Full name: Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault Born: 15 October 1926

Poitiers, France
Died: 25 June 1984 (aged 57)
(1926-1984) Paris, France
Era: 20th-c philosophy
Region: Western Philosophy
School: Continental philosophy,
structuralism, post-structuralism
Main interests: History of
ideas, epistemology,
ethics, political philosophy
Notable ideas: "Archaeology",
"genealogy", "episteme",
"dispositif", "biopower",
"governmentality", "disciplinary
institution",panopticism
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Structure of this Lecture
1. Michel Foucault: The Man and His Work
2. The Discursive Construction of Madness:
Foucaults Madness and Civilization: A History of
Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961)
3. Epistemes: Foucaults The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966)
4. The Panopticon: Foucaults Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)

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 1. Michel Foucault: The Man and His Work

Michel Foucault (1926-1984): historian, philosopher,

(psychologist)
1969-1984: Professor of the History of Systems of
Thought at the Collge de France
Foucault studies systems of thought (vs. individual thoughts)
terms for systems of thought: discourse, episteme
Foucaults two methods of inquiry
archaeology: excavation of past systems of thought
genealogy: study of the emergence and development of
systems of thought
political activist: advocacy for patients in mental
institutions, homosexuals, prisoners, immigrants
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 2. The Discursive Construction of Madness:
Foucaults Madness and Civilization: A History
of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961)

Foucaults Ph.D. thesis: Madness and Civilization

history of the concept of madness from the
Middle Ages to the 19th century
history of the exclusion of madness from reason-
based societies
madness is not a psychological but a social
phenomenon:
Madness exists only in society. It does not exist
outside the forms of sensibility that isolate it, and
the forms of repulsion
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 a. Madness in the Late Middle Ages (14th and
15th Centuries)

variety of approaches to
the mad
locked away in towers
sent away on ships
admitted to hospitals
tolerated within normal
society
no strict separation
between reason and
madness
the mad symbolized
the dark side of culture
the atmosphere of unrest Hieronymus Bosch, The Ship
at the end of the Middle of Fools (c. 1490-1500)
Ages
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b. Madness in the Age of Reason /
Enlightenment (17th and 18th Centuries)
Age of Reason /
Enlightenment: strict
separation between
reason and madness
madness as the
negation of reason -
internment
exclusion and silencing
but no treatment
the mad, beggars,
vagabonds, criminals,
and the sick interned
Anon. Madness, or a
together Man Bound with
the mad held in chains Chains (1808)
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 The Birth of Modern Psychiatry: Philippe Pinel
Releases The Mad from Their Chains in 1793

Tony Robert-Fleury. Pinel Releasing Lunatics at

the Salptrire in 1795 (c. 1795)

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 c. Madness in Modern Society (19th Century
Onward)
From the 19th century onward, madness came to be
seen as
a mysterious phenomenon that deserves to be studied
an illness that must be treated
scientific approach to madness:
observation
analysis
documentation
classification
goal: treatment
the mad are no longer chained but still locked away in
mental institutions, where they are studied and
treated for their illness
mad(wo)man as a specific type of human being
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Foucault vs. Modern Psychiatry
Foucault argues that modern
psychiatry
excludes and locks the mad away
exercises power by subjecting the mad to:
the codes of scientific classification and
documentation
the codes of bourgeois rationality, morality,
and family structures
continuous observation

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 Madness as Discursive Construct
madness as social construct (vs. psychological
condition)
madness as discursive construct
discourse: three examples
Enlightenment discourse
modern scientifc discourse
psychoanalytic discourse
DEF: Discourses
are practices that systematically construct the objects
(e.g. madness, the mad) they talk about
determine what counts as true and what can be said,
thought, and known at a specific historical moment
are networks of power/knowledge
assign subject positions
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 3. Epistemes: Foucaults The Order of Things:
An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966)

The Order of Things charts the birth of the human

sciences (sociology, psychology, philology, and so
on) from the Renaissance to the 19th century
Foucaults central insight: history is a succession of
radically different orders of knowledge that define
what counts as true
DEF: epistemes (Gr. knowledge)
are historically specific, supraindividual orders of
knowledge
define what counts as true
provide the basis for the sciences
define how signs relate to things
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Foucaults Definition of Episteme
DEF episteme: The episteme [...] is the totality
of relations that can be discovered, for a given
period, between the sciences when one analyses
them at the level of discursive regularities.
(Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge)

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3 Successive Epistemes
a. The Renaissance Episteme
15th/16th century
(Renaissance): signs and
things resemble each
other and are
interchangeable
microcosm/macrocosm,
e.g. blood/air, yellow
bile/fire, black bile/earth, Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi
phlegm/water maioris scilicet et minoris
Metaphysica, physica atque
technica Historia (1617-1619)

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3 Successive Epistemes
b. The Enlightenment Episteme
17th/18th c.
(Enlightenment / Age of
Reason): signs and things
disconnected: signs
represent things
e.g. scientific labeling and
classification of plants in
botanical gardens

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3 Successive Epistemes
c. The Modern Episteme
19th c. (Modernity):
signs become
interesting in their
own right
human sciences, e.g.
philology and modern
linguistics,
anthropology,
psychology, sociology,
Literaturwissenschaft,
and so on
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 Foucault on the Death of Man
Man is an invention of recent date. And one
perhaps nearing its end [...] one can certainly wager
that man would be erased, like a face drawn in
sand at the edge of the sea. (Michel Foucault, The
Order of Things)
man is an invention of humanism and the Enlightenment
man = autonomous, self-determined individual; source
of truth and knowledge
language, discourses, and epistemes as sources of truth
and knowledge
subjects are constructed and subjected by discourses
e.g. biological discourse

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 4. The Panopticon: Foucaults Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)
From Torture to Prisons I
A. Torture
e.g. the quartering of Robert Franois Damiens in 1775

"On 1 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned 'to

make the amende honorable before the main door of the
Church of Paris,' where he was to be 'taken and conveyed in a
cart, wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning
wax weighing two pounds;' then, 'in the said cart, to the
Place de Grve, where, on a scaffold that will be erected
there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and
calves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife
with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with
sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn
away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and
sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and
quartered by four horses and his limbs and body consumed
by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds'
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(Pices originales, 372-4). [...] 'Finally, he was quartered,' 17
recounts the Gazette dAmsterdam of 1 April 1757.
From Torture to Prisons II
'This last operation was very long, because the horses used
were not accustomed to drawing [...]. [...] 'After two or three
attempts, the executioner Samson and he who had used the
pincers each drew out a knife from his pocket and cut the body at
the thighs instead of severing the legs at the joints; the four
horses gave a tug and carried off the two thighs after them,
namely, that of the right side first, the other following; then the
same was done to the arms, the shoulders, the arm-pits and the
four limbs; the flesh had to be cut almost to the bone, the horses
pulling hard carried off the right arm first and the other
afterwards. When the four limbs had been pulled away, the
confessors came to speak to him; but his executioner told them
that he was dead, though the truth was that I saw the man move,
his lower jaw moving from side to side as if he were talking. One
of the executioners even said shortly afterwards that when they
had lifted the trunk to throw it on the stake, he was still alive. The
four limbs were untied from the ropes and thrown on the stake
set up in the enclosure in line with the scaffold, then the trunk
and the rest were covered with logs and faggots, and fire was put
to the straw mixed with this wood. [] In accordance with the
decree, the whole was reduced to ashes.'" (Michel Foucault,
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From Torture to Prisons III
B. Prisons
e.g. Lon Fauchers rules for young prisoners in Paris of 1837:
Art. 23. At twenty minutes to one, the prisoners leave the
school, in divisions, and return to their courtyards for
recreation. At five minutes to one, at the drum-roll, they
form into workteams.
Art. 24. At one o'clock they must be back in the
workshops: they work until four o'clock.
Art. 25. At four o'clock the prisoners leave their workshops
and go into the courtyards where they wash their hands and
form into divisions for the refectory.
Art. 26. Supper and the recreation that follows it last until
five o'clock: the prisoners then return to the workshops.
(qtd. in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish)

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From Torture to Prisons IV
feudal-sovereign power (18th century: Damiens
execution)
torture
public spectacle
complete destruction of the offenders body
disciplinary power (19th century: Fauchers prison
rules)
reform as goal
(self-)disciplining of the prisoners body
restoration of the (self-)disciplined subject to
society

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The Panopticon
Stateville Correctional Center, Illinois
J Benthams Panopticon

Jeremy Benthams panopticon

total surveillance
prisoners self-disciplining
modern, soft power (vs. the hard power of torture)

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The Carceral Society
disciplinary power:
panopticon as a model
for all of society (prisons,
schools, factories,
hospitals, and so on)
power invisible and
anonymous
self-disciplining:
techniques of the self
surveillance

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Three Disciplinary Techniques
Three disciplinary techniques in prisons, factories, hospitals, schools,
universities, and so on
1. hierarchical observation
2. normalizing judgment
3. examination

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