Western societies jail fools, while older societies acknowledged their existence Western societies repress the creative force of madness Western societies torture the minds of criminals, whereas older societies tortured their bodies: prisons are the chief instrument of social control Western societies control individuals by training their minds Western societies are vast mechanisms of supervision and repression
Western society has developed "bio-power" Liberal democratic societies are not any less oppressive than totalitarian regimes History is not a monodimensional class struggle, but many parallel social conflicts (prisons, asylums, schools...)
We "know" the world through the theories we believe in Epistemes (structures of knowledge) determine our experience in the world (humans are not autonomous sources of knowledge - "man is a recent invention") The objects of science exist only insofar as science exists ("there was no life before biology") Knowledge and power are identical
Caleb Lopez
I hate all those episodes. Worst season of the Addams Family.
Luke Baker
If this is the case, then how to we determine which are superior cultures or systems of knowledge? Foucault stated that Western cultures were no better than 'older', say, Eastern societies, but neither did he consider the latter superior.
Asher King
Just go with our gut rele m8
Christian Hall
We're working in a Nietzchean framework here. Values are a human invention rather than having any indepndant existence. The culture with more power ends up defining these values and placing itself ontop.
Zachary Carter
>WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH >society doesnt like me because i want to have giant gay orgies and intentionally spread AIDS to other people. im going to destroy everything so i can be free to be a fucking degenerate!
you sure as fuck died to AIDS despite it not existing.
what a fucking faggot
Elijah Edwards
>Liberal democratic societies are not any less oppressive than totalitarian regimes
so disgusting that anyone could ever believe this. Just a sickening detachment from reality. French "philosophy" is a joke
Evan Campbell
This.
John Sanders
I generally agree with the top paragraph. Prisons are cruel and unusual punishments.
Benjamin Young
what do you propose we do with criminals? tell them not to be criminals and ask if they want to fuck your wife?
John Hernandez
>all these triggered /pol/ cucks
Benjamin Thomas
>how could I both defend my support for the USSR and my pozzed fagginess? >I KNOW! Mind blowing
Daniel Foster
>We "know" the world through the theories we believe in Spengler opened this one up for me.
Nolan Rivera
Foucault as Humpty Dumpty
Let us now turn to Foucault’s theory identifying truth and power. Here is an example of the exciting ground lying within the Bailey:
>In societies like ours, the “political economy” of truth is characterised by five important traits. Truth is centred on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it; it is subject to constant economic and political incitement.
>The essential political problem for the intellectual is not to criticise the ideological contents supposedly linked to science, or to ensure that his own scientific practice is accompanied by a correct ideology, but that of ascertaining the possibility of constituting a new politics of truth. The problem is not changing people’s consciousnesses – or what’s in their heads.
>It’s not a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power (which would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time – but the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth....
And here is Foucault’s Humpty Dumptying by which the Motte may be constructed from the material in the Bailey
>“Truth” is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements
Well if that is how truth is to be understood, all those exciting statements about truth lose their glamour — they are true but mundane. Just go through the passage, crossing out truth and substituting “a system of ordered procedures for the production... of statements” and you can see the boring Motte to which Foucault may retreat.
Suddenly the glamour of paradoxical profundities such as “[the] regime of truth... is not merely ideological... it was a condition of the ...development of capitalism” evaporates and we are left with rather mundane observations about social institutions without gaining any insight into why some social institutions might be more truth conducive than others. The upshot of this Humpty-Dumptying is a puerile and pernicious scepticism about the possibility of knowledge.
Elijah Flores
Foucault never said that aids didn't exist.
Wyatt Nguyen
Read Carl Schmitt, you leftist cuck.
Nolan Lopez
Firing squads
Luke Allen
I wonder what this degenerated cuck would have thought of modern france full of homicidal and homophobic islamic shitskins
Ian Brooks
He probably wouldn't have liked that modern France is full of Muslims to be honest. You do know that Foucault is compatible with right wing views?
Ryan Ortiz
Islam is pretty right wing so I'd imagine he would oppose it
Lucas Cox
>that Foucault is compatible with right wing views yeah but only like Deleuze, some of their concepts are so abstract that they can be made compatible with almost every ideology or system. But they are cleary influenced by Frankfurt school and what would become known as the 68 movement.
Kevin Lewis
True, but I think Foucault is very relevant to the right-wing. I'm a literal holocaust denying National Socialist and I get a lot out of reading him. The problem with these dumbass /pol/ white nationalists isn't their views themselves, it's just that they're close minded and they've come to their views through reading internet posts online rather than actual scholarship.
William Hill
yeah, well , too much /pol is bad, I noticed that too. It's like wading through a dumping ground hoping to find something of use but at the same time you are always in danger of catching some shit
Angel Reed
All of this is what his critics attribute to him as his 'epistemology', when really it's something he borrows directly from Nietzsche as a starting point for his work as a historian.
It's the starting point of his work, and admittedly sounds like a tired truism when you see it flaunted by every person that's read anything about him and their mother, but the real interesting stuff in his work comes in the alternative historical narratives he uncovers. The quality of his writing varies here too because he doesn't rely on empirical study as much as we would like him to in this day and age (episteme), but specifically focused books like Discipline and Punish or the history of sexuality are incredibly well written and interesting.
Another thing to consider is that late in his career he confessed that the point in his work was in order to lay a specific framework for understanding history inspired by Nietsche's Genealogy. I think some cool stuff can come out of that, with people investigating things in daily life that everyone takes for granted.
I might be guilty of the very fallacy you're talking about, but I find the real worth of his work in understanding him as bracketing the questions of epistemology and real truth value. For me, his work is best understood as showing how truth works as a signifier in social discourse, not in determining or even considering objective noumenal truth. This is a flaw in his work, but also what makes it worth reading imo.
Jace Watson
Sex and Character by Otto Weinigner, a Freud pupil and (self loathing) Jew might be of worth too in that regard
Adam King
How so?
Aaron Robinson
>finally get rid of /pol/ retards >they've already been replaced by stormfaggots and frogmen
Isaac Richardson
Ludwig Klages, a Nietzsche pupil and Jew loather might also be worth in that regard. B^)
Luis Campbell
Ok, which book in particular addresses my false ideas?
Parker Thompson
Don't forget the part where Western societies make Michel Foucault a professor.
Grayson Ross
Why is he so happy looking?
Christian Brown
I'm an autistical know-it-all, am I powerfull?
Thomas Rogers
Because he is experiencing undeserved power for the first time
Nicholas Gutierrez
Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism and the Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy.
Cooper Edwards
Also there is a pretty ok thread about him right here >
Thomas Cruz
Lots and lots of Chomsky hash.
Elijah Clark
Felt the need to
Joseph Gomez
Isn't this the guy who started the entire 94 genders thing?
Adam Moore
thinkin bout boipussi
David Brooks
Nah, but stupid college students twisted his ideas some and did do that.