DOI: 10.4231/0dxp-r218
title: Foucault: Lecture 3, 05 November 1985

description: &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Deleuze Seminars&lt;/em&gt; is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&quot;Foucault&quot; was a 26-lecture seminar given from October 1985 to June 1986. In these lectures, Deleuze offers his interpretation and analysis of French philosopher Michel Foucault&#39;s work. Examining the theoretical foundations and major themes of Foucault&#39;s philosophy, Deleuze dedicates several lectures to each of what he calls the &quot;three axes&quot; of Foucault&#39;s thought. This seminar coincides with the publication of Deleuze&#39;s book &lt;em&gt;Foucault&lt;/em&gt; (1986).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the 5 November 1985 lecture, after the usual recap of previous key points, Deleuze considers the work by Krafft-Ebing and his &lt;em&gt;Psychopathia Sexualis&lt;/em&gt;, to which Deleuze contrasts Foucault&rsquo;s perspective, also emphasizing the emergence of statements in government and in schools. Then, Deleuze considers the very method of extracting statements, i.e., necessarily by constituting a corpus to unlock the patterns that define statements, but in a fashion that is depersonalized (to the extent possible). Deleuze likens this to Gabriel Tarde&rsquo; microsociology and finds examples in Foucault&rsquo;s &ldquo;Lives of Infamous Men&rdquo; and in the &lt;em&gt;History of Madness&lt;/em&gt;. The method consisting of determining the sites of power [&lt;em&gt;les foyers de pouvoir&lt;/em&gt;] around which the words, sentences and propositions are organized, Deleuze argues that Foucault&rsquo;s method for these sites leads him to identify &ldquo;singularities&rdquo; as constitutive of a corpus, thereby designating a &ldquo;there is&rdquo; of language. Linking this gathering of language to historical formations (e.g. the Classical age, and Nietzsche and Mallarm&eacute;, also works by Blanchot), Deleuze says that for Foucault, the &ldquo;there is&rdquo; of language is an &ldquo;anonymous murmur&rdquo;, discovered by breaking open language and statements to the corpus of visibility, the being-light of each period. For Foucault, this glimmering of visibilities emerges in the work of Raymond Roussel, poetry constituted as knowledge (&lt;em&gt;savoir&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This dataset for the new version includes four files, the translation and transcription of the session in Open Data Text (odt) format, an aggregate version of the audio recordings in a single mp3, and the original Paris-8 French transcription of the recorded lecture. The aggregate audio file has been downsampled.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Les S&eacute;minaires de Deleuze&lt;/em&gt; sont une collection d&#39;enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents compl&eacute;mentaires des conf&eacute;rences que le philosophe fran&ccedil;ais Gilles Deleuze a donn&eacute; lors de sa carri&egrave;re &agrave; l&#39;Universit&eacute; de Paris 8.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&laquo;Foucault&raquo; &eacute;tait un s&eacute;minaire de 26 conf&eacute;rences donn&eacute; d&#39;octobre 1985 &agrave; juin 1986. Dans ces conf&eacute;rences, Deleuze offre son interpr&eacute;tation et son analyse de l&rsquo;&oelig;uvre du philosophe fran&ccedil;ais Michel Foucault. En examinant les fondements th&eacute;oriques et les th&egrave;mes majeurs de la philosophie de Foucault, Deleuze consacre plusieurs conf&eacute;rences &agrave; chacun de ce qu&#39;il appelle les &laquo;trois axes&raquo; de la pens&eacute;e de Foucault. Ce s&eacute;minaire co&iuml;ncide avec la publication du livre de Deleuze &lt;em&gt;Foucault&lt;/em&gt; (1986).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Dans la conf&eacute;rence du 5 novembre 1985, les sujets de discussion comprennent: la s&eacute;rie des d&eacute;placements chez Foucault: la question du savoir, puis la question du pouvoir, puis la question du d&eacute;sir; pourquoi et comment le d&eacute;placement du savoir au pouvoir chez Foucault; l&#39;arch&eacute;ologie comme l&#39;extraction des &eacute;nonc&eacute;s d&#39;une &eacute;poque; des mots, des phrases et des propositions comme ce qui est imm&eacute;diatement donn&eacute;; le psychiatre austro-allemand Richard von Krafft-Ebing et sa &lt;em&gt;Psychopathia sexualis&lt;/em&gt;; que pour trouver les &eacute;nonc&eacute;s il faut constituer un corpus; les linguistes am&eacute;ricains Leonard Bloomfield et Zellig Harris, le distributionalisme et d&eacute;gager les r&eacute;gularit&eacute;s qui d&eacute;finissent les &eacute;nonc&eacute;s; sociologue fran&ccedil;ais Gabriel Tarde et microsociologie; les &eacute;nonc&eacute;s du XIXe si&egrave;cle; la notion de corpus et les foyers de pouvoir et de r&eacute;sistance; la dimension dans laquelle le langage est donn&eacute;; l&#39;&ecirc;tre du langage comme historique; le rassemblement du langage comme li&eacute; &agrave; une formation historique (repr&eacute;sentation pour le XVIIe si&egrave;cle, litt&eacute;rature pour le XIXe si&egrave;cle); la philosophe fran&ccedil;ais Maurice Blanchot et sa th&eacute;orie de la litt&eacute;rature du comme irr&eacute;ductible &agrave; la repr&eacute;sentation, dont le po&egrave;te fran&ccedil;ais St&eacute;phane Mallarm&eacute; est un exemple; la linguistique pr&eacute;suppose que tout corpus est relatif; qu&#39;il n&#39;y a jamais de commencement du langage; l&#39;&ecirc;tre-langage et le murmure anonyme; le sens silencieux muet des choses et du monde, et la ph&eacute;nom&eacute;nologie; le rassemblement du langage et le &lt;em&gt;on parle&lt;/em&gt;, le murmure anonyme ou &eacute;nonc&eacute;; le corpus de visibilit&eacute;; l&#39;&ecirc;tre-lumi&egrave;re de chaque &eacute;poque; un tableau comme un rassemblement de lumi&egrave;re; Raymond Roussel; et comment l&#39;&ecirc;tre-langage et l&#39;&ecirc;tre-lumi&egrave;re d&rsquo;une m&ecirc;me &eacute;poque sont h&eacute;t&eacute;rog&egrave;nes.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 05 November 1985. This is lecture 3 of a 26-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between October 1985 and June 1986.