Michel+Foucault


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=Madness and Institutionalism=
 * Michel Foucault** (October 15, 1926 - June 26, 1984) was a French Philosopher famous for his analysis and criticism of social patterns and institutions. He was notorious for his risqué lifestyle but best known for his discourse on knowledge and power. He wrote about an inspecting gaze and a normalizing gaze, both which are enacted in social and institutional contexts through frameworks of power.**
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Foucault studied 19th century concept of madness and the concept of insanity. He made the critical observation that prior to the segregation and classification of madness the 'normal' and the 'insane' were inextricably linked. Within society, the sane were not without contact with the insane. He noted that it wasn't until this psychiatric condition was institutionalized (approx. 17th century) that the normal had virtually no contact with the mad. In fact, he introduces //Madness and Civilization// with the thought that no madness at all in a human being is in itself a form of madness- a kind of over-sanitized, obedient existence.

In //Madness and Civilzation// he traces the history of the concept of mental illness back to the times when hospitals were filled with patients affected by leprosy. He says that with time, it is the criminals, outcasts, and mentally ill who filled the marginalized framework left over from this prior disease. He examines the //need// for the concept of the insane as opposed to just looking at the modern definitions of this condition.

=Knowledge and Power=

Michel Foucault discusses knowledge and power extensively. A portion of the discourse pertains to the fact that education is obtained to hold a certain amount of power. Also the vast majority of people have an intrinsic //Will to Power// as discussed by Friedrich Nietzsche. Foucault explores this concept in relation to discourses on sexuality, the incarceration system and controling society's madness by normalizing all of its devious facets. The institutionalization of these concepts (madman, criminal) or the act of bringing it into everyday discourse (as with sexuality) is, according to Foucault, a form of societal power control and power struggle. "Deviants" are locked away or in other ways marginalized in order to maintain stability and power. Nietzsche also discusses power in relation to "priestly types" who, after a long evolutionary process of coping with physical inferiority, have learned to control people's "herd instinct" through other more cunning, mental as opposed to physical, means. The concept of Panopticism is related to this: a cautionary instinct has been instilled within the consciousness of citizens who censor themselves as a result of the institutional eye; ie. police, surveillance cameras, etc.

A term which Foucault used was [|'biopower].' This term describes the processes through which institutional practices define, measure, categorize and construct the body. Biopower therefore refers to the ways that power is enacted upon the body through regulating its activity. Processes and practices produce particular kinds of meaning and capabilites. He felt that all bodies were constructed through biopwer.

=Panopticism=

He developed Jeremy Bentham's //Panopticon// model in //Discipline and Punish//, criticizing society's tendency to 'criticize and observe'. Panopticism is a visual theory in which a tower in a jail is surrounded by a building with jail cells. The tower encompasses guards and they can see every cell but the cell mates cannot see the guards, and it is a feeling in which the mates endure if the guards are watching them or not at all times. This theory is applied to surveillance in society and results in self-censorship.

=Foucault and Goffman: Surveillance and Interaction=

Other theorists have observed the institutionalization of hospitals. In his text //Asylum// Eriving Goffman described institutionalization as the reaction of patients to beaurocratic structures in hospitals. He also discussed the concept of framing where certain individuals in power have enough control to select the type and quantity of media to be distributed. These individuals, in modern times, are often leaders of corporations who are also responsible for an increase in surveillance. Both Foucault and Goffman studied the effects that media and societal structures have on our adapted or learned behaviours. According to Foucault, surveillance impedes our thoughts and actions causing us to examine our every move through a process of self-surveillance. Goffman describes selective usage of media to influence social behaviours and developed the theory of upshifting and downshifting (e.g. upshifting as when confronting a friend, downshifting as when behaving "appropriately" as in church). He developed the idea that life is like theatre in which we are all actors who choose their stage, props, and actions. In his //Presentation of Self in Everyday Life// he concluded that this kind of behaviour is manifest of a certain artificiality that results from obeying societal conventions- similar to Foucault's concept of self-surveillance and being conscious of the "all seeing eye."

=Foucault and Nietzsche=

Although living in a time particularly influenced by existentialist philosophy propogated particularly by Jean-Paul Sartre, he was overtly opposed to its 'negation of life'. Instead he was profoundly affected by Nietzsche's bold 'quickly in, quickly out' philosophy. There are many parallels between the works of these two authors, as Foucault was profoundly influenced by Nietzsche's philosophy, social observations and behaviours (i.e. punishment as festival, the //will to power//). Foucault put these concepts together and studied punishment from the perspective of surveillance and power; punishment as a means to maintain power and psychiatric hospitals as a means to keep social behaviours under control. A notable difference in the writings of these thinkers is that according to Nietzsche, there is no 'universal panopticism' because the //universe// is indifferent. This thought heralds the understanding of our own freedom, and not an existentialist concept of overall indifference. Foucault however observed that within society there is no such freedom because we are constantly observed, even by ourselves. Surveillance has increased in the Information Society as technology has allowed for a greater range of surveillance possibilities resulting in hypersurveillance and the superpanopticon.

=Works by Foucault:=

//Madness and Civilization (1961) The Birth of the Clinic (1963) ////Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel (1963)// //The Order of Things (1966) The Archeology of Knowledge (1969) Discipline and Punish (1975) ////The History of Sexuality, Vol I: An Introduction (1976) ////The History of Sexuality, Vol II: The Use of Pleasure (1984) ////The History of Sexuality, Vol III:// //The Care of the Self (1984)//

=Works Cited=

Foucoult, Michel. “The Eye of Power, 1974, Excerpt” February 16, 2006 http://foucoult.info/documents/foucoult.eyeofpower.en.html

Foucault, Michel (1965). "Madness and Civilization". New York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, Michel (1978). "The History of Sexuality: An Introduction". New York: Vintage Books.

Miller, James (1993). "The Passion of Michel Foucault". Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

http://foucoult.info/documents/foucoult.eyeofpower.en.html

Images
Google Images. //Michel Foucault//. Online at: 