Urban thinkers of the first generation-Michele Foucault.pptx

Urban thinkers-Michele Foucault

1. Michele Foucault Ramez Al Masannat 2006601036

2. Biography Born Paul-Michel Foucault in Poitiers, France on October 15, 1926 Father was a surgeon who hoped Michel would follow in his footsteps Known for his critical studies of various social institutions, including medicine, education, psychiatry and his work on the history of sexuality Influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant and Georges Dumézil

3. Education and Career attended École Normale Supérieure ; earned degrees in both psychology and philosophy Was a member of the French Communist Party from 1950-1953; later it was said he never was an active participant Taught psychology at the University of Lille from 1953-1954 1954-1958 - served as a cultural delegate to the University of Uppsala in Sweden Also held teaching posts at Warsaw University, the University of Hamburg and the University of Tunis throughout the late 1950s and 60’s Also earned his doctorate in philosophy 1970- elected to France's most prestigious academic body, the Collège de France as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought First visited the U.S. in 1970- lectured at the University of Buffalo and UC-Berkeley

4. The Imitation of Life Foucault’s writings on sexuality are thought to have been influenced by his homosexuality In the 1970’s and 80’s, Foucault participated in anonymous lifestyle in San Francisco. It is suspected during this time, he contracted HIV Died of an AIDS-related illness on June 16, 1984; the 1st high profile French personality to be reported as an AIDS victim Originally slated to be a six-volume project, his work The History of Sexuality was never fully published due to restrictions within his estate.

5. Theories Madness and Civilization The Birth of the Clinic Death and The Labyrinth The Order of Things The Archaeology of Knowledge Discipline and Punish The History of Sexuality Utopias and Heterotopias Power

6. Power Panopticism A theory derived Foucault that emphasizes power relations between modern social subjects. Foucault illustrates this form of surveillance by borrowing from Jeremy Bentham’s architectural prison, the panopticon .

7. Power of Life and Death Whoever controls the wealth, taxes, products, good, services, labor and blood controls life and death in a society Examples: kings, lords, land owners, slave owners- any sovereign Control food, war and peace and labor- can let live or die at will

8. Power Today In a rational society, power usually does not come from control over life and death Ex: death penalty Less common Seen as a protection for the rest of society Importance of quality of life New power comes from Bio-Power

9. Bio-Power Bio-power is a technology of power Uses different techniques to allow for control of the entire population

10. Bio-Power Anatomo-politics of the human body Idea of the body as a machine- it is productive, useful, etc Appears in the military, education ,work to make the population more disciplined

11. Bio-Power Regulatory controls: a bio-politics of the population Body is part of the mechanics of life- propagation, births and deaths, health, life expectancy and longevity Used in demography, wealth analysis, etc to control population statistically

12. Bio-Power Bio-power is responsible for: Capitalism Controlled input of people into labor and adjustments to the population The Judicial System Threat for disobedience is ultimately death But not death by a sovereign, death becomes a norm upheld by society as punishment Power held within society is more stable and accepted

13. Power Power is exercised concretely and in detail (in regards to specificity, techniques and tactics) Power is visible Is power simply a means of repression? According to Foucault, the answer is no. What makes power acceptable is that is “produces goods, induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse”. Power should be viewed as a productive network versus a negative instance which represses

14. Truth “ The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the children of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power”.

15. Truth continued… Is said to have been influenced by Nietzsche’s statement that “knowledge functions as an instrument of power” Truth is subject to economic and political incitement Is an object of diffusion and consumption Is transmittable through the control of the dominant political and economical instutitions (e.g. academic institutions, military, media, writing) The three-fold specificity of the intellectual a) class position b) conditions of his life and work c) the specificity of the politics of truth in our societies The political problem is not changing the minds of people’s thinking, but the production of truth on political, economic and institutionalized levels Truth is power (but would power be considered as truth?)

16. Utopias and Heterotopias

17. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.

18. Heterotopias There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality.

19. Principles of Heterotopias 1 st principle: is that there is probably not a single culture in the world that fails to constitute heterotopias. That is a constant of every human group. But the heterotopias obviously take quite varied forms. There are two main categories: crisis heterotopias: there are privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis. ex. Honeymoon trip….Hotel…. Nowhere Deviant heterotopias: places for individuals whose behavior is deviant to those around them ex. Hospitals

20. Principles of Heterotopias 2 nd principle: society, as its history unfolds, can make an existing heterotopia function in a very different fashion; for each heterotopia has a precise and determined function within a society and the same heterotopia can, according to the synchrony of the culture in which it occurs, have one function or another . Ex. The cemetery

21. Principles of Heterotopias 3 rd principle: The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible . Ex. The theater brings onto the rectangle of the stage, one after the other, a whole series of places that are foreign to one another; thus it is that the cinema is a very odd rectangular room, at the end of which, on a two-dimensional screen, one sees the projection of a three-dimensional space

22. Principles of Heterotopias 4 th principle: Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time - which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies . Ex. Enclosure: Museums, libraries Opposite to enclosure: Festivals and fairgrounds

23. Principles of Heterotopias 5 th principle: Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications .

24. Principles of Heterotopias 6 th principle: they have a function in relation to all the space that remains. This function unfolds between two extreme poles. Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, o r else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space. Ex. Illusion: Brothels Ex. Real space: Collonies