Michel Foucault

284 Pages·1984·28.853 MB·English

by  Mark Cousins, Athar Hussain (auth.)

Michel Foucault
CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL THEORY
General Editor: ANTHONY GIDDENS
This series aims to create a forum for debate between different
theoretical and philosophical traditions in the social sciences. As
well as covering broad schools of thought, the series will also
concentrate upon the work of particular thinkers whose ideas have
had a major impact on social science (these books appear under the
sub-series title of 'Theoretical Traditions in the Social Sciences').
The series is not limited to abstract theoretical discussion - it also
includes more substantive works on contemporary capitalism, the
state, politics and other questions.
Published titles
Tony Bilton, Kevin Bonnett, Philip Jones, Ken Sheard, Michelle Stanworth and
Andrew Webster: Introductory Sociology
Simon Clarke: Marx, Marginalism and Modern Sociology
Emile Durkheim: The Division of Labour in Society (trans. W. D. Halls)
Emile Durkheim: The Rules of Sociological Method (ed. Steven Lukes, trans. W. D.
Halls)
Boris Frankel: Beyond the State?
Anthony Giddens: A Contemporary Critique ofH istorical Materialism
Anthony Giddens: Central Problems in Social Theory
Anthony Giddens: Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory
Anthony Giddens and David Held (eds.): Classes, Power and Conflict
Geoffrey Ingham: Capitalism Divided?
Terry Johnson, Christopher Dandeker and Clive Ashworth: The Structure ofS ocial
Theory
Douglas Kellner: Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis ofM arxism
Jorge Larrain: Marxism and Ideology
Ali Rattansi: Marx and the Division of Labour
Gerry Rose: Deciphering Sociological Research
John Scott: The Upper Classes: Property and Privilege in Britain
Steve Taylor: Durkheim and the Study ofS uicide
John B. Thompson and David Held ( eds.): Habermas: Critical Debates
John Urry: The Anatomy of Capitalist Societies
Forthcoming Titles:
Martin Albrow: Max Weber and the Construction ofS ocial Theory
Ali Rattansi and Dominic Strinati: Marx and the Sociology of Class
Michel Foucault
Mark Cousins
Athar Hussain
M
MACMILLAN
© Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain 1984
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First published 1984
Reprinted 1985
Published by
Higher and Further Education Division
MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG212XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cousins, Mark
Foucault - (Theoretical traditions in the
social sciences).
1. Foucault, Michel
I. Title II. Hussain, Athar III. Series
194 B2430.F724
ISBN 978-0-333-28651-7 ISBN 978-1-349-17561-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17561-1
Contents
Preface vi
References and Abbreviations vii
1 Introduction 1
PART I KNOWLEDGE AND DISCOURSE
Introduction 14
2 The Classical Episteme 16
3 The Human Sciences 47
4 The Archaeology of Knowledge 76
PART II THE ASYLUM, THE CLINIC AND THE PRISON
Introduction 100
5 The Asylum 106
6 The Clinic 141
7 ThePrison 168
PART III SEXUALITY AND POWER
Introduction 200
8 Sexuality 202
9 Power 225
10 Conclusions 252
References 266
Bibliography 267
Index 275
Author Index 275
Subject Index 276
Preface
Although we have worked on this book jointly and written it as a
single text, we are individually responsible for its particular parts.
Mark Cousins wrote the Introduction and Part I and Athar
Hussain Parts II and III; we jointly wrote the Conclusions. In the
course of writing this book, we have benefited from the comments
and suggestions by Parveen Adams, Colin Gordon, Barry Hindess,
Paul Hirst and Jill Hodges; we thank them all. We owe a special
debt of gratitude to Beverley Brown for her editorial work on the
manuscript as well as detailed comments. We would also like to
thank Anna Wynn for typing the manuscript.
London, November 1983 MARK COUSINS
ATHAR HUSSAIN
References and
Abbreviations
A comprehensive bibliography of Foucault's writings is at the end
of this book. That bibliography is divided into sections (denoted by
Roman numerals), and items in each section are arranged
according to the year of publication and numbered. Thus a
reference in the text such as (111.3: 25) refers to page 25 of Item 3 in
Section III. Where there is more than one item under one entry, we
have identified them by the title or a part of it. However, we have
treated the miscellanea Power and Knowledge as a single text and
referred to page numbers only. Where appropriate, we have
referred to the English translations only. The works of Foucault
with which this book is principally concerned are referred to in the
text not by their bibliographical number (indicated in brackets
below) but by the following abbreviations.
AK The Archaeology of Knowledge (1.6)
AS L 'archeologie du savoir (1.6)
BC The Birth of the Clinic (1.3)
DP Discipline and Punish (1.9)
HF Histoire de la Folie (1972 edition) (1.2)
HS The History of Sexuality (1.10)
LCMP Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (11.1)
LMC Les mots et les choses (1.5)
MC Madness and Civilization (1.2)
MG Les machines a guerir (III.2)
NC Naissance de la clinique (1.3)
OT The Order of Things (1.5)
PK Power and Knowledge (11.2)
SP Surveiller et punir (1.9)
References to works of other authors are in the form of the name
and either the title of the work in question or the year of its publi
cation.
1
Introduction
There is something repulsive about books which pretend to sub
stitute for other books, and something ridiculous about beginning
that substitution with an introduction. Typically, such intro
ductions seek to indicate what unifies the work in question, the real
unity which has had to wait for its omniscient salesman who will
now explain where the work has come from, what are its distinctive
features, what campaigns it has endured. They seek to proclaim the
novelty of the work but do so by mediating it for the reader so that
it may be assimilated into a known and familiar terrain. Masters
are proclaimed and then mastered. Our description of the work of
Michel Foucault does not substitute for his works; it is not without
its own definite conditions of presentation. Nor does it wish to state
a covert unity in Foucault's work, the unfolding of a theme. It does
not find one. Above all, it does not wish to find the source, or the
meaning or the import of Foucault's work beyond that work. We
shall not argue that all is made clear by considering a 'crisis' in tra
ditionalleft-wing politics, by considering a 'crisis' in philosophy,
by considering the world and especially May 1968. The grandeur of
explanation by reference to 'crisis' wears a little thin with constant
use. Critical critics know the world too quickly.
The starting-point of our exposition is the cCilviction that the
strength of Foucault's work lies in the particular analyses he
performs. Simple as it may be, the value of analysis needs to be
asserted within the human and social sciences, when they are so fre
quently evacuated by schemes of empty generality or smothered
under the weight of antiquarian detail. Now certainly Foucault's
analyses have a serial continuity with each other. They all concern
the modern organization of theoretical and practical know ledges
and their relation to certain practices and forms of social organ
ization. But the problems that Foucault's analyses address are each
different. They do not sum up nor do they exemplify a single
methodological principle. Rather than impose a felicitous unity
upon the work we prefer, in this introduction, to indicate what we
take to be habitual features of Foucault's analyses.
2 Introduction
To begin with, there is the negative fact that Foucault does not
construct a general theory of social relations. Neither does he
propose a general theory of the relation between forms of knowl
edge and social practices and forms of social organisation, nor even
a general concept of knowledge. In the work which formalizes his
analytic procedures most clearly, the Archaeology of Knowledge,
the movement is to give the slip to conventional positions, not to
establish a formal analytic. It is chiefly a work which proceeds
through negation. In one sense this should not be a surprise. For
the objects of his analyses, (most obviously in The Order of Things)
are frequently general theoretical systems themselves. He is con
cerned more to analyse them than to supersede them. So it is
redundant to construct a Foucault which has all the attributes of a
general theory, one which can be wheeled into battle with the
masters and fathers of social thought. Yet this is done, especially in
respect to the question of power, where Foucault is alleged to have
sired a general theory of power which is an alternative to the con
ventional theories of power. We shall argue that while Foucault's
treatment of power relations is distinctive and novel, this does not
constitute a general theory.
Yet while we present Foucault's work as a series of analyses
rather than work from which a general theory can be inferred, we
do not at all wish to deny that the work has powerful implications
for theoretical work within the social sciences. This should be taken
in two senses. First, his particular analyses of the relation between
forms of knowledge and social practices implicated in psychiatry or
criminology throw into question a number of widespread epistemo
logical and sociological assumptions which govern conventional
analyses. We shall develop the implications of this point in the
chapter on The Archaeology of Knowledge and in the conclusion.
Secondly, especially in The Order of Things but also in the analyses
of Madness and Civilisation and Discipline and Punish, he provides
an analysis of the human sciences themselves, together with the
ancillary fields of criminology and psychiatry. The implications of
these analyses are ambiguous since Foucault's analysis does not
take the form of a critique, still less any outline of an alternative
scheme of knowledge. But if his analysis be accepted it is clear that
many a conventional position (and just as many a soi-disant uncon
ventional position) in the social sciences is left in considerable dis
comfort. Foucault's analyses induce a series of discontents with the
social and human sciences without any facile proclamation of their
transcenden.ce.