About 30 years ago I decided to read Discipline and Punish, and because I can read French, I read it in French.
Foucault is a master of French rhetoric and the writing is clear and often as gorgeous and intense as you will find in Proust or St. Augustine.
HOWEVEVER, the sophistry is so thick. As example, he never can make a judgement as to whether the old fashion of punishment via ritualized torture is better or worse than the carceral one. Instead he side steps it by writing something to the effect of, "Donc, une supplice et un emploi du temps." (i.e. torture and a time-table).
I will not forget that he died in 1984 from the ravages of AIDS, habitue that he was of S&M bars in San Francisco and New York City. And he died in a hospital, which around 1960 he had examined (skewered) in La Naissance de la Clinique.
"consistently reducing ethical considerations to simply the elucidation of power structures. This is the path that much of the humanities academy has since taken,"
I am wondering whether this is related to the opposite phenomenon of expunging power structures from social sciences such as economics.
I like the summary of Foucault. But this "Discipline and Punish is a stark exercise in deploying intellectual power to serve particular self-interested human ends, rather than necessarily to illustrate empirical phenomena." seems to come out of nowhere. Can you explain this in more detail?
About 30 years ago I decided to read Discipline and Punish, and because I can read French, I read it in French.
Foucault is a master of French rhetoric and the writing is clear and often as gorgeous and intense as you will find in Proust or St. Augustine.
HOWEVEVER, the sophistry is so thick. As example, he never can make a judgement as to whether the old fashion of punishment via ritualized torture is better or worse than the carceral one. Instead he side steps it by writing something to the effect of, "Donc, une supplice et un emploi du temps." (i.e. torture and a time-table).
I will not forget that he died in 1984 from the ravages of AIDS, habitue that he was of S&M bars in San Francisco and New York City. And he died in a hospital, which around 1960 he had examined (skewered) in La Naissance de la Clinique.
he was also a pedophile who wanted to repeal the age of consent
for him, he lived the credo of power and self-interest uber alles
I could tell you other thing about him and sexual tastes. He probably infected people in San Francisco and other places.
I am 69 and gay.......lived through the very start of the AIDS epidemic. Remember it well and how people acted.
That he wrote a book about punishment that manages to swerve around the French Revolution scarcely inspires confidence in his methods.
This is interesting:
"consistently reducing ethical considerations to simply the elucidation of power structures. This is the path that much of the humanities academy has since taken,"
I am wondering whether this is related to the opposite phenomenon of expunging power structures from social sciences such as economics.
I like the summary of Foucault. But this "Discipline and Punish is a stark exercise in deploying intellectual power to serve particular self-interested human ends, rather than necessarily to illustrate empirical phenomena." seems to come out of nowhere. Can you explain this in more detail?
There's some more detail in Wikipedia's article on the book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish#Reception