Foucault
(Up to: Scribblings Philosophy )
There is a whole bunch more Foucault information at http://www.foucault.info/.
The Foucault Reader
Summary
Throughout the journey laid down by The Foucault Reader, there are two main channels that predominate, in my view. Indeed, both are admitted to in the penultimate chapter, Preface to The History of Sexuality, Vol. II in which Foucault discusses the dilemmas and decisions he encountered regarding his research.
The first tool of thought is that Foucault sets out to challenge modern day established subjective theories by placing them in a continuous historical context, always using the intricate path of mankind's existence and development as a solid foundation for drawing conclusions as to more abstract, yet fundamental ideologies lying behind the progress of power. Drawing on Nietzsche and extensive French literature since the Reconnaisance (the focus period of Foucault's observations as they indicate both the change from pre-17th century, as well as all of the major progress that leads up to the present day), and leading into the schematics of sexuality since the Victorian era, there is a constant interplay between modes of power and modern day scientific exploration.
The second tool is an investigation into the relation between power and influence on a more horizontal basis - within societies, organisations, architectures and relationships, using the above chronology to chart an evolution in human control. It is this cross-axis approach that allows the subject of power to be examined from a cross-dimensional viewpoint; the influences of particular locations and dogmas on each other over several centuries. Both of these tools are as important as each other, and without either a much lesser picture of power government would be presented.
The latter includes the realisation of architecture as a science to be an imposing force on human thought and activity, citing the Panopticon as the culminating example of its maturisation; disciplinary procedures that began in military organisations, and gradually spread in various forms into other locations such as prisons and schools; and the move from complete subjectification of the populace, in the form of central points of domination, e.g. sovereignty, in order to maintain control and stability, towards distributed objectification as an infrastructural system, e.g. examinations and, I extrapolate, surveillance programmes.
Thoughts
So all through this book I've been trying to keep it all in a self-relevant context - having grown up in the insular world of modern day Westernism that seems determined to preclude any other points of view, any kind of historical perspective other than nationally prescribed, educationalist force-feeding is generally an eye-opener, and I doubt the fact that Foucault takes a logically French view makes any difference to this.
The effect of being exposed to several centuries of progress at a level, or with a wonder never touched upon before University schooling is akin to the first time you stare out into space after being told what stars are. The realisation of the scope and scale of everything that has contributed to that which we now take for granted, almost as if what we know has always been like this, the unfolding of political structures with almost diagramatic reasoning and psychological pragmaticsm. Even in this truncated tour of excerpts from Foucault's writing, the step-by-step analysis of the genealogy of our own culture means that by the end of it the apparent rigidity of our environment, our social firmament, gets thrown into a maze of turmoiled self-reflection, and the minutiae that we wrap ourselves in with insulant ignorance, whose constancy we depend upon to stop ourselves from having to accept our own adjustment, are sudddenly revealed from a thoroughly inverted standpoint. From here, Foucault reveals all the loopholes, the illogical inconsistencies that fill us and prevent us from making true progress.
To become immersed in spectatorism, to want to inspect who we are from somewhere else, is to become trapped and frustrated as we reveal to ourselves the knowledge we have thus far eluded.
The final two chapter of the book, a series of interviews in the final few years of his life, provide an excellent insight into his way of thinking, especially when it comes to the rationale behind discourse versus polemics. There's a copy on-line at http://foucault.info/foucault/interview.html and the first question or two are well worth checking out.
Questions
Is sexual "deviance" an offshoot of sexual pleasure and evolution?
(See also: Objectivity What Is Objectivity Sex And Pleasure As Evolution Ceci NEst Pas Une Pipe )
