Foucault: WTF? An Introduction to Foucault, Power and Knowledge
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
- In this introduction to Foucault, we consider the relationship between knowledge and power through looking (primarily) at three books by Michel Foucault: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, The Order of Things and The History of Sexuality (as well as, very briefly, History of Madness-sometimes published as Madness and Civilisation-and The Birth of the Clinic).
We unpack some of the terminology central to Foucault's philosophy such as episteme (and the shifts between epistemes), archaeology and genealogy. Finally, we look at how Foucault uses the panopticon-a plan for a uniquely utilitarian prison designed by Jeremy Bentham-in order to consider how discipline and punishment might have become a part of our everyday lives.
If you're look for the work of Michel Foucault explained simply and engagingly then, hopefully, this might be the video you're looking for!
If you'd like to get your hands on a copy of the script to this video with footnotes and references to pour over to your heart's content then check out my Patreon at / tomnicholas
Further Reading
Foucault: A Very Short Introduction by Gary Gutting
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Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault
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The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction by Michel Foucault
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[The above are affiliate links. I receive a small kickback from anything you buy which, in turn, helps to support the channel.]
If you've enjoyed this video and would like to see more including my What The Theory? series in which I provide some snappy introductions to key theories in the humanities as well as PhD vlogs in which I talk about some of the challenges of being a PhD student then do consider subscribing.
Thanks for watching!
Twitter: @Tom_Nicholas
Website: www.tomnicholas.com
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"
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?
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
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.
Philosophy is the act of writing down your fears, depravity, prejudice and self hate so they can be shared and indulged by others.
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... ;)
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:))))
this video has subs, it is about philosophy and Tom has charming British accent... i'm blown away
Brilliant! The only explanation I've come across that I can make any sense of! 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 😁
I am just dipping a tentative toe into philosophy, particular philosophy and education. This video has been really helpful, thank you.
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.
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
Great stuff! Good job - I could turn to this from time to time. Very well summarized!
I just wanted to comment that I really appreciate the pace at which you speak. thanks for this video
You've become my new favourite teacher!
A very helpful summary of a lot of complicated ideas. Thanks!
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.
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
"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)
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
THANK YOU! You do such a great job with these videos.
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.
Hey I stumbled across your chancel while trying to find a good summary about Foucault. I really love this video! Thank you!
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!
Amazing. The philosophy youtubers are best thing to ever come out from the UK.
Thank you for presenting a very fluent and accomplished summary of Foucault.
I am so glad I found your channel !!! wow fantastic content - very well presented ! New subscriber from Australia :)
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.
Excellent as always Tom, you’re the clearest pane of glass
Thanks William, that’s very kind of you to say so!
Thank you so much for this video! It helped me to grasp Foucault a lot better.
Wonderful! Thank you so much for this, really helped me wrap my head around Foucault!
Really glad it helped Ellie!
Tanks for the video and references for further reading!
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!
So useful for my studies 🙏 thank you so much, Tom!
No worries Christina! I’m so glad it was helpful!
Love the way you explain these difficult concepts. Thanks!
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).
Thanks for this video and for many of your orthers. Always so helpful - and enjoyable to watch.
Extremely informative, thank you!
Very good Tom, I like how you explore philosophers instead of pop culture that can be interpreted with philosophy.
He's one of my favorites for sure, what a lad!
Man, this is so exactly what I needed today in my search for sensemaking!
Great video Tom! Keep them coming!
Brilliant, Sir! You've earned yourself one curious, eager-to-learn American subscriber. Thank you for taking the time to research, film and share this with the rest of us.
Awesome! Really impressive analysis. Thanks!!
Great! It has helped me question the danger of most structures that we see today and made me realize how much modern education follows his philosophy.
Thanks for sharing...clear and appetizing for the mind.
Great stuff. Takes something so difficult and makes it accessible.
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
Well done for making Foucault easier to understand.
thanks so much, I will keep following your update.
What a great summary, thank you.
Lovely initiative! Keep it up! :) Will recommend to my students!
This is great, just what i needed!!!
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!
Just wanted to say that you are quite good at communicating these concepts and a good teacher.
Super nice video, what a pleasure to listen to you!
Thanks, 26m well spent. I'm attempting to write a bachelorthesis on Foucaults panopticon and that is a good summary of his work.
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
You are a legend! Thank you so much for helping me understand this.
Thank you for your high quality content! I've been enjoying watching School of Life videos on philosophy in the past few weeks. I found them to be a good introduction to folks like Wittgenstein or Derrida, but their Foucault video was pretty caricaturesque. Thank you for going more in depth into his work!
Great introductory video!
This was ultimately informative in ways conducive to a broader interpretation of my own individual thought processes caught up therein.
excellent introduction, thanks for your great effort
Amazing introduction. Thank you so much for your work Tom!
This is the best video on Foucault...Thank you Tom!
Fantastic, really useful reminder and reintroduction much appreciated.
No worries, glad you found it useful in some small way Martin!
Greetings..
Excellent. I truly understand the intellectual power of Foucault. ...and really acknowledged his great works.
Many thanks.
OL.
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
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.
I am in love with your brain 😭😍❤️ thank you so much. LIKE REALLY THANK YOU.
This was a great video Tom!
Excellent stuff, thank you!
Really enjoyed, Brilliant !
For those who are in science, please Tom, love to hear about Kuhn, Feyerabend.
This was really helpful, thank you.
Crystal clear. Thank you.
Great video! Truly awesome!
That’s the best video to start Foucalt I think, thanks a lot :)
Tom, this is brilliant.
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
That was brilliant. Thanks Tom Nicholas
Great video. It seems at first glance that systems of thought were really just highly fluid cultural assumptions (fluid compared to today) and that tracing them seems less important than understanding why the self destructive ones keep spreading and stopping them.
Thanks dude for this wonderful load of information
Please do an Introduction specifically on Baudrillard!! Would be very very helpful thanks!
Thank you so much for this. This was such a great introduction!
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 wish I could heart react this so much. This is great! Thank you so much!
Thank you so much for this!
How do you manage to explain and summarise all these ideas in one video with your audio and visual representation? It baffles me. I am very grateful for your channel it not only explains ideas by great thinkers so beautifully but also, makes me excited to read their original texts. Thank you🌻
you are amazing sir , you summed up very aptly
So, this guy and Then and Now really want me to subscribe to their channels, really impressive!
wow. Thank you. I did able to understood Nietzche, Foucalt and Kant in a snapshot.
This is so useful and, for me, translates from the 'academese', areas of study I was totally unaware of. Thanks mate :-)
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 video!
How do you not have a million subs by now?? Instant subscribe!
This is the single best channel on TH-cam. Thank you very much for doing this. I am an undergraduate of philosophy at UCLA and I believe that we need more undergraduate classes which teach these theories. In my current studies, I haven't been able to find any classes which even remotely discuss these topics.
Thank you so much! Note for self for later reference - Discipline and Punish - 17:00