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1. FOUCAULTfoo-co Burcu Yetkin Ezgi Şerefoğlu Tevhide Peker

2. Biography

3. Michel Foucault was born on October 15, 1926 in Poitiers, France to Dr. Paul Foucault and Anne Foucault. • In 1943 he prepared to enroll at the ÉcoleNormaleSupérieure in Paris, but did not initially pass his entrance exams. • He was admitted into the École in 1946. • Here he became friends with Louis Althusser, a fellow student, and went on to receive degrees in philosophy, psychology, and psychiatry.  • In 1950 he became an assistant lecturer at the University of Lille. • In 1954 he published his first book Maladiementale et personnalité(Mental illness and personality).

4. He left France to teach at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. • He left Uppsala in 1958 to direct the French Institutes at Warsaw University and the University of Hamburg. • 1968 marked a period of increased political and activist interest for Foucault. • In 1970 he was elected as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. • His reputation grew in the 1970s and 80s and he lectured throughout the world, spending more time at American institutions, namely the University at Buffalo and UC Berkeley. • Foucault died of an AIDS-related illness on June 25, 1984 in Paris. 

5. WhowasMichelFoucault? • MichelFoucaultwas a French Philosopher. His writingshave had an enormousimpact on manyfields; includingthehistory of science (particularlymedicine), criticaltheory, historyandthesociology of knowledge. Foucault is considered a postmodernistandpoststructuralistbymanyspectators of his work. He consideredhimselfto be a followermodernity. Foucault is the main influencefor a groupwhodeclarethemselves as the New Philosophers, a statusthatFoucault had mixedfeelingsabout.

6. HistorianorPhilosopher • He has beenlabelled as a genealogist, a philosopherand a historian. • «Born a philosopher he has become a historian in ordertoremain a philosopher.» ( PhillippeAries, 1973) • Foucaultcannot be easilyclassified. He has been a philosopher, a historian, a sexologist, a penologist. Thisjusttouch on thesurface of his work.

7. FoucaultandPoststructuralism • Despite his structuralist label some commentators saw Michel Foucault as one of the most important representative of the post-structuralist movement. However Foucault himself rejects all the labels associated with his position. To Megill, "Foucault regards himself as a critic and ontologist, but his ontology is the ontology of his own language, and he views criticism not in the conventional sense of a project design to bring us to the haven of understanding, but in the post-structuralist sense of to put into crisis." (Megill, 1985) • He agreed that language and society were shaped by rule governed systems, but he disagreed with the structuralists from two points. Firstly, he did not think that there were definite fundamental structures that could explain the human condition and secondly he thought that it was impossible to step outside of discourse and survey the situation objectively. (Jones, 1998)

8. Foucault’sideas on; • Language • Discourse • Power • Knowledge • Truth

9. Language • The understanding of language is a ‘mirror of mind’, andthecorrelativeview of mind is a ‘mirror of nature (reality)’ whichaccuratelyreflectsrelations in theobjectiveworld. • Theview of language as a ‘representation of a representation (thought)’ (Foucault 1966)implies an emphasisontherepresentativefunction of language, andthe idea thattheinternalorganisation of language has toreproducetheinternalorganisation of thoughts.

10. Discourse Foucault’sthreediscoursedefinitions; Discourse is; • General domain of allstatements. • An individualisablegroup of statements. • A regulatedpractisethataccountsfor a number of statements.

11. Discourse is "a group of statements which provide a language for talking about ...a particular topic at a particular historical moment." "Discourse, Foucault argues, constructs the topic. It defines and produces the objects of our knowledge. It governs the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about. • "nothing has any meaning outside of discourse"

12. Interms of thinkingaboutdiscourse as havingeffects, it is importanttoconsiderthefactors of truth, power, knowledge, since it is because of thiselementsthatdiscourse has effects.

13. Truth • is somethingintrinsicto an utterance • is not an ideal abstractqualitytowhichhumansaspire • İtssomethingworldly: it is somethingthatsocietiesproduceratherthansomethingtransendental. • Discourses do not exist in a vacuum but are in constantconflictwithotherdiscoursesandothersocialpracticeswhichinformthemoverquestions of truthandauthority. • Foucault is not interested in whichdiscourse is a trueoraccuraterepresentation of the ‘real’. Rather he is concernedwiththemechanicswherebyoneproduces as the dominant discourse.

14. ‘ I wanttotrytodiscover how thischoice of truth, inside whichwearecaught but whichweceaselesslyrenew, wasmade, but also how it wasrepeated, renewedanddisplaced.’ POWER

15. Power • Accordingto Liberal Humanists: ‘power is a possesion. It can be takenfromsomeoneand has a restrictingforce.’ • Marxists: ‘powerrelationsaredeterminedbyeconomicrelations.’ • Foucault: power not onlyrestrictingone’sbehaviour ( as liberal humanistssuggest) but also it producespossibleforms of behaviour.

16. Powerrelationsproduceforms of ‘subjectivity’ • It has a controloverindividuals, socialgroupingsandclasses as well as controldiscourses. • Powerproducesthe ‘real’. (truth) • Mosttheorist of powerhaveseenindividuals as oppressedbypowerrelations, but foucaultseesthem as theeffectsorinstences of powerrelations.

17. Knowledge • All of theknowledgewehave is theresultortheeffect of powerstruggles. • Powerandknowledgeneedandimplyone in anothertheirproductiverelationsareincarnated in discourse. Discourseproducespower, reinforces it but alsoexposes it, make it fragileandpermitsitslocalizationanddetention. • Bytheinternalization of dominant andlegitimizeddiscourses, andtheknowledgetheycauses, thisknowledgebecomesessential in buildingup a particularview of socialworldanddefiningindividualidentities: that is in whatsort of worldindividualsareliving, as well as whotheyareandwhattheyarelike.

18. Knowledge • How peoplegovernthemselvesandothersthroughtheproduction of knowledge. • Foucaultseesknowledgegeneratingpowerbyconstitutingpeople as subjects, andthengoverningthesubjectswithknowledge. • Subjectknowledgesubject

19. As a summary, accordingtofoucault, discourse as a socialpracticewhichproduceandorganisesknowledge, andthroughwhichpower is exercised, has strenghtenedalltheapproachesinterested in relationshipsbetweenlanguageandcontext.

20. Michel Foucault always insisted that he was not a poststructuralist critic but rather a genealogist. But his analysis of discourse owes a lot to Saussure's insights about the construction of meaning. Foucault shows how discourses regulate what can be said, what can be thought, and what is considered true or correct. So the pre-modern medical theories based on bodily humors constructed a particular understanding of the body, and within that discourse, certain things were true and false. However, there were many other propositions that were neither true nor false but fell outside the discursive system altogether. Anyone who tried to think outside the system would not have been respected or accorded a voice in the conversation about bodies. Discourse is thus the medium through which power is expressed and people and practices are governed; academic disciplines discipline. Foucault also argued that "the history of thought" is a misnomer, as it implied a continuous evolution of ideas. Rather, he used the terms genealogy or archeology of knowledge, focusing on theruptures or breaks between one era's discourse and another's.

21. “Archaeology” is the determination of the historical a priori for the appearance of ideas, sciences, philosophies, etc. at any given time in history. • A Priori means the conditions independent of experience without which experience would not be possible. • Genealogy is a tactical way of bringing subjected forms of knowledge into play.