DOI: 10.4231/tyk6-rp17
title: Foucault: Lecture 24, 20 May 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;Featuring an intervention by &Eacute;ric Alliez, the 20 May 1986 session&rsquo;s transcription has now been reconstituted nearly in its entirety, with a new translation (no longer the &ldquo;inaudible&rdquo; status indicated on Paris 8 and WebDeleuze). Alliez discusses forms of subjectification in the context of contemporary Italian Marxism, opening with broader references (to Antonio Negri, notably) regarding &lt;em&gt;Opera&iuml;smo&lt;/em&gt;, or Workerism, and then tracing what Alliez calls three phases of development from post-World War II onward. Alliez focuses on Marx&rsquo;s term &ldquo;real subsumption&rdquo; that Negri discusses as having an impact on, among other matters, possibilities for resistance and constitution of subjectivity, leading into what Alliez considers a third moment. After his remarks, Deleuze continues developing the strange diagram located in the final chapter of Deleuze&rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Foucault&lt;/em&gt; with detailed descriptions of the drawing&rsquo;s facets (minimally presented in the book) including the importance of &ldquo;crossing the line&rdquo;. Foucault&rsquo;s shift &ndash; to cross the line &ndash; corresponds to his three problems, the third being &ldquo;what is the mode of my subjectification?&rdquo;, which Deleuze argues is linked to an even more fundamental question for Foucault, &ldquo;what does it mean to think?&rdquo; For the knowledge-being, says Deleuze, this is the space between speaking and seeing; then, for the power-being, thinking is at once &ldquo;to emit singularities&rdquo; and &ldquo;to roll the dice&rdquo;; and then, for the self-being, it is &ldquo;to constitute a space within&rdquo; coextensive with the Outside line of the fold. Sketching the diagram (for nearly an hour), Deleuze introduces texts by Melville, Faulkner and Michaux to show how the strata interact between knowledge and force, how singularities (affect, resistance, force relations) are emitted, and how they are connected to the line of the Outside. While the speed of thinking in Spinoza&rsquo;s Book V of &lt;em&gt;Ethics&lt;/em&gt; is linked to this, Deleuze insists conversely on the need for a &ldquo;slow being&rdquo; in the zone of subjectification. In response to students&rsquo; question, Deleuze examines this graph in contrast to Blanchot&rsquo;s perspectives on the line of the Outside, and concerning possible links between the strata and the Outside , Deleuze summarizes his interpretation of Foucault&rsquo;s thought throughout the year, also reflecting on the place of time within the framework he has presented: that through the coextensivity of inside with the Outside, the inside condenses every past and the Outside ushers in every future, hence a properly Foucauldian temporality.&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;Note: Eric Alliez&rsquo;s commentary, running (approx.) from the 2:50-35:57 marks of the complete audio files, has been newly transcribed from a difficult audio source, with a new translation.&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 premi&egrave;re partie de la conf&eacute;rence du 20 mai 1986 Eric Alliez parle des luttes sociales en Italie et du marxisme italien. Les sujets de discussion de la conf&eacute;rence de Deleuze comprennent: les trois ontologies historiques selon Foucault (la savoir, le pouvoir et le soi); Nicolas de Cues, son trait&eacute; &lt;em&gt;De Possest&lt;/em&gt;, l&#39;&ecirc;tre-puissance et l&#39;&ecirc;tre-pouvoir; Foucault comme historien des conditions, du savoir, du pouvoir et des subjectivit&eacute;s; un r&eacute;capitulation de quoi &laquo;penser&raquo; signifie dans Foucault; les singularit&eacute;s, la pens&eacute;e, le hasard et la rapport des forces; le jeu; les rapports de fr&eacute;quences (AZERT); Nietzsche et Mallarm&eacute;; H&eacute;raclite; Leibniz; penser, c&#39;est plier, et la pens&eacute;e de l&#39;&ecirc;tre-soi comme constitutif; le dedans du dehors; la topologie de la pens&eacute;e; faire un diagramme de la pens&eacute;e de Foucault; la disjonction voir-parler; les strates, et la recherche de la non stratifi&eacute;e; la vie dans les archives; les &eacute;l&eacute;ments non stratifi&eacute;s (l&#39;a&eacute;rien, l&#39;oc&eacute;anique, la zone des morts partielles ou la zone des rapports de forces comme un rapport entre les points singuliers, la zone de l&#39;&ecirc;tre-pouvoir); la ligne du dehors et les singularit&eacute;s; le roman de Melville &lt;em&gt;Moby-Dick&lt;/em&gt; et la vitesse des lignes des lignes du dehors; l&#39;artiste et &eacute;crivain fran&ccedil;ais d&#39;origine belge Henri Michaux, son exp&eacute;rience de la mescaline telle que captur&eacute;e dans son roman &lt;em&gt;Mis&eacute;rable Miracle&lt;/em&gt;, et son livre &lt;em&gt;Les Grandes &Eacute;preuves de l&#39;esprit&lt;/em&gt;; l&rsquo;acc&eacute;l&eacute;r&eacute; lin&eacute;aire, la ligne de haute vitesse, la vitesse mol&eacute;culaire et la ligne de la pens&eacute;e; la vitesse et la pens&eacute;e; penser, c&#39;est affronter la vitesse de la pens&eacute;e, et comment y survivre; &lt;em&gt;L&#39;&Eacute;thique&lt;/em&gt; de Spinoza, livres IV et V; subjectivation; le philosophe fran&ccedil;ais Maurice Merleau-Ponty, son &lt;em&gt;Le visible et l&#39;invisible&lt;/em&gt;, le voir et la subjectivation, et les peintres; traitements possibles des lignes du dehors; le mise en jeu des syst&egrave;mes lin&eacute;aires; comment co-vivre avec, plut&ocirc;t que survivre jusqu&#39;&agrave;, la mort; le pli et la topologie de la subjectivit&eacute;; Foucault, la linguistique et la litt&eacute;rature, et le privil&egrave;ge de l&#39;&eacute;nonc&eacute;; et le temps, &lt;em&gt;Les mots et les choses&lt;/em&gt; de Foucault, et l&#39;affection de la pens&eacute;e par soi.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 20 May 1986. This is lecture 24 of a 26-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between October 1985 and June 1986.