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Foucault’s lecture notes from 1970–71 demolish caricatures of his thought (2013)

124 points by benbreen 12y ago

jstanley 12y ago
Do people here generally have context on this? I've never heard of anything the article is talking about.
- pjonesdotca 12y ago
  Anyone with formal or informal studies in critical theory will be well aware of Focault. Everyone else should get up to speed.
  - Aushin 12y ago
    I've never been able to understand a word of him. I've seen the famous Chomsky/Foucault debate. I understood Chomsky perfectly well. Many people have informed me that Foucault completely bested him. I couldn't tell because I had no idea what the heck he was saying.
    - RodericDay 12y ago
      The Chomsky-Foucault Debate in 5 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA
      - Aushin 12y ago
        Haha this is the video version of what people tell me happened. I still can't confirm for myself.
        steveklabnik 12y ago
        For anyone who hasn't watched the actual, full video of the debate, you should do so. Watching them argue in two languages at the same time is super fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8 Okay, here's what the video is saying, in slightly-longer form. The exchange in the video is basically Chomsky saying "human nature" and Foucault laughing. This gets at the heart of the hour-long debate: do humans have some sort of nature? Foucault, and philosophers like him, think that the idea of 'human nature' is complete and utter garbage. So when Chomsky admits that his position boils down to an appeal of human nature, Foucault just laughs at him. It's a great moment that really highlights the whole thing. I love it.
        Aushin 12y ago
        Any insight into why they think the concept of human nature is bunk? How are they defining human nature in the context of their debate?
        dethstar 12y ago
        >How are they defining human nature in the context of their debate? That's what Foucault wants to know. https://youtu.be/3wfNl2L0Gf8?t=9m48s https://youtu.be/3wfNl2L0Gf8?t=9m48s And from my little understanding, because they don't believe there's such thing as a human nature, since society, and other things from our surrounding affect us, and the "nature" could change in a different context, which would imply it isn't some kind of force behind us.
        steveklabnik 12y ago
        There's a lot of different ways to tackle this problem, obviously, so I'll just point you in one of many directions. You'd have to consult the specific thinker's works to get their exact takes. Okay, so the concept of 'human nature' in general needs some more definition, like you've said. Here's maybe a better phrasing of the problem: "Do humans have some sort of _innate_ properties that are shared amongst all humans?" This phrasing calls back to an old debate in philosophy: essentialism. This is a question of ontology, in other words, what kinds of things are there in the world, and how do we categorize them? An essentialist takes the position that we can form categories of things by defining some set of properties, and then any entity which has those properties is one of those things. In other words, let's say something like "You're a human as long as you have a name." This is a position which is essentialist. And that might be a workable definition. A non-essentialist may come along and challenge your ontology, though. "Ships also have names, but they are clearly not human." You may agree with this, and so you need to revise your set of properties. "Humans are things that have names, and walk on two legs." The non-essentialist may respond, "birds have names, and when they walk, they use two legs. Your ontology is incorrect. You see where this is going. Those who take a position against essentialism claim that this approach to categorization is a folly. It's fundamentally broken.. To give you a counterpoint, I generally agree with a process philosophy, which means that I equate identity with _doing_, not with _being_. An example of a process philosopher's standpoint on ontology: "You're a Rubyist if you write Ruby code." This kind of categorization is more useful, because over time, my identity can change. I might be a Rubyist for a while, but at some point, I wasn't. And I might stop being one in the future, too. An approached based on do-ing includes things like a time component that an essentialist position never can. So, returning to the original question, no, the question of an inherent nature doesn't make any sense, and therefore, neither does 'human nature'. So where do we go from there? Well, any claim that's reliant on an appeal to human nature is incorrect. For example, "Humans are inherently greedy." Anyway, that's a hastily-typed overview of a concept in a HN comment, but hopefully that helps you get the gist of it.
    - nkurz 12y ago
      Perhaps you understand English better than French? You may not have noticed, but upon rewatching the video, my best guess is that Chomsky was speaking English and Foucault may have been speaking French. This may have made Foucault marginally more difficult to follow... Joking aside, without taking away from Chomsky, at least in places I found Foucault surprisingly clear: [O]ne of the tasks that seems immediate and urgent to me, over and above anything else, is this: that we should indicate and show up, even where they are hidden, all the relationships of political power which actually control the social body and oppress or repress it. What I want to say is this: it is the custom, at least in European society, to consider that power is localised in the hands of the government and that it is exercised through a certain number of particular institutions, such as the administration, the police, the army, and the apparatus of the state. One knows that all these institutions are made to elaborate and to transmit a certain number of decisions, in the name of the nation or of the state, to have them applied and to punish those who don't obey. But I believe that political power also exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions which look as if they have nothing in common with the political power, and as if they are independent of it, while they are not. One knows this in relation to the family; and one knows that the university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class. Institutions of knowledge, of foresight and care, such as medicine, also help to support the political power. It's also obvious, even to the point of scandal, in certain cases related to psychiatry. It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them. This critique and this fight seem essential to me for different reasons: firstly, because political power goes much deeper than one suspects; there are centres and invisible, little-known points of support; its true resistance, its true solidity is perhaps where one doesn't expect it. Probably it's insufficient to say that behind the governments, behind the apparatus of the State, there is the dominant class; one must locate the point of activity, the places and forms in which its domination is exercised. And because this domination is not simply the expression in political terms of economic exploitation, it is its instrument and, to a large extent, the condition which makes it possible; the suppression of the one is achieved through the exhaustive discernment of the other. Well, if one fails to recognise these points of support of class power, one risks allowing them to continue to exist; and to see this class power reconstitute itself even after an apparent revolutionary process. http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm Foucault believes that seemingly neutral institutions such as education and medicine act to preserve the power of one social class over another. While it's clear how the police and military maintain authority, it's less clear how topics like constant surveillance and attitudes toward sexuality would tilt the playing field. Foucault's philosophy offers a framework to analyze these different forms of power based on their effect rather than their apparent mechanism.
  - jordan0day 12y ago
    > Everyone else should get up to speed. Why? Admittedly, everything I know (not much!) about critical theory comes from hearing people talk about critical theory, and not from first sources, but I don't see why it's more compelling than philosophy in general? So, really, I'm posing that question completely seriously. Why should I study critical theory in general, or Focault in particular? Keep in mind it's not "Why should I spend time studying critical theory rather than spend time doing nothing", it's "Why should I spend time studying critical theory rather than some other philosophy/science/technology/art?"
    - steveklabnik 12y ago
      Well, Foucault's work is about a lot of things, but here's one that should certainly interest technologists: what is power? How does it affect us? What does it do to shape societies? Etc. Critical theory in general? Well, it depends on what you're trying to get out of your time with philosophy. I'm particularly interested in technology's affect on humans, so something like critical theory gives me useful intellectual tools. But if the human side of things doesn't appeal to you, you may not particularly care.
      - pjonesdotca 12y ago
        And if that is an interesting topic for a technologist than the work of Bernard Stiegler is fairly essential to seeing where continental thinking seems to be headed. http://www.amazon.com/New-Critique-Political-Economy/dp/0745648045/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/New-Critique-Political-Economy/dp/0745...
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
      I took classes in literary criticism during college, and I think they have given me mental habits and tools that have served me very well. Essentially, it helps me see the hidden layer under what people say and (especially) write--the influences, desires, assumptions, etc. that create differences in how each person thinks and communicates. This has been helpful as I have moved into a management role. Office politics often are the end result of unspoken agendas and wishes of coworkers. Critical theory helps infer those from the seemingly straightforward text of emails and what people say in conversation. What people want and what they say are often two different things. Engineers and programmers, used to working with systems whose behaviors are explicitly and objectively defined, can find this frustrating. My opinion, it is reality, so might as well deal with it. I've found critical theory helpful in that.
  - uxhacker 12y ago
    Foucault and other French Postmodern Philosophers are sometimes hard going. Foucault came up with lots of interesting ideas. My favourite is one of his concepts on power and knowledge. The idea is that one way the powerless can gain power is by creating knowledge, even in small bits. Twitter is probably proof of this.
  - whckns 12y ago
    The American (anglosaxon?) categorization of poststructuralist philosophy (like Foucault or Butler) as critical theory is curious to (mildly educated) European readers. The term was coined by Horkeimer, Adorno, Lukačs and other intellectuals around the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Those were all hardcore Hegelians (and Marxists more or less). Their ideas regarding Objectiveness, History or Truth are pretty much the contrary to what postmodern philosophy is suggesting. In fact as a postmarxist Foucault was revolting against the dominance of Hegelian thinking.
    - steveklabnik 12y ago
      > is curious to (mildly educated) European readers. I don't think it has to do with Europe, I think it has to do with the fact that the categories are fuzzy and unless you _really_ care about this stuff, you just let it go. I almost replied below when it was mentioned that Foucault was "postmodern," but really, it's just not that important, in the end.
      - whckns 12y ago
        true, but i still think the case is special for the US: While in europe (germany at least) Critical Theory and Poststructuralism are pretty much antagonist concepts it seems to be bundled in the US as Continental/Critical Theory and that really means: everything but Analytical Philosophy.
    - tatterdemalion 12y ago
      Every one of these attempts to categorize thinkers should have double-sized, bolded quotation marks around it. At best, some thinkers in some periods of their writing bear a family resemblance to one another. "Critical theory" in English usually seems to mean "Not analytic philosophy" without the stigmatism or demonymism that "continental philosophy" has.
- jlarocco 12y ago
  I flagged it because I have no idea, and the linked to article gives no context (Foucault who?) and apparently has nothing to do with the topics usually on HN.
  - carlob 12y ago
    It seems a bit pretentious to flag something because you haven't heard of him. There is a bunch of stuff on HN daily that I don't know about, and often the article doesn't provide much context. However, I usually hit wikipedia and try to learn more rather than hitting flag.
    - jlarocco 12y ago
      Most of the time that's how I feel about it, too. I'd never flag an article about some framework or technology I had never heard of. But in this case I'm not seeing the connection to technology or startups or general interest; it just seems off topic. I'm sure it's a great article, I'm just not sure it belongs on HN, so I flagged it.
      - dang 12y ago
        Intellectual diversity is the founding principle of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html Not everything on the front page excites everyone's curiosity, but it doesn't need to. Avoiding monoculture is the main thing. This is good for technical work too.
  - jackmaney 12y ago
    Agreed (and upvoted). After skimming through the article, I immediately came back and flagged it. Go ahead and downvote as much as you want, but this belongs on some humanities blog, not on HN.
    - SamReidHughes 12y ago
      Not according to the site's guidelines.
- smutticus 12y ago
  This article is not that good, nor is the intended audience those unfamiliar with Foucault's work. Foucault wrote about many different things. Mostly he was interested in the evolution of power and politics through western civilization. If you're interested in Foucault there are much better places to start than this article.
  - e40 12y ago
    Any recommendations?
    - metamet 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish Anything regarding the Panopticon is fascinating.
- JimmyM 12y ago
  Here is one possible reason that Foucault might be popular amongst HN types. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v7n2/gerrie.html http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v7n2/gerrie.html
- msutherl 12y ago
  Yes, I work as a programmer and bits of Foucault that I've read have been transformative for me. Most of my programmer friends are also at least aware of him. The portion of his work that I'm familiar with was concerned with the insight that societies are organized by "technologies" of discipline and the "genealogy"[1] of these technologies in different institutional contexts i.e. hospitals, prisons, schools. When I first encountered Foucault's work as an undergraduate, I wished I'd read it much earlier as it would have helped me decode the prison-like experience of school. The contradiction between imposed ideologies of "freedom" (via studying US history, the news, conversation with adults, etc.) and the total control exerted by the state over where I could go, what I could say, and what I was to do nearly every minute of my life resulted in a lot of cognitive dissonance for me. If only I'd learned earlier what "ideology" meant and that it was well-known that "freedom" is not an ethical, political, or ontological given. Foucault's work reveals that we always exist within power structures and illuminates much of how these structures operate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_(philosophy)
- formulaT 12y ago
  Postmodern philosophy is to progressive social politics as Marxism is to left wing economics. Both are theories that would be easily dismissed if they weren't written in highly obfuscatory language. Both serve the purpose of giving a political agenda the veneer of being based on solid theory. That is why right wing writers sometimes refer to postmodernism as "Cultural Marxism". I don't like the term cultural marxism because it sounds conspiratorial, when really all that is going on is people using big words and the fear of appearing stupid to cow other people into submission.
tatterdemalion 12y ago
Foucault is - _really_ - one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. This is not an audience for "critical theory" or "continental philosophy" or what-have-you, but everyone owes it to themselves to learn about Foucault's work, just as much as they owe it to themselves to learn about the work of say Ludwig Wittgenstein or Claude Shannon. There are continental philosophers who are not very impressive in my opinion (Louis Althusser comes to mind), but Foucault is not one of them. Foucault's work is usually focused on trying to discern what things we take as natural, known, and unquestionable are actually constructed claims which can be questioned. I think Discipline & Punish is his most accessible writing; it is a history of judicial systems from the 17th century to the 20th century. This article is not a great introduction to Foucault, and assumes a familiarity. I do not know why it is on Hacker News except that the author has recently passed.
- steveklabnik 12y ago
  Discipline and Punish was my first introduction to any of this kind of thought, and it was great. Highly recommended.
  - tatterdemalion 12y ago
    For me, coming to understand Foucault was like coming to understand metaprogramming. It punched down to a lower level of thought: the idea that our discourse and our notions of truth are themselves constituted and shaped by our society and circumstances. It is so disappointing that there are people who think of themselves as "hackers" being dismissive of Foucault (and associated thinkers like Deleuze and Guattari). (This is not so much a response to you as my desire to wax more about Foucault.)
    - steveklabnik 12y ago
      Agreed, strongly. D&G are my favorites, actually, as is Deleuze on his own.
      - tatterdemalion 12y ago
laurentoget 12y ago
As much as I am sure the availability of this translation is interesting for english speaking Foucault scholars, I am not sure I buy the 'demolish the caricatures' angle. There was enough material to demolish those caricatures before this was available and, even if there was no published transcript of those lectures, there was no mystery about them and their content was known at least to those who attended those lectures.
vixen99 12y ago
Scruton: The man who tells you truth does not exist is asking you not to believe him. So don't.
oniratea 12y ago
My favourite work of Foucault is Il faut défendre la société where he discusses the history of historical intelligibility.
EGreg 12y ago
I think his work went downhill after inventing the pendulum :-P Did anyone see the Focault-Chomsky debate?
- msutherl 12y ago
  Did you mean to say he's been on a downswing?
jccalhoun 12y ago
Whenever I've read a particularly dense section of Foucault (or anything originally written in a language other than English) I am always struck by the fact that translating things from one language to another is incredibly hard. I remember taking German during the summer to get my language requirement out of the way for my phd and my translations of German newspaper or magazine articles would be so disjointed and far away from the meaning that other people in the class had gotten from them. Translating something written for a much higher reading level must be very difficult.
- aw3c2 12y ago
  Hey, sorry for this offtopic comment but I saw an older comment of yours that I would love to talk about. Could you mail me? I added an mail address in rot13 to my profile. Should be obvious once you see the domain. ;) Thanks!

124 points by benbreen 12y ago

jstanley 12y ago

Do people here generally have context on this? I've never heard of anything the article is talking about.

pjonesdotca 12y ago
Anyone with formal or informal studies in critical theory will be well aware of Focault. Everyone else should get up to speed.
- Aushin 12y ago
  I've never been able to understand a word of him. I've seen the famous Chomsky/Foucault debate. I understood Chomsky perfectly well. Many people have informed me that Foucault completely bested him. I couldn't tell because I had no idea what the heck he was saying.
  - RodericDay 12y ago
    The Chomsky-Foucault Debate in 5 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA
    - Aushin 12y ago
      Haha this is the video version of what people tell me happened. I still can't confirm for myself.
      - steveklabnik 12y ago
        For anyone who hasn't watched the actual, full video of the debate, you should do so. Watching them argue in two languages at the same time is super fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8 Okay, here's what the video is saying, in slightly-longer form. The exchange in the video is basically Chomsky saying "human nature" and Foucault laughing. This gets at the heart of the hour-long debate: do humans have some sort of nature? Foucault, and philosophers like him, think that the idea of 'human nature' is complete and utter garbage. So when Chomsky admits that his position boils down to an appeal of human nature, Foucault just laughs at him. It's a great moment that really highlights the whole thing. I love it.
        Aushin 12y ago
        Any insight into why they think the concept of human nature is bunk? How are they defining human nature in the context of their debate?
        dethstar 12y ago
        >How are they defining human nature in the context of their debate? That's what Foucault wants to know. https://youtu.be/3wfNl2L0Gf8?t=9m48s https://youtu.be/3wfNl2L0Gf8?t=9m48s And from my little understanding, because they don't believe there's such thing as a human nature, since society, and other things from our surrounding affect us, and the "nature" could change in a different context, which would imply it isn't some kind of force behind us.
        steveklabnik 12y ago
        There's a lot of different ways to tackle this problem, obviously, so I'll just point you in one of many directions. You'd have to consult the specific thinker's works to get their exact takes. Okay, so the concept of 'human nature' in general needs some more definition, like you've said. Here's maybe a better phrasing of the problem: "Do humans have some sort of _innate_ properties that are shared amongst all humans?" This phrasing calls back to an old debate in philosophy: essentialism. This is a question of ontology, in other words, what kinds of things are there in the world, and how do we categorize them? An essentialist takes the position that we can form categories of things by defining some set of properties, and then any entity which has those properties is one of those things. In other words, let's say something like "You're a human as long as you have a name." This is a position which is essentialist. And that might be a workable definition. A non-essentialist may come along and challenge your ontology, though. "Ships also have names, but they are clearly not human." You may agree with this, and so you need to revise your set of properties. "Humans are things that have names, and walk on two legs." The non-essentialist may respond, "birds have names, and when they walk, they use two legs. Your ontology is incorrect. You see where this is going. Those who take a position against essentialism claim that this approach to categorization is a folly. It's fundamentally broken.. To give you a counterpoint, I generally agree with a process philosophy, which means that I equate identity with _doing_, not with _being_. An example of a process philosopher's standpoint on ontology: "You're a Rubyist if you write Ruby code." This kind of categorization is more useful, because over time, my identity can change. I might be a Rubyist for a while, but at some point, I wasn't. And I might stop being one in the future, too. An approached based on do-ing includes things like a time component that an essentialist position never can. So, returning to the original question, no, the question of an inherent nature doesn't make any sense, and therefore, neither does 'human nature'. So where do we go from there? Well, any claim that's reliant on an appeal to human nature is incorrect. For example, "Humans are inherently greedy." Anyway, that's a hastily-typed overview of a concept in a HN comment, but hopefully that helps you get the gist of it.
  - nkurz 12y ago
    Perhaps you understand English better than French? You may not have noticed, but upon rewatching the video, my best guess is that Chomsky was speaking English and Foucault may have been speaking French. This may have made Foucault marginally more difficult to follow... Joking aside, without taking away from Chomsky, at least in places I found Foucault surprisingly clear: [O]ne of the tasks that seems immediate and urgent to me, over and above anything else, is this: that we should indicate and show up, even where they are hidden, all the relationships of political power which actually control the social body and oppress or repress it. What I want to say is this: it is the custom, at least in European society, to consider that power is localised in the hands of the government and that it is exercised through a certain number of particular institutions, such as the administration, the police, the army, and the apparatus of the state. One knows that all these institutions are made to elaborate and to transmit a certain number of decisions, in the name of the nation or of the state, to have them applied and to punish those who don't obey. But I believe that political power also exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions which look as if they have nothing in common with the political power, and as if they are independent of it, while they are not. One knows this in relation to the family; and one knows that the university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class. Institutions of knowledge, of foresight and care, such as medicine, also help to support the political power. It's also obvious, even to the point of scandal, in certain cases related to psychiatry. It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them. This critique and this fight seem essential to me for different reasons: firstly, because political power goes much deeper than one suspects; there are centres and invisible, little-known points of support; its true resistance, its true solidity is perhaps where one doesn't expect it. Probably it's insufficient to say that behind the governments, behind the apparatus of the State, there is the dominant class; one must locate the point of activity, the places and forms in which its domination is exercised. And because this domination is not simply the expression in political terms of economic exploitation, it is its instrument and, to a large extent, the condition which makes it possible; the suppression of the one is achieved through the exhaustive discernment of the other. Well, if one fails to recognise these points of support of class power, one risks allowing them to continue to exist; and to see this class power reconstitute itself even after an apparent revolutionary process. http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm Foucault believes that seemingly neutral institutions such as education and medicine act to preserve the power of one social class over another. While it's clear how the police and military maintain authority, it's less clear how topics like constant surveillance and attitudes toward sexuality would tilt the playing field. Foucault's philosophy offers a framework to analyze these different forms of power based on their effect rather than their apparent mechanism.
- jordan0day 12y ago
  > Everyone else should get up to speed. Why? Admittedly, everything I know (not much!) about critical theory comes from hearing people talk about critical theory, and not from first sources, but I don't see why it's more compelling than philosophy in general? So, really, I'm posing that question completely seriously. Why should I study critical theory in general, or Focault in particular? Keep in mind it's not "Why should I spend time studying critical theory rather than spend time doing nothing", it's "Why should I spend time studying critical theory rather than some other philosophy/science/technology/art?"
  - steveklabnik 12y ago
    Well, Foucault's work is about a lot of things, but here's one that should certainly interest technologists: what is power? How does it affect us? What does it do to shape societies? Etc. Critical theory in general? Well, it depends on what you're trying to get out of your time with philosophy. I'm particularly interested in technology's affect on humans, so something like critical theory gives me useful intellectual tools. But if the human side of things doesn't appeal to you, you may not particularly care.
    - pjonesdotca 12y ago
      And if that is an interesting topic for a technologist than the work of Bernard Stiegler is fairly essential to seeing where continental thinking seems to be headed. http://www.amazon.com/New-Critique-Political-Economy/dp/0745648045/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/New-Critique-Political-Economy/dp/0745...
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    I took classes in literary criticism during college, and I think they have given me mental habits and tools that have served me very well. Essentially, it helps me see the hidden layer under what people say and (especially) write--the influences, desires, assumptions, etc. that create differences in how each person thinks and communicates. This has been helpful as I have moved into a management role. Office politics often are the end result of unspoken agendas and wishes of coworkers. Critical theory helps infer those from the seemingly straightforward text of emails and what people say in conversation. What people want and what they say are often two different things. Engineers and programmers, used to working with systems whose behaviors are explicitly and objectively defined, can find this frustrating. My opinion, it is reality, so might as well deal with it. I've found critical theory helpful in that.
- uxhacker 12y ago
  Foucault and other French Postmodern Philosophers are sometimes hard going. Foucault came up with lots of interesting ideas. My favourite is one of his concepts on power and knowledge. The idea is that one way the powerless can gain power is by creating knowledge, even in small bits. Twitter is probably proof of this.
- whckns 12y ago
  The American (anglosaxon?) categorization of poststructuralist philosophy (like Foucault or Butler) as critical theory is curious to (mildly educated) European readers. The term was coined by Horkeimer, Adorno, Lukačs and other intellectuals around the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Those were all hardcore Hegelians (and Marxists more or less). Their ideas regarding Objectiveness, History or Truth are pretty much the contrary to what postmodern philosophy is suggesting. In fact as a postmarxist Foucault was revolting against the dominance of Hegelian thinking.
  - steveklabnik 12y ago
    > is curious to (mildly educated) European readers. I don't think it has to do with Europe, I think it has to do with the fact that the categories are fuzzy and unless you _really_ care about this stuff, you just let it go. I almost replied below when it was mentioned that Foucault was "postmodern," but really, it's just not that important, in the end.
    - whckns 12y ago
      true, but i still think the case is special for the US: While in europe (germany at least) Critical Theory and Poststructuralism are pretty much antagonist concepts it seems to be bundled in the US as Continental/Critical Theory and that really means: everything but Analytical Philosophy.
  - tatterdemalion 12y ago
    Every one of these attempts to categorize thinkers should have double-sized, bolded quotation marks around it. At best, some thinkers in some periods of their writing bear a family resemblance to one another. "Critical theory" in English usually seems to mean "Not analytic philosophy" without the stigmatism or demonymism that "continental philosophy" has.
jlarocco 12y ago
I flagged it because I have no idea, and the linked to article gives no context (Foucault who?) and apparently has nothing to do with the topics usually on HN.
- carlob 12y ago
  It seems a bit pretentious to flag something because you haven't heard of him. There is a bunch of stuff on HN daily that I don't know about, and often the article doesn't provide much context. However, I usually hit wikipedia and try to learn more rather than hitting flag.
  - jlarocco 12y ago
    Most of the time that's how I feel about it, too. I'd never flag an article about some framework or technology I had never heard of. But in this case I'm not seeing the connection to technology or startups or general interest; it just seems off topic. I'm sure it's a great article, I'm just not sure it belongs on HN, so I flagged it.
    - dang 12y ago
      Intellectual diversity is the founding principle of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html Not everything on the front page excites everyone's curiosity, but it doesn't need to. Avoiding monoculture is the main thing. This is good for technical work too.
- jackmaney 12y ago
  Agreed (and upvoted). After skimming through the article, I immediately came back and flagged it. Go ahead and downvote as much as you want, but this belongs on some humanities blog, not on HN.
  - SamReidHughes 12y ago
    Not according to the site's guidelines.
smutticus 12y ago
This article is not that good, nor is the intended audience those unfamiliar with Foucault's work. Foucault wrote about many different things. Mostly he was interested in the evolution of power and politics through western civilization. If you're interested in Foucault there are much better places to start than this article.
- e40 12y ago
  Any recommendations?
  - metamet 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish Anything regarding the Panopticon is fascinating.
JimmyM 12y ago
Here is one possible reason that Foucault might be popular amongst HN types. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v7n2/gerrie.html http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v7n2/gerrie.html
msutherl 12y ago
Yes, I work as a programmer and bits of Foucault that I've read have been transformative for me. Most of my programmer friends are also at least aware of him. The portion of his work that I'm familiar with was concerned with the insight that societies are organized by "technologies" of discipline and the "genealogy"[1] of these technologies in different institutional contexts i.e. hospitals, prisons, schools. When I first encountered Foucault's work as an undergraduate, I wished I'd read it much earlier as it would have helped me decode the prison-like experience of school. The contradiction between imposed ideologies of "freedom" (via studying US history, the news, conversation with adults, etc.) and the total control exerted by the state over where I could go, what I could say, and what I was to do nearly every minute of my life resulted in a lot of cognitive dissonance for me. If only I'd learned earlier what "ideology" meant and that it was well-known that "freedom" is not an ethical, political, or ontological given. Foucault's work reveals that we always exist within power structures and illuminates much of how these structures operate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_(philosophy)
formulaT 12y ago
Postmodern philosophy is to progressive social politics as Marxism is to left wing economics. Both are theories that would be easily dismissed if they weren't written in highly obfuscatory language. Both serve the purpose of giving a political agenda the veneer of being based on solid theory. That is why right wing writers sometimes refer to postmodernism as "Cultural Marxism". I don't like the term cultural marxism because it sounds conspiratorial, when really all that is going on is people using big words and the fear of appearing stupid to cow other people into submission.

tatterdemalion 12y ago

Foucault is - _really_ - one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. This is not an audience for "critical theory" or "continental philosophy" or what-have-you, but everyone owes it to themselves to learn about Foucault's work, just as much as they owe it to themselves to learn about the work of say Ludwig Wittgenstein or Claude Shannon. There are continental philosophers who are not very impressive in my opinion (Louis Althusser comes to mind), but Foucault is not one of them. Foucault's work is usually focused on trying to discern what things we take as natural, known, and unquestionable are actually constructed claims which can be questioned. I think Discipline & Punish is his most accessible writing; it is a history of judicial systems from the 17th century to the 20th century. This article is not a great introduction to Foucault, and assumes a familiarity. I do not know why it is on Hacker News except that the author has recently passed.

steveklabnik 12y ago
Discipline and Punish was my first introduction to any of this kind of thought, and it was great. Highly recommended.
- tatterdemalion 12y ago
  For me, coming to understand Foucault was like coming to understand metaprogramming. It punched down to a lower level of thought: the idea that our discourse and our notions of truth are themselves constituted and shaped by our society and circumstances. It is so disappointing that there are people who think of themselves as "hackers" being dismissive of Foucault (and associated thinkers like Deleuze and Guattari). (This is not so much a response to you as my desire to wax more about Foucault.)
  - steveklabnik 12y ago
    Agreed, strongly. D&G are my favorites, actually, as is Deleuze on his own.
    - tatterdemalion 12y ago

laurentoget 12y ago

As much as I am sure the availability of this translation is interesting for english speaking Foucault scholars, I am not sure I buy the 'demolish the caricatures' angle. There was enough material to demolish those caricatures before this was available and, even if there was no published transcript of those lectures, there was no mystery about them and their content was known at least to those who attended those lectures.

vixen99 12y ago

Scruton: The man who tells you truth does not exist is asking you not to believe him. So don't.

oniratea 12y ago

My favourite work of Foucault is Il faut défendre la société where he discusses the history of historical intelligibility.

EGreg 12y ago

I think his work went downhill after inventing the pendulum :-P Did anyone see the Focault-Chomsky debate?

msutherl 12y ago
Did you mean to say he's been on a downswing?

jccalhoun 12y ago

Whenever I've read a particularly dense section of Foucault (or anything originally written in a language other than English) I am always struck by the fact that translating things from one language to another is incredibly hard. I remember taking German during the summer to get my language requirement out of the way for my phd and my translations of German newspaper or magazine articles would be so disjointed and far away from the meaning that other people in the class had gotten from them. Translating something written for a much higher reading level must be very difficult.

aw3c2 12y ago
Hey, sorry for this offtopic comment but I saw an older comment of yours that I would love to talk about. Could you mail me? I added an mail address in rot13 to my profile. Should be obvious once you see the domain. ;) Thanks!