This makes me want to tag on my own
question, more biographical than anything:
Was Foucault a quite depressed person?:
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 02:45 -0600, Chetan Vemuri wrote:
> A new reader of Discipline and Punish asked me if we should interpret
> Foucault's concept of the panopticon as one of a totalitarian police state
> of terrorized slaves? I told the reader (a friend of mine) that it Foucault
> did not suggest such but meant a society where people reform themselves,
> correct themselves, teach themselves, a diagram of power that sought to
> induce a certain relation of human beings to themselves as Nikolas Rose
> describes it.
> Would you find my summation accurate? Or is there more to panopticism that I
> could explain?
Perhaps a good answer is "yes and no":
We might go to, say, a meeting of the Young
Republicans (a college student organization
associated with a particular political party
in the US). We could ask them to discuss the
concept of a "totalitarian police state" and
to come up with a characterization of such a
state that is at once specific enough to identify
the states we think of that way and abstract
enough to encompass new or formerly unrecognized
cases. They might, indeed, talk about elements
such as ubiquitous surveillance, points of
intervention, increasingly fine control over
the placement of bodies in space, etc. They might
even "psychologize" a bit and imagine something
not far from the impact of such arrangements on
the "formation of the self".
Holding up Discipline and Punish or parts of
History of Sexuality or some other writings against
this it would seem that, yes, that's what Foucault
is talking about. It might seem odd or interesting
that he finds these elements in places we wouldn't
normally look for them such as in schools or in
the confession booth. There could be debate
about whether or not "totalitarian police state" is
the right term for such cases or not yet there would
not be a lot of controversy that his writing raises
the questions of that debate.
So, that's "yes" but "no" is a better answer,
ultimately:
Whatever is the actual *case* of the situations
Foucault examines - whatever really happened - we
don't really add anything by applying the words
"totalitarian police state". Those words don't
reveal some previously overlooked aspect. Those
words don't bring forward some obscure truth about
the matter.
Those words *do* reduce all of those cases to
some pre-existing political discourse about a
"theory of fascism". On the one hand, those words
take us away from caring about the specificity of
Foucault's cases and towards a kind of pure, free-floating
abstraction. The talk about fascism can be *operative*
in the sense of informing political debate and action:
for example, we might collectively treat some situation
differently if someone throws the words "totalitarian
police state" at it and they stick but that hasn't
gotten us any closer to understanding the cases examined,
why they happened when they did, and how and why they
evolved over time. The "theory of fascism" generally
doesn't much succeed at those things.
Those words also convey some kind of value judgement
(bad, hopefully) but they aren't necessary for that,
either. We don't need a theory to recognize injustice,
or harm. We don't need a theory to tell us when
certain things are bad: it's there in the facts of the
case already or it isn't; we agree about the value
judgment or we don't. Applying the "theory of fascism"
doesn't bring new moral clarity to the cases.
If we're not going to bother with a useless (or
even trouble-making) theory of fascism then how
do we view these cases? Enter Foucault:
Foucault looks at these cases and wonders: what
were the people who were doing this thinking?
How did that thinking lead to these actions?
How were their thoughts about what they were doing
the natural consequence of the prevailing theories
of their day (either flowing from those theories
are specifically getting structure by being opposed
to or alternative to those prevailing theories)?
Noting that the timing and nature of shifts in
the popular ideas and corresponding changes in
behavior are not inherent in the ideas themselves,
how are new ways of thinking introduced and when
do new ideas spread and take effect vs. leaving
the mouth of a single speaker and promptly falling
dead on the floor.
So, "yes" Foucault often looked at cases that
at the Young Republicans meeting we might discuss
in terms of fascism or fascist tendencies but
"no" he was specifically not discussing them in
such terms. Rather, he was looking at the specifics
of the case and of the dynamic processes that
organized societies to create those specific
built environments, social/economic practices,
etc. He looked at how such tangible arrangements
of society reproduced themselves over time,
how they evolve gradually, and how they are sometimes
suddenly interrupted by abrupt evolutions and
changes.
Not needing a theory of fascism Foucault did
lean towards almost having a kind of theory of
Power -- an almost "genetic" theory: the discourse
of a place and period encodes and generates the
construction and renewal of the built environment
and prevailing practices; the built environment
and prevailing practices produce, in the individual,
a "character" within that discourse. That "character"
helps to re-enact and perpetuate the discourse and the
cycle repeats.
The individual tends towards the loss of a certain kind
of freedom - tends towards becoming the builder of
his own prison. As technology increases over
time (not just hard engineering technology but also
technologies of logic and social engineering) the
discourse/environment dynamic - Power - seems to
mostly increase the fineness of its control. Tends
over time to determine more and more of the built
environment in which bodies are placed, to create
more and more points of intervention, and to become
ever more nuanced and precise.
Yet there are exceptions: revolutions, convulsions,
huge sudden shifts that reverse trends and seem to
restore a degree of liberty. What, Foucault ultimately
wondered without ever solving the problem, explains
those? And is it something people can *do* (or is
it just random dumb luck)?
In his own attempts to "do" - to effect the
discourse of his time to cause a break and
regression in the ever-finer intrusions of
Power into the formation of the self - Foucault seems
to me to have concentrated on dismissing prevailing
theories that add nothing (or cause troubles) and
to instead have wanted to offer up observations of
what Power was doing and why - to help people
(or "the self") be more reflective.
As a case, consider Google. Google is discussed
in terms of "organizing the world's information"
and now, increasingly, "personalizing search and
advertising for each individual's benefit". Like
the words "totalitarian police state" those feel
good characterizations - those "theories of what
Google does" don't really reveal any facts about
the case. They don't tell us anything new about
what's happening or its morality - they reveal nothing
that isn't already in the case itself. They only
add "heat" to the political discourse, draw us into
abstractions and away from the facts of the case.
On the other hand, we could look with greater
scrutiny at those facts. Google creates new, unprecedented
forms and degrees of individual surveillance. They
apply a variety of scientific analytic techniques
to the surveillance data, using the results to modulate
interventions in terms of what information users
receive and in terms of who receives what information
about which users. Perhaps, if we are "Foucaultian",
we don't look for some overarching theory that produces
a theorem "Google is bad because it has fascist
tendencies" but, rather, always look at the facts of the
case in greater and greater detail. We can look
at Google's Power-shaping discourse as the intersection
of contemporary discourses on Internet economics,
social sciences, computing system engineering economics,
jurisprudence in a global economy, etc. In the end,
if people are natively uncomfortable with a clear-eyed
assessment of what Google does, and they see how what
they do follows almost inevitably from the prevailing
theories, then perhaps people can discover (in the
specific context of their situations) ways to resist that
discourse and perhaps make it inoperative: e.g., to
end the surveillance and related practices rather than
debate how best to justify and reproduce them and to do
so first by learning how to talk about it more accurately.
Is it meaningful to accuse Google of fascism or fascist
tendencies? In a sense, sure. The accusation has a
recognized place in the discourse of the day. People
know and agree roughly about what is meant by such an
accusation. But the accusation gets us nowhere either in
understanding the case of Google or in resisting the
logic of Power that produces Google. Instead, we're
better off just looking at the facts of the case and,
in particular, the particular kinds of relevant fact
that Foucault helped to identify.
--------------------
So my question: was Foucault quite depressed?
Some of what I've read makes it sound as though
he felt the only way to resist ever-increasing
oppression was through the kind of lateral
thinking clear-eyed look at things he advocated.
At the same time, it sounds as though he did not
see any proof that resistance was really possible.
In "Foucault's triangle," as I see it (not a
conventionally phrased way of looking at it):
there is discourse, there is manifest power (built
environment, social practices), and there are
bodies. The first two reproduce themselves by
means of the third, and vice versa. There is no
a priori reason to think that discourse and manifest
power can't become *so* refined and precise that
the bodies are then completely and irresistibly
objectified - neutralized - predicted, shaped,
neutered - tamed, domesticated, passive.
Foucault was outwardly optimistic in trying to
theorize and demonstrate resistance but he
achieved no great success at that. It's an
unfair question to ask about an academic but was
he driven by an underlying depression and sense
of hopelessness? The timing of his death indicates
that he was not reckless in the face of real knowledge
of HIV - I'm not trying to open the old canard that
he was self-destructive in quite that way. But there
is something about the image of Foucault at the
bath houses, about the burning of manuscripts,
and even about the grand ambition and subject matter
of History of Sexuality that leaves me with an
image of a very depressed person. It would fit
(perhaps too much in a "just so" way) with the
notion of someone who felt they had identified the
necessary form of resistance only to simultaneously
raise serious theoretical and empirical doubts about
its possibility for existence....
-t
question, more biographical than anything:
Was Foucault a quite depressed person?:
On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 02:45 -0600, Chetan Vemuri wrote:
> A new reader of Discipline and Punish asked me if we should interpret
> Foucault's concept of the panopticon as one of a totalitarian police state
> of terrorized slaves? I told the reader (a friend of mine) that it Foucault
> did not suggest such but meant a society where people reform themselves,
> correct themselves, teach themselves, a diagram of power that sought to
> induce a certain relation of human beings to themselves as Nikolas Rose
> describes it.
> Would you find my summation accurate? Or is there more to panopticism that I
> could explain?
Perhaps a good answer is "yes and no":
We might go to, say, a meeting of the Young
Republicans (a college student organization
associated with a particular political party
in the US). We could ask them to discuss the
concept of a "totalitarian police state" and
to come up with a characterization of such a
state that is at once specific enough to identify
the states we think of that way and abstract
enough to encompass new or formerly unrecognized
cases. They might, indeed, talk about elements
such as ubiquitous surveillance, points of
intervention, increasingly fine control over
the placement of bodies in space, etc. They might
even "psychologize" a bit and imagine something
not far from the impact of such arrangements on
the "formation of the self".
Holding up Discipline and Punish or parts of
History of Sexuality or some other writings against
this it would seem that, yes, that's what Foucault
is talking about. It might seem odd or interesting
that he finds these elements in places we wouldn't
normally look for them such as in schools or in
the confession booth. There could be debate
about whether or not "totalitarian police state" is
the right term for such cases or not yet there would
not be a lot of controversy that his writing raises
the questions of that debate.
So, that's "yes" but "no" is a better answer,
ultimately:
Whatever is the actual *case* of the situations
Foucault examines - whatever really happened - we
don't really add anything by applying the words
"totalitarian police state". Those words don't
reveal some previously overlooked aspect. Those
words don't bring forward some obscure truth about
the matter.
Those words *do* reduce all of those cases to
some pre-existing political discourse about a
"theory of fascism". On the one hand, those words
take us away from caring about the specificity of
Foucault's cases and towards a kind of pure, free-floating
abstraction. The talk about fascism can be *operative*
in the sense of informing political debate and action:
for example, we might collectively treat some situation
differently if someone throws the words "totalitarian
police state" at it and they stick but that hasn't
gotten us any closer to understanding the cases examined,
why they happened when they did, and how and why they
evolved over time. The "theory of fascism" generally
doesn't much succeed at those things.
Those words also convey some kind of value judgement
(bad, hopefully) but they aren't necessary for that,
either. We don't need a theory to recognize injustice,
or harm. We don't need a theory to tell us when
certain things are bad: it's there in the facts of the
case already or it isn't; we agree about the value
judgment or we don't. Applying the "theory of fascism"
doesn't bring new moral clarity to the cases.
If we're not going to bother with a useless (or
even trouble-making) theory of fascism then how
do we view these cases? Enter Foucault:
Foucault looks at these cases and wonders: what
were the people who were doing this thinking?
How did that thinking lead to these actions?
How were their thoughts about what they were doing
the natural consequence of the prevailing theories
of their day (either flowing from those theories
are specifically getting structure by being opposed
to or alternative to those prevailing theories)?
Noting that the timing and nature of shifts in
the popular ideas and corresponding changes in
behavior are not inherent in the ideas themselves,
how are new ways of thinking introduced and when
do new ideas spread and take effect vs. leaving
the mouth of a single speaker and promptly falling
dead on the floor.
So, "yes" Foucault often looked at cases that
at the Young Republicans meeting we might discuss
in terms of fascism or fascist tendencies but
"no" he was specifically not discussing them in
such terms. Rather, he was looking at the specifics
of the case and of the dynamic processes that
organized societies to create those specific
built environments, social/economic practices,
etc. He looked at how such tangible arrangements
of society reproduced themselves over time,
how they evolve gradually, and how they are sometimes
suddenly interrupted by abrupt evolutions and
changes.
Not needing a theory of fascism Foucault did
lean towards almost having a kind of theory of
Power -- an almost "genetic" theory: the discourse
of a place and period encodes and generates the
construction and renewal of the built environment
and prevailing practices; the built environment
and prevailing practices produce, in the individual,
a "character" within that discourse. That "character"
helps to re-enact and perpetuate the discourse and the
cycle repeats.
The individual tends towards the loss of a certain kind
of freedom - tends towards becoming the builder of
his own prison. As technology increases over
time (not just hard engineering technology but also
technologies of logic and social engineering) the
discourse/environment dynamic - Power - seems to
mostly increase the fineness of its control. Tends
over time to determine more and more of the built
environment in which bodies are placed, to create
more and more points of intervention, and to become
ever more nuanced and precise.
Yet there are exceptions: revolutions, convulsions,
huge sudden shifts that reverse trends and seem to
restore a degree of liberty. What, Foucault ultimately
wondered without ever solving the problem, explains
those? And is it something people can *do* (or is
it just random dumb luck)?
In his own attempts to "do" - to effect the
discourse of his time to cause a break and
regression in the ever-finer intrusions of
Power into the formation of the self - Foucault seems
to me to have concentrated on dismissing prevailing
theories that add nothing (or cause troubles) and
to instead have wanted to offer up observations of
what Power was doing and why - to help people
(or "the self") be more reflective.
As a case, consider Google. Google is discussed
in terms of "organizing the world's information"
and now, increasingly, "personalizing search and
advertising for each individual's benefit". Like
the words "totalitarian police state" those feel
good characterizations - those "theories of what
Google does" don't really reveal any facts about
the case. They don't tell us anything new about
what's happening or its morality - they reveal nothing
that isn't already in the case itself. They only
add "heat" to the political discourse, draw us into
abstractions and away from the facts of the case.
On the other hand, we could look with greater
scrutiny at those facts. Google creates new, unprecedented
forms and degrees of individual surveillance. They
apply a variety of scientific analytic techniques
to the surveillance data, using the results to modulate
interventions in terms of what information users
receive and in terms of who receives what information
about which users. Perhaps, if we are "Foucaultian",
we don't look for some overarching theory that produces
a theorem "Google is bad because it has fascist
tendencies" but, rather, always look at the facts of the
case in greater and greater detail. We can look
at Google's Power-shaping discourse as the intersection
of contemporary discourses on Internet economics,
social sciences, computing system engineering economics,
jurisprudence in a global economy, etc. In the end,
if people are natively uncomfortable with a clear-eyed
assessment of what Google does, and they see how what
they do follows almost inevitably from the prevailing
theories, then perhaps people can discover (in the
specific context of their situations) ways to resist that
discourse and perhaps make it inoperative: e.g., to
end the surveillance and related practices rather than
debate how best to justify and reproduce them and to do
so first by learning how to talk about it more accurately.
Is it meaningful to accuse Google of fascism or fascist
tendencies? In a sense, sure. The accusation has a
recognized place in the discourse of the day. People
know and agree roughly about what is meant by such an
accusation. But the accusation gets us nowhere either in
understanding the case of Google or in resisting the
logic of Power that produces Google. Instead, we're
better off just looking at the facts of the case and,
in particular, the particular kinds of relevant fact
that Foucault helped to identify.
--------------------
So my question: was Foucault quite depressed?
Some of what I've read makes it sound as though
he felt the only way to resist ever-increasing
oppression was through the kind of lateral
thinking clear-eyed look at things he advocated.
At the same time, it sounds as though he did not
see any proof that resistance was really possible.
In "Foucault's triangle," as I see it (not a
conventionally phrased way of looking at it):
there is discourse, there is manifest power (built
environment, social practices), and there are
bodies. The first two reproduce themselves by
means of the third, and vice versa. There is no
a priori reason to think that discourse and manifest
power can't become *so* refined and precise that
the bodies are then completely and irresistibly
objectified - neutralized - predicted, shaped,
neutered - tamed, domesticated, passive.
Foucault was outwardly optimistic in trying to
theorize and demonstrate resistance but he
achieved no great success at that. It's an
unfair question to ask about an academic but was
he driven by an underlying depression and sense
of hopelessness? The timing of his death indicates
that he was not reckless in the face of real knowledge
of HIV - I'm not trying to open the old canard that
he was self-destructive in quite that way. But there
is something about the image of Foucault at the
bath houses, about the burning of manuscripts,
and even about the grand ambition and subject matter
of History of Sexuality that leaves me with an
image of a very depressed person. It would fit
(perhaps too much in a "just so" way) with the
notion of someone who felt they had identified the
necessary form of resistance only to simultaneously
raise serious theoretical and empirical doubts about
its possibility for existence....
-t