Cultural Studies III

Lebanese American University

Abir A Chaaban
Michel Foucault
Foucault was born in Poitiers, France, on October 15, 1926.

He became academically established during the 1960s, when he held a
series of positions at French universities, before his election in 1969 to
the Collge de France, where he was Professor of the History of
Systems of Thought until his death.

Foucault was very active politically.

He was a founder of the Groupe d'information sur les prisons and often
protested on behalf of homosexuals and other marginalized groups.
He frequently lectured outside France, particularly in the United States.

In 1983 had agreed to teach annually at the University of California at
Berkeley.

An early victim of AIDS, Foucault died in Paris on June 25, 1984.

Michel Foucault
His academic formation was in psychology and its history as much as
in philosophy, his books were mostly histories of medical and social
sciences.

Like Jean Paul Sartre, Foucaults early work started from an opposition
to bourgeois society and culture and with a spontaneous sympathy for
groups at the margins of the bourgeoisie (artists, homosexuals,
prisoners, etc.).

Philosophically, he rejected what he saw as Sartre's centralization of
the subject (which he mocked as transcendental narcissism).

Personally and politically, he rejected Sartre's role as what Foucault
called the universal intellectual, judging a society in terms of
transcendent principles.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Michel Foucault
First published Wed Apr 2, 2003; substantive revision Wed May 22, 2013
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/


Michel Foucault
His writings were in the critic of the
institutions of power.


Key Concepts
Discourse
Knowledge/Power
Discipline
Governmentality and Biopower


Discourse

Foucault was interested in the phenomenon of discourse throughout his
career, primarily in how discourses define the reality of the social world
and the people, ideas, and things that inhabit it.

For Foucault, a discourse is an institutionalized way of speaking or
writing about reality that defines what can be intelligibly thought and said
about the world and what cannot.

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault argued that sex as pleasure was
transformed into a discourse abut "sexuality in the act of confession .
This discourse was then transformed into science in psychoanalysis
which changed the way we think about desire, and pleasure.

In Foucaults argument, discourses about sexuality did not discover
some pre-existing, truth about sexuality. It but rather reconstructed it
through particular practices of power and knowledge production.

Social Theory Re-Wired Routledge
http://theory.routledgesoc.com/profile/michel-foucault

Knowledge / Power

For Foucault, power and knowledge are
related.

knowledge is always an exercise of power
and power always a function of knowledge.




Knowledge/Power
In the History of Sexuality. He outlines this thesis through confession.

Confession was a practice of the Catholic Church, that proliferated during the 17
th

century Counter Reformation. It then became diffused into secular culture in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Through the confession (a form of power) people were incited to tell the truth
(produce knowledge) about their sexual desires, emotions, and dispositions.

Through confessions, the idea of a sexual identity came into existence, an identity
that had to be monitored, and often controlled by state power.

Power/knowledge not only limits what we can do, but also opens up new ways of
acting and thinking about ourselves.


Read: Social Theory Re-Wired Routledge
http://theory.routledgesoc.com/profile/michel-foucault
Discipline
Discipline is a mechanism of power that regulates the thought
and behavior of social actors through subtle means.

In contrast to the centralized sovereign force exercised by
monarchs, discipline works within decentralized mechanisms of
government. It reorganizes space and time, and everyday
activities.

Surveillance is also an integral part of disciplinary practices.

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault argues that modern society is a
disciplinary society. Power is exercised through disciplinary
institutions (prisons, schools, hospitals, militaries, etc.).

Read: Social Theory Re-Wired Routledge
http://theory.routledgesoc.com/profile/michel-foucault
Governmentality and Biopower

In Security, Territory, Population, Foucault coined the concept of
governmentality.

Governmentality is the art of governing, the populations.

In the History of Sexuality, Foucault demonstrates the decentralized
mechanisms government uses to control and govern sexual conduct of
population through the school s, statistics, hospitals and demographic
management.

Foucault was especially interested in how, in contemporary times, the
governing of conduct was increasingly focused on the management of
populations.

The management of populations relied on biopower, which institutionalizes
policies and procedures to manage births, deaths, reproduction, and health and
illness within the larger social body.

Foucaults Methods of Analysis

Foucault developed two methods of analysis to de-scientify scientific
truths in the social sciences

Archeology

He studies historical systems of knowledge to demonstrate the discontinuity of
conceptual formations and discursive formations. The Archeology of Knowledge
1969, The Order of Things 1966.

Genealogy

A tactic of analysis he demonstrated in Discipline and Punish 1975. the History of
Sexulaity 1976.. Society Must Be Defended". Lectures at The College de France,.
1975-76, Security Territory and Population Lectures at the Collge de France 1977
1978

How power uses conceptual formations to differentiate.
The aim is to distinguishes between the dominant discourse and the discourse of
resistance.

How does the discourse from below mobilizes power and changes the rules that
determine the legitimacy of power.


In Surveiller ET Punir: La Naissance De la Prison, Foucault evaluates the
juridical and philosophical discourses that led to the disappearance of
torture as the most obvious encounter of the power to punish, and the
birth of the prison as a new mechanism of punishment. This discourse
was concerned with protesting old and static laws that demonstrated
the brutality of sovereignty by torturing the condemned to death as a
form of punishment. Foucault argues:

La protestation contre la supplices on la trouve partout dans la second
moiti du XVIIIe sicle : chez les philosophes et les thoriciens du
droit : chez le juristes, des hommes de loi, des parlementaires ; dans
les cahiers de dolances et chez les lgislateurs des assembles. Il
faut punir autrement : dfaire cet affrontement physique du souverain
avec le condamne ; dnouer ce corps a corps, qui se droule entre la
vengeance du prince et la colre continue du peuple, par
lintermdiaire du supplici et du bourreau. Trs vite le supplice est
devenu intolrable. Rvoltent, si on regard ou cote du pouvoir, o il
trahit la tyrannie, lexcs, la soif de revanche, et le cruel plaisir de
punir . Foucault, 1975 :75).

Abir A. Chaaban, 2008, Sovereignty, State Legitimacy and the Nation
State: The Case of Lebanon. https://lau.academia.edu/AbirChaaban


In Surveiller ET Punir: La Naissance De la Prison, Foucault conducts his analysis
by demonstrating torture as a form of punishment protested by discourse.

Torture disappeared publicly by the institutionalization of new procedures and
mechanisms replacing torture as form of punishment implemented by the
system of law.

This in effect led to the change in the rule of recognition and the validity of torture
as a legitimate form of punishment. However, punishment itself did not
disappear; punishment becomes hidden and implemented within new legal
mechanisms and procedures, eliminating the protested brutality of torture,
while maintaining the power to punish in the institution of the prison.

Discourse that resisted old and static rules is the mechanism that led to the
emergence of new rules of recognition, consequently changing primary rules
of obligation, and defining the legal system and its validity. Nevertheless, the
sovereign power becomes hidden within mechanisms and procedures that
implement its rules within institutions as in the case of prison that replaced
torture.

Abir A. Chaaban, 2008, Sovereignty, State Legitimacy and the Nation State: The
Case of Lebanon. https://lau.academia.edu/AbirChaaban


The History of Sexuality

Foucaults objective is to falsify what was known at the repressive
hypothesis.

This thesis stats that sexual desires have been repressed and silenced
since the eighteenth century.

Foucault demonstrates that sex as an object of knowledge was called into
being once people began talking about it through the confession.

According to Foucault, knowledge is expressed through discourse, or the
way we talk about things.

Discourse about sex through the act of confession brought into the
interplay of relations of power a certain truth about sexuality.

This truth is then reworked in the process of psychoanalysis and the
science of the sexual.
The History of Sexuality

Foucault is interested in uncovering what he called the
genealogy of knowledge.

He uses genealogy as a method to refute taken-for-
granted truths.

He then aims at refuting the truth claim attached to the
Repressive Hypothesis.




Ars erotica and Science Sexualis
In Part III, Foucault distinguishes between two
ways sexuality was spoken about: ars erotica and
Science Sexualis.

Ars erotica or erotic art is an eastern conception of sex.
Sex is seen as an art and not something dirty and
shameful.
Scientia sexualis", the science of sexuality. This science
developed from the act of confession staring 17th century). Sex
is seen as something one should repress, a sin.


ars erotica
In the erotic art, truth is drawn from pleasure
itself, understood as a practice and
accumulated in experience; pleasure is not
considered in relation to an absolute law of
the permitted and forbidden, nor by
reference to the criterion of utility, but first
and foremost in relation to itself; it is
experience as pleasure, evaluated in terms
of its intensity, its specific quality, its
duration, its reverberations in the body and
the soul. (p.57)
scientia sexualis
Let us put forward a general working
hypothesis. The society that emerged in the
nineteenth century bourgeois, capitalist, or
industrial society, call it what you will did not
confront sex with a fundamental refusal of
recognition. On the contrary, it put into
operation an entire machinery for producing
true discourses concerning it. Not only did it
speak of sex and compel everyone to do so; it
also set out to formulate the uniform truth of
sex. (p. 69)
Confession and the Science of
Sex
According to Foucault, scienta sexualis developed in
the West.

It emerged from the act of Christian confession starting
the Counter Reformation.

Sex through the process of confession becomes
discourse, something to talk about.

A fixation with finding out the "truth" about sexuality
arises, a truth that is to be confessed.
scienta sexualis and
psychoanalysis
Foucault is presenting a critic of psychoanalysis
and the truth attached to sexuality in the process
of scientifying confession in the process of
scientific liberation of the subconscious.

We Other Victorians
This chapter starts with setting the argument of the
Repressive Hypothesis.

The story goes Through the European history,
human beings moved from the society where the talk
about sex and sexuality were freely expressed, into
the period where all these free expressions were
repressed and became forbidden.

Western society moved from the end of Renaissance
into the Victorian of 17
th
century. In this period,
sexuality was confined only within a home.




At the beginning of the seventeenth century a
certain frankness was still common, it would
seem. Sexual practices had little need of
secrecy; words were said without undue
reticence, and things were done without too
much concealment

But twilight soon fell upon this bright day,
followed by the monotonous nights of the
Victorian bourgeoisie. Sexuality was carefully
confined; it moved into the home. The conjugal
family took custody of it and absorbed it into the
serious function of reproduction. On the subject
of sex, silence became the rule. (p. 1)

We Other Victorians P-5-6
The repressive hypothesis claims that of the
reasons why this occurred, is the rise of capitalism
during that time:

Production is at the heart of capitalism. Thus any kind of
unproductive activity is incompatible with the work ethics.

Workers energy should be geared at production therefore
sexual activities are to be corrected and disciplined.




We Other Victorians
Madness which was an integrated part of the society was
defined as abnormality.

It was viewed as a pathology that impaired social productivity
and should be put away from others. This gave birth to asylum
and mental hospital.

Any form of sexuality that was not productive was to be
corrected. Adultery was seen a wrong act while homosexuality
became a third sex. (Compare with Freud)

Non productive sexuality is then not essential to society. It
should be suppressed. Such disciplinary methods were
deployed in all disciplinary institutions like prisons, hospitals
schools and universities.

Roy Hornsby, http://royby.com/philosophy/pages/love_sex_truth.html
The Questions
Foucault raises three doubts about this repressive
hypothesis:

1) "Is sexual repression truly an established historical
fact?" (1.10);

2)"Are prohibition, censorship, and denial truly the forms
through which power is exercised in a general way, if not
in every society, most certainly in our own?" (1.10);

3) "Was there really a historical rupture between the age
of repression and the critical analysis of repression?"
(1.10).
The Repressive Hypothesis
The Incitement to Discourse
In Part II, Chapter I. Foucault starts with the
falsification of the Repressive Hypothesis.

The method he adopts is genealogy.

How did sexual activity transform from an act to a
discourse defining power relations in the state,
government and the government of the population.


The Repressive Hypothesis
The Incitement to Discourse

At the level of discourses and their domains,
however, practically the opposite
phenomenon occurred. There was a
steady proliferation of discourses
concerned with sex specific discourses,
different from one another both by their
form and by their object: a discursive
ferment that gathered momentum from the
eighteenth century onward. (p.18)
The Incitement to Discourse
Pages 18-21

The church played an important part during the seventeenth
century when repression took place. Catholic pastoral after the
Council of Trent. (p18)

The Christianity pastoral determined which acts are illicit
according to marital obligation.

Heterosexual monogamy was promoted as the only acceptable
sexuality where as homosexuals were criminals and that was
when sex had become associated with sin.

The church in the 17
th
century made into an obligation for
everyone to confess regularly of his or her sin.

Foucault viewed this as a tool that controlled the sexuality of
people in the form of discourse.
All details of their thoughts, fantasies, acts and movements had
to be told.

The Incitement to Discourse


Resistance to Victorian Puritanism My Secret Life *( page. ( 22-23)

Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century there emerged a political,
economic and technical incitement to talk about sex( p 23-24).
This discourse is not theoretical.
It was derived by morality and rationality

At the beginning of the eighteenth century sex became a police matter. ( p 24)
It became regulated in the internal power of the state.

The revolution against the king, led to the emergence of the of population and
the management of the population as an economic and political problem. ( p25)

Governments perceived that they were not dealing with subjects, but with population.

At the heart of this political and economic problem of population was sex. Government
must analyze, birth rates, the age of marriage, the legitimate and illegitimate births, the
frequency of sexual relations, the ways to make them fertile and sterile..etc (26)




* Note:
The Protestant English Revolutionaries were called Puritans.
The Victorians are the bourgeoisie meaning the middle class that won the revolution against king, the nobles, and aristocrats.

The Incitement to Discourse
Sex becomes an object of analysis. (26)
Regulation and organization of child sex and at schools (26-27)
Children sex
Secondary schools
The space and shape of classes
The segregation between boys and girls at schools.

It is because sex existed, it was talked about that such regulation,
organization were taking shape. (28)

Adolescent sex became a public problem dealt with by doctors that counseled students and
professors of the educational institutions that gave their opinions about it to parents.

A process of transformation of adolescent sex into discourse was taking shape,
where the child was not outside this discourse but a part of it by educational
programs directed at the child.



Government of the Population
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries discourses on sexuality in the fields of medicine,
psychiatry, pedagogy, criminal justice and social work emerged.

This occurred as sex became an object of administration and management through government
inquiry.

The analysis of population demographics led governments to focus on investigations into
birthrate, legitimate and illegitimate births, age of marriage, frequency of sexual relations, fertility
and so on.

The effect of these analyses was a grid of observations that related to sexual matters.


Sex became confined to the privacy of the home and the procreative couple and at the same
time it became an enmeshment of a web of discourses and forms of analysis between the state
and individuals.

Sex did not multiply against power, but in the very space and means of its exercise.


Smart, B. 1988, Michel Foucault, Routledge, London
Foucault, M, 1978 The History of Sexuality,
scientia sexualis
scientia sexualis is focused around the method of confession.

since the Middle Ages, confession has been a major tool used in the
West as a means to reveal the truth.

In this power relationship the confessor has produced knowledge/power
through discourse.
The confession provides a sense of purification for the confessor.
In that sense therefore, confession is a process where the confessor is the
instigator discourse of truth. He makes a choice to come to the
confessional booth.

Scientia sexualis is the process where confession moved from
the confessional booth in church, into the scientific and medical
world, into the world of psychiatry. It was here that these
confessions began to be noted, taken down, codified, and used
to develop an understanding of scientific truth.

Discussion Question
Read Part III, Sciencia Sexualis. Summarize the main
points

In two or three paragraphs ( 500-700 words) discuss the
statement below in your own words.

(Due Monday July 14, 2014 before class). 5% of
Participation mark. No exceptions are allowed.

Foucault forms a strong criticism of psychoanalysis,
as the modern, scientific form of confession.