Michel Foucault Flashcards
(38 cards)
What is Michel Foucault’s Lifespan?
1926-1984
What book did Michel Foucault write, and when?
The Birth of Biopolitcs
Lectures spanning from 1978-1979
What is Foucault’s legacy?
He was one of the most influential and controversial scholars of the post-World War II period.
How is Focuault’s work Relevant?
This notwithstanding, biopolitics and biopower continue to hold significant purchase in and for discussions on modern forms of governance and modes of subjectification.
What is biopolitics?
The style of government that regulates populations through “biopower” (the application and impact of political power on all aspects of human life).
It examines how human life processes are managed under authority
The main explanation is how sexuality ties together multiple “technologies of power”,
What is biopower?
Foucault argues that biopower is a technology which appeared in the late eighteenth century for managing populations. It incorporates certain aspects of disciplinary power.
If disciplinary power is about training the actions of bodies, biopower is about managing the births, deaths, reproduction and illnesses of a population.
What type of theorist is Michel Foucault?
Foucaultbegan briefly as aMarxist
The question of Foucault’s overall political stance remains hotly contested. But it’s thought to be a reaction to Marxism
What is Foucault’s view on the state?
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What is Foucault’s view on liberalism?
x
What was Michel Foucault’s main political viewpoints?
Foucault is particularly concerned with the relations between political power and the body, and describes various historical ways of training the body to make it socially productive.
The body is an element to be managed in relation to strategies of the economic and social management of populations.
What does Foucault mean by Pastoral Power?
The modern State, Foucault argues, consists of the convergence of a very particular set of techniques, rationalities and practices designed to govern or guide people’s conduct as individual members of a population and also to organize them as a political and civil collective in the same way as a shepherd who cares for his flock from birth to death. This idea of politically organizing the day to day conduct of the population is borrowed from the metaphor of the care of a shepherd for his flock and originated in Egyptian, Assyrian, Mesopotamian and Hebrew cultures.
What does Foucault mean by Governmentality?
Delete card, put 5
How does Foucault view Marxism?
Foucault is well known for his controversial statements in 1966 that ‘Marxism exists in nineteenth century thought like a fish in water: that is, it is unable to breathe anywhere else’ and that it was a mere ‘storm … in a children’s paddling pool’ (The Order of Things,, Tavistock, 1970, p. 262). For a brief period after 1968 Foucault’s comments on Marxism as a form of political activity became more favourable. He subsequently returned to his earlier views on the historical specificity of Marxism and to criticisms of the inflated claims made by Marxists in relation to Marx’s work.
What is life’s impact of governing, according to Foucault?
“life denotes neither the basis nor the object of politics. Instead, it presents a border to politics- a border that should be simultaneously respected and overcome, one that seems to be both natural and given but also artificial and transformable”
What did Foucault believe was central to processes such as punishment, and sex and discipline?
Power.
No one is producing these things, they are effects generated by the interaction of power relations. They are not necessarily shared by individuals or institutions
What are the effects of power relations, according to Foucault?
Whenever we try to influence others, this is power. However, our attempts to influence others rarely turn out the way we expect.
This applies to both personal and societal relationships.
This relation is basically - we know what we do, but we don’t know the effects of what we do.
Does Foucault believe power us autonomous?
No
It is rather a matter of superficially stable structures, emerging on constantly shifting relations underneath
This shift is caused by the unending struggle between people.
Why is Foucault criticised by liberal thinkers?
Foucault is condemned by many liberal commentators for his failure to make any normative distinction between power and resistance, that is, for his relativism.
How does Foucault view resistance?
Foucault doesn’t believe that that one is defeated before one begins
He believes that one must proceed with caution to avoid simply supporting a strategy of power while thinking oneself rebellious.
According to Foucault, what happens when we get to free ourselves from sexual repression?
Though we try to liberate ourselves from sexual repression, we in fact play into a strategy of power which we do not realize exists.
This strategy is for everyone to constitute themselves as “‘subjects’
How are we passive subjects of sexual repression?
we are subjected in this process, made into passive subjects of study by medical professionals, for example.
How are we active subjects of sexual repression?
having to actively confess our sexual proclivities and indeed in the process develop an identity based on this confessed sexuality
In what way does Foucault say power operates in society?
What example does he use?
So, power operates in ways that are both overtly oppressive and more positive
In society, we are subjects of sexual repression
What does Foucault say plays a big part in power relations?
Sexuality for Foucault has a quite extraordinary importance in the contemporary network of power relations.