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米歇尔·福柯米歇爾·福柯-生平
米歇爾•福柯（Michel Foucault）1926年10月26日出生於法國維艾納省省會普瓦捷，這是法國西南部的一個寧靜小城。他父親是該城一位受人尊敬的外科醫生，母親也是外科醫生的女兒。福柯在普瓦捷完成了小學和中學教育，1945年，他離開家乡前往巴黎參加法國高等師範學校入學考試，並於1946年順利進入高師學習哲學。1951年通過大中學教師資格會考後，他在梯也爾基金會資助下做了1年研究工作，1952年受聘為裏爾大學助教。
早在高師期間，福柯即表現出對心理學和精神病學的極大興趣，恰好他父母的一位世交雅剋琳娜•維爾道（Jacqueline Verdeaus）就是心理學家，而雅剋琳娜的丈夫喬治•維爾道則是法國精神分析學大師雅剋•拉康的學生。因此，在維爾道夫婦的影響下，福柯對心理學和精神分析學進行了係統深入的學習，並與雅剋琳娜一道翻譯了瑞士精神病學家賓斯萬格爾（Ludwig Binswanger）的著作 《夢與存在》 。書成之後，福柯應雅剋琳娜之請為法文本做序，並在1953年復活節之前草就一篇長度超過正文的序言。在這篇長文中，他日後光彩奪目的寫作風格已經初露端倪。1954年，這本罕見的序言長過正文的譯作由德剋雷•德•布魯沃出版社出版，收入《人類學著作和研究》叢書。同年，福柯發表了自己的第一部專着《精神病與人格》，收入《哲學入門》叢書，由法國大學出版社出版。福柯後來對這部著作加以否定，認為它不成熟，因此，1962年再版時這本書幾乎面目全非。
1955年8月，在著名神話學家喬治•杜梅澤爾（Georges Dumezil）的大力推薦下，福柯被瑞典烏普薩拉大學聘為法語教師。在瑞典期間，福柯還兼任法國外交部設立的“法國之傢”主任，因此，教學之外，他花了大量時間用於組織各種文化交流活動。在瑞典的3年時間裏，福柯開始動手撰寫博士論文。得益於烏普薩拉大學圖書館收藏的一大批16世紀以來的醫學史檔案、書信和各種善本圖書，也得益於杜梅澤爾的不斷督促和幫助，當福柯離開瑞典時《瘋癲與非理智——古典時期的瘋癲史》 已經基本完成。
1958年，由於感到教學和工作負擔過重對，福柯提出辭職，並於6月間回到巴黎。兩個月後，還是在杜梅澤爾的幫助下，同時也因為福柯在瑞典期間表現的出色組織能力，他被法國外交部任命為設在華沙大學內的法國文化中心主任。這年10月，福柯到達波蘭，不過他並沒有在那兒待太久，原因倒也富於戲劇性：他中了波蘭情報機關的美男記。福柯從很早時候起就是同性戀，對此他倒不加掩飾，就個人生活而言，這位老兄顯然夠得上“風流”的美名。然而50年代正是東西方冷戰正酣之時，兩方都在挖空心思的相互刺探。恰恰在1959年，法國駐波蘭大使館文化參贊告假，大使本已有心提拔福柯，便一面讓他代行參贊職務，一面行文報請正式任命。所以波蘭情報機構乘虛而入，風流成性的年輕哲學家合當中計。
離開波蘭後，福柯繼續他的海外之旅，這一次是目的地是漢堡，仍然是法國文化中心主任。1960年2月，福柯在德國最終完成了他的博士論文。這是一本在厚度和深度上都同樣令人匝舌的大書：全書包括附錄和參考書目長達943頁，考察了自17世紀以來瘋癲和精神病觀念的流變，詳盡梳理了在造型藝術、文學和哲學中體現的瘋癲形象形成、轉變的過程及其對現代人的意義。按照慣例，申請國傢博士學位的應該提交一篇主論文和一篇副論文，福柯因此决定翻譯康德的《實用人類學》並以一篇導言作為副論文，雖然這一導言從來沒有出版，但福柯研究者們發現，他後來成熟並反映於《詞與物》、《知識考古學》中的一些重要概念和思想，在這篇論文中其實已經形成。
應福柯之請，他以前在亨利四世中學的哲學老師，時任巴黎高師校長的讓•伊波利特（Jean Hyppolite）欣然同意作副論文的“研究導師”，並推薦著名科學史傢、時為巴黎大學哲學係主任的喬治•岡奎萊姆（Georges Conguilhem）擔任他的主論文導師。後者對《瘋癲史》贊譽有加，並為他寫了如下評語“人們會看到這項研究的價值所在，鑒於福柯先生一直關註自文藝復興時期至今精神病在造型藝術、文學和哲學中反映出來的嚮現代人提供的多種用途；鑒於他時而理順、時而又搞亂紛雜的阿莉阿德尼綫團，他的論文融分析和綜合於一爐，它的嚴謹，雖然讀起來不那麽輕鬆，但卻不失睿智之作……因此，我深信福柯先生的研究的重要性是毋庸置疑的。” 1961年5月20日，福柯順利通過答辯，獲得文學博士學位。這篇論文也被評為當年哲學學科的最優秀論文，並頒發給作者一枚銅牌。
還在福柯通過博士論文答辯以前，剋萊蒙－費朗大學哲學係新任係主任維也曼在讀完《瘋癲史》手稿後，即緻函尚遠在漢堡的作者，希望延聘他為教授。福柯欣然接受，並於1960年10月就任代理教授，1962年5月1日，剋萊蒙-費朗大學正式升任福柯為哲學係正教授。在整個60年代，福柯的知名度隨着他著作和評論文章的發表而急劇上升：1963年《雷蒙•魯塞爾》和《臨床醫學的誕生》 ，1964年《尼采、弗洛伊德、馬剋思》以及1966年引起極大反響的《詞與物》。
這部著作力圖構建一種“人文科學考古學”，它“旨在測定在西方文化中，人的探索從何時開始，作為知識對象的人何時出現。” ] 福柯使用“知識型”這一新術語指稱特定時期知識産生、運動以及表達的深層框架。通過對文藝復興以來知識型轉變流動的考察，福柯指出，在各個時期的知識型之間存在深層斷裂。此外，由於語言學具有解構流淌於所有人文學科中語言的特殊功能，因此在人文科學研究中，語言學都處於一個十分特殊的位置：透過對語言的研究，知識型從深藏之處顯現出來。
這本書“妙語連珠，深奧晦澀，充滿智慧” ，然而就是這樣一本十足的學術論着，甫經出版即成為供不應求的暢銷書：第一版由法國最著名的伽利瑪出版社於1966年10月出版，印了3500册，年底即告售磬，次年6月再版5000册，7月：3000，9月：3500，11月：3500；67年3月：4000，11月：5000……，據說到80年代為止，《詞與物》僅在法國就印刷了逾10萬册。對這本書的評價也同樣戲劇，評論意見幾乎截然二分，不是大加稱頌，就是憤然聲討，兩造的領軍人物也個個了得：被譽為“知識分子良心”的大哲學家薩特聲稱這本書“要建構一種新的意識形態，即資産階級所能修築的抵禦馬剋思主義的最後一道堤壩”，法國共産黨的機關雜志也連續發表批駁文章；不過更有意思的是，這一次，天主教派的知識分子們同似乎該不共戴天的共産黨人們站到了同一條戰綫裏：雖然進攻的方式有所不同，但在反對這一點上，兩派倒是心有期期。但福柯這一方的陣容也毫不遜色：岡奎萊姆拍案而起，他於1967年發表長文痛斥“薩特一夥”對《詞與物》的指責，並指出爭論的焦點其實並不在於意識形態，而在於福柯所開創的是一條嶄新的思想係譜之路，這恰恰又是固守“人本主義”或“人道主義”的薩特等所不願意看到並樂意加以鏟除的。
不管怎樣，《詞與物》為福柯帶來了巨大聲望。不久，福柯又一次離開了法國，前往突尼斯大學就任哲學教授。福柯在突尼斯度過了1968年5月運動的風潮。這是一個“革命”的口號和行動時期遍及歐洲乃至世界的時期，突尼斯爆發了一係列學生運動，福柯投身於其中，發揮了相當的影響。此後，他的身影和名字也一再出現於法國國內一次又一次的遊行、抗議和請願書中。
1968年5月事件促使法國教育行政當局反思舊大學制度的缺陷，並開始策劃改革之法。作為實驗，1968年10月間，新任教育部長艾德加•富爾决定在巴黎市郊的萬森森林興建一座新大學，它將擁有充分的自由來實驗各種有關大學教育體製改革的新想法。福柯被任命為新學校的哲學係主任。但是，萬森很快就陷入無休止的學生罷課、與警察的臨街對峙乃至火爆衝突中，福柯的哲學係也在極左派的吵嚷聲中成為動亂根源。在萬森兩年，是使福柯感到筋疲力盡的兩年。
1972年12月2日，對福柯來講是一個具有紀念意義的日子，這一天，他走上了法蘭西學院高高的講壇，正式就任法蘭西學院思想體係史教授。進入法蘭西學院意味着達學術地位的顛峰：這是法國大學機構的“聖殿中的聖殿”。
70年代的福柯積極緻力於各種社會運動，他運用自己的聲望支持旨在改善犯人人權狀況的運動，並親自發起“監獄情報組”以收集整理監獄制度日常運做的詳細過程；他在維護移民和難民權益的請願書上簽名；與薩特一起出席聲援監獄暴動犯人的抗議遊行；冒着危險前往西班牙抗議獨裁者佛朗哥對政治犯的死刑判决……。所有這一切都促使他深入思考權力的深層結構及由此而來的監禁、懲戒過程的運作問題。這些思考構成了他70年代最重要一本着作的全部主題——《規訓與懲罰》。
福柯的最後一部著作《性史》的第一捲《求知意志》在1976年12月出版，這部作品的目的是要探究性觀念在歷史中的變遷和發展。福柯對這部性的觀念史寄予厚望，並以務求完美的態度加以雕琢，大綱和草稿改了一遍又一遍，以至最終文本與最初計劃相差甚大。這又是一部巨著，按照福柯最後的安排，全書分為四捲，分別為《求知遺志》、《快感的享用》、《自我的呵護》、《肉欲的告贖》。可惜的是，作者永遠也看不到它出齊了，1984年6月25日，福柯因艾滋病在巴黎薩勒貝蒂爾醫院病逝，終年58歲。
福柯的死使法國上下震驚。共和國總理和教育部長稱“福柯之死奪走了當代最偉大的哲學家……凡是想理解20世紀後期現代性的人，都需要考慮福柯。” 《世界報 》 、 《解放報》 、《晨報》、《新觀察傢》等報刊相繼刊發大量紀念文章。思想界的重要人物也紛紛發表紀念文字：年鑒學派大師費爾南•布羅代爾稱“法國失去了一位當代最光彩奪目的思想傢，一位最慷慨大度的知識分子”；喬治•杜梅澤爾的紀念文章感人肺腑，老人老淚縱橫的談到以前常說的話“我去世時，米歇爾會給我寫訃告。”然而，事實無情，顛倒的預言更加使人悲從心來：“米歇爾•福柯棄我而去，使我感到失去很多東西，不僅失去了生活的色彩也失去了生活的內容。”
6月29日上午，福柯的師長和親友在醫院舉行了遺體告別儀式，儀式上，由福柯的學生，哲學家吉爾•德勒茲宣讀悼文，這段話選自福柯最後的著作 《快感的享用》 ，恰足以概括福柯終身追求和奮鬥的歷程：
“至於說是什麽激發着我，這個問題很簡單。我希望在某些人看來這一簡單答案本身就足夠了。這個答案就是好奇心，這是指任何情況下都值得我們帶一點固執地聽從其驅使得好奇心：它不是那種竭力吸收供人認識的東西的好奇心，而是那種能使我們超越自我的好奇心。說穿了，對知識的熱情，如果僅僅導致某種程度的學識的增長，而不是以這樣或那樣的方式盡可能使求知者偏離自我的話，那這種熱情還有什麽價值可言？在人生中：如果人們進一步觀察和思考，有些時候就絶對需要提出這樣的問題：瞭解人能否采取與自己原有的思維方式不同的方式思考，能否采取與自己原有的觀察方式不同的方式感知。……今天的哲學——我是指哲學活動——如果不是思想對自己的批判工作，那又是什麽呢？如果它不是致力於認識如何及在多大程度上能夠以不同的方式思維，而是證明已經知道的東西，那麽它有什麽意義呢？”
米歇爾·福柯-成就
福柯的主要工作總是圍繞幾個共同的組成部分和題目，他最主要的題目是權力和它與知識的關係（知識的社會學），以及這個關係在不同的歷史環境中的表現。他將歷史分化為一係列“認識”，福柯將這個認識定義為一個文化內一定形式的權力分佈。
對福柯來說，權力不衹是物質上的或軍事上的威力，當然它們是權力的一個元素。對福柯來說，權力不是一種固定不變的，可以掌握的位置，而是一種貫穿整 個社會的“能量流”。福柯說，能夠表現出來有知識是權力的一種來源，因為這樣的話你可以有權威地說出別人是什麽樣的和他們為什麽是這樣的。福柯不將權力看 做一種形式，而將它看做使用社會機構來表現一種真理而來將自己的目的施加於社會的不同的方式。
比如福柯在研究監獄的歷史的時候他不衹看看守的物理權力是怎樣的，他還研究他們是怎樣從社會上得到這個權利的——監獄是怎樣設計的，來使囚犯認識到他們到底是誰，來讓他們銘記住一定的行動規範。他還研究了“罪犯”的發展，研究了罪犯的定義的變化，由此推導出權力的變換。
對福柯來說，“真理”（其實是在某一歷史環境中被當作真理的事物）是運用權力的結果，而人衹不過是使用權力的工具。
福柯認為，依靠一個真理係統建立的權力可以通過討論、知識、歷史來被質疑，通過強調身體，貶低思考，或通過藝術創造也可以對這樣的權力挑戰。
福柯的書往往寫得非常緊湊，充滿了歷史典故，尤其是小故事，來加強他的理論的論證。福柯的批評者說他往往在引用歷史典故時不夠小心，他常常錯誤地引用一個典故或甚至自己創造典故。
米歇爾·福柯-作品介紹
《瘋癲與文明》
英文版《瘋癲與文明》《瘋癲與文明》 （Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique - Folie et deraison）是1961年出版的，它是福柯的第一部重要的書，是他在瑞典教法語時寫的。它討論了歷史上瘋狂這個概念是如何發展的。
福柯的分析始於中世紀，他描寫了當時人們如何將麻風病人關起來。從這裏開始他探討了15世紀愚人船的思想和17世紀法國對監禁的突然興趣。然後他探討了瘋狂是如何被看做一種女人引起的病的，當時有人認為女人的子宮在她們的身體周圍環繞可以引起瘋狂。後來瘋狂被看做是靈魂的疾病，最後，隨着西格蒙德•弗洛伊德瘋狂被看做是一種精神病。
福柯還用了許多時間來探討人們是怎樣對待瘋子的，從將瘋子接受為社會秩序的一部分到將他們看做必須關閉起來的人。他也研究了人們是怎樣試圖治療瘋狂的，尤其他探討了菲利普•皮內爾和塞繆爾•圖剋的例子。他斷定這些人使用的方法是殘暴和殘酷的。圖剋比如對瘋子進行懲罰，一直到他們學會了來模仿普通人的作為，實際上他是用恐嚇的方式來讓他們的行為像普通人。與此類似的，皮內爾使用厭惡療法，包括使用冷水浴和緊身服。在福柯看來，這種療法是使用重複的暴行直到病人將審判和懲罰的形式內化了。
《詞與物》
《詞與物》 （Les Mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines）出版於1966年，它主要的論點在於每個歷史階段都有一套異於前期的知識形構規則（福柯稱之為認識型（épistémè）），而現代知識型的特徵則是以「人」做為研究的中心。既然「人」的概念並非先驗的存在，而是晚近知識型形塑的結果，那麽它也就會被抹去，如同海邊沙灘上的一張臉。這本書的問世使福柯成為一位知名的法國知識分子，但也因為「人之死」的結論而飽受批評。讓•保羅•薩特就曾基於此點批判此書為小資産階級的最後壁壘。
《規訓與懲罰》
米歇爾·福柯《規訓與懲罰》 （Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison）出版於1975年。它討論了現代化前的公開的、殘酷的統治（比如通過死刑或酷刑）漸漸轉變為隱藏的、心理的統治。福柯提到自從監獄被發明以來它被看做是唯一的對犯罪行徑的解决方式。
福柯在這部書中的主要觀點是對罪犯的懲罰與犯罪是一個相互關係——兩者互為前提條件。
福柯將現代社會比做邊沁的《全景監獄》（Panopticon），一小批看守可以監視一大批囚犯，但他們自己卻不被看到。
傳統帝王透過凌遲罪犯、斬首示衆，以肉體的展示來宣示自身統馭的權威，這種直接曝入施力者與受力者的腳色，16世紀進入古典時代，福柯以兩個歷史事 件作為典範，說明規馴手段的方式與樣貌完全不同以往。其一是鼠疫肆虐於歐洲，為了讓發生鼠疫的地區災情不致繼續擴散，指示每戶人傢關緊門戶，閉居自身住 所，不可在未經許可下到公共空間溜搭，街道上衹有持槍的軍人以及固定時間出來巡察、點名，透過書寫登記，記錄每個居民的存亡交付市長進行重新審核，規訓方 式從原來展示威嚇，至現代轉變成用科學知識、科層制度進行各種分配安置，顯示規訊手段的改變。
福柯無意解釋罪犯是怎麽來的，或是為何會有犯罪的行為等等起源或事件發生的原因等問題。他要強調某種機製存在於那邊，原本衹是要將一群擾亂社會秩序 者關起來，然這件單純事情開始被關註，研究為何這群人這麽不同，觀察顱骨大小、小時候是否被虐待，開始産生心理學、人口學、犯罪學這些學問，為「罪犯」這 個身份附加更多的意涵，也同時加以主體化罪犯，試圖讓人正視強調這命題。再從這套認識，於監獄中透過反復操練、檢查審核、再操練，不衹是要矯正犯人，並要 犯人認清自己是個罪犯，是擁有偏差行為的「不正常」人，所以你自己要努力矯正自己，監獄、警察都是在「幫助」你做這件事情。也就是說，這套機製中的受力者 既是主體又是客體，不衹告訴罪犯你必須做甚麽，還會要求時時問自己這樣做對不對，並且如何為自己的這個罪犯身份，懺悔和自我審查。
《性史》
《性史》中譯本《性史》 （Histoire de la sexualité）一共分三捲（本計劃六捲），第一捲《認知的意志》（La volonté de savoir）， 也是最常被引用的那一捲，是1976年出版的，其主題是最近的兩個世紀中性在權力統治中所起的作用。針對對於弗洛伊德等提出的維多利亞時代的性壓抑，福柯 提出置疑，指出性在17世紀並沒有壓抑，相反得到了激勵和支持。社會構建了各種機製去強調和引誘人們談論性。性與權力和話語緊密地結合在了一起。第二捲 《快感的享用》（L'Usage des plaisirs）和第三捲《關註自我》（Le Souci de soi） 是在福柯死前不久於1984年出版的。其主要內容是古希臘人和古羅馬人對性的觀念，關註一種“倫理哲學”。此外福柯還基本上寫好了一部第四捲，其內容是基 督教統治時期對肉體與性的觀念和對基督教的影響，但因為福柯特別拒絶在他死後出版任何書籍， 傢人根據他的遺願至今未出版它的完整版本。
《詞與物》
《詞與物》 （Les Mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines）出版於1966年，它主要的論點在於每個歷史階段都有一套異於前期的知識形構規則（福柯稱之為認識型（épistémè）），而現代知識型的特徵則是以「人」做為研究的中心。既然「人」的概念並非先驗的存在，而是晚近知識型形塑的結果，那麽它也就會被抹去，如同海邊沙灘上的一張臉。這本書的問世使福柯成為一位知名的法國知識分子，但也因為「人之死」的結論而飽受批評。讓•保羅•薩特就曾基於此點批判此書為小資産階級的最後壁壘。
Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. His writings on power, knowledge, and discourse have been widely discussed and taken up by others. In the 1960s Foucault was associated with structuralism, a movement from which he distanced himself. Foucault also rejected the poststructuralist and postmodernist labels later attributed to him, preferring to classify his thought as a critical history of modernity rooted in Kant. Foucault's project is particularly influenced by Nietzsche; his "genealogy of knowledge" being a direct allusion to Nietzsche's "genealogy of morality". In a late interview he definitively stated: "I am a Nietzschean."
In 2007 Foucault was listed as the most cited intellectual in the humanities by The Times Higher Education Guide.
Biography
Early life
Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in Poitiers as Paul-Michel Foucault to a notable provincial family. His father, Paul Foucault, was an eminent surgeon and hoped his son would join him in the profession. His early education was a mix of success and mediocrity until he attended the Jesuit Collège Saint-Stanislas, where he excelled. During this period, Poitiers was part of Vichy France and later came under German occupation. After World War II, Foucault was admitted to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm), the traditional gateway to an academic career in the humanities in France.
The École Normale Supérieure
Foucault's personal life during the École Normale was difficult—he suffered from acute depression. As a result, he was taken to see a psychiatrist. During this time, Foucault became fascinated with psychology. He earned a licence (degree equivalent to BA) in psychology, a very new qualification in France at the time, in addition to a degree in philosophy, in 1952. He was involved in the clinical arm of psychology, which exposed him to thinkers such as Ludwig Binswanger.
Foucault was a member of the French Communist Party from 1950 to 1953. He was inducted into the party by his mentor Louis Althusser, but soon became disillusioned with both the politics and the philosophy of the party. Various people, such as historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, have reported that Foucault never actively participated in his cell, unlike many of his fellow party members.
Early career
Foucault failed at the agrégation in 1950 but took it again and succeeded the following year. After a brief period lecturing at the École Normale, he took up a position at the Université Lille Nord de France, where from 1953 to 1954 he taught psychology. In 1954 Foucault published his first book, Maladie mentale et personnalité, a work he later disavowed. At this point, Foucault was not interested in a teaching career, and undertook a lengthy exile from France. In 1954 he served France as a cultural delegate to the University of Uppsala in Sweden (a position arranged for him by Georges Dumézil, who was to become a friend and mentor). In 1958 Foucault left Uppsala and briefly held positions at Warsaw University and at the University of Hamburg.
Foucault returned to France in 1960 to complete his doctorate and take up a post in philosophy at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. There he met philosopher Daniel Defert, who would become his lover of twenty years. In 1961 he earned his doctorate by submitting two theses (as is customary in France): a "major" thesis entitled Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (Madness and Insanity: History of Madness in the Classical Age) and a "secondary" thesis that involved a translation of, and commentary on Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Folie et déraison (Madness and Insanity — published in an abridged edition in English as Madness and Civilization and finally published unabridged as "History of Madness" by Routledge in 2006) was extremely well-received. Foucault continued a vigorous publishing schedule. In 1963 he published Naissance de la Clinique (Birth of the Clinic), Raymond Roussel, and a reissue of his 1954 volume (now entitled Maladie mentale et psychologie or, in English, "Mental Illness and Psychology"), which again, he later disavowed.
After Defert was posted to Tunisia for his military service, Foucault moved to a position at the University of Tunis in 1965. He published Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things) during the height of interest in structuralism in 1966, and Foucault was quickly grouped with scholars such as Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes as the newest, latest wave of thinkers set to topple the existentialism popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre. Foucault made a number of skeptical comments about Marxism, which outraged a number of left wing critics, but later firmly rejected the "structuralist" label. He was still in Tunis during the May 1968 student riots, where he was profoundly affected by a local student revolt earlier in the same year. In the Autumn of 1968 he returned to France, where he published L'archéologie du savoir (The Archaeology of Knowledge) — a methodological response to his critics — in 1969.
Post-1968: as activist
In the aftermath of 1968, the French government created a new experimental university, Paris VIII, at Vincennes and appointed Foucault the first head of its philosophy department in December of that year. Foucault appointed mostly young leftist academics (such as Judith Miller) whose radicalism provoked the Ministry of Education, who objected to the fact that many of the course titles contained the phrase "Marxist-Leninist," and who decreed that students from Vincennes would not be eligible to become secondary school teachers. Foucault notoriously also joined students in occupying administration buildings and fighting with police.
Foucault's tenure at Vincennes was short-lived, as in 1970 he was elected to France's most prestigious academic body, the Collège de France, as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought. His political involvement increased, and his partner Defert joined the ultra-Maoist Gauche Proletarienne (GP). Foucault helped found the Prison Information Group (French: Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons or GIP) to provide a way for prisoners to voice their concerns. This coincided with Foucault's turn to the study of disciplinary institutions, with a book, Surveiller et Punir (Discipline and Punishment), which "narrates" the micro-power structures that developed in Western societies since the eighteenth century, with a special focus on prisons and schools.
Later life
In the late 1970s, political activism in France tailed off with the disillusionment of many left wing intellectuals. A number of young Maoists abandoned their beliefs to become the so-called New Philosophers, often citing Foucault as their major influence, a status Foucault had mixed feelings about. Foucault in this period embarked on a six-volume project The History of Sexuality, which he never completed. Its first volume was published in French as La Volonté de Savoir (1976), then in English as The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1978). The second and third volumes did not appear for another eight years, and they surprised readers by their subject matter (classical Greek and Latin texts), approach and style, particularly Foucault's focus on the human subject, a concept that some mistakenly believed he had previously neglected.
Foucault began to spend more time in the United States, at the University at Buffalo (where he had lectured on his first ever visit to the United States in 1970) and especially at UC Berkeley. In 1975 he took LSD at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park, later calling it the best experience of his life.
In 1979 Foucault made two tours of Iran, undertaking extensive interviews with political protagonists in support of the new interim government established soon after the Iranian Revolution. His many essays on Iran, published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, only appeared in French in 1994 and then in English in 2005. These essays caused some controversy, with some commentators arguing that Foucault was insufficiently critical of the new regime.
In the philosopher's later years, interpreters of Foucault's work attempted to engage with the problems presented by the fact that the late Foucault seemed in tension with the philosopher's earlier work. When this issue was raised in a 1982 interview, Foucault remarked "When people say, 'Well, you thought this a few years ago and now you say something else,' my answer is… [laughs] 'Well, do you think I have worked hard all those years to say the same thing and not to be changed?'" He refused to identify himself as a philosopher, historian, structuralist, or Marxist, maintaining that "The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning." In a similar vein, he preferred not to claim that he was presenting a coherent and timeless block of knowledge; he rather desired his books "to be a kind of tool-box others can rummage through to find a tool they can use however they wish in their own area… I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers."
In 1992 James Miller published a biography of Foucault that was greeted with controversy in part due to his claim that Foucault's experiences in the gay sadomasochism community during the time he taught at Berkeley directly influenced his political and philosophical works . Miller's book has largely been rebuked by Foucault scholars as being either simply misdirected, a sordid reading of his life and works, or as a politically driven intentional misreading of Foucault's life and works.
Foucault died of an AIDS-related illness in Paris on 25 June 1984. He was the first high-profile French personality who was reported to have AIDS. Little was known about the disease at the time and there has been some controversy since. In the front-page article of Le Monde announcing his death, there was no mention of AIDS, although it was implied that he died from a massive infection. Prior to his death, Foucault had destroyed most of his manuscripts, and in his will had prohibited the publication of what he might have overlooked.
Works
Madness and Civilization
Main article: Madness and Civilization
The English edition of Madness and Civilization is an abridged version of Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, originally published in 1961. A full English translation titled The History of Madness has since been published by Routledge in 2006. "Folie et deraison" originated as Foucault's doctoral dissertation; this was Foucault's first major book, mostly written while he was the Director of the Maison de France in Sweden. It examines ideas, practices, institutions, art and literature relating to madness in Western history.
Foucault begins his history in the Middle Ages, noting the social and physical exclusion of lepers. He argues that with the gradual disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded position. The ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary version of one such exclusionary practice, namely that of sending mad people away in ships. In 17th century Europe, in a movement Foucault famously calls the "Great Confinement," "unreasonable" members of the population were institutionalised. In the eighteenth century, madness came to be seen as the reverse of Reason, and, finally, in the nineteenth century as mental illness.
Foucault also argues that madness was silenced by Reason, losing its power to signify the limits of social order and to point to the truth. He examines the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane, notably at the hands of Philippe Pinel and Samuel Tuke who he suggests started the conceptualization of madness as 'mental illness'. He claims that these new treatments were in fact no less controlling than previous methods. Pinel's treatment of the mad amounted to an extended aversion therapy, including such treatments as freezing showers and use of a straitjacket. In Foucault's view, this treatment amounted to repeated brutality until the pattern of judgment and punishment was internalized by the patient.
The Birth of the Clinic
Main article: The Birth of the Clinic
Foucault's second major book, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical) was published in 1963 in France, and translated to English in 1973. Picking up from Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic traces the development of the medical profession, and specifically the institution of the clinique (translated as "clinic", but here largely referring to teaching hospitals). Its motif is the concept of the medical regard (translated by Alan Sheridan as "medical gaze"), traditionally limited to small, specialized institutions such as hospitals and prisons, but which Foucault examines as subjecting wider social spaces, governing the population en masse.
Death and The Labyrinth
Main article: Death and The Labyrinth
Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel was published in 1963, and translated into English in 1986. It is unique, being Foucault's only book-length work on literature. For Foucault this was "by far the book I wrote most easily and with the greatest pleasure." Here, Foucault explores theory, criticism and psychology through the texts of Raymond Roussel, one of the fathers of experimental writing, whose work has been celebrated by the likes of Cocteau, Duchamp, Breton, Robbe-Grillet, Gide and Giacometti.
The Order of Things
Main article: The Order of Things
Foucault's Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines was published in 1966. It was translated into English and published by Pantheon Books in 1970 under the title The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Foucault had preferred L'Ordre des Choses for the original French title, but changed the title as there was already another book of this title. The work broadly aims to provide an anti-humanist excavation of the human sciences, such as sociology and psychology. The book opens with an extended discussion of Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas and its complex arrangement of sight-lines, hiddenness and appearance. Then it develops its central thesis: all periods of history have possessed specific underlying conditions of truth that constituted what could be expressed as discourse, for example art, science, culture etc. Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, in major and relatively sudden shifts, from one period's episteme to another. Foucault's Nietzschean critique of Enlightenment values in Les mots et les choses has been very influential to cultural history. It is here Foucault's infamous claims that "man is only a recent invention" and that the "end of man" is at hand. The book made Foucault a prominent intellectual figure in France.
The Archaeology of Knowledge
Main article: The Archaeology of Knowledge
Published in 1969, this volume was Foucault's main excursion into methodology, written as an appendix of sorts to Les Mots et les choses. It makes references to Anglo-American analytical philosophy, particularly speech act theory.
Foucault directs his analysis toward the "statement" (énoncé), the basic unit of discourse. "Statement" has a special meaning in the Archaeology: it denotes what makes propositions, utterances, or speech acts meaningful. In contrast to classic structuralists, Foucault does not believe that the meaning of semantic elements is determined prior to their articulation. In this understanding, statements themselves are not propositions, utterances, or speech acts. Rather, statements constitute a network of rules establishing what is meaningful, and these rules are the preconditions for propositions, utterances, or speech acts to have meaning. However, statements are also 'events', because, like other rules, they appear at some time. Depending on whether or not it complies with these rules of meaning, a grammatically correct sentence may still lack meaning and, inversely, a grammatically incorrect sentence may still be meaningful. Statements depend on the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field of discourse; the meaning of a statement is reliant on the succession of statements that precede and follow it. Foucault aims his analysis towards a huge organised dispersion of statements, called discursive formations. Foucault reiterates that the analysis he is outlining is only one possible procedure, and that he is not seeking to displace other ways of analysing discourse or render them as invalid.
According to Dreyfus and Rabinow, Foucault not only brackets out issues of truth (cf. Husserl), he also brackets out issues of meaning. Rather than looking for a deeper meaning underneath discourse or looking for the source of meaning in some transcendental subject, Foucault analyzes the discursive and practical conditions for the existence of truth and meaning. To show the principles of meaning and truth production in various discursive formations, he details how truth claims emerge during various epochs on the basis of what was actually said and written during these periods. He particularly describes the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, and the 20th century. He strives to avoid all interpretation and to depart from the goals of hermeneutics. This does not mean that Foucault denounces truth and meaning, but just that truth and meaning depend on the historical discursive and practical means of truth and meaning production. For instance, although they were radically different during Enlightenment as opposed to Modernity, there were indeed meaning, truth and correct treatment of madness during both epochs (Madness and Civilization). This posture allows Foucault to denounce a priori concepts of the nature of the human subject and focus on the role of discursive practices in constituting subjectivity.
Dispensing with finding a deeper meaning behind discourse appears to lead Foucault toward structuralism. However, whereas structuralists search for homogeneity in a discursive entity, Foucault focuses on differences. Instead of asking what constitutes the specificity of European thought he asks what constitutes the differences developed within it and over time. Therefore, as a historical method, he refuses to examine statements outside of their historical context: the discursive formation. The meaning of a statement depends on the general rules that characterise the discursive formation to which it belongs. A discursive formation continually generates new statements, and some of these usher in changes in the discursive formation that may or may not be adopted. Therefore, to describe a discursive formation, Foucault also focuses on expelled and forgotten discourses that never happen to change the discursive formation. Their difference to the dominant discourse also describe it. In this way one can describe specific systems that determine which types of statements emerge. In his Foucault (1986), Deleuze describes The Archaeology of Knowledge as "the most decisive step yet taken in the theory-practice of multiplicities."
Discipline and Punish
Main article: Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison was translated into English in 1977, from the French Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, published in 1975. The book opens with a graphic description of the brutal public execution in 1757 of Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to kill Louis XV. Against this it juxtaposes a colourless prison timetable from just over 80 years later. Foucault then inquires how such a change in French society's punishment of convicts could have developed in such a short time. These are snapshots of two contrasting types of Foucault's "Technologies of Punishment." The first type, "Monarchical Punishment," involves the repression of the populace through brutal public displays of executions and torture. The second, "Disciplinary Punishment," is what Foucault says is practiced in the modern era. Disciplinary punishment gives "professionals" (psychologists, programme facilitators, parole officers, etc.) power over the prisoner, most notably in that the prisoner's length of stay depends on the professionals' judgment. Foucault goes on to argue that Disciplinary punishment leads to self-policing by the populace as opposed to brutal displays of authority from the Monarchical period.
Foucault also compares modern society with Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon" design for prisons (which was unrealized in its original form, but nonetheless influential): in the Panopticon, a single guard can watch over many prisoners while the guard remains unseen. Ancient prisons have been replaced by clear and visible ones, but Foucault cautions that "visibility is a trap." It is through this visibility, Foucault writes, that modern society exercises its controlling systems of power and knowledge (terms Foucault believed to be so fundamentally connected that he often combined them in a single hyphenated concept, "power-knowledge"). Increasing visibility leads to power located on an increasingly individualized level, shown by the possibility for institutions to track individuals throughout their lives. Foucault suggests that a "carceral continuum" runs through modern society, from the maximum security prison, through secure accommodation, probation, social workers, police, and teachers, to our everyday working and domestic lives. All are connected by the (witting or unwitting) supervision (surveillance, application of norms of acceptable behaviour) of some humans by others.
The History of Sexuality
Main article: The History of Sexuality
Three volumes of The History of Sexuality were published before Foucault's death in 1984. The first and most referenced volume, The Will to Knowledge (previously known as An Introduction in English — Histoire de la sexualité, 1: la volonté de savoir in French) was published in France in 1976, and translated in 1977, focusing primarily on the last two centuries, and the functioning of sexuality as an analytics of power related to the emergence of a science of sexuality (scientia sexualis) and the emergence of biopower in the West. In this volume he attacks the "repressive hypothesis," the widespread belief that we have "repressed" our natural sexual drives, particularly since the nineteenth century. He proposes that what is thought of as "repression" of sexuality actually constituted sexuality as a core feature of human identities, and produced a proliferation of discourse on the subject.
The second two volumes, The Use of Pleasure (Histoire de la sexualite, II: l'usage des plaisirs) and The Care of the Self (Histoire de la sexualité, III: le souci de soi) dealt with the role of sex in Greek and Roman antiquity. Both were published in 1984, the year of Foucault's death, with the second volume being translated in 1985, and the third in 1986. In his lecture series from 1979 to 1980 Foucault extended his analysis of government to its 'wider sense of techniques and procedures designed to direct the behaviour of men', which involved a new consideration of the 'examination of conscience' and confession in early Christian literature. These themes of early Christian literature seemed to dominate Foucault's work, alongside his study of Greek and Roman literature, until the end of his life. However, Foucault's death left the work incomplete, and the planned fourth volume of his History of Sexuality on Christianity was never published. The fourth volume was to be entitled Confessions of the Flesh (Les aveux de la chair). The volume was almost complete before Foucault's death and a copy of it is privately held in the Foucault archive. It cannot be published under the restrictions of Foucault's estate.
Lectures
From 1970 until his death in 1984, from January to March of each year except 1977, Foucault gave a course of public lectures and seminars weekly at the Collège de France as the condition of his tenure as professor there. All these lectures were tape-recorded, and Foucault's transcripts also survive. In 1997 these lectures began to be published in French with eight volumes having appeared so far. So far, seven sets of lectures have appeared in English: Psychiatric Power 1973–1974, Abnormal 1974–1975, Society Must Be Defended 1975–1976, Security, Territory, Population 1977–1978, The Hermeneutics of the Subject 1981–1982, The Birth of Biopolitics 1978-1979 and The Government of Self and Others 1982-1983. Society Must Be Defended and Security, Territory, Population pursued an analysis of the broader relationship between security and biopolitics, explicitly politicizing the question of the birth of man raised in The Order of Things. In Security, Territory, Population, Foucault outlines his theory of governmentality, and demonstrates the distinction between sovereignty, discipline, and governmentality as distinct modalities of state power. He argues that governmental state power can be genealogically linked to the 17th century state philosophy of raison d'etat and, ultimately, to the medieval Christian 'pastoral' concept of power. Notes of some of Foucault's lectures from University of California, Berkeley in 1983 have also appeared as Fearless Speech.
Criticisms
Certain theorists have questioned the extent to which Foucault may be regarded as an ethical 'neo-anarchist', the self-appointed architect of a "new politics of truth", or, to the contrary, a nihilistic and disobligating 'neo-functionalist'. Jean-Paul Sartre, in a review of The Order of Things, described the non-Marxist Foucault as "the last rampart of the bourgeoisie."
Jürgen Habermas has described Foucault as a "crypto-normativist"; covertly reliant on the very Enlightenment principles he attempts to deconstruct. Central to this problem is the way Foucault seemingly attempts to remain both Kantian and Nietzschean in his approach:
Foucault discovers in Kant, as the first philosopher, an archer who aims his arrow at the heart of the most actual features of the present and so opens the discourse of modernity ... but Kant's philosophy of history, the speculation about a state of freedom, about world-citizenship and eternal peace, the interpretation of revolutionary enthusiasm as a sign of historical 'progress toward betterment' - must not each line provoke the scorn of Foucault, the theoretician of power? Has not history, under the stoic gaze of the archaeologist Foucault, frozen into an iceberg covered with the crystals of arbitrary formulations of discourse?
– Habermas Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present 1984,
Richard Rorty has argued that Foucault's so-called 'archaeology of knowledge' is fundamentally negative, and thus fails to adequately establish any 'new' theory of knowledge per se. Rather, Foucault simply provides a few valuable maxims regarding the reading of history:
As far as I can see, all he has to offer are brilliant redescriptions of the past, supplemented by helpful hints on how to avoid being trapped by old historiographical assumptions. These hints consist largely of saying: "do not look for progress or meaning in history; do not see the history of a given activity, of any segment of culture, as the development of rationality or of freedom; do not use any philosophical vocabulary to characterize the essence of such activity or the goal it serves; do not assume that the way this activity is presently conducted gives any clue to the goals it served in the past."
– Rorty Foucault and Epistemology, 1986