Michel Foucault
1926-1984 · French · Philosophy of History, History of Thought, Power-Knowledge, Sexuality, Ethics, Pedagogy
Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.
Born in Poitiers in 1926 into a family of surgeons, Foucault battled mental anguish in early life that shaped his scrutiny of psychiatry and confinement. Educated at the École Normale Supérieure under Althusser and Canguilhem, he won the chair he named himself at the Collège de France and held it until his death from AIDS in 1984.
Topics Michel Foucault addresses
- power-knowledge
- genealogy
- archaeology of knowledge
- biopower
- governmentality
- discipline
- panopticism
- the episteme
- discursive formations
- the care of the self
- parrhēsia
- subjectivation
- normalization
- docile bodies
- the dispositif
- the repressive hypothesis
- aesthetics of existence
- problematization
- dividing practices
- pastoral power
- the analytic of finitude
- man is a recent invention
- the death of the author
- confession and the will to know
Questions to put to Michel Foucault
Archaeology and the Order of Things
- What do you mean by an episteme?
- How is 'man' a recent invention?
- Why do you say man might disappear like a face drawn in sand?
- What's the difference between archaeology and traditional history of ideas?
- How did the human sciences come into being in the late eighteenth century?
Discipline, Surveillance, and Docile Bodies
- What is the panopticon and why does it matter?
- How do disciplinary techniques produce modern individuals?
- What's the difference between sovereign punishment and disciplinary punishment?
- How does examination function as a technique of power?
- Why did you focus on the prison rather than other institutions?
Power, Knowledge, and the Repressive Hypothesis
- What do you mean when you say power is productive rather than repressive?
- How does the repressive hypothesis get sexuality backwards?
- What's the relationship between power and knowledge?
- Where there is power, there is resistance — how does that work?
- How is confession a technique of power rather than liberation?
Biopower and Governmentality
- What's the difference between sovereign power and biopower?
- What do you mean by governmentality?
- How does neoliberalism produce the entrepreneur of the self?
- Are you sympathetic to neoliberalism in your late lectures?
- How does biopower manage populations rather than individuals?
The Care of the Self and Aesthetics of Existence
- What do you mean by creating ourselves as a work of art?
- How is the care of the self different from modern morality?
- What is parrhēsia and why does it matter to you?
- Why turn to the Greeks and Romans for ethical resources?
- How can ethics work without universal principles or foundations?
Iran, Critique, and Political Commitment
- What did you mean by spiritual politics in Iran?
- How do you respond to the criticism of your Iran writings?
- How can your genealogical method ground political critique without normative foundations?
- What's at stake for you in refusing what we are rather than discovering what we are?
- How did your work with the prison information group shape your thinking about power?
Converse with Michel Foucault on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Michel Foucault's own writing, cited to the page.