Michel Foucault’s Controversial Life and Philosophy Explored in a Revealing 1993 Documentary
Michel Foucault’s colorful life and hugely influential work were both struggles against limitation—the limits of language, of social structures and stultifying historical identities. As such, he managed to provoke scholars of every possible persuasion, since he called into question all positive programs—the ancient imperial, feudal, and liberal humanist—while steadfastly refusing to replace them with comprehensive alternative systems. And yet systems, social institutions of power and domination, were precisely the problem in Foucault’s estimation. Through his technique of raiding archives to produce an “archaeology of knowledge,” Foucault showed how every institution is shot through with what William E. The 1993 documentary film above, Michel Foucault: Beyond Good and Evil, explores the philosopher and his complex and controversial life through interviews with colleagues and biographers and re-enactments of Foucault’s storied exploits in the American counterculture. via Critical Theory
strong reading: Michel Foucault - The Order of Things - Part 1
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences by Michel Foucault. Original Title: Les Mots et les choses [words and things]. Published in French in 1966, and in English in 1970. I feel a little stuck trying to summarize this book. On the one hand, there is a vast amount of very specific information about some very important things. So, I’m going to try to do a combo chapter-by-chapter kind of a thing as well as a sort of a bullet-pointed highlights reel/ talking points list. Main Keywords/ Themes: Order: “at one and the same time, that which is given in things as their inner law, the hidden network that determines the way they confront once another, and also that which has no existence except in the gird created by a glance, an examination, a language; and it is only in the blank spaces of this grid that order manifests itself in depth as though already there, waiting in silence for the moment of its expression (Foucault, xx). Archaeology: Resemblance: Episteme: Preface: Part 1
Michel Foucault: Free Lectures on Truth, Discourse & The Self
Image by Lucas Barroso Félix, via Wikimedia Commons Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was an enormously influential French philosopher who wrote, among other things, historical analyses of psychiatry, medicine, the prison system, and the function of sexuality in social organizations. He spent some time during the last years of his life at UC Berkeley, delivering several lectures in English. And happily they were recorded for posterity: These last lectures are also available on YouTube (in audio format). One of Foucault's more controversial and memorable books was Discipline and Punish (1977), which traced the transition from the 18th century use of public torture and execution to--less than 50 years later--the prevalence of much more subtle uses of power, with a focus on incarceration, rehabilitation, prevention, and surveillance. Here he is in 1983 commenting on that book (thanks for the link to Seth Paskin). Would you like to support the mission of Open Culture? Related Content:
foucault quotes 2
December 2001 'But then, what is philosophy today - philosophical activity, I mean - if it is not the critical work of thought on itself? And if it does not consist in the endeavour of knowing how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, rather than legitimating what is already known? There is always something ludicrous in philosophical discourse when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it, or when it presumes to give them naively positivistic instruction. But it is its right to explore what might be changed, in its own thought, through the practice of a knowledge that is foreign to it. Michel Foucault. (1992) [1984]. November 2001 'For some people, writing a book is always taking a risk, for example the risk of not finishing it. Michel Foucault. (1994) [1984]. October 2001 'The problem of Islam as a political force is an essential problem for our time and for the years to come. ..' September 2001 July 2001
Michel Foucault: la máxima aspiración del poder es la inmortalidad - 21.09.2012 - lanacion.com
¿Por qué usted, sin ser antropólogo, se interesa más, desde un punto de vista filosófico, en la estructura de las instituciones que en los mecanismos evolutivos? -Lo que trato de hacer -y siempre traté de hacer desde mi primer verdadero libro, Historia de la locura en la época clásica- es poner en tela de juicio por medio de un trabajo intelectual diferentes aspectos de la sociedad, mostrando sus debilidades y sus límites. De todas maneras, mis libros no son proféticos y tampoco un llamado a las armas. Me irritaría intensamente que pudiera vérselos bajo esa luz. La meta que se proponen es explicar del modo más explícito -aun cuando a veces el vocabulario sea difícil- las zonas de la cultura burguesa y las instituciones que influyen directamente sobre las actividades y los pensamientos cotidianos del hombre. -La palabra clave de todos sus libros parece ser "poder", ya se lo entienda en el sentido de poder disciplinario, poder de la medicina mental o poder omnipotente de la pulsión sexual?
