Foucault - The Key Ideas

Foucault on philosophy, power, and the sociology of knowledge: a concise introduction

Paul Oliver

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781444130973
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Foucault - The Key Ideas is a concise introduction to the life, works and ideas of this ground-breaking modern philosopher. This book will not only guide you through the events of Foucault's life and help you to understand his most complex ideas with ease; it will also demonstrate the practical impact of those ideas on life today. Covering everything from Foucault's views on the philosophy and sociology of knowledge to his analysis of power and institutions in society, this book offers a fascinating insight into the legacy of this revolutionary thinker.
NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.
AUTHOR INSIGHTSLots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience.
TEST YOURSELFTests in the book and online to keep track of your progress.
EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGEExtra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of study skills.
FIVE THINGS TO REMEMBERQuick refreshers to help you remember the key facts.
TRY THISInnovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

1

Themes of a life

In this chapter you will learn about:

• the key events in the life of Michel Foucault
• the main historical and political events that provided a backdrop to his life
• an overview of his academic development and of his main intellectual ideas.

Early life and influences

Paul-Michel Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in Poitiers, France. Poitiers is the capital of the Poitou-Charentes region, in western central France, and is home to the country’s second oldest university, whose former students have included such luminaries as the writer François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553) and the philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650). Foucault thus grew up in a historic town with important academic and cultural links, and would have been very used to university life, even before he himself became a student.

Another influence on the development of Foucault must have been the events of World War II. After the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, Poitiers became part of Vichy France (1940–44), the unoccupied southern zone of the country that was essentially a puppet state of the German Third Reich. Later in the war the city was occupied and came under direct Nazi rule. The war was a period of anxiety and uncertainty for the people of Poitiers and we can only assume that the experience had a profound effect on the developing world view of the teenage Foucault.

Foucault’s father, Paul, was a successful surgeon and the family was consequently financially secure, enjoying such luxuries as household servants. The father appears to have exerted strict control over the family. He evidently became unhappy with the development of his eldest son, and he sent him for a very formal education at the local Roman Catholic high school. The young Michel was expected to follow a career in medicine. However, it soon became apparent that the boy had a strong independent streak and would forge his own career path.

---

Insight

For most of his life, Foucault was a person who rejected authority and the accepted norms. His early refusal to follow a career in medicine is perhaps an indication of this tendency.

---

Somehow Foucault managed to persuade his parents to allow him to pursue an academic career and to try to obtain a place at the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris. This was one of the most celebrated institutions of the grandes écoles system of France. Traditionally these specialist higher education institutions provided courses of training and education for a select few who would ultimately occupy leading positions in the professions. The Ecole normale supérieure was the leading institution for obtaining a post in a French university to teach Humanities. Entry was selective, and young people from across France competed for places. In order to maximize their chances of entry, candidates often studied at the so-called khâgne classes at a Paris lycée (secondary school). These involved a year of intense study, leading up to the entry examination.

To this end, in 1945 Foucault left home and travelled to Paris to enrol at the Lycée Henri-IV. This is one of the premier lycées of France, situated on the rue Clovis, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. The khâgne courses were extremely demanding, requiring a great deal of private study and reading. Foucault impressed his tutors and at the end of the academic year was successful in gaining entry to the Ecole normale on the rue d’Ulm. He was now a normalien, and his real development towards becoming an intellectual began.

University life in Paris

The course at the Ecole normale lasted four years. At the end of the course the students sat the examinations for the agrégation, the qualification that allowed the holder to teach in the French higher education system. Foucault specialized in Philosophy and familiarized himself with the leading French and German philosophers. While he was acknowledged by fellow students and tutors alike to be highly intelligent, he was also considered to have a somewhat unusual, even difficult, personality.

While at university Foucault showed signs of being unhappy and disturbed. Of course, this isn’t particularly unusual for students, who are trying very hard to find their true persona and to identify a route through life which they find interesting and appealing. Young people at this age are often caught between the advice and indeed demands of parents, and their own developing interests. The two are often in conflict. This can be all the harder for university students since they are trying to develop their own world view within an environment that includes highly intelligent, accomplished and articulate peers.

In 1948, two years after starting at the Ecole normale, Foucault’s anxieties culminated in a suicide attempt. There is no reliable evidence for his immediate motivation in attempting to take his own life, other than his general feeling of unhappiness. In addition, there is no way of knowing whether he was serious about the attempt, or whether it was intended as a kind of public statement of his unhappiness. At any rate, it must have been very disturbing for his parents, who had no doubt great hopes of their son having a successful career as a university lecturer. His father arranged for Michel to have a psychiatric assessment and gradually the event seems to have been forgotten. However, it was a precursor of a lifelong interest, one might say obsession, of Foucault’s with suicide and death. He appears to have held the belief in later life that the contemplation, and indeed the act of suicide, was an acceptable activity. At the end of his four-year course, he initially failed the agrégation, but passed it a year later in 1951. This initial failure might be taken as a further indication of maladjustment to his current life.

Another trend in his student years that was to presage a major theme of his private life in later years was his developing homosexuality. There had been indications of this earlier in his life, but during his years at the Ecole normale his attraction to men became pronounced and he began to take part in the gay subculture of Paris. It should be remembered, however, that in the early 1950s there was not an overt gay scene of the kind that would evolve in the capital a few decades later. Even though Paris had a justified reputation as a liberal city, gay liaisons and activities were normally conducted surreptitiously. Foucault, however, made no particular attempt to hide his predilections from fellow students at the Ecole normale. Students then, as now, were generally eager for new experiences, and tolerant of those who sought them. Foucault may have been considered a little different, but probably no more, in his own way, than many other students.

---

Insight

Foucault’s evolving homosexuality may have been the cause of developing psychological tensions. It is unclear whether his parents were aware of his sexuality but, if so, then it may have been the cause of further tension between Foucault and his father.

---

A noteworthy influence during his period at the Ecole normale was that of Louis Althusser (1918–90), the Marxist philosopher and Communist Party activist. He had started work as a philosophy tutor at the Ecole normale about halfway through Foucault’s course and Foucault attended his lectures. Althusser seems to have had a considerable influence upon his students, and one might assume that this also applied to Foucault. It seems plausible that Althusser’s lectures were at least one of the factors that resulted in Foucault’s joining the Communist Party, which he did after graduation in 1951.

As someone who was developing a world view that tended to reject the significance for society of individual, subjective action, it seems reasonable that Foucault should have been influenced by the structuralist theories of Karl Marx (1818–83). Although Marx was a wide-ranging thinker, Foucault tended to be influenced by the strand of thought that individual existence was predominantly shaped by the large-scale structures and institutions of society. Society influenced the individual, rather than the other way round. However, as we shall note throughout this book, a sweeping generalization such as this ignores the enormous diversity of Foucault’s thinking. It is exceedingly difficult to put Foucault into a neat intellectual box and say that he belongs to a specific school of thought. Indeed, on a number of occasions, Foucault himself asserted that very point, stressing, for example, that he never adopted one particular theoretical perspective in his research or a particular methodology of collecting and analysing data. He appears to have selected whichever methodology appeared to be appropriate for the problem he had set himself; and in some instances, he developed what he argued were new methodologies.

---

Insight

At various times commentators upon Foucault have tried to attach labels to his writing. However, during his lifetime Foucault tended to reject such labels. It can therefore be difficult to position his work in relation to, for example, that of his contemporaries.

---

Early career development

After graduation Foucault obtained a post as a tutor at the Ecole normale, probably partly through the support of Althusser and other professors. This involved providing some individual support to students. Two years after graduating, and while still retaining the tutorship at the Ecole normale, he was successful in obtaining a lectureship in Psychology at the University of Lille. During this period at Lille he published his first book, Maladie mentale et psychologie (‘Psychology and Mental Illness’; published 1954). Foucault had now been studying hard and continuously for a long time, and, like many people in that position, felt that he needed a break from the academic world. Indeed he may even have felt that he was not suited to the life of a university lecturer. He managed to obtain a post as cultural attaché at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, a role that did not involve the kind of teaching responsibilities to which he had been accustomed. He probably gained this post partly through the influence of Georges Dumezil (1898–1986), who was then a professor at the Collège de France, but who had taught at Uppsala during the early 1930s. He was nearly 30 years older than Foucault, but throughout the latter’s life would intervene on many occasions to support his academic development. He was destined to outlive his young protégé.

After four years at Uppsala, Foucault moved again, this time to Poland. The French Cultural Centre in Warsaw had been reopened and Foucault was appointed the director. However, it seems that aspects of his private life caused concern there, and he began to consider returning to his homeland. It was suggested to him that he might consider a lecturing vacancy in the Philosophy Department at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. The head of the department was somewhat familiar with Foucault’s work, and ultimately he was successful in obtaining the job. Thus, by the beginning of the 1960s, Foucault was successfully reinstalled in France and back within the academic world.

He now also began work on completing his doctoral theses. At this time in France, it was necessary to produce two theses in order to achieve a doctorate. His shorter thesis was on the work of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and was examined by Jean Hippolyte, Foucault’s former teacher at the Lycée Henri-IV. The major thesis, which was an enormous work of almost one thousand pages, was entitled Folie et déraison: histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. This would be translated into English and published in 1982 as Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. The committee of academics who conducted the viva voce examination for the major thesis expressed some surprise at the unconventional academic style in which it was written, while at the same time acknowledging its detailed, scholarly approach.

The basic argument of Madness and Civilization was contrary to received wisdom about the insane. The contemporary assumption, derived from a scientific-psychological model of mental illness, was that it could be defined and described in terms of a cognitive malfunction. Foucault, however, argued that people were often defined as insane simply because they behaved in ways that were different from the majority or that contravened the norms of polite society. In other words, madness was a question of social and cultural definition. This argument in itself was somewhat disconcerting for the scientifically oriented members of Foucault’s doctoral assessment panel. He also argued that during the medieval period there had been a tendency to treat those who were mentally disturbed as simply different from the norm while still according them a place in everyday society. However, with the Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century ‘age of science and rationality’, there develops a philosophy of excluding the insane from normal society and placing them under surveillance in separate institutions. They are punished and given what is regarded as remedial treatment. Attempts are made to coerce them back into normal patterns of behaviour. Foucault did not paint a complimentary picture of contemporary society, and this was not lost on the doctoral examiners. Nevertheless, there was an appreciation that they were faced with an impressive piece of work, and an original thinker.

---

Insight

The idea that society defines people in a particular way is an increasingly popular one. For example, we might argue that disabled people are only ‘disabled’ if they define themselves as such, or if society defines them in that way.

---

While at Clermont-Ferrand, Foucault met a philosophy lecturer named Daniel Defert (1937–), who would remain his long-term partner. However, in 1966 Defert had to commence his military service and was scheduled to serve this in Tunisia. Foucault wanted to remain with Defert and managed to obtain a lecturing position at the University of Tunis. He and Defert lived in a small seaside town named Sidi Bou Said, about 15 miles from Tunis itself. This was famous as an artists’ colony: among others, Paul Klee had painted there. The town is popular with tourists, being famous for its striking houses with their dazzling whitewashed walls and cobalt-blue shutters.

It was during 1966 that Foucault published his next book, Les Mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humains, which was later published in English translation as The Order of Things: An archaeology of the human sciences. While Foucault ranged far and wide in this work, at its heart, I would argue, is the concept of the episteme. Each period in history, Foucault argued, was characterized by an interweaving network of assumptions about the world that conditioned the beliefs and propositions that were accepted as true. Some ideas would not be seriously considered by society because they fell outside the distinctive set of assumptions, or ways of thinking, that were a feature of that epoch. Sometimes these ways of thinking would be overt and fully in the public consciousness, and sometimes they would be less overt, perhaps even part of the collective subconscious. At any rate, they functioned to determine what society considered to be scientific or rational. The sum total of this complex relationship of ideas that determined the nature of public thought was termed the ‘episteme’. Gradually, and through a varied range of historical, political, economic and other factors, the nature of the context and limitations of public consciousness would evolve, and one episteme would gradually be transformed into another. This idea would be a central element in Foucault’s thought in subsequent publications.

Just as Foucault was thinking intellectually about changes in the parameters of human thought, dramatic changes were also afoot in the political life of France. In early 1968 the Vietnam War (1959–75) was at its height. Around the world there were growing objections to the morality and conduct of the war. On 16 March an American patrol in Vietnam fired on a small village named My Lai and killed many of the inhabitants. The massacre was to further intensify the moral outrage against the war, but, even before the full details emerged, on 17 March there was a large anti-war demonstration in London’s Grosvenor Square. In April students protesting against the war occupied Columbia University in New York City.

Besides the Vietnam War, there were, however, other sources of discontent among young people. On 19 March, stud...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Meet the author
• Only got a minute?
• Only got five minutes?
• 1 Themes of a life
• 2 The excavation of knowledge
• 3 The nature of power
• 4 The history of punishment
• 5 Living outside the norms
• 6 The rational and the insane
• 7 Political engagement
• 8 The nature of institutions
• 9 The role of the intellectual
• 10 Retrospect of a life
• Glossary
• Taking it further
• Index