DOI: 10.4231/m540-sv94
title: Foucault: Lecture 20, 22 April 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 22 April 1986 lecture, with the seminar commencing discussion of subjectification, the third axis of Foucault&rsquo;s thought (cf. Deleuze&rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Foucault&lt;/em&gt;, chapter 5), Deleuze connects Foucault&rsquo;s thought to Blanchot&rsquo;s concept of &ldquo;the Outside&rdquo; (&lt;em&gt;The Infinite Conversation&lt;/em&gt;), hence his third dimension as an encounter with an absolute Outside, Blanchot&rsquo;s &ldquo;the impossible&rdquo;, a &ldquo;non-relationship&rdquo;, yet that also entails points of resistance in the diagram, about which Blanchot speaks in terms of &ldquo;one dies&rdquo; (&lt;em&gt;on meurt&lt;/em&gt;), not personal death but death coextensive with life, in fact, a double death of the &ldquo;I&rdquo; and the &ldquo;one&rdquo;. Deleuze concludes that however close this line of the Outside moves toward death, we have to accept that it will pull back toward life, a kind of peristaltic movement that Deleuze depicts graphically (cf. the image in &lt;em&gt;Foucault&lt;/em&gt; of the line and its foldings). Reflecting on how the inside is the double of the outside, Deleuze concludes that the inside is the fold (&lt;em&gt;pli&lt;/em&gt;) of the Outside and, with Blanchot, that thought comes from the Outside. Deleuze draws on Michaux to suggest that the fold is like the eye of the hurricane, where we can live and breathe, and that for Foucault, the invention of the formation of the fold goes back to the Greeks. Deleuze points to other artists as thinkers of the fold: Artaud&rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;The Letters to Jacques Rivi&egrave;re; &lt;/em&gt;Raymond Roussel, the double and the doubling (&lt;em&gt;doublure&lt;/em&gt;); Pierre Boulez&rsquo;s compositions (cf. &lt;em&gt;Pli selon pli&lt;/em&gt;); Melville and Ahab&rsquo;s line of the Outside. Linking these approaches to Heidegger&rsquo;s reflections on thinking, inflected by Foucault as a hallucinatory powerlessness through the theme of the double, of doubling inherent to a fold, Deleuze returns (with Foucault) return to the Greeks, their diagram of folding force onto itself, and Deleuze proposes different paths through the fold in works by Roussel and Leiris for the next session.&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;La conf&eacute;rence du 22 avril 1986 marque la troisi&egrave;me partie du s&eacute;minaire o&ugrave; Deleuze examine le troisi&egrave;me axe de la pens&eacute;e de Foucault. Deleuze commence par r&eacute;capituler: 1) les formes d&#39;ext&eacute;riorit&eacute; et d&#39;int&eacute;riorit&eacute; dans &lt;em&gt;Arch&eacute;ologie du savoir&lt;/em&gt; de Foucault; et 2) les forces et le Dehors dans &lt;em&gt;L&rsquo;entretien infini&lt;/em&gt; de Blanchot (p. 66 et 104). Les autres sujets de discussion comprennent: la ligne du Dehors; la double mort du &lt;em&gt;Je&lt;/em&gt; et du &lt;em&gt;On&lt;/em&gt;; la psychanalyse et ce que disent les enfants; la psychanalyse et le &lt;em&gt;On&lt;/em&gt; (le &lt;em&gt;On &lt;/em&gt;n&rsquo;&eacute;tant nullement la personne de la psychanalyse); points de r&eacute;sistance et morts partielles; le &lt;em&gt;On meurt&lt;/em&gt; comme une ligne du Dehors; le mouvement et la conversion du lointain au proche; &lt;em&gt;Les mots et les choses&lt;/em&gt; de Foucault et comment la ligne du Dehors est dedans (p. 350); &lt;em&gt;Folie et D&eacute;raison: Histoire de la folie &agrave; l&#39;&acirc;ge classique &lt;/em&gt;de Foucault; le dedans comme le pli du Dehors; Blanchot et la pens&eacute;e venant du Dehors; &lt;em&gt;Qu&#39;appelle-t-on penser?&lt;/em&gt; de Heidegger; &lt;em&gt;Les lettres &agrave; Jacques Rivi&egrave;re&lt;/em&gt; de l&#39;&eacute;crivain fran&ccedil;ais Antonin Artaud, et l&#39;im-pouvoir vital de la pens&eacute;e; Raymond Roussel, l&#39;op&eacute;ration du double et de la doublure; et l&#39;invention du pli par les Grecs.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 22 April 1986. This is lecture 20 of a 26-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between October 1985 and June 1986.