Do people here generally have context on this? I've never heard of anything the article is talking about.
The portion of his work that I'm familiar with was concerned with the insight that societies are organized by "technologies" of discipline and the "genealogy"[1] of these technologies in different institutional contexts i.e. hospitals, prisons, schools.
When I first encountered Foucault's work as an undergraduate, I wished I'd read it much earlier as it would have helped me decode the prison-like experience of school. The contradiction between imposed ideologies of "freedom" (via studying US history, the news, conversation with adults, etc.) and the total control exerted by the state over where I could go, what I could say, and what I was to do nearly every minute of my life resulted in a lot of cognitive dissonance for me. If only I'd learned earlier what "ideology" meant and that it was well-known that "freedom" is not an ethical, political, or ontological given. Foucault's work reveals that we always exist within power structures and illuminates much of how these structures operate.
Foucault wrote about many different things. Mostly he was interested in the evolution of power and politics through western civilization. If you're interested in Foucault there are much better places to start than this article.
Anything regarding the Panopticon is fascinating.
That is why right wing writers sometimes refer to postmodernism as "Cultural Marxism". I don't like the term cultural marxism because it sounds conspiratorial, when really all that is going on is people using big words and the fear of appearing stupid to cow other people into submission.
Everyone else should get up to speed.
Okay, here's what the video is saying, in slightly-longer form. The exchange in the video is basically Chomsky saying "human nature" and Foucault laughing.
This gets at the heart of the hour-long debate: do humans have some sort of nature? Foucault, and philosophers like him, think that the idea of 'human nature' is complete and utter garbage. So when Chomsky admits that his position boils down to an appeal of human nature, Foucault just laughs at him.
It's a great moment that really highlights the whole thing. I love it.
That's what Foucault wants to know.
https://youtu.be/3wfNl2L0Gf8?t=9m48s
And from my little understanding, because they don't believe there's such thing as a human nature, since society, and other things from our surrounding affect us, and the "nature" could change in a different context, which would imply it isn't some kind of force behind us.
Okay, so the concept of 'human nature' in general needs some more definition, like you've said. Here's maybe a better phrasing of the problem: "Do humans have some sort of _innate_ properties that are shared amongst all humans?" This phrasing calls back to an old debate in philosophy: essentialism. This is a question of ontology, in other words, what kinds of things are there in the world, and how do we categorize them?
An essentialist takes the position that we can form categories of things by defining some set of properties, and then any entity which has those properties is one of those things. In other words, let's say something like "You're a human as long as you have a name." This is a position which is essentialist. And that might be a workable definition.
A non-essentialist may come along and challenge your ontology, though. "Ships also have names, but they are clearly not human." You may agree with this, and so you need to revise your set of properties. "Humans are things that have names, and walk on two legs." The non-essentialist may respond, "birds have names, and when they walk, they use two legs. Your ontology is incorrect.
You see where this is going. Those who take a position against essentialism claim that this approach to categorization is a folly. It's fundamentally broken.. To give you a counterpoint, I generally agree with a process philosophy, which means that I equate identity with _doing_, not with _being_. An example of a process philosopher's standpoint on ontology: "You're a Rubyist if you write Ruby code." This kind of categorization is more useful, because over time, my identity can change. I might be a Rubyist for a while, but at some point, I wasn't. And I might stop being one in the future, too. An approached based on do-ing includes things like a time component that an essentialist position never can.
So, returning to the original question, no, the question of an inherent nature doesn't make any sense, and therefore, neither does 'human nature'. So where do we go from there? Well, any claim that's reliant on an appeal to human nature is incorrect. For example, "Humans are inherently greedy."
Anyway, that's a hastily-typed overview of a concept in a HN comment, but hopefully that helps you get the gist of it.
In particular, delineating humans has the same problems as separating any species. You can have a group B that can interbreed with A and C, but A and C can't. Has anything useful come out of getting worked up over what to call species A, B, and C?
Definitions are very important. For example, one of the defining movements from second to third wave feminism was a move from essentialism. Second-wave essentialism couldn't handle the 1% of intersex people, for example, or the existence of trans individuals. (this is of course not the only thing that separates them, just one example)
These kinds of questions are full of real-world implications. This stuff matters when it comes down to questions like healthcare, and if some procedure is covered, for example. Any law which affects people based on some criteria. That's a lot of laws.
> In particular, delineating humans has the same problems as separating any species.
Absolutely, which is an other example of where this issue raises its head. Ontology is very relevant to many, many fields.
What a dishonest attempt at a characterization. You took the opporunity of the readers' unfamiliarity with a topic to interject your own subjective and vague opinion ("Second-wave essentiallism couldn't handle" -- what function does this phrase even serve beyond emotional release for the writer? What does it even mean?), without providing any links or citations to the extensive existing material that exists.
If you valued actual discourse, you would link to some article like Michelle Goldberg's "What is a Woman?"[0] in the New Yorker to provide some sort of context on the conflicting ideas of feminism and queer theory. But time and time again my fellow men who cheerlead for queer theory and identity politics bring nothing to the table but opportunistic, ingenuine rhetoric bordering on non-sequitur. I don't even need to claim anything about second-wave or modern radical feminists -- the transparently anti-intellectual liberal male digs his own grave.
If one's confidence in one's own bias is such that one can inject it into discourse without feeling the need to cite any material which asserts ideas which they are biased "against" ("Second-wave essentiallism", whatever that entails), or even import material supporting their own claims, would one not mind if another was to comment with some reading material for those who may be interested in this thread? For example, the 2013 letter "Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Criticism of 'Gender'" written by 37 second-wave and modern radical feminists [0], or the essay "SSCAB/DSCAB: Reconsidering the Conversation" written by a black radical feminist [1], or glosswitch's "Beauty and the cis" [2]? Surely it shouldn't change anything to point out that these writings exist.
[0] reprinted here: https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/authenticity-...
[1] https://bmgnedra.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/sscabdscab-reframi...
I didn't make any claims about the origin of the term. Your history is accurate, to my knowledge.
> without feeling the need to cite any material
This isn't a dissertation. It's HN. Not every last thing needs a citation.
And no, I don't 'mind' at all. I'm very sympathetic to many arguments made here. People should read second-wave stuff. I just come down on a different side of them, personally.
That assertion is a good illustration of the problem some Continental philosophers tried to address - what is a "species" and how is it defined? It's an arbitrary labeling we put on a collection of individuals that we perceive to have similarities.
This kind of thinking is exactly what lead Chomsky into the erroneous theories of Universal Grammar and the Language Acquisition Device. Studying real neurons in actual brains is what got linguistics out of the generative grammar dead-end: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics_Wars
(It is part of our nature to have constraints keeping us from being dogs. Anyone who wishes to prove otherwise is welcome to become a dog.)
In your argument against human nature, you stated: "An essentialist takes the position that we can form categories of things by defining some set of properties". But that's seems a strawman definition in this context, because no one can even define a chair. Much less a human. Fortunately, people who believe in the concept of human nature (virtually everyone) don't need to sit around making futile constructivist definitions.
Saying that there's no essential dog-nature does not inherently imply that one can become a dog.
> (virtually everyone)
Yes, Plato and Aristotle were essentialists, and you can't possibly over-state their influence on Western thought. But, I would argue that your 'everyone' includes many non-philosphers, who haven't necessarily considered this problem in the depth that philosophers have. That doesn't mean that essentialism is disproven or anything! But rightfully, in my mind anyway, a number of schools of thought take issue with it, just like any other position.
That said, actually, it depends on who you're talking to.
> that's seems a strawman definition in this context
It's not! That's the problem itself: you're absolutely right that defining what is a chair and what is human is very difficult.
It's sad that Foucault laughs at it, because it's essentially an argument by authority (his own) and not based on anything with scientific substance.
Of course if you pretend that "Science is always a power play" you can say whatever you want, because you've elevated your opinion to a position above criticism.
Oddly enough, this is a common ploy used by cult leaders.
My disdain for the pomo and Crit Theory people has no limits - because while academics have persuaded themselves that Foucault etc are geniuses who offered the humanities profound insights into culture and power etc, they've also been completely marginalised and screwed over by neo-capitalism, and have offered no useful resistance to it.
Somehow I can't help wondering if the two are related - because the whole nub of Critical Theory is the utterly mistaken assumption that deconstruction and tentative subjectivity have political power, when in fact they're the opposite of political power, and offer neither a useful insight into how power really works, nor any effective strategy for resisting its excesses.
> Of course if you pretend that "Science is always a power play" you can say whatever you want, because you've elevated your opinion to a position above criticism.
Or at least to a position where science is not a valid source of criticism.
If I understand correctly, poststructuralists say that all truth claims are about power, and only that, because objective truth cannot ever be determined. That leaves them free to make ever-more-blatant power plays in their own claims.
What you call "the history of ethology" hopefully comprises the blunders that at different points in history "the scientific establishment" made regarding the "nature" of a) black men, b) women, c) gay people, d) irish people, e) jewish people, f)... you get the idea.
These observations of "animal behavior" are both extremely unsophisticated, always failing to control for critical variables, and very tied up to what the society of the day wants the conclusions to be.
Even today, ignorant people go around talking about how "human nature is selfish". I think Foucualt's contributions were pretty great re: this precise discussion we're having over here. Certainly more important than the vast majority of ethological work out there.
If you want to challenge me on this, just answer my question: What is human nature, and what do you claim to know about it in 2015?
Are you going to try to explain the remarkable consistency of these interests across all political systems and historical periods as a purely political phenomenon?
If so, why are there clearly analogous interests in many primates and other animals?
I say you're wrong - and challenge you to provide solid observational evidence to prove conclusively that social and political traditions generate these interests.
No, I do not think so. There are vast, vast numbers of people who opt to teach and nurse instead of gunning for leadership, who opt to do salaried engineering instead of management, and I don't see why the latter in each case have a better claim on our "nature" as a species.
What do you mean by "interest in sex"? Human nature seems to also have an "interest in food", that in places like america is exacerbated into an obesity epidemic, but doesn't seem to say anything super meaningful about our relationship to eating. Isaac Newton died a virgin, I guess he wasn't human? Gay men have no interest in reproduction... is their humanity in question?
You should read stuff like UBC's "WEIRD" study, or how women were believed to have bigger sexual appetite than men at various places in time, before going off about observations "across all political systems and historical periods".
You seem to be obliquely pushing some notion that we are more dominant than cooperative, which is pretty ignorant in a thread about Foucault and Chomsky.
Indeed. And sex. And status in herd hierarchies.
That was my point. But it doesn't stop there. I'd also include symbolic abstraction, myth-making and narrative logic (as an efficient but flawed heuristic for passing on knowledge), persistent shared memory, embodied metaphors as per Lakoff - and so on.
It seems to me - and maybe to a lot of the Internet - that humans spend a lot of time and energy on these things.
Other species spend a lot of time on some of them, but not all of them.
There may be a reason for the difference.
So I have issues with the suggestion that they're always evidence of pathological socialisation - or that writing impenetrable books and laughing at and condescending to anyone who disagrees with their content is likely to make that socialisation any less pathological, where it does exist.
[1] http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manif...
Rather than starting with axioms that lead to a sort of universal knowledge, Foucault did studies that could be considered more sociological in nature to show how relations of power affect the way that we experience ourselves and others, i.e., how it fashions our subjectivity. This is what he terms his "archaeological" method in articles like "What is Enlightenment?" http://foucault.info/documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault..... Examples of these studies include his works Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.
At the very least, Foucault's studies show how some of the most significant ways in which we experience the world and ourselves are socially constructed, rather than essential. Identity then becomes political, rather than something that is distinctly our own. In some of his work, he also directly takes on thinkers like Kant in an attempt to show their work as historically situated rather than universal.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=BODdpZCvvrQC&lpg=PA201&ots...
Joking aside, without taking away from Chomsky, at least in places I found Foucault surprisingly clear:
[O]ne of the tasks that seems immediate and urgent to me,
over and above anything else, is this: that we should
indicate and show up, even where they are hidden, all the
relationships of political power which actually control the
social body and oppress or repress it.
What I want to say is this: it is the custom, at least in
European society, to consider that power is localised in
the hands of the government and that it is exercised
through a certain number of particular institutions, such
as the administration, the police, the army, and the
apparatus of the state. One knows that all these
institutions are made to elaborate and to transmit a
certain number of decisions, in the name of the nation or
of the state, to have them applied and to punish those who
don't obey. But I believe that political power also
exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number
of institutions which look as if they have nothing in
common with the political power, and as if they are
independent of it, while they are not.
One knows this in relation to the family; and one knows
that the university and in a general way, all teaching
systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are
made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to
exclude the instruments of power of another social class.
Institutions of knowledge, of foresight and care, such as
medicine, also help to support the political power. It's
also obvious, even to the point of scandal, in certain
cases related to psychiatry.
It seems to me that the real political task in a society
such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions,
which appear to be both neutral and independent; to
criticise and attack them in such a manner that the
political violence which has always exercised itself
obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can
fight against them.
This critique and this fight seem essential to me for
different reasons: firstly, because political power goes
much deeper than one suspects; there are centres and
invisible, little-known points of support; its true
resistance, its true solidity is perhaps where one doesn't
expect it. Probably it's insufficient to say that behind
the governments, behind the apparatus of the State, there
is the dominant class; one must locate the point of
activity, the places and forms in which its domination is
exercised. And because this domination is not simply the
expression in political terms of economic exploitation, it
is its instrument and, to a large extent, the condition
which makes it possible; the suppression of the one is
achieved through the exhaustive discernment of the other.
Well, if one fails to recognise these points of support of
class power, one risks allowing them to continue to exist;
and to see this class power reconstitute itself even after
an apparent revolutionary process.
Foucault believes that seemingly neutral institutions such as education and medicine act to preserve the power of one social class over another. While it's clear how the police and military maintain authority, it's less clear how topics like constant surveillance and attitudes toward sexuality would tilt the playing field. Foucault's philosophy offers a framework to analyze these different forms of power based on their effect rather than their apparent mechanism.
> One knows this in relation to the family; and one knows that the university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class.
Wasn't Foucault a professor? He just, essentially, refuted himself (because he's part of that teaching system, which appears to disseminate knowledge, and is really about maintaining a certain social class in power).
Why? Admittedly, everything I know (not much!) about critical theory comes from hearing people talk about critical theory, and not from first sources, but I don't see why it's more compelling than philosophy in general?
So, really, I'm posing that question completely seriously. Why should I study critical theory in general, or Focault in particular? Keep in mind it's not "Why should I spend time studying critical theory rather than spend time doing nothing", it's "Why should I spend time studying critical theory rather than some other philosophy/science/technology/art?"
Critical theory in general? Well, it depends on what you're trying to get out of your time with philosophy. I'm particularly interested in technology's affect on humans, so something like critical theory gives me useful intellectual tools. But if the human side of things doesn't appeal to you, you may not particularly care.
Essentially, it helps me see the hidden layer under what people say and (especially) write--the influences, desires, assumptions, etc. that create differences in how each person thinks and communicates.
This has been helpful as I have moved into a management role. Office politics often are the end result of unspoken agendas and wishes of coworkers. Critical theory helps infer those from the seemingly straightforward text of emails and what people say in conversation.
What people want and what they say are often two different things. Engineers and programmers, used to working with systems whose behaviors are explicitly and objectively defined, can find this frustrating. My opinion, it is reality, so might as well deal with it. I've found critical theory helpful in that.
You should study Foucault to better see the prisons you live in. Foucault is postmodernist critical theory. Plain old Critical Theory you should study to understand how people today are subtly manipulated (the Hegelian dialectic is a good start). This is the tool that is systematically applied by our overlords to steer public perception.
Foucault talked about how we reinforce power relations through the internalization and mobilization of discourse. For Foucault, power is best understood by studying our everyday interactions, instead of examining decrees from those in authority. Power affects us so deeply that we often don't realize how our speech and actions reinforce systems of inequality. Working in software, I see exclusionary comments at least on a weekly basis that almost slip under the radar as being innocuous until you realize that this is exactly the form of power that Foucault analyzes in his studies.
So to answer your question, assuming since you're posting in HN that you're in the software field, you may be interested in reading Foucault if you're interested in obtaining additional analytical tools to understand and improve the currently horrible, exclusionary system that permeates the software world.
As a disclaimer, I'm not saying that Foucault is the only way to understand this phenomenon, nor even necessarily the best. Just trying to point out some concrete ways in which his concepts may be useful in certain scenarios.
"Gender" is a system of resource extraction. Women are not "excluded" in tech and elsewhere, they are literally defined as resources, as objects that have and produce value. Women are not "unequal" -- this implies that within the system of gender, both women and men are people who simply don't have the exact same capital. But men do not view women as people under gender. See Beatrix Campbell's "End of Equality". [0]
It is ultimately impossible to understand any microcosm of oppression through individualism. Women and men are social classes, with "gender" being the name referring to the process of securing class:Men's interests as a whole. Individual anti-woman comments do not "reinforce" "inequality", they are symptoms of gender itself. Noel Ignatiev's essay "The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To To Abolish It" responds to attempts to understand oppression with individualist ideologies [1]:
> Just as the capitalist system is not a capitalist plot, so racial oppression is not the work of "racists." It is maintained by the principal institutions of society, including the schools (which define "excellence"), the labor market (which defines "employment"), the legal system (which defines "crime"), the welfare system (which defines "poverty"), the medical industry (which defines "health"), and the family (which defines "kinship"). Many of these institutions are administered by people who would be offended if accused of complicity with racial oppression. It is reinforced by reform programs that address problems traditionally of concern to the "left" - for example, federal housing loan guarantees. The simple fact is that the public schools and the welfare departments are doing more harm to black children than all the "racist" groups combined.
[0] http://www.troubleandstrife.org/2014/04/the-end-of-equality/
By focusing the analysis on the supposed binary oppositions within and between discursive identities, a great deal of practical, compassionate, utility is lost for the sake of smashing global industrial capitalism with the unrealizable dream of replacing it with some kind of utopian society.
In short, you appear to be rebuking Foucault for not doing something he wasn't trying to do anyway. I mean, his words remain, so any utility hasn't been lost and remains for any of us to pick up and...use. So, if you think he didn't take it far enough, feel free to take it where you think it should go!
I wasn't really saying anything about capitalism. Analysis of gender, at least, as a system of resource extraction is possible without an axiom of the necessity of the abolition of global capitalism.
"Now that Jewish Studies has become an academic industry, with its own dissertation mill, conference, publications, and no doubt soon its junior faculty, it is time for the abolitionists to declare where they stand in relation to it. Abolitionism is first of all a political project: the abolitionists study Jewishness in order to abolish it. "
"We at Race Traitor, the journal with which I am associated, have asked some of those who think Jewishness contains positive elements to indicate what they are. We are still waiting for an answer. Until we get one, we will take our stand with David Roediger, who has insisted that Jewishness is not merely oppressive and false, it is nothing but oppressive and false. As James Baldwin said, 'So long as you think you are a jew, there is no hope for you.'"
"The jewish race is neither a biological nor a cultural formation; it is a strategy for securing to some an advantage in a competitive society. "
"The jewish club does not require that all members be strong advocates of jewish supremacy, merely that they defer to the prejudices of others."
Therefore, two men giggling about dongles is viewed as inappropriate[0], while the hackathon "Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas" was widely lauded on HN in spite of containing body shaming[1] and explicit sexual content. The latter was not considered inappropriate because it was critical of tech culture, which is seen as being dominated by White males, and therefore deserving of highly negative satire.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_vigilantism#PyCon_Dong...
[1] http://www.stupidhackathon.com/ see "Intellectual Babes Calendar"
I don't think it has to do with Europe, I think it has to do with the fact that the categories are fuzzy and unless you _really_ care about this stuff, you just let it go.
I almost replied below when it was mentioned that Foucault was "postmodern," but really, it's just not that important, in the end.
"Critical theory" in English usually seems to mean "Not analytic philosophy" without the stigmatism or demonymism that "continental philosophy" has.
https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html
Not everything on the front page excites everyone's curiosity, but it doesn't need to. Avoiding monoculture is the main thing. This is good for technical work too.
Go ahead and downvote as much as you want, but this belongs on some humanities blog, not on HN.
This is a guy that's talking about how power transmits through societies. Do you think that's irrelevant when looking at who's funding companies? What different VCs project about their vision of the world when putting money down? What different business models project to the outside world?
Let's cut this crap of the hacker as an apolitical being. It's Hacker News, not tech/Unix/cracker News.