Foucault for Architects

Gordana Fontana-Giusti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135010089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

From the mid-1960s onwards Michel Foucault has had a significant impact on diverse aspects of culture, knowledge and arts including architecture and its critical discourse. The implications for architecture have been wide-ranging. His archaeological and genealogical approaches to knowledge have transformed architectural history and theory, while his attitude to arts and aesthetics led to a renewed focus on the avant-garde.

Prepared by an architect, this book offers an excellent entry point into the remarkable work of Michel Foucault, and provides a focused introduction suitable for architects, urban designers, and students of architecture.

Foucault's crucial juxtaposition of space, knowledge and power has unlocked novel spatial possibilities for thinking about design in architecture and urbanism. While the philosopher's ultimate attention on the issues of body and sexuality has defined our understanding of the possibilities and limits of human condition and its relation to architecture.

The book concentrates on a number of historical and theoretical issues often addressed by Foucault that have been grouped under the themes of archaeology, enclosure, bodies, spatiality and aesthetics in order to examine and demonstrate their relevancy for architectural knowledge, its history and its practice.

CHAPTER 1

Positioning

1.1 Context

Foucault was a thinker with wide academic interests that spanned from philosophy to psychology and further into the history of science. He read histories of medical and social sciences and his passion was linked to literary and political discourse. This made him a unique thinker whose work was at the time bridging unusually between separate aspects of life, knowledge and art.

Paul-Michel Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in Poitiers, where his early years were marked by war, psychological difficulties and certain eccentricities, yet intellectually, he excelled from a young age. Having moved to Paris in 1946 to study at the École Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, Foucault encountered the philosophies of Hegel and Marx. In the École, Hegel was studied with great attention through the work of Jean Hyppolite (1907–68) and Marx through the reading of Louis Althusser (1918–90). Both of these made a strong impression on Foucault. His two early works, ‘Introduction’ to Dream and Existence by Ludwig Binswanger and Mental Illness and Psychology were written in 1954 in response to this context. At the time, the phenomenologist of perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–61), who was linked to Jean-Paul Sartre, also taught here in rue d’Ulm.

Sartre (1905–80) had no direct sway on Foucault. Nevertheless, the thought of Sartre, as the thinker who marked the French philosophical and existentialist scene in the 1960s, persisted throughout most of Foucault’s life. Foucault shared with Sartre a dislike of bourgeois society and a sympathy for groups perceived as being at the margins: artists, prisoners and homosexuals. Philosophically, Foucault rejected what he saw as Sartre’s emphasis on the subject (‘transcendental narcissism’ as he called it), thus discarding Sartre’s role as the ‘universal intellectual’. When asked to comment on Sartre and the difference between Foucault’s generation and that of his predecessor, Foucault stressed the importance of his generation’s discovery of ‘the eagerness for concepts’ and above all for ‘systems’, and the departure from the idea of ‘meaning’ (Quinzaine litteraire 15 April 1966).

Central to Foucault’s enthusiasm and appreciation for systems was the emergence of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s work, namely La pensée sauvage (1962), dispelling all previous myths about meaning. According to Foucault, Lévi-Strauss demonstrated about societies what Lacan demonstrated in relation to the unconscious – that ‘meaning’ was

a sort of surface effect, a shimmer, a foam, and that what ran through us, underlay us, and what was before us, what sustained us in time and space, was the system (Quinzaine litteraire 15 April 1966).

This system mentioned here by Foucault implies the idea of a spatial distribution, as every system is spatially organised. Foucault drew parallels between Lévi-Strauss and Lacan, leading him to point out the relevance of Lacan’s work in determining the relationship between structures and systems of language. The French psychoanalyst Lacan argued that what spoke through the patient and his neurosis was not the subject but the acquired system of language, leading Foucault to state that ‘before any human existence, there would already be a discursive knowledge, a system that we will rediscover’ (Eribon 1993: 161). This system of language, which Foucault identified as discursive knowledge, was thus acknowledged as primary. For Foucault, the underlying system thus came first, while our process of the discovery of a discursive knowledge is a consequential result.

Foucault’s work benefited from Georges Canguilhem’s contribution to the history and philosophy of science. Canguilhem (1904–95) was Foucault’s mentor and the supervisor of his doctoral thesis on the history of madness. He remained one of Foucault’s most important lifelong supporters. Canguilhem’s critical studies of biology provided a model for what Foucault was to achieve in the history of human sciences. Based on the work of Gaston Bachelard, Canguilhem’s approach gave Foucault a sense of the discontinuities and ruptures of science and an understanding of the historical role of concepts as independent of comprehension based on appearances. Canghuilhem’s discourse revealed the inconsistencies of scientific knowledge and critically reviewed the role of concepts, showing evidence that concepts are determined by the conditions of a particular historic period. This approach remained central to Foucault, who reinforced it by deploying the linguistics and psychoanalysis developed by Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Lacan respectively.

Based on the work of Gaston Bachelard, Canguilhem’s approach gave Foucault a sense of the discontinuities and ruptures of science and an understanding of the historical role of concepts as independent of comprehension based on appearances.

On a different level, Foucault was fascinated by French avant-garde literature and art, especially by the works of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet and Pierre Klossowski (Foucault 1977). Here, Foucault found concrete examples of the experiential and existential concerns in their most direct appearance. He was particularly interested in the ‘liminal experiences’ of human behaviour, where the usual categories of intelligibility begin to fall apart. This suggested to Foucault the review of concepts and knowledge from another angle – from a different set of experiences.

These diverse intellectual, artistic and literary milieus provided the background for the critical history of thought and the ‘archaeological’ and ‘genealogical’ approaches deployed in Foucault’s historical critiques. His first major work was Madness and Civilisation (1961), which originated in the study of psychology and in visiting St Anne, a mental hospital in Paris linked to Lacan. Written during Foucault’s post-graduate years (1955–9) while he held a series of diplomatic and educational posts in Sweden, Poland and Germany, Madness and Civilisation is a study of the emergence of the concept of ‘mental illness’ in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Foucault made a case against the irrefutable scientific truth of the time that madness was a mental illness. His second book, The Birth of the Clinic (1963), continued this questioning by critically addressing the emergence of clinical practice in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century.

Uppsala – Foucault sitting at the table in his apartment.

Following the publication of these books, Foucault became established; he maintained a number of academic positions at French universities throughout the 1960s and gained widespread recognition after the success of The Order of Things (1966), which made him a household name and an iconic figure in France. The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), written during Foucault’s stay in Tunisia, followed. Written as a methodological exposé, the book articulates the implicit historical approach (‘archaeology’) used in Madness and Civilisation, The Birth of the Clinic and The Order of Things. In the same year, Foucault was elected to the prestigious Collège de France, where he was the Professor of the History of Systems of Thought until his death.

Foucault was politically engaged at different points in his life. His early involvement with the political establishment started with the 1963 Commission that led to the reforms by the Ministry of Education in 1965. Foucault’s assistance responded to the state’s need for an activist intellectual to take part in the reforms and the students’ needs for an academic who could articulate their discontent about the discrepancy between the elite Grandes Écoles and the universities of mass education. He became increasingly politically active in the 1970s, aiming to materialise some of his more radical ideas.

Foucault’s reputation amongst his peers was at best ambiguous. He enjoyed respect and friendship from some colleagues, whilst others held him in suspicion. His eccentricity, plus his resistance to abiding by the rules and conforming to the fixed boundaries of disciplines and practices, contributed to this perception.

Foucault’s activism after the demonstrations of 1968 is characterised by the disrupted relations between the state and intellectuals, particularly in establishing the new university at Vincennes. This period included stand-offs with the government and physical encounters with the police (Eribon 1993: 201–11). Foucault’s role was to propose new academic staff and he took this as a chance to alter the French intellectual scene. Well-known successful candidates proposed by Foucault included Michel Serres, Judith Miller, Alan Badiou and Gilles Deleuze, who joined after Foucault’s departure (Eribon 1993: 203).

Foucault’s role was to propose new academic staff and he took this as a chance to alter the French intellectual scene. Well-known successful candidates proposed by Foucault included Michel Serres, Judith Miller, Alan Badiou and Gilles Deleuze, who joined after Foucault’s departure.

Foucault was a founder of the Groupe d’information sur les prisons (Prison Information Group) and protested on behalf of marginalised groups. His Discipline and Punish (1975), a genealogical study of modern imprisonment, was set in opposition to torture or killing. While acknowledging the element of improvement, Foucault’s book emphasised how such reform became a means of more effective discipline and how this new mode of punishment became the model for control of an entire society, including factories and hospitals. Foucault’s dual concept of ‘power / knowledge’ showed that at least for the study of human beings, the goals of power and the goals of knowledge cannot be separated.

Foucault lectured outside France, in Europe, Japan and the United States, including regular teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. His final works arose from the exploration of the ancient world that he undertook later on in life while researching the history of sexuality. The History of Sexuality had been planned as a multi-volume work. The first volume, Introduction, came out in 1976 as Volonté de savoir (Foucault 1987a), while the planned second volume, The Confessions of the Flesh, has never been published. The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self (Volumes 2 and 3) appeared instead in 1984 (Foucault 1987b and 1990).

In parallel with the last two books of The History of Sexuality, the nature of Foucault’s political involvement had changed. He became interested in the possibility of the state playing a specific role in promoting people’s happiness. This kind of thinking involved themes centred on the manner in which individuals form themselves and focused on the investigation of the aspects of freedom and the self. The reasons for this turn and redirection of Foucault’s discourse were many, including the time spent at Berkeley. California was a place in a series of ‘other places’ such as Uppsala, Warsaw, Hamburg and Tunisia that acted as catalysts for his work.

The initial support that Foucault had in 1981 for the French Socialist party in government was short-lived. He proclaimed his dissatisfaction with the government’s lack of consideration for the problem of prisons (Revue de l’Université Bruxelles 113, 1984: 37). The ineffectiveness of political action resulted in his renewed interest in aesthetics and in a further exploration of the concept of self. Suffering from AIDS, Foucault died in Paris on 25 June 1984. His lectures at the Collège de France were published posthumously, containing important clarifications and additions to his ideas.

Foucault remained a scientific realist in the tradition of his teacher Georges Canguilhem, despite his interest in the historical background and the social consequences of all truth-claims. Foucault wrote in appreciation of Canguilhem:

… in the history of science one cannot take truth as given, but neither can one do without a relation to the truth and to the opposition of the true and the false. It is this reference to the order of the true and the false which gives to that history its specificity and its importance (1985a: 3).

Foucault was therefore a rationalist and, when he discusses such notions related to the field of scientificity, he remains within the tradition of the French philosophers from August Comte (1798–1857) via Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) to Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) and Louis Althusser (1918–90).

Michel Foucault was both an academic and a marginal. He was able to hold a prestigious chair at the Collège de France while having a life story that included a suicide attempt, breakdowns, a short period of institutionalisation, a police file and an early death. He was a human rights activist and a person able to shout misogynist remarks. Highly political and profoundly private, he was a dandy who managed to project the two contrasting aspects of his existence. In the words of Dumézil, one of his closest colleagues, Michel Foucault wore many masks (Eribon 1993).

Highly political and profoundly private, he was a dandy who managed to project the two contrasting aspects of his existence. In the words of Dumézil, one of his closest colleagues, Michel Foucault wore many masks.

This complexity, which appears as a reconciliation of the ‘academic’ and the ‘transgressive’, was not easy to bear. Foucault was initially troubled with his sexuality and kept his private life to himself. He never reflected in public about the change of institutional relations to which his work contributed, despite having played an important role in the transformation of perception and attitudes regarding madness, prisons and sexuality (Eribon 1993: 154).

1.2 Resisting boundaries

Part of the fascination with Foucault’s work has been his resistance to disciplinary boundaries. His discourse was driven by its own logic, without concerns for the limits of usual subject areas, resisting the established interpretational procedures through which the books of philosophy had traditionally acquired their status. Even if we may have become used to interdisciplinary studies today, Foucault’s skills in moving effortlessly and impeccably between disciplines and themes is exemplary.

This opening was possible because Foucault’s ideas did not operate within the traditional intellectual context. He argued with precision, often pushing the point into a direction that would become irresistible to collocutors such as Georges Dumézil, Jean Hyppolite, Jules Vuillemin and Fernand Braudel (Eribon 1993: 61–98).

Foucault maintained that there were no longer assumed methodologies and approaches that were proper for certain subjects of investigation. The ‘unproblematic parcelling out’ of modes of thought was no longer sustainable; he considered the sense of security easily achieved by following the methodological path presumed right to be intellectually naïve. He argued that history needed to be approached as a category that required constant watchfulness, with theoretical attention to its methodologies and to the results it created and disseminated (Cousins 1989: 126–39). This would apply equally to the methods, approaches and effects of the history of architecture.

Foucault maintained that there were no longer assumed methodologies and approaches that were proper for certain subjects of investigation. The ‘unproblematic parcelling out’ of modes of thought was no longer sustainable; he considered the sense of security easily achieved by following the methodological path presumed right to be intellectually naïve.

The shift in human sciences from the eighteenth century onwards as demonstrated by Foucault was characteristic of many disciplines, including architecture. Architectural knowledge in France in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century became rationalised, thus losing many of its transcending characteristics. Despite excellent contributions to the subject, such as the critical history of eighteenth-century French architecture by Anthony Vidler (1988 and 2011), architecture’s discourse can still expand further in the area of critical revision of the architectural canon and the norms in urban policies.

1.3 Architecture unspoken

Foucault’s questions in respect to architecture and urbanism open up on various levels: on the level of knowledge / discourse and discursive practice; on the level of architectural effects u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Illustration credits
• Introduction
• 1. Positioning
• 2. Archaeology
• 3. Enclosure
• 4. Bodies
• 5. Spatiality / Aesthetics
• Further reading…
• Bibliography
• Index