DOI: 10.4231/zb8h-yt44
title: Foucault: Lecture 1, 22 October 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 22 October 1985 session, to introduce the first axis of Foucault&#39;s thought, historical formations, Deleuze draws from his articles on Foucault, on &lt;em&gt;The Archeology of Knowledge&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Discipline and Punishment&lt;/em&gt;, the first two chapters of the Foucault book corresponding, respectively, to &ldquo;A New Archivist&rdquo; [&lt;em&gt;Critique &lt;/em&gt;274 (1970)] and &ldquo;A New Cartographer&rdquo; [&lt;em&gt;Critique &lt;/em&gt;343 (1975)]. Deleuze here provides an overview of the initial segment to prepare the detailed analysis. Following a bibliographical overview of Foucault&rsquo;s writing, Deleuze points to Foucault&rsquo;s first axis on the discipline of the archives, i.e., of historical formations, that Foucault approaches from the perspectives of &ldquo;seeing&rdquo; (&lt;em&gt;le voir&lt;/em&gt;) and &ldquo;speaking&rdquo; (&lt;em&gt;le parler&lt;/em&gt;). Deleuze adds several other dyads to these: the lesson of things and the lesson of grammar (that &ldquo;seeing&rdquo; is not &ldquo;saying&rdquo;), also the drawing and the text, and a third theme, the visible and the statable, i.e., visibilities and statements. Moreover, since &ldquo;seeing&rdquo; and &ldquo;speaking&rdquo; are conditions specific to each period (&lt;em&gt;&eacute;poque&lt;/em&gt;) which make behaviors and mentalities possible, Deleuze reviews how Foucault&rsquo;s perspective on &ldquo;seeing&rdquo; and &ldquo;speaking&rdquo; developed from unreason (&lt;em&gt;d&eacute;raison&lt;/em&gt;) in the seventeenth century to disciplinary techniques in the eighteenth century. Deleuze emphasizes that, for Foucault, a statement regime is called a &ldquo;discursivity&rdquo; linked to types of evidence, as well as to non-discursive formations, distinctions that connect in turn, through the works Raymond Roussel, to a kind of &ldquo;making seen&rdquo;, first, in machines or mechanical processes, then in the linguistic process or the statable regime. Foucault also insists on the irreducibility of the statement and visibility, proceeding along two tracks, descriptions and statements, with the primacy given to statements over visibilities. Deleuze emphasizes Foucault&rsquo;s debt to Maurice Blanchot (cf. &lt;em&gt;The Infinite Conversation&lt;/em&gt;) and his statement &ldquo;seeing is not speaking&rdquo; as well as his term for the disjunction as &ldquo;non-relation&rdquo;. The four theses from Foucault that Deleuze defines here provide the seminar&rsquo;s agenda: to understand how historical formations are constituted through the combination of regimes of statements and fields of visibility. Moreover, these forms, statements and visibilities, also constitute knowledge as the procedure without which truth has no existence.&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 22 octobre 1985, Deleuze introduit le premier axe de la pens&eacute;e de Foucault qu&#39;il examinera dans le s&eacute;minaire: les formations historiques. Les autres sujets de discussion comprennent: la discipline des archives; le voir et le parler comme conditions de formations historiques; la le&ccedil;on des choses et la le&ccedil;on de grammaire, le voir n&#39;est pas le dire; le dessin et le texte; le visible et l&#39;&eacute;non&ccedil;able, les visibilit&eacute;s et les &eacute;nonc&eacute;s; le voir et le parler comme des conditions propres &agrave; chaque &eacute;poque qui rendent possibles les comportements et les mentalit&eacute;s; l&#39;asile, l&#39;h&ocirc;pital g&eacute;n&eacute;ral, et la prison comme lieux qui font voir; lieux de confinement et de la quadrillage visuelle; le philosophe anglais Jeremy Bentham, le &lt;em&gt;Panopticon&lt;/em&gt; et le panoptique; la prison comme une question de lumi&egrave;re et d&#39;ombre; la &lt;em&gt;d&eacute;raison&lt;/em&gt; du XVIIe si&egrave;cle et le lieu de visibilit&eacute;; le r&eacute;gime des &eacute;nonc&eacute;s et la r&eacute;forme du droit p&eacute;nal du XVIIe si&egrave;cle; les techniques disciplinaires et l&#39;invention de la notion de d&eacute;linquance; formations discursives et non discursives; les &oelig;uvres de l&#39;&eacute;crivain fran&ccedil;ais Raymond Roussel comme faisant voir: 1) les machines ou les processus machiniques, 2) le proc&egrave;de linguistique ou le r&eacute;gime &eacute;nonciatif, et 3) l&#39;irr&eacute;ductibilit&eacute; de l&rsquo;&eacute;nonc&eacute; et de la visibilit&eacute;; la disjonction ou le non rapport entre le voir et le parler; les visibilit&eacute;s et les &eacute;nonc&eacute;s comme conditions; le primat et la non r&eacute;ductibilit&eacute; des &eacute;nonc&eacute;s sur les visibilit&eacute;s; le th&eacute;oricien litt&eacute;raire, philosophe et &eacute;crivain fran&ccedil;ais Maurice Blanchot et son &lt;em&gt;L&#39;Entretien infini&lt;/em&gt;; l&#39;image visuelle comme le pr&eacute;sentation des lieux sans &eacute;v&eacute;nement; visibilit&eacute;s comme ne cessent de capturer les &eacute;nonc&eacute;s, et la bataille entre les deux; les formations historiques et l&#39;entrelacement, la combinaison, des r&eacute;gimes d&#39;&eacute;nonc&eacute;s et des champs de visibilit&eacute;s; et le savoir comme proc&eacute;dure (processus de visibilit&eacute; + proc&eacute;d&eacute; d&rsquo;&eacute;noncabilit&eacute;).&lt;/p&gt;
description: Lecture given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8, 22 October 1985. This is lecture 1 of a 26-lecture seminar Deleuze taught between October 1985 and June 1986.