Hi, my name's Tom. Welcome back to my channel and to another episode of What the Theory?, my ongoing series in which I aim to provide some sometimes enjoyable but always accessible introductions to key theories in cultural studies and the wider humanities. Today, we're taking a look at the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault; we're going to take a look at some of the key terminology and methodologies from his work including archaeology, genealogy, episteme and power and we're also going to have a brief look at some of his key books such as The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality. As always, if you have any thoughts or questions as we go along then please do feel free to pop those down below in the comments and, if you're new around here and this seems like your kind of thing, then please do consider subscribing. Finally, if you would like to support my work creating humanities-based educational content here on YouTube, then please do check out my Patreon. With that out of the way however, let's crack on with Michel Foucault: What the Theory? If we wanted to boil the work of Michel Foucault down to its most basic insight it would be that human knowledge is locked in an intimate relationship with power. As Foucault himself writes in the opening chapter to his book Discipline and Punish: 'there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations'. In short, though we often like to think of knowledge—particularly scientific knowledge—as operating outside of the more value-driven realm of political, social and economic power relations, Foucault instead argues that the two are inextricably linked. He argues that the knowledge that exists at any given time, the facts that are deemed to be incontrovertible and the discoveries that it is possible to make are, in fact, heavily influenced by that same era's power relations. Now, those of you who have watched a number of my other videos might be thinking that a lot of this sounds a little familiar. When we looked at Gramsci's notion of Hegemony, for example, there was a similar idea that the culture which exists within capitalist society tends to be legitimized by—and therefore in turn legitimize—the economic base of that society. There are a number of ways, however, in which Foucault's work, though not entirely disagreeing with that of Gramsci, is pretty distinct from it. Firstly, in unpacking the relationship between power and knowledge, Gramsci is pretty much exclusively interested in the power element of that equation. Foucault, however, takes the opposite approach. In fact, he writes in great detail about some specific effects which he sees the power relations of certain eras having had upon specific bits of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, Foucault's conception of power is far less centralized than that of Gramsci. Power, in Foucault's work, is very rarely a matter of representative politics, the state or economy and instead tends to be a question more of the possibilities for self-empowerment—does the received wisdom of the era in which we live allow us to have agency, to truly know ourselves and to construct our identities to our own design, or does it subtly coerce us into appealing to some kind of "normality"? Now, in seeking to explore such matters, many philosophers would have taken a very broad and largely theoretical approach. What is particularly interesting about Foucault's work, however, is that he is actually engaged in intricate studies of real world examples of the things that he's talking about. Indeed, although many would very broadly conceive Foucault to be a philosopher or critic of some kind, the vast majority of his books were histories. As Gary Gutting explains in his overview of Foucault's life and work, on becoming a professor of the Collège de France, Foucault chose to title Professor of the History of Systems of Thought. In works such as History of Madness, The Order of Things, The Birth of the Clinic, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Foucault is thus interested in how dominant structures of thought or ways of thinking in Western Europe have changed over time. In particular, he's interested in how the shift from one structure of thought to another might have enabled new scientific discoveries, new medical practices, new punishment systems and new sexual identities to emerge which would previously have been unthinkable while, at the same time, stopping other ideas from emerging. All of this, however, may be a lot to take in all at once. So, let's slow it on down, take a step back and start with that very central idea that knowledge, rather than being universal and incontrovertibly objective, is in fact historically contingent—by which I mean specific to a particular moment in time. And, in order to best understand this, I think it's useful to take a look at one of Foucault's key influences: Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for pronouncing that 'god is dead'. And with phraseology like that it's no surprise that popular understandings of his work tend to be somewhat lacking in nuance. For instance, though many often assume Nietzsche's declaration of the "death of God" to be an attack on a religion, what Neitzche was actually doing there is reflecting on what consequences the Enlightenment might have for human morality. See, during the 17th and 18th centuries, a scientific and philosophical movement which we refer to as the Enlightenment had pretty much seen theological explanations for why the world is and how the world works supplanted by ones based in logic, reason and the early scientific method. And a central theme of Nietzsche's work was what this metaphorical murder of God by science might mean for human morality— without an appeal to the divine as an outside arbiter of what is moral, how would society decide what is good and what is evil? Nietzsche, however, was not an advocate for a return to a society under the grip of religion, he was simply interested in asking what comes next. In fact, the book of Nietzsche's which perhaps had the most significant influence on Foucault was On the Genealogy of Morality which is itself a pretty incisive attack on the church. Within it, Nietzsche sets out to explore how popular held conceptions of what is good and what is evil had changed over time. Nietzsche argues that, throughout history, 'everywhere, "noble", "aristocratic" in social terms is the basic concept from which, necessarily, "good" in the sense of "spiritually noble", "aristocratic", of "spiritually highminded", "spiritually privileged" developed: a development that always runs parallel with that other one which ultimately transfers "common", "plebeian", "low" into the concept "bad"'. Nietzsche's argument that, throughout history, ideas around what is moral and righteous had largely been constructed in order to celebrate those who were already powerful and further marginalize the already disempowered, however, had consequences for more than just the already pretty embattled Church. For, though taking a more secular approach, the proponents of the Enlightenment—most notably Immanuel Kant—had equally taken it for granted that morality could be universally and objectively defined. And Nietzsche's suggestion that this had almost never been the case in the past raised significant questions about whether it would be possible in the future. Questions of morality certainly appear both implicitly and explicitly throughout Foucault's work. What he takes most of all from Nietzsche, however, is this notion that ideas, rather than being universal and objective, are actually quite often historically contingent; Foucault simply substitutes out post-enlightenment morality for post-enlightenment science. With all its claims to be driven by logic and reason, Foucault set out to ask whether what is considered logical or reasonable might also be historically contingent. In arguing that this was indeed the case, Foucault suggests that each period of history—or, indeed, the present—might have a corresponding structure of thought or what he calls an "episteme" which he defines in his book The Archeology of Knowledge as 'something like a world-view, a slice of history common to all branches of knowledge, which imposes on each one the same norms and postulates, a general stage of reason, a certain structure of thought that the men [sic] of a particular period cannot escape'. An episteme, then, refers to the way in which a society thinks at any given moment. And a shift from one episteme to another allows new discoveries to be made which previously would have been seen as entirely illogical, while at the same time continuing to limit new thoughts from being had. In The Order of Things, for instance, he delineates between three different episteme in Western Europe from the 17th century onwards. To foreground just one of these, he writes that, in what he refers to as the Classical period, 'the naturalists, economists, and grammarians employed the same rules to define the objects prior to their own study, to form their concepts, to build their theories'. He argues that, across three distinct disciplines in this period, there was a tendency to want to classify, group and describe objects of study; whether that be plants and animals, the workings of the economy or language. While this certainly enabled new discoveries to be made, in other ways, it limited the progress of scientific, economic and linguistic thought. In particular, suggests Foucault, this focus on categorization and definition tended to ignore the role of time and thus view the world as temporally static he therefore argues that, with regard to the natural sciences, theories of evolution were almost unthinkable in this episteme and only became so when the Classical period 'which retained a view of a static, ordered, compartmented universe that is subjected from its very beginnings to the classification table, and the still confused perception of a nature that is the heir to time' gave way to a modern episteme 'open to the possibility of an evolution'. Foucault refers to the methodology he uses to identify these episteme as "archeology". For, just as an archaeologist, on uncovering a monument, then uses what they learned from that monument to make broader hypotheses about the society which built it, so too does Foucault view texts and documents as monuments. He then uses the things which they say in order to make broader hypotheses about the way in which the society in which they were written was thinking. This approach is evident not only in The Order of Things but also Foucault's History of Madness and The Birth of the Clinic in which Foucault seeks to explore changes in how French society thought about mental illness and medical practice over time. What we see in those earlier works far more than in The Order of Things, however, is the beginnings of an interest in how different episteme might not only mark out certain ideas as illogical or unreasonable but people. For, in exploring the limits about what it is possible to know about either mental or physical health in a given period, there is also an implicit explanation about what it is possible to know about ourselves, our own minds and bodies. Furthermore, there are clear implications for power here too. For example, is it me that decides whether I am ill or not or is that left up to a doctor to decide for me? Nevertheless, it is only in Foucault's later work that the implications for a society's way of thinking for that society's power relations starts to be not only acknowledged but the central focus of Foucault's research. In Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Foucault again uses archaeology in order to identify changes in the way that Western Europe thought about both the penal system and sexuality over time. Alongside this, however, he also adds a new methodology which he calls, after Nietzsche, "genealogy". In common parlance, of course, genealogy refers to the study of our biological ancestors; it is the process of seeking out who our great grandmothers and great great grandmothers were in order to gain an insight into how we came to be the people we are today. And genealogy, as Foucault and Nietzsche use the term, seeks to pursue a similar explanation for the present in the past with regard to ideas. Furthermore, as Nietzsche's study of morality perhaps indicated, where archaeology took a slightly more detached approach to viewing the changes in episteme and that relationship to power throughout history, genealogy is explicitly interested in how a change in the way in which a society thinks might relate to a change in its power relations. In The History of Sexuality, then, Foucault is interested in how contemporary perceptions of sexuality came to be formed. A key element of his argument is the idea that, although same-sex romantic and physical relationships have existed throughout history, the concept of homo- and heterosexuality as distinct ways of being is actually only a late 19th century invention. Interestingly, however, though acknowledging that the coining of the terms homo- and heterosexual were part of broader attempts to suppress non-heterosexual—and, broadly speaking, non-marital sexual and romantic relationships, Foucault in fact sets out to critique what he calls the 'repressive hypothesis': the notion—still fairly prevalent today—that, from the 17th century onwards—bourgeois society had largely sought to suppress any discussion whatsoever of sex. For, as the codification of homo- and heterosexuality infers, seeking to moralize sexual activity actually involved an awful lot of discussing it. Foucault therefore argues that, rather than repression, the (broadly-speaking) Victorian episteme was, instead, characterized by 'the proliferation of specific pleasures and the multiplication of disparate sexualities'. Now, some attempt to characterize Foucault as a constant pessimist in his conceptualization of power. However what we see here is a distinctly nuanced argument. For Foucault is arguing that, yes, the codification and categorization of a notion of homosexuality was part of an attempt to define homosexuality as some kind of illness yet, as Foucault writes, it 'also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: homosexuality began to speak on its own behalf, to demand that it's legitimacy or "naturality" be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified'. Though meant to subdue, the categorization of homosexuality in this way thus, in some regards, provided a language for empowerment of those people being subdued. Had he been able to complete his work on how we think about sexuality, Foucault's plan was to use the insight that he'd gained from exploring this particular topic to draw broader conclusions about how the present episteme governs how we come to know and come to use our bodies in a study of what he called biopolitics. Just as, in The Order of Things, he had argued that the classical episteme's tendency to want to classify and describe different things was not just present in the Natural Sciences but also in linguistics and economics, so too did Foucault think that we might find echoes of the ways in which we think about sexuality elsewhere in society. Unfortunately, however, he sadly died before he was able to finish that work. Where we do find a really good and really finished example of his thinking about one specific topic rippling out into thinking about society as a whole, however, is in Discipline and Punish. Like The History of Sexuality, Discipline and Punish begins with a very specific focus. Foucault observes that, towards the end of the 18th century, the manner in which France punished criminals changed significantly. Previously, the focus had been on public acts of brutality. Indeed, Foucault opens the book with a description of the very public drawing and quartering of a man who would had drawn a penknife on Louis XV. He then contrasts this with the minutely-detailed daily schedule of a prisoner in the House of Young Prisoners in Paris just 80 years later. He writes that 'we have, then, a public execution and a timetable. They do not punish the same crimes nor the same type of delinquents. But they each define a certain penal style'. Our tendency, of course, is to see the latter form of punishment as far more humane than the former. And Foucault broadly agrees. However he does suggest that the latter form of punishment is far more insidious. For, where the first is very public and very chaotic, the latter both hides the exercise of power from view while also being minutely detailed. Having studied this shift in episteme as it related to French society's ways of thinking about crime and punishment, Foucault then goes on to consider whether this move away from very public and chaotic exercises of power towards more private, insidious and details ones might be found elsewhere in society. See, as Foucault argues, the routine of the prison 'produces subjected and practiced bodies, "docile" bodies. Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). Foucault argues however that, since the 17th century, such practices of instilling obedience through discipline and routine 'had constantly reached out to ever broader domains, as if they tended to cover the entire social body'. Schools, hospitals, the military and numerous other institutions had, in Foucault's view, come to operate in a very similar manner and to a similar end. Foucault had always argued that power was diffuse throughout society rather than centralized, but, here perhaps more than anywhere else in Foucault's work, we see quite how true that fact is. What makes Discipline and Punish a particularly astute example of Foucault's wider body of work, however, is that, as well as being an exploration of how structures of thought or ways of thinking might have shifted power relations in society, the power that Foucault is exploring being exercised here is also definitively epistemological. For, this particular form of discipline operates precisely by limiting the knowledge that we are able to gain about ourselves; the routine encourages us to want to conform in some way, to try and fit in and therefore limits our ability to construct our own identities. Indeed, Foucault argues that the real insidiousness of these forms of discipline lies in the fact that much of the work is done internally: by ourselves to ourselves. He uses the metaphor of the panopticon, a form of prison designed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The design features a central tower from which a single prison officer can see every single cell in the prison while themselves being obscured by a blindingly bright light. Though the single officer can only actually be looking in one direction at any given time, then, the prisoners have no idea whether or not it is they that are currently being observed. The idea, then, is that the prisoners will be forced to be constantly on their best behavior whether the prison officer is looking at them or not because there is always the possibility that they might be. Just as this leads to a situation in which the prisoners are disciplining themselves as much as being disciplined by the prison officers, Foucault suggests that we come to internalize the ways of thinking that we are routinely forced into through school, workplace or the prison. And, just as a lack of awareness as to the role of time in nature meant that the natural scientists of the Classical episteme couldn't quite get their heads around the notion of evolution, so too does this limit the knowledge that we are able to gain about ourselves; it, in some ways, stops us all from being able to form our identities to our own end and turns us into conforming, docile bodies. So, to conclude. The central thesis of Foucault's work is that all human knowledge is very rarely universal or objective but is, in fact, historically contingent. Through archaeology and, later, genealogy, Foucault sets out to suggest that each period of history has a corresponding episteme which certainly allows new discoveries to be made but also limits in some way what is thinkable at that point. Initially, Foucault restricts this discussion to the discussion of the natural sciences and medicine but, in his later work, we really see him start to expand out into using these ideas to discuss how we might be limited in the knowledge that we are able to gain about ourselves and our own identities. In effecting our individual agency in this way and our potential for personal empowerment or subjection, knowledge thus comes to be intimately associated with power. And, just as Foucault often sought to explore the diffuse consequences of power, so too does he often see its source as being diffuse. For, just as it is not, in the end, the prison officer who is subjecting those prisoners to their routine but the prisoners themselves, so too do the ways of thinking in which we have been instructed force us to regulate ourselves rather than any outside force. Thank you very much for watching, I hope this has been useful to you if you're currently trying to get your head around Foucault's ideas. If you would like to see me go more in-depth into any of Foucault's individual books in the future then do let me know. And, if you'd like to get your hands on a copy of the script for this video with footnotes and references to mull over to your heart's content, then do check out my Patreon. A like down below is always appreciated but, other than that, thanks very much for watching once again and have a great week!