TRANSCRIPT OF FOUCAULT AND ANARCHY
28 July 2000
http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/Forum/
A recording of the famous BBC Documentary on Foucault
was shown as a popular and accessible introduction to
the ideas of this influential philosopher.
Debate followed on the relevance and consequence of
these ideas for anarchism.
The following items are a:
1) A transcript of the content of the video,
supported by some more detailed philosophical and
biographic background.
2) A record of some key points in the subsequent
debate.
An Outline of the ideas of Foucault
(as presented in BBC Doc 1992)
Interpretation heavily influenced by Millers book The
Passion of Michael Foucault.
Foucaults Biographic details Upper Middle Class
background. Son of Surgeon.
As a student was tormented and suicidal, attributed to
his emerging homosexuality and Catholic upbringing
(though by this time he had rejected Christianity).
Develops interest in suffering and sadism. Briefly
hospitalised after breakdown.
Formative experiences seem to shape his subsequent
philosophical quest. Though it was noted that
Foucaults life defies pseudo-Freudian biographies
and remains enigmatic.
Seeking to out radicalise the Satrean generation he
becomes Frances leading left wing academic. But
constantly flees the limelight, and attempts to give
voice to the mad, criminal, delinquent and
perverted, to all outsiders within society (pun
intentional, and very Foucauldian).
In late 1968 returned to Paris to take part in the
political militancy of the period.
His life also becomes a philosophical experiment, a
quest for limits and whats beyond them. Always feels
on the edge of some discovery or revelation but never
quite achieves it.
Experiments with narcotic, erotic, sadomasochistic and
aesthetic experiences and allegedly has a Near Death
Experience, all of which he says transgress the
limits of normality and social conditioning. Most
powerful experiences said to be with SM, LSD and NDE.
This intensifies in last years.
In 1980 diagnosed as having contracted AIDS. With the
lack of evidence of that period, refuses to believe
that AIDS exists thinking it an hysterical, homophobic
social construction. Refuses treatment and allegedly
carries on with unprotected sex after infection. Dies
in 1984.
Variously claimed as most important post-war European
philosopher or charlatan.
Along with Derrida and Barthes becomes the formative
influence on post-structuralism and its later
development into so-called post-modernism.
Philosophy and Politics
Philosophy based on rejection of bourgeois notions of
normalcy and rationality, which are seen as control
mechanism within society. Seeks to find the source of
these notions and go beyond them. Believes this can be
done partly by analysis but crucially requires
empirical experience. Transgression can take us beyond
the constraints of normality, and perhaps allow us to
see it from a new angle.
The purpose of this seems to be to explore the way we
are, how our society operates, whether this situation
is desirable, and if not what we can do to change it
and ourselves. Academic philosophy had become over
concerned with concepts, logic and language and had
forgotten the questions of our place in the world and
how we should live. We need to analyse aspects of
daily life not concepts. In particular philosophy
needed to be more politicised and psychologicised.
Freud and Marx were an early influence.
He becomes especially interested in outsiders and
disparaging of experts within the system. He
emphasises first hand experience. Attacking the
Satrean school as elitist he attempts to use his
influence less to publicise his own ideas and more to
shine a light on the victims of society: the mad,
criminals, perverts and outsiders of all kinds.
Outsiders who come as near as possible to standing
outside the system and its conditioning, but are
equally conditioned in the sense of being mirror
images of the bourgeois European. Influenced by this
insight, and structuralist notions, he attempts to
analyse the categories of, and particularly the
borderlines between, mad-sane, good-evil,
healthy-sick.
His generation attempts to be more radical in its
critique than Sartre and the Marxist Existentialists,
while also incorporating an aesthetic and even
spiritual dimension to life. This generation was
greatly influenced by the Surrealists. Especially the
last performance of Artaud, which blurred the
boundaries between art and insanity and emphasised
passionate subjectivity over calm objectivity. Most
importantly uncertainty became a guiding principle and
the rejection of dogma.
Development of his Ideas
Doctoral Thesis Madness and Civilisation. 1961-65
Debunks notion that there exists a referent of the
category called Mad. What does it mean? There is no
general definition. Some people may suffer from mental
damage and harmful dysfunctions of various kinds, but
does the popular notion of sane vs. insane mean
anything? Is sane just a European bourgeois mindset?
Was the exclusion of the insane the price of
creating modern civilisation?
Also rejects the liberal idea that the Mad were once
treated badly and cast out and are now treated more
humanely within caring institutions.
The Mad were once seen as visionaries, geniuses or
powerful people beyond good and evil, but now
stigmatised as disabled, powerless, and rejected by
mainstream society. In many ways the Mad are now worse
off. The more we care and intervene the more damage we
do it seems. Is this progress?
Perhaps madness was, in part, a closer vision than
reason of the way things really were?
Archaeology of Knowledge. 1966
He examines our normal concepts in terms of form of
structuralist linguistics and the psychology of a
conditioned mindset. Explores nature of culture.
The Power System (a web of political and social
relations) shapes our civilisation and this shapes
everything else.
But power is not (entirely) hierarchical anymore, it
is local. An automatic, holistic system based on the
interplay of patterns of power in and between
Institutions: the Family, Work, Business, the State,
Academia, Culture etc. In contemporary society the
influence of science, bourgeois professional experts
and Academia is paramount (more so than Capital??).
But ultimately no one is in control, every one is its
victim. I some sense we are all inmates in a vast
lunatic asylum.
At root this could be seen as founded in the social
interaction of free individuals, and thus reformable.
But Foucault is pessimistic, the individual (the
subject or self) is a conceptual product rooted in
language, which itself is a product of social power
relations. There is no free self to act differently.
We are caught in a loop!
Reason cant help either, it is also a product of our
language and so based on the order of our society. Is
our society rational? If not where does Reason stand?
Was it just the mode of behaviour of those who had
power in society (not least to lock up those who
behaved differently).
To counter claims by materialists that reality is
the guarantor of Reason and Science (at least in
part), he argued that material reality was shaped by
our conceptual schemes, giving examples such as the
effect on our physiology and bodies of our dietary and
exercise habits, and the human impact on the planet,
which were all determined by our ideas and their
relations with each other.
In Tunisia during May 68, but later returns.
Advocating political militancy and prison reform. At
times jokingly(?) calls himself a nihilist or an
anarchist when asked his political beliefs.
70s Modification of this View: the Genealogical Turn
(even more pessimism)
Rejects the structuralist notions in favour of the
post-structuralism for which he is well known.
Genealogy replaces Archaeology. Very influenced by
Nietzsche. We cannot stand outside of the structure we
want to analyse because we are part of it (be it
society, our selves or language and logic). Detached
analysis, insight, free thought are all impossible!
Whats more there is no question of foundational
sources or origins to discover, or corresponding
progress to implement (i.e. the political system is
not, as some had claimed entirely a reflection of
family relations. The opposite was also true).
There was not even any purpose or meaning to it all.
Everything was randomly constructed by historical
events some of these were useful others not.
Darwinian influence. A kind of natural selection of
concepts and values. But this didnt imply our
civilisation was the most evolved or adapted (as
some later conservative post-modernists would claim)
we may be in an evolutionary cul de sac from which
we need to escape. But is this possible?
He still retains the desire for a better society
however. A contradictory intellectual tension develops
between the notion of the inescapably conditioned
nature of society and his desire to transcend these
limits. Perhaps Foucaults disrespect for classical
Reason allowed him to accept this contradiction.
His transgressional experiments increase.
Discipline and Punish 1975
Turns his attention from the Mad to the Criminal
His book opens by contrasting the medieval torturing
to death of a criminal with with the mind-numbing and
soul-destroying regime of discipline, control and
surveillance imposed in modern prisons. He refuses
either to support the latter or denounce the former.
Both are manifestations of resentment (as Nietzsche
said) and tell us something about human nature.
Prisons are about revenge not reform, the humanist
myth of rehabilitation is just a self-delusory
rationalisation. If anything it shows we have become
more hypocritical as our surface morality
increasingly hides our deeper motives. Is this
progress? As with asylums is humanism humane?
Further more the reason for both forms of revenge is
punishment, which has the aim of control. But
underlying resentment is the jealousy of someone who
can escape the limitations imposed on self and others
in the name of order. The bourgeois drive for order
and control is exposed again.
But the thesis is widened. The Prison becomes a
metaphor for society as a whole. At the same time that
hierarchical power has declined local systemic power
has increased.
We all live in a prison. More concrete examples are
given, as the regimes in schools, factories and
hospitals are compared to the prison system. Foucault
calls this Panopticism (the all seeing eye model of
the State) after Jeremy Benthams Utilitarian
Panopticon prison plan.
Dominant cultural notions like normal, healthy,
good, right and proper are exposed as propaganda
terms for imposing a bourgeois system of order on
society.
After writing this escapes France and immigrates to
America. Which he believes to be one of the few places
on Earth with any potential for a better society.
The American Phase 1975-1984
He is warmly welcomed in the States where his
libertarian ideas are welcomed by radical academics.
Sometimes authentically (though perhaps sometimes as
an instrument against Marxism). The beginnings of
American Post Modernism (which some see over
simplistically as recuperated Post-Structuralism).
Death Valley, Spring 1975
Foucault and a friend drive to Death Valley, the
hottest desert on Earth, listen to Stockhausen and
take LSD. This is later claimed by Foucault to be a
turning point in his life and a major step forward.
The disorganisation of thoughts produced is said to
give him a perspective outside of all his social,
linguistic and rational conditioning.
At the same time his philosophy shifts from a social
critique to a radical examination of the nature of
mind, self, life and death.
He concludes that everything is a socially constructed
illusion. There is no human nature or even a true
personal self, no meaning to life, no independent
truth at all. Everything is constructed by us. We need
this contructedness to function at all. And we are all
unique and complex beings situated in our own unique
and complex set of relationships.
More optimistically he also comes to believe we can
stand outside of this construction (even if only
momentarily) under certain conditions. Once we have
done this we are never quite the same again or see the
world in the same way. This means we have the
potential to change our selves and our relations, and
perhaps eventually society too. Though later
interpreters of Foucault are more pessimistic seeing
personal and close interpersonal reforms as the only
sort possible.
Foucault now focuses on finding the conditions for
transcendence of constructions.
History of Sexuality. 1976-1984
Experiments in Gay Culture and SM practises.
Explores the socially constructed nature of sexuality
and its role in shaping society in turn. Sex is seen
as a powerful force in society (a major link in the
loop perhaps?), but he rejects conventional and
Freudian studies of it. He denies that sexuality is
repressed because this is essentialist, it is only
constructed (and constructive). There is no sexually
repressed society (he claims) only rigid or open
societies.
Also develops a wider interest in Californian
counterculture. Its excesses, frivolity and plurality
of contradictory belief systems are seen as
liberating. Multiple belief meant you were no longer
imprisoned by any one ideology. These were the grounds
for the potential to liberation and self (re)creation.
His three volume History of Sexuality starts as a
description of the cultural conditioning of sexuality
and becomes a study of the cultural conditioning of
self.
In his final years he promotes the Aesthetics of
Existence. An ideology based on the breaking away
from all conditioning through transgressive
practices , the detachment from social convention
(including morality, which is seen as a form of
oppression) and the subsequent creation of a new self
and pattern of relationships.
Life and self becomes a work of art, and has many
interpretations, all of which are true. The net result
is a culture of liberation and becoming, leading to
the invention of a new form of existence and self. But
despite this optimism this remained theoretical and a
quest that was never fully achieved. However he later
claims, with wry irony, that the nearest he came this
was in the state of bliss produced when he nearly dies
in a car accident.
In the 80s increases his immersion in the
countercultural and sexual underground.
His explorations are halted by the contraction of AIDS
and he dies in 1984.
DEBATE:
A Critique of the video and its interpretation of
Foucault It makes him look too much of a
counterculturalist, or pop psychologist, when in
reality he was a serious intellectual concerned with
language theory and conceptual systems. It over
popularised, trivialised and simplified his ideas.
This was acknowledged but allowances were suggested as
it was only a primer to the complex philosophical (and
often technical) theories of Foucault.
The critique of Foucaults ideas included the fact
that he undervalues reality and material
consequences, his defence against this is not
convincing, material reality is not (totally) socially
constructed. A long, though sometimes amusing, debate
occurred about the nature of social construction and
whether our chairs existed.
Most of us concluded he was too abstract and
intellectualised, though he had his defenders who
claimed we were being over simplistic.
Similar he may have taken his anti-essentialism a bit
too far (most dramatically in denying the existence of
his AIDS).
Despite this no other good arguments against his basic
notions were raised with people either agreeing or
staying silent. Some offered first hand testimony of
the institutions Foucault describes confirming his
perceptions of them.
So what were the consequences for anarchism?
It was generally concluded that ideological forms of
anarchism and political ideologies in general (from
Marxism to Fascism) were redundant, if Foucaults
ideas were correct. They would do more harm than good,
even if they were successful, due to their false
universalistic concepts. There could be no general
solutions. Classical anarchism with its notions of an
inherently benign human nature, a revolutionary
subject (usually the working class) and grand
revolutionary solutions was particularly at risk.
Another problem for classical anarchism was that it
focused exclusively on removing hierarchical power
relations. If Foucault is right then hierarchical
power relations were on the way out anyway, and being
replaced by what he calls local power relations. So if
anarchism was successful it might just become part of
this process and lead to a society of totalised local
power relations. I.e. a free but conventional and
conformist collective. This would explain the
conservative mindset of some anarchists. A few
examples were given.
Those who wanted to retain classical (or any
ideological) anarchism, as a credible belief system,
had to refute these criticism or take on the even
harder task of refuting Foucault himself. No one put
themselves forward on this line unfortunately.
Though some called for a showing of the debate between
Chomsky and Foucault, which we shall endeavour to
find.
However some of us thought Foucauldian theory
strengthen a different, more contemporary form of
anarchism. What might be called neo-anarchism (as in
the movements around May 68), Post-Modern anarchism
or post-anarchism anarchy (after Hakim Bey). This
would involve a non-ideological form of anarchism
based on suspension of (absolute) belief and driven
only by the desire for freedom at any cost. A movement
towards political anarchy that was pragmatic and
pluralistic in all its methods, theories and
solutions. Striving for an anarchist society that was
itself pluralistic and diverse rather than uniform,
with good intentions but no preplanning or universal
vision. And one that took the overthrow of local power
structures as seriously as hierarchical ones
(something that has indeed been the case since the
6os amongst enlightened anarchists, and was not
unknown to some traditional anarchists such as
Bakunin). Such an anarchism could be seen as the most
realistic political manifestation of Foucaults thesis
and could take many of his ideas onboard. Which in
certain respects were similar to Situationism (though
probably more intelligent). In many ways its
psychological constructivism is in fact more
encouraging for anarchists than faith in human
benevolence.
It was questioned whether Foucault was an
individualist. The only reply to this seems to be yes
but not as we knew them. The later Foucault believed
the political focus was ourselves, and so the
individual, but didnt really believe in the baggage
that normally goes with this: atomic egoism, free
will, and essentialism. The individual was more of an
active node in society for him, one that creates it
but is also created by it. Perhaps in some ways he was
like Stirner, and believed in a creative nothing.
Foucault had held that resistance was impossible from
outside of the system, an anti-system movement would
either be impotent (if it could really exist at all)
or be recuperated back into it. He believed resistance
was possible within the system but only from situated
individuals who could only act in isolation.
Due to this it was claimed that Foucault had refuted
the possibility of revolutions, utopias or anykind of
large scale social change.
It was retorted that Foucault did believe in social
change (and perhaps utopias) but through the agency of
micro-relationships rather than mass movements.
In some way Foucault could be seen as reversing the
Bookchinite chasm. For him it is the lifestyle
anarchist that is the key to revolution and the
social anarchist who is the impotent
counter-revolutionary!
The main problem identified was that if this is so
what overcomes the isolated and local nature of such
reformist changes. How do you get a revolution
without large scale social action? But this seems to
be a relic of Marxist thinking. The key is the
original critique of Foucault. He forgets about
material reality and its consequences.
The fact that we are interconnected by sharing the
same material world means any local changes will have
effects on the larger system. Particular in light of
complexity theory. All that then remains is to achieve
a consciousness of this. Or to put it another way, to
generate a culture, albeit a polychromatic, polyphonic
one.
A degree of materiality also allows us to cautiously
return to Reason. But perhaps of a different kind.
Perhaps we need a neo-Hegelian reflexive concept of
Reason, that explores the dialectical nature of the
loops we are trapped in, and our points of agency
within it. Perhaps even a heavily reconstructed
anarcho-marxism might appeal to some?
But even with or without a evidence of a material
basis there is plenty of evidence of interconnectivity
that indicates something is doing the job (if not
physical laws then synchronicity, the logos or
just the matrix!).
A final problem with Foucault is his exclusive
concentration on local power structures, the mirror
image of the problem with classical anarchism. He
acknowledges that not everyone has equal power, and
that hierarchy still exists, but doesnt address this
problem. Perhaps this is merely due to his desire to
correct an imbalanced view, or because he thinks
hierarchies are dissolving on their own. But a serious
political movement can not be as narrow or as
optimistic as this. Hierarchies still need to be
challenged and so the more traditional modes of
anarchism have their place still. Though perhaps the
nature and methodology of Revolution needs to be
modified somewhat. A million insurrections rather than
one?
=====
"The world is the natural setting of and field for all my thoughts and all
my explicit perceptions. Truth does not 'inhabit' only 'the inner man' or
more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world and only in the
world does he know himself."
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945
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