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How to Read Foucault
Intent upon letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. Michel Foucault was a philosopher of extraordinary talent, political activist, social theorist, cultural critic, and creative historian. He irreversibly shaped the way we think today about such controversial issues as power, sexuality, madness, and criminality.
Johanna Oksala explores the conceptual tools that Foucault gave us for constructing new forms of thinking as well as for smashing old certainties. She offers a lucid account of him as a thinker whose persistent aim was to challenge the self-evidence and necessity of our current experiences, practices, and institutions by showing their historical development and, therefore, contingency.
Extracts are taken from the whole range of Foucault’s writings―his books, essays, lectures, and interviews―including the major works History of Madness , The Order of Things , Discipline and Punish , and The History of Sexuality .
Johanna Oksala explores the conceptual tools that Foucault gave us for constructing new forms of thinking as well as for smashing old certainties. She offers a lucid account of him as a thinker whose persistent aim was to challenge the self-evidence and necessity of our current experiences, practices, and institutions by showing their historical development and, therefore, contingency.
Extracts are taken from the whole range of Foucault’s writings―his books, essays, lectures, and interviews―including the major works History of Madness , The Order of Things , Discipline and Punish , and The History of Sexuality .
130 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2007
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November 15, 2008
Yes, this is a very good basic guide to the French thinker. No, it does not easily escape the obscurities inherent in the subject - but it is worth persevering with.
Friends know that I have a fairly low opinion of the many French attempts to intellectualise existence into mere words. The post-structuralists can be a particular bete noire of mine. But a major exception must be Michel Foucault who has made two major contributions to what really matters in life - that is, not what we think the world is but how we think the world through so that we can live in it better.
The first contribution was to seek to uncover the 'archaeology' (his term) and 'genealogy' (the term is derived from Nietzche) of institutions, social norms and techniques of control in society so that we are enabled critically to question why it is that things are as they are. This is not to be assumed to be (as a generation of Marxists or existentialists might have seen matters) the means to a necessary commitment to liberation or revolution in a utopian way. On the contrary, understanding how things have come to be is a way of coming to terms with facts on the ground as much as it is of changing them. The point of this is to be found in the second contribution.
Each person (in a sense, this is a development of the existentialist mentality without accepting the existentialists' belief in total freedom of choice) is a potential creative process, a work of art in itself. Each of us is being made in a relationship between materials to hand (society) and our will to create ourselves. No questioning of social norms means a blank canvas but a canvas is there nevertheless, yet, without the canvas or other materials, even found materials, we can produce nothing. Both canvas (society) and our creativity are necessary. Our personal art is to 'will' matters to a creative resolution that is all the better for it having investigated and critiqued its own archaeology, its own origins.
This is, in fact, startling stuff. Rationalist critics consider Foucault to be offering us a narcissistic model of human development in which self-regarding humans a-socially bend social norms to their own ends wherever and as they can for what is implied to be pure self-gratification.
In fact, the critics have missed the point The narcissism lies in the critics' own belief that they can and should bend the world to norms that are unquestioned. This is largely because the critics have allowed themselves to become wholly identified with these norms (even the norms of rebellion and resistance to norms) - to the extent of ceasing to have an independent existence of their own. They have become their world, over-socialised into essentialism. Their narcissism lies in their identification with their world, a social ego vaster than that of an individual who is concerned with their own creative development in relation to significant others.
The paradox of Foucault's position is that a critical detachment from norms does not mean a war against norms but only the creation of the possibility that norms might not be taken as dogma, that they are norms that create a framework for a liberation. This liberation comes from a personal assessment of the relationship between the creative individual and inherited structures of power that includes their own power to define and so manage what power actually is. Best personal choices may, indeed, once many individuals engage in their own creation, be truly revolutionary in changing social norms - but not through a programme of work, only through a programme of being.
There is very much more to Foucault than this. As usual, I have elided his position with my own theft of his work - which I suspect would be precisely what he would consider appropriate.
The wider interest in him is less in regard to his potential influence on personal liberation than on his sustained onslaught on inherited modes of defining persons into convenient essences, as well as his analysis of the social structuring of power in which the 'victim' is as complicit as the 'oppressor'. The implication of his work is that 'norms' are such that any 'formal' revolution will merely shift the persons doing the oppression and the victims into new roles of equal 'normality', unless both victim and oppressor come to see their 'normal' practices as inappropriate, inutile, uneconomic and/or socially unnecessary. In short, any real change must be change in consciousness about power rather than in actual physical control of systems of power.
The area of dispute I would have with him is the same as I would have with other post-structuralists. The analysis of language as creating persons so that persons and society are (to oversimplify) little more than language and codes is said to mean that there is no such thing as 'man'. To an extent, this is true - there is no quintessence of man nor indeed of anything. All definitions are fluid so that nothing is fixed over time. But this has always led me to the 'great so what?' because the fluidity and the ability to participate in that fluidity, by manipulating and appropriating language and codes, restores 'personality' to existence by the back door.
If it is only through the manipulation of terms to define power relations, a fluid but very real sense of man (meant non-sexistly) engaged in its own creation through the creative force of each and every one of its components, emerges. This more organic vision may seem dangerously essentialist but this would be a mistake.
The fluid self-definitional process of 'men operating within language systems' creates no point of fixed external essence. It is not derived from anything more than the accumulated transactions between creative individuals yet this provides the basis for the acceptance and destruction of the social norms that at any point in time serves to create a definition of Man (meaning the accumulated and present but not future culture in which individual men exist). It is not that Society exists but that Man exists as social norms. This is not something that Foucault is likely to accept (nor probably the reader).
A major insight of Foucault has transformed political thinking amongst critics of the existing system even if this by-passes a professional political class that is well embedded within the current system of power relations - that is, that all those involved in a power relations are complicit with it.
This is held (rightly) as a powerful bloc to the acceptability of Marxist socialism as a simple theory of liberation. Similarly, the apparent liberation within identity politics (which dominated the 1970s and is now coming to its apogee but also to its probable end with the election of Obama and his rivalry with Hillary Clinton in the US) is more illusion than reality.
Identity politics merely disrupts the system to the point of bringing it to the brink of collapse, but not because the identity politicians intend it to be brought to the brink (as in the accidental 'toxic' effects of the use of political pressure on banks to lend cash to blacks who could never have paid back the loans), but because the identity politicians have worked within a system in which political pressure has been treated as merely one factor within the total system of free market management of money. The rest is history and, indeed, may make the current political class history.
Foucault's potential for critique is neither of the Right nor of the Left in itself but is a tool for either or neither or something new. For those concerned with true redistribution of power and resources, it will help raise the question of how a black or female President can, in any real sense, make any fundamental difference to the liberation of anyone so long as the system and social norms remain as they are. To identify oneself primarily as gay, black, woman or indigenous white is to abnegate one's duty to creative personal development.
Foucault is not the final word on anything. His arguments are merely persuasive and suggestive. His position is actually ethical rather than political - he suggests 'the permanent training of oneself by oneself' as Oksala puts it This does, indeed, 'resemble(s) the creation of a work of art' but it is not narcissism. It is the potential creation of a society of complexity and diversity through individual commitment to 'new fields of experience, pleasures, relationships, modes of living and thinking.'
We can immediately see here why such thinking is revolutionary because it rejects the use of boxes to set in place our identities. It rejects the way that social norms and customs are used to constrain us - but it is not by any means a-moral. Assuming the right spirit in which the creative process is undertaken, liberation is equally liberatory of others, certainly non-exploitative and non-oppressive and creates (in theory) an ever-widening circle of negotiated freedom. Of course, 'life is not like that'. A more cogent criticism of Foucault is not one of narcissism but of bringing in either utopianism or conservative pessimism (depending on the extent of the revolution of consciousness implied) by the back door.
Anyway, a good introduction. Not always an easy read at times but worth it for the clear and useful final chapters which may hit some people with the force of a revelation about what could be possible for us without our seeking to change more than can be changed. It might certainly stop futile attendance at political meetings which have no real effect on policy or society and which divert our attention to more productive behaviour at those points in society where we can have most direct personal effect.
Friends know that I have a fairly low opinion of the many French attempts to intellectualise existence into mere words. The post-structuralists can be a particular bete noire of mine. But a major exception must be Michel Foucault who has made two major contributions to what really matters in life - that is, not what we think the world is but how we think the world through so that we can live in it better.
The first contribution was to seek to uncover the 'archaeology' (his term) and 'genealogy' (the term is derived from Nietzche) of institutions, social norms and techniques of control in society so that we are enabled critically to question why it is that things are as they are. This is not to be assumed to be (as a generation of Marxists or existentialists might have seen matters) the means to a necessary commitment to liberation or revolution in a utopian way. On the contrary, understanding how things have come to be is a way of coming to terms with facts on the ground as much as it is of changing them. The point of this is to be found in the second contribution.
Each person (in a sense, this is a development of the existentialist mentality without accepting the existentialists' belief in total freedom of choice) is a potential creative process, a work of art in itself. Each of us is being made in a relationship between materials to hand (society) and our will to create ourselves. No questioning of social norms means a blank canvas but a canvas is there nevertheless, yet, without the canvas or other materials, even found materials, we can produce nothing. Both canvas (society) and our creativity are necessary. Our personal art is to 'will' matters to a creative resolution that is all the better for it having investigated and critiqued its own archaeology, its own origins.
This is, in fact, startling stuff. Rationalist critics consider Foucault to be offering us a narcissistic model of human development in which self-regarding humans a-socially bend social norms to their own ends wherever and as they can for what is implied to be pure self-gratification.
In fact, the critics have missed the point The narcissism lies in the critics' own belief that they can and should bend the world to norms that are unquestioned. This is largely because the critics have allowed themselves to become wholly identified with these norms (even the norms of rebellion and resistance to norms) - to the extent of ceasing to have an independent existence of their own. They have become their world, over-socialised into essentialism. Their narcissism lies in their identification with their world, a social ego vaster than that of an individual who is concerned with their own creative development in relation to significant others.
The paradox of Foucault's position is that a critical detachment from norms does not mean a war against norms but only the creation of the possibility that norms might not be taken as dogma, that they are norms that create a framework for a liberation. This liberation comes from a personal assessment of the relationship between the creative individual and inherited structures of power that includes their own power to define and so manage what power actually is. Best personal choices may, indeed, once many individuals engage in their own creation, be truly revolutionary in changing social norms - but not through a programme of work, only through a programme of being.
There is very much more to Foucault than this. As usual, I have elided his position with my own theft of his work - which I suspect would be precisely what he would consider appropriate.
The wider interest in him is less in regard to his potential influence on personal liberation than on his sustained onslaught on inherited modes of defining persons into convenient essences, as well as his analysis of the social structuring of power in which the 'victim' is as complicit as the 'oppressor'. The implication of his work is that 'norms' are such that any 'formal' revolution will merely shift the persons doing the oppression and the victims into new roles of equal 'normality', unless both victim and oppressor come to see their 'normal' practices as inappropriate, inutile, uneconomic and/or socially unnecessary. In short, any real change must be change in consciousness about power rather than in actual physical control of systems of power.
The area of dispute I would have with him is the same as I would have with other post-structuralists. The analysis of language as creating persons so that persons and society are (to oversimplify) little more than language and codes is said to mean that there is no such thing as 'man'. To an extent, this is true - there is no quintessence of man nor indeed of anything. All definitions are fluid so that nothing is fixed over time. But this has always led me to the 'great so what?' because the fluidity and the ability to participate in that fluidity, by manipulating and appropriating language and codes, restores 'personality' to existence by the back door.
If it is only through the manipulation of terms to define power relations, a fluid but very real sense of man (meant non-sexistly) engaged in its own creation through the creative force of each and every one of its components, emerges. This more organic vision may seem dangerously essentialist but this would be a mistake.
The fluid self-definitional process of 'men operating within language systems' creates no point of fixed external essence. It is not derived from anything more than the accumulated transactions between creative individuals yet this provides the basis for the acceptance and destruction of the social norms that at any point in time serves to create a definition of Man (meaning the accumulated and present but not future culture in which individual men exist). It is not that Society exists but that Man exists as social norms. This is not something that Foucault is likely to accept (nor probably the reader).
A major insight of Foucault has transformed political thinking amongst critics of the existing system even if this by-passes a professional political class that is well embedded within the current system of power relations - that is, that all those involved in a power relations are complicit with it.
This is held (rightly) as a powerful bloc to the acceptability of Marxist socialism as a simple theory of liberation. Similarly, the apparent liberation within identity politics (which dominated the 1970s and is now coming to its apogee but also to its probable end with the election of Obama and his rivalry with Hillary Clinton in the US) is more illusion than reality.
Identity politics merely disrupts the system to the point of bringing it to the brink of collapse, but not because the identity politicians intend it to be brought to the brink (as in the accidental 'toxic' effects of the use of political pressure on banks to lend cash to blacks who could never have paid back the loans), but because the identity politicians have worked within a system in which political pressure has been treated as merely one factor within the total system of free market management of money. The rest is history and, indeed, may make the current political class history.
Foucault's potential for critique is neither of the Right nor of the Left in itself but is a tool for either or neither or something new. For those concerned with true redistribution of power and resources, it will help raise the question of how a black or female President can, in any real sense, make any fundamental difference to the liberation of anyone so long as the system and social norms remain as they are. To identify oneself primarily as gay, black, woman or indigenous white is to abnegate one's duty to creative personal development.
Foucault is not the final word on anything. His arguments are merely persuasive and suggestive. His position is actually ethical rather than political - he suggests 'the permanent training of oneself by oneself' as Oksala puts it This does, indeed, 'resemble(s) the creation of a work of art' but it is not narcissism. It is the potential creation of a society of complexity and diversity through individual commitment to 'new fields of experience, pleasures, relationships, modes of living and thinking.'
We can immediately see here why such thinking is revolutionary because it rejects the use of boxes to set in place our identities. It rejects the way that social norms and customs are used to constrain us - but it is not by any means a-moral. Assuming the right spirit in which the creative process is undertaken, liberation is equally liberatory of others, certainly non-exploitative and non-oppressive and creates (in theory) an ever-widening circle of negotiated freedom. Of course, 'life is not like that'. A more cogent criticism of Foucault is not one of narcissism but of bringing in either utopianism or conservative pessimism (depending on the extent of the revolution of consciousness implied) by the back door.
Anyway, a good introduction. Not always an easy read at times but worth it for the clear and useful final chapters which may hit some people with the force of a revelation about what could be possible for us without our seeking to change more than can be changed. It might certainly stop futile attendance at political meetings which have no real effect on policy or society and which divert our attention to more productive behaviour at those points in society where we can have most direct personal effect.
February 20, 2015
This is a pretty run-of-the-mill Foucault secondary source. If you're interested in learning more about his ideas in an overall sense, this one is pretty good, but I think A Very Short Introduction to Foucault was much better, covered mostly the same sources, and was about the same length. (I prefer that series across the board to the "How to Read" series.)
The part that made it more entertaining for me were all of the nonsensical scribblings of an angry, young, Christian woman who'd read the book before me and felt like leaving her message in pencil in a library book. There were so many good points, e.g. in relation to the term Queer Theory, she wrote, "Why call it that if that behavior is NORMAL?" and underlined normal. Or in relation to the idea of subjects discovering new ways to live, "Oh, I think we've discovered all the possible perversions! ... Good can exist w/o evil - would Foucault agree (if he were to accede such exists)? Or are there two co-existent necessarily?"
Maybe I'm a complete cynic at this point, but it's kind of funny to me when someone is so trapped in their ideological positions that they are incapable of even reading a basic secondary source like this and following its points. It's extra funny when the text is about how people have a hard time with reflexivity because they're locked in hierarchies of power and then people use those hierarchies unreflexively to "argue against" the author and end up just proving their points!
The part that made it more entertaining for me were all of the nonsensical scribblings of an angry, young, Christian woman who'd read the book before me and felt like leaving her message in pencil in a library book. There were so many good points, e.g. in relation to the term Queer Theory, she wrote, "Why call it that if that behavior is NORMAL?" and underlined normal. Or in relation to the idea of subjects discovering new ways to live, "Oh, I think we've discovered all the possible perversions! ... Good can exist w/o evil - would Foucault agree (if he were to accede such exists)? Or are there two co-existent necessarily?"
Maybe I'm a complete cynic at this point, but it's kind of funny to me when someone is so trapped in their ideological positions that they are incapable of even reading a basic secondary source like this and following its points. It's extra funny when the text is about how people have a hard time with reflexivity because they're locked in hierarchies of power and then people use those hierarchies unreflexively to "argue against" the author and end up just proving their points!
February 16, 2016
making philosophy the easiest thing to read.
November 25, 2019
For Foucault, here is no “pure� (my term) individual subject who thinks independently. That subject, rather, is a socially-constructed object who is the product of its (his/her) time and culture. Foucault uses the term, episteme, to illustrate the main periods in the history of thought that form the way a philosophical subject, formed unconsciously as an object, sees the world. The language we learn also frames a socially constructed reality. That, the author argues, is Foucault’s contribution to linguistic analysis. Unlike the existentialists, Foucault discounts the role of the individual thinker, but he also shares their belief that we, via a deep awareness, can emancipate ourselves from these chains of time and culture and create ourselves as a work of art. This is what he seems to mean by the first chapter title, “The Freedom of Philosophy.�
The book is pointed in saying that Foucault does not believe there’s a true self and the author argues that Foucault cautions against “the assumption that there are anthropological universals: truths about human beings that hold in all cultures and all historical times.� But the way the author states Foucault’s objection to human universals is not so much factual. It is, rather, because the implication of such facts for what is and what is not normal, particularly regarding the sexuality, race, gender and mental illness that Foucault emphasizes. Foucault is correct in seeing the potency of socially constructed notions, but such notions also hide a deeper reality of why we hold them, and with such intensity, in the first place? What is the motivation that underlies, for example, the need for power? Why are we so tribal? Why are we prone to defer to authority or to conform to the group? Might there not be examples of human universals, found to some significant degree because of the survival value they provide? But at the next level down, might there not be variation in these key human universals � variation being the essence of Darwinian evolution � so that the notion of “true self� is not actually a universal self as it might apply to everyone, but as it applies to each of us individually. Fear protects everyone (a universal), but some are more fearful than others. In Foucault’s examples, the norm of sexuality is not a strict male-female division as conventional society would have it, but a variation in the nature of our sexuality (being gay, lesbian transsexual, queer, etc.). And, it’s interesting that Foucault’s own favored terminology, episteme, ironically is a social construction that denies the existence of a true self. In other words, Foucault’s own philosophical framing prevents us from seeing those deeper levels of knowledge about ourselves that would allow the artful re-creation of ourselves in ways that are more truthful and healthy for ourselves and society.
The book is pointed in saying that Foucault does not believe there’s a true self and the author argues that Foucault cautions against “the assumption that there are anthropological universals: truths about human beings that hold in all cultures and all historical times.� But the way the author states Foucault’s objection to human universals is not so much factual. It is, rather, because the implication of such facts for what is and what is not normal, particularly regarding the sexuality, race, gender and mental illness that Foucault emphasizes. Foucault is correct in seeing the potency of socially constructed notions, but such notions also hide a deeper reality of why we hold them, and with such intensity, in the first place? What is the motivation that underlies, for example, the need for power? Why are we so tribal? Why are we prone to defer to authority or to conform to the group? Might there not be examples of human universals, found to some significant degree because of the survival value they provide? But at the next level down, might there not be variation in these key human universals � variation being the essence of Darwinian evolution � so that the notion of “true self� is not actually a universal self as it might apply to everyone, but as it applies to each of us individually. Fear protects everyone (a universal), but some are more fearful than others. In Foucault’s examples, the norm of sexuality is not a strict male-female division as conventional society would have it, but a variation in the nature of our sexuality (being gay, lesbian transsexual, queer, etc.). And, it’s interesting that Foucault’s own favored terminology, episteme, ironically is a social construction that denies the existence of a true self. In other words, Foucault’s own philosophical framing prevents us from seeing those deeper levels of knowledge about ourselves that would allow the artful re-creation of ourselves in ways that are more truthful and healthy for ourselves and society.
January 2, 2025
نقش روشنفکر طرح شیوهها� بديع اندیشیدن است:
روشنفکر باعث میشو� انسانه� جهان پیرامونشا� را در پرتوی متفاوت بنگرند، او عادتها� ذهنی مرسوم مردم را مشوش میکن� و آنه� را برمیانگیز� تا خواستار و آغازگر تغییر باشند. روشنفکر وجدان اخلاقی جامعه نیست، نقش او داوری سیاسی نیست، وظیفه� روشنفکر آن است که با ممکن ساختن شیوهها� بدیل اندیشیدن، راه رهایی را برای ما هموار کند.
(ص ۲۱)
روشنفکر باعث میشو� انسانه� جهان پیرامونشا� را در پرتوی متفاوت بنگرند، او عادتها� ذهنی مرسوم مردم را مشوش میکن� و آنه� را برمیانگیز� تا خواستار و آغازگر تغییر باشند. روشنفکر وجدان اخلاقی جامعه نیست، نقش او داوری سیاسی نیست، وظیفه� روشنفکر آن است که با ممکن ساختن شیوهها� بدیل اندیشیدن، راه رهایی را برای ما هموار کند.
(ص ۲۱)
February 26, 2021
How to read Oksala.
June 28, 2020
Foucault is just as, if not more, relevant today than he was during the 60's and 70's. The questions he raises about for example mental health, the institution of prisons, gender identity, critique of the government as a form of resistance, are all burning questions of our day. And, of course, he exhorts the individual to resist characterizing themselves by society's categories and allow themselves to chart a path that fulfills them - thereby blurring the boundary between the creator of art and the creation. Oksala does a great job expanding upon and making Foucault, who is abstruse at times, accessible to all.
October 15, 2013
First, the series. If the other books in this series are as good as this one, it is a real resource. This one has ten chapters,each on a topic like The Prison, The Death of Man, and Repressed Sexuality. The chapters in with an extended quote from a book or paper, and then the topic is discussed. You get a pretty good survey of Foucault's work here. From the chapter Practices of the Self: "Ethics refers to a creative activity, the permanent training of oneself by oneself." There's a chapter called Reason and Madness, which starts with a quote from Foucault's History of Madness.
March 30, 2018
Foucault had been on the periphery of my studies at undergraduate, now a bit older I realised I'd never get round to reading his huge and notoriously dense original texts so not wanting to miss out entirely I looked for an introductory book.
Oksala's book is just that and an excellent one at that, she covers 10 themes which she skillfully links together to track the evolution of his ideas - at the heart of which is the social construction of the self (by external and internal forces).
I'd recommend this book to anyone as an excellent primer on Foucault and wider ideas of sociology.
Oksala's book is just that and an excellent one at that, she covers 10 themes which she skillfully links together to track the evolution of his ideas - at the heart of which is the social construction of the self (by external and internal forces).
I'd recommend this book to anyone as an excellent primer on Foucault and wider ideas of sociology.
October 16, 2023
Great and quick introduction to Foucault’s main themes, and enough that you’ll understand most references to his ideas in other books. He examines the machinery of power and how science is often used to explain and create ethics of which we should be skeptical (e.g. sexual biology, psychoanalysis, criminality).
November 24, 2012
I love reading analyses of Foucault's thought and this is the best one I've ever read. It could have been longer, though, spending fleeting time on some of Foucault's most important concepts.
June 9, 2020
A great primer that will help the curious reader misunderstand, a little less, what is proving to be the most important thinker of late 20th and early 21st century.
November 14, 2022
“If you want new ideas, read old books.�
–attributed to Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.
It was just happenstance that I stumbled upon a video that was the famous debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. The Dutch philosopher Fons Elders invited both of them to the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands in 1971. They discussed the reality of human nature. If you stream the video you see Foucault’s provocative and animated spar with Chomsky. Intense eyes, effective French, and a penchant for captivating delivery. I wanted to read what this man was talking about. For many readers like me, diving straight into philosophical texts without a background is difficult. Whenever in doubt, check Five Books for recommendations. Thanks to Gary Gutting’s list of best books on Foucault I found Johanna Oksala’s How To Read Foucault (2007).
Oksala is a Foucault scholar with many books on the philosopher’s work under her belt. It’s rare to find such an accessible introductory text for general readers written by an expert. But make no mistake the book is not a diluted version without substance. Every chapter begins with sections from Foucault’s writing followed by Oksala’s clear commentary. She provides precise context and pulls relevant sections from Foucault’s work to showcase them.
The difficulty in introducing Foucault to readers is partly because of his multifaceted nature. He trained as a philosopher at the famous École Normale, where some of the most famous 20th-century French philosophers like Sartre, Beauvoir, and Derrida studied. The 1960s saw the dominance of existentialism, the study of human nature and human existence. But philosophers like Foucault and Derrida focused on social and linguistic determinants of thought and discarded the central role of human nature. This new wave is now classified as post-structuralism. Foucault became an intellectual historian using a novel method of historiography to address philosophical questions of contemporary society and its problems.
Foucault’s work is broadly classified using historical terms. The first phase spanned the 1960s and was called archaeologies: works like History of Madness (1961) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). The 1970s was the genealogical phase: Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality, vol. 1(1976). The final ethical phase was in the 1980s: the final two volumes of The History of Sexuality (1984). Rather than seeing these works as clearly demarcated phases readers must see them as three branches of his large study. Different yet concatenated. After I read the book I saw Foucault as a polymath-philosopher because all three phases involve the excavation of historical works from a wide range of subjects. As Oksala writes,
"Foucault’s thought, similar to his life, defies categorization under a single motif."
Why should anyone read Foucault today? He studied the historical development of prisons, the history of sexuality and sexual practices, history of mental illnesses and institutions among many other subjects to explain contemporary social and medical discourses and power relations in society. I was particularly interested in the historiography of incarceration and how the power structures necessitate the existence of prisons. The television series Time (2021) is a good companion for readers when you read about Discipline and Punish (1975). The series is about a newly imprisoned man and a prison guard both of whom grapple with guilt, ethics, and fears. It begs the question about the efficacy of incarceration in social reforms.
Similarly, in The History of Sexuality, Foucault insists that ‘homosexual� was a name that emerged in the 19th century as a result of pathological discourse and power relations as opposed to a biological construct. Oksala writes,
"Foucault characterised his work as a genealogy of the modern subject: a history of how people are constructed as different types of subjects � as delinquents, homosexuals, mentally ill, or, through such exclusions, as normal and healthy. Such a history is essentially linked to political struggles: it is possible to contest and ultimately transform oppressive and degrading identities when they are exposed as social constructions rather than expressions of natural facts."
We require similar tools today not to opinionate on the state of things but to cultivate alternative ways of thinking. Oksala covers all major themes and works of Foucault in this book. It is rich with resources and put together deftly. Never slacking. Never boring. Pavlov was right about reading old books for new ideas.
–attributed to Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.
It was just happenstance that I stumbled upon a video that was the famous debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. The Dutch philosopher Fons Elders invited both of them to the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands in 1971. They discussed the reality of human nature. If you stream the video you see Foucault’s provocative and animated spar with Chomsky. Intense eyes, effective French, and a penchant for captivating delivery. I wanted to read what this man was talking about. For many readers like me, diving straight into philosophical texts without a background is difficult. Whenever in doubt, check Five Books for recommendations. Thanks to Gary Gutting’s list of best books on Foucault I found Johanna Oksala’s How To Read Foucault (2007).
Oksala is a Foucault scholar with many books on the philosopher’s work under her belt. It’s rare to find such an accessible introductory text for general readers written by an expert. But make no mistake the book is not a diluted version without substance. Every chapter begins with sections from Foucault’s writing followed by Oksala’s clear commentary. She provides precise context and pulls relevant sections from Foucault’s work to showcase them.
The difficulty in introducing Foucault to readers is partly because of his multifaceted nature. He trained as a philosopher at the famous École Normale, where some of the most famous 20th-century French philosophers like Sartre, Beauvoir, and Derrida studied. The 1960s saw the dominance of existentialism, the study of human nature and human existence. But philosophers like Foucault and Derrida focused on social and linguistic determinants of thought and discarded the central role of human nature. This new wave is now classified as post-structuralism. Foucault became an intellectual historian using a novel method of historiography to address philosophical questions of contemporary society and its problems.
Foucault’s work is broadly classified using historical terms. The first phase spanned the 1960s and was called archaeologies: works like History of Madness (1961) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). The 1970s was the genealogical phase: Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality, vol. 1(1976). The final ethical phase was in the 1980s: the final two volumes of The History of Sexuality (1984). Rather than seeing these works as clearly demarcated phases readers must see them as three branches of his large study. Different yet concatenated. After I read the book I saw Foucault as a polymath-philosopher because all three phases involve the excavation of historical works from a wide range of subjects. As Oksala writes,
"Foucault’s thought, similar to his life, defies categorization under a single motif."
Why should anyone read Foucault today? He studied the historical development of prisons, the history of sexuality and sexual practices, history of mental illnesses and institutions among many other subjects to explain contemporary social and medical discourses and power relations in society. I was particularly interested in the historiography of incarceration and how the power structures necessitate the existence of prisons. The television series Time (2021) is a good companion for readers when you read about Discipline and Punish (1975). The series is about a newly imprisoned man and a prison guard both of whom grapple with guilt, ethics, and fears. It begs the question about the efficacy of incarceration in social reforms.
Similarly, in The History of Sexuality, Foucault insists that ‘homosexual� was a name that emerged in the 19th century as a result of pathological discourse and power relations as opposed to a biological construct. Oksala writes,
"Foucault characterised his work as a genealogy of the modern subject: a history of how people are constructed as different types of subjects � as delinquents, homosexuals, mentally ill, or, through such exclusions, as normal and healthy. Such a history is essentially linked to political struggles: it is possible to contest and ultimately transform oppressive and degrading identities when they are exposed as social constructions rather than expressions of natural facts."
We require similar tools today not to opinionate on the state of things but to cultivate alternative ways of thinking. Oksala covers all major themes and works of Foucault in this book. It is rich with resources and put together deftly. Never slacking. Never boring. Pavlov was right about reading old books for new ideas.
November 2, 2023
I highly recommend the book. The introduction is eloquent yet concise and explains Foucault's significance beyond the university into the worlds of political activism, the practice of health, and for society at-large. I'd use the remaining nine chapters as guides alongside whichever book of Foucault's you happen to be reading.
Perhaps Oksala's biggest achievement is how she unifies Foucault's sprawling oeuvre--from sexuality to medicine to psychiatry--within the same larger research "project." Foucault's core mission, Oksala writes, is to expand human freedom. This he does by exposing the artificiality of modern institutions, whose ostensible "scientific-ness" and objectivity mask forms of discipline, conformity, and control that inhibit individual flourishing and uniqueness.
Foucault is at heart a critical historian, and his analytical target is the modern institution of the 19th century. For in this era, scientific advances transformed medicine, psychiatry, public health, and criminology into "disciplines." Newly enshrined with the authority of science, these fields established goalposts for appropriate human behavior, while the knowledge they generated was deployed for the technocratic management of populations. As such, they advanced a "normalizing" conformity that pathologized and, conversely, privileged only certain forms of being human, such as in the realm of mental health. Yet, Foucault argues, these presumptively "objective" discourses are anything but. They are social constructions designed to advance the goals of the prevailing system of power of any given time period. When people realize this--that the constraints imposed on psychological and physical expression are, at root, artifices--they become capable of sloughing them off and acting in ways more honest to their true selves.
Such discourses evolve and shift over time, as new "power/knowledge" dyads emerge from one historical period, or "episteme," to another. In "Discipline and Punish," for example, Foucault contrasts carceral discipline in two different eras. In the first, a murderer is put to death in a ghastly, public way. In the second, a criminal is incarcerated, his behavior controlled by an omniscient monitoring apparatus. This contrast, between a physically painful execution and a psychologically terrifying imprisonment, show how discourses around power—and the mechanisms used to express it--change over time. Yet, despite their differences, both systems share a common goal: that of “disciplining� people, bodies, and populations.
As systems of power grow more sophisticated and less reliant on physical punishment to enforce compliance, Foucault argued in his later work on "governmentality," forms of social control become more subtle, inserting themselves deeper into the human psyche. This can compel individuals to voluntarily conform themselves with the goals of the prevailing system of power, such as by internalizing "ideal" conceptions of mental health. But adopting these behaviors may come at the expense of individual uniqueness, possibly exacerbating feelings of internal stigma or shame for non-conforming individuals.
Foucault's hope seems to be that when we recognize these forces for what they are--as historically contingent social constructions advancing power under the cover of "knowledge"--we can unshackle our psyches, liberating ourselves and, in turn, society. "His idea of productive power--power that produces and incites rather than represses and censors forms of experience and knowledge--has provided valuable tools for challenging conservative political views on sexuality, gender, delinquency, and mental illness," Oksala writes (4).
Yet the call to freedom can also be interpreted as a call to petty anarchy. Take the recent Covid-19 protests, in which anti-vaxxers equated public health mandates with the expansion of a frightening "biopolitical police state" (see Colebrook 2023). Is this an unfair misappropriation of Foucault? Or did his blanket criticism of medicine and public health possibly feed these movements, giving them a veneer of intellectual respectability? In the United States, political opportunists frequently and dramatically raise the specter of an insidious "administrative deep state," a charge that echoes in part Foucault's criticism of technocratic governance? Apart from advocating for "productive power," what concrete political option does Foucault propose for improving on the current order? Why doesn't his analysis of power more strongly engage with the institution of the state?
Perhaps Oksala's biggest achievement is how she unifies Foucault's sprawling oeuvre--from sexuality to medicine to psychiatry--within the same larger research "project." Foucault's core mission, Oksala writes, is to expand human freedom. This he does by exposing the artificiality of modern institutions, whose ostensible "scientific-ness" and objectivity mask forms of discipline, conformity, and control that inhibit individual flourishing and uniqueness.
Foucault is at heart a critical historian, and his analytical target is the modern institution of the 19th century. For in this era, scientific advances transformed medicine, psychiatry, public health, and criminology into "disciplines." Newly enshrined with the authority of science, these fields established goalposts for appropriate human behavior, while the knowledge they generated was deployed for the technocratic management of populations. As such, they advanced a "normalizing" conformity that pathologized and, conversely, privileged only certain forms of being human, such as in the realm of mental health. Yet, Foucault argues, these presumptively "objective" discourses are anything but. They are social constructions designed to advance the goals of the prevailing system of power of any given time period. When people realize this--that the constraints imposed on psychological and physical expression are, at root, artifices--they become capable of sloughing them off and acting in ways more honest to their true selves.
Such discourses evolve and shift over time, as new "power/knowledge" dyads emerge from one historical period, or "episteme," to another. In "Discipline and Punish," for example, Foucault contrasts carceral discipline in two different eras. In the first, a murderer is put to death in a ghastly, public way. In the second, a criminal is incarcerated, his behavior controlled by an omniscient monitoring apparatus. This contrast, between a physically painful execution and a psychologically terrifying imprisonment, show how discourses around power—and the mechanisms used to express it--change over time. Yet, despite their differences, both systems share a common goal: that of “disciplining� people, bodies, and populations.
As systems of power grow more sophisticated and less reliant on physical punishment to enforce compliance, Foucault argued in his later work on "governmentality," forms of social control become more subtle, inserting themselves deeper into the human psyche. This can compel individuals to voluntarily conform themselves with the goals of the prevailing system of power, such as by internalizing "ideal" conceptions of mental health. But adopting these behaviors may come at the expense of individual uniqueness, possibly exacerbating feelings of internal stigma or shame for non-conforming individuals.
Foucault's hope seems to be that when we recognize these forces for what they are--as historically contingent social constructions advancing power under the cover of "knowledge"--we can unshackle our psyches, liberating ourselves and, in turn, society. "His idea of productive power--power that produces and incites rather than represses and censors forms of experience and knowledge--has provided valuable tools for challenging conservative political views on sexuality, gender, delinquency, and mental illness," Oksala writes (4).
Yet the call to freedom can also be interpreted as a call to petty anarchy. Take the recent Covid-19 protests, in which anti-vaxxers equated public health mandates with the expansion of a frightening "biopolitical police state" (see Colebrook 2023). Is this an unfair misappropriation of Foucault? Or did his blanket criticism of medicine and public health possibly feed these movements, giving them a veneer of intellectual respectability? In the United States, political opportunists frequently and dramatically raise the specter of an insidious "administrative deep state," a charge that echoes in part Foucault's criticism of technocratic governance? Apart from advocating for "productive power," what concrete political option does Foucault propose for improving on the current order? Why doesn't his analysis of power more strongly engage with the institution of the state?
April 9, 2023
At the time of reading this I have only read a single primary text - Birth of a Clinic - so cannot comment on the accuracy of interpretation of the excerpts in the context of Foucault’s wider works.
Having said this, I will effortlessly praise Dr Oksala for the book. It strikes a nimble balance between density and approachability, sometimes even giving concepts concrete frames of reference.
My only criticism will be a longing for neutrality. Some passages contain popular counter arguments to Foucault’s thought by the wider community. The author introducing the reader to these is undeniably necessary; however, Dr Osaka goes a step further to give her own criticism of the criticisms. This, in my opinion, could have been eschewed.
Overall, a great and approachable introduction to one of the most influential European thinkers. I recommend it highly.
Having said this, I will effortlessly praise Dr Oksala for the book. It strikes a nimble balance between density and approachability, sometimes even giving concepts concrete frames of reference.
My only criticism will be a longing for neutrality. Some passages contain popular counter arguments to Foucault’s thought by the wider community. The author introducing the reader to these is undeniably necessary; however, Dr Osaka goes a step further to give her own criticism of the criticisms. This, in my opinion, could have been eschewed.
Overall, a great and approachable introduction to one of the most influential European thinkers. I recommend it highly.
Read
December 20, 2023En jaksa sen kummemmin kirjottaa tästä, mut ihan perushyvä kätevä tiivistys Foucault’n ajattelusta. Antaa sellasen hyvän punaisen langan mihin kietoa kaikki se mitä on ite tuotannosta ehtinyt lukea. Tyydyn vaan lainaamaan Oksalan loppukappaletta, joka summaa aika kivasti sen miks Foucault kiinnostaa:
”The important legacy of Foucault's thought lies not in telling us who or what we should be - upright citizens, beautiful and virtuous, sexually healthy and liberated - but in opening up spaces of freedom that make a singular way of life possible. Through reading him we are able to experience the world around us in radically new ways, and in the process become something different ourselves: subjects searching for ways of thinking, living and relating to other people that are perhaps currently still unimaginable.�
”The important legacy of Foucault's thought lies not in telling us who or what we should be - upright citizens, beautiful and virtuous, sexually healthy and liberated - but in opening up spaces of freedom that make a singular way of life possible. Through reading him we are able to experience the world around us in radically new ways, and in the process become something different ourselves: subjects searching for ways of thinking, living and relating to other people that are perhaps currently still unimaginable.�
Read
December 15, 2023My notes:
While short, this was a fantastic overview of Foucault's works!
This is a great prelude to studying his stuff in greater depth.
Check out my notes for quotes and side notes.
While short, this was a fantastic overview of Foucault's works!
This is a great prelude to studying his stuff in greater depth.
Check out my notes for quotes and side notes.
May 26, 2024
This work is an excellent, surprisingly clear introduction to Foucault's thought and work. I have read a couple of other expositions of his thought, and this is by far the most helpful, prior to jumping to read some of his work.
I highly recommend this "How To" guide!
I highly recommend this "How To" guide!
May 26, 2018
3 1/2 stars....review forthcoming, eventually, after working through foucault's works....
September 29, 2022
still don't know how to read foucault.
November 29, 2022
Excellent little book
March 13, 2023
Fits plenty of information into a small package, although at the cost of legibility at times. The style of writing is comprehensible but quite tiring to a non-native English speaker.
November 29, 2023
Three times I picked up this book and three times I put it down... I can't, I really can't...
April 6, 2021
i'm actually pretty excited to dive into some foucault after reading this book!
July 8, 2010
A decent introduction to Foucault for literary studies students, maybe philosophy students, too; but this book misses the extent to which Foucault's project is in line with Marx's, and without that I think Foucault's whole thing goes out the window. Maybe that's just me. I'd recommend just reading Foucault. He's a splendid writer.
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