CGC week 1 (9/28):
Questions
1)
Page 12: “With regard to madness, illness, and
crime…” Other in as much as they are also ourselves?
2)
Page 12 – 2nd full paragraph – doesn’t
want to conceive of subjectivity in terms of a single unifying experience or
anthropological definition, but subjectivity can only be understood in terms of
its relationship to its own truth. Is there any subjectivity outside of this
relationship to this truth?
3)
Pg. 12 -Truth is essentially conceived as system
of obligation – what does that mean (how does it relate to question 2)?
Obligations is not something we might necessarily associate
with truth. Are they voluntary or forced? Or both? Truth as those things that
are consciously or not agreed to – I submit to the fact the murder is bad.
Truth is taken out of an ethereal structure and embeds it in a serious of power
relationships. We is unpacking different
aspects of a third mode of inquiry into the subjectivity/truth relationships.
He repackages the relationship between subjectivity and truth as a historical
problem – historical formulation as opposed to a positivist formulation? Truth
as bond, obligation, and politics and not truth as content or formal structure
of knowledge. If you assert things as true, it requires that you act in certain
ways. Its more about meaning than truth – brandom relationship. Obligation of
being a certain subject – truth is not only concept of knowledge – you can’t
choose or simply change the content. Truth in some way produces the subject.
Truth is no longer something that is contained within the value of certain
statement (true/untrue). He is adding an additional angle of analysis (we can
still analyze statements epistemologically in terms of their truth value), but
there is also a whole other layer of analysis in which what we take to be true
transforms us into a certain kind of subject with a certain set of obligations.
“I love you example.” What obligations does this statement establish? It’s not
that the knowledge-part (truth-value) is irrelevant but the statement has other
effects in terms of the obligations that it establishes. Does the truth value
bare on the bond or obligations itself? What makes it meaningful in terms of
these obligations?
4)
Pg. 12 -Why is it immaterial that truth is
variable? Is truth not embodied in institutions., ect?
5)
Can we distinguish the domain of sexuality from
other domains such as madness in terms of how each domain produces its own
notion of truth - In these other domains, truth about the subject is produced
from outside whereas in sexuality is produce through confession? Is domain of sexuality uniquely (pg. 13)
Is this form of truth as obligation unique to sexuality? Or
does this concept of truth work in other domains? Is this a departure from his
notion of regimes of truth? Is he trying to work out a concept of truth
particular to sexuality? It can’t be
just sexuality – he uses the example of psychiatry as a system of obligation,
thus psychiatry as true (pg 11-12). This historicized notion of truth runs
throughout. What’s different about the relationship between sexuality and other
domains of discourse? 1) The domain of sexuality is ambiguous – we don’t just
have a repressive relationship to sexuality. We have a productive relationship
with sexuality, not a negative one (like we do with madness, ect). Sexuality is
ambiguous in terms of refusal and acceptance. Is this ambiguity really absent
in other domains? It is difficult to differentiate productive sexuality when
sexuality is always embedded in a field of power relationships. Do particular
historical relationships render sexuality particularly ambiguous? Ambiguity is
historically contingent. Is he willing to recognize sexuality as ambiguous
because in the case of the other domains there are distinct domains of
expertise that we have assigned responsibility for determining
subjectivity/truth? Whereas in terms of sexuality, we are experts – there is no
outside expert. Inside/outside flip – is there a tension here? Is that flip
clean with respect to sexuality and the other domains?
6)
18-19 – any reflection on morality is associated
with the historical claim about the turn from Pagan to Christian ethics – what
is the quality of the relationship between the 2? Why inquire into morality in
this way (historically)?
What is the relationship between ethics and sexuality for
Foucault? Ethically there is a special quality of the domain of sexuality that
allows him to ask questions about ethics as the relationship between self and
self? Anytime, we are thinking about moral questions, we are asking questions
about the shift from Pagan morality to Christian ethics – why? Any moral
question is associated with the French revolution? Why does the ethical turn
necessarily come in terms of sexuality? Assuming that he wrong in terms that
they are massive overs statements, what is it about sexuality that makes him
think these statements are plausible?
There is a shift in thinking that things that are natural superseded
governmentality (but then takes on this same logic itself). Does sexuality
provide the venue that for mapping human morals onto the natural world (or vice
versa?) He builds up a contrast between early and late Hellenic periods, but
doesn’t really connect to anything at the end. Prerequisite that nature has to
be conceived in rational terms (where does this rationality come from?), and
then humans can follow the laws of their city…Vernant – changing social and
political structure gave birth to the rationality of the city that was then
mapped onto nature and now the process is going in the other direction.
Pachydermic subjectivity.
7)
Pg. 11 – “When in a culture….” How does Foucault
imagine subjects are equipped to ask ourselves about our experience of
ourselves?
8)
Pg. 10 – three different inquiries into the subjectivity/truth
relationship – can we unpack those for the purposes of tracking them in other
lectures? Can we especially clarify the second one? 1981 Berkeley lectures
(youtube) two poles – historical ontology of ourselves or critical history of
thought and formal ontology of truth and a critical analysis of knowledge?
9)
Pg. 18 – Experience of ourselves – what is the
relationships between desire, institutions, individuals, ect…What does the
statement “yes, I desire” mean if we conceive of sexuality as desire?
The idea of confession is interesting because there is a
sense in which sexuality is a confessional act that does things in the world.
Confession is directly linked to morality – sexuality is tied with morality –
what you confess is that I desire…why conceived of sexuality as desire? There
is a lot at stake for this question when Foucault is writing. The wait of the
confession, I desire, seems self-evident to Foucault. He initially frames it as
though there are these two opposites positions – diagnose/diagnosed – but in
terms of desire, there is an almost implicit accusation. You are called upon to
confess by something external. Maybe one difference is that you can’t resist
certain forms of subjectivity? But nothing can override your claims about
sexuality? But there is also a problem of incitement. It’s not clear how one
could recognize its own madness. Is he ignoring the historical relationship
between mental illness and sexuality?
In part he is interested in giving an analysis of how truly
being able to state one’s desires in the domain of sexuality distinguishes it
from other domains. However, is it really that different? We may have experts
who determine whether or not someone is mentally ill, but we are also incited
to confess that we desire (we don’t get to choose whether we confess or not).
There is a demand from the subject – history of sexuality, proliferation of
sexuality discourses as a mechanism of power dynamics. Is their a
methodological difference here in his analysis? In History of Sexuality vol. 1
he is interested in power relationships/dynamics, but here he is interested in
the relationship between subject/truth. There is definitely a historical
context in which Foucault is writing (his own life history)
