@@jamesjross There have been accusations. I've never looked closely enough into it to know how valid those are. From what I recall hearing about it, i think there's a lot of uncertainty about what actually happened. It was over half a century ago, and there isn't a lot of hard evidence one way or the other. Somebody may have done a rigorous investigation, but I'm not aware of it.
@@charlescalthrop2535 What I said about the lack of evidence was referring to accusations against Foucault specifically. The claims were that he had exploitative relationships with young men (in Algeria, I think?). But regarding the more general issue of the "problematic" views of left wing academics in the 60s and 70s, there is no real ambiguity. It's a pretty well documented fact. But it needs to be understood in the larger context of the cultural conflicts of that era. It was a time that was dominated by a spirit of challenging authority and cultural norms. Sometimes that questioning went too far. I saw a video on it recently that took a pretty balanced view. It didn't sugarcoat anything, but it still took a thoughtful, nuanced view. I can try to look it up if you're interested.
@@theloniuspunk383 Yes, and a deeply unpleasant man, unlike Roland Barthes who was gay, died prematurely by being run over by a bus in 1980 and was universally loved by his students at the Sorbonne. Both their writings are valid objects of study. And Baudelaire was a total schmuck, but as my most respected prof demonstrated to me, in both discursive and poetic writing, it's not helpful to conflate the writer and the text and this is not just a postmodern 'text is all there is' cop out. I write this to remind myself of my own ad hominem tendencies when reading or listening to music etc. Can't stand Schopenhauer either (went around kicking little old ladies downstairs) but if I excised every jerk from my reading list I'd have a much shorter list. This is not to deny the liminal value of biography (let's remember how little we know about Shakespeare, eg.) but our current episteme includes the scrutinizing of well-known figures to a pathological extent, which begs the question, where to draw the line.
Rumor has it he was bribed into the Chomsky debate with hash that him and his friends called "Chomsky Hash"; I also heard he was a bit baked during the debate but I've conflicting reports lmao 😂😂
Thanks for watching! Really looking forward to your feedback on this one. Do let me know if you'd like me to make some more Foucault videos in the future (maybe going in-depth into some particular books of his)? Furthermore, as with the last episode of What the Theory?, if you'd like to get your hands on a copy of the script for this video with footnotes and references, you can sign up to support me on Patreon at patreon.com/tomnicholas
woah red means recording was here, check out Noam Chomsky and Foucault debate if you read this, and then let me know which one of foucault's facial expressions reminded you of count Chocula the most.
I started watching your videos to get a backdrop for a creative writing course I am taking. Your speaking style and on-screen personality are wonderful. I think the most valuable thing you do for me is to give concrete examples of theory placed in their cultural context. Thank you for posting and providing a path for learning about topics that are complex and would normally take a huge commitment to learn.
My goodness. I really appreciate the clear and flowing distillation of the idea of the Episteme, and especially how the scheduling and ordering of our current society can lead to creeping conformity and a lack of self-knowledge! I know that I'd seen fragments of these ideas before, but never really saw how the puzzle fit together before, and I thank you for the work you've put into ordering your mind so that it can produce a work so easily apprehended by my own... ;)
When I was in high school, the local public school district installed small cameras in all the school buses to watch the students, after allegations of lesbian behavior by the girls’ lacrosse team in the back of a school bus. However, they could only afford 1 real small camera, and all the others were fake replicas, but they regularly switched around the real camera with the fake cameras, so nobody knew which bus it was on. It was an actual panopticon, whose intended purpose was to get everyone to behave. It completely failed as a measure of social control, and nobody changed their behavior at all, since everyone assumed it was highly unlikely the real camera was in the same school bus as them, and also that nobody actually looked at any of the tapes except maybe some perverted teacher or administrator who, if they actually saw anyone engaged in sexual activity, would simply watch it and not report it to any higher authorities or punish anyone involved, because they would probably want to see more. The implications of this experiment are clear: panopticons don’t actually work, and people are going to say “fuck it” and do what they want to do even if they think they might be being watched (at least if they are teenagers or criminals, groups whose brains are more impulsive and rebellious than typical adults in terms of how their brains govern behavior). On the other hand, later on in life as an adult I worked in an office and there were cameras everywhere, all of them actual real, working cameras, and supposedly 1 or 2 employees from the security department actually looked at the tapes, and this actually DID seem to keep people in line and control their behavior. I would hypothesize that an office environment produces a different episteme in people than being on a school bus or in a prison, and also the incentive structure is different. In school or prison, people already dislike the situation they are in, and any attempt to punish them does not really work very well since they don’t even really like being there in the first place. However, in an office job, while people similarly dislike being there, at this point in life they are dependent upon money from the job to survive and have been brainwashed their entire life into the idea of being an obedient worker, and rebelliousness tends to fade with adulthood, and workers have a strong incentive not to do anything that might get them fired, since unlike being at school or in a prison, a job actually pays you money, which is of extremely high importance in our current capitalist system. Our form of capitalism conditions people to place a very high importance on money for their dual roles as workers and consumers, trying to trick everyone into working very hard to get as much money as possible, to the point that they have almost no free time and are miserable, and then also trick everyone into spending all that money on useless things they don’t need to the point of going into debt and having negative net worth, thus necessitating that they work even harder to pay for everything they buy and ward off the debt collectors. This does not trick everyone into behaving this way, as some people are able to control their spending and not give into advertising pressure, and some people are able to avoid this trap of having to work very hard to try to get more money by finding various ways around that to survive, but it tricks enough people to keep the capitalist system going rather than falling apart due to its internal contradictions.
I think the nuances in the interplay of power and consequences in your two examples present themselves to point precisely at why Foucault's imagination rarely functions in real life. Reading the history of Presidio Modelo in Cuba can also partly explain your experiences of surveillance in different scenarios. Great comment!
@@cakesbubbles2566 Except that they do? Foucault discusses the differences between power, so someone who is powerless (a prisoner, consumer,...) being controlled by systems of oppression aka power. His notion of biopolitics shows he predicted the identity politics today and is also in fact, a re-affirmation of agency against systems of oppression. People profiling themselves through their identity is because we are surrounded by systems that try to identify us. In the 90's, people seemed to care less about their identity. Even in the 2000s, people were seeking to unite and lay aside their differences, so if you were native or black or hispanic, it didn't really matter because there were more liberties surrounding those traits. But today, we have dating apps, surveillance monitors, news channels, politics, that heavily rely on identity (nationality, skin colour, faith, sexuality, gender, cultural heritage...) and because of that people feel the need to clarify and be vocal about their own identity. The easiest example would be The Internet because it's really vague. People want to identify themselves, because otherwise they are just a clean slate like everyone else. Here, you can tell Foucault's notion of how we are slaves to these premises, as technology seems to dictate our political realm. I had a professor who made the same claim for how pocket watches turned Europe into a modern society and his arguments were quite astounding to me. Just because people have something that ticks in their pocket, they suddenly start thinking differently. The same could be said for smartphones. We carry the globe in our pockets, and people feel the need to distinct themselves from it. Every time we change our toolkit, so does our thinking. Humans are technocratic beings.
I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this that "The panopticon simply doesn't work" as such structures can, and do succeed in suppressing dissent. However, I think this demonstrates an ideal solution. It shows that the panopticon has no response to systemic upheaval. If the majority decides not to cooperate, they cannot be suppressed in this way. This suggests to me that now, more than ever, class solidarity is one of the most powerful weapons of all.
Thanks so much Tom. I was long overdue gaining a clearer overview on what Foucault proposed rather than some of the caricatures presented by his critics.
As student of Postmodernism, and arguably its most famous architect, Michel Foucault, I was interested in what you excluded, which was a lot, particularly his personal homosexuality, and his specific pedophilic attention he had throughout his life. You did fair with Foucault’s discussions on power, and I did learn more on his prison takes, and to some extent, on Foucault’s philosophy on human archeology, genealogy, and how this relates to mankind’s epistemes.
I'd rather read deleuze and be straight, they put it on stock after this many years of isolation and sexual inactive processes... knowledge and power don't matter within capitalism they have some crappy trancdental idealism on being half retarded labourer
Facault is a great joke - peadophile and pseudointtelectual:))) Good that this kind of crap is only still popular in UK - "country" with strong commie heritage:))))
Ah, I haven't actually had a chance to put proper subtitles on this one just yet but I'm glad that TH-cam's automatic ones did an okay job here. Sometimes they can be pretty awful, haha!
He's one of the scholars that had biggest impacts on my worldview. Really glad TH-cam suggested your channel to me out of nowhere. Instantly subscribed.
Incredible video. Introductions to Foucault on TH-cam usually (well, always) neglect his epistemological work and only focus on Discipline and Punish. Anyone who comes across this will not have doubts once they’re finished. Very well done.
@@qpalzm563 I also thought of Kuhn. Perhaps a changing episteme allows for the conception of new experiments, which would promote Kuhn's paradigm shift.
One way of explaining it that I've heard is that the Foucauldian episteme focuses on the unconscious; the questions that we don't think about asking - questions which are outside the 'paradigm' (in Kuhn's conceptualisation)
I would like if you did more philosophy/philosopher videos, because that’s what I’m interested in and you explain these topics so nicely/succinctly. Thank you
As an avid Foucault reader, this solely stands as the best introduction to his works on this platform. However, if I were to offer a reverse discourse (lol), you could have also included Foucault's idea on the death of man (although I do understand that this video is an introduction to his work). Anyways, you've done some great work. Love the channel 😁
@@Misho83 apprently in the US is j elsewhere is hard g, in italian we say it with a soft g, but to be fair it comes from the greek word ἡγεμονία where the γ is an hard sound, so maybe hard g is more correct
@@Tom_Nicholas There are many online sources like Forvo or even TH-cam stuff showing how proper names in different languages are pronounced (Wikipedia almost always shows the IPA transcriptions, too).
I appreciate your videos so much! This video on Foucault summarized three years of grad school into one brief lecture and helped me understand what he was actually trying to say. Oh my God, I get it now! Thank you, thank you.
@@Tom_Nicholas super useful! just a tip: Gramsci is pronounced "Gramshee" (like banshee lol). In italian the trigraphs "sci" and "sce" do the swishy sound while the sound you're making with an "hard" k would be written "schi" (or sche). Which would turn Gramsci into Gramschi :P hopefully you find this helpful in return!
Pronunciation is my downfall everytime, haha! It's not even a language thing, half the time I get the names of British scholars wrong too! Thanks for your tips though, I'll be sure to get it right next time!
I don't see how a clinical psychiatrist like Peterson can have anything against this line of thought. It's simply brilliant and explains alot of things we are seeing today, like identity politics. Foucault is a revelation to anyone who learns about him.
His work can take a little bit of time to get your head but I think it's worth it. I certainly really enjoyed spending a good few days re-immersing myself in it all! Glad you found it helpful!
Great!!! You have a real gift at explaining one of the West's most difficult and important thinkers. Have you ever tackled Cluade Levi Strauss? I would love to hear you on him....
I’m currently needing to write a reflective essay on a transcription of Foucault’s ‘Two Lectures’ on Power and Knowledge. I legit have no idea what he’s saying half the time. So this has been helpful. Thank you. Am subbing from Australia! ((:
@@Tom_Nicholas, I hope so too. If not, start uploading some Deleuze, Barthes, Derrida, Spivak, Zizek etc., there's a bunch of them. I'm happy I passed this exam and don't have to deal anymore (yet) with these villains.
There's always lots of Foucault complaints. But, most of these fall under the broad category of "I think thou protesteth too much." It's actually pretty hard to contest his core presentation because they have the obvious ring of truth. What is radical in Faucault is the blinding glimpse of the obvious. And, it is just this simplicity that offends so many.
I’ve never been good at conformity even if I try. We are constantly fear mongered with surveillance, but fear = power. We need to stop fearing surveillance and get rid of it (starting with these smartphones)
Absolutely. Also, it ended up being cut for time (to even get this down to 26 minutes!) but I did have some great stuff from his essay The Subject and Power in here which is a chapter he wrote for a book of essays about his work towards the end of his life. There's some really great reflections in there about what his intentions were as a scholar and what he sees the goal of his writings as.
excellent intro, i met Foucault once at the eagle in san fran sunday afternoon when it was empty, he talked to me about power and structures of power and many things
What an experience it must have been. Its a shame he died so soon, we can only imagine what he would’ve accomplished had aids not taken him from the world.
Back when it was pretty hardcore since he died in 84. My wife went to the Stud late 70's to dance, because the music was great and nobody tried to pick her up. lol
I guess he learned that morality actually had a pretty important place in the world. Just imagine, if he had used his morality and found one partner, he would have had been able to dodge the disease. But, complete freedom from government is very different than complete freedom from social norms….oops.
@@hamilton7798 "...First, there is the question of freedom of sexual choice, which must be faced. I say "freedom of sexual choice" and not "freedom of sexual acts" because there are sexual acts like rape which should not be permitted whether they involve a man and a woman or two men. *I don't think we should have as our objective some sort of absolute freedom or total liberty of sexual action.* However, where freedom of sexual choice is concerned, one has to be absolutely intransigent. This includes the liberty of expression of that choice. By this I mean the liberty to manifest that choice or not to manifest it." (Foucault)
Interesting thoughts. I like the subtle yet intuitive nature of the philosophy: the ways we (society) think limit what/how we can think about. An example that came to mind (please correct me if I'm off) is how the thought of heterosexual males as the "default" has caused a lot of scientific development to be incomplete or lacking: us only recently finding that cis women show symptoms of many diseases and disorders in drastically different ways than cis men.
I think that's a really good example you raise. The journalist Caroline Criado-Perez recently wrote a book (which I've yet to read) about how a great deal of the world is designed for "average people" which tends to mean men. Crash test dummies, for instance, are mostly designed to resemble the "average man" which means safety systems end up being designed for those certain body shapes. There's certainly a way in which this could be explained through some of Foucault's writing.
It's amazing how you can somehow manage to create bite sized videos of extremely complex theories. Your content are great stimulus for further understandings the works of complex philosophers.
Thank you! Haha, I did less well on this one in terms of it being "bite sized" though! Will aim to get back to a slightly-more-digestable 17 or so minutes next time round!
@@Tom_Nicholas hey, I am not even complaining . It's just that what I feel your video is different from other is how you introduce complex philosophical topics, which are very relivent for today's societies . It's brief and simple at the same time touches on some interesting points
Interesting and informative overview. One could perhaps describe the contemporary panopticon as existing through the power relations of social media, everything is seen, social norms and punishments have been established. (humiliation). I wonder how Foucault would describe the present system of knowledge and power that is emerging. .
I would love to see you go more in depth on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, especially in conjunction and contrast with his work on sexuality. It always amuses me when people hear that word and make assumptions 😂 thanks for the great content!
Foucault raped children and advocated that the raping of children is a human right we should be fighting for, I am quite happy throwing the raped baby out with the bathwater considering anything else he thought was "ethical".
This was really really engrossing, thank you. I've always struggled with sitting down and working through the classics like this and this made it so much more accessible
The Panoptic effect was always one that stuck out to me too, the social implications with surveillance obviously became increasingly relevant (and quite frightening with the combined implications of say for example Islamophobia as a phenomenon), but also, just that general notion of our moderation of behaviour based on the idea of being "observed" by one another, whether physically, or documented/remembered and just "understood" by our actions within the context of a contemporary norm and how norms can shift (and why). It remains a sort of perfect microcosm of that notion of the meaning of "morality" or "common sense", or "normal/abnormal" and how that shapes society and the very idea of self, how we act and how we are capable of acting (that sense of agency). Just like the Plato's cave shadows, Debord's simulacra of identity, the proverbial policeman that lives inside our head etc. When it comes to historical examples of how this effect shapes our ability to interact scientifically with the world specifically, it seems to be a largely negative one, and the resistance to change can come from the "bottom" up as much as the "top" down. It all feels related with the traditionalism/progressivism binary, or modern/postmodern discourse in that and other ways.
Excellent content, and your delivery is perfect. You should narrate audiobooks - you'd be so much better than most of the narrators I've had to listen to!
I envy that synthesizing power that you have, in all videos. And it's also fun to watch. In this one you managed to explain Michel in context without simplifying his ideas. I'm a fan of your work now, you are really helping, I feel less dumb thanks to you.
I think it's more correct to say "ruins" rather than "monuments" since an old book on a dusty shelf is, in practice, a ruin of words until someone who can read it constructs identity and experience from said ruin, and simbolizes that book's value as monumental or unvaluable
Not everyone in any society all think the same. It is those with the most power and influence and the largest number of adherents to their ideas that all think and believe the same that make certain schools of thought seem dominant. What is ironic is that as soon as someone writes a big book making some other statements that seems new and becomes popular, the ignorant hordes jump on board and become evangelizers.
Analyzing geo politics and especially the details of Ukraine war I came to very similar conclusions about power , Nietzche too seems to talk about this. Jung was right people don't have ideas ideas have people , I only figured out later about these 2 cause I was never fan of philosophy, but they pattern recognition I noticed that they were thinking along the same lines as the conclusions I drew.
We see part of this in the Bible , how if you break the rules you will burn in hell for eternity which forces people to behave even when nobody is looking.
Foucault didn't always arrive at the most convincing answers, but he always asked the most wonderfully interesting questions.
Did he also bang boys?
@@jamesjross There have been accusations. I've never looked closely enough into it to know how valid those are. From what I recall hearing about it, i think there's a lot of uncertainty about what actually happened. It was over half a century ago, and there isn't a lot of hard evidence one way or the other. Somebody may have done a rigorous investigation, but I'm not aware of it.
@@ahobimo732 What was that comment referring to? It seems to be deleted?
@@charlescalthrop2535 They were asking about child abuse accusations against Foucault and other left wing academics in Europe in the mid 20th century.
@@charlescalthrop2535 What I said about the lack of evidence was referring to accusations against Foucault specifically. The claims were that he had exploitative relationships with young men (in Algeria, I think?).
But regarding the more general issue of the "problematic" views of left wing academics in the 60s and 70s, there is no real ambiguity. It's a pretty well documented fact.
But it needs to be understood in the larger context of the cultural conflicts of that era. It was a time that was dominated by a spirit of challenging authority and cultural norms. Sometimes that questioning went too far.
I saw a video on it recently that took a pretty balanced view. It didn't sugarcoat anything, but it still took a thoughtful, nuanced view. I can try to look it up if you're interested.
The most comprehensive introduction to Foucault I've ever watched. Thumbs up for Tom!
Ah, well I can't ask for much nicer feedback than that! Really glad you thought so!
Tom Nicholas you are awesome 👏
Foucault was a pedophile
@@theloniuspunk383 Yes, and a deeply unpleasant man, unlike Roland Barthes who was gay, died prematurely by being run over by a bus in 1980 and was universally loved by his students at the Sorbonne. Both their writings are valid objects of study. And Baudelaire was a total schmuck, but as my most respected prof demonstrated to me, in both discursive and poetic writing, it's not helpful to conflate the writer and the text and this is not just a postmodern 'text is all there is' cop out. I write this to remind myself of my own ad hominem tendencies when reading or listening to music etc. Can't stand Schopenhauer either (went around kicking little old ladies downstairs) but if I excised every jerk from my reading list I'd have a much shorter list. This is not to deny the liminal value of biography (let's remember how little we know about Shakespeare, eg.) but our current episteme includes the scrutinizing of well-known figures to a pathological extent, which begs the question, where to draw the line.
@@theloniuspunk383 Yes. And?
Foucalt : -hits the blunt- WHAT IF EVERYTHING IS A PRISON?
YOOOOOO I SWEAR I THOUGHT THE EXACT SAME THING I WAS JUST ABOUT TO COMMENT THAT XD
Rumor has it he was bribed into the Chomsky debate with hash that him and his friends called "Chomsky Hash"; I also heard he was a bit baked during the debate but I've conflicting reports lmao 😂😂
Prisons. Prisons everywhere. One big interconnected network of prisons. Like some kind of...Prison Planet!
@@raymondnoriega953 lol I’ve never heard that one. Must’ve been quality stuff to bring Foucault to the yard considering his overall vice profile.
Foucault: *hits the blunt*
"Mmmmmm... little boys"
A very helpful summary of a lot of complicated ideas. Thanks!
Thanks for watching! Really looking forward to your feedback on this one. Do let me know if you'd like me to make some more Foucault videos in the future (maybe going in-depth into some particular books of his)?
Furthermore, as with the last episode of What the Theory?, if you'd like to get your hands on a copy of the script for this video with footnotes and references, you can sign up to support me on Patreon at patreon.com/tomnicholas
Yes please, power knowledge and self 🥰
Would also be interesting to learn about "the gaze" (and how other scholars like Edward Said expanded on this notion)!
Pin your comment at the top my dude, easier for people to see, and comment on it.
Please do more on The order of things and The history of Sexuality
Please make your works cited and/or footnotes available to the public!
Thank you for this and all you do.
woah hi Red! dope that you are into philosophy!
woah red means recording was here, check out Noam Chomsky and Foucault debate if you read this, and then let me know which one of foucault's facial expressions reminded you of count Chocula the most.
Another one here happy to see Red.
We all know what the red means now
I started watching your videos to get a backdrop for a creative writing course I am taking. Your speaking style and on-screen personality are wonderful. I think the most valuable thing you do for me is to give concrete examples of theory placed in their cultural context. Thank you for posting and providing a path for learning about topics that are complex and would normally take a huge commitment to learn.
My goodness. I really appreciate the clear and flowing distillation of the idea of the Episteme, and especially how the scheduling and ordering of our current society can lead to creeping conformity and a lack of self-knowledge! I know that I'd seen fragments of these ideas before, but never really saw how the puzzle fit together before, and I thank you for the work you've put into ordering your mind so that it can produce a work so easily apprehended by my own... ;)
When I was in high school, the local public school district installed small cameras in all the school buses to watch the students, after allegations of lesbian behavior by the girls’ lacrosse team in the back of a school bus. However, they could only afford 1 real small camera, and all the others were fake replicas, but they regularly switched around the real camera with the fake cameras, so nobody knew which bus it was on. It was an actual panopticon, whose intended purpose was to get everyone to behave.
It completely failed as a measure of social control, and nobody changed their behavior at all, since everyone assumed it was highly unlikely the real camera was in the same school bus as them, and also that nobody actually looked at any of the tapes except maybe some perverted teacher or administrator who, if they actually saw anyone engaged in sexual activity, would simply watch it and not report it to any higher authorities or punish anyone involved, because they would probably want to see more.
The implications of this experiment are clear: panopticons don’t actually work, and people are going to say “fuck it” and do what they want to do even if they think they might be being watched (at least if they are teenagers or criminals, groups whose brains are more impulsive and rebellious than typical adults in terms of how their brains govern behavior). On the other hand, later on in life as an adult I worked in an office and there were cameras everywhere, all of them actual real, working cameras, and supposedly 1 or 2 employees from the security department actually looked at the tapes, and this actually DID seem to keep people in line and control their behavior. I would hypothesize that an office environment produces a different episteme in people than being on a school bus or in a prison, and also the incentive structure is different.
In school or prison, people already dislike the situation they are in, and any attempt to punish them does not really work very well since they don’t even really like being there in the first place. However, in an office job, while people similarly dislike being there, at this point in life they are dependent upon money from the job to survive and have been brainwashed their entire life into the idea of being an obedient worker, and rebelliousness tends to fade with adulthood, and workers have a strong incentive not to do anything that might get them fired, since unlike being at school or in a prison, a job actually pays you money, which is of extremely high importance in our current capitalist system.
Our form of capitalism conditions people to place a very high importance on money for their dual roles as workers and consumers, trying to trick everyone into working very hard to get as much money as possible, to the point that they have almost no free time and are miserable, and then also trick everyone into spending all that money on useless things they don’t need to the point of going into debt and having negative net worth, thus necessitating that they work even harder to pay for everything they buy and ward off the debt collectors. This does not trick everyone into behaving this way, as some people are able to control their spending and not give into advertising pressure, and some people are able to avoid this trap of having to work very hard to try to get more money by finding various ways around that to survive, but it tricks enough people to keep the capitalist system going rather than falling apart due to its internal contradictions.
I think the nuances in the interplay of power and consequences in your two examples present themselves to point precisely at why Foucault's imagination rarely functions in real life. Reading the history of Presidio Modelo in Cuba can also partly explain your experiences of surveillance in different scenarios. Great comment!
"Allegations of Lesbian behavior"
Kinda disturbing that they tried to police sexual behavior
I'm sure heterosexual behavior was not seen as an issue
@@cakesbubbles2566 Except that they do? Foucault discusses the differences between power, so someone who is powerless (a prisoner, consumer,...) being controlled by systems of oppression aka power. His notion of biopolitics shows he predicted the identity politics today and is also in fact, a re-affirmation of agency against systems of oppression.
People profiling themselves through their identity is because we are surrounded by systems that try to identify us. In the 90's, people seemed to care less about their identity. Even in the 2000s, people were seeking to unite and lay aside their differences, so if you were native or black or hispanic, it didn't really matter because there were more liberties surrounding those traits. But today, we have dating apps, surveillance monitors, news channels, politics, that heavily rely on identity (nationality, skin colour, faith, sexuality, gender, cultural heritage...) and because of that people feel the need to clarify and be vocal about their own identity.
The easiest example would be The Internet because it's really vague. People want to identify themselves, because otherwise they are just a clean slate like everyone else. Here, you can tell Foucault's notion of how we are slaves to these premises, as technology seems to dictate our political realm.
I had a professor who made the same claim for how pocket watches turned Europe into a modern society and his arguments were quite astounding to me. Just because people have something that ticks in their pocket, they suddenly start thinking differently. The same could be said for smartphones. We carry the globe in our pockets, and people feel the need to distinct themselves from it. Every time we change our toolkit, so does our thinking. Humans are technocratic beings.
I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this that "The panopticon simply doesn't work" as such structures can, and do succeed in suppressing dissent.
However, I think this demonstrates an ideal solution. It shows that the panopticon has no response to systemic upheaval. If the majority decides not to cooperate, they cannot be suppressed in this way. This suggests to me that now, more than ever, class solidarity is one of the most powerful weapons of all.
@Barshonk lol sucks for you I guess since whether it's the place for it or not, this is to my mind a valuable and interesting thought.
Thanks so much Tom. I was long overdue gaining a clearer overview on what Foucault proposed rather than some of the caricatures presented by his critics.
Amazing. The philosophy youtubers are best thing to ever come out from the UK.
this video has subs, it is about philosophy and Tom has charming British accent... i'm blown away
As student of Postmodernism, and arguably its most famous architect, Michel Foucault, I was interested in what you excluded, which was a lot, particularly his personal homosexuality, and his specific pedophilic attention he had throughout his life.
You did fair with Foucault’s discussions on power, and I did learn more on his prison takes, and to some extent, on Foucault’s philosophy on human archeology, genealogy, and how this relates to mankind’s epistemes.
I'd rather read deleuze and be straight, they put it on stock after this many years of isolation and sexual inactive processes... knowledge and power don't matter within capitalism they have some crappy trancdental idealism on being half retarded labourer
Great job, Foucault's thesis are pretty complicated! Thank you so much for simplifying it ❤️👍
Thank you Hafida, I hope it was helpful!
theses*
Try reading him in the original French oy vey :)
No they aren't, it's just post modern mental gymnastics. Contrived complexity to make stupid ideas seem worthwhile.
Facault is a great joke - peadophile and pseudointtelectual:))) Good that this kind of crap is only still popular in UK - "country" with strong commie heritage:))))
Thanks so much for the subtitles ( and the good work, of course ). This really helps those who speak English as a second language. 🤓
Ah, I haven't actually had a chance to put proper subtitles on this one just yet but I'm glad that TH-cam's automatic ones did an okay job here. Sometimes they can be pretty awful, haha!
No worries mate. Thanks for the great work still
He's one of the scholars that had biggest impacts on my worldview. Really glad TH-cam suggested your channel to me out of nowhere. Instantly subscribed.
Glad you've got a lot out of reading Foucault and glad you enjoyed the video! Hope you like the rest of my stuff!!
Yeah I'm really so sorry to hear that...you'll come back to your senses soon enough
You've become my new favourite teacher!
Incredible video. Introductions to Foucault on TH-cam usually (well, always) neglect his epistemological work and only focus on Discipline and Punish. Anyone who comes across this will not have doubts once they’re finished. Very well done.
Discipline and Punish is also about epistemology (the discipline, power/knowledge)
EDIT: NVM, it's discussed at the end
"Gave way to a [new] episteme" made me think of paradigmatic scientific revolutions, in the Thomas Kuhnian sense.
Yeah, I thought the same! Wouldn't the episteme be like a component of a paradigm? Maybe the episteme is broader than I understand it
@@qpalzm563 I also thought of Kuhn. Perhaps a changing episteme allows for the conception of new experiments, which would promote Kuhn's paradigm shift.
One way of explaining it that I've heard is that the Foucauldian episteme focuses on the unconscious; the questions that we don't think about asking - questions which are outside the 'paradigm' (in Kuhn's conceptualisation)
Your videos are god tier quality.
I would like if you did more philosophy/philosopher videos, because that’s what I’m interested in and you explain these topics so nicely/succinctly. Thank you
As an avid Foucault reader, this solely stands as the best introduction to his works on this platform. However, if I were to offer a reverse discourse (lol), you could have also included Foucault's idea on the death of man (although I do understand that this video is an introduction to his work).
Anyways, you've done some great work. Love the channel 😁
Thank you for your thought provoking video. It was really helpful
here again. what a mental playground. now to garden. a spring curse that may not last too many generations....crack on. thank-you.
Very good work, Tom. I have to say though: @16:19 that has to be simultaneously the least flattering and most appropriate image of Foucault.
Thank you, very useful. Just one thing, it's "Gramsci" not "Gramski". "Sc" in Italian is like the "sh" sound in shelter :)
Thank you for pointing this out! My pronunciation is quite often awful across the board, haha!
Thanks so much, that really bugged me and I had to wonder if maybe college had led me astray.
Hegemony is also an interesting one, I've heard people pronouncing it with a "j" and with a "g". Is it a British English / American English thing?
@@Misho83 apprently in the US is j elsewhere is hard g, in italian we say it with a soft g, but to be fair it comes from the greek word ἡγεμονία where the γ is an hard sound, so maybe hard g is more correct
@@Tom_Nicholas There are many online sources like Forvo or even TH-cam stuff showing how proper names in different languages are pronounced (Wikipedia almost always shows the IPA transcriptions, too).
I am just dipping a tentative toe into philosophy, particular philosophy and education. This video has been really helpful, thank you.
Excellent as always Tom, you’re the clearest pane of glass
Thanks William, that’s very kind of you to say so!
I appreciate your videos so much! This video on Foucault summarized three years of grad school into one brief lecture and helped me understand what he was actually trying to say. Oh my God, I get it now! Thank you, thank you.
i was researching foucault two days ago and stumbled upon ur video on debord, subscribed, and bam! yesterday you post this. brilliant
Haha, amazing timing! Love it when that happens! Hope you find this useful!
@@Tom_Nicholas super useful! just a tip: Gramsci is pronounced "Gramshee" (like banshee lol). In italian the trigraphs "sci" and "sce" do the swishy sound while the sound you're making with an "hard" k would be written "schi" (or sche). Which would turn Gramsci into Gramschi :P hopefully you find this helpful in return!
Pronunciation is my downfall everytime, haha! It's not even a language thing, half the time I get the names of British scholars wrong too! Thanks for your tips though, I'll be sure to get it right next time!
Making a thought experiment on what should be simple. Such as, what harms others is bad.
I don't see how a clinical psychiatrist like Peterson can have anything against this line of thought. It's simply brilliant and explains alot of things we are seeing today, like identity politics. Foucault is a revelation to anyone who learns about him.
Foucault gave me headaches during the school year! Very clear and informative video, as usual 🙏
His work can take a little bit of time to get your head but I think it's worth it. I certainly really enjoyed spending a good few days re-immersing myself in it all! Glad you found it helpful!
Foucault gave himself headaches. Worse, he's majorly responsible for what seems like a terminal brain tumor in the civilised world today.
Thank you for this video it really helped me with my His. Analysis and Theory class!
This was excellent. 💡💡
Great stuff! Good job - I could turn to this from time to time. Very well summarized!
i'm here because i recently learned that Jordan Peterson considers Foucault to be irredeemably vile and hateful. That sure sparked my curiosity!
I just wanted to comment that I really appreciate the pace at which you speak. thanks for this video
Great!!! You have a real gift at explaining one of the West's most difficult and important thinkers. Have you ever tackled Cluade Levi Strauss? I would love to hear you on him....
He has one on structuralism which touches on Levi Straus
This is the best video on Foucault...Thank you Tom!
Excellent stuff, thank you!
You somehow look a lot like Ramsay Bolton from GOT 🤔😅
Moderm AU Ramsay where Roose was actually a good dad and Ramsay studied poly sci in university
British People bone structure.
Omg yes!!!! I've been trying to place the resemblance for months now lol
Gordon Ramsey-Bolton
Great video!
How do you not have a million subs by now?? Instant subscribe!
THANK YOU! You do such a great job with these videos.
21:04 Has a great point
He hit the nail on the head.
Everything is a prison , the head of a state is a slave to its people and the people are his slaves.
I’m currently needing to write a reflective essay on a transcription of Foucault’s ‘Two Lectures’ on Power and Knowledge. I legit have no idea what he’s saying half the time. So this has been helpful. Thank you. Am subbing from Australia! ((:
Really glad this helped you out! Best of luck with the essay!
Great timing! My girlfriend is studying for her literary theory exam and she's struggling with understanding Foucault.
Oh super, I love it when things work out like that! I hope this helps in some small way!
@@Tom_Nicholas, I hope so too. If not, start uploading some Deleuze, Barthes, Derrida, Spivak, Zizek etc., there's a bunch of them. I'm happy I passed this exam and don't have to deal anymore (yet) with these villains.
I’ve got a couple of Barthes videos up already and I’m sure I’ll get on to some of those others soon enough!!
There's always lots of Foucault complaints. But, most of these fall under the broad category of "I think thou protesteth too much." It's actually pretty hard to contest his core presentation because they have the obvious ring of truth. What is radical in Faucault is the blinding glimpse of the obvious. And, it is just this simplicity that offends so many.
This video has the best explanation of 'soul is the prison of the body' and doesn't even mention that it's explaining it
Crikey! Foucault is more important than I thought!
This is the clearest and most useful overview of Foucault's work I've come across. Thank you for taking the time to make these videos!
I’ve never been good at conformity even if I try. We are constantly fear mongered with surveillance, but fear = power. We need to stop fearing surveillance and get rid of it (starting with these smartphones)
I was trying to find articles about Foucault that I could understand but I had such a hard time so I really appreciate this video. Thank you so much!
A very short and good intro would be his inaugural lecture at Collège de France: The order of discourse (L'ordre du discours).
Absolutely. Also, it ended up being cut for time (to even get this down to 26 minutes!) but I did have some great stuff from his essay The Subject and Power in here which is a chapter he wrote for a book of essays about his work towards the end of his life. There's some really great reflections in there about what his intentions were as a scholar and what he sees the goal of his writings as.
excellent intro, i met Foucault once at the eagle in san fran sunday afternoon when it was empty, he talked to me about power and structures of power and many things
What an experience it must have been. Its a shame he died so soon, we can only imagine what he would’ve accomplished had aids not taken him from the world.
Back when it was pretty hardcore since he died in 84. My wife went to the Stud late 70's to dance, because the music was great and nobody tried to pick her up. lol
I guess he learned that morality actually had a pretty important place in the world. Just imagine, if he had used his morality and found one partner, he would have had been able to dodge the disease. But, complete freedom from government is very different than complete freedom from social norms….oops.
@@hamilton7798 "...First, there is the question of freedom of sexual choice, which must be faced. I say "freedom of sexual choice" and not "freedom of sexual acts" because there are sexual acts like rape which should not be permitted whether they involve a man and a woman or two men. *I don't think we should have as our objective some sort of absolute freedom or total liberty of sexual action.* However, where freedom of sexual choice is concerned, one has to be absolutely intransigent. This includes the liberty of expression of that choice. By this I mean the liberty to manifest that choice or not to manifest it." (Foucault)
Man, this is so exactly what I needed today in my search for sensemaking!
Thank you so much! Note for self for later reference - Discipline and Punish - 17:00
Interesting thoughts. I like the subtle yet intuitive nature of the philosophy: the ways we (society) think limit what/how we can think about. An example that came to mind (please correct me if I'm off) is how the thought of heterosexual males as the "default" has caused a lot of scientific development to be incomplete or lacking: us only recently finding that cis women show symptoms of many diseases and disorders in drastically different ways than cis men.
I think that's a really good example you raise. The journalist Caroline Criado-Perez recently wrote a book (which I've yet to read) about how a great deal of the world is designed for "average people" which tends to mean men. Crash test dummies, for instance, are mostly designed to resemble the "average man" which means safety systems end up being designed for those certain body shapes. There's certainly a way in which this could be explained through some of Foucault's writing.
@@Tom_Nicholas cool to be affirmed by someone more well read!
you would be a fantastic true crime podcaster with that voice, love it
I wish we had TH-cam and YOU 25 years ago when I was in Grad School!
Tom, this is brilliant.
Thank you for presenting a very fluent and accomplished summary of Foucault.
This is a great introduction to Foucault's work.
Thank you!
It's amazing how you can somehow manage to create bite sized videos of extremely complex theories.
Your content are great stimulus for further understandings the works of complex philosophers.
Thank you! Haha, I did less well on this one in terms of it being "bite sized" though! Will aim to get back to a slightly-more-digestable 17 or so minutes next time round!
@@Tom_Nicholas hey, I am not even complaining . It's just that what I feel your video is different from other is how you introduce complex philosophical topics, which are very relivent for today's societies . It's brief and simple at the same time touches on some interesting points
That's very kind of you to say so! Thanks for your support as ever!
wonderful.....my heart's content.....
This was really helpful, thank you.
thanks a bunch for sharing this. it seriously means a lot. and It was so sweet your granni's 90th birthday. I really enjoyed that vlog. God bless.
Interesting and informative overview. One could perhaps describe the contemporary panopticon as existing through the power relations of social media, everything is seen, social norms and punishments have been established. (humiliation). I wonder how Foucault would describe the present system of knowledge and power that is emerging. .
I thought I saw Foucault somewhere and apparently he was mentioned in two of the sources of the paper I should be working on. That sure is something.
Extremely informative, thank you!
I'm curious about the 'Cards Against Humanity', which is under the Scrabble box...
So, this guy and Then and Now really want me to subscribe to their channels, really impressive!
Super nice video, what a pleasure to listen to you!
So useful for my studies 🙏 thank you so much, Tom!
No worries Christina! I’m so glad it was helpful!
Absolutely loved this video! As a future decolonial theorist, I love epistemology and now Foucault even more
I dare you to tackle Society Must be Defended...his best lecture series.
Great video Ive always found Foucault liberating for the individual. But dangerous in the hands of the ruling class.
Thanks, 26m well spent. I'm attempting to write a bachelorthesis on Foucaults panopticon and that is a good summary of his work.
Well done for making Foucault easier to understand.
AAAAA TOM YOU'RE A LIFESAVER, I COULDN'T, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, GET MY HEAD AROUND MY BOI FOUCAULT. THANK YOU TOM FOR HELPING ME WITH MY ASSESSMENT.
I would love to see you go more in depth on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, especially in conjunction and contrast with his work on sexuality. It always amuses me when people hear that word and make assumptions 😂 thanks for the great content!
Foucault raped children and advocated that the raping of children is a human right we should be fighting for, I am quite happy throwing the raped baby out with the bathwater considering anything else he thought was "ethical".
This was really really engrossing, thank you. I've always struggled with sitting down and working through the classics like this and this made it so much more accessible
The Panoptic effect was always one that stuck out to me too, the social implications with surveillance obviously became increasingly relevant (and quite frightening with the combined implications of say for example Islamophobia as a phenomenon), but also, just that general notion of our moderation of behaviour based on the idea of being "observed" by one another, whether physically, or documented/remembered and just "understood" by our actions within the context of a contemporary norm and how norms can shift (and why).
It remains a sort of perfect microcosm of that notion of the meaning of "morality" or "common sense", or "normal/abnormal" and how that shapes society and the very idea of self, how we act and how we are capable of acting (that sense of agency). Just like the Plato's cave shadows, Debord's simulacra of identity, the proverbial policeman that lives inside our head etc.
When it comes to historical examples of how this effect shapes our ability to interact scientifically with the world specifically, it seems to be a largely negative one, and the resistance to change can come from the "bottom" up as much as the "top" down. It all feels related with the traditionalism/progressivism binary, or modern/postmodern discourse in that and other ways.
Your tone, voice and accent soothes my ADD.
Hey I stumbled across your chancel while trying to find a good summary about Foucault. I really love this video! Thank you!
Excellent content, and your delivery is perfect. You should narrate audiobooks - you'd be so much better than most of the narrators I've had to listen to!
This was a great video Tom!
Great introductory video!
I envy that synthesizing power that you have, in all videos. And it's also fun to watch. In this one you managed to explain Michel in context without simplifying his ideas. I'm a fan of your work now, you are really helping, I feel less dumb thanks to you.
This was ultimately informative in ways conducive to a broader interpretation of my own individual thought processes caught up therein.
Wonderful! Thank you so much for this, really helped me wrap my head around Foucault!
Really glad it helped Ellie!
I think it's more correct to say "ruins" rather than "monuments" since an old book on a dusty shelf is, in practice, a ruin of words until someone who can read it constructs identity and experience from said ruin, and simbolizes that book's value as monumental or unvaluable
Not everyone in any society all think the same. It is those with the most power and influence and the largest number of adherents to their ideas that all think and believe the same that make certain schools of thought seem dominant. What is ironic is that as soon as someone writes a big book making some other statements that seems new and becomes popular, the ignorant hordes jump on board and become evangelizers.
Analyzing geo politics and especially the details of Ukraine war I came to very similar conclusions about power , Nietzche too seems to talk about this.
Jung was right people don't have ideas ideas have people , I only figured out later about these 2 cause I was never fan of philosophy, but they pattern recognition I noticed that they were thinking along the same lines as the conclusions I drew.
Great video, thank you. If anyone wants to understand just how brilliant Noam Chomsky's takedown of Foucault is, this is a great starting point
We see part of this in the Bible , how if you break the rules you will burn in hell for eternity which forces people to behave even when nobody is looking.
really helpful for my paper writing, thanks a lot.
Glad to have helped in some small way, best of luck with the paper!
Nice job Thomas 👌 I applied his theories while writing a paper on G. Orwell's 1984 and I had a great time doing that I must say. Keep going 👍
Ooh, that sounds really interesting!
Cool, can I get the thesis statement?