are not static
forms of distribution, they are "matrices of transformations." The nineteenth-century grouping
made up of the father, the mother, the educator, and the doctor, around the child and his sex,
was subjected to constant modifications, continual shifts. One of the more spectacular results
of the latter was a strange reversal: whereas to begin with the child's sexuality had been
problematized within the relationship established between doctor and parents (in the form of
advice, or recommendations to keep the child under observation, or warnings of future
dangers), ultimately it was in the relationship of the psychiatrist to the child that the sexuality of
adults themselves was called into question.
• 3. Rule of double conditioning – No "local center," no "pattern of transformation" could
function if, through a series of sequences, it did not eventually enter into an over-all strategy.
And inversely, no strategy could achieve comprehensive effects if did not gain support from
precise and tenuous relations serving, not as its point of application or final outcome, but as its
prop and anchor point. There is no discontinuity between them, as if one were dealing with
two different levels (one microscopic and the other macroscopic); but neither is there
homogeneity (as if the one were only the enlarged projection or the miniaturization of the
other); rather, one must conceive of the double conditioning of a strategy by the specificity of
possible tactics, and of tactics by the strategic envelope that makes them work. Thus, the
father in the family is not the "representative" of the sovereign or the state; and the latter are
not projections of the father on a different scale. The family does not duplicate society, just as
society does not imitate the family. But the family organization, precisely to the extent that it
was insular and heteromorphous with respect to the other power mechanisms, was used to
support the great "maneuvers" employed for the Malthusian control of the birthrate, for the
populationist incitements, for the medicalization of sex and the psychiatrization of its non-
genital forms. [compare and contrast – the family has an effect toward civilization]
• 4. Rule of the tactical polyvalence of discourses [Discourse is what joins knowledge to power,
and like power itself, discourse works in all sorts of different ways. There is not a simple
dominant/dominated relationship in discourse, and silence does not always imply repression.]
– What is said about sex must not be analyzed simply as the surface of projection of these
power mechanisms. Indeed, it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together.
And for this very reason, we must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments
whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable. To be more precise, we must not imagine
a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between
the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements
that can come into play in various strategies. It is this distribution that we must reconstruct,
with the things said and those concealed, the enunciations required and those forbidden, that it
comprises; with the variants and different effects-according to who is speaking, his position of
power, the institutional context in which he happens to be situated-that it implies; and with the
shifts and reutilizations of identical formulas for contrary objectives that it also includes.
Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it, any more than
silences are. We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby
discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a
stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse
transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it
fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. In like manner, silence and secrecy are a shelter for
power, anchoring its prohibitions; but they also loosen its holds and provide for relatively
obscure areas of tolerance. Consider for example the history of what was once "the" great sin
against nature. The extreme discretion of the texts dealing with sodomy-that utterly confused
category and the nearly universal reticence in talking about it made possible a twofold
operation: on the one hand, there was an extreme severity (punishment by fire was meted out
well into the eighteenth century, without there being any substantial protest expressed before
the middle of the century), and on the other hand, a tolerance that must have been widespread
(which one can deduce indirectly from the infrequency of judicial sentences, and which one
glimpses more directly through certain statements concerning societies of men that were
thought to exist in the army or in the courts). There is no question that the appearance in
nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on
the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and "psychic
hermaphrodism" made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of
"perversity"; but it also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: homosexuality
began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or "naturality" be
acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was
medically disqualified. There is not, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite it,
another discourse that runs counter to it. Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating
in the field of force discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate
without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy. We must not
expect the discourses on sex to tell us, above all, what strategy they derive from, or what
moral divisions they accompany, or what ideology-dominant or dominated-they represent;
rather we must question them on the two levels of their tactical productivity (what reciprocal
effects of power and knowledge they ensure) and their strategical integration (what
conjunction and what force relationship make their utilization necessary in a given episode of
the various confrontations that occur). In short, it is a question of orienting ourselves to a
conception of power which replaces the privilege of the law with the viewpoint of the objective,
the privilege of prohibition with the viewpoint of tactical efficacy, the privilege of sovereignty
 with the analysis of a multiple and mobile field of force relations, wherein far-reaching, but
never completely stable, effects of domination are produced. The strategical model, rather than
the model based on law. And this, not out of a speculative choice or theoretical preference, but
because in fact it is one of the essential trllits of Western societies that the force relationships
which for a long time had found expression in war, in every form of warfare, gradually became
invested in the order of political power.
• Sexuality must not be described as a stubborn drive, by nature alien and of necessity
disobedient to a power which exhausts itself trying to subdue it and often fails to control it
entirely. It appears rather as an especially dense transfer point for relations of power:
between men and women, young people and· old. people, parents and offspring, teachers and
students, priests and laity, an administration and a population. Sexuality is not the most
intractable element in power relations, but rather one of those endowed with the greatest
instrumentality: useful for the greatest number of maneuvers and capable of serving as a point
of support, as a linchpin, for the most varied strategies. There is no single, all-encompassing
strategy, valid for all of society and uniformly bearing on all the manifestations of sex. For
example, the idea that there have been repeated attempts, by various means, to reduce all of
sex to its reproductive function, its heterosexual and adult form, and its matrimonial legitimacy
fails to take into account the manifold objectives aimed for, the manifold means employed in
the different sexual politics concerned with the two sexes, the different age groups and social
classes. In a first approach to the problem, it seems that we can distinguish four great strategic
unities which, beginning in the eighteenth century, formed specific mechanisms of knowledge
and power centering on sex.
• Discourse – a system of thought knowledge or communication that constructs our experience of
the world
o Normalizing power took sex, which is merely an activity that people do, and molded it
into what he calls a discourse of sexuality or really what we might call discourses of
sexuality in the scientific, psychological, and juridical realms
▪ example: one of them is in fact Sigmund Freud who wrote three essays on the
theory of sexuality in 1905; scientific discourses of sexuality that are emerging in
the late 19th century like Richard von cross’ psychopathic sexualis.
o Codification – Normalizing power starts to codify normative sexuality and you start to
codify abnormal sexuality. You start to attach sex to sexuality which is tied to identity,
who you are as a person.
▪ Example: same-sex activity used to be “someone who succumbed to the sin of
sodomy” but in the 18th and 19th centuries, that person became a
“homosexual.” So, for Foucault it's not the idea that sexuality was only policed
in the 19th century, as an act itself, but it's that the kind of policing that started
to construct identities attached to the acts before. Before the 18th and 19th
centuries, for Foucault you might simply condemn the act of homosexual sex as
a sin but around the 18th and 19th centuries you started to merge that act with
a sense of identity.
❖ Same-sex is an act while homosexuality is the identity.
o “Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold
and check or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries to gradually uncover, it is the
name that can be given to a historical construct…” (pp. 105)
▪ History of sexuality – examine what sexuality is as a social and historical
construct
 o “Nearly 150 years have gone into the making of a complex machinery for producing true
discourses on sex, it is this deployment that enables something called sexuality to
embody the truth of sex and its pleasures” (pp. 68)
▪ Discourse of sexuality – aim is to separate sex and act a set of acts from
sexuality a discourse
• what is the point of Foucault giving this history or genealogy of sexuality?
o “I wanted to reintegrate a lot of obvious facts of our practices in the historicity of some
of these practices and thereby rob them of their evidentiary status, in order to give them
back the mobility that they have had and that they should always have.”
▪ If we can start to look at the way in which certain things that we hold as natural,
like sexuality, is in fact not natural but is understood through layers of social
discourse, then we might realize that they actually have the possibility of
changing. That they have “mobility” and this idea of treating sexuality as
something that is mobile and fluid and changeable and not essential or natural
is in fact a major theme of what is to be called queer theory that is going to
emerge in the 1980s 90s 2000s and today much of which will footnote this very
text history of sexuality.
*****

BOOK 5: Urbanski, Steve – The Identity Game

The Identity Game: Michel Foucault’s Discourse-Mediated Identity as an Effective Tool for Achieving a
Narrative-Based Ethic

• Abstract: This article examines in hermeneutic fashion [refers to the theory and practice of
interpretation, where interpretation involves an understanding that can be justified. It
describes both a body of historically divers methodologies for interpreting texts, objects, and
concepts, and a theory of understanding] the philosophy of Michel Foucault and isolates an
identity matrix that can assist humans in [aim] navigating the often numerous and conflicting
narratives facing us in the 21st century and empower us to move toward a more narrative-
based ethic that is beneficial to multiple stakeholders.
• Identity Scheme – our identities are not fixed in the traditional sense but mediated by the many
rich, dialogical discourses we encounter each day. [Our identity is not linear/singular]
o Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, and its application to
ethics has never been more important.
• Emotivistic framework –In highly developed countries (egocentric), they view ethical decision-
making is emotivictic. [emotivism – the view that moral judgments do not function as
statements of fact but rather as expressions of the speaker's or writer's feelings.]
• This book talks about how the identity of a person empowers them to determine and take
ethical action – which informs us what narrative-based ethic is.

INTRODUCTION AND THESIS STATEMENT

• Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche – individual in his ascetic ideal – “Let the world perish,
but let there be philosophy, the philosopher, me!” (p. 108).
o Nietzsche is a genealogist [Nietzsche criticized "the genealogists" in On the Genealogy
of Morals and proposed the use of a historic philosophy to critique modern morality
by supposing that it developed into its current form through power relations.]
o There are forces of identity and ethics playing off of and competing with one another
 o Genealogy – Although Nietzsche’s genealogies undermine the narratives and social
practices that guide us as ethical beings, his genealogies were, in essence, works of
deconstruction long before Jacques Derrida made the practice famous (and infamous,
depending on one’s philosophical orientation) more than 70 years later. By questioning
the value of the values, themselves, a Nietzschean genealogy, is a purification of sorts,
which calls into question the very values humans hold sacred. By toppling these
philosophical barriers, or at least lessening their effectiveness, Nietzsche hopes to open
a space for a new, purer form of thought. [You are questioning the truth in these
values/morals. Questioning them for what they really are, exposing them, in order to
establish a purer form of truth | something new.]
o Deconstruction – The process of deconstruction can have the same result; however, the
operative word is can. Many scholars agree that deconstruction has much the same
effect as a Nietzschean genealogy. Its aim is to destabilize a subject by constantly
questioning the social practices (such as values and even language) and thus open that
subject to a richer understanding. [You are trying to challenge the thought, and
therefore, questioning it]
▪ However, not all forms of deconstruction can be looked upon with such disdain.
Several works by Derrida, among them “Structure, Sign, and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences” and “The Principle of Reason: The University
in the Eyes of Its Pupils”, are not intended to destroy discourses but rather
disrupt them, open them to new discussion, and ultimately to more
comprehensive meaning [Still questioning it. To give new meaning, broaden
the conversation]
• Gilles Deleuze – ethics in his discussion of active and reactive forces (both of which play major
roles the ascetic ideal) – “Eternal return, as a physical doctrine, affirms the being of becoming.
But, as selective ontology, it affirms this being of becoming as the ‘self-affirming’ of the
becoming-active” (p. 72).
o The ethical dimension of an “eternal return” affirms the “being of becoming.”
• Example of Genealogy and Deconstruction (Gayatri Spivak – Feminism and Critical Theory)
o Patriarchy – outwardly accepts the patriarchy but destabilizes it by effectively
questioning key aspects of Marxism and Freudianism, thus opening the patriarchy and
allowing a space for a feminist discussion [Uses already established thoughts, questions
it, and open another path or way of discussion]
o Marxian View of Production – Spivak changed it to reproduction
o Freud’s pleasure principle – Spivak debunked it and suggested it that childbirth is
anything but a pleasurable experience.
o AIM: Spivak does not want to destroy the texts of Marx and Freud. She merely proposes
a different way of reading them, one that includes a feminist voice.
• Michel Foucault – His genealogical approach aligns him with both Nietzsche and Derrida, yet
Foucault is a difficult philosopher to classify. At times he is a structuralist, at other times a post-
structuralist or a post-modernist.
o Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison and The History of Sexuality: An
Introduction are genealogies and both, in true Nietzschean fashion, bring into question
the values and social practices that underpin our ethical makeup. [Questions the
already-established social values]
• Foucault’s method in questioning ethics and values in a post-modern time of competing
narratives.
 o First: Starts with his belied that identity is not fixed but rather a discourse mediated by
our interactions with others.
▪ Foucault believes that an unfixed, discourse-mediated identity can assist us in
overcoming emotivism and egoism and propel us toward a more narrative-
based ethic.
▪ To achieve communitarian-like ethics, not one that is emotivist in nature
o Narrative-Based Ethic – informed by our lived experiences that recognizes the collective
nature of the world in which we live.
▪ It is a communitarian-type of ethic – belief that a person's social identity and
personality are largely molded by community relationships, with a smaller
degree of development being placed on individualism.
• Walter R. Fisher (Philosopher) – sees humans as “storytellers” who view the world based on an
awareness of what Fisher terms narrative probability and their constant habit of testing that
story’s narrative fidelity.
o Narrative probability – what constitutes a coherent story [something that make sense]
o Narrative Fidelity – whether the experience rings true with other stories they know to
be true in their lives [the story’s validity]
▪ In Fisher’s philosophy, the many stories that bind us together and ultimately
construct our reality are fueled by history. This history is the roots of his
narrative fidelity.
o Narrative Paradigm – not being a celebration of narration as much as it is a celebration
of human beings by “… reaffirming their nature as storytellers” [Narration is the story
itself while human beings as storytellers. Putting emphasis on the identity of the
individual as a storyteller]
• Contingent Historical Forces – These contingent historical forces are the bridge between Fisher
and Foucault
o Foucault was never shy about undermining biological, psychological, or social truths,
usually purporting that they are merely outcomes of contingent historical forces.
o For Foucault, history becomes more of a frame or a boxing ring where preconceived
truths can be isolated and taken apart in an effort to expose or create new knowledge.

A METHODOLOGY OF HERMENEUTICS
• Unfixed Identity
• Framing both the individual and ethics (their relationship).
• “The other” plays a vital role in our interpersonal actions.
• Narrative – A narrative includes an appreciation of the other and the natural connection
everyone has to history, language, the present, and the future. Our place in this equation can be
active or passive.
o Passive – we are vulnerable to Nietzschean-like ressentiment, which can be paralyzing
and destructive.
o Active – new communicative possibilities arise and assure a connection to an ethic that
includes a multiplicity of voices and social practices.
• Individual – how he defines the concept of identity opens a space for communicative and
ethical transformation.
o Foucault’s “Technologies of the Self” [11], a better recognition of the link between
identity (fixed or otherwise) and ethics will emerge and the greater challenge to look
beyond identity, ego, and emotivism when facing ethical quandaries
• In connection to Foucault saying to not look at him as an author because he might change – As
Foucault neared the end of his life (because he had AIDS in the 1980s, he knew he would die),
his outlook on life, knowledge, and the other changed radically. An offshoot of this change was a
preoccupation with subjectivity and practices of the self. At times Foucault’s later writings are
puzzling and in direct conflict with his earlier material. He retreated from his more politically
engaging texts (i.e., Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality) and undertook a project
that can best be described by Sawicki [12] as self-refusal — “to become someone else you were
not at the beginning” (p. 288). For this abrupt change to have significance within a discussion of
ethics, ego, identity, and emotivism, it is significant to first look at earlier Foucauldian concepts
of identity to illustrate how they changed at different points of his life.
• Identity – A Question of Identity: “What is an Author?”
o human identity being essentially a discourse that is mediated by our interactions with
others
o Foucault re-casts the idea of the author, denying its status as a unified consciousness
capable of explaining the final meaning of the text. Instead, Foucault describes the
author as a set of functions or leverage points that enable the production of a final
meaning
o Foucault refers to the author/work relationship as “... a solid and fundamental unit” [13]
but quickly adds: I want to deal solely with the relationship between text and author
and with the manner in which the text points to this figure that, at least in appearance,
is outside it and antecedes
▪ Foucault is suggesting that there is an unavoidable link between the two, the
moment the work is conceived and during the actual writing process. However,
his reference to the author as “this figure” also illustrates his feelings of
detachment for the author as an actual identity. The author is “outside” the
work being created and he/she also antecedes it or exists prior to the creation
of the work. Once the piece is written, a distinct break occurs between author
and work. “Writing unfolds like a game,” Foucault [13] writes, “that [jeu] that
invariably goes beyond its own rules and transgresses its limits” (p. 206).
• Text – Eventually a point arises when the text assumes an existence of its own and is linked to
the author in only an associative manner. The work, in fact, is able to give rise to subsequent
independent discourses, which continue in different forms even after the author’s death. [The
text eventually has its own identity]
o Alive Author/Dead man – While the author is alive, Foucault notes that he “... must
assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing” (p. 207). This odd role of the
dead man is Foucault’s way of dealing with the cultural manner in which we have “...
metamorphosed this idea of narrative, or writing, as something designed to ward off
death” (p. 206).
o Immortality of the text – The text is essentially immortal but in the case of (among
others) Flaubert, Proust, and Kafka, it takes on transformative powers and continues to
grow long after its human “creator” has physically died. [The text continuously
involves since knowledge also continue to change. The way the text is perceived
changes]
o Author – The authority and status we attach to the term “author” are special and
definitive in nature. Foucault writes: A private letter may well have a signer — it does
not have an author; a contract may well have a guarantor — it does not have an author.
An anonymous text posted on a wall probably has an editor — but not an author. The
 author function is therefore characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and
functioning of certain discourses within a society”
▪ Function – His use of the work “function” is key to his perception of identity in
this essay. By being designated as a function, the author becomes part of a
process that produces meaning via the text. Writing suddenly moves from a
foundational to a functional principle and the author is merely part of the
productive process. [For Foucault, the author is not the individual who creates
the text but is only an integral part of the process]
o Authorship – Initially, Foucault points out, there was a time in which great texts
(narratives, stories, epics, tragedies, comedies) were routinely accepted without any
question about authorship. What the work said to the masses was considered
paramount to who wrote it. [The content of text holds more value than the author] In
the Middle Ages, a distinct shift occurred among scientific texts. They were not
considered “true” or “valid” unless marked by the name of their author. [The
reputation of the author dictates the value of the text] This is the point, Foucault
believes, in which the idea of author began to play a paramount role in how a work is
perceived.
▪ Authorial intent – The concept of authorial intent began to emerge and take
precedence, rather than the concept of a text and the reader creating a shared
realm via a transactional relationship.
• Selves – involved in the authorial function as well as the subsequent discourses a text can give
rise to even after the author has died
o Concerning the “selves,” Foucault writes that at different times an author will possess
distinctly different identities, such as the voice used in a narrative account versus the
voice used in the preface of a text. When the author analyzes his or her work after it is
published, yet another “self” is required. None of these “selves” is wholly descriptive,
yet all are present as one time or another [The ‘selves’ evolved as the need in creating
and evaluating the text changes; it evolves depending on the need of the text]
• Break between author and text – the break occurs right after the text was offered for public
consumption which give rise to numerous subsequent and independent discourses.
o Authorial intent becomes blurry at this point because the discourses can only go so far
depending on how well it is accepted. Even though the author (while living) may offer a
rationale behind various parts of the text, it is the reader who ultimately creates
meaning in his or her mind. Once the author is dead, this process of reader-generated
meaning becomes even more pronounced. [the author used gypsy in the context of
them being accused and outcasted. But readers try to insert their narrative that it is a
racial slur
• Disciplines – In a discipline, unlike in commentary, what is supposed at the point of departure is
not some meaning which must be rediscovered, nor an identity to be reiterated; it is that which
is required for the construction of new statements. For discipline to exist, there must be the
possibility of formulating — and in doing so ad infinitum — fresh propositions (pp. 222-23).
• Independence of a text – Within this passage, Foucault illustrates the independent nature
(identity, if you will) a text achieves once it is read and interpreted by the reader. The author has
served his “function” and assisted in producing meaning, but once that meaning is made
available to the public, a new form of production is generated, that being the production of new
discourses. [the text becomes independent because it breaks away from the author’s rationale
of the text and the readers create their own context and thought of the text]
 o Chameleon-like Identity: “To be the same is really boring” – our relationship with our
identity is one of “differentiation, of creation, of innovation.” [Our identity is adaptive]
• Discipline and Punish: This again illustrates the chameleon-like tendencies that Foucault sees
for our identities. It also exemplifies how his views on identity became more concentrated late
in his life. Just 13 years earlier, in “What is an Author?” Foucault’s perceptions of identity were
somewhat broader, using the author as a focal point. In his 1982 lecture, just two years before
his death, his focal point is clearly the individual. Foucault’s Identity and the Ethico-political:
Discipline and Punish. Damien’s identity is literally stripped away. Foucault names Damiens in
Discipline and Punish, and he is a focal point at which the reader can identify with the hideous
power of the monarchy. Yet Damiens accomplishes a secondary function: Although he has a
name and works as a character with a fixed identity, he is also illustrative of what happens to
anyone who commits a crime against the monarchy. Identity moves throughout this text in a
Foucauldian discursive manner. It is bolstered and defined by the varying narratives of
Discipline and Punish. [Damien is the identity as he has the name and he can be seen as the
focal point of the story. But he is also seen as representative, a symbol. of the acts committed
against him]
o Montagne – the identity reversed the accuser, the monarch, to the accused. The
condemned man found himself transformed into a hero by the sheer extent of his
widely advertised crimes, and sometimes the affirmation of his belated repentance.
Against the law, against the rich, the powerful, the magistrates, the constabulary or the
watch, against taxes and their collectors, he appeared to have waged a struggle with
which one all to easily identified [6] (p. 67). The executioners were seen as evil
representatives who dumbly followed the orders of an unscrupulous monarchy, never
questioning them. When an accused was made an example, it often times had the
opposite effect. Foucault is able to weave this ethical component into Discipline and
Punish, and it is directly linked to identity. [unfixed identity – the identity changes due
to circumstances surrounding the identity and how it is perceived by the society
(process of mediation and determination)]
o Monarchy – the monarchy established the ‘good’ for those that obeyed them and the
‘bad’ for those that disobeyed them. The same labels turned the tide against the
monarchy, which made them the accused.
▪ The monarchy was practicing pure emotivism because it defined the just and
the ethical in a manner that was beneficial to the preservation and longevity of
the crown. More relevant is the effect that transformation has on the people
surrounding the subject.
• The history of Sexuality – Sex became a topic to be studied and regulated by way of science and
the courts. Prostitution was outlawed and sex became a topic to be evaluated by psychiatrists.
This repression had a backlash, however. Rather than acting as a prevention of sexuality,
repression became an incitement.
o Jouy – accused of touching a girl. The significance of this story is that Jouy was not
arrested. Instead he was placed in a hospital and studied for the rest of his life. Sex was
now a matter of science to by analyzed in the laboratory. It also became a topic that was
discussed less frequently in public. Sex became something to be whispered about.
o Like Discipline and Punish, there is a subtle communitarian ethical note in The History of
Sexuality. Foucault advocates a cultural form of action in which we must recognize and
reverse the direction of the numerous analyses. He concludes: Rather than assuming a
generally acknowledged repression, and an ignorance measured against what we are
suppose to know, we must ... investigate the conditions of their emergence and
 operation, and try to discover how the related facts of interdiction or concealment are
distributed with respect to them [7] (p. 73).
o This collective recognition provides the possibility for change, but it involves first a
realization of identity and then a movement beyond identity. A major part of Foucault’s
genealogy is the narratives and social practices that make up our culture. Unlike
Nietzsche, Foucault seems to be allowing a space for these narratives and social
practices to continue. To completely dismantle them would involve doing away with the
very cultures he is using in his genealogy. Instead Foucault appears to be advocating a
narrative-based form of ethics, though he never uses those words.
• A Movement Beyond Identity: Technology of the Self Of the four “technologies” Foucault
addresses in “Technologies of the Self,” [11] the first two, the technology of production and the
technology of sign systems, deal primarily with the study of the sciences and linguistics. It is the
final two, the technology of power and the technology of the self, which are most applicable to
this essay. The technology of power and how it transforms otherwise free-thinking beings into
mere subjects has been a subtheme in the earlier discussions of Discipline and Punish and The
History of Sexuality.
• When one is asked ‘What is the most important moral principle in ancient philosophy?’ the
immediate answer is not ‘Take care of oneself’ but the Delphic principle, gnothi seauton (‘Know
yourself’) [11] (p. 226). Our philosophical tradition has overemphasized the latter and forgotten
the former, Foucault writes. The statement “Know yourself” in the Delphic principle was not an
abstract form. Rather, it was technical advice: “Do not suppose yourself to be a god” [11] (p.
226). In a sense it is classic and very sound advice for avoiding egoism. By not supposing oneself
to be a god, a person naturally assumes a greater sense of responsibility toward the other, and
this underscores the significance of the technology of the self. The gods, after all, need only to
be true to themselves.
• Foucault believes in an ethic of transgression where good can be salvaged from the ruins [20].
To achieve this ethical salvation, one must first know oneself well enough to break free of the
bonds of self and discover an agency that can bring about change. By accentuating this ethical
care of the self, Foucault enables the subject to assume responsibility without violating the
integrity of the other [21].

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

• Beyond Identity and Toward a Narrative-based Ethic This project established as its objective not
only to define Foucault’s view an unfixed, discourse-mediated identity but also to show that
unfixed identity in action within two of his major works, Discipline and Punish and The History of
Sexuality. The various characters in these two texts — whether individual prisoners in Discipline
and Punish or the Western culture in The History of Sexuality — did exhibit the characteristics
of a discourse-mediated identity.
o At times they were individuals with names and positions within society but at other
times their identities were changed by the various circumstances surrounding them.
These identity permutations often had wide-scale effects that otherwise may not have
occurred. The torture of one prisoner suddenly reminded everyone of the tyrannical
power of the monarchy and the result was a backlash against that power. It was not the
fixed identity of one prisoner but the broader identity mediated by the torturous
punishment doled out to this prisoner that was the impetus for collective action and
change. There is an ethical component embedded in this everchanging identity and
Foucault addresses it through his technology of the self. Because his technologies were
addressed late in his life, each is a valuable lens through which to view ethics. Especially
 significant to this project is the technology of the self because it suggests a specific
manner of moving beyond the self (where emotivism and egoism reside), or, as Foucault
says, to “get free of oneself” [22] (p. 8-9). Once this is accomplished, identity – whether
fixed or discourse mediated – becomes in a sense a process of unfolding, a relational
interaction between the good and bad of life, always in the process of becoming. This
Foucauldian notion of getting free is complex, especially when one looks at his work in
totality. His early works suggest definite subjectivity and leaves little room for
modification. Later in his life, the very idea of ethics was dependent on consideration of
the other and a moving beyond the self [17, 18]. This movement, like the
aforementioned process of identity unfolding, is where change can begin. Each of us has
within himself or herself the capability to overcome emotivism and egoism and become
an active cog in a collective narrative-based form of ethics.

*****

BOOK 6: Strozier, Robert & M. Foucault – Subjectivity and Identity: Historical Constructions of Subject
and Self

How subject and self-developed during the history of western thought.

Chapter 1: HOW MEN THEMSELVES [Theories of Origin, Subjectivity, and the Monogendering of
Reproduction

*****

BOOK 7: Thiele, Leslie Paul – Thinking Politics Perspectives in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern
Political Theory

• A standard introduction to political theory. Demonstrating the continuity and change within the
long and venerable tradition of political thought
• Redeeming qualities of political theory – Its capacity to stretch the mind, induce critical inquiry,
and bring worldly problems to bear.
• The chapters of this book integrate the insights of ancient, modern, and postmodern political
thought. A large and growing literature addresses each of these areas of political theory.
o The intent was to make the book more accessible to those who have had little
opportunity to study political theory, without, in the process, doing a disservice to the
complexities of the field.

INTRODUCTION
• POLITICAL THEORY – deliberation about the proper organization of collective human existence.
It is concerned with understanding political life as it is defined by the public use of power.
• Goof life – This investigation of things political has traditionally been understood as an inquiry
into the nature of “the good life.”
• ANCIENT TIMES: The good life has been characterized as a life of reason, shared with others in
liberty and grounded in justice. [components of this life, speculate on its requirements, evaluate
its potential, and argue for its achievement.]
• Political theory is poor in eternal truths and practical implementations.
o It follows that the art and craft of political theory is less a learning of set principles,
technical procedures, or concrete applications than an exercise in critical thought.
• In studying political theory, we must interact with it creatively using analytic and interpretive
skills, moral philosophic judgement, and the social and historical knowledge needed to
appreciate a tradition of thought, to contest its claims, and to make good use of its insights.
• As a field: Political theory has always been, and remains today, a field uncertain of its mandate,
unsettled in its procedures, and self-consciously critical of its own identity.
• Political theory might be described as an unending dance staged between skeptical reserve and
the epic effort to achieve methodological rigor, conceptual stability, and moral certainty about
things political.
• History – Only that which has no history is truly definable. Historical phenomena may be
described in detail, but their meanings cannot be affixed once and for all.
o Yet political theory is a historical product. Its multiple origins and ongoing evolution
make it available for rich description but not conclusive definition.
o Consequently, there is no single definition of political theory to be found in this book.
Instead, the multifaceted nature of the discipline is explored.
• Thinking Politics – The aim of this text is not encyclopedic. Rather than provide a survey of the
discipline and its major figures, it approaches the tradition from various points of view in an
effort to engage readers in thinking politics. This unusual term requires an explanation.
o First, thinking about politics as this phrase is commonly employed. To think about
politics is to think about the means and ends of political life. It entails exploring the
nature and charting the limits of politics. Thinking about politics is primarily an analytical
and historical enterprise. [How politics came to be and how it is being used, talked
about “employed”]
o Thinking politics also means thinking through politics. To think through politics is to
acknowledge that one’s own attitudes, beliefs, and values are themselves products of a
political life. To think through politics is, self-consciously, to think through the medium
of one’s participation in a collective existence with its inherent commitments and
biases. Thinking through politics, then, is a consideration of the various political forces
that stimulate and constrain thought and action in greater and lesser degrees. This is
largely a self-reflective and interpretive project. [who we are is a product of our
political life therefore politics is everywhere. Also, it is what pushes us to think or be a
certain way. It is self-reflective because we have different perspectives, and it has
different effect on us]
o Finally, thinking politics means thinking politically. To think politically is to think
explicitly about one’s opinions and behavior in reference to common standards, rights,
and responsibilities. To think politically is to think as a member of political society,
rather than as a particular individual with particular interests. It requires that one step
into the shoes of others, moving beyond the question of what is desirable for oneself an
individual to ponder what people can and should do together. It demands one’s
judgment as a citizen among citizens. [since we are product of politics then we must
think in that way and not separate ourselves from it]
 o The task of thinking politically is normative and critical in nature. Political theorists and
political theory texts often give pride of place to one of these three projects: the
analytical and historical, the self-reflective and interpretive, or the normative and
critical. Yet these three aspects of thinking politics remain inextricably entwined within
the tradition of political thought.
o Such survey texts court the danger of undercutting what arguably should be their most
important service: prompting the reader to engage in critical political thought. The aim
is to develop both an understanding of the domain of politics and a sensibility to the
ways in which this domain may be intellectually and morally engaged.
o The book is also significantly informed by postmodern concerns. Introductory texts in
political theory tend to traverse the tradition in retrospect. Historical overview has
much to recommend it and is an indispensable component of political theory. But
students also need to be grounded in the present and to cast a glance to the future.
o To study political theory today and ignore postmodern thought is to neglect one of its
more creative forces.
• Postmodernism
o Instead of characterizing postmodernism as superseding its forerunners, Thinking
Politics encourages the simultaneous exploration of ancient, modern, and postmodern
perspectives. It integrates the postmodern focus on the social construction of identity
with the modern concern for the regulation of social interaction and the ancient
preoccupation with the cultivation of virtue and the formation of character. [Social
construct is an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society]
• Chapter 1, “Theory and Vision,” explores the nature of theory. The chapter suggests that
theories are best understood as conceptual lenses that furnish focused visions of the world. It
discusses similarities and differences between interpretive political theory and scientific theory.
In turn, the chapter examines the normative nature of political theory as well as its methods of
historical and conceptual analysis. [concept is an abstract idea; a general notion.]
• Chapter 2, “The Question of Human Nature,” argues that human beings are unique because
they are political animals and that the question of human nature must be broached before the
question of politics can be adequately addressed. Many of the greatest achievements in the
tradition of political thought are grounded on specific theories of human nature. With these
exemplars in mind, current knowledge of human biology and genetics is brought to bear on
political concerns and theoretical aspirations. [In his Politics, Aristotle believed man was a
"political animal" because he is a social creature with the power of speech and moral
reasoning: Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature
a political animal.]
• Chapter 3, “Politics, Power, and the Public Good,” explores the meaning of politics. It defines
politics as the public use of power. An extensive investigation of the means and ends of power
allows it to be distinguished from force. In turn, the chapter explores the ambiguous boundaries
of public life. Because politics is pervasive, it becomes necessary to distinguish between actions,
events, and institutions that are more and less political in nature. [it is displayed and affects
everyone]
• Chapter 4, “Modernity and Postmodernity,” approaches postmodern understandings of
politics by way of their modern predecessors. The chapter begins with a historical analysis of
modernism and proceeds with an overview of structuralist, poststructuralist, and postmodern
thought. It subsequently juxtaposes the modern concern with governmental regulation of social
interaction and allocation of scarce resources to the postmodern concern with the social
construction of individual and collective identities. The chapter highlights the political nature of
 postmodern theory by contrasting it to modern behaviorism. [Juxtaposition or the contrast
between postmodern and modern ideas]
• Chapter 5, “Identity and Difference,” examines various ways in which individual and collective
identities are forged and contested. It investigates the political significance of racial, religious,
gender, and economic identities. In each case, the text prompts the reader to explore whether,
how, and to what extent his or her own identity is a social construct and how identities thus
constructed respond and relate to difference. [how identities are socially constructed – what
Influences the individual in terms of his surrounding]
• Chapter 6, “Statecraft and Soulcraft,” begins by exploring the linkage between postmodern
concerns and the issues that animate classical theory. It compares the ancient Greek effort to
craft virtuous souls through education and legislation with the postmodern focus on the social
construction of identity. It links the relationship between statecraft and soulcraft, politics and
identity, to the valorization of key political concepts in the tradition of political theory, such as
liberty, reason, and justice. [shaping oneself or one’s soul through education and legislation to
understand the social construction of identity]
• Chapter 7, “Ideology and Irony,” examines the history of ideology from the coining of the word
in the eighteenth century through the reported “end of ideology” in our times. The chapter
introduces irony, a kind of skeptical reserve, as a counteracting force to ideology. Political
theories avail themselves of both ironic and ideological lenses. These lenses respectively expand
and contract the theorist’s breadth of vision and impetus for action. The chapter encourages
readers to weigh the merits and shortcomings of both ideological and ironic lenses, to identify
their uses within the history of political thought, and to explore the nature of an appropriate
balance.

*****

BOOK 8: Young, Robert J. C. – Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction

• Robert Young examines the political, social, and cultural after-effects of decolonization by
presenting situations, experiences, and testimony rather than going through the theory at an
abstract level. He situates the debate in a wide cultural context, discussing its importance as an
historical condition, with examples such as the status of aboriginal people, of those
dispossessed from their land, Algerian rai music, postcolonial feminism, and global social and
ecological movements.
• Above all, Young argues, postcolonialism offers a political philosophy of activism that contests
the current situation of global inequality, and so in a new way continues the anti-colonial
struggles of the past.

1. Postcolonial Theory
2. Subaltern knowledge
3. Cultural hybridity
4. Postcolonial space
5. Gender
6. Conclusion.
INTRODUCTION

• The question of the minority outside the westerns:

o That is the first question which postcolonialism tries to answer.
o Turning the world upside down – Since the early 1980s, postcolonialism has developed
a body of writing that attempts to shift the dominant ways in which the relations
between western and non-western people and their worlds are viewed.
▪ Example: experiencing how differently things look when you live in Baghdad or
Benin rather than Berlin or Boston, and understanding why
o It means realizing that when western people look at the non-western world what they
see is often more a mirror image of themselves and their own assumptions than the
reality of what is really there, or of how people outside the west actually feel and
perceive themselves.
• Postcolonialism
o postcolonialism offers you a way of seeing things differently, a language and a politics in
which your interests come first, not last.
o Postcolonialism claims the right of all people on this earth to the same material and
cultural well-being. The reality, though, is that the world today is a world of inequality,
and much of the difference falls across the broad division between people of the west
and those of the non-west.
• Western and Non-Western Division
o Western Expansion – This division between the rest and the west was made fairly
absolute in the 19th century by the expansion of the European empires, as a result of
which nine-tenths of the entire land surface of the globe was controlled by European, or
European derived, powers.
o Non-Western Inferiority – Colonial and imperial rule was legitimized by anthropological
theories which increasingly portrayed the peoples of the colonized world as inferior,
childlike, or feminine, incapable of looking after themselves (despite having done so
perfectly well for millennia) and requiring the paternal rule of the west for their own
best interests (today they are deemed to require 'development').
▪ Racial Basis – The basis of such anthropological theories was the concept of
race. In simple terms, the west-non-west relation was thought of in terms of
whites versus the non-white races.
▪ White Supremacy – White culture was regarded (and remains) the basis for
ideas of legitimate government, law, economics, science, language, music, art,
literature - in a word, civilization.
o Resistance – Throughout the period of colonial rule, colonized people contested this
domination through many forms of active and passive resistance. It was only towards
the end of the 19th century, however, that such resistance developed into coherent
political movements: for the peoples of most of the earth, much of the 20th century
involved the long struggle and eventual triumph against colonial rule, often at enormous
cost of life and resources.
▪ Example: In Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, people struggled against the
politicians and administrators of European powers that ruled empires or the
colonists who had settled their world. When national sovereignty had finally
been achieved, each state moved from colonial to autonomous, postcolonial
status. Independence! [Direct to Indirect rule]
 o Decolonization – However, in many ways this represented only a beginning, a relatively
minor move from direct to indirect rule, a shift from colonial rule and domination to a
position not so much of independence as of being in-dependence. It is striking that
despite decolonization, the major world powers did not change substantially during the
course of the 20th century. [there has been no shift] For the most part, the same
(ex)imperial countries continue to dominate those countries that they formerly ruled as
colonies. The cases of Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, and Iraq, make it clear that any country
that has the nerve to resist its former imperial masters does so at its peril.
▪ All governments of these countries that have positioned themselves politically
against western control have suffered military interventions by the west against
them.
▪ Yet the story is not wholly negative. The winning of independence from colonial
rule remains an extraordinary achievement. And if power remains limited, the
balance of power is slowly changing.
o Immigration – Along with this shift from formal to informal empire, the western
countries require ever more additional labor power at home, which they fulfil through
immigration. As a result of immigration, the clear division between the west and the
rest in ethnic terms at least no longer operates absolutely.
▪ This is not to say that the president of the United States has ever been an
African-American woman, or that Britain has elected an Asian Muslim as prime
minister. Power remains carefully controlled.
▪ Example: Cultures are changing though: white Protestant America is being
hispanized. Hispanic and black America have become the dynamic motors of
much live western culture that operates beyond the graveyard culture of the
heritage industry. Today, for many of the youth of Europe, Cuban culture rules,
energizing and electrifying with its vibrant son and salsa.
o More generally, in terms of broad consensus, the dominance of western culture, on
which much of the division between western and non-western peoples was assumed to
rest in colonial times, has been dissolved into a more generous system of cultural
respect and a tolerance for differences.
• Argument of Nations – For now, what is important is that postcolonialism involves first of all the
argument that the nations of the three non-western continents (Africa, Asia, Latin America) are
largely in a situation of subordination to Europe and North America, and in a position of
economic inequality.
• Anti-Colonial struggle – Postcolonialism names a politics and philosophy of activism that
contests that disparity, and so continues in a new way the anti-colonial struggles of the past. It
asserts not just the right of African, Asian, and Latin American peoples to access resources and
material well-being, but also the dynamic power of their cultures, cultures that are now
intervening in and transforming the societies of the west.
o Postcolonial cultural analysis has been concerned with the elaboration of theoretical
structures that contest the previous dominant western ways of seeing things.
o Example: A simple analogy would be with feminism, which has involved a comparable
kind of project: there was a time when any book you might read, any speech you might
hear, any film that you saw, was always told from the point of view of the male. The
woman was there, but she was always an object, never a subject. From what you would
read, or the films you would see, the woman was always the one who was looked at. She
was never the observing eye. For centuries it was assumed that women were less
intelligent than men and that they did not merit the same degree of education. They
 were not allowed a vote in the political system. By the same token, any kind of
knowledge developed by women was regarded as non-serious, trivial, gossip, or
alternatively as knowledge that had been discredited by science, such as superstition or
traditional practices of childbirth or healing.
o All these attitudes were part of a larger system in which women were dominated,
exploited, and physically abused by men. Slowly, but increasingly, from the end of the
18th century, feminists began to contest this situation. The more they contested it, the
more it became increasingly obvious that these attitudes extended into the whole of the
culture: social relations, politics, law, medicine, the « arts, popular and academic
knowledges. As a politics and a practice, feminism has not involved a single system of
thought, inspired by a single founder. It has rather been a collective work, developed by
different women in different directions: its projects have been directed at a whole range
of phenomena of injustice, from domestic violence to law and language to philosophy.
Feminists have also had to contend with the fact that relations between women
themselves are not equal and can in certain respects duplicate the same kinds of power
hierarchies that exist between women and men. Yet at the same time, broadly speaking
feminism has been a collective movement in which women from many different walks of
life have worked towards common goals, namely the emancipation and empowerment
of women, the right to make decisions that affect their own lives, and the right to have
equal access to the law, to education, to medicine, to the workplace, in the process
changing those institutions themselves so that they no longer continue to represent only
male interests and perspectives.
• Transformation and Re-orientation – In a comparable way, 'postcolonial theory involves a
conceptual reorientation towards the perspectives of knowledges, as well as needs,
developed outside the west. It is concerned with developing the driving ideas of a political
practice morally committed to transforming the conditions of exploitation and poverty in which
large sections of the world's population live out their daily lives.
• This book seeks to follow the larger politics of postcolonialism which are fundamentally populist
and affirm the worth of ordinary people and their cultures. Postcolonialism will here be
elaborated not from a top-down perspective but from below: the bulk of the sections that
follow will start with a situation and then develop the ideas that emerge from its particular
perspective. What you will get, therefore, is postcolonialism without the obscure theory,
postcolonialism from below, which is what and where it should rightly be, given that it
elaborates a politics of 'the subaltern', that is, subordinated classes and peoples.
• Postcolonial theory – so-called, is not in fact a theory in the scientific sense, that is a coherently
elaborated set of principles that can predict the outcome of a given set of phenomena. It
comprises instead a related set of perspectives, which are juxtaposed against one another, on
occasion contradictorily. It involves issues that are often the preoccupation of other disciplines
and activities, particularly to do with the position of women, of development, of ecology, of
social justice, of socialism in its broadest sense. Above all, postcolonialism seeks to intervene, to
force its alternative knowledges into the power structures of the west as well as the non-west. It
seeks to change the way people think, the way they behave, to produce a more just and
equitable relation between the different peoples of the world.
o A lot of people don't like the term 'postcolonial': now you may begin to see why. It
disturbs the order of the world. It threatens privilege and power. It refuses to
acknowledge the superiority of western cultures. Its radical agenda is to demand
equality and well-being for all human beings on this earth.
What does subaltern mean? What is the third world?
• SUBALTERN
o A subaltern is someone with a low ranking in a social, political, or other hierarchy. It can
also mean someone who has been marginalized or oppressed.
o The term subaltern designates and identifies the colonial populations who are socially,
politically, and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of power of an imperial
colony and from the metropolitan homeland of an empire.
o But the term is also used to describe someone who has no political or economic power,
such as a poor person living under a dictatorship. [North Koreans]
• THIRD WORLD
o The Third World. The term Third World was originally coined in times of the Cold War to
distinguish those nations that are neither aligned with the West (NATO) nor with the
East, the Communist bloc. Today the term is often used to describe the developing
countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Australia/Oceania.
o The modern definition of “Third World” is used to classify countries that are poor or
developing. Countries that are part of the “third world” are generally characterized by
(1) high rates of poverty, (2) economic and/or political instability, and (3) high mortality
rates.
What are the two different types of colonialisms discussed? What kind of colonialism does the U.S.
represent? What is decolonizing? Can you give an example of what decolonial thinking might look
like?
• TWO TYPES OF COLONIALISM
o Majorly there are two types of colonialism: Settler colonialism and Exploitation
colonialism.
▪ The Settler colonialism involves immigration at large scale as an outcome of
religious, economic or political issues. | A settler colony, as the name implies is
meant to serve as a permanent settlement for citizens of the colonizing country
or colonial master nations
▪ Exploitation colonialism involves the trade and commerce like the export of
goods or even the slave trade. | In contrast, a colony of the extractive variant is
meant to be occupied by the colonial power with the exclusive aim of
economically exploiting it.
• US COLONIALISM
o Settler colonial states include Canada, the United States, Australia, and South Africa, and
settler colonial theory has been important to understanding conflicts in places like
Israel, Kenya, and Argentina, and in tracing the colonial legacies of empires that engaged
in the widespread foundation of settlement colonies.
o Settler colonialism participated in the formation of US cultures and lasted past the
conquest, removal, or extermination of Indigenous people. The practice of writing the
Indigenous out of history perpetrated a forgetting of the full dimensions and
significance of colonialism at both the national and local levels.
o The first colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Many of the people who
settled in the New World came to escape religious persecution. The Pilgrims, founders
of Plymouth, Massachusetts, arrived in 1620. In both Virginia and Massachusetts, the
colonists flourished with some assistance from Native Americans.
• DECOLONIZATION
o free (an institution, sphere of activity, etc.) from the cultural or social effects of
colonization; eliminate colonial influences or attitudes from.
 o decolonization, process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing
country. Decolonization was gradual and peaceful for some British colonies largely
settled by expatriates but violent for others, where native rebellions were energized by
nationalism
• DECOLONIAL THINKING
o For non-Indigenous people, decolonization is the process of examining your beliefs
about Indigenous Peoples and culture by learning about yourself in relationship to the
communities where you live and the people with whom you interact.
o Decolonization is work that belongs to all of us, everywhere. It asks us to think about
our relationship with Indigenous lands that colonizers have unjustly claimed, re-defined
and repurposed all over the world. It asks us to embrace responsibility as opposed to
accepting fault. Lastly, decolonization is a path forward to creating systems which are
just and equitable, addressing inequality through education, dialogue, communication,
and action.
How do the ideological justifications for slavery and caste systems overlap?
• In a caste system, people are divided up into various social groups, some more prestigious than
others. Slavery is a system where one group of people owns another group of people.
Chapter four lays out a history of Great Britain’s interventions in Iraq. Are there any other countries
subject to constant interference by their former colonial rulers that you can think of?
• Philippines and US

*****

BOOK 9: Aschroft, Bill et all. – Post-colonial Studies: Key Concepts

A-Z explanation regarding concepts of post-colonial studies (parang dictionary)

*****

Book 11: Fanon, Frantz – The Wretched of the Earth.