DOI: 10.4231/dx2c-jz71
title: Foucault: Lecture 9, 07 January 1986

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;With the 7 January 1986 lecture, Part II of the seminar focuses on power, the second axis of Foucault&rsquo;s thought, starting with Deleuze&rsquo;s review as well as with key terms: historical formations or strata of statements and visibilities; the intertwining of the latter, also as language and light, yet remaining heterogenous, constantly battling, occurring via a &ldquo;non-relation&rdquo;, but a relation between the forms occurring due to the dimension of power. While knowledge is formal and stratified, power is informal and unstratified, with a boundary like a curve regularizing relations between singular points, with knowledge relations linked to power relations, the latter thus understood as relations of forces. Deleuze notes three aspects of these relations and their heterogeneity and joins Foucault to Kant through heterogeneity and reciprocal presupposition, but while quickly observing that Foucault needed to add a third axis (part III of the seminar), he remains focused on the first two axes. With no systematic account of the principles of power in Foucault, Deleuze pursues these principles by understanding power as practice, which is how, Deleuze says, Foucault approached all historical problems, linking his published works to his interviews. Situating &lt;i&gt;Discipline and Punish&lt;/i&gt; within ongoing European leftist debates of the 1960s-70s, and to Foucault&rsquo;s activism in the GIP (Prisons Information Group), Deleuze considers three practical problems: the new types of struggles (concerning power), the role of the intellectual (concerning knowledge), and the meaning of &ldquo;to be subject&rdquo;, with Deleuze selecting different examples of ruptures (e.g., in Yugoslavia, in Italy, and France). Besides the transversal type of engagement, Foucault also proposed the &ldquo;specific intellectual&rdquo;, influenced by American types of &ldquo;new subjectivities&rdquo;, the subject defined as a small incarnation of singularities. Hence, the three practices (struggles, intellectuals, subjectivities) form the linkage between historical formations and the here-now. Deleuze then seeks principles, first being: do not seek large aggregates, but rather microphysics, corpuscles in contrast to the wave, distinctions that Foucault links to Durkheim versus Gabriel Tarde (Foucault tending toward the latter). After outlining Foucault&rsquo;s denunciation of six postulates of classical theories of power, Deleuze leaves the last one for the next session, the linkage made between the State and law.&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&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.&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;La conf&eacute;rence du 7 janvier 1986 marque la deuxi&egrave;me partie du s&eacute;minaire o&ugrave; Deleuze examine le deuxi&egrave;me axe de la pens&eacute;e de Foucault, le pouvoir. Les autres sujets de discussion comprennent: les formations historiques ou stratifi&eacute;es, d&rsquo;&eacute;nonc&eacute;s et de visibilit&eacute;s; le visible; Raymond Roussel; le rapport savoir-pouvoir; le sujet universel kantien; le &lt;em&gt;hic et nunc&lt;/em&gt;; le &lt;em&gt;ici-maintenant&lt;/em&gt; des entretiens en corr&eacute;lation avec les livres de Foucault; luttes centralis&eacute;es et transversales; mai 1968; Guattari; la critique de la repr&eacute;sentation; le mouvement des prisons; les foyers de r&eacute;sistance au pouvoir et les nouveaux types de lutte; le r&ocirc;le de l&#39;intellectuel dans la lutte; qu&#39;est-ce qu&#39;&ecirc;tre sujet (au moment du s&eacute;minaire); l&#39;ann&eacute;e 1950 comme point de d&eacute;part de beaucoup de ces questions; le politicien communiste, th&eacute;oricien et auteur yougoslave Milovan Djilas; la rupture yougoslave; Le philosophe et politicien italien Mario Tronti et le marxisme; le travail noir; la nouvelle subjectivit&eacute;; les rapports transversaux entre groupes restreints; la microphysique du pouvoir; l&#39;auteur fran&ccedil;ais Andr&eacute; Gide et la justice; l&#39;&eacute;crivain et militant politique fran&ccedil;ais Jean Genet et les Black Panthers; les scientifiques et la bombe atomique; le sujet comme une incarnation des singularit&eacute;s; continuit&eacute; historique et subjectivit&eacute;; le centralisme &agrave; la Fran&ccedil;ais du surr&eacute;alisme; le sociologue fran&ccedil;ais &Eacute;mile Durkheim; Gabriel Tarde; imitations et inventions sociales et les corpuscules de la croyance et du d&eacute;sir; grands ensembles) et microphysique; l&#39;anthropologue et ethnologue fran&ccedil;ais Claude L&eacute;vi-Strauss; les six postulats de Foucault; soci&eacute;t&eacute;s primitives et l&rsquo;&eacute;change, don et contre-don; les lignages (structures verticales) et le r&eacute;seau d&#39;alliances (ou pratiques); Nietzsche; les s&eacute;ries et les rapports des forces; le pouvoir est diffus et ne se laisse pas localis&eacute;, il est local et jamais global; le pouvoir n&#39;est pas essence ni attribut, et n&rsquo;a pas d&#39;int&eacute;riorit&eacute;; l&#39;exemple de la lettre cachet; la microphysique de d&eacute;lit; et force comme un rapport entre les forces.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 07 January 1986. This is lecture 9 of a 26-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between October 1985 and June 1986.