Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France

On the proposal of Jules Vuillemin a chair in the department of Philosophy and History was to be created at Collège de France to take the place of the late Jean Hyppolite .The title of the new chair was to be called "The history of systems of thought" and was created on 30 November 1969.Veillemin put forward a little known philosopher outside the shores of France and the rest of Europe his name was Michel Foucault to the general assembly of professors and they duly elected Foucault where he was admitted on the 12th April 1970 to the Collège de France he was 44 years old.As required by this appointment he held a series of public lectures from 1970 until his death in 1984. These lectures in which he further advanced his work, were summarised from audio recordings and edited by Michel Senellart. They were subsequently translated into English and further edited by Graham Burchell and published posthumously by St Martin's Press.

Lectures On The Will To Know (1970–1971)

This was an important time for Foucault and marks an important switch of methodology from ‘archaeology’ to ‘genealogy’ (according to Foucault he never abandoned the archaeology method). This was also a period of transition of thought for Foucault; the Dutch TV-televised Foucault Noam Chomsky Human nature Justice versus Power debate of November 1971 at the Eindhoven University of Technology appears at this exact time period as his first inaugural lecture were delivered at the Collège de France entitled “the Order Of Discourse” delivered on 2 December 1970 (translated and published into English as "The Discourse On Language") then a week later (9 December 1970) his first ever full inaugural lecture course was delivered at the Collège de France "The Will to Knowledge" course Foucault promised to explore; "fragment by fragment," the "morphology of the will to knowledge," through alternating historical periods, inquiries and theoretical questioning. The lectures produced were called "Lectures On The Will To Know"; all of this within a space of a year.

The first phase of Foucault’s thought is characterized by knowledge construction of various types and how each thread of knowledge systems combine together to produce a series of networks (Foucault uses the term ‘Grille’) to produce a successful fully functional ‘subject’ and a workable fully functional human society. Foucault uses the terms epistemological indicators and epistemological breaks to show, contrary to popular opinion, that these “indicators” and “breaks” require skilled trained technical group of ‘specialists’ in the various knowledge fields and a trained rigorous professionalized regulatory body of which know-how on behalf of those who use the terms (discourse formations or “speech/discourse”) with a professional body that can make the terms used stand up to further rational scrutiny. Scientific knowledge for Foucault isn't an advancement for human progress as is so often portrayed by the human sciences (such as the humanities and the social sciences) but is much more of a subtle method of organizing and producing firstly an individual subject, and secondly, a fully functional society functioning as a self-replicated control apparatus not as a group of ‘free’ atomized individuals but as a collective societal,organised (or drilled) unit both in terms of industrial Production,labour power and a militarily organized unit(in the guise of armies) which is beneficial for the production of “epistemological indicators” or “breaks” enabling society to “control itself” rather than have external factors (such as the state for example) to do the job.

In the inaugural lecture course "The Will To Know" Foucault goes into detail on how the ‘natural order of things’ from the 16th century transpired into a fully organised human society which includes a “Governmentality” apparatus and a complex machine (by “governmentaility”, Foucault means a state apparatus which is conceived as a scientific machine) as a rational organizing principle. This was the first time (contrary to popular opinion that this was a rather late invention in Foucault’s thought) that Foucault started to go into the Greek dimensions of his thought of which he would return to in later lectures towards the end of his life. First of all a few pointers should be made explicit on certain points. Foucault mentions the western notion of by money, production and trade (Greek society) starting about 800 BCE to 700 BCE. However, other ‘non-western’ societies also had these very same problems and is automatically assumed by some historians that these were entirely western inventions. This isn’t entirely true; China and India for example had the most sophisticated trading and monetary institutions by the 6th century B.C.E., indeed the term corporation was derived from India^[1] from at least 800 BCE and lasted until at least 1000 C.E. Most importantly there was a social security system in India at this time. Foucault begins his notions from these lectures on the very notion of truth and the ‘Will to knowledge’ and the challenge is on when Foucault asks the very question of the entire western philosophical and political tradition:Namely knowledge(at least scientific knowledge) and its close association with truth is entirely desirable and is politically and philosophically natural and neutral.First of all Foucault puts these notions (at least its political notions) to a thorough test, firstly, Foucault asks the politically 'neutral' question on the very first appearance of money which became not only an important economic symbol but above all else became a measure of value and a unit of account.

Money once established as a social process and social reality had (if one could say the word) an extremely rocky and precarious history. First of all while it had a social reality but the actual social authority to use money didn't develop a standard practice or knowledge on how to use it,it was rather undisciplined. Kings and emperors could squander large taxation revenues with impunity regardless of the consequences. Above all else kings and monarchs could take out forced loans and get others(their subjects) to pay for these forced loans and to add insult to injury get them to pay interest on the loans at extortionate rates of interest charged on the loans because they and their advisers regarded it as their own ‘income’. However,whole societies were dependent on money particularly when the whole of society had to use and be ready for its function.^[2][3] Money took at least 3,000 years of history to get a more disciplined approach and became the sole prerogative of the fiscal responsibility of the state after the medieval ‘order of things’ was entirely dismantled ‘to get it right’ namely; the ruthlessness and rigorous efficiency needed for its proper function and it wasn't until the 16th century with the advent of modern political economy with its analysis of production, labour and trade you then get a sense of why money,particularly its relationship with capital and its complex relationship with the rest of society conversion,from labour power into money via the essential route of surplus value became a much maligned and misunderstood category and hot potato. This is where Foucault is at his most profound. Foucault now is asking how is it that modern western political economy, together with political philosophy and political science came to ask the question concerning money but was utterly perplexed by it (this is a question that particularly irritated and irked Karl Marx throughout his life)? That money and its various association with production, labour, government and trade was beyond doubt but its exact relationship with the rest of society was entirely missed by economists but yet still its version of events was entirely accepted as true? Foucault begins to try to go into the whole production of truth (both philosophical and political) its whole “breaks” “discontinuity” 'epistemological unconscious' and theoretical splitting “Episteme”. From this Greek period starting from 800 BCE Foucault pursues the path of scientific and political knowledge the emergence and conditions of possibility for philosophical knowledge and ends up with “the problem of political knowledge (i.e. Aristotelian notions of the political animal) of what is necessary in order to govern the city and put it right." He then divided his work on the history of systems of thought into three interrelated parts, the "re-examination of knowledge,the conditions of knowledge,and the knowing subject."

On the Punitive Society (1972–1973)

In these lectures, yet to be published into English, Foucault uses the first precursor of Discipline and Punish to study the foundations of what he calls “disciplinary institutions”(punitive power) and the productive dimensions of penalty. Foucault spent a lot of time during this period trying to make intelligible the internal and external dynamics of what we call the prison. He questioned, "What are the relations of power which made possible the historical emergence of something like the prison?". This was correlated to three terms; firstly ‘measure’ "a means of establishing or restoring order, the right order, in the combat of men or the elements; but also a matrix of mathematical and physical knowledge."(treated in more detail in The Will To Knowledge lectures of 1971); Secondly the ‘inquiry’ "a means of establishing or restoring facts, events, actions, properties, rights; but also a matrix of empirical knowledge and natural sciences"(from the 1972 lectures Theories On Punishment and Penal Theories and Institutions) and thirdly ‘the examination’ treated as “the permanent control of the individual, like a permanent test with no endpoint”. Foucault links the examination with 18th century Political economy and the productive labourers with the wealth they produce and the forces of production.

Society Must Be Defended (1975–1976)

Foucault, in these series of lectures, which form a trilogy; "Society Must Be Defended", Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics the very first time the concept of biopower first appears here. Also, the first explanatory explanation of the term “Civil war” gets a full discussion in the form of rigorous treatment of a working definition. Foucault tries to go into great detail how power (as Foucault saw it) the general detail becomes a battle ground drifting from civil war to generalized pacification of the individual and particularly the systems he(the individual) relies upon and gives loyalty too: "According to this hypothesis, the role of political power is perpetually to use a sort of silent war to reinscribe that relationship of force, and to reinscribe it in institutions, economic inequalities, language, and even the bodies of individuals.” Foucault begins to explain that this generalized form of power is not only rooted into Disciplinary institutions but is also concentrated into “political sovereignty, the military, and war” so is in turn spread evenly right throughout modern society as a network of domination and a “Jurisdiction test with a permanent perpetual verdict as a resultant dynamic juridical and economic conceptions of power, law, domination, and subjugation including biological theory applied to politics as a resultant consequence therefore, extending the Medieval term Body politic "King as body of the nation" to modern society". So Foucault asks us to consider how the role of subjectification can manufacture subjects and most importantly how with the concept civil war(Foucault uses the term “civil war” instead of the Marxist term “class war”) person-to-person group-to-group dynamics that this “civil war” “become the professional and technical prerogative of a carefully defined and controlled military apparatus?”

Foucault then goes into great detail about what lies behind the “academic chestnut” which couldn’t be deciphered by his historical predecessors namely the disjointed and discontinuous movement of history and power (biopower). What is meant by this? For Foucault predecessors, history was concerned by deeds of monarchs and a full list of their accomplishments in which the sovereign is presented in the text as doing all things ‘great’. This 'greatness' of deeds was accomplished all by themselves however,for Foucault this wasn’t the case: “Sovereignty-whether it involves a "commonwealth by institution" or a "commonwealth by acquisition”. Foucault’s genealogy comes into play here where Foucault tries to build a bridge between two theoretical notions;disciplinary power (Disciplinary institutions) and biopower and the constant shift, throughout history, between the two ‘paradigms’. And what developments-from these two ‘paradigms’ became new subjects (subjectification and domination). The previous historical dimensions so often portrayed by historians (according to Foucault) was sovereign history and most importantly a signifier for sovereignty and acts as a ceremonial tool for sovereign power “It glorifies and adds lustre to power. History performs this function in two modes: (1)in a “genealogical” mode (understood in the simple sense of that term) that traces the linage of the sovereign.”This is where Foucault discusses a “counterhistory” of “race struggle or race war”.By race Foucault means different cultural, religious and linguistics practices which culminates into-as what we understand the term-the mythology of different ‘biological races’ and acts as unifying agent amongst the population forming a ‘nation’. By the time of the 17th century with the development of Mercantilism, Statistics (mathematical statistics) and political economy this reaches a most vitriolic and vicious form (in the guise of armies both industrial and military)in which-according to Foucault-a war against each not in the form of constant bickering amongst ourselves but in a struggle for the states very existence.

Security, Territory, Population (1977–1978)

The course deals with the genesis of a political knowledge that was to place at the centre of its concerns the notion of population and the mechanisms capable of ensuring its regulation but even of its procedures and means employed to ensure,in a given society, "the government of men". A transition from a "territorial state" to a "population state"(Nation state)? Foucault examines the notion of biopolitics and biopower as a new technology of power over populations that is distinct from punitive disciplinary systems, by tracing the history of governmentality, from the first centuries of the Christian era to the emergence of the modern nation state. These lectures illustrate a radical turning point in Foucault's work at which a shift to the problematic of the government of self and others occurred.

The Birth of Biopolitics (1978–1979)

The Birth of Biopolitics develops further the notion of biopolitics that Foucault introduced in his lectures on "Society must be defended". It traces how eighteenth-century political economy marked the birth of a new governmental rationality and raises questions of political philosophy and social policy about the role and status of neo-liberalism in twentieth century politics.

On The Government Of The Living (1979–1980)

In the On The Government Of The Living lectures delivered in the early months of 1980, Foucault begins to ask questions of Western man obedience to power structures unreservedly and the pressing question of Government: "Government of children, government of souls and consciences, government of a household, of a state, or of oneself." Or governmentality, as Foucault prefers to call it without ever questioning its very existence nor its development. Foucault tries to trace the kernel of “the genealogy of obedience” in western society. The 1980 lectures attempt to relate the historical foundations of “our obedience”—which must be understood as the obedience of the Western subject.Foucault argues, confessional techniques are an innovation of the Christian West intended to guarantee men’s obedience to structures of power in return,so the belief goes,for Christian salvation.In his summary of the course Foucault asks the question: “How is it that within Western Christian culture, the government of men requires, on the part of those who are led, in addition to acts of obedience and submission, ‘acts of truth,’ which have this particular character that not only is the subject required to speak truthfully, but to speak truthfully about himself?” The reader should take note here that much of this kind of work has been done before, albeit in what is best described as brilliant, lost and forgotten scholarship by such scholars as Ernst Kantorowicz (his work on the body politic and the king's two bodies), Percy Ernst Schramm, Carl Erdmann, Hermann Kantorowicz, Frederick Pollock and Frederick Maitland. However, Foucault was after the genealogical dynamics and his main thrust was “regimes of truth” and the emergence and gradual development of “reflexive acts of truth”. Foucault locates the very beginning of this act of obedience to power structures and the truth that they bring to the first Christian institutions between the 2nd century and the 5th century C.E. This is where Foucault starts to use his main tool-that is Genealogy (philosophy) as his main focus and it is with this genealogical tool that you finally get to understand fully what genealogy actually means. Foucault goes into great painstaking detail into the Christian baptism and its contingency and discontinuity in order to find the “the genealogy of confession”. This is an attempt-according to Foucault-to write a “political history of the truth”.

Subjectivity and Truth (1980–1981)

In these lectures, yet to be published in English, Foucault develops notions on the ability of the concept of truth to shift through time as described by the modern human sciences (for example Ethology) in contrast to ancient society (Aristotelian notions). It discusses how these notions are accepted as truth and produce the self as true. This is followed by a discussion on the existence of this truth and the discourse of truth for the experience of the self.

References

External links

• Michel Foucault Audio Archive Home