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?

Canguilhem, "Diseases" and "Health" from Writings on Medicine

The group began with questions.

[1] What is the thesis in these pieces? PP. 48: health becoming an object of calculation. The body as given. What should we make of this?

[2] PP. 39: “We would nevertheless….social facts”. In what sense are patients not social facts? Is there a distinction between social factors in medicine and psycho-somatic qualities that he discusses below?

[3] PP. 38: “Should the introduction….” Discussion of the “in vogue” paradigm. What other sources (other than immunology) are there for thinking about disease? Where else does GC look for an account of disease?

Is the reading of health and the history of philosophy performing an account of disease and human experience?

[4] PP. 37-8 How is the discussion for living conditions integrated into an understanding of disease? How does this relate to inequality?

PP. 50 does GC contrast his own account with the phenomenological account?

[5] Could we apply Delaporte’s ‘epistemographic’ framework to make sense of the disease chapter? What does GC mean in claiming that health is the truth of the body?

 Discussion ensued.

The Normal and the Pathological : is disease merely a quantitative variation of the normal state? GC: no.

Do sciences of the normal and the pathological exist? Are these discrete? CG: 228. only a science of what is called normal. He is critical of the idea that physiology comes before pathology. We actually start with pathology (the way that knowledge actually develops): ‘the patient calls the doctor’. Eventually that gives rise to questions about normality.

GC is criticizing the ideas that there is no self-standing “ontology” of disease. It is always a quantitative distance from the health.

Three problems with this view: (i) rationalist optimism: evil has no reality. (ii) the view is too deterministic (Laplace). (iii) the reduction of quality to quantity.

CG is doing historical epistemology. But is he also doing epistemocritical work too? He is not only charting the discursive shift, but wants to make a positive argument for why conception of health is better than another.

At the end, GC seems to suggest that Merleau-Ponty was paving the way for his own view. On pp. 48, he refers to the body as having different qualities—then this is taken up in relation to health. He also does not want to embrace a kind of anti-medicine.

CG wants to see the body as both given and constructed. But does not seem to want to take the phenomenological route to make this point. He seems to want to preserve a space for experience viz a viz the body (or health and disease?).

Perhaps what CG is rejecting is a kind of reductionism of health to either the first or third personal perspective.

37-8: The treatment of disease in the hospitals systematically erase or decontextualize them from their social conditions. There is an interesting connection between production and medicine.

GC seems like he is interested in different registers: social, biological, etc.. and wants to leave room for a kind of phenomenological point of view within each.

Is GC just rejecting the idea that ophthalmology patients are purely social facts?

He wants to affirm both the sociological and the medical.

Delaporte, "Foucault, Epistemology, and History"

 We began with questions:

p.288 - Delaporte mentions the idea of an “internally normative project”.

p. 291 - Delaporte distinguishes the current and the present and says that for Foucault the present was bracketed.

p. 287 - Delaporte describes Broussais as inventing a whole series of relations among disparate entites (287).  To what extent does archaeology require looking outside of a discipline.  Is Delaporte claiming that this is essential to (important for) archaeology?

p. 287 – Delaporte defines history of science in terms of history of veridical discourse.  Would this definition apply to different kinds of history?  Or is this definition specific just for history of science?  Is the focus on “the true and the false” central to science specifically

p. 290 – Delaporte discusses the status of the concept of rupture (p. 292) and origin  in Foucault and uses it in unexpected ways, or potentially unexpected ways.

p. 285 – Delaporte sketches four different levels of epistemography. What are the relations among these levels? How would we apply these levels to Delaporte’s own works?

Why is Delaporte focusing this analysis more on the early Foucault rather than the later Foucault?  Why is there no discussion here of HSv1?  How would we extend the analysis to later Foucault?

 

 Some items in discussion:

Four levels of epistemography

The epistemonomic – The identification of “internal epistemological controls”, which are standards and rules for saying, seeing, inquiring based on accepted epistemological foundations.  The identification of  internal structure.  Are these rules presumed to be explicit?

The epistemocritical - An analysis that “would put” to a historical figure “the question of the truth of his assertions”.  (Rorty’s “rational reconstruction”.)

The epistemological – Analysis of “theoretical structures” and “concepts” and “rules governing their use” (p. 286).  Delaporte is here referring to Canguilhem.  This differs from epistemonomic in that the epistemological is focused on the history of our epistemological concepts today.

The archaeological – The identification of transformations, or “historicity”.

 All three levels make use of the epistemonomic but establish different relations  to it.  [Image on board]

Delaporte, The History of Yellow Fever Chs. 6 and 7

We began with questions.  

[1] To what extent is Delaporte engaged in genealogy? What is the relationship of the book to more traditional forms of history?

[2] What should we make of Delaporte’s claim that the mosquito is constituted as an object? What about his distinction between ‘words’ versus ‘concepts’?

[3] On page 144, Delaporte claims to be laying the groundwork for a true archaeology of science. Is this book supposed to be an instance of archaeology? Or is it just laying the groundwork? Presumably this is supposed to differ from a history of science. In DaC didn’t Delaporte make a claim about taking claims in their positivity? Not with the truth or falsity of claims per se. What is the broader context for this book? What makes this argument important? Is it just correcting other historians?

[4] What does Delaporte mean by ‘history’ and ‘historical epistemology’? Is the latter supposed to serve as a corrective to the former? What is the epistemological shift that Delaporte is drawing attention to in the book?

[5] What is does the axiom of historical epistemology involve? (pp. 127, 131).

[6] Is Delaporte successful in setting aside questions of truth and falsity? Or is he ultimately concerned with correcting myths? pp. 106: political practice did not alter the shape of theory (i.e., it was not political indifference). Pp. 136: “psychology has nothing to do with hypothesis formation and verification”. How is this consistent with Delaporte’s broader project? Perhaps this section is an example of Delaporte focusing on figures.

[7] On page 103-5. What should we make of the notions of linearity and (dis)continuity?

[8] Continuity and discontinuity both seem to play an important role in scientific discovery.

 Discussion ensued.

What does FD mean when he says that there is an epistemological transformation on pp. 122? Manson and Finlay are both trying to explain how the Yellow Fever is transferred from one circulatory system to another. Vehicle model: a mechanistic conception of transfer (Finlay). Host model: pays attention to the life cycle as well.

Classical epidemiology as the intersection between parasitology and microbiology. It has both ‘Hippocratic’ and ‘Newtonian’ assumptions built into it.

Can we read this section as an attempt to account for the historical conditions of possibility for epidemiology of the vector?  

On page 108: “no research objects to which… compare”. What is the notion of the ‘research object’ doing?

How would FD characterize the interesting thing about his own account? He is not interested in an analysis that starts with present scientific truth and then assesses past views in relation to it. If it is archaeological, then what are the depth transformations in knowledge?

Perhaps the archaeology component differs from Foucault’s account, insofar as it is internal to science. Foucault looks more broadly. Perhaps the archaeology gives FD a new way of talking about historical contributions. We can hold the opening up of ideas and their wrongness in tension. Archaeology is a domain specific analysis. Genealogy can be read as not domain specific. So DaC could be considered more genealogical in so far as it puts political and economic discourse into conversation with medical knowledge.

 

Traditional historiography (legendary history):

·         FD contrasts two paintings he in his introduction. Master of ceremonies (pp. 4). Focus on these great individuals.

·         Discovery of the truth.

·         Fadedness versus accidental structure.

·         Assumes that there is a single valid point of view and that we can analyze the past in terms of truth and error (does not respect the historical epistemological axiom).

·         Repetition and extension (not fine detail).

Delaporte’s work:

·         Documenting a transformation.

·         Historical epistemological axiom.

·         Privileges fine detail over (simplified) continuity and discontinuity.

·         Perhaps there is a kind of realism/happy positivism about FD’s writing. Pp. 106: appeal to historical accuracy.

·         Reversal: the facts and the conditions of possibility for those facts (i.e., “structure of the visible” and “surface effects”).

Delaporte, The History of Yellow Fever, Chs. 4 and 5

 (Meeting Date: April 8th)

We began with questions:

1. Page 67. “[T]he structure of the visible” is discussed that which grounds the principle of analogy. What does Delaporte mean by this?

2. Page 91. Delaporte makes the claim that the mosquito theory constituted an interpretive scheme for thinking about disease. The movement is from theory to observation and not the reverse. Can we talk a bit about the role of theory here?  

3. On page 89, he refers to history as chronological and as having a logic. What does he mean by this? 

4. What is the point of a chapter that is basically saying “and this is why they did not find the solution for 20 years.” Why write a 20 pages on this and not just a paragraph or 2 pages?

5. Page 79 [“The divergence of interpretations and … in reality the controversy took place because...”]. Addresses the distinction between something observed as a fact versus the reality of the thing. This links up with a notion in Foucault of mythmaking and storytelling.

6. Page 93 [“in order clarify the history, let us first set down the facts”]. Recall discussion last week about historians versus historical epistemologists. Shall we revisit some of this theme?

7. Page 65 [end of the first paragraph]. Delaporte talks about the transformation of scientific theory as a matter of salvation. What is behind this terminology? Can we relate some form of Christian theological understanding to his study of science? He also talks at some point about missionaries. Does he talk more about this connection elsewhere?

8. This may be a situation where he is moving away from early Foucault focusing on discourse etc. and looking instead at individual human beings…Or perhaps he is holding both individuals and discourse in relation to each other?

Then we discussed:

- People described the discovery as “fated” (89), but Delaporte says “history is not a story dictated by fate.” Everything did in fact come together in a rather remarkable way. It’s like he is telling a story of accidents. A bumbling detective story where the silly detective turns out to be right by chance/accident.

- In showing failure and error Delaporte undermines a teleological conception of history.

- Delaporte's history has a performative element, and this is something worth thinking about. Foucault’s and Nietzsche's genealogical writings are also performative. The latter two aim to take the reader to a new place. To change the reader, to bring them to a new place via literary style. But Delaporte’s story is not super impressive in this way…one’s consciousness is not revolutionized by it.

- Page 95 [“these are the facts”]. We see the return of this notion of history as having a chronology and logic. He refers to logic again on page 89.  

- In order to discuss the history we first have to get down the facts. But the ordering of facts on their own does not constitute or make a history. What matters is how we line them up?

- In his foreward Canguilhem mentions political context [“This history is the political history of the exploitation of the globe of international trade”], but we are now almost done reading the book and there is no clear political analysis from Delaporte.

- What function is Canguilhem’s intro supposed to have? What is the function of naming the text as a political tract when it doesn’t actually read that way? Is there some political element in Delaporte we are missing? Will it emerge in the last chapters of the book?