Foucault on Bachelard

Chomsky and Foucault discusses the nature of power, amongst other things.

In this intriguing overview of his famous notion of the 'trace,' Derrida critiques the long-standing philosophical 'authority of the question' by examining the conditions for questioning itself ... he argues that presence always presupposes 'Otherness' (a 'primary affirmation') which embodies a 'return'...to a 'different temporality older than the past and beyond the future' - a different 'past,' 'present,' or 'future' ... Derrida seeks a 'rapport' with this Otherness that allows for any conventional understanding of presence or the present ... such rapport, he feels, would promote a different experience with the past or future ...

In 1983, Foucault's responded (in audio format) to questions about arguably his most influential work, "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" (1977)... specifically, the focus was the orgin of the prison system as it relates to the emergence of what he termed - 'disciplinary society.' The 18th century prisons, he contends, were based upon 17th century disciplinary institutions - mainly, schools and the army. Their social arrangement became the basis for diffused societal regimentation - Bentham's panopticon, was the theoretical model - a centralized observation device in which the disciplinarian observes the disciplinee - but not vice-versa ... The first 4 images are from DP: 1. The book's cover 2. A close-up of the cover 3. An alcoholism lecture at Fresnes prison 4. 'Plan of the Panopticon,' by Bentham, 1843 5. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

This is an excerpt from the Chomsky-Foucault debate which was aired on Dutch television in 1971. The moderator seen here is Fons Elder. I am unaware of any full length copies of the original video, however the debate has been reprinted (and translated, of course) several times. For a copy of this debate and several interesting interviews that followed, see Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, _The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature_ (New York: The New Press, 2006).

Last year when scientists mounted a pendulum above the South Pole and watched it swing, they were replicating a celebrated demonstration performed in Paris in 1851. Using a steel wire 220 feet long, the French scientist Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault suspended a 62-pound iron ball from the dome of the Panthéon and set it in motion, rocking back and forth. To mark its progress he attached a stylus to the ball and placed a ring of damp sand on the floor below. The audience watched in awe as the pendulum inexplicably appeared to rotate, leaving a slightly different trace with each swing. Actually it was the floor of the Panthéon that was slowly moving, and Foucault had shown, more convincingly than ever, that the earth revolves on its axis. At the latitude of Paris, the pendulum's path would complete a full clockwise rotation every 30 hours; on the Southern Hemisphere it would rotate counterclockwise, and on the Equator it wouldn't revolve at all. At the South Pole, as the modern-day scientists confirmed, the period of rotation is 24 hours. The swing of Foucault's pendulum depends on the way we set it into the motion. If we set the pendulum in motion by a short push at the position of equilibrium it will swing as it is shown in animation. Actually the speed of the pendulum in the extreme positions is the speed of the earth rotation in the point of observation.

Trabajo para asignatura Teoria y Técnicas de Negociación.

Gilles Deleuze, Pourparlers : « [...] les forces de l'homme ne suffisent pas à elles seules à constituer une forme dominante où l'homme peut se loger. II faut que les forces de l'homme (avoir un entendement, une volonté, une imagination, etc.) se combinent avec d'autres forces [...] La forme qui en découlera ne sera donc pas nécessairement une forme humaine, ce pourra être une forme animale dont l'homme sera seulement un avatar, une forme divine dont il sera le reflet, la forme d'un Dieu unique dont l'homme ne sera que la limitation (ainsi, au XVIIe siècle, l'entendement humain comme limitation d'un entendement infini) [...] C'est dire qu'une forme-Homme n'apparaît que dans des conditions très spéciales et précaires : c'est ce que Foucault analyse, dans Les mots et les choses, comme l'aventure du XIXe siècle, en fonction des nouvelles forces avec lesquelles celles de l'homme se combinent alors. Or tout le monde dit qu'aujourd'hui l'homme entre en rapport avec d'autres forces encore (le cosmos dans l'espace, les particules dans la matière, le silicium dans la machine...) : une nouvelle forme en naît, qui n'est déjà plus celle de l'homme [...] »

Segunda parte del video Historias con futuro de la Universidad Pedagógica Nacional de Colombia sobre la pedagogía como pensar de otro modo.

Here, Foucault argues that the prison is one facet in the overall 'rationality' structuring disciplinary society - questions raised regard methods used to coerce persons to behave in certain, predictable ways and the best means to achieve this end ... Foucault offers this observation near the conclusion of DP: "The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the 'social-worker'-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements" (p. 304)." The images: 1. Plan for a Penitentiary, 1840 - prisoner kneeling before an observation tower 2. Interior of the Statesville Penitentiary, Joliet, IL 3. Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, PA 4. Texas Death Row prisoner, 1994

In 1971, American linguist/social activist Noam Chomsky squared off against French philosopher Michel Foucault on Dutch television ... the program was entitled 'Human Nature: Justice Vs. Power' and offered sharp contrasts between the more traditional view of 'human nature' and what would become a postmodernist perspective ... Chomsky, following a rationalist lineage going back to at least Plato, believes that there is a foundational 'nature' and that its positive aspects (love, creativity, recognizing and embracing justice) must be realized, while Foucault remains skeptical of any such notion... for him, the issue is not so much whether 'justice' or 'human nature' 'exists,' but how they have historically (and currently) function in society ... in regard to justice, he says (this is not included in the clips): "... the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power..." The point of any political struggle, for Foucault, is to alter the 'power relations' in which we all find ourselves ...

Video sobre o pensamen de Foucault

In 1971, American linguist/social activist Noam Chomsky squared off against French philosopher Michel Foucault on Dutch television ... the program was entitled 'Human Nature: Justice Vs. Power' and offered sharp contrasts between the more traditional view of 'human nature' and what would become a postmodernist perspective ... Chomsky, following a rationalist lineage going back to at least Plato, believes that there is a foundational 'nature' and that its positive aspects (love, creativity, recognizing and embracing justice) must be realized, while Foucault remains skeptical of any such notion... for him, the issue is not so much whether 'justice' or 'human nature' 'exists,' but how they have historically (and currently) function in society ... in regard to justice, he says (this is not included in the clips): "... the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power..." The point of any political struggle, for Foucault, is to alter the 'power relations' in which we all find ourselves ...

Here's my comparison of Habermas' "The Relationship between Theory and Practice Revisited" and Foucault's "What is Enlightenment?" All of the quotes are from these, which can be found in Habermas' "Truth and Justification" and for Foucault "The Essential Works of Foucault Vol 1: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth", on the following pages: 1. Foucault, p. 312. 2. Foucault, p. 313. 3. Foucault, p. 313. 4. Habermas, p. 289. 5. Habermas, p. 290. 6. Foucault, p. 319.

« Ce sont tous ces phénomènes de rapport entre les sciences ou entre les différents discours dans les divers secteurs scientifiques qui constituent ce que j'appelle épistémè d'une époque » Michel Foucault. La crise écologique, un tremblement de terre dans le paysage d'où naissent nos pensées ? Prise de conscience, symptôme de la production d'une nouvelle épistémè, d'une reconfiguration épistémologique... de Foucault vers G. Bateson, un pont possible ?

Programa de televisión que explora las consecuencias del pensamiento de Foucault en nuestro presente, producido por ATEI Tv y A Parte Rei, Revista de Filosofía

These were culled from a variety of French philosopher Michel Foucault's works - from the early "Madness and Civilization" (1965) through the last two published volumes of "The History of Sexuality" (1985-1986) - and some key essays ... In order: 1. Michel Foucault, cover illustration for Alan Sheridan's 'The Will To Truth' 2. The Ship of Fools ('Madness and Civilization') 3. Marquis de Sade, by ManRay ('The Order of Things') 4. 'Las Meninas', by Velazquez ('The Order of Things') 5. Friedrich Nietzsche, by Munch ('Nietzsche, Genealogy, History') 6. Don Quixote, by Picasso ('The Order of Things') 7. Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon ('Discipline and Punish') 8. Jeremy Bentham ('Discipline and Punish') 9. Philippe Pinel ('Madness and Civilization') 10. Friedrich Hoelderlin ('The Father's "No" ') 11. David Ricardo ('The Order of Things') 12. Georges Bataille {'Preface to Transgression') 13. Jorge Luis Borges ('The Order of Things') 14. Rene Descartes ('Madness and Civilization') 15. Maurice Blanchot ('The Thought from Outside') 16. Georges Cuvier ('The Order of Things') 17. Xavier Bichat ('Birth of the Clinic') 18. Robert Damiens ('Discipline and Punish') 19. Raymond Roussel ('Raymond Roussel') 20. Plato ('The Use of Pleasure') 21. Herculine Barbin, the cover of Foucault's study ('Herculine Barbin') 22. Franz Bopp ('The Order of Things') 23. Antonin Artaud ('Madness and Civilization,' 'The Order of Things')) 24. Plutarch ('The Care of the Self') 25. Gustave Flaubert ('Fantasia of the Library') 26. Pierre Rivierre, the manuscript's first page 27. 'This Is Not A Pipe', by Magritte ('This Is Not a Pipe') The music is from American composer Morton Feldman's "Coptic Light" (1986)

In this 1983 audio clip, Foucault responds to questions about his last project - the multi-volume "History of Sexuality" (three of a planned six were published) ... here, he discusses the shift from the ancient, Greco-Roman sexual ethic that involved 'pleasure' as the primary motif, to the modern (often psychoanalytic) notion of 'desire' which became the modern 'key' to unpacking the 'essence' of the 'human being' ... In the HOS, Foucault traces the historical genealogy of this transformation and in the first volume offers critiques of what he regards as a precarious, entrapping construct - 'sex,' he says, 'is the most speculative, most ideal, and most internal element in a deployment of sexuality organized by power in its grip on bodies and their materiality, their forces, energies, sensations, and pleasures.'

Jeffrey Foucault performing One for Sorrow at the Green River Festival in 2006 (with David Goodrich and Kris Delmhorst). Filmed & edited by Kathy Wittman.

Video di prova. Originariamente postato da hiperf289. Conferenza di Michel Foucault del 1983 sulla nascita della società disciplinare e sul suo libro più famoso, Sorvegliare e Punire.

Conceito de sujeito moderno

Sebastien Foucault is the emotional tale of one man's struggle against his own past.

Dibattito tra Michel Foucault e Noam Chomsky sull'idea di giustizia e il suo rapporto con la civilizzazione in cui si sviluppa. Sottotitolato da Aiace su suggerimento di 8dix.

This is a video compilation of a Foucault pendulum in action at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The rotation of the plane of the pendulum's oscillations demonstrates that the earth is a rotating reference frame. The number of rotations it makes in one day (about 180 degrees in 24 hours) also indicates the latitude of the museum (about 30 degrees north of the equator). By my count, there must be exactly 144 pins forming a circle on the floor underneath the pendulum. In the video, you will see two pins get knocked over, 1 hour apart. There was another pin between these two that gets tipped over, but this event is not on the video. With this data, I expect the time for two adjacent pins to get knocked over to be 48/144 = 0.33 hours. Between the 3 pins getting knocked over, it should have taken only 40 minutes, not 1 hour. Perhaps the spacing or position of the pins were uneven? At latitude L in the northern hemisphere, the plane of the pendulum's oscillations rotates clockwise by the amount 360*sin(L) degrees in one day. One can google to find out how this expression can be obtained, but let me point out two illuminating remarks regarding this expression: (1) It is the projection of the angular velocity of the earth (magnitude 360 degrees per day) onto the vertical direction at latitude L. (2) It is related to the net rotation of a vector resulting from parallel transport along a closed circuit on the surface of a sphere. This rotation is given by the solid angle subtended by the surface enclosed by the circuit. In the case of our pendulum, the circuit is the circle of latitude. We get 360*sin(L) after subtracting 360 from the solid angle subtended by the surface enclosed by the circle of latitude and that includes the north pole. The museum is at latitude 29 deg 46 min N, according to the touch-screen panel near the pendulum. My old Magellan handheld GPS reported coordinates of 29 deg 43.281 N, 95 deg 23.353 W, 23 ft, which is pretty close. Plugging L~30 deg into our formula, we get 360*sin(30)=180 deg/day. Other facts I learned from the touch-screen: Pendulum weight - 180 lbs (81.6 kg) Length - 61.6 feet (18.8 m) Period - 8.71 sec Swing angle - 5 deg Displacement - 65 inches (1.65m)

Chomsky and Foucault discusses the nature of power, amongst other things.