Who is Michel Foucault?
©2001 by Miguel B. Llora, MA
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Ruse and new triumph of madness: the world that thought to justify madness through psychology must justify itself before madness, since in its struggles and agonies it measures itself by the excess of works like those of Nietzsche, of Van Gogh, of Artaud. And nothing in itself, especially not what it can know of madness, assures the world that it is justified by such works and madness. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization |
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Michel Foucault & Co. on Video
Jean
Paul Sartre
Friedrich
Nietzsche
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Foucault, Michel: 1926-84, French philosopher and historian. Highly influential, he is known for historical studies, e.g., Madness and Civilization (1961), that reveal the sometimes disturbing power relations in social practices. Works such as The Order of Things (1966) and Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) analyze systems of knowledge, uncovering their unconscious rules and relations to one another. His last writings, e.g., History of Sexuality, vol. 2 (1984), examine the self's relationship to itself. |
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 | Madness and Civilization : A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1988): Foucault examines madness as it changes from a relatively harmless and accepted state to one of abject terror in the 18th century. The change of heart resulted in the confinement of the deranged under conditions of extreme brutality. The madmen came at this time to replace the leper as the pariah of society, in essence the madman has become in this case, the other or the abnormal. The mad were lumped with the poor, the destitute in a word marginalized. The mad served no purpose in the mercantile era of production and was a threat to basic social values. They were confined, brutalized, but were also put up for public ridicule. As such, they were beyond morality. There was issued a carte blanche to do with these madmen as their keepers pleased. This effect came about only after they had identified them as such. It was the manifestation of a power matrix that allowed man to brutalize man. In the 19th century, society began to take a moral attitude towards the insane, not one of compassionate but one of abject dejection. The changes that took effect during the industrial revolution changed the status of the downtrodden making them the bedrock from which all wealth was cemented. As long as the poor knew their place and remained there, they eventually were established as a class to be identified and utilized. It was from within demoralizing situation that madness evolved its persona. The mad were considered unnatural and disorderly and were now viewed as moral defects. It was with this preparation that the modern definition of madness saw it genesis. Mental illness took on a medical personage. Suddenly, with this classification came the authorization for not only new contact between doctors and patients but altogether new paradigm between insanity and medical thought. When before the physician played not role in the life of confinement, he is suddenly the main player in this new game with a new set of rules. According to Foucault, the entry of the doctor onto the scene is not out of an inherent skill but is a result of the power he possesses. The physician is now validated by a body of "objective knowledge." The medical profession does not stop there. The ultimate sanction of this authorized body of knowledge is the eventual entry into the lives of healthy individuals who were deemed healthy enough to function on their own yet not trusted to make any autonomous judgments. As the medical establishment has become more extensive so that the distinction between medical and moral has eventually become confused. In effect, he challenges us to examine why we have evolved this cherished tenet. Why we have placed the power in the hands of establishments such as the medical profession. Much like Zola before him, Pierre Riviere has become Foucault's Dreyfus and through their icons of the damned, they have both moved us to examine. Although the book is wordy and sometimes convoluted, the challenge cannot be ignored. Any new examination of the vanguard is certainly welcome. |
 | Birth of the Clinic, The : An Archaeology of Medical Perception (1994): In 1963 M. Foucault published The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Passing on into the medical gaze from the "unreasoned" being "unhealthy", the topic is one more time - health. The Birth of the Clinic is an elucidation of M. Foucault's immense research pursuing his "archaeology," searching for archival material in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. In this work M. Foucault shows us how at the start of the 19th century yet more discontinuity occurred. In the Classical Period we see the eruption of the practice of clinical medicine. The goal beforehand, according to M. Foucault had been to get rid of distress and to restore well-being. In the Classical Period, the diseased body itself became the central point of medical gaze, here we see a momentous shift in medicine. The common sense notion of "health" was uprooted with the aim of mending the patient to a condition of "normalcy". In The Birth of the Clinic, we see the discipline of medicine grow and change into a science, and within this backdrop we see medicine tied together with sciences such as anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and biology. Taking its place with the institutions in society brings medicine into a place that associates it with other political and social institutions. The concept of "normality" has political and social implications. If you are ill, de facto you are not "normal". M. Foucault makes the link here with other works such as Madness and Civilization, where madness ran counter to the socially agreeable idea of what was normal which put one in at the mercy of the asylum. Similarly, in the realm of medicine the clinic evolves. Within this framework, M. Foucault performs, once again, his archeology to explore the ever shifting power relations that occur with one more knowledge. The premise for all these shifts come full circle in The Order of Things were he examines how these Epistemes and discourse became a foundational consideration. If M. Foucault was worried about being labeled a Structuralist - this book is proof positive that he may not have ended as a Structuralist but he certainly started as one. After that almost threateningly short introduction (threatening in the sense that I run the risk of oversimplifying M. Foucault's project) I wish to conclude with a few more thoughts. What I see M. Foucault doing in this book, is to identify various texts that he uses to explore methods, laws, institutions, buildings and the philosophy of medicine - as the mutation of discourse - which is representative of the Episteme. In reality, M. Foucault is not really writing about medicine as he is about epistemology. Medical perception is also rather ontological - since I see M. Foucault making a (albeit a thin) link in the modern age of death and the individual. In the end, M. Foucault's importance is that he has boldly (in the tradition of Nietzsche) attempted to create a new method (despite denying it later) and a new framework for the study of the human sciences as a whole - for that one has to read The Order of Things (also available on Amazon.com). Be prepared for a brain twister. |
 | Archeology of Knowledge (1982): Foucault suggests that the very idea of order as such, along with the larger idea of episteme, which through implication that "The Order of Things" was organized around cultural totalities, was a mistake. In this book Foucault makes a huge reversal. We know also that outside "The Archaeology of Knowledge" Foucault does not limit himself to discourse, even though it remains central. And within it, he clearly allows for primary relations between institutions, techniques, social forms, etc., which are not discursive in nature. We are left with weak answers. Maybe, because "The Archaeology of Knowledge" really deals with knowledge, discursive relations are sufficient. Knowledge is found for the most part in texts, documents, books. Maybe we can excuse the oversight by the fact that it was only after "The Archaeology of Knowledge" that Foucault clarified the intimacy of power and knowledge and went beyond the early view that power in knowledge simply controlled and excluded discourse. Moreover, how do we deal with the problem of savoir and connaissances - granted one finds there the visible/invisible couple, the question of epistemic knowledge (savoir) and accumulated knowledge (connaissances), the concept discursive practice, the critique of systems, and the Center (or, the principles of the Author, the Origin, and so forth). But, by what right, do we introduce the axis of fact, and the dimension of knowledge production? Are they not interpreters' inventions? I'll say this much, as much as "The Archeology of Knowledge answers it begs more questions. Let me just close by saying to be fair to Foucault that it was an "in-between" book - assessing where he came from and outlining where he was going. Complicated? Yes, but a valuable resource in understanding "Discourse" - good luck. |
 | The Order of Things : An Archaeology of Human Sciences (1994): By far the most complex of Foucault's works that I have had the pleasure to read (mind you, I have not read The Archeology of Knowledge yet), it is also one of the most expansive. Foucault deals with the history of economic thought, linguistic, perspectives on art (Velasquez), the history of biological thought, and literature. Aside from destabilizing the way things are ordered, it is fascinating how he fractures just about everything else - most specifically, the way we taxonomize things. Foucault has to acknowledge Nietzsche and Sartre (as he does Velasquez, Cervantes and Borges). Nietzsche's vision of the approaching nihilism has not really happened. Christianity, whose dissolution he predicted is alive and well. God might be dead in the minds of high minded PhDs but is very much alive in the hearts of lots of Christians. If nihilism is around the corner with the Death of God and the Death of Man - the world has not really budged from its general order of things. Despite all the movement in academia, the rigid moralizing and ever present conservative mind set is growing stronger - not that that is such a bad things - it is just that the predictions are not really happening. The dissolution of the self and the fictionalizing of history and the death of man as well as man as "subject" and "object" of his study that is the philosophical tradition from Nietzsche to Heidegger passed along to Sartre and Camus and ultimately with its apex in Lacan, Derrida and Focault - the great synthesizer of knowledge - in the end he is a structuralist and more. This is the Foucualt I love - the one who questions and add complexity. Not the easiest of reads but a must read for anyone who wishes to understand his work in total. I give it a resounding 5 stars as it gives me new hope. |
 | I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother ...: A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century (1982): It is early in February, 2001. Can it be said that America is in love with its Serial Killers? Sure. With the range of "Reality TV" and movies, the writing is on the wall. What about a healthy alternative to all this bloodbath? What about a truelly intellectual examination into the complexity of the criminal mind. Part Dostoyevsky, part unbelievable, "I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother ... : A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century" is a highly thought provoking analysis of the social construction of the criminal. The book guides you through the labyrinth/maze that is the criminal justice system and the mechanism involved in the prosecution of the criminal. The book is comprehensive, it includes testimony (from several angles), a suspect written confession, trial examination and post archival examination. Foucault has brought together through his talent to uncover archives and present them in an interesting manner. If you are looking for an alternative without sacrificing the excitement of a murder mystery - this is your entry ticket to the Post Modern examination of crime. Nothing less than 5 stars! |
 | Herculine Barbin (1980): The question of Herculine Barbin is one of profound impact within the realm of M. Foucault's work. Placed within the central problematic of "The Body" the question is not explored anywhere else within the book but in M. Foucault's introduction. The book plays out the vital issues. The subtitle tells it all: "Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite." - The problem is executed and explored in this book within the framework of the "Archive" - of 4 parts. The book is divided into M. Foucault's introduction, Barbin's Memoirs, The Dossier, and Oscar Panizza's "A Scandal at the Convent." M. Foucault begins his introduction with: "Do we truly need a true sex? With a persistence that borders on stubbornness, modern Western societies have answered in the affirmative. They have obstinately brought into play this question of a "true sex" in an order of things where one might have imagined that all that counted was the reality of the body and the intensity of its pleasures." Here he sets up the problematic that sexuality revolves around institutions of power - the law, the church, the medical establishment, and society in general. Within this framework, sexuality then ceases to be a continuum and falls subject to our ever changing moods. Where exactly does a Hermaphrodite fit in, in all this? Is the Hermaphrodite male with female qualities? Is the reverse true? Who decides? What is the impact of what is decided? This is what the book tries to explore. The Dossier is a collection of the socially constructed perspectives - similar to "I Pierre Riviere..." (Also available on Amazon.com) before it; the editors take aim at the various perspectives and conclusions drawn by people within the framework of Power/Knowledge. We see how Barbin is constructed - outside of his/her voice (his/her voice we get from part 2 - "My Memoirs"). The memoirs paint a painful story of one's struggle to fit in within a very unforgiving structure that would allow Barbin to be neither a "girl" nor a "boy". It paints a tragic figure of a person torn within this framework to conform, to "be". Lastly, Oscar Panizza's "A Scandal at the Convent" is a fabrication, a poor rendition that stretches the Barbin story from the medico-legal issue that it is to one of sheer erotica. The movie that follows is an abomination to the archive the M. Foucault and his ilk uncover. Or is it simply a portrayal of the "edge" that discourse has in terms of Power/Knowledge. M. Foucault writes: "The result is indeed remarkable. Panizza kept a few important elements of the case: the very name of Alexina, the scene of the medical examination. For a reason I have trouble grasping-perhaps because, relying on his memories of his reading without having Tardieu's book at hand, he availed himself of another study of a similar case that he had at his disposal-he altered the medical reports. But the most radical changes were those he made in the whole narrative. He transposed it in time; he altered many material elements and the entire atmosphere; and, above all, he took it out of the subjective mode and put it into objective narration. He gave everything a certain "eighteenth-century" manner: Diderot and his Religieuse do not seem far off. There is a rich convent for girls of the aristocracy, a sensual mother superior who shows an equivocal affection for her niece, intrigues and rivalries among the nuns, an erudite and skeptical abbe, a credulous country priest, and peasants who go - after the devil with their pitchforks. Throughout, there is a skin - deep licentiousness and a semi-naive play of not entirely innocent beliefs, which are just as far removed from the provincial seriousness of Alexina as they are from the baroque violence of The Council of Love. But in inventing this whole landscape of perverse gallantry, Panizza deliberately leaves in the center of his narrative a vast area of shadow and that is precisely where he places Alexina. Sister, mistress, disturbing schoolgirl, strayed cherub, male and female lover, faun running in the forest, incubus stealing into the warm dormitories, hairy-legged satyr, exorcized demon-Panizza presents her only in the fleeting profiles which the others see. This boy-girl, this never eternal masculine-feminine, is nothing more than what passes at night in the dreams, the desires, and the fears of everyone. Panizza chose to make her only a shadowy figure, without an identity and without a name, who vanishes at the end of the narrative leaving no trace. He did not even choose to fix her with a suicide, whereby she would become a corpse, like Abel Barbin, to which curious doctors in the end assigned the reality of an inadequate sex. I have brought these two texts together, thinking they deserved to be published side by side, first of all because both belong to the end of the nineteenth century, that century which was so powerfully haunted by the theme of the hermaphrodite-somewhat as the eighteenth century had been haunted by the theme of the transvestite." In the end, the tragedy of Barbin allows one to take a step away from the theoretical to see the real impact all this power relations have. I revisit M. Foucault when he concludes his introduction: "Most of the time, those who relate their change of sex belong to a world that is strongly bisexual; and their uneasiness about their identity finds expression in the desire to pass over to the other side-to the side of the sex they desire to have and in whose world they would like to belong. In this case, the intense monosexuality of religious and school life fosters the tender pleasures that sexual non-identity discovers and provokes when it goes astray in the midst of all those bodies that are similar to one another." Pause. Think. Consider. |
 | Discipline & Punish : The Birth of the Prison (1995): Discipline and Punish is a brutally honest exploration of the construction of self through the examiniation of the evolution of the prison over the recent past. Michelle Foucault has comprehensively researched and deconstructed the prison: its "architecture" (focus on the Gaze and Bentham's Panopticon), engaging in ideas of "subjectivity and the discursively constructed self", and most importantly "discipline" to create a study of the evolving idea of human nature. Foucualt presents the idea that the self has its origins in "power" and "knowledge". We are then a creation of societal and disciplinary forces that reverberate and cause the "subject" to surrender to patterns of life within the full matrix of the world. This comprehensive and passionate study of power and discipline is probably the most complete "postmodern" discussions of social forces; the theories are coherent and have huge implications for our understanding of who we are and how we came to fill the our little spaces in the everyday that are part and parcel of this interrelation of knowledge and power. He is a sociologist, a psychologist, a structuralist (although he hates the label) - he is all this but more. Foucualt is a social theorist that tries to defy categorization. If this stuff gets you going, you should try "I, Pierre Riviere.....", "Madness and Civilization" and for the structuralists out there, "The Order of Things." A masterpiece and my favorite of all his works. |
 | The History of Sexuality : An Introduction (History of Sexuality) (1990): A clear reversal from what we thought about as the "Silence of the Victorian Era" to actually an explosion of discussion about what was allowed and not allowed. Following along Foucault's line of reasoning with the Body as the focal point of Discourse and the seat of Power. We are both now Subject and Object of our Discourse. The Body is the final frontier. A wonderful, yet perplexing end of the line of sorts to a series of pieces such as "Discipline and Punish" and "Madness and Civilzation". Foucault takes us on a ride and strips bare the forces behind our social engineering. We often wonder how the forces and counter forces of this intangible and immeasureable "thing" called Power what it is and how it weaves its way in and out of our conciousness. Foucault and "The History of Sexuality" is only one and by far the definitive or representative piece of his examination of Power. A challenge to read (as is most of his work, specially "The Order of Things") this eclectic iconoclast takes you on a rocket ride you will not forget. Buckle your seat belt because you and Toto can kiss Kansas goodbye. |
 | The History of Sexuality : The Use of Pleasure (History of Sexuality) (1990) In the second volume of his history of sexuality L'Usage des plaisirs or The Use of Pleasure M. Foucault turns to ancient Greece, an era opulent in honest eroticism. Sexuality is so key to our development that all sorts of restrictions are found in the most primitive of societies. According to M. Foucault, even in the animal kingdom, sexual practice is followed by something remarkably resembling the seeds of moral behavior. We must move outside the confines of society, if only for a short time, if we wish to escape the confining practices of sexual morality. Within this framework, the bathhouse and the orgy chambers may be said to offer refuge transgression from the constraints of civilization. It seems that the only place in society where sexuality has ever been entirely free of moral hindrances has been the fantasizing adolescent mind. For more on this topic, kindly refer to History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction and History of Sexuality Volume 3: The Care of the Self (Also available on Amazon.com). |
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History of Sexuality : The Care of the Self (History of Sexuality) (1988): The
third and last volume Le Souci de soi or The Care of the Self M. Foucault's history
progresses to ancient Rome. In the middle of all the "sexual discourse,"
M. Foucault does have some fascinating things to say concerning "the culture
of the self." M. Foucault sketches the emergence of subjectivity -- how it
evolved into an mindset, a way of behaving and set all over ways of living. Foucault
considers how society develops and inculcates through techniques of objectification.
Sex became a social practice within the realm subjectivity that gives rise to
inter-individual relations. These exchanges and communications would at times
become an occasion to create social institutions. The Final Piece - In May 1984 M. Foucault delivers this Le Souci de soi or The Care of the Self, the final manuscript (of the third volume of his history of sexuality) to his publisher Gallimard. Two weeks later, on June 2, he collapsed and was hospitalized. For two years he had found himself suffering from frequent semi-debilitating illnesses. M. Foucault had AIDS. The end was sudden; on June 25 M. Foucault died. Along with the rest of the losses -- a brilliant thinker -- was the planned series of either 5 or 6 books relating to the history of sexuality. Le Souci de soi or The Care of the Self was to be the last. His funeral attracted hundreds of mourners. These included celebrities from all sectors of Parisian cultural life, many of who were deeply moved. Didier Eribon recalls this in his fine biography "Michel Foucault" (Also available on Amazon.com and I highly recommend it as well): "Le Monde carried an article by Pierre Bourdieu on its front page. `There is nothing more dangerous,' wrote Bourdieu, `than to reduce a philosophy, especially one so subtle, complex, and perverse, to a textbook formula. Nonetheless, I would say that Foucault's work is a long exploration of transgression, of going beyond social limits, always inseparably linked to knowledge and power.' The sociologist ended with these words: `I would have liked to have said this better -- this thought that was so bent on conquering a self-mastery, that is, mastery of its history, the history of categories of thought, the history of the will and desires. And also this concern for rigor, this refusal of opportunism in knowledge as well as in practice, in the techniques of life as well as in the political choices that make Foucault an irreplaceable figure.' Inside were two pages filled with testimonials and analyses; here Veyne discussed the work of his lost friend: `Foucault's work seems to me to be the most important event of thought in our century.'" (Eribon, 1991: 328) Despite thorny intellectual disputations, M. Foucault was a compassionate character. Several colleagues looked upon him as a special accomplice. New researchers like myself simply see him as an inspiration and portal to new spaces of thought. The sad irony of this piece, Le Souci de soi or The Care of the Self is that it stands as the bookend of one of the greatest of his already vast oeuvre. Conclusion - Last few comments on Le Souci de soi or The Care of the Self: Foucault brilliantly brings to light the previously unexamined assumptions and hidden undercurrents and structures as well as techniques of the past. This book is no exception. However, as a caution, The Care of the Self shares with the inspirations that it draws from a sense of coherence. The arguments are artfully constructed but the book seems to fall short in places. Foucault seems oblivious of the ordinary folk he seems to be describing. It all seems to revolve around the elite -- the philosophers and literati of that Greco-Roman era. It falls short in the examination of the every day. As if pontificating from a distance, the master of the "gaze" peers into the past and sometimes fails to break through the veil. Foucault's interest in sexuality is based also on solipsistic examination. Greeks and Romans were far less interested in sex in relations of right and wrong. Both Greeks and Romans were interested rather in how to put sexuality to use in order to achieve a healthy balance. "The Care of the Self" is far softer than "The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction" and less technical than "The Use of Pleasure" (both also available on Amazon.com). Foucault writes concerning the "problematization" of sex and the growing vilification of sex, which will have its effects up to the present day. This is where the book is its most powerful -- Foucault is one of those thinkers whose work sheds light and brings to presence our modern day dilemmas. We can learn much from him. |
 | The Foucault Reader (1984): Paul Rabinow does a spectacular job of compiling the "essential" Foucault. I needed to read "Madness and Civilization" as well as "I Pierre Riviere....." for a humanities course 2 years ago and this book was very helpful in placing Foucault in perspective. The Foucault Reader includes the controversial "What is an Author?", an article that outlines the complex mechanism of how a whole set of layers changes the way you, the reader, engage with the text. If Foucault and Roland Barthe were so busy analyzing the "Author Function", it makes one wonder: How much of their own "Author Function" where they aware of? By collaborating with Rabinow, Foucault is just as guilty of making his personality,notoriety and other works, work for or against each other. So much for the "Death of an Author". Notwithstanding all that I wrote above, I highly recommend this as a starting point, lest you get lost in Foucault's purposeful ambiguity. |
 | Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth : Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984 (Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984 , Vol 1) (1998): The First of three volumes (the second and third are also available on Amazon.com) that will introduce selected translations from the original four French volumes. This first volume has 11 course summaries that M. Foucault submitted to the College de France from 1970 to 1982. Moreover, Rabinow has skillfully included several key essays and interviews from M. Foucault's last years, when his work turned exclusively toward issues of ethics and the "care of the self." The outlines often explore subjectivity, but M. Foucault's thought turned more moral and political, zeroing in on technology and the social institutions. The selection starts with the difference M. Foucault made between the "will to knowledge" (a passion for authoritative organization) and the "will to truth" (concern for the integrity of subjective expression). In exposing to us how these systems of knowledge are shaped by political structures of power (which in turn serve to justify themselves), M. Foucault provided dazzling critiques of some of our most highly regarded institutions in the areas of health, justice, government and education. This is really the first concrete anthology of M. Foucault's ethics of the care of the self and sexuality that really joins everything to his critical analysis of power/knowledge. In this volume, M. Foucault describes how philosophers, from antiquity to modernity, developed the practice of self-care through various literary modes: keeping journals of useful thoughts and quotations, exchanging correspondence of self-disclosure and advice between friends, writing texts of self-examination and confession (as if to imply that this was the forerunner of the modern day "examination of conscience"), drafting meditative and exploratory essay. Moreover, M. Foucault insists that "a pleasure must be something incredibly intense" or it is "nothing": "the real pleasure would be deep, so intense, so overwhelming that I couldn't survive it, I would die." Leaving no doubt why he is linked with such notables as Bataille, de Sade and Nietzsche. One of the more disturbing problematics that M. Foucault brings up in an interview is his thought points of resistance to power: Q. It would seem that there is something of a deficiency in your problematic, namely, in the notion of resistance against power. Which presupposes a very active subject, very concerned with the care of itself and of others and, therefore, competent politically and philosophically. M.F. This brings us back to the problem of what I mean by power. I scarcely use the word power, and if I use it on occasion it is simply as shorthand for the expression I generally use: relations of power. But there are ready-made models: when one speaks of power, people immediately think of a political structure, a government, a dominant social class, the master and the slave, and so on. I am not thinking of this at all when I speak of relations of power. I mean that in human relationships, whether they involve verbal communication such as we are engaged in at this moment, or amorous, institutional, or economic relationships, power is always present: I mean a relationship in which one person tries to control the conduct of the other. So I am speaking of relations that exist at different levels, in different forms; these power relations are mobile, they can be modified, they are not fixed once and for all.... These power relations are thus mobile, reversible, and unstable. It should also be noted that power relations are possible only insofar as the subjects are free. If one of them were completely at the other's disposal and became his thing, there wouldn't be any relations of power. Thus, in order for power relations to come into play, there must be at least a certain degree of freedom on both sides. Even when the power relation is completely out of balance, when it can truly be claimed that one side has "total power" over the other, a power can be exercised over the other only insofar as the other still has the option of killing himself, of leaping out the window, or of killing the other person.... Of course, states of domination do indeed exist. In a great many cases, power relations are fixed in such a way that they are perpetually asymmetrical and allow an extremely limited margin of freedom.... But the claim that "you see power everywhere, thus there is no freedom" seems to me absolutely inadequate. The idea that power is a system of domination that controls everything and leaves no room for freedom cannot be attributed to me. (291-293) (quote abridged) For M. Foucault, ethical self-care is formed by the system of knowledge and the power relations (as outlined above) in which the self is situated. The really expansive genealogical studies of M. Foucault's earlier books deal with how science related to disease, madness and criminality and how institutional powers sought to govern populations. Despite the almost about-face that M. Foucault makes, this book is helpful in making the change clear and how it fits within his oeuvre. M. Foucault's alternatives usefully problematize them; and problematization rather than conceited solutions is the hallmark of M. Foucault's philosophy. Rabinow's selection is a helpful one and no respectable M. Foucault selection should be without it, Volume 2 - Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, and Volume 3 - Power (all available on Amazon.com) |
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We are now far away from the country of tortures, dotted with wheels, gibbets, gallows, pillories; we are far, too, from that dream of the reformers, less than fifty years before: the city of punishments in which a thousand small theaters would have provided an endless multicolored representation of justice in which the punishments, meticulously produced on decorative scaffolds, would have constituted the permanent festival of the penal code. The carceral city, with its imaginary 'geo-politics', is governed by quite different principles. The extract from La Phalange reminds us of some of the more important ones: that at the center of this city, and as if to hold it in place, there is, not the 'center of power', not a network of forces, but a multiple network of diverse elements - walls, space, institutions, rules, discourse; that the model of the carceral city is not, therefore, the body of the king, with the powers that emanate from it, nor the contractual meetings of wills from which a body that was both individual and collective was born, but a strategic distribution of elements of different natures and levels. That the prison is not the daughter of laws, codes or the judicial apparatus; that it is not subordinated to the court and the docile or clumsy instruments of the sentences that it hands out and of the results that it would like to achieve; that it is the court that is external and subordinate to the prison. That in the central position that it occupies, it is not alone, but linked to the whole series of 'carceral' mechanisms which seem distinct enough - since they are intended to alleviate pain, to cure, to comfort - but which all tend, like the prison, to exercise a power of normalization. That these mechanisms are applied not to transgressions against a 'central' law, but to the apparatus of production - 'commerce' and 'industry' - to a whole multiplicity of illegalities, in all their diversity of nature and origin, their specific role in profit and the different ways in which they are dealt with by the punitive mechanisms. And that ultimately what presides over all these mechanisms is not the unitary functioning of an apparatus or an institution, but the necessity of combat and the rules of strategy. That, consequently, the notions of institutions of repression, rejection, exclusion, marginalization, are not adequate to describe, at the very center of the carceral city, the formation of the insidious leniencies, unavowable petty cruelties, small acts of cunning, calculated methods, techniques, 'sciences' that permit the fabrication of the disciplinary individual. In this central and centralized humanity, the effect and instruments of complex power relations, bodies and forces subjected to multiple mechanisms of 'incarceration', objects for discourses that are in themselves elements for this strategy, must we hear the distant roar of battle. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish |
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 | Michel Foucault (1992): This work gives a lucid grasp of Foucault the man but falls short of introducing him fully fleshed out to the reader. However, I strongly believe that the book is a balanced, and richly precise account of the philosophers life. The biography is most beneficial as an account of Foucault's political opinions and activities. Like many of his fellow nomaliens in the 1950s, Foucault was briefly a member of the Communist Party, although his involvement was rather distant - some details of which are explored within the book. Eribon ought to know, he knew Foucault from 1979 to 1984. Foucault was moreover a member of an intellectual scenes of which he was but a part - albeit an important part. Only the scantiest outline of his childhood and adolescence (during wartime Paris) is given, and even most of what we are informed of his later life seems to take a back seat to the almost encyclopedic publication histories of his books and Foucualt's impressions of his contemporary thinkers and colleagues. An example of this explanation is the fact that Sartreans attacked Les Mots et Les Choses as unhistorical and reactionary - all of this information helps to elucidaate this enigmatic figure to the reader. Unfortunately, Eribon's biography has little to say about the logic of Foucault's political development or how it is related to the development of his philosophical ideas. What is pleasantly puzzling in Foucault is the concurrent rejection of Marxism (his work, after all, assert the centrality of thought in forming historical experience) and the sustained endorsement of radicalism. Eribon is clear to point that Foucault makes an interesting contrast with his contemporary Francois Furet, who shared with him the responsibility of disengaging French intellectuals from Marx. One might also lament that no clear picture of his private life or character emerges, as it does with David Macey's (The Lives of Michel Foucault) rendition. Eribon clearly conjectured that Foucault's homosexuality is axial to understanding both the man and his ideas, but perhaps out of fear of the reductive misuse of this issue he shrinks away from it - I am grateful to Eribon for this. Reducing the mans work detracts from the oeuvre and lessens the biographical project. We learn virtually nothing about Foucault's relations with the two important romantic interests of his life, the young composer Jean Barraque, with whom he had a "tempestuous and passionate relationship" (Eribon, 1991: 65) and with the sociologist Daniel Defert, whom he considered for the last 25 years of his life. According to Eribon, the flight of Foucault's sexual experience ranged from guilty to neurotic. Foucault lived the underworld of Parisian bars in the 1950s to the blissful and celebratory eroticism of the Bay Area in the 1980s when he began spending part of the academic year in Berkeley and were he, Eribon asserts contracted AIDS from which he dies in 1984. However, Eribon, it should be noted, writes with non-titillating discretion and non-reduction. Although Foucault's homosexuality may have played a role in forming some of his ideas, we cannot and should not reduce it to that but understanding it is essential. According to Eribon, "Foucault's work is a long exploration of transgression." (Eribon, 1991: 328) On a more "intellectual note" Eribon is clear to point out that Foucault tried to explain in Les Mots et Les Choses that the question of whether events had or had not occurred could only be raised in relation to the perspective from which the question of their occurrence might arise. As a case in point, Foucault mentions that those caught up in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution could not have had the thought that what they were going through as precisely that - the Industrial Revolution. Eribon is good at bringing out that according to Foucault, systems of thought have to be understood not only through the explicit "discourse" in which they are given expression, but equally through the structure and lives of the institutions in which they are embodied and through which they are worked out - - the "episteme". This is not,, in my opinion, a book of major scholarly guise but rather, one may, with respect rather than insolence, call a genuinely high form of "intellectual journalism" and it will stand the test of time. Despite David Macey's skill at making Foucault accessible in "The Lives of Michel Foucault" and James Miller's excesses regarding Nietzsche in "The Passion of Michel Foucault" (all available on Amazon.com) this translation of Eribon's biography "Michel Foucault" by Betsy Wing is an essential for every Foucault library and my personal favorite. |
 | The Passion of Michel Foucault (1994): I assume Miller is trying to demystify Foucault from the deifying result of the author function surrounding his subject. Despite Foucault's writing about it and his advocacy of a nameless or faceless book, I am aware that Foucault was aware of his author function. Books like "The Passion Michel Foucault" by Miller as well as works by Eribon and Macey serve the same function to perpetuate Foucault's own author function. I am not convinced either that Foucault's es muss sein can be essentialized as a Nietzschean project per se. Foucault is the great synthesizer. Rather than build on his academic successes, Miller pokes around looking for dirt on Foucault using the same technique that proved successful for Foucault - the archives. Read all three biographies to get an idea of his work but make sure to read his TEXT to get an idea of his thought. |
 | The
Lives of Michel Foucault (1995): David Macey's "The Lives of Michel Foucault"
- 1993 is by far the best of the three siggnificant biographies that have thus
far appeared (there is James Miller's "The Passion of Michel Foucault"
- 1993 and Betsy Wing's translation of Diddier Eribon's "Michel Foucault"
- 1991 all available on Amazon.com). For MMacey, the "silence" of Foucault
is something to be taken seriously, not as theoretically authorized avoidance
of truth telling, but rather as the bewilderment of a man; a real man situated
in his time and place, caught between different roles and self-conceptions. Macey
tells Foucault's story clearly and without fanfare. What is truly scholarly helpful
in Macey's telling is a rigorous archive of how Foucault, this most tenacious
detractor of institutional power, was ironically the beneficiary of the French
intellectual establishment, and how this retiring scholar proved remarkably proficient
at seizing political moments for stepping up onto the public stage. Macey's intensive
research and detailed textual elucidation provides the type of documentary support
that is often lacking in James Miller's "passionate" book. Macey's book,
is conversely, is a cautious account of Foucault's doings, written with expertise
of a careful study and a sharp spirit of defensiveness, as might be expected from
a biography that has been duly "authorized" by Foucault's surviving
companion Daniel Defert. As opposed to Miller's very good biography that offered
a portrait of Foucault the man and thinker - Macey's rendition pays attention
to the day-to-day goings on offers the reader a more vivid picture of Foucault
as a political activist. Macey painstakingly explores the early 1970s - when Foucault
plunged into a life of sustained political involvement. I am grateful to all three
biographers for making Foucault come alive as a person and more understandable
as a scholar. Macey though, is really good at taking Foucault's anti-humanist
perspective and developing it, not as a theme or explanation of Foucault's life
but rather as a topic of study. According to Macey, no French theoretician has
had a more recondite or permanent influence on American thinking then Michel Foucault.
Foucault, who been dead for more than a decade now may no longer be the first
name to be dropped at academic circles and seminars, but the terms he made famous,
terms like `discourse' and `networks of power' - often misappropriated and dropped
at a moments notice get a very good treatment in this book. Macey is really helpful
in taking the often cryptic writing of Foucault and makes it accessible to the
unfamiliar - and at times even familiar - Foucault scholar. According to Macey,
the cult of Foucault, matured in its impact because Foucault and his cohort had
intellectual claims beyond the reading of "texts." Going beyond the
often dead ended practice of "deconstruction" practiced by such luminaries
as Lacan, Derrida and Levi-Strauss. Foucault was shaping an enterprise in anti-humanist, anti-essentialist "discourse." In sync with many other strains in the thought of his continental contemporaries - with Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger were acknowledged as his primary influences while Althusser, Canguilhem and Barthes were included in the mix - Foucault's ideas about the essential constitution of civil society drew on a ardently anti-liberal attack on the Enlightenment. Far from being the light of reason to shed light and resolve problems surrounding the human condition, the Enlightenment according to Foucault replaced the ancien regime model of social marginalization and class demarcations with a better mousetrap of domination, which was simply a modernized technology of social control. It would no longer be possible to look to the obvious figures of sovereignty and privilege - embodied in king and counts - for the telling signs of "power." Power was beginning to make its way into the ordinary institutions of social life. The reigning king of the humanist project was still Sartre, who became the locus of Foucault's efforts. Sartre, according to Foucault stood for a tired philosophy of "Marxist humanism." Sartre did not see, in Foucault's view that humanism was inevitably the soiled result of the new technology of domination that sprang up with the Enlightenment. Sartre, according to Foucault, was the poster boy of the Enlightenment. Macey spells out how according to Foucault, Humanism was just the happy facade put on the medical and scientific lessening of the human being into an itemized, categorized and catalogued object of a detached "gaze" - recognition of this phenomenon accordingg to Foucault should put to rest any ebullience for the communitarian didactic discourse of the Sartrean "politics of commitment." More openly then does Miller (or Eribon for that matter), Macey recognizes Foucault's ongoing struggle against Sartre's "gaze," against any other interpretative or evaluative power. What was really happening, Foucault posits was the construction of a "networks" of power - though one was not supposed to ask "`whose' power?" Power, this new social fixation with discipline and surveillance, became its own rationale according to Foucault. As I mentioned above, power was not to be found in leaders or social organizations or parties or in any given social structure, but was rather a kind of "discourse, " a set of terms or symbolic representations that connect, in an abstract way, the given instances of discipline and surveillance at work in social life. For Foucault, to fight a diffuse "power" was to be able to pick any point of attack in any institutional setting and do the work of social revolution. Foucault is not keen to lay out a recipe for such transgression but his strength is in critique. Macey's strength is making this often baroque author accessible - the Macey that I appreciate. |
 | Michel Foucault (1992): David R. Shumway does a brief and very helpful "overview" of Foucault for the academic beginner. It is an academic book that digs -- especially into The Order of Things - Foucault's groundbreaking piece concerning history and its tropic structures. Shumway has a real handle on the issue of "discourse." Shumway succinctly put it this way. "Discourse is no longer to be understood as the expression of the speaker, but rather the speaker is to be understood as part of discursive practice." (Shumway, 1989: 102) Power is also examined and Shumway points out that "it is the power of institutions and not the truth of discourse that excludes its false competitors. (Shumway, 1989: 104) Foucault is a historian of ideas, and his interest is in the way in which ideas are configured by the techniques, practices and rituals of institutions. According to Shumway, for Foucault, power is not something that is solely retained by institutions; rather power is dispersed and agreed to and reinforced by repetition and resistance. This is not an easy concept to grasp and Shumway makes it accessible to the novice scholar like myself. He points out that for Foucault, in the case of sexuality, the act of Confession -- first embraced by the Roman Catholic Church, and then later by psychoanalysts -- produced a kind of talk or "discourse" about sex that helped to shape the history of sexuality. Lastly, according to Shumway, Foucault advocates as a mode of political dissent, moving away from the disciplinary mindset. In the realm of good introductions/framing of Foucault discourse/authorial extension/examination, this books ranks among the giants and is a must for all serious Foucault scholars. |
 | Foucault for Beginners (Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Books: 62) (1994): Foucault's range is amazing. Very few disciplines escaped his epistemological examination. His examination includes literary criticism, criminology, and gender studies. Arguing that definitions of abnormal behaviour are socially constructed, Foucault explored the power relations between those who meet and those who deviate from social norms. Foucault's examination of the birth the prisons includes a very graphic description of early punishment and the orgy of suffering does not escape Moshe Süsser's and is cleverly written by Lydia Alix Fillingham. This book gives a very brief introduction to Foucault's work (or the part of it that interests us), plus a very good bibliography. According to Foucault, people do not have a 'true' identity. In essence, the self is a product of discourse. Identity, is performative our interaction with others, but this is not static. It is a dynamic, temporary and shifting. Foucualt centers his epistemology around power, knowledge and language. People do not really have power per se. Power is a force which people engage in - as in power knowledge and language. Power is not owned; it is used. Where power is, there is also an equal and opposite reaction. I was particularly impressed by the treatment of "The Birth of the Clinic" since this is one of the few of his works that I missed and hope to read soon, it placed for me the significance of his play on power and the gaze. I get the sense that "The Birth of the Clinic" is a spin-off from "Madness and Civilization" based on his take of the dis-empowerment of the sick (not well, not normal) as well as the mad. I understand when this comic book mentions that reading "The Order of Things" is not the best starting point to understanding Foucault and I will venture to "The Archeology of Knowledge" aremd with this introduction and the other readings I have done on Foucault. A primer, I think it is a really good start. However, in reality, Foucault and French deconstruction is NOT infinitely incomprehensible. Conversely, be warned, if you think you can read this as a substitute and come to class to discuss Foucault, you might be disappointed.I highly recommend this to start and hopefully it leads you to the fascinating maze that is Foucault. |
 | Foucault in 90 Minutes (2000): Lots can be said about the genial and conversational style of Foucault in 90 minutes. Strathern does not pull any punches to vigorously outline his personal strong belief in his sweep of the philosopher's life and work. He does not disappoint with Foucault in 90 minutes. I would like to caution the reader about the reading and use of this (and I am not even sure it qualifies as a "book" - it is more like an essay actually) book. Readers unquestionably should not use these extremely short, and often opinionated volumes as a replacement for reading Foucault's books. On occasion, Strathern judges Foucault guilty of a number of intellectual oversimplifications, and clearly dislikes, not Foucault's homosexuality, but of some of the Foucault's life choices. I strongly feel that if you are going to provide a "reader" or "introduction" of sorts, a writer needs to be neutral and as objective as he/she can possibly be - Strathern in neither. As a point of stylle, the first section of the volume covers Foucault's life and work. At the end of the essay, Strathern, lists quotations from the Foucault's work and tries a chronology of his life and of the history of philosophy. In concluding, I would like to reiterate the point I made above, Strathern's Foucault in 90 minutes would have been as a good introduction to demystify Foucault, to establish a form of working context which makes the life and work of Foucault less ominous. Unfortunately, Strathern is neither. Best to try Macey, Eribon, Miller or even David Shumway (all available on Amazon.com) for a more scholarly introduction. |
 |
One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area - European culture since the sixteenth century - one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it. It is not around him and his secrets that knowledge prowled for so long in the darkness, In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the knowledge of identities, differences, characters, equivalences, words - in short, in the midst of all the episodes of that profound history of the Same - only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear. And that appearance was not the liberation of an old anxiety, the transition into luminous consciousness of an age-old concern, the entry into objectivity of something that has long remained trapped within beliefs and philosophies: it was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge. As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility - without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises - were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things |
| |
 | Deconstructing History (1998): I can see how this book can be read as problematic. Deconstructing History is based on a "deconstructive" reading of history and its sources. I can see how this lucid piece may have changed the entire discipline of history. Alun Munslow is not really original. Borrowing from Hayden White, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacque Derrida; Munslow's main thesis revolves around the premise that historians write history as narrative and fall under the limitations that this paradigm provides. Munslow details both empiricist and deconstructionist issues and considers the arguments of both schools. To Munslow, Deconstructing History debates whether history is defined as the textual product of historians or the textual model for the past itself. The argument, and I feel is a compelling one, revolves around the various layers that mediate the past from the reader. The first layer involves "the past" itself - as a referent. The second layer involves the "archive" or the evidence. The third layer involves the interpretation of the facts in a narrative from. All these forms of mediation pose a problem as it "obscures history's real character"(Munslow 1). The past itself - that it is a reality is not in question. However, "the absence of a direct correspondence to the reality of the past, the way in which history is interpreted and reported as a narrative is of primary importance to the acquisition and character of our historical knowledge."(Munslow 163). The past itself is not in question but getting to this base layer is a problem. The problem begins when the facts from the evidence, the "archive" is already subject to the narrative form. The "archive" or evidence is turned into 'facts' through the narrative interpretation of the person writing it. In effect, both the representation and the facts themselves are already "tainted". The third layer of mediation seems to make matters worse for the reader. The Author decides to interpret the already tainted facts and writes history. My sense is that because of this "mediation" the Author is then effecting some form of epistemic violence. This is where Foucault comes in. The Author functions as the legitimizer of Discourse and effects another layer of meaning. It would be naïve for those who espouse a reconstructive views to ignore the effect of the Author, the impact of strategies, tropes, emplotment, and the fact that history is written in the here and now. According to Foucault, the narrative is important over and above all these narrative limits but because of whom it excludes. The point is clear, history is not "discovered", history is "created". History is a narrative interpretation and built into this is the ideology or social theory that determines a particular author's oeuvre. Where then do we go from here? According to Barthes, "Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favor of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to over throw the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author." (Barthes 148). What are the implications of this? Well, if we decenter the Author from this function knowing that the history is constructed, then it takes away the role of the Author as the definitive expert - and that is, to lots of historians, dangerous. On the flipside, it is clear that it opens up lots of room for reexamining history. Do we open ourselves to a reread of history? I think we have no choice. |
 | Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (1987): In "The Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida" Allan Megill provides us a framework to consider where we are. It is the role of intellectual historians to give us pause to think. According to writers like Milan Kundera, "Life is but a sketch." Without a pause to think, life becomes light. The major advantage that Megill has is that he comes to this project as an intellectual historian and not a philosopher. His framework is supposed to be pedagogical. Megill does tend though to play the critic with his selective reading of his chosen foursome. Having said that, it is clear though that his examination of discontinuity is important and the alternatives he provides in terms of options, necessary. Megill's framework is premised on the idea that modern" thought is grounded on the idea, and the problematic surrounding the idea of the Enlightenment project of an epistemology modeled against science. Following along a fairly traditional or conventional model, Megill reads some Enlightenment thinkers saw man (as seen by the sciences) to be pre-determined "objects." Conversely, Megill sees the opposite occur with other Enlightenment thinkers saw man as moral "subjects." subjects of free thought who sought to exercise that sense of free will. The central question that came out of the Enlightenment, as premised by Kant, is how free are we REALLY within this deterministic scientific view? Using Kant as his fulcrum, man is a fragmented unit fraught with issues of dualism, the main area of concern being the duality of the theoretical versus the practical. Megill takes this one step further (taking the queue from Kant) that Aesthetic deliberation provides an alternative space of consideration. Megill introduces, at this junction, a sense of "crisis." Within a traditional perspective, we see a loss of a sense of moral standards. On the other hand, there is the loss of faith in historicism. This is where Megill take off. The question we need to ask then is: Is this view of seeing things as a "lack of continuity" really a break with tradition? Is it really? Is it a new sense of historicity? A sense of discontinuity. Could it also be seen as Nietzsche setting up a new "tradition" as he sets this sense of discontinuity? Contrary to the simplistic notion that Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida are no more than convenient illustrations of the "irrationalism," writ large, in the twentieth century European mind. I argue the reverse is true, as I am certain Megill does too in "The Prophets of Extremity." The three thinkers examined who follow Nietzsche are not simple nihilists but rather have a richer and more developed project that, in a lot of ways, Nietzsche began. Where the break is, the rest are a "footnote" to Nietzsche, with a creative and extended project. Is Megill ignoring the other areas (purposeful or otherwise) of deliberations by such creative minds as Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida a risky move? Certainly. It is a risk worth taking and one worth reading, but reading critically. For as much as these other thinkers (and yes, even Nietzsche) one cannot escape the notion that this sense of crisis really needs to presuppose what it denies. Moreover, these thinkers (Megill included) make us re-examine our positions: that there is not only one way of thinking (and to problematize everything). Megill opens up a new space of deliberation for us. |
 | Prisoners of Shangri-LA : Tibetan Buddhism and the West (1999): Lopez is a genius and really gets at the heart of the Western construction of Tibet, the realities of the Panchen Lama and the Shugden affair really hit home that Tibet is real and for as long was we treat Tibet as the ideal Shangri-La, we deny Tibet any real space in history. Lopez writes, "To the extent that we continue to believe that Tibet prior to 1950 was a utopia, the Tibet of 1998 will be no place" (11). This book is a triumph in Tibetan studies and should be read, written, and discussed. Donald Lopez shows us that from within how to find some way to break free from the carceral community and perhaps "some may find a file with which to begin the slow work or sawing though the bars" (Lopez 13). Lopez writes, "This book does not set out to apportion praise and blame. Neither is its purpose to distinguish good Tibetology from bad, to separate fact from fiction, or the scholarly from the popular, but to show their confluence. The question considered is not how knowledge is tainted but how knowledge takes form. This book then is an exploration of some of the mirror-lined cultural labyrinths that have been created by Tibetans, Tibetophiles, and Tibetologists, labyrinths that the scholar may map but in which the scholar also must wander. We are captives of confines of our own making, we are all prisoners of Shangri-La. This book, then, is not written outside the walls of the prison, nor does it hold the key that would permit escape. Hidden in its pages, however, some may find a file with which to begin the slow work of sawing though the bars" (Lopez 13). This book, in my opinion, is one of the best books around on the social construction of Tibet. This book is effectively a history of the "Orientalist" creation of Tibet. Lopez give an account of a vast set of creations of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism that pervade popular western culture. Tsering Shakya reads in Lopez's work that Tibet remained outside the scrutiny of post-colonial discourse because it was never really annexed by a western colonial power. My sense is that the remoteness and seemingly unprofitable conditions that was Tibet insulated it from colonial powers in the past - not anymore. But the extensive examination of the archive that Lopez undertakes undermines Shakya's reading of Lopez that it was never really annexed - maybe not physically but certainly was culturally. I have to agree with Lopez in that there are really two Tibets - the somewhat more authentic one and the one constructed by the West. In his extensive look at the archive, Lopez digs into a few very key aspects of Tibetan Buddhism that were not just appropriated but rather misappropriated to seem almost representative of the whole of Tibet. In Lopez's examination of the phenomenon of Lamaism, his deconstruction of T. Lobsang Rampa, his examination of the discourse of the Book of the Dead, and the uncritical appropriation of the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum we see how extensive the invention is of Tibet is in the West. The Dalai Lama himself is quick to point out that Lamaism (which really does not exist) is not a debasement of Buddhism but rather that the reverse is true. Tibetan Buddhists, perhaps more than any other sect, adhere strictly to the Sutras. Translated from the original Sanskrit, Tibetan text and the commentaries are perhaps the "purest" - if I might be allowed to use the phrase without overly romanticizing. Lopez continues by outlining what I would call his version epistemic violence that is within the framework of dualities: "Thus Lamaism may be portrayed in the West as the most authentic and most degenerate form of Buddhism, Tibetan monks may be portrayed as saintly or rapacious, Tibetan artists may be portrayed as inspired mystics and mindless automatons, Tibetan peasants may be portrayed as pristine or filthy. This language about Tibet not only creates knowledge about Tibet, in many ways creates Tibet, a Tibet that Tibetans in exile have come to appropriate and deploy in an effort to gain both standing in exile and independence for their country" (Lopez 10). The deconstruction of the T. Lobsang Rampa is very telling in that falsification is very difficult. Making all sorts of questionable claims - akin to the ones made by Madam Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society - very difficult to disprove (or even prove). The discourse of the Book of the Dead and its publication here in the west and it position as representative and preeminent status as "the book" (as Lopez likes to call it) is really proven to be the product of western academic fiction. The exoticizing of the mantra Oh Mani Padme Hum only proves that the Orientalist discourse of the self and other and the rendering "exotic" is alive and well. Lopez compels us to ask the question, "Who's Tibet"? |
| Mystery of Alexina (1991): Much like the book that it is based on, the tragic story of Herculine Barbin is thought provoking because it calls to question how we construct the self. Subject to the stresses and strains of society, the medical, legal and theological institutions, Barbin had to choose his/her "sex." In the France of that time -- changing one's sex was allowed but once you made the decision, there was no turning back. A tragedy for the ages but a great way to deconstruct the social construction of the self. An excellent movie ... the film will stand the test of time. |
Internal Links:
Disclaimer: This section offers a series of articles
that I have collected on Michel Foucault. The section is designed to assist fellow
scholars in their research on this very rich and fascinating area of interest.
The collection is my personal library of articles and will serve as the foundation
for my own work on the work, life and thoughts of Michel Foucault. All the articles
have been, to the best of my ability, properly referenced and where possible,
the author's name is included. Feel free to print them out if you find them useful.
01. Changing
of the Gods: The Gender and Family Discourse of American Evangelicalism in Historical
Perspective
02. American Governmentality:
Michel Foucault and Public Administration
03. Gray
Morning
04. Communication, Criticism,
and the Postmodern Consensus
05.
Objects without Origins: Foucault in South African Socio-Medical Science
06. Foucault and the Subject of Feminism
07. How is it, then, that we still remain
barbarians? Foucault, Schiller, and the Aesthetician of Ethics
08.
Truth and the Juridical Forms
09. Foucault's
response to Freud: Sado-Masochism and the Aestheticization of Power
10.
The Politics of Critical Description: Recovering
the Normative Complexity of Foucault's pouvoir/savoir
11.
Behold the Deconstructionist, who liberates literature by confining it to a cult
12. Between Power and Knowledge: Habermas,
Foucault and the future of legal studies
13.
A women's training centre considered as a 'site of localised power': thoughts
on Foucault
14. The productive hypothesis:Foucault,
Gender and the History of Sexuality
15.
Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault
16.
The Masks of M. Foucault
17. Thinking
beyond the East-West Divide: Foucault, Patocka, and the Care of the Self
18. Fictions of Emergence Foucault/Genealogy/Nietzsche
19. Books in Review: The Passion of Michel Foucalt
20. Writing Power in Duras L'Amant de la Chine Du Nord
21. Tortured Prose
22.
Beyond Good and Evil: The Ethical Sensibility of Michel Foucault
23.
The Secret Cabinet of Dr. Foucault: A Survey of Recent Articles
24.
About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self
25.
Subject and Abject - the examined life of Michel Foucault
26.
Interpreting Foucault
27. Punishment, Surveillance
and Discipline in Paradise Lost
28. Feminist
Theory and Foucault: A Bibliographic Essay
29.
Dodging the Crossfire: Questions for Postcolonial Pedagogy
30.
Discursive Formation, Life Stories, and the emergence of co-dependency: "Power
Knowledge"; and the search for Identity
31.
Critique of Characterization: It was in not knowing that he loved her
32. Discipline and Deterrence: Rethinking
Foucault on the question of power and contemporary society
33.
The Philosopher's Prism: Foucault, Feminism and Critique
34.
Foucault and the Spaces of History
35. The
Critique of Impure Reason: Foucault and the Frankfurt School
36.
Carnival of Atrocity: Foucault, Nietzsche, Cruelty
37.
Obituary
38. The History of Sexuality
39. Subject and Abject
40.
The Lives of Michel Foucault
41. The History
of Sexuality
42. Discipline and Punish
43. Foucault Phobia
44.
Language and Infinity
45. Subjectivity and Truth
46. Subjectivity and Truth
47.
The Essential Works of Foucault
48. Aesthetics,
Method and Epistemology
49. Religion and Culture
50. Personality and Power
Yet unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted, I do believe in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts constituting a discursive formation like Orientalism. The unity of the large ensemble of texts I analyze is due in part to the fact that they frequently refer to each other: Orientalism is after all a system for citing works and authors.
Edward Said, Orientalism
SAID
contra FOUCAULT.doc
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| MICHEL FOUCAULT | JACQUES DERRIDA | EDWARD SAID | MILAN KUNDERA | PHILIP ROTH |
An examination of Western Civilization
leading up to Foucault...
| |
 | Comprehensive.
However, with a topic this extensive, not that I am suggesting that Anderson is
trying to do this, but it is difficult to produce the definitive PoMo piece. Postmodern
thought is the academic topic of the day - or maybe the era. It has replaced Existentialism
as the topic of discussion all over the place as THE coffee shop conversation
topic. Anderson takes the bull by the horn and comes up with a 4-part book that
will certainly prove useful as a primer and will help you impress your friends.
Part one and two sets out to define and to explain vocabulary. Part three deals
with the construction of self. Part four takes on a more macro look (globalization)
and closes with the positive side of postmodern discourse. Thing with this collection is that it is very difficult to go wrong when you include such notables as Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty. PoMo philosophers are taking on deity status that was reserved for existentialist celebrities like Heidegger and Sartre. Despite the lack of popular appeal due to purposeful ambiguity as well as the difficulty of the material, it has taken academia by storm. A dense book, it is packed with information. Despite the range and complexity, I highly recommend "The Truth about the Truth" as a starter kit only. The collection does not really prepare students to discuss this stuff in class in any detail - mind you this is my opinion only and it could change as folks find it a good book for an introduction class. Anderson does a fantastic job. We ignore this stuff at our own risk. Be prepared. |
 | Perhaps one of the best introductions to the PoMo phenomenon. Funny how the most insightful sources are the most simple. The complexity of Derrida and Foucault seems to fade away as I moved from one section to the next. I really appreciated the writers attempt at not mocking the complex topic and trying to make is real. I was specially appreciative of the sections that introduced the PoMo phenomenon. Despite the lack of real direction Postmodern thinking provides, it is a really interesting phenomenon and worth exploring. If you take this as your starting point then move to "The Truth about the Truth: De-Confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World" by Walter Truett Anderson (also provided by Amazon.com) and then proceed to engage in the specific writers and artists themselves, this purposeful ambiguity will eventually fade away. |
 | If
there was any reason for Simone de Beauvoir's claim that "I am not a woman
of action....", this book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the claim
is unfounded. In an autobiography filled with heroes, villains, friends, and foes
de Beauvoir cast aside all doubt that was (and still is) a person of consequence. Hard Times: Force of Circumstance is filled (over and above her constant devotion to Sartre) with references to Claude Lanzman and Nelson Algren. We are taken into her world and all her most intimate thoughts. Her insights on Brazil, Castro, Kruschev and the Algerian conflict are from a first hand source and you really can't beat that. Of all of de Beauvoir's acts of courage, the independent (independent of Sartre) acts relating to the Algerian conflict in general and Djamila Boupacha in particular are acts of bravery and are in her own terminology "Good Faith" as an Existentialist. De Beauvoir centers her "Action" on 3 things: motive, the act itself, and the willingness to take the consequences. As a concrete example, along with her cohort Gisele Halimi (who saw her role as Boupacha's lawyer) and Djamila Boupacha (who saw her role as sacrificial lamb/symbol), de Beauvoir was set in her role as writer. Before I go on, I should background the Boupacha case for those who have not read book. During the French/Algerian conflict, Boupacha was accused of planting a bomb (which never exploded) at the University of Algiers. Convicted solely on the merit of her confession, a confession that was extracted via torture and rape. Compelled to "Act" both Halimi and de Beauvoir moved to see the trial transferred and attention and awareness raised regarding the acts of torture in Algeria. As much a she claims that others "Did more..." what is important to note is that the writer has an important function - that of an educator. In the realm of pubblic vs. private, all "freedom" regarding public acts are in "good faith" if the call to action has a liberating effect on all. In the area of perception - we see ourselves as subject and the "other" as object. Writers help us realize that to the "other" we are object to their subject. Coming back to Boupacha, de Beauvoir's actions as writer are clearly acts of "good faith". Writing the introduction to "Djamila Boupacha" and signing in as co-author is proof positive of "Action". I guess in a struggle such as this one, one cannot help but rank extent of action based on risk. In a life full with travel, writing, teaching, success and disappointment - these "Hard Times" don't seem so bad after all. I salute de Beauvoir for a life well spent. She went beyond most of her colleagues/peers in terms of impact. Through it all, she is just as human as any of us - she cries, she hurts, she loves - she is human and she is woman (you can take that however you like) and like all of us, has struggles and triumphs. A bit like a travel diary at times, this book is highly under rated and deserves its place beside "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter". A resounding 5 stars! |
 | Bair works really hard at making it clear that Sartre and De Beauvoir were two sides of the same coin. Larger than life as always but deeply and painfully human too. Despite the eventual demise of their "professional" relationship, and the eventual move of Sartre to study Flaubert and De Beauvior to her feminist crusade, the two are inextricably linked. Did she really have as much control (specially in the end) over Sartre and his life? We will never know. What Bair does though is succeed in making her human more than all of De Beauvior's work ever could. Despite the fact that De Beauvior and Sartre are larger than life, and they always will be, Bair makes her subject - human, vulnerable and understandable. It is comprehensive and exhaustive journey (despite whatever errors there might be), one worth taking at any junction in the readers Existential journey. |
 | What
does Simone de Beauvoir as in the Second Sex? I think it revolves around: What
peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is that she - a free and autonomous
being like all human creatures - nevertheless finds herself living in a world
where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. This comes from a long line of factors, that independently do not explain it but are part and parcel of the subjection of women. Darwin, Freud and Marx have formulated ideas about how the world works and to some extent how it should work. The "the division of the species into two sexes is not always clear-cut," and several species are able to perform "asexual propagation." The idea of "opposite sexes," created over the centuries by Western civilization, is not the result of biology, but rather a social construct with deep social roots. I espouse the existentialist view, that we create society and to assume any of it as given is "bad faith" in a gender perspective, one is not born, but rather becomes a woman. I said it before and I will state it again, "Biology is not enough to give an answer to the question that is before us: why is woman the Other? Our task is to discover how the nature of woman has been affected throughout the course of history; we are concerned to find out what humanity has made of the human female." Moreover, ".....the body of woman is one of the essential elements in her situation in the world. But that body is not enough to define her as a woman." which actually encapsulates the thesis of the Other, biology is not enough but does give us certain insights as to why woman has evolved into her current state. As the definition of woman is constructed (albeit wrongly) along psychological and materialistic lines as well, the role and definition of woman can be changed but in the meantime, women have to deal with even more limitations of her body, "As with her grasp on the world, it is again impossible to measure in the abstract the burden imposed on woman by her reproductive function." and "The bondage of woman to the species is more or less rigorous according to the number of births demanded by society and the degree of hygienic care provided for pregnancy and childbirth." Obviously it is longer and more complex than this - but if this has at least started you on the road and interested in the subject, I challenge you to pick up her book and find out where she comes from and what she means - we will be all richer in the end! |
 | Middle ages religious beliefs were so strong that people, would risk torture rather than renounce their faith. St. Teresa was a contemporary of Machiavelli; he was considered a "modern" man while she was more medieval. AS a short back grounder to get a better appreciation of the book and a flavor of the context, Monasticism was a dynamic movement of the Middle Ages; religious souls wanting to withdraw from the sinful world and devote themselves to God. There was also a move from the hermit saint to a more cooperative movement (St. Benedictine). First Benedictine Pope saw how effective these groups were within society. Separation between cultural leadership (church, monastery) and political leadership (barbarian kings). Moreover, Reform movements within the church came within the monastic community. Moreover, this was also a period when the Virgin Mary becomes an important figure; savior of the hopelessly lost souls. St. Bernard is torn between inner worship and outer manifestation of faith. St. Teresa conceived idea of theologian/preachers who would be committed to poverty but would go out into the world and later followed by the age of song, southern troubadours, knighthood, idealization of women, growth of reason. Enter into all this, one Teresa of Avila - with her mystical tendencies. What were we to do with her? Both now and then. The only way to really engage is to suspend belief and allow for the mystical qualities of a mystical connection to God to take over - if even for a brief moment. To run counter and be cynical from the get go will destroy the experience. We should have a look see with a child's eye and innocence and even if we leave jaded, at least we can say we tried. I marvel at the woman and I am left wondering by the entire episode, sometimes even scared to re-read it. How is Teresa's description of union, rapture and ecstasy, and her description of her love of god, different from Plato's search for beauty? Was she a hero? A little Padre Pio cum Joan of Arc? Judge for yourself. It will leave no one unchanged. |
 | If confronted with the question: "To what extent, if any, and probably for what purpose can society as a body, interfere with the liberty of the individual?" The answer is probably, never. Oh well, one clear answer to this infinitely incomprehensible question was provided in the 19th century by John Stuart Mill in this classic writing On Liberty. JSM is the grand papa of what is modern Liberalism. We may not agree with Mill, but if we are to agree or disagree, it is best to first go back to the source. In a sense, Mill comes from the position that restraints always tend to stifle individuality. Freedom is the default, to stifle the abberation. If there is a call to interfere, there had better be a real good reason. Mill, however, does not have his head in the clouds but he does have a blanket statement that could use some complexity. Mill is of the reasoning that society is in the right to interfere with individual liberty only if harm is done or threatened to others. This is, of course, an over simplification. Mill further elaborates with a sense of paternalism and what seems like a progressive attitude about the rights of all people and the disutility of unfair treatment. It is not an easy read but it is a lucid one. In Mill's view, Harm, or the threat of harm, only brings conduct into public realm by (relating back to Plato) a prima facie condition to intervene. A foundational piece and a staple for the Humanities. To engage in the discourse of Mill is to step in the realm of Public contra Private. |
 | France in politically powerful and economically wealthy. King Louis XIV saw himself as ruling over an enlightened society. He was passionate about the arts and obsessive about theatre. Moliere wrote comedy. He contrasts what people are to what they think of themselves. Moliere's audience was spoiled, well educated, bourgeois, aristocratic and royal. The audience wanted to be entertained, to laugh and to be cheerful. The Misanthrope was controversial but a box office success. The play takes place in Celimene's house where she entertains a variety of visitors. Her visitors are relatives, friends and suitors who spend their time much as the upper society of the day. They dressed, penned and received letters wrote poems and libelous prose. They visited each other, hoped to be noticed by royalty and the litigious pursed lawsuits to uphold their reputations. Several suitors vie for Celimene's favour. Her malicious wit and her reluctance to pick one partner over the others cause her to end up alone. The play begins with Alceste and Philinte arguing about one of the social conventions of the day. Alceste declares that it is morally wrong to falsely flatter and Philinte says we must be tolerant of peoples behaviour. These two alternatives a-re frequently presented to the audience. There are two ways to approach the world and one is as good as the other. Throughout the play the characters axe thrown up against this dilemma with a variety of responses and outcomes. Each player presents as a contradiction with a hidden core. So that, depending on how one chooses to read the play, the characters can be interpreted in a variety of ways. This is were the fun begins, Alceste has been interpreted by many audiences as a noble, heroic idealist, a champion of honesty. He also can be seen as a rigid extremist, an absolutist whose maniacal criticism is quickly tiresome. He criticizes societies corruptions and acts like a conceited prig. Celimen is a chilly shrew or bewitchingly shrewd. She employs the conventions of the times in that she is a gossip, she has a malicious wit etc. but she is an admirable character. Philinte and Eliante are studiously tolerant of everyone and are consummate bores. Alceste's passionate assertion on the ideal of truth and honesty verses falsity comes across as absurdity. His absolutist stance is difficult to examine. He is a rigid extremist obsessed with his vision of right. He is in love with a person who embodies everything he abhors i.e. a coquette who falsely flatters, who is a witty gossip and although he professes to he wants to change her and at the end of the play Celimene is abandoned to society and Alceste leaves her stranded even though he first wished she was helpless so that he could rescue her. His passion is out of proportion to events. i.e. Alceste advises Philante that hanging would be an appropriate response to falsely flattering. He is unable to apply anything he says to himself so that he thinks that he is reasonable and he is mostly unreasonable, bad tempered and brusque i.e. instead of an apology regarding his lawsuit he hopes he is guilty so that he can show the stupidity of society. The play is derisive of bourgeois behaviour but with Alceste as the messenger one wonders if Moliere is serious. Philinte and Eliante who are perhaps the Epicureans in the play stand for reasonable tolerance but they seem iust tedious i.e. Eliante's prescription for how love works. Celimene is the character who generates the most empathy. Even so, she ruthlessly rips everyone apart. She is quick and intelligent with the small talk. She is beautiful, rich, independent and her salon is the gathering place of the moment. She is the one who displays the most false behavior but perhaps she is the most honest. Truth and honesty, usually traits to strive for, in Alceste's character, seem somehow less than desirable. His passion and contradictory behaviour smack of insincerity, the very trait he claims to despise. This culture is obsessed with wealth and power and societal recognition. The currency is wit, youth, beauty. Celimene is aware that she has a very short time to establish herself before she will have the status of Arsinone, an older prude who is relegated to the ranks of visitor rather than someone who people want to visit. Even though Celimene plays by the rules she fails. Alceste and Celimene are totally unsuited to each other but perhaps they share obsession: he to distaste, she to taste. Alceste claims the more one loves the less one should forgive. Alceste courts isolation but at the end of the play Philinte and Eliante stick with him. Such a small book with such a rich context. |
 | It
is easy to be reductionist about anything and Machiavelli is no exception. Place
Machiavelli in the here and the now and you will see a modern day Lawyer or Management
Consultant or Political Strategist. Stripped of all the trappings and layers the
ages have placed on "The Prince", Niccolo Machiavelli is nothing more
than a consultant, just doing his job. Machiavelli is a sort of strategist for
Lorenzo De Medici. In the tradition of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli advises that ruling is a state of constant warfare and the protagonists must be vigilant. He advises: "A Prince, therefore, must have no other object or thought, nor acquire skill in anything, except War, its organization, and its discipline." (p. 46). With all the changes taking place in the big picture and small picture in the fields of Economics and Commerce, you get the funny feeling that the more things change, the more they really stay the same. That all the tenets outlined are timeless and can apply today can be debated till we are blue in the face. However, one thing does ring true: "I know everyone will agree that it would be most laudable if a Prince possessed all the qualities deemed good among these I have enumerated. But because of conditions in the world, Princes cannot have these qualities, or observe them completely. So a Prince has of necessity to be so prudent that he knows how to escape the evil reputation attached to those vices which could lose him his state, and how to avoid those vices which are not so dangerous. if he possibly can; but, if he cannot, he need not worry so much about the latter. And then, he must not flinch from being blamed for vices which are necessary for safeguarding the state. This is because, taking everything into account, he will find that some of the things that appear to be virtues will, if he practices them, ruin him, and some of the things that appear to be vices will bring him security and prosperity." Well, Dorothy, you can kiss Kansas good-bye. Can man transcend him/her self enough to hear what Machiavelli is saying - that the nature of things just does not allow us to be virtues. Are we really just more sophisticated animals with a veneer of technology and so called civilization but we are simply playing the cycle of life over and over? Before anyone is tempted to reduce Machiavelli and to quote him as most people do - we should to the Bible, The Communist Manifesto and Thus Spake Zarathustra - read it! For those of you who often quote Machiavelli without having read him first, I cordially invite you - no challenge you - to pick up this volume and really hear him - I strongly believe and even defend Machiavelli - this is not advocacy of vice but simply a realist pointing out to a Prince the things one needs to do to preserve a state. Next time you are tempted to say "The end justifies the means." think whether Machiavelli meant it to be use that way. I short but solid read a 5 stars for generations to come. |
 | Nietzsche is by far one of the most vilified of Philosophers - probably with good reason. He was not clear and he contradicted himself - much like lots of thinkers that came before and specially after him. His project (after all the thundering language, hyperbole and confusion) is that Zarathustra is a call to personal freedom and greatness. Mostly misquoted, Nietzsche was not calling for a master race based on genetic and physical difference. His treatment of women is by far the most controversial, next to his incantation of "God is Dead....", we always seem to forget the long live man. Nietzsche calls for a re-examination of slave mentality. For this to come about, we have to go under - a sense of nihilism a freedom from the current constraints as if to effect a new order..... and that is not just risky it is downright scary. Often seen as nihilistic, Nietzsche just opened our eyes to the weakness of our current system that we might be prompted to change - his love for man was misunderstood and twisted to suit the needs of greedy and ignorant people. Nietzsche asks us to focus on what can make us great again. He calls us to question our decisions as life affirmation on the philosophical matrix of the "Eternal Return" - that it is this life and no other. He challenges us to love our fate. Nietzsche begins with the problem of existence. On the premise of the book alone, it is clear that Zarathustra's coming down from the mountain is like an unfamiliar alien (or a too familiar human). Much like his Postmodern successors, he questions the vanguards and those long cherished tenets and traditions - asking us to look a things differently. Is it a system that is useful - probably not - it would put too much stress/pressure on an individual. Inspiring writers like Foucault, Sartre and Hesse - Nietzsche will remain enigmatic till the end of time and Zarathustra his greatest work. Read with caution..... |
 | Dionysian/Apollonian -- a clarification. Are these dual impulsees that work in opposition or partnership? Although Dionysis is more primal, he is nevertheless deeply connected With Apollo. Together, they work in concert to make art, and beauty, possible, and to allow the possibility of an esthetic justification. Dionysis may perhaps be compared to content, and Apollo to form... Are the illusionary veils of Apollo suppose to be good? The answer may live in the notion that they intrinsically linked. Without them we cannot live. But, they are neither good nore evil in any strict moral sense. Although, Nietzsche plays in the realm of Apollo as illusionary veils, we should not allow them to distrct us from or usurp the power and primacy of teh Dionysian. Where then should we live? In the realm of Apollo or Dionysis? We live in both, but they manifest themselves in different ways. The Dionysian is always lurking underneath the calm waters but is later sublimated through the world-creaing illusions we socially construct. A veneer of "order". Hellenic (Aeschylus) vs. Athenian (Euripedes) - what makes the former better? I think the answer for Nietzsche lies in the fact that in the latter we have caricatures of humankind - the scoundrel, the slave, the merchant, etc. All copies of artificial distinctions which do not participate in the tragedy of existence in any substantial way. Evil is vanquished, the hero is rewarded with marriage or wealth, etc. In the Hellenic, the human dares to wrestle with the powerful and yet capricious and whimsical gods (the mirror of our existence), and the tragic hero is not greeted with reward for his striving, but with punishment and incomprehensible suffering. This is the real text of existence. The world which is ugly and painful, and yet at the same time, through music and drama, can be transformed into the tragic myth, allowing us more direct access into our fundamental and ultimately unfathomable condition. |
 | In answering this question, the first thing to keep in mind in the "Apology" is that Socrates shows a certain Will to defy authority. Primarily, Socrates is defiant in his trial. He displays a probably deserved contempt for his accusers. He is defiant that he should be allowed to speak about philosophy, despite his enemies claim to the contrary. However, Scorates is adamant that one should never betray what one feels is just. Socrates is of the school of thought that citizens are under a prima facie obligation to obey the law regardless on their stand about how unjust the law might be. In the Apology, Socrates leans on the notion that confronted with a law one profoundly disagrees with, one can set aside the general obligation to obey and disobey. Conversely, in the Crito, Socrates does an about face and lands solidly on the Absolute Theory of Obligation. Socrates presents an argument designed to refute the prima facie theory in an effort to avoid a sense of nihilism, a sense of chaos. We get the sense that if you apply that to modern day America, it is legal to disagree, maybe even healthy to engage in discourse with the law, but not to disobey it. A sense that law transcends man and there are a few arguments that this is all based on. socrates rests his arguments: that a sense of filial obligation is embodied in the state/citizen relationship, that a social contract of agreement exists. In the end, it seems like an apparent contradiction exists. As per Socrates, a hostile attitude is not inconsistent with strict adherence to the law. We are struck with the dilemna placed on the issue of public vs. private. Moreover, we are struck yet with an ethical dilemna - despite the unjust nature of the law, do we do "the right thing" - What is "the right thing" anyway? Ponder for a mooment the consistency problem embodied in the book - my sense is that Plato is telling us that socrates maintains that a responsible citizen has an absolute obligation to obey the law insofar as the government does not exceed its legitmate authority. We have to ask ourselves where that line is drawn. A simple yet profound read and a classic for the ages. |
 | There must be a control for the passion of lust and sex in thef play and this is one woman's idea how the civil war can be ended'. Unlike "Romeo and Juliet" it is neither ethically deficient nor deterministic: odd for a play whose central theme would appear superficially to be sex. It is about control. The passion of power. There is a reason for wanting power that is noble, and that noble reason is what makes the play ethical. This is not what most people think hearing the name of.the play. There is heat. The heat of lust. Sexual tension is created, ready to explode. So many people all want to do the same thing at the same time. The men ache in erection, seem physically in pain with no relief in sight and will resort to any means short of violence to have their release. The men admire and have lustful thoughts and fantasies about other women but stay with their wives. The purity of the play Women create the lust, moral chaos (p.46) But men created the depravity in the women (p.46-47) The male takes the blame. The Christians certainly change this concept later with the apple, Eve and that garden The second strata of the passion is much more poignant, more endearing, more enduring. Women no longer want to lose men through injury, time or death to war. As mothers, they no longer want to see their daughters die unmarried, childless, never knowing love either emotionally or sexually. It is the passion of women to end the slaughter and decimation by ending the excuse of the oldest of boys' clubs, that of man as warrior, protector. The women want man as lover, father. The women also want to be treated more as equals, allies, partners, friends (p. 94) In "Romeo and Juliet" we saw what passion destroyed. In "Lysistrata" we see what passion can create. |
 | Is Medea's response merely another example of "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned", or are there other factors which make her response unique? Was she "insane" to have killed her children or was it legitimate within the scope of her response? What is so primal, so horrible about a mother killing her children? What role do the gods play in Medea's situation? Is she being punished for her earlier betrayal of her family? Did the Sun God's appearance with Medea at the end of the play indicate that she was vindicated and had divine support in her program of revenge? If the action cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of the characters of a play in which fate and destiny are present, then the matter is left up to these divine powers. Where does that situate us in our Existential dilemna? The, audience is free to purge its feelings because the gods are controlling the course of the action. How important are the different social values and responses exhibited in the play? Does the play's action turn on cultural differences or more fundamental aspects? Lastly, if it is a "Greek tragedy", is it only Jason's tragedy? Let us not forget his role in all this. It is tragic in that his life ends in despair. What about "bad karma"? Although Jason married a second wife, we saw no indication that he dad any romantic passion for her. It seems to echo his withdrawal of feeling from Medea. The more withdrawn he became, the more passionate was Medea's response. If Jason had exhibited more passion, it might have improved Medea's attitude. His coldness did not justify her actions but made them more understandable. Is it simply greek soap opera or are current soap operas a reflection of passions past and still present. Nothing could justify the actions of Medea but certainly a lot can explain it, or can it? |
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