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Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France

Lectures at the Collège de France
Author Michel Foucault
Original title Lectures at the Collège de France series
Translator Graham Burchell
Country France
Language French
Published St Martin's Press
Abnormal
  • Lectures on the Will to Know
On the Government of the Living
  • Psychiatric Power
Security, Territory, Population
  • Society Must be Defended
The Birth of Biopolitics
  • The Courage of Truth
The Government of Self and Others
  • The Hermeneutics of the Subject
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)

On the proposal of Jules Vuillemin, a chair in the department of Philosophy and History was created at Collège de France to replace the late Jean Hyppolite. The title of the new chair was The history of systems of thought and it was created on 30 November 1969. Vuillemin put forward the then-little known outside the shores of France-philosopher Michel Foucault - to the general assembly of professors and Foucault was duly elected on the 12th April 1970. He was 44 years old. As required by this appointment he held a series of public lectures from 1970 until his death in 1984. These lectures in which he further advanced his work, were summarised from audio recordings and edited by Michel Senellart. They were subsequently translated into English and further edited by Graham Burchell and published posthumously by St Martin's Press.

This was an important time for Foucault and marks an important switch of methodology from ‘archaeology’ to ‘genealogy’ (according to Foucault he never abandoned the archaeology method). This was also a period of transition of thought for Foucault; the Dutch TV-televised Foucault Noam Chomsky Human nature Justice versus Power debate of November 1971 at the Eindhoven University of Technology appears at this exact time period as his first inaugural lecture were delivered at the Collège de France entitled “the Order Of Discourse” delivered on 2 December 1970 (translated and published into English as "The Discourse On Language") then a week later (9 December 1970) his first ever full inaugural lecture course was delivered at the Collège de France "The Will to Knowledge" course Foucault promised to explore; "fragment by fragment," the "morphology of the will to knowledge," through alternating historical periods, inquiries and theoretical questioning. The lectures produced were called "Lectures On The Will To Know"; all of this within a space of a year.

The first phase of Foucault’s thought is characterized by knowledge construction of various types and how each thread of knowledge systems combine together to produce a series of networks (Foucault uses the term ‘Grille’) to produce a successful fully functional ‘subject’ and a workable fully functional human society. Foucault uses the terms epistemological indicators and epistemological breaks to show, contrary to popular opinion, that these “indicators” and “breaks” require skilled trained technical group of ‘specialists’ in the various knowledge fields and a trained rigorous professionalized regulatory body of which know-how on behalf of those who use the terms (discourse formations or “speech/discourse”) with a professional body that can make the terms used stand up to further rational scrutiny. Scientific knowledge for Foucault isn’t an advancement for human progress as is so often portrayed by the human sciences (such as the humanities and the social sciences) but is much more of a subtle method of organizing and producing firstly an individual subject, and secondly, a fully functional society functioning as a self-replicated control apparatus not as a group of ‘free’ atomized individuals but as a collective societal, organised (or drilled) unit both in terms of industrial Production, labour power and a militarily organized unit (in the guise of armies) which is beneficial for the production of “epistemological indicators” or “breaks” enabling society to “control itself” rather than have external factors (such as the state for example) to do the job.


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