WDTT, Lecture 6

We began, per custom, with questions:

Foucault's use of the metaphor of "dramaturgy" (p. 210) in contrast to the "symbolic" and the "performative".   Where else in his writings or lectures does he use this metaphor?  And why specifically is the form of avowal in this lecture dramaturgical, but the other forms of avowal in other lectures were not dramaturgical?  How does dramaturgy differ from performativity on Foucault's account?  What is the concept of "dramaturgy" here?

Foucault's discussion of hermeneutics of self in this lecture.  He distinguishes between a Christian/ancient hermeneutics of the subject and a more modern kind of textual-analytical notion of the hermeneutics of the subject (225)?  Why does he choose the term "hermeneutics"?  Why does he think of psychoanalytical and psycho-clinical notions of the subject in terms of hermeneutics, when they do not display the kind of 'openness' to the text that hermeneutics in a philosophical sense does?  (See also p. 167).

We had questions on continuing to track Foucault's historiographical categories -- language of "new object" and "introduced" and "formed".  How to map to the distinction between "origin" and "emergence" (and "descent") in Foucault's 1971 essay?  What about Foucault's use of paradigmatic cases of psychology?  How is Foucault's historiography here different from Kuhn's?

Foucault ends up arguing in this lecture that the avowal is insufficient in cases of, say, crimes without reason.  Why is it considered insufficient here?  (See pp. 215-16).

Relatedly, when Foucault says that the avowal was deficient in the context of modern psychology and jurispreudence (p. 211) and was replaced by the examination (p. 211; cf. Discipline and Punish), how do we understand the long lectures preceding this on avowal?  Why is avowal important?  How did it do something other than drop out?

What is the position of these lectures from 1981 vis-a-vis Foucault's genealogies of ethics and genealogies of power?


Discussion ensued:

In terms of relationship between avowal and examination -- one useful source would be Foucault's discussion in History of Sexuality, Volume One on the link between the confession and the modern scientia sexualis.  The question is one of continuity; how is there continuity between confessional technologies of the self and modern sciences.

• Is the idea something like the following?  The practice/project of avowal set up a kind of functional technology of the self; but then this particular practice can (for various reasons [that remain unclear?]) no longer function in that way in 18th c. & 19th c. penal practice, so that then some other technology of the self had to come in to fulfill that function or play that role.  This other technology of the self is that of the examination (p. 211).
• So the idea is that avowal is important to our history not because of how we continue to practice avowal today, but rather because avowal created a function (a veridictional function) that we continue to need to fulfill.  "Avowal by the guilty party has become a fundamental need of the system" (209); such that later "the examination... filled the white or black spaces left by avowal" (211).

We discussed dramaturgy vs. performative vs. symbolic.

• Is MF's reference to "dramaturgy" here a silent reference to Goffman?
• Why is this avowal (modern avowal) of such dramaturgical import, but others earlier aren't?  Or is it that they're just not explicitly stated to be, or analyzed as, dramaturgical?

We discussed the methodology here as caught between genealogies of power and histories of ethics:

• MF's category of technologies of the self is here interesting.