DOI: 10.4231/8324-4g90
title: Foucault: Lecture 5, 19 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 19 November 1985 lecture, in a session lasting over 3 hours, Deleuze provides a thorough review of previously covered material: statements distinct from words, sentences and propositions; intermixing of language systems (cf. Proust); rules of passage between levels of statements. Deleuze then defines different aspects of the statement: its &ldquo;primitive function&rdquo; and its &ldquo;derivative function&rdquo;, the latter with three facets, the &ldquo;author function&rdquo; (vs. the subject of enunciation), the unassignable &ldquo;one&rdquo;, the &ldquo;one speaks&rdquo; as the being of language. To clarify these distinctions, Deleuze considers examples from Beckett and Fitzgerald, and also from Sartre on the dream and perception, i.e., the discursive object being the world that surrounds a statement, the object at the limit of the vector field, with the discursive concept located at the intersection of the heterogeneous systems through which the statement passes. Continuing the recap, Deleuze summarizes the two main topics outlined to date, namely, the question of the archive (seeing and speaking, the visible and the statable) and the importance of constructing a corpus of words, sentences and propositions in a particular formation. The previous session&rsquo;s discussion about light falling and language gathering is linked to painting (cf. C&eacute;zanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin), and concerning the being of language, Deleuze considers the medical statement as a regime of light, of visibility, with knowledge located at the conjunction of seeing and speaking. He then shifts the gap between seeing and speaking or, with Blanchot&rsquo;s term, the &ldquo;non-relation&rdquo; between these (cf. &lt;i&gt;The Order of Things&lt;/i&gt;), then the primacy of the statement over the visible (cf. &lt;i&gt;The Archaeology of Knowledge&lt;/i&gt;), and then conquests, seizures, captures of the statement by the visible and struggle for release of the statement from the visible (cf. &lt;i&gt;This is Not a Pipe&lt;/i&gt;). Deleuze then considers Foucault&rsquo;s neo-Kantianism in Foucault, first distinguishing the point of view of God, for which there is no given, and the point of view of infinity, distinct from finite thought. Outlining Kant&rsquo;s view, Deleuze relates these to Foucault&rsquo;s perception (in the three kinds of texts identified earlier) of the gap between seeing and speaking as well as to the problem of knowledge when confronted with this gap, with both Kant and Foucault resorting to a third party&rsquo;s intervention into this gap, with Foucault offering &ldquo;mysterious art that will bring together statements and visibilities through a non-relation&rdquo;.&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 19 novembre 1985, les sujets de discussion comprennent: l&#39;&eacute;nonc&eacute; et les variables extrins&egrave;ques; la logique et la linguistique des propositions; l&#39;h&eacute;t&eacute;rog&eacute;n&eacute;it&eacute; de l&#39;&eacute;nonc&eacute;; l&#39;&eacute;nonc&eacute; et les champs de vecteurs; le sujet, l&#39;objet et le concept de l&#39;&eacute;nonc&eacute;; Blanchot et le &lt;em&gt;on&lt;/em&gt; inassignable; l&#39;&eacute;crivain irlandais Samuel Beckett; l&#39;&eacute;nonc&eacute;s et propositions; &lt;em&gt;L&#39;arch&eacute;ologie du savoir &lt;/em&gt;de Foucault; le philosophe fran&ccedil;ais Jean-Paul Sartre, le r&ecirc;ve et la perception; l&#39;archive audio-visuelle et l&#39;&eacute;nonҫable; la lumi&egrave;re et le corpus des choses, des objets, des &eacute;tats de choses et des qualit&eacute;s sensibles; la peinture; les tableaux comme un r&eacute;gime de lumi&egrave;re qui conditionne tout le reste de la philosophie de Foucault; les rapports entre l&#39;&eacute;nonҫable et le visible; la disjonction entre voir et parler; &lt;em&gt;La trahison des images&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Ceci n&rsquo;est pas une pipe&lt;/em&gt;) de l&#39;artiste belge Ren&eacute; Magritte; Foucault, le philosophe allemand Immanuel Kant, et la diff&eacute;rence dans la nature des deux facult&eacute;s de l&#39;esprit humain (l&#39;espace-temps comme forme d&#39;intuition, et le concept); que la forme de tout concept est &lt;em&gt;a = a&lt;/em&gt;; l&#39;espace et le temps comme formes de r&eacute;ceptivit&eacute;; &lt;em&gt;je pense&lt;/em&gt; comme forme de spontan&eacute;it&eacute; personnelle; l&#39;intuition comme un d&eacute;s&eacute;quilibre fondamental chez humains; que du point de vue de l&#39;infini, ou de Dieu, tout est concept; cr&eacute;ation &lt;em&gt;ex nihilo&lt;/em&gt;; le philosophe allemand Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz et diff&eacute;rence comme &eacute;tant dans le concept (que Kant oppose); Kant, la finitude constituante, et l&#39;irr&eacute;ductibilit&eacute; du donn&eacute; au concept; la philosophie du XVIIe si&egrave;cle, et l&#39;infini et le fini; le math&eacute;maticien et &eacute;crivain fran&ccedil;ais Blaise Pascal et les ordres de l&#39;infini; et Kant, le jugement esth&eacute;tique et le sch&eacute;matisme de l&#39;imagination.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 19 November 1985. This is lecture 5 of a 26-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between October 1985 and June 1986.