@@jamesjross There have been accusations. I've never looked closely enough into it to know how valid those are. From what I recall hearing about it, i think there's a lot of uncertainty about what actually happened. It was over half a century ago, and there isn't a lot of hard evidence one way or the other. Somebody may have done a rigorous investigation, but I'm not aware of it.
@@charlescalthrop2535 What I said about the lack of evidence was referring to accusations against Foucault specifically. The claims were that he had exploitative relationships with young men (in Algeria, I think?). But regarding the more general issue of the "problematic" views of left wing academics in the 60s and 70s, there is no real ambiguity. It's a pretty well documented fact. But it needs to be understood in the larger context of the cultural conflicts of that era. It was a time that was dominated by a spirit of challenging authority and cultural norms. Sometimes that questioning went too far. I saw a video on it recently that took a pretty balanced view. It didn't sugarcoat anything, but it still took a thoughtful, nuanced view. I can try to look it up if you're interested.
Rumor has it he was bribed into the Chomsky debate with hash that him and his friends called "Chomsky Hash"; I also heard he was a bit baked during the debate but I've conflicting reports lmao 😂😂
@@theloniuspunk383 Yes, and a deeply unpleasant man, unlike Roland Barthes who was gay, died prematurely by being run over by a bus in 1980 and was universally loved by his students at the Sorbonne. Both their writings are valid objects of study. And Baudelaire was a total schmuck, but as my most respected prof demonstrated to me, in both discursive and poetic writing, it's not helpful to conflate the writer and the text and this is not just a postmodern 'text is all there is' cop out. I write this to remind myself of my own ad hominem tendencies when reading or listening to music etc. Can't stand Schopenhauer either (went around kicking little old ladies downstairs) but if I excised every jerk from my reading list I'd have a much shorter list. This is not to deny the liminal value of biography (let's remember how little we know about Shakespeare, eg.) but our current episteme includes the scrutinizing of well-known figures to a pathological extent, which begs the question, where to draw the line.
woah red means recording was here, check out Noam Chomsky and Foucault debate if you read this, and then let me know which one of foucault's facial expressions reminded you of count Chocula the most.
I started watching your videos to get a backdrop for a creative writing course I am taking. Your speaking style and on-screen personality are wonderful. I think the most valuable thing you do for me is to give concrete examples of theory placed in their cultural context. Thank you for posting and providing a path for learning about topics that are complex and would normally take a huge commitment to learn.
When I was in high school, the local public school district installed small cameras in all the school buses to watch the students, after allegations of lesbian behavior by the girls’ lacrosse team in the back of a school bus. However, they could only afford 1 real small camera, and all the others were fake replicas, but they regularly switched around the real camera with the fake cameras, so nobody knew which bus it was on. It was an actual panopticon, whose intended purpose was to get everyone to behave. It completely failed as a measure of social control, and nobody changed their behavior at all, since everyone assumed it was highly unlikely the real camera was in the same school bus as them, and also that nobody actually looked at any of the tapes except maybe some perverted teacher or administrator who, if they actually saw anyone engaged in sexual activity, would simply watch it and not report it to any higher authorities or punish anyone involved, because they would probably want to see more. The implications of this experiment are clear: panopticons don’t actually work, and people are going to say “fuck it” and do what they want to do even if they think they might be being watched (at least if they are teenagers or criminals, groups whose brains are more impulsive and rebellious than typical adults in terms of how their brains govern behavior). On the other hand, later on in life as an adult I worked in an office and there were cameras everywhere, all of them actual real, working cameras, and supposedly 1 or 2 employees from the security department actually looked at the tapes, and this actually DID seem to keep people in line and control their behavior. I would hypothesize that an office environment produces a different episteme in people than being on a school bus or in a prison, and also the incentive structure is different. In school or prison, people already dislike the situation they are in, and any attempt to punish them does not really work very well since they don’t even really like being there in the first place. However, in an office job, while people similarly dislike being there, at this point in life they are dependent upon money from the job to survive and have been brainwashed their entire life into the idea of being an obedient worker, and rebelliousness tends to fade with adulthood, and workers have a strong incentive not to do anything that might get them fired, since unlike being at school or in a prison, a job actually pays you money, which is of extremely high importance in our current capitalist system. Our form of capitalism conditions people to place a very high importance on money for their dual roles as workers and consumers, trying to trick everyone into working very hard to get as much money as possible, to the point that they have almost no free time and are miserable, and then also trick everyone into spending all that money on useless things they don’t need to the point of going into debt and having negative net worth, thus necessitating that they work even harder to pay for everything they buy and ward off the debt collectors. This does not trick everyone into behaving this way, as some people are able to control their spending and not give into advertising pressure, and some people are able to avoid this trap of having to work very hard to try to get more money by finding various ways around that to survive, but it tricks enough people to keep the capitalist system going rather than falling apart due to its internal contradictions.
I think the nuances in the interplay of power and consequences in your two examples present themselves to point precisely at why Foucault's imagination rarely functions in real life. Reading the history of Presidio Modelo in Cuba can also partly explain your experiences of surveillance in different scenarios. Great comment!
@@cakesbubbles2566 Except that they do? Foucault discusses the differences between power, so someone who is powerless (a prisoner, consumer,...) being controlled by systems of oppression aka power. His notion of biopolitics shows he predicted the identity politics today and is also in fact, a re-affirmation of agency against systems of oppression. People profiling themselves through their identity is because we are surrounded by systems that try to identify us. In the 90's, people seemed to care less about their identity. Even in the 2000s, people were seeking to unite and lay aside their differences, so if you were native or black or hispanic, it didn't really matter because there were more liberties surrounding those traits. But today, we have dating apps, surveillance monitors, news channels, politics, that heavily rely on identity (nationality, skin colour, faith, sexuality, gender, cultural heritage...) and because of that people feel the need to clarify and be vocal about their own identity. The easiest example would be The Internet because it's really vague. People want to identify themselves, because otherwise they are just a clean slate like everyone else. Here, you can tell Foucault's notion of how we are slaves to these premises, as technology seems to dictate our political realm. I had a professor who made the same claim for how pocket watches turned Europe into a modern society and his arguments were quite astounding to me. Just because people have something that ticks in their pocket, they suddenly start thinking differently. The same could be said for smartphones. We carry the globe in our pockets, and people feel the need to distinct themselves from it. Every time we change our toolkit, so does our thinking. Humans are technocratic beings.
I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this that "The panopticon simply doesn't work" as such structures can, and do succeed in suppressing dissent. However, I think this demonstrates an ideal solution. It shows that the panopticon has no response to systemic upheaval. If the majority decides not to cooperate, they cannot be suppressed in this way. This suggests to me that now, more than ever, class solidarity is one of the most powerful weapons of all.
My goodness. I really appreciate the clear and flowing distillation of the idea of the Episteme, and especially how the scheduling and ordering of our current society can lead to creeping conformity and a lack of self-knowledge! I know that I'd seen fragments of these ideas before, but never really saw how the puzzle fit together before, and I thank you for the work you've put into ordering your mind so that it can produce a work so easily apprehended by my own... ;)
As student of Postmodernism, and arguably its most famous architect, Michel Foucault, I was interested in what you excluded, which was a lot, particularly his personal homosexuality, and his specific pedophilic attention he had throughout his life. You did fair with Foucault’s discussions on power, and I did learn more on his prison takes, and to some extent, on Foucault’s philosophy on human archeology, genealogy, and how this relates to mankind’s epistemes.
I'd rather read deleuze and be straight, they put it on stock after this many years of isolation and sexual inactive processes... knowledge and power don't matter within capitalism they have some crappy trancdental idealism on being half retarded labourer
Facault is a great joke - peadophile and pseudointtelectual:))) Good that this kind of crap is only still popular in UK - "country" with strong commie heritage:))))
Ah, I haven't actually had a chance to put proper subtitles on this one just yet but I'm glad that RUclips's automatic ones did an okay job here. Sometimes they can be pretty awful, haha!
As an avid Foucault reader, this solely stands as the best introduction to his works on this platform. However, if I were to offer a reverse discourse (lol), you could have also included Foucault's idea on the death of man (although I do understand that this video is an introduction to his work). Anyways, you've done some great work. Love the channel 😁
@@qpalzm563 I also thought of Kuhn. Perhaps a changing episteme allows for the conception of new experiments, which would promote Kuhn's paradigm shift.
One way of explaining it that I've heard is that the Foucauldian episteme focuses on the unconscious; the questions that we don't think about asking - questions which are outside the 'paradigm' (in Kuhn's conceptualisation)
Incredible video. Introductions to Foucault on RUclips usually (well, always) neglect his epistemological work and only focus on Discipline and Punish. Anyone who comes across this will not have doubts once they’re finished. Very well done.
He's one of the scholars that had biggest impacts on my worldview. Really glad RUclips suggested your channel to me out of nowhere. Instantly subscribed.
Thanks so much Tom. I was long overdue gaining a clearer overview on what Foucault proposed rather than some of the caricatures presented by his critics.
His work can take a little bit of time to get your head but I think it's worth it. I certainly really enjoyed spending a good few days re-immersing myself in it all! Glad you found it helpful!
@@Misho83 apprently in the US is j elsewhere is hard g, in italian we say it with a soft g, but to be fair it comes from the greek word ἡγεμονία where the γ is an hard sound, so maybe hard g is more correct
@@Tom_Nicholas There are many online sources like Forvo or even RUclips stuff showing how proper names in different languages are pronounced (Wikipedia almost always shows the IPA transcriptions, too).
Great!!! You have a real gift at explaining one of the West's most difficult and important thinkers. Have you ever tackled Cluade Levi Strauss? I would love to hear you on him....
Interesting thoughts. I like the subtle yet intuitive nature of the philosophy: the ways we (society) think limit what/how we can think about. An example that came to mind (please correct me if I'm off) is how the thought of heterosexual males as the "default" has caused a lot of scientific development to be incomplete or lacking: us only recently finding that cis women show symptoms of many diseases and disorders in drastically different ways than cis men.
I think that's a really good example you raise. The journalist Caroline Criado-Perez recently wrote a book (which I've yet to read) about how a great deal of the world is designed for "average people" which tends to mean men. Crash test dummies, for instance, are mostly designed to resemble the "average man" which means safety systems end up being designed for those certain body shapes. There's certainly a way in which this could be explained through some of Foucault's writing.
Interesting and informative overview. One could perhaps describe the contemporary panopticon as existing through the power relations of social media, everything is seen, social norms and punishments have been established. (humiliation). I wonder how Foucault would describe the present system of knowledge and power that is emerging. .
@@Tom_Nicholas super useful! just a tip: Gramsci is pronounced "Gramshee" (like banshee lol). In italian the trigraphs "sci" and "sce" do the swishy sound while the sound you're making with an "hard" k would be written "schi" (or sche). Which would turn Gramsci into Gramschi :P hopefully you find this helpful in return!
Pronunciation is my downfall everytime, haha! It's not even a language thing, half the time I get the names of British scholars wrong too! Thanks for your tips though, I'll be sure to get it right next time!
I don't see how a clinical psychiatrist like Peterson can have anything against this line of thought. It's simply brilliant and explains alot of things we are seeing today, like identity politics. Foucault is a revelation to anyone who learns about him.
I would like if you did more philosophy/philosopher videos, because that’s what I’m interested in and you explain these topics so nicely/succinctly. Thank you
Absolutely. Also, it ended up being cut for time (to even get this down to 26 minutes!) but I did have some great stuff from his essay The Subject and Power in here which is a chapter he wrote for a book of essays about his work towards the end of his life. There's some really great reflections in there about what his intentions were as a scholar and what he sees the goal of his writings as.
I’m currently needing to write a reflective essay on a transcription of Foucault’s ‘Two Lectures’ on Power and Knowledge. I legit have no idea what he’s saying half the time. So this has been helpful. Thank you. Am subbing from Australia! ((:
I appreciate your videos so much! This video on Foucault summarized three years of grad school into one brief lecture and helped me understand what he was actually trying to say. Oh my God, I get it now! Thank you, thank you.
This was really really engrossing, thank you. I've always struggled with sitting down and working through the classics like this and this made it so much more accessible
excellent intro, i met Foucault once at the eagle in san fran sunday afternoon when it was empty, he talked to me about power and structures of power and many things
What an experience it must have been. Its a shame he died so soon, we can only imagine what he would’ve accomplished had aids not taken him from the world.
Back when it was pretty hardcore since he died in 84. My wife went to the Stud late 70's to dance, because the music was great and nobody tried to pick her up. lol
I guess he learned that morality actually had a pretty important place in the world. Just imagine, if he had used his morality and found one partner, he would have had been able to dodge the disease. But, complete freedom from government is very different than complete freedom from social norms….oops.
@@hamilton7798 "...First, there is the question of freedom of sexual choice, which must be faced. I say "freedom of sexual choice" and not "freedom of sexual acts" because there are sexual acts like rape which should not be permitted whether they involve a man and a woman or two men. *I don't think we should have as our objective some sort of absolute freedom or total liberty of sexual action.* However, where freedom of sexual choice is concerned, one has to be absolutely intransigent. This includes the liberty of expression of that choice. By this I mean the liberty to manifest that choice or not to manifest it." (Foucault)
@@Tom_Nicholas, I hope so too. If not, start uploading some Deleuze, Barthes, Derrida, Spivak, Zizek etc., there's a bunch of them. I'm happy I passed this exam and don't have to deal anymore (yet) with these villains.
It's amazing how you can somehow manage to create bite sized videos of extremely complex theories. Your content are great stimulus for further understandings the works of complex philosophers.
Thank you! Haha, I did less well on this one in terms of it being "bite sized" though! Will aim to get back to a slightly-more-digestable 17 or so minutes next time round!
@@Tom_Nicholas hey, I am not even complaining . It's just that what I feel your video is different from other is how you introduce complex philosophical topics, which are very relivent for today's societies . It's brief and simple at the same time touches on some interesting points
I think it would be useful to discuss the way existentialism came to inform his later work. The Care of the Self is a n Existentialist mantra as well as the title of Foucault's second volume of his History of Sexuality.
I liked your presentation and believe that at least I got the big picture of this guy’s philosophy. Now let’s see if that is true. You also said his work was incomplete because he died. This makes me think about what the continuation of his analysis would be like, and especially what happens when Foucault’s ideas and method is used by doctrinarians. You gave the examples of his investigation of the history of punishment and also of the history of sexuality to explain how he demonstrates how structures of knowledge and thought are very much conditioned on historic context. And yes i suppose he wanted to find ways out of that constraint. There is a problem though, and it’s about his views on objective reality. Apparently he believed that this can not exist - because whatever we would take as objective reality and “truth” would be conditioned on the organisation, power structure and so forth of the society we’re in, and therefor no longer objective reality independent of human thought. I think this is all nice and dandy if we are talking about sociology, economics, psychology and so forth. But now comes the dogmatic extrapolator and says: let’s apply this all to physics and biology. I think this is how we got into this hideous dilemma and battle about whether sexuality and gender are the same or not and which one matters more. I’m talking of course of the idea that gender would be a “social construct”, biology be damned. But it’s all somehow derived from the axiomatic rejection of the existence of objective reality independent from our thought. However, that axiom is assumed to be true by (most) natural scientists, full knowing that it is undecidable whether this axiom is true or false. I know now why as a physicist I rather reject this Foucault (not the one with the pendulum).
I envy that synthesizing power that you have, in all videos. And it's also fun to watch. In this one you managed to explain Michel in context without simplifying his ideas. I'm a fan of your work now, you are really helping, I feel less dumb thanks to you.
I think it's more correct to say "ruins" rather than "monuments" since an old book on a dusty shelf is, in practice, a ruin of words until someone who can read it constructs identity and experience from said ruin, and simbolizes that book's value as monumental or unvaluable
I would love to see you go more in depth on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, especially in conjunction and contrast with his work on sexuality. It always amuses me when people hear that word and make assumptions 😂 thanks for the great content!
Foucault raped children and advocated that the raping of children is a human right we should be fighting for, I am quite happy throwing the raped baby out with the bathwater considering anything else he thought was "ethical".
Thanks for watching! Really looking forward to your feedback on this one. Do let me know if you'd like me to make some more Foucault videos in the future (maybe going in-depth into some particular books of his)? Furthermore, as with the last episode of What the Theory?, if you'd like to get your hands on a copy of the script for this video with footnotes and references, you can sign up to support me on Patreon at patreon.com/tomnicholas
Where's the introduction to "Abuse"? Focault's abuse of Tunisian 9 and 10 year olds has just been documented so I look forward to your video on that Tommy.
why does it matter from the perspective of people who are interested in philosophy and history? personal life of a scientist has no bearing on his work
@@fixpontt instead of pedophile , let’s suppose extremely racist neo nazi work of his had been discovered after his death . Would it matter for you then ? Or nah ?
@@singleoneonly I'm currently studying Heidegger's philosophy, and I think his work was very good, and even though he makes good critiques in his later works, it's important to understand how he related to his these; the same goes for Foucault.
@@edcify8241 Because heidegger was an actual nazi party member. The accusations against Foucault haven’t held any water since the 90s and just serve as a way to call a gay man a pedophile and discredit his ideas. It’s fucking gross.
The Panoptic effect was always one that stuck out to me too, the social implications with surveillance obviously became increasingly relevant (and quite frightening with the combined implications of say for example Islamophobia as a phenomenon), but also, just that general notion of our moderation of behaviour based on the idea of being "observed" by one another, whether physically, or documented/remembered and just "understood" by our actions within the context of a contemporary norm and how norms can shift (and why). It remains a sort of perfect microcosm of that notion of the meaning of "morality" or "common sense", or "normal/abnormal" and how that shapes society and the very idea of self, how we act and how we are capable of acting (that sense of agency). Just like the Plato's cave shadows, Debord's simulacra of identity, the proverbial policeman that lives inside our head etc. When it comes to historical examples of how this effect shapes our ability to interact scientifically with the world specifically, it seems to be a largely negative one, and the resistance to change can come from the "bottom" up as much as the "top" down. It all feels related with the traditionalism/progressivism binary, or modern/postmodern discourse in that and other ways.
I have a decent understanding of the history of science. What people believed and why they believed it at different points of history and how that changed over time. Science is a means to create an understanding of the world that becomes progressively closer to reality. While science is subjective in that it represents merely our closes approximation of reality that subjectivity is not independent of reality and the ways in which our understanding can be wrong are constrained. And over time these constraints are tightened. In that way science over time tends to be closer and closer to reality. So while society can have an influence on scientific understanding, it is only within the bounds of what is known with near certainty.
Thanks for making this video. Dutch translations for Foucault are a hard read, it is almost like listening a lecturer that has not real understanding of the current level of knowledge the students have. Find myself often shifting to find out where I am. It lacks a Socratic conversational approach, where questions are used to ensure the level of understanding is on par between the philosopher and his student.
9:37 Quiz: give the source of this rather similar quotation: "The style of any mathematic which comes into being, then, depends entirely on the culture in which it is rooted, the sort of mankind it is that ponders it. The soul can bring its inherent possibilities to scientific development, can manage them practically, can attain the highest levels in its treatment of them -- but is quite impotent to alter them"
Great video. It seems at first glance that systems of thought were really just highly fluid cultural assumptions (fluid compared to today) and that tracing them seems less important than understanding why the self destructive ones keep spreading and stopping them.
I would actually enjoy a more in depth video about one of his books. Maybe "The history of Sexuality", "Discipline and Punish" or "The history of Madness". Though I trust they are all pretty interesting.
I would certainly say that those three stand out as the most engaging in their arguments. I'll definitely look at putting together some book-specific videos on Foucault in the future!
Foucault didn't always arrive at the most convincing answers, but he always asked the most wonderfully interesting questions.
Did he also bang boys?
@@jamesjross There have been accusations. I've never looked closely enough into it to know how valid those are. From what I recall hearing about it, i think there's a lot of uncertainty about what actually happened. It was over half a century ago, and there isn't a lot of hard evidence one way or the other. Somebody may have done a rigorous investigation, but I'm not aware of it.
@@ahobimo732 What was that comment referring to? It seems to be deleted?
@@charlescalthrop2535 They were asking about child abuse accusations against Foucault and other left wing academics in Europe in the mid 20th century.
@@charlescalthrop2535 What I said about the lack of evidence was referring to accusations against Foucault specifically. The claims were that he had exploitative relationships with young men (in Algeria, I think?).
But regarding the more general issue of the "problematic" views of left wing academics in the 60s and 70s, there is no real ambiguity. It's a pretty well documented fact.
But it needs to be understood in the larger context of the cultural conflicts of that era. It was a time that was dominated by a spirit of challenging authority and cultural norms. Sometimes that questioning went too far.
I saw a video on it recently that took a pretty balanced view. It didn't sugarcoat anything, but it still took a thoughtful, nuanced view. I can try to look it up if you're interested.
Foucalt : -hits the blunt- WHAT IF EVERYTHING IS A PRISON?
YOOOOOO I SWEAR I THOUGHT THE EXACT SAME THING I WAS JUST ABOUT TO COMMENT THAT XD
Rumor has it he was bribed into the Chomsky debate with hash that him and his friends called "Chomsky Hash"; I also heard he was a bit baked during the debate but I've conflicting reports lmao 😂😂
Prisons. Prisons everywhere. One big interconnected network of prisons. Like some kind of...Prison Planet!
@@raymondnoriega953 lol I’ve never heard that one. Must’ve been quality stuff to bring Foucault to the yard considering his overall vice profile.
Foucault: *hits the blunt*
"Mmmmmm... little boys"
The most comprehensive introduction to Foucault I've ever watched. Thumbs up for Tom!
Ah, well I can't ask for much nicer feedback than that! Really glad you thought so!
Tom Nicholas you are awesome 👏
Foucault was a pedophile
@@theloniuspunk383 Yes, and a deeply unpleasant man, unlike Roland Barthes who was gay, died prematurely by being run over by a bus in 1980 and was universally loved by his students at the Sorbonne. Both their writings are valid objects of study. And Baudelaire was a total schmuck, but as my most respected prof demonstrated to me, in both discursive and poetic writing, it's not helpful to conflate the writer and the text and this is not just a postmodern 'text is all there is' cop out. I write this to remind myself of my own ad hominem tendencies when reading or listening to music etc. Can't stand Schopenhauer either (went around kicking little old ladies downstairs) but if I excised every jerk from my reading list I'd have a much shorter list. This is not to deny the liminal value of biography (let's remember how little we know about Shakespeare, eg.) but our current episteme includes the scrutinizing of well-known figures to a pathological extent, which begs the question, where to draw the line.
@@theloniuspunk383 Yes. And?
Thank you for this and all you do.
woah hi Red! dope that you are into philosophy!
woah red means recording was here, check out Noam Chomsky and Foucault debate if you read this, and then let me know which one of foucault's facial expressions reminded you of count Chocula the most.
Another one here happy to see Red.
We all know what the red means now
I started watching your videos to get a backdrop for a creative writing course I am taking. Your speaking style and on-screen personality are wonderful. I think the most valuable thing you do for me is to give concrete examples of theory placed in their cultural context. Thank you for posting and providing a path for learning about topics that are complex and would normally take a huge commitment to learn.
When I was in high school, the local public school district installed small cameras in all the school buses to watch the students, after allegations of lesbian behavior by the girls’ lacrosse team in the back of a school bus. However, they could only afford 1 real small camera, and all the others were fake replicas, but they regularly switched around the real camera with the fake cameras, so nobody knew which bus it was on. It was an actual panopticon, whose intended purpose was to get everyone to behave.
It completely failed as a measure of social control, and nobody changed their behavior at all, since everyone assumed it was highly unlikely the real camera was in the same school bus as them, and also that nobody actually looked at any of the tapes except maybe some perverted teacher or administrator who, if they actually saw anyone engaged in sexual activity, would simply watch it and not report it to any higher authorities or punish anyone involved, because they would probably want to see more.
The implications of this experiment are clear: panopticons don’t actually work, and people are going to say “fuck it” and do what they want to do even if they think they might be being watched (at least if they are teenagers or criminals, groups whose brains are more impulsive and rebellious than typical adults in terms of how their brains govern behavior). On the other hand, later on in life as an adult I worked in an office and there were cameras everywhere, all of them actual real, working cameras, and supposedly 1 or 2 employees from the security department actually looked at the tapes, and this actually DID seem to keep people in line and control their behavior. I would hypothesize that an office environment produces a different episteme in people than being on a school bus or in a prison, and also the incentive structure is different.
In school or prison, people already dislike the situation they are in, and any attempt to punish them does not really work very well since they don’t even really like being there in the first place. However, in an office job, while people similarly dislike being there, at this point in life they are dependent upon money from the job to survive and have been brainwashed their entire life into the idea of being an obedient worker, and rebelliousness tends to fade with adulthood, and workers have a strong incentive not to do anything that might get them fired, since unlike being at school or in a prison, a job actually pays you money, which is of extremely high importance in our current capitalist system.
Our form of capitalism conditions people to place a very high importance on money for their dual roles as workers and consumers, trying to trick everyone into working very hard to get as much money as possible, to the point that they have almost no free time and are miserable, and then also trick everyone into spending all that money on useless things they don’t need to the point of going into debt and having negative net worth, thus necessitating that they work even harder to pay for everything they buy and ward off the debt collectors. This does not trick everyone into behaving this way, as some people are able to control their spending and not give into advertising pressure, and some people are able to avoid this trap of having to work very hard to try to get more money by finding various ways around that to survive, but it tricks enough people to keep the capitalist system going rather than falling apart due to its internal contradictions.
I think the nuances in the interplay of power and consequences in your two examples present themselves to point precisely at why Foucault's imagination rarely functions in real life. Reading the history of Presidio Modelo in Cuba can also partly explain your experiences of surveillance in different scenarios. Great comment!
"Allegations of Lesbian behavior"
Kinda disturbing that they tried to police sexual behavior
I'm sure heterosexual behavior was not seen as an issue
@@cakesbubbles2566 Except that they do? Foucault discusses the differences between power, so someone who is powerless (a prisoner, consumer,...) being controlled by systems of oppression aka power. His notion of biopolitics shows he predicted the identity politics today and is also in fact, a re-affirmation of agency against systems of oppression.
People profiling themselves through their identity is because we are surrounded by systems that try to identify us. In the 90's, people seemed to care less about their identity. Even in the 2000s, people were seeking to unite and lay aside their differences, so if you were native or black or hispanic, it didn't really matter because there were more liberties surrounding those traits. But today, we have dating apps, surveillance monitors, news channels, politics, that heavily rely on identity (nationality, skin colour, faith, sexuality, gender, cultural heritage...) and because of that people feel the need to clarify and be vocal about their own identity.
The easiest example would be The Internet because it's really vague. People want to identify themselves, because otherwise they are just a clean slate like everyone else. Here, you can tell Foucault's notion of how we are slaves to these premises, as technology seems to dictate our political realm.
I had a professor who made the same claim for how pocket watches turned Europe into a modern society and his arguments were quite astounding to me. Just because people have something that ticks in their pocket, they suddenly start thinking differently. The same could be said for smartphones. We carry the globe in our pockets, and people feel the need to distinct themselves from it. Every time we change our toolkit, so does our thinking. Humans are technocratic beings.
I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this that "The panopticon simply doesn't work" as such structures can, and do succeed in suppressing dissent.
However, I think this demonstrates an ideal solution. It shows that the panopticon has no response to systemic upheaval. If the majority decides not to cooperate, they cannot be suppressed in this way. This suggests to me that now, more than ever, class solidarity is one of the most powerful weapons of all.
@Barshonk lol sucks for you I guess since whether it's the place for it or not, this is to my mind a valuable and interesting thought.
My goodness. I really appreciate the clear and flowing distillation of the idea of the Episteme, and especially how the scheduling and ordering of our current society can lead to creeping conformity and a lack of self-knowledge! I know that I'd seen fragments of these ideas before, but never really saw how the puzzle fit together before, and I thank you for the work you've put into ordering your mind so that it can produce a work so easily apprehended by my own... ;)
Philosophy is the act of writing down your fears, depravity, prejudice and self hate so they can be shared and indulged by others.
As student of Postmodernism, and arguably its most famous architect, Michel Foucault, I was interested in what you excluded, which was a lot, particularly his personal homosexuality, and his specific pedophilic attention he had throughout his life.
You did fair with Foucault’s discussions on power, and I did learn more on his prison takes, and to some extent, on Foucault’s philosophy on human archeology, genealogy, and how this relates to mankind’s epistemes.
I'd rather read deleuze and be straight, they put it on stock after this many years of isolation and sexual inactive processes... knowledge and power don't matter within capitalism they have some crappy trancdental idealism on being half retarded labourer
Great job, Foucault's thesis are pretty complicated! Thank you so much for simplifying it ❤️👍
Thank you Hafida, I hope it was helpful!
theses*
Try reading him in the original French oy vey :)
No they aren't, it's just post modern mental gymnastics. Contrived complexity to make stupid ideas seem worthwhile.
Facault is a great joke - peadophile and pseudointtelectual:))) Good that this kind of crap is only still popular in UK - "country" with strong commie heritage:))))
this video has subs, it is about philosophy and Tom has charming British accent... i'm blown away
Thanks so much for the subtitles ( and the good work, of course ). This really helps those who speak English as a second language. 🤓
Ah, I haven't actually had a chance to put proper subtitles on this one just yet but I'm glad that RUclips's automatic ones did an okay job here. Sometimes they can be pretty awful, haha!
No worries mate. Thanks for the great work still
As an avid Foucault reader, this solely stands as the best introduction to his works on this platform. However, if I were to offer a reverse discourse (lol), you could have also included Foucault's idea on the death of man (although I do understand that this video is an introduction to his work).
Anyways, you've done some great work. Love the channel 😁
Amazing. The philosophy youtubers are best thing to ever come out from the UK.
"Gave way to a [new] episteme" made me think of paradigmatic scientific revolutions, in the Thomas Kuhnian sense.
Yeah, I thought the same! Wouldn't the episteme be like a component of a paradigm? Maybe the episteme is broader than I understand it
@@qpalzm563 I also thought of Kuhn. Perhaps a changing episteme allows for the conception of new experiments, which would promote Kuhn's paradigm shift.
One way of explaining it that I've heard is that the Foucauldian episteme focuses on the unconscious; the questions that we don't think about asking - questions which are outside the 'paradigm' (in Kuhn's conceptualisation)
Incredible video. Introductions to Foucault on RUclips usually (well, always) neglect his epistemological work and only focus on Discipline and Punish. Anyone who comes across this will not have doubts once they’re finished. Very well done.
Discipline and Punish is also about epistemology (the discipline, power/knowledge)
EDIT: NVM, it's discussed at the end
He's one of the scholars that had biggest impacts on my worldview. Really glad RUclips suggested your channel to me out of nowhere. Instantly subscribed.
Glad you've got a lot out of reading Foucault and glad you enjoyed the video! Hope you like the rest of my stuff!!
Yeah I'm really so sorry to hear that...you'll come back to your senses soon enough
Thanks so much Tom. I was long overdue gaining a clearer overview on what Foucault proposed rather than some of the caricatures presented by his critics.
Foucault gave me headaches during the school year! Very clear and informative video, as usual 🙏
His work can take a little bit of time to get your head but I think it's worth it. I certainly really enjoyed spending a good few days re-immersing myself in it all! Glad you found it helpful!
Foucault gave himself headaches. Worse, he's majorly responsible for what seems like a terminal brain tumor in the civilised world today.
Thank you, very useful. Just one thing, it's "Gramsci" not "Gramski". "Sc" in Italian is like the "sh" sound in shelter :)
Thank you for pointing this out! My pronunciation is quite often awful across the board, haha!
Thanks so much, that really bugged me and I had to wonder if maybe college had led me astray.
Hegemony is also an interesting one, I've heard people pronouncing it with a "j" and with a "g". Is it a British English / American English thing?
@@Misho83 apprently in the US is j elsewhere is hard g, in italian we say it with a soft g, but to be fair it comes from the greek word ἡγεμονία where the γ is an hard sound, so maybe hard g is more correct
@@Tom_Nicholas There are many online sources like Forvo or even RUclips stuff showing how proper names in different languages are pronounced (Wikipedia almost always shows the IPA transcriptions, too).
You've become my new favourite teacher!
Excellent as always Tom, you’re the clearest pane of glass
Thanks William, that’s very kind of you to say so!
A very helpful summary of a lot of complicated ideas. Thanks!
I am just dipping a tentative toe into philosophy, particular philosophy and education. This video has been really helpful, thank you.
Great!!! You have a real gift at explaining one of the West's most difficult and important thinkers. Have you ever tackled Cluade Levi Strauss? I would love to hear you on him....
He has one on structuralism which touches on Levi Straus
You somehow look a lot like Ramsay Bolton from GOT 🤔😅
Moderm AU Ramsay where Roose was actually a good dad and Ramsay studied poly sci in university
British People bone structure.
Omg yes!!!! I've been trying to place the resemblance for months now lol
Gordon Ramsey-Bolton
Interesting thoughts. I like the subtle yet intuitive nature of the philosophy: the ways we (society) think limit what/how we can think about. An example that came to mind (please correct me if I'm off) is how the thought of heterosexual males as the "default" has caused a lot of scientific development to be incomplete or lacking: us only recently finding that cis women show symptoms of many diseases and disorders in drastically different ways than cis men.
I think that's a really good example you raise. The journalist Caroline Criado-Perez recently wrote a book (which I've yet to read) about how a great deal of the world is designed for "average people" which tends to mean men. Crash test dummies, for instance, are mostly designed to resemble the "average man" which means safety systems end up being designed for those certain body shapes. There's certainly a way in which this could be explained through some of Foucault's writing.
@@Tom_Nicholas cool to be affirmed by someone more well read!
Interesting and informative overview. One could perhaps describe the contemporary panopticon as existing through the power relations of social media, everything is seen, social norms and punishments have been established. (humiliation). I wonder how Foucault would describe the present system of knowledge and power that is emerging. .
i was researching foucault two days ago and stumbled upon ur video on debord, subscribed, and bam! yesterday you post this. brilliant
Haha, amazing timing! Love it when that happens! Hope you find this useful!
@@Tom_Nicholas super useful! just a tip: Gramsci is pronounced "Gramshee" (like banshee lol). In italian the trigraphs "sci" and "sce" do the swishy sound while the sound you're making with an "hard" k would be written "schi" (or sche). Which would turn Gramsci into Gramschi :P hopefully you find this helpful in return!
Pronunciation is my downfall everytime, haha! It's not even a language thing, half the time I get the names of British scholars wrong too! Thanks for your tips though, I'll be sure to get it right next time!
I don't see how a clinical psychiatrist like Peterson can have anything against this line of thought. It's simply brilliant and explains alot of things we are seeing today, like identity politics. Foucault is a revelation to anyone who learns about him.
This video has the best explanation of 'soul is the prison of the body' and doesn't even mention that it's explaining it
Absolutely loved this video! As a future decolonial theorist, I love epistemology and now Foucault even more
I would like if you did more philosophy/philosopher videos, because that’s what I’m interested in and you explain these topics so nicely/succinctly. Thank you
A very short and good intro would be his inaugural lecture at Collège de France: The order of discourse (L'ordre du discours).
Absolutely. Also, it ended up being cut for time (to even get this down to 26 minutes!) but I did have some great stuff from his essay The Subject and Power in here which is a chapter he wrote for a book of essays about his work towards the end of his life. There's some really great reflections in there about what his intentions were as a scholar and what he sees the goal of his writings as.
I was trying to find articles about Foucault that I could understand but I had such a hard time so I really appreciate this video. Thank you so much!
Crikey! Foucault is more important than I thought!
This is the clearest and most useful overview of Foucault's work I've come across. Thank you for taking the time to make these videos!
I’m currently needing to write a reflective essay on a transcription of Foucault’s ‘Two Lectures’ on Power and Knowledge. I legit have no idea what he’s saying half the time. So this has been helpful. Thank you. Am subbing from Australia! ((:
Really glad this helped you out! Best of luck with the essay!
Thanks, 26m well spent. I'm attempting to write a bachelorthesis on Foucaults panopticon and that is a good summary of his work.
I appreciate your videos so much! This video on Foucault summarized three years of grad school into one brief lecture and helped me understand what he was actually trying to say. Oh my God, I get it now! Thank you, thank you.
This was really really engrossing, thank you. I've always struggled with sitting down and working through the classics like this and this made it so much more accessible
Thank you for your thought provoking video. It was really helpful
excellent intro, i met Foucault once at the eagle in san fran sunday afternoon when it was empty, he talked to me about power and structures of power and many things
What an experience it must have been. Its a shame he died so soon, we can only imagine what he would’ve accomplished had aids not taken him from the world.
Back when it was pretty hardcore since he died in 84. My wife went to the Stud late 70's to dance, because the music was great and nobody tried to pick her up. lol
I guess he learned that morality actually had a pretty important place in the world. Just imagine, if he had used his morality and found one partner, he would have had been able to dodge the disease. But, complete freedom from government is very different than complete freedom from social norms….oops.
@@hamilton7798 "...First, there is the question of freedom of sexual choice, which must be faced. I say "freedom of sexual choice" and not "freedom of sexual acts" because there are sexual acts like rape which should not be permitted whether they involve a man and a woman or two men. *I don't think we should have as our objective some sort of absolute freedom or total liberty of sexual action.* However, where freedom of sexual choice is concerned, one has to be absolutely intransigent. This includes the liberty of expression of that choice. By this I mean the liberty to manifest that choice or not to manifest it." (Foucault)
Great video Ive always found Foucault liberating for the individual. But dangerous in the hands of the ruling class.
I wish we had RUclips and YOU 25 years ago when I was in Grad School!
Great timing! My girlfriend is studying for her literary theory exam and she's struggling with understanding Foucault.
Oh super, I love it when things work out like that! I hope this helps in some small way!
@@Tom_Nicholas, I hope so too. If not, start uploading some Deleuze, Barthes, Derrida, Spivak, Zizek etc., there's a bunch of them. I'm happy I passed this exam and don't have to deal anymore (yet) with these villains.
I’ve got a couple of Barthes videos up already and I’m sure I’ll get on to some of those others soon enough!!
It's amazing how you can somehow manage to create bite sized videos of extremely complex theories.
Your content are great stimulus for further understandings the works of complex philosophers.
Thank you! Haha, I did less well on this one in terms of it being "bite sized" though! Will aim to get back to a slightly-more-digestable 17 or so minutes next time round!
@@Tom_Nicholas hey, I am not even complaining . It's just that what I feel your video is different from other is how you introduce complex philosophical topics, which are very relivent for today's societies . It's brief and simple at the same time touches on some interesting points
That's very kind of you to say so! Thanks for your support as ever!
really helpful for my paper writing, thanks a lot.
Glad to have helped in some small way, best of luck with the paper!
So, this guy and Then and Now really want me to subscribe to their channels, really impressive!
here again. what a mental playground. now to garden. a spring curse that may not last too many generations....crack on. thank-you.
Wonderful! Thank you so much for this, really helped me wrap my head around Foucault!
Really glad it helped Ellie!
This is a great introduction to Foucault's work.
Thank you!
I think it would be useful to discuss the way existentialism came to inform his later work. The Care of the Self is a n Existentialist mantra as well as the title of Foucault's second volume of his History of Sexuality.
you would be a fantastic true crime podcaster with that voice, love it
Nice job Thomas 👌 I applied his theories while writing a paper on G. Orwell's 1984 and I had a great time doing that I must say. Keep going 👍
Ooh, that sounds really interesting!
Cool, can I get the thesis statement?
Thank you so much! Note for self for later reference - Discipline and Punish - 17:00
I dare you to tackle Society Must be Defended...his best lecture series.
I liked your presentation and believe that at least I got the big picture of this guy’s philosophy. Now let’s see if that is true.
You also said his work was incomplete because he died. This makes me think about what the continuation of his analysis would be like, and especially what happens when Foucault’s ideas and method is used by doctrinarians. You gave the examples of his investigation of the history of punishment and also of the history of sexuality to explain how he demonstrates how structures of knowledge and thought are very much conditioned on historic context. And yes i suppose he wanted to find ways out of that constraint. There is a problem though, and it’s about his views on objective reality. Apparently he believed that this can not exist - because whatever we would take as objective reality and “truth” would be conditioned on the organisation, power structure and so forth of the society we’re in, and therefor no longer objective reality independent of human thought. I think this is all nice and dandy if we are talking about sociology, economics, psychology and so forth. But now comes the dogmatic extrapolator and says: let’s apply this all to physics and biology. I think this is how we got into this hideous dilemma and battle about whether sexuality and gender are the same or not and which one matters more. I’m talking of course of the idea that gender would be a “social construct”, biology be damned. But it’s all somehow derived from the axiomatic rejection of the existence of objective reality independent from our thought. However, that axiom is assumed to be true by (most) natural scientists, full knowing that it is undecidable whether this axiom is true or false. I know now why as a physicist I rather reject this Foucault (not the one with the pendulum).
I envy that synthesizing power that you have, in all videos. And it's also fun to watch. In this one you managed to explain Michel in context without simplifying his ideas. I'm a fan of your work now, you are really helping, I feel less dumb thanks to you.
Thank you for presenting a very fluent and accomplished summary of Foucault.
I think it's more correct to say "ruins" rather than "monuments" since an old book on a dusty shelf is, in practice, a ruin of words until someone who can read it constructs identity and experience from said ruin, and simbolizes that book's value as monumental or unvaluable
I would love to see you go more in depth on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, especially in conjunction and contrast with his work on sexuality. It always amuses me when people hear that word and make assumptions 😂 thanks for the great content!
Foucault raped children and advocated that the raping of children is a human right we should be fighting for, I am quite happy throwing the raped baby out with the bathwater considering anything else he thought was "ethical".
So useful for my studies 🙏 thank you so much, Tom!
No worries Christina! I’m so glad it was helpful!
Great video, thank you. If anyone wants to understand just how brilliant Noam Chomsky's takedown of Foucault is, this is a great starting point
Extremely informative, thank you!
I thought I saw Foucault somewhere and apparently he was mentioned in two of the sources of the paper I should be working on. That sure is something.
Thanks for watching! Really looking forward to your feedback on this one. Do let me know if you'd like me to make some more Foucault videos in the future (maybe going in-depth into some particular books of his)?
Furthermore, as with the last episode of What the Theory?, if you'd like to get your hands on a copy of the script for this video with footnotes and references, you can sign up to support me on Patreon at patreon.com/tomnicholas
Yes please, power knowledge and self 🥰
Would also be interesting to learn about "the gaze" (and how other scholars like Edward Said expanded on this notion)!
Pin your comment at the top my dude, easier for people to see, and comment on it.
Please do more on The order of things and The history of Sexuality
Please make your works cited and/or footnotes available to the public!
Great! It has helped me question the danger of most structures that we see today and made me realize how much modern education follows his philosophy.
This video is “just what the doctor ordered” - haha - thanks!
Where's the introduction to "Abuse"? Focault's abuse of Tunisian 9 and 10 year olds has just been documented so I look forward to your video on that Tommy.
why does it matter from the perspective of people who are interested in philosophy and history? personal life of a scientist has no bearing on his work
@@fixpontt instead of pedophile , let’s suppose extremely racist neo nazi work of his had been discovered after his death . Would it matter for you then ? Or nah ?
@@Francisco-dg4zf You do know people still teach and value heidegger right? A literal nazi party member.
@@singleoneonly I'm currently studying Heidegger's philosophy, and I think his work was very good, and even though he makes good critiques in his later works, it's important to understand how he related to his these; the same goes for Foucault.
@@edcify8241 Because heidegger was an actual nazi party member. The accusations against Foucault haven’t held any water since the 90s and just serve as a way to call a gay man a pedophile and discredit his ideas. It’s fucking gross.
AAAAA TOM YOU'RE A LIFESAVER, I COULDN'T, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, GET MY HEAD AROUND MY BOI FOUCAULT. THANK YOU TOM FOR HELPING ME WITH MY ASSESSMENT.
I just wanted to comment that I really appreciate the pace at which you speak. thanks for this video
Hey I stumbled across your chancel while trying to find a good summary about Foucault. I really love this video! Thank you!
Making a thought experiment on what should be simple. Such as, what harms others is bad.
This was ultimately informative in ways conducive to a broader interpretation of my own individual thought processes caught up therein.
The Panoptic effect was always one that stuck out to me too, the social implications with surveillance obviously became increasingly relevant (and quite frightening with the combined implications of say for example Islamophobia as a phenomenon), but also, just that general notion of our moderation of behaviour based on the idea of being "observed" by one another, whether physically, or documented/remembered and just "understood" by our actions within the context of a contemporary norm and how norms can shift (and why).
It remains a sort of perfect microcosm of that notion of the meaning of "morality" or "common sense", or "normal/abnormal" and how that shapes society and the very idea of self, how we act and how we are capable of acting (that sense of agency). Just like the Plato's cave shadows, Debord's simulacra of identity, the proverbial policeman that lives inside our head etc.
When it comes to historical examples of how this effect shapes our ability to interact scientifically with the world specifically, it seems to be a largely negative one, and the resistance to change can come from the "bottom" up as much as the "top" down. It all feels related with the traditionalism/progressivism binary, or modern/postmodern discourse in that and other ways.
I have a decent understanding of the history of science. What people believed and why they believed it at different points of history and how that changed over time. Science is a means to create an understanding of the world that becomes progressively closer to reality. While science is subjective in that it represents merely our closes approximation of reality that subjectivity is not independent of reality and the ways in which our understanding can be wrong are constrained. And over time these constraints are tightened. In that way science over time tends to be closer and closer to reality. So while society can have an influence on scientific understanding, it is only within the bounds of what is known with near certainty.
Your videos are god tier quality.
Thanks for making this video. Dutch translations for Foucault are a hard read, it is almost like listening a lecturer that has not real understanding of the current level of knowledge the students have. Find myself often shifting to find out where I am. It lacks a Socratic conversational approach, where questions are used to ensure the level of understanding is on par between the philosopher and his student.
Somebody get this man a sub.
Man, this is so exactly what I needed today in my search for sensemaking!
This is the best video on Foucault...Thank you Tom!
Well done Tom. You briefed in half
an hour one complete semester on Foucault's thougth; that's syntesis power mate. I've just suscribed to your page.
9:37 Quiz: give the source of this rather similar quotation: "The style of any mathematic which comes into being, then, depends entirely on the culture in which it is rooted, the sort of mankind it is that ponders it. The soul can bring its inherent possibilities to scientific development, can manage them practically, can attain the highest levels in its treatment of them -- but is quite impotent to alter them"
Greetings..
Excellent. I truly understand the intellectual power of Foucault. ...and really acknowledged his great works.
Many thanks.
OL.
Great stuff! Good job - I could turn to this from time to time. Very well summarized!
Great video. It seems at first glance that systems of thought were really just highly fluid cultural assumptions (fluid compared to today) and that tracing them seems less important than understanding why the self destructive ones keep spreading and stopping them.
Well done for making Foucault easier to understand.
Thank you from my dissertation x
Very good Tom, I like how you explore philosophers instead of pop culture that can be interpreted with philosophy.
wow. Thank you. I did able to understood Nietzche, Foucalt and Kant in a snapshot.
it's pronounced "Gramshi" but I appreciate the effort
Your tone, voice and accent soothes my ADD.
thanks a bunch for sharing this. it seriously means a lot. and It was so sweet your granni's 90th birthday. I really enjoyed that vlog. God bless.
Tom, this is brilliant.
Very good work, Tom. I have to say though: @16:19 that has to be simultaneously the least flattering and most appropriate image of Foucault.
I would actually enjoy a more in depth video about one of his books. Maybe "The history of Sexuality", "Discipline and Punish" or "The history of Madness". Though I trust they are all pretty interesting.
I would certainly say that those three stand out as the most engaging in their arguments. I'll definitely look at putting together some book-specific videos on Foucault in the future!
Don’t like this dude and his view on children and sexuality, he said it’s ok to have sex with a child if the child wants... that’s not ok
@@Anders76 He literally raped children and claimed it as a human right.
wonderful.....my heart's content.....
well i'm a english student, and i didn't understand anything from it but i appreciate it
THANK YOU! You do such a great job with these videos.