Foucault_Crisis of Medicine/Antimedicine_May 27, 2021

 

Foucault, “History of Sexuality: Volume 2 – Part II on Dietetics”

 

We began with questions:

Restrictive sexual economy – not b/c of evil but b/c of integrity of ethical subject – not good or bad but more or less (136).  Also rel. to temporality.

In the intro he offers a sketch of the arch. (form) and glgcl. (transforming practices) modes or aspects of problematization.  Development of new form of subject and conduct.

How does the individual fit in here and rational mode of behavior (108).

Focus on experience (4) of sexuality; recalling a term he used in BoC.  How these readings bear this notion of experience out vis-à-vis the subject.

Contrast between ancient medical/sexual ethics and modern medical/sexual ethics.  What type of differences are central for Foucault’s argument?  What is the crux of the contrast between ancient ethics and normal/pathological orders of medicine (97)?  What is at stake in this contrast?

What are mastery, strength, and life such that they are not expressed through a moral code but also not through health (or at least medicalized illness)? (125)  Yet Foucault also describes this in terms of taking care of health (108)?

What is a technique of existence as a specifically ethical category? (138)

 

 

We then moved to discussion:

One thing we noted at the outset that Foucault was critical of an excess of self-care and the use of pleasure (104); so he’s not falling int neoliberal hyper-individualism.

Introduction - methodology

Foucault’s intro sketches archlgy and gnlgy as two dimensions of problematization.  Archaeology analyzes “forms” and genealogy analyzes their “formation” (and transformation) out of practices composing/constituting them.

Also in the intro he lays out an analytics of ethics (Foucault’s “ethical fourfold”).  He uses this fourfold to explicate aspects of dietetics in Part II, Ch. 1.

If we read Part II through this methodological apparatus – what do we get?

We get an analysis of the form of problematization of regimen (inclusive of sexuality).  We get a story of the shape and form of the problematization – what it was concerned with.  We also get an analysis of their form on the basis of practices in part because the texts Foucault analyzes are something like “practical manuals”.

Practice is a challenging concept here.  What are practices?  Not ideas, not behaviors, not societies.  There is a contextualism in Foucault’s analysis, too, and this connotes an analytics of practice.

                              These practices are not oriented by an ethical goal (telos) of normalization.

The concern is one that problematizes sexuality with “relation to the body” (102).  The body becomes an explicit part of the ethical substance.

The genealogical dimensions are more to be found across HSv2 and HSv3.

What are the implications of Foucault’s arguments?

How does Foucault position Western modernity vis-à-vis the Greeks?  Contrast between Greeks and Christianity (HSv3, 135).

Canguilhem, "The death of man, or exhaustion of the cogito?"

 Qs:

Places where GC discusses/mentions objections to MF (81, 85, 87) – let’s discuss these objections.

• ·        Geology v archaeology (77)
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• ·        Objection to ruptures (81)
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• ·        Alternative grids? (85)
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• ·        How to talk about knowledge without a norm (87)

Norms (78-79) in MF – GC describes MF as more normative as more forward-looking – At the same time Foucault is positioned as not normative (94).

GC’s reading of MF offers too narrow of a perspective – narrowly in not taking up the later work.  Is soc/pol philosophy possible on this picture of Foucault? If so, how could soc/pol theory get into the picture here?

GC also offers a connection to Kant and Hume in the final paragraph (93).  What elements of Kant might be missing?

 

 

D:

Geology connotes the earth/planet/naturalism, or naturalization of culture.  By contrast, archaeology connotes culture.  “Man inhabits a culture, not a planet” (77), says Canguilhem.  But the criticism is that archaeology (read as geology) “naturalizes culture” and does it “by withdrawing [culture] from history” (77).  The critics are representatives of “humanism” and “existentialism” and they accuse Foucault as “positivism” and naturalism.

Canguilhem shares the criticisms but not its reasons – in other words, we shouldn’t naturalize culture but not in order to preserve “humanism” (or the essence of the human), but rather in order to…. [maintain a focus on history?].

The next paragraph GC offers a reason as to how MF left behind naturalism, in the sense of essentialism about nature (e.g., not “liberal naturalism” or “subject naturalism”).

Does GC rely on a divide between culture/planet or culture/nature?  Does the role of history who mediate this better?

“Geology of Morals” (1T Plateaus) on geology in non-evolutionist fashion; observing geological metaphors.

Is Soc/Pol archaeology (in GC’s sense of MF) possible?

If we take normativity to be internal to soc/pol philosophy, then how can we do it given a kind of abnormativ-ism in Foucault.  When soc/pol needs to go beyond mere descriptivism and move into normativism, what can we get out of archaeology?

Does GC offer a ‘futural’ framing of Foucault (as “an explorer”)?  Is that sufficient for normativity?  If we see Foucauldian explorations of the future in terms of problematization does that give us a space of normativity?  What, then, is the relationship between problems and normativity?

[CK: Problematization is necessary for any viable account of normativity, but is not itself sufficient.]

               GC asks whether nknoweldge can be elaborated without reference to some norm?

 

 

 

Plan for next time?

A= 1984 text? / 1974 essay / 1963 BoC chapter

B= 1974 three essays on medicine

We chose A

Canguilhem, “From the Social the Vital” (from 2nd edition of The Normal and the Pathological)

 

 

The abnormal as logically second but historically first (243).  Is the logical point a more a priori point or is it meant to be born out by the historical examples that follow on the next few pages?

 

Canguilhem broaches the differences between normalization and standardization, norms and standards, (e.g., 246), but we could interrogate this.

 

The normative has “its beginning… in its infraction” (242).  What is the relationship between the infraction and the norm?  And what is the relationship that then follows between the norm and the process of regulation that serves to reinforce the norm?

 

The brief historical epistemology that GC offers on 244-245.  Where do we see GC anticipating Foucault and where do we see Foucault doing something particularly different than what is anticpated?

 

Why is normalization for GC expressed in terms of “the polar opposition of a positive and a negative” (240) and logical negation (243)?

To what extent does GC disarticulate this conception of opposition and negation escape the idea of contradiction?

 

How do different forms of regulation and norms interact for GC?  How is the social normalization related to technological and to biological?  (See 255 for example.)  What kinds of things are “social” and “technological” and “juridical”?

 

How are organic and social norms differentiated by GC?  He offers an idea of reflexivity or normative autonomy (256), in contrast to the unity of an organic whole.  Does this sufficiently establish the distinction he wants?

 

If the normal gets naturalized through institutions (237), then how does this, how do these institutions, relate to the “unity” of “organization” that GC discusses later in the piece (250)?

 

To what extent can normalization be regarded as specific to modern forms of rationality?  What is GC’s conception of how this comes about?  Is it more about social modernity?  Or evolution?

 

 

 

We then began with discussion:

Dialectic in the CGC.  Is he thinking a notion of opposition without contradiction?  That is a notion of opposition, or dialectical relationship, by way of a non-contradictory negativity.

Canguilhem’s “two teams”: contradiction and externality (A), versus inversion, polarity, opposition (240), negation (243), infraction (242)?

 

Four metaphilosohpical options briefly sketched:

               Contradiction (GWFH): the norm exists and then gets contradicted; contradiction is the motor.

               Negation (GWFH): negativity/difference is contained within every rule/rationality

Negation (GC): difference/negativity comes first, and then later comes the rule/norm, and then from that comes the abnormal.

               Difference (GD): difference comes first, and out of that comes the rule/norm.

 

Are the rules for GC more like Kantian rules in that they are conditions or procedures for unity of judgment?  Or are they more like rules of practice?

 

At this point many more interesting things were said, but we didn't get them down in notes.

 

One interesting thing concerned the relationship between the first half of the piece (metaphilosophy, metaphysics, philosophy) and the second half of the piece (a historical epistemology).  What is their relation?  Does part 2 follow form part 1?  Is part 2 what you h ave to do given the argument that GC lands on in part 1?