Talk:Michel Foucault

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2004 – 2005 January 2006 – August 2006

Contents 1 Foucault FOR lowering consent? 2 Habermas/Foucault debate (what is it?) 3 His fourth work. 4 garbage about MF spreading AIDS 5 Foucault and HIV/AIDS source 6 Power/Knowlege? 7 Misleading phrasing about postmodernism 8 Not only a philosopher

[edit] Foucault FOR lowering consent?

This section is unclear. Did Foucault support lowering the age of consent from 15 or was he campaigning to have it raised from 15?

Surely if he was trying to have it lowered this would be a very serious and damning act. 'Foucault loved along with discourse, structuralism... a nice plump child's arse.'

This needs clarification.

During the '60s/'70s there was a great deal of debate about such things. This was a time when the voting age was higher than it is now, when consensual sodomy was largely illegal, and so on and so forth. At a time when gay marriage was too radical to even imagine in the US, reconsidering the age of consent was on the table. But that is neither here nor there... Foucault was EXTREMELY involved in all sorts of left-wing political movements. Many of them had to do with the reform of prisons and asylums, and with rolling back the criminalization and institutionalization of social deviance. I'm not sure why this letter (which apparently was signed by a large number of academics, like anti-Israel letters today) gets two paragraphs, but not GIP or Vincennes or the student riots or Iran, all mentioned in passing.

[edit] Habermas/Foucault debate (what is it?)

This seems to have good citations for research and it probalby should be linked from both of the participants pages. Is there a justification for removing the see also from Foucault in your mind? because I don't think that given the amount of coverage this had in main media and in scholarly journals, that it wasn't worthy of mention, much like the Foucault-Chomsky debate.--Buridan 01:59, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

"See also" sections are almost always a crutch for articles. They tend to be added when no one actually has enough material to add to the concrete discussion, because they are just too easy. Without some sort of motivating explanation, highlighting the debates Foucault had with Habermas in particular, just reads like special pleading. Why not Foucault/Althusser? Or Foucault/Lacan? Or a dozen others?

I'm not at all against including the actual issue if it really relates to Foucault's notability. I'm not particularly convinced it does so, but a well written couple sentences that explained why this debate was important to Foucault's career or notability would be lovely to have (with an appropriate link in the narrative text). Absent that, I just don't see a reason for a bare link. LotLE×talk 02:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

but the bare link was a see also... there should probably be othe see also's like the foucault-chomsky, etc. It just takes time for people to latch onto that and its meaning. It hardly needs noting that any time two of europes leading intellectuals at the time sit down and talk... that it is significant, people who recognize foucault's name should probably see the foucault/habermas debate. it really doesn't need extended definition or clarification... I'm not sure adding to notability is the reason it is there. it is there because the event itself is notable in the life of Michel Foucault. Just like his testimony before the committee on prisons and the chomsky-foucault debate. I think it should be left for expansion since it actually was something that occured. --Buridan 02:46, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

If the event is significant to the life of Foucault, you should be able to describe its significance in a sentence. Just because something vaguely relates to a biographical subject doesn't mean it warrants inclusion in the biography itself (and nothing in The Foucault/Habermas debate convinces me it has that significance. I'm not hostile to including that, I just want to see explicitly why it is worth mentioning in the biography.

Is the testimony about prisons in the article now? I can go take a look. But likewise, if it is, I want a sentence telling me why it matters to Foucault's notability. Just to push things slightly in a sarcastic direction, even if it warranted an article, "Lulu's first published paper on Foucault" would not necessarily warrant a mention in Foucault's own biography. Biographies should not be grab bags of trivia, but should stick close to the actual reasons a biography subject is notable. Just disagreeing with some other intellectual doesn't make the cut in an academic biography. If there's more than that, let me see it. LotLE×talk 03:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

if it were trivial, i would have let it pass, but this debate is probably in the top 20 philosophical exchanges in the 21st century, but like the habermas/derrida exchanges about the future of europe are likely to be for the 21st. google has 649 articles for habermas/foucault debate, 280 in scholar.google.com and amazon has 3 books centering on the topic, which is about 1/2 of the amount as russell's interaction over 30+ years with wittgenstein. --Buridan 11:09, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Why is it so very difficult to come up with a sentence saying why it is important then? For all the work spent convincing me an unadorned and unexplained link is important, why didn't you just write a good quality description indicating the important of this debate to Foucault's notability? (The Google vs. Scholar hits seem odd, I'm curious exactly what search you made). LotLE×talk 14:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to be clear that I'm not exactly a babe-in-the-woods here. I'm not a Habermasian or Habermas scholar: i.e. I haven't read Theory of Communicative Action. But I have read The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, which seems to be what the entire "debate" amounts to. I.e. After Foucault died, Habermas published a well-read book that was partially about Foucault. From what I know, it's really not so much a "debate" as the normal process of critical writing: Given that it is Habermas' book, it makes sense to discuss in Habermas' article. But any debate consists of later theorist trying to imagine what Foucault "might have said" had he lived long enough to read Habermas' book.

It's not necessarily unreasonable to read an important thinker through their later reception. A philosopher's death doesn't necessarily end their notability, or its reasons. I haven't looked, but it would be reasonable for the Hegel article to mention both Kierkegaard and Marx, for example, who shaped "Hegel, as we know him". But without being willing to give even a sentence explaining why this example is like that, I just don't see its place in this particular biography (thousands of people have written about Foucault, after all, both before and after Foucault's death). LotLE×talk 14:51, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm only passingly familiar with Habermas, but I've read quite a bit of Foucault, and I can certainly voice my agreement with the following argument:

"I just don't see [the Habermas/Foucault debate's] place in this particular biography (thousands of people have written about Foucault, after all, both before and after Foucault's death).

Lately, someone linked to Discordianism in the See Also section for the article on the Kantian Noumenon. Although there is certainly an arguable connection between the two concepts, it's a stretch, and while the Noumenon may or may not be a notable concept in Discordianism (about which I know very little), Discordianism is certainly not particularly relevant to discussions of the Noumenon. If it's fair to include a link to Discordianism there, it's also fair to include any other ideology that is connected similarly to concepts in the article on the Noumenon-- we would, in other words, have to create a list of "see also" pages that would quickly exceed the actual body of the article in size without adding much useful content.

Similarly, while Foucault himself was obviously a very notable element of the Foucault-Habermas debate, that debate isn't necessarily of great relevance to a biograpical article on Foucault. While it may or may not have been "in the top 20 philosophical exchanges in the 21st century", it shouldn't, as I see it, anyway, be mentioned only via a link without an accompanying explanation of how it was, for example, an event of particular formative influence on the life of Foucault. If it is such an event, or if there's some other compelling reason to put it here, then that reason should be further-explained: I agree with Lulu that even if some given subject deserves an article, and even if that subject is definitely connected with the subject of the biography, it shouldn't necessarily be included in the biography, and I think it certainly shouldn't be included without any accompanying evidence for its importance to the biography. How, indeed, is it fair to include the Habermas-Foucault debate and not hundreds of links to other recorded debates in which Foucault engaged during his lifetime in the See Also section here? I'm not saying that it necessarily isn't sensible or fair-- it's just that I can't currently see the reasoning for doing it.

And, again, while it is indeed useful to a student of Foucault to know that Foucault participated in this debate, it isn't particularly productive to have a list of hundreds of debates between Foucault and others in the See Also section. If such a list were created, I think it would be better treated as a separate article altogether ("list of debates between Michel Foucault and others", or something like this); that article might more clearly deserve inclusion in this one.

I guess my real problem here is that other users need to know precisely why "this debate is probably in the top 20 philosophical exchanges in the 21st century", or at least to see some sources verifying that this is a common position: in my opinion, at least, if it were indeed evidently the case that this debate were of such monumental influence and importance, it would indeed warrant mention in the Foucault article (even though it would still need an explanation).

Tastyummy 20:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] His fourth work.

"Some believe that a fourth volume, dealing with the Christian era, was almost complete at the time of Foucault's death. Foucault scholar and friend, Arnold Davidson, has denied that an intended fourth and fifth volume in the series had ever been written."

I didn't want to edit this before discussing it. In Religion and culture: Michel Foucault selected and edited by Jeremy R. Carrette. The author states on page two that, "In his lecture series form 1979 to 1980 Foucault extended his analysis of government to its 'wider sense of techniques and procedures designed to direct the behaviour of men', which involved a new consideration of the 'examination of conscience' and confession in early Christian literature. These themes of early Christian literature seemed to dominate Foucault's work, alongside his study of Greek and Roman literature, until the end of his life. However, Foucault's death from AIDS left the work incomplete, and the planned fourth volume of his History of Sexuality on Christianity was never published". The author goes on to say in the footnotes that "The fourth volume was to be entitled Les aveux de la chair (Confessions of the Flesh). The volume was almost complete before Foucault's death and a copy of it is privately held in the Foucault archive. It cannot be published under the restrictions of the Foucault's estate." The author goes on to include material from Foucault's work in his book in Part III and the following are the title heads.

Part III Christianity, sexuality, and the self: fragments of an unpublished volume

TWELVE On the government of the living (1980)
THIRTEEN About the beginning of the hermeneutics of the self (1980)
FOURTEEN Sexuality and solitude (1980)
FIFTEEN The Battle for chastity (1982)

1. Paperback: 217 pages
2. Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 17, 1999)
3. Language: English
4. ISBN: 041592362X

http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Culture-M-Foucault/dp/041592362X/sr=8-2/qid=1158193047/ref=sr_1_2/103-3716621-7326227?ie=UTF8&s=books —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kungfumoo (talk • contribs).

So fix it! Please go ahead and make an edit that clarifies the facts of the matter. We'd need a better citation to substantiate the "Arnold Davidson" claim, and it's not very important to retain the claim in the face of the published drafts. -- Rbellin|Talk 00:37, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] garbage about MF spreading AIDS

We've been through this debate before and it was decided that it was not notable. How many times must we cover the same territory? The unsourced comment that Richard hamilton made some homophobic remarks is really not encyclopedic. It adds nothing to a study of Foucault. I have been reading Foucault and works about Foucault for over 15 years and have never once seen a serious scholar make this claim or address this claim in any serious way. It is simply not a part of the scholarly discussion of Foucault's work or its reception. As far as I can tell, all we have is unsourced speculation from a "Richard Hamilton" -- presumably the "Social Misconstruction of Reality" guy -- portrayed as if it were the opinion of Foucault's critics in general. The speculation itself is completely bogus as even the supporters of hamilton are forced to acknowledge, including the information that the claim lacks evidence and is "implausible" (I would say, impossible) given that Foucault died in 1984, before much was known about AIDS at all. Why is it necessary to include speculation from one guy (without a freakin' citation!) that we acknowledge is without evidence or plausibility? And then attribute that speculation to "conservative detractors" in general? I haven't read Hamilton's book; it is possible that he makes this bizarre claim in there - from the reviews all I can tell is that he does not seem to have understood Foucault's Discipline and Punish. But Hamilton's a scholar, from what I can tell; sociology professor at Ohio State - it seems "implausible" that he would make such an incendiary and homophobic claim in an academic work that he expects people to take seriously. If he does make the claim, quote the passage here in the discussion page and let's talk about it. If there is evidence this claim is serious and that it is taken seriously, then perhaps we can include something here; otherwise, I don't see the point of a passage on a page about foucault dedicated to exposing the fact that a relatively unknown scholar said something stupid, implausible, and lacking in evidence in a book that nobody has really read.

By the way, it is poor form to switch from a named account to an anonymous ip just for the purpose of revert warring or evading the 3RR. It is even poorer form to charge people with "vandalism" for making substantive edits (even deletions) that are well explained. So, Mr. 208.100.228.2, if you are Timeloss, log in as Timeloss; if you are someone else, please get a login, and please stop edit warring. Discuss your proposed change here, as I have. I will not revert again as I am at my limit, but we need to resolve this.--csloat 07:28, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Foucault and HIV/AIDS source

I still don't think its notable enough to include in the article, but I think I've stumbled upon the source for all the rumours about Foucault spreading HIV. The person who is well documented making these claims, and internationally known, is Camille Paglia.

Camille Paglia: People say this was not true, blah blah blah. I'm sorry, I happen to believe it. This information came to me very reliably. There were only two people between me and Foucault. Foucault told a famous gay writer, who told my close friend, who told me, that when he realized he had AIDS, he was so angry that he determined he would take as many with him as he could. He would take as many to death as he could. That he deliberately went to bars and would deliberately have sex with people and not tell them and try actively to take them with him.

Source: http://privat.ub.uib.no/bubsy/PagliaAIDS.htm

Presumably she wrote or spoke about this somewhere else as well because the interviewer seemed to be already aware of her comments.--Agnaramasi 16:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

"famous gay"

"close friend"

Paglia is one step away from E!TV.

This search yields more info in the form of an article by Page DuBois that mentions it. Apparently this started with Miller's biography rather than with Camille, but the latter was all too willing to help spread the ludicrous rumor. This would have been 1983, when the disease was barely understood. On Foucault's deathbed, according to Defert, his doctors were still saying "if it's AIDS..." Eribon writes that Foucault suspected but did not know that he had AIDS -- "He never knew the nature of this suffocating illness. Even in the hospital he was making enthusiastic plans for a trip to Andalusia." I haven't read Miller's bio, but according to O'Farrell's (also found through google books), "Even Miller has to admit that he believes the rumor about Foucault's alleged behavior to be 'essentially false' (Miller, 1993: 375)." O'Farrell cites Michael Bartos: "The rumour that Foucault had gone to American bath-houses to deliberately spread HIV should be seen for what it is: a commonplace of the demonisation of people with HIV and an iteration of the standard myths of the malevolent importation of HIV/AIDS." (1997:687-8). OFarrells book is Michel Foucault, SAGE 2005. Sara Mills writes "These stories do seem to be simply part of a fictional backlash response to homosexuality and bear little resemblance to reality." (Michel Foucault, Routledge, 2003, p. 19). There is more for the enterprising researcher to follow up on -- there is more written about this than I had imagined, but looking through google books, almost every mention of the rumor discounts it. Truly, it does not make a lot of sense. And the most likely first source for the rumor does not believe it himself -- according to Jonathan Dollmore (Textual Practice, 9:1 p. 42): "The rumour that Foucault deliberately tried to infect others is discounted; although circulating for almost a decade, Miller finds no evidence for it." Apparently Miller wrote that the rumor was circulating in 1983; this too does not make sense. Among whom was this rumor spreading, one must ask? But of course by stringing together out of context quotes from Foucault about sex and death ("Sex is worth dying for") and placing them in a context where a lot more is known about AIDS than 1983, Foucault is imagined as this predatory killer. It's a vicious way to discredit a scholar. And it's a fascinating example of the academic telephone game. Miller states the rumor and immediately states that it is false, but others reproduce the rumor, citing Miller without noting that he also found no evidence for it. As for Paglia, I find her utterly delusional, and this is far from the only example of that.--csloat 19:38, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

These rumous are very interesting, and very dubious indeed. I think its especially telling that its not necessary "conservative detractors" but, in the case of Paglia, an anti-Foucaultian feminist critic that spreads them...--Agnaramasi 22:46, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Prima facie, it appears to be a rumor and nothing more.Vector4F 16:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Power/Knowlege?

Most of us know his theory of Power/Knowledge. However, shouldn't there be something more about the book, than just the title? At least a link to an external site that explains it a bit?

If a link is need, here's a good one: http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Speech/rccs/theory54.htm

I just wanted to ask before doing it myself and being considered a vandalist for doing so. 65.23.211.62 23:18, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

No, feel free to be bold and edit the article! --Robdurbar 09:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misleading phrasing about postmodernism

Hullo -- In the introductory paragraphs MF's relationship to postmodernism (he is not "postmodern" in any well-articulated sense of the word, but it often considered as such) is presently correctly but in an order likely to confuse a reader who is new to Foucault. Suggestion (if no one objects after a while I'll change it):

During the 1960s, Foucault was often associated with the structuralist movement. Although he was initially happy with this description, he later emphasised his distance from the structuralist approach, and he always unequivocally rejected the 'post-structuralist' and 'postmodernist' labels. Nonetheless, his work is often described as post-structuralist or postmodernist by commentators and critics.

Sounds good? 140.247.163.163 08:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not only a philosopher

Foucault was both a philosopher and an historian. He spent half his life buried in historical archives, was utterly concerned with historical method, and had at least as much impact on historians as he did on philosophy. His archival research was concerned with many other research areas than philosophy, and his interest in these areas was not merely philosophical. It is diminishing Foucault's contribution as an historian not to name him as such in the first line of the entry. The first line should read: "Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian." FNMF 15:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I was in two minds about editing that because I think the claim needs to be discussed, not least because Foucault himself explicitly denied, more than once, that he was a historian. None of his works, as far as I know, are commonly classified as works of history; I doubt if they'd commonly be found on the syllabus of history courses. That he enjoyed working with archival sources, and that he has things to say of relevance to historians, is undeniable. The latter, at least, is true of many philosophers. Is there any citation which can be provided confirming that Foucault is a historian, or mentioning him in a list of historians? I only have cites to the contrary: Foucault, intro to volume 2 of his History of Sexuality; Megill, "Reception of Foucault by Historians"... KD Tries Again 15:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)KD

A number of points can easily be made in relation to the above queries:

• He wrote a book called The History of Madness in the Classical Age (translated as Madness and Civilisation).
• He wrote a book called The History of Sexuality.
• He wrote a book called The Birth of the Clinic.
• He wrote a book about the history of imprisonment.
• He gave his chair the title "History of the Systems of Thought."
• No doubt he was not a conventional historian. Neither was he a conventional philosopher (especially according to the current Wikipedia definition of philosophy). But being an unconventional historian is not an argument against describing him as an historian. If he's not an historian, he's not a philosopher either.
• It is extremely common for his works to be studied in history courses, and he has been extremely influential in the study of history.

If that is not enough, here is a quotation from Edward Said that sums up the issue eloquently:

For one, he was the most wide-ranging in his learning: at once the most concrete and historical, he was as well the most radical in theoretical investigation. [...] He was neither simply a historian, nor a philosopher, nor a literary critic, but all of those things together, and then more still. [...] In short, Foucault was a hybrid writer, dependent on—but in his writing going beyond—the genres of fiction, history, sociology, political science, and philosophy. [...] This is by no means to say that Foucault's histories, for example, have no historical validity or accuracy, but it is to say that—like the other works I have mentioned—the form and concern of these histories as artifacts require principal attention as self-aware, mixed-genre performances in the present, full of learning, quotation, and invention. (Edward W. Said, "Michel Foucault, 1926–1984," in Jonathan Arac (ed.), After Foucault: Humanistic Knowledge, Postmodern Challenges [New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988], pp. 2–3).

Note that Said's implication here is that Foucault can be classed as, at least, a philosopher, an historian, and a literary critic. Note that the quotation says that Foucault was all these things and more. Note that it refers to his "histories," arguing that while they have historical validity and accuracy, they also require other kinds of attention to be properly understood. If Foucault wished to qualify his status as historian, I do not believe this qualification applies in any way that means an encyclopaedia should not categorise him as an historian. Just as, for example, even though Nietzsche or Derrida (or Foucault) might not quite describe themselves as philosophers, this obviously does not mean an encyclopaedia should not describe them as such. To not be limited to a category, to exceed a category, is not at all the same thing as a decision by an encyclopaedia to exclude someone from that category. FNMF 04:42, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

To the above can be added citations from Foucault himself. A typical pronouncement of Foucault's position on his work as an historian is the following:

I would like to write the history of this prison, with all the political investments of the body that it gathers together in its closed architecture. Why? Simply because I am interested in the past? No, if one means by that writing a history of the past in terms of the present. Yes, if one means writing the history of the present. (Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 30–31).

Again: Foucault is concerned here with the way he is not a conventional historian, but is quite explicit that he is a writer of history. Given Foucault's range of interests and methods, and the discipline and commitment with which he explored the depths of historical archives, it is clear that there is no way of claiming that he is somehow not an historian, nor does it make any sense to argue that his work fits better simply within philosophy. He cites obscure historical references far more often than he cites renowned philosophers (which is not at all to deny his philosophical significance). As I stated originally, Foucault was both a philosopher and historian (and more than this). The opening line of an encyclopaedia is not the place to contest this designation, nor the place to argue for one over the other. FNMF 11:51, 17 March 2007 (UTC)