DOI: 10.4231/y2c1-yt98
title: Foucault: Lecture 16, 18 March 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;In the 18 March 1986 lecture, having detailed Foucault&rsquo;s three successive historical formations from &lt;i&gt;The Order of Thing&lt;/i&gt;s, Deleuze indicates their correspondence to &ldquo;geological movements of thought&rdquo; to which he assigns different terms, unfolding (&lt;i&gt;d&eacute;pli&lt;/i&gt;) for the &ldquo;God-form&rdquo; (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries), re-folding (&lt;i&gt;repli&lt;/i&gt;) for the &ldquo;man-form&rdquo; (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries), and the super- or overfold (&lt;em&gt;surpli&lt;/em&gt;) for the Overman (&lt;em&gt;Surhomme&lt;/em&gt;, end of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries). After again addressing Foucault&rsquo;s take on the theme of the &ldquo;death of man&rdquo;, i.e., the disappearance of the &ldquo;man-form&rdquo;, Deleuze focuses mainly on the third form, the overfold, but traces each of its traits back through each successive formation. In the first formation, he emphasizes the relation with the forces of elevation to the infinite, the orders of infinities; then, in the second formation, man&rsquo;s engagement with the forces of the outside, the three forces of finitude in labor, life and language; then, why the &ldquo;man-form&rdquo; envelops death (of the form). Dwelling at length over the precariousness of the &ldquo;man-form&rdquo; and the coextensivity of life and death, Deleuze considers whether, despite the forms of violence that man inflicts all around him, there might be a new form liberating man from such violence, hence a return to the age of the overfold. However, after parenthetically discussing how Foucault limited himself to European formations, he cites &lt;em&gt;The Order of Things &lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:normal"&gt;at length&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt; to discuss the &ldquo;man-form&rdquo; and the power of reuniting (&lt;em&gt;rassemblement&lt;/em&gt;) language in the being of language, the anonymous murmur, and the perpetual return of language to itself, examples of which abound: Mallarm&eacute;&rsquo;s concept of &ldquo;the Book&rdquo;; Artaud&rsquo;s &ldquo;writing for aphasics&rdquo;; Burroughs&rsquo;s &ldquo;cut-ups&rdquo; and &ldquo;fold-ins&rdquo;; Roussel&rsquo;s proliferating expression; Brisset&rsquo;s decompositions; P&eacute;guy&rsquo;s repetitions; C&eacute;line&rsquo;s creation of kinds of syntax; e. e. cummings&rsquo;s ungrammatical formations. Deleuze asks, in conclusion, whether modern literature can be an operation reuniting language in order then to stretch it to its limit, syntactical invention approaching the agrammatical, something that Foucault discusses for language but not for labor and life, a disparity to be queried next time.&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. 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 18 mars 1986, les sujets de discussion comprennent: la succession de trois formes: Dieu (XVIIe-XVIIIe si&egrave;cles), Homme (XVIIIe-XIXe si&egrave;cles), Surhomme (fin du XIXe, XXe et XXIe si&egrave;cles); les mouvements g&eacute;ologiques de la pens&eacute;e; le pli et le d&eacute;pli des choses et le surpli; le th&egrave;me de la mort de l&#39;Homme et la disparition de la forme Homme; que toute forme est un compos&eacute; des rapports de forces; les forces dans l&#39;Homme en rapport avec les forces d&#39;&eacute;l&eacute;vation &agrave; l&#39;infini; de la nature des humains, les ordres des infinit&eacute;s, la pens&eacute;e au XVIIe si&egrave;cle, et les preuves cosmologiques de l&#39;existence de Dieu; le philosophe et th&eacute;ologien allemand Nicolas de Cues; penser c&#39;est plier; Cuvier et la vie; que la forme Homme enveloppe la mort (de la forme) de l&#39;Homme; Nietzsche; &lt;em&gt;L&#39;Essence du Christianisme&lt;/em&gt; de Feuerbach; la forme Surhomme; Bichat, la vie animale, le pluralisme des morts violentes, et son livre &lt;em&gt;Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort&lt;/em&gt;; la pr&eacute;carit&eacute; de la forme Homme; Foucault, le langage et &lt;em&gt;Les mots et les choses&lt;/em&gt;; la forme Homme et la puissance de rassemblement le langage dans l&#39;acte d&#39;&eacute;crire; l&#39;&ecirc;tre du langage; le murmure anonyme; le retour perp&eacute;tuel du langage &agrave; lui-m&ecirc;me; le surpli du langage, le Surhomme, et les livres de Mallarm&eacute;; le&lt;em&gt; cut up&lt;/em&gt; (forme simple) et le &lt;em&gt;fold in&lt;/em&gt; (le pliage sur soi-m&ecirc;me ou le surpli); Roussel et la fuite infini des parenth&egrave;ses; la cr&eacute;ation de la syntaxe; le po&egrave;te et essayiste fran&ccedil;ais Charles P&eacute;guy; l&#39;&eacute;crivain et m&eacute;decin fran&ccedil;ais Louis-Ferdinand C&eacute;line; les limites du langage; et la litt&eacute;rature moderne comme une op&eacute;ration vers une invention de la syntaxe.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 18 March 1986. This is lecture 16 of a 26-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between October 1985 and June 1986.