Talk:Michel Foucault/Archive 1

message: This is looking really good. User:Wheat
Is the comment about Foucault allegedly infecting sexual partners with HIV/AIDS truly appropriate?  An un-cited allegation of this sort is not to mind responsible.  If such an incident did occur, shouldn't it be referenced by an biography?
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contrary to what it states above, I have submitted this article for peer review because I think it's good enough now to go to feature article status--XmarkX 10:45, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree it is, and since it's now gone on to WP:FAC, I've removed it from Peer review, according to policy.Bishonen | Talk 11:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe you would like to go and say that on the FAC entry!--XmarkX 01:21, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: i removed homosexual from the first sentence ("homosexual french philosopher"). Not because Foucault wasn't one, but because I think it's ridiculous that it's stated like that right off the bat. Do other articles list immediately the sexual orientation of a philosoper (Martin Heidegger was a heterosexual german philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard was a heterosexual Danish philosopher)? -DWRZ 16:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: first sentence

message: It would be timely to discuss the connection between Foucault and France's current lack of census taking. Some blame the lack of official ethnic and unemployment demographics for the current unrest in France.
This page has a lot of problems.
Firstly, there's a lot of minor factual inaccuracies. Foucault was not in France much during 1968 and not in May. He was there briefly in the aftermath. Defert, however, was there. On that note, I have never heard this about Defert being posted to Tunisia before. I have also not heard this story about Foucault's early encounter with a psychiatrist. So I've edited that.
There are also wide-ranging inaccuracies in the stuff about his thought, but I'll leave that till another night.User:mgekelly
:The main biographical source I have for Foucault is Foucault for Beginners, which, while not breathtakingly reputable, is actually pretty good on most counts (Or, at least, the other books in the same series are). The chronology of where Foucault was when I got from Paul Russell's chronology in The Gay 100, which is quoted at . It has Foucault leaving Tunis in May of 1968 to teach in Vincennes. I'm willing to believe either of these sources to be wrong, but I'd like to know what your sources are first. Snowspinner 14:18, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)
::I am researching Foucault full-time at the moment. I have read all three of Foucault's biographies:Miller's The Passion of Michel Foucault, Didier Eribon's Michel Foucault and David Macey's The Lives of Michel Foucault. I have also read nearly all of what Foucault himself said in print about his biography. Foucault's own account of May 1968 can be found in 'Remarks on Marx' published by Semiotext(e). In my opinion the Foucault for Beginners book is really quite inaccurate about a lot of things, though obviously for its audience that might not be a big problem.
::The definitive chronology of Foucault's life, however, is in volume 1 of Dits et Ecrits, the deifinitive collection of Foucault's shorter works in French. It shows that Foucault left Tunis in October 1968, and being appointed to Vincennes in December. It also shows that you were right about the Defert-Tunis connection.--XmarkX 05:50, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, cool. I yield to you on this one then. (Though I still think Foucault for Beginners is a pretty damn good quick reference. No substitution for the real books, but as accuarate as a summary can be) Snowspinner 05:53, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)
On the question of the inaccuracies in thought: this page strikes me as a valiant effort by english-speaking intellectuals mostly familiar with Foucault through a critical theory/cultural studies/queer theory lens to talk about his thought -- but as a result, to anyone familiar with Foucault's work in its original context, language, and full breadth, it appears faintly ridiculous. I don't want to run amok through a page that people have obviously worked pretty hard on, but nonetheless this gives at best an extremely limited picture of Foucault as a thinker. I would want to correct the following main things if I were to edit the page but would rather not without some consent from those who inhabit this page more regularly:
1. The biography omits some important details, includes a number of odd remarks, and engages in various kinds of speculation. Foucault's objections to biography as such are not really explained.
2. Early translations of Foucault are notoriously inaccurate. The Works section should be organized according to the French bibliography, with subsidiary notes on the English versions. (It is terrible to represent "Madness and Civilization" as one of Foucault's works.)
3. The summaries of the History of Sexuality project and of Discipline and Punish are the most clearly inadequate. (The difference between vol. 1 and vols. 2, 3, and the unpublished 4 is not noted - in fact, as is well documented, they belong to radically different projects. Similarly, Discipline and Punish is not replaced within the context of Foucault's work, and so the stakes of the project are just not apparent.)
4. The project of the lectures deserves much more than a single paragraph.
I guess the central question I'm really asking has to do with the purpose of this page. Is it trying to represent the dominant American reception of Foucault's thought? (It strikes me this does a very good job of that.) Or is it trying to represent Foucault qua Foucault, even if that means in some cases referring to things which will be inaccessible to the majority of its readers? (Though, luckily, with the publication of the lectures, increasingly accessible.) Mgasner 21:00, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Foucault and Modern France 

message: There is some material at Discorso e verita nella Grecia antica that was previously listed at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English that needs merging into this page.  See the deletion debate at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Discorso e verita nella Grecia antica for more information.  Once it has been merged please redirect it to here. 
The text in question is:
:Sunday, 11 August 1996
:The obligation of truth
:The last lectures of Michel Foucault in Berkeley. The french philosopher "returns" to Ancient Greece seeking the traces of a lost virtue: parrhesia. In the autumn of 1983, one year before his death, Michel Foucault gave six lectures in the University of Berkeley dedicated to an extremely interesting subject: the Greek "parrhesia" ("παρρησία"). The transcripts of those lectures were recently gathered in a book titled "Discorso e verita nella Grecia antica" (Donzelli, 1996). They are essentially a part of a wider research to which Foucault dedicated the last years of his life. The french philosopher returns to the roots of the "critical tradition of the West". His goal is the construction of a "genealogy of the critical stance in western philosophy". In the epicentre of his research lies Greece and ancient greek philosophy. In the Greece of the 5th century BC, Foucault meets the first traces of a virtue later lost in the Christian world. The name of that virtue is "parrhesia". Its meaning is: "to tell the truth", "outspokenness". It's not enough to know the truth and to possess the knowledge and the techniques to discover it. It's also necessary to possess the ability and courage to speak the truth. "Truth" is the fundamental concept of philosophy. When we talk about truth, two problems immediately rise to the surface. The first is the "logical-epistemological" problem, meaning the problem of defining the criteria which permit us to discern whether a statement is true or not. The second problem is the "ethical-political", meaning the problem of the capacity to tell the truth, when it is not the simple accuracy of our statement that's being judged, but the right or the obligation to speak the truth. This second problem is analyzed by Foucault by a series of posed questions: "Who is in a position to speak the truth? Which are the ethical and spiritual assets that make someone capable to be presented and considered as one who speaks the truth? And for which issues is it important to tell the truth? For the world? The nature? The city? The mores? The man? What are the consequences of speaking the truth? Which are the positive effects for the city, the governors, the people? And, in the end, what is the relationship between the act of telling the truth and wielding power? Can speaking the truth coincide with wielding power, or must these activities be considered fully independent and separate? And can they be separated or does the one presuppose the other?" These four questions for the speaking of the truth as an activity -- who is in a position to speak the truth, for which issues, with which consequences, with what relationships to power-- seem to appear as a philosophical conundrum towards the end of the 5th century, revolving around Socrates, especially through his discussions with the sophists, about politics, rhetorics, ethics. The problem researched here by Foucault isn't to determine whether we can be sure a given statement is true (this has been the focus of the western philosophical tradition, creating what Foucault calls "the analytics of truth") but rather to know who is capable of speaking it. What is the importance to society of the existence of people capable of speaking the truth? How can we recognize these people? In the thematics of parrhesia, Foucault sees the beginnings of what in the West has been called "criticism" and which finds in Socrates its first grand example. Here philosophy is directly connected to politics. It's not at all a coincidence, after all, that philosophy and democracy were born together in ancient Greece, when the autarchic speech was confronted by the philosophical dialogue in which the opinions of the participants compete with each other -- and tyranny was confronted by democracy, in which the opinions of the citizens compete with each other. Athenean democracy was self-characterized explicitely as a state that ensures isegoria, which is the equal right of speech, isonomia, which is the equal right of everyone to take part in the wielding of power, and parrhesia, which is the right/obligation of speaking the truth. The word parrhesia appears for the first time in Euripides and is repeated often throughout Greek thought. We find it in Plato, in Diogenes, in Epicurus, in the stoics, and it reaches even to the to the texts of theology of the Fathers of the 5th century AD. For the last time it appears in Ioannis Chrysostomos. From there we lose its trace, and with it the courage of "speaking the truth" also withdraws and is lost. But why does Foucault speak about courage? The ancient Greeks thought that for someone to speak the truth he had to speak openly and tell all he had in his mind. Parrhesia presupposes also that there's no difference between what someone thinks and what they say. It's radically different therefore from what the ancient Greeks called "phronese" (prudence). But for someone to speak all they thought and considered true is a deed that can lead to serious dangers. Antigone's parrhesia leads to tragic results. Whoever has parrhesia also has the courage of risking danger for what they say. The councillors of the lord who speak the truth, run the danger of being punished, exiled or slain.  The governot who openly speaks what is in his mind runs the danger of losing his popularity and common agreement in his policies. According to Foucault, parrhesia interjects a "rift" in the history of the West. It initiates the transition from opinion to the responsibility of truth. The responsibility of truth -- and therefore truth as an issue -- is born alongside the "subject". The birth of the subject represents a challenge to authority, to the point that it's connected with the exercise of criticism. For the ancient Greeks, criticism is authentic only when the person exercising it is in risk. In the case of Socrates, parrhesia becomes an issue of life and death. With Socrates parrhesia ceases to be identified with a rhetorical technique or with the mere intention of "speaking the truth". It begins instead to be connected and identified with a way of life, with example, with the harmony and consistency that a subject's life can embody. Socrates, in the name of all his earlier life, chooses death. He becomes therefore the symbol of a morality that refuses to betray the free search for truth. The case of Socrates shows also that whoever knows to speak the truth before others, is at the same time a man who makes solid a close relationship between what he says and what he lives. So, in a simple word (parrhesia) a series of ethical and political virtues are concentrated, to which all citizens should aspire. Whoever has parrhesia proves truly that he was a special relationship with truth, a relationship based on courage and sincerity, a given relationship with life that implies responsibility and danger, an authentic communication with others and with his own self that passes through criticism and self-criticism, an ethical perception that recognizes the worth of freedom and the obligation of telling the truth. In this way is the citizen born who is free, because he chooses to speak openly and sincerely instead of deceiving his fellow conversationist with various rhetorical techniques, because he chooses truth and not silence or falsehood, he chooses endangering his life instead of security, criticism instead of flattery, moral debt instead of personal gain or passivity or indifference.
-- Graham  ☺ | Talk 21:21, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge and Redirect 

message: "His structuralist or poststructuralist leanings have led others to question the basis and sincerity of his political activism - a problem he shares with Noam Chomsky, George Lakoff and Jane Jacobs."
I don't know anything about Jacobs, but neither Chomsky or Lakoff are postmodernists. (Look into Chomsky's famous debate with Foucault if you don't believe me.) As such, I have no idea what this sentence is trying to get at, so it at the very least needs to be clarified significantly.
RadicalSubversiv E 09:09, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. If I remember correctly Chomsky self-identifies as a modernist. Human Nature: Justice versus Power Noam Chomsky debates with Michel Foucault 1971. Hyacinth 00:42, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: More importantly, why would structuralist "leanings" cause one to doubt another's political convications? Isn't being a structuralist a political conviction? And how could both structuralist and poststructuralist leanings cause doubt? Wouldn't it be one or the other? Hyacinth 02:22, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite right- that's why we don't have that line in the article anymore!--XmarkX 04:54, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Foucault didn't really consider himself post-structuralist either. Voyager640 06:24, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chomsky, Lakoff, Jacobs 

message: I have also posted this remark on Josh's discussion page as he has now posted the ISBN needed twice. Timwi reverted the first edit and I reverted the second. I'm not sure that the Foucault entry needs ISBNs. There are multiple editions of Foucault's books in different languages and they are very easy to find. It would just confuse the issue adding ISBNs in a situation where there are multiple reprints of the same books. --Panopticon 22:48, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  ISBNs 

message: Where did Foucault says that are similarities beetwen statements and speech acts (Searle)? Is in an article/interview? Washington Irving 04:07, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Foucault clearly says that the enoncé (statement) is *not* a speech act. For Foucault's discussion on this see L'Archéologie du savoir pp. 107-112 or The Archeaology of Knowledge 80-83. He says that a correlation between the 'speech act' and the enoncé 'does not stand up to examination'. p. 83 --Panopticon 01:42, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  About statements and speech acts 

message: I found the discussion of "The History of Sexuality" in this article to be overly brief.  Last time I checked that section, it contained no attempt at a summary of *why* Foucault rejects the repressive hypothesis (the evolution of the customs of confession, for example.)  Furthermore, Foucault's theory of power (in the "Method" section of the first volume) is not discussed, which I lament, due to the fact that power is one of the core concerns of his work and therefore is an idea of which the Foucault layman will naturally want more information. (There is a link to the entry on "power" which does contain a detailed section on Foucault, but I think it is somewhat simplistic and fails to note some key points.)  The discussion of the second two volumes is even more scant, noting their subject matter without attempting to describe their conclusions on said subject matter.  Since "History of Sexuality" is, in many scholars' view, his most important work, I think this article should give more attention to its ideas.  However, since this is a featured, peer-reviewed article, I don't want to just change anything without permission of the author, so I would like to know if anyone objects to me working on this section a bit.Shakantala 19:44, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Dear Shakantala, Go for it! The worst that can happen is that your edits will get edited! I'm not sure who authored the sections you mentioned.--Panopticon 08:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I broadly agree - although stuff about power you might want to stick under the separate article on the (sociological) concept of powerXmarkX 14:45, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: History of Sexuality

message: Shouldn't this article mention Foucault's views on Iranian revolution somewhere?
I could try to write a section. Alex 20:15, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Views of Iranian revolution

message: Foucault's ideas on truth deserve mention in Truth. Would anyone here care to oblige?
:Hurrah!  I'm giddy at the proposition!  Maybe, though, if they're not already there, epistemology would be more appropriate than truth?  -Seth Mahoney 17:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm happy to leave the choice to the experts...Banno 20:04, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Truth 

message: I would sleep much better, if a Wikipedia's featured atricle would not include sentences such as:
"The study of Foucault's thought is complicated because his ideas developed and changed over time." (in the section on changing viewpoint)
I cannot think of a single philosopher, whose ideas did NOT develope and change over time.
--Golioder 22:15, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Foucault's changing viewpoint 

message: The current image (:Image:Michel-foucault.jpg) says it is uncopyrighted, and the site it gives as a source is http://www.foucaultsociety.org/resources/michel_foucault.asp. However, that site says that its source is Wikipedia! Something's confused here, and I doubt its copyright status is public domain. --Fastfission 02:38, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I did some digging and corrected the sourcing. Snowspinner 16:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Something's wrong here

message: This article occassionally uses French words without defining them, making the article confusing at times to most English speakers.  For instance, a sentence early in the article starts off with, "Like many  'normaliens' ..."  What does normalien mean?  --LostLeviathan 17:52, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  French terms 

message: Hey, guys. While I certainly see sexuality and gender differences as social constructions, it seems a tad bit presumptuous to be positing them as such - without any sort of clause - in the lead of the article. What are thoughts on just adding something like "what sociologists believe to be..." or something of that nature? I've just found that a great number of people (namely, those who don't study this sort of stuff, but are certainly likely to come to Wikipedia) don't see things in that manner.
Great work, though, contributors - congrats on the Featured Article status! Coolhappysteve 01:06, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gender/sexuality as social constructs? 

message: Substituted at 20:37, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment