Foucault & Farge, Disorderly Families, I. Marital Discord

Thursday Jan.18, 2018

Questions

·      * Emergence of terms (e.g. ‘madness,’ ‘debauchery,’ etc.) – relation between scribes & formalities of language of the lettres de cachet – who is determining the language used in letters?

·      * Do scribes literally transcribe what the subjects are saying, or are they just compiled from notes?

·      * How might we categorize medium in a Foucauldian vocabulary? Is strategizing coupled with classification in a Foucauldian vocab? (p.43)

·      * Unpack the method of reading deployed here (e.g. “surface of the couple” p.32-3)

·      * Theme of repentance and relation of theme through history of punitive practice (p.47) How clearly do these claims connect to MF’s narrative histories of punishment? Emergence of the social attitude of repentance – as cause for disciplinary punishment? (p.48)

·     *  How does gender map onto the organization of the letters?

Responses

Method of reading – how are they describing the reading on p.32? – What emerges from the reading of these petitions? – interlaced systems of values? Surface – why use this language? Is there a depth? Does the order of importance come from untangling this system of values? Is it found within the genre of the writing?

What is the difference between the visible & the surface that comes into view from the gaze of the others? (see also p.42) – Surfaces & visibilities à bringing a positivity into view

Reading method à collecting letters; historiographical question of how one assembles the visbilities/positivities – what is the empirical status of MF’s work? Positivities as facts. MF’s positivism

Positivities taking on different significance than those in D&P, where they have an added layer of interpretation/analysis?  

Reading for themes? Are they reading for the themes?

Reading as a question of seeing/visibility*

Documents that make visibilities sayable 

Is this function of archival material or function of private/public distinction or function of both?

Private life enigmatic to neighbors/to public.

Letters – mechanism by which their private life gets made public – obscure lives make public this otherwise private concern

What is meant by public & private here? Public – known by authorities (police)? Because they were known by others?

Public/Private – public determined by the limits of the sovereign – private, what is lost

Private – what gets lost, what is obscure? Public – what becomes visible? What is visible?

Politics of the family – gendering of public/private (p.48-9) letters prior to reified gendering of the split between the private/public * (Both husband/wife make these petitions)

What belongs to genre of letter-writing – where the discourse comes from that is used in the letters? Categories belonging to the genre? Do they correspond with categories used by different genres (e.g. court proceedings, letters written by neighbors)

Imprecision as the medium through which the 18^th century police worked (p.43) – Why is imprecision a medium rather than a strategy or a technique? Notion of the imprecise police à imprecision = substance in which the police works because sovereign power is also imprecise

Police not generating the stakes (or the categories) of the practice, but are reactive.