Foucault picks up on some of the themes that we've encountered in
the course so far with respect to the fact that humans are in a state
of collective historical becoming.
There's no essential human nature, but there is rather historical contingency,
relations of power, rampant inequities.
He's distrustful, not only of the idea of a human nature that would be ahistorical,
which virtually everyone in the course that we've read has been distrustful of,
but he's also distrustful of the idea of progress, along with some of the other
thinkers that we've been reading recently.
I want to say something about Foucault's method and how it relates
to this idea In "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," Foucault talks about his
method as being one of genealogy.
And the fun thing about this text is that, of course, it picks up directly not
only from Nietzsche, but from Nietzsche's account of history, which we've read.
So for Foucault, genealogy is the method of uncovering the
roots of present day thinking.
In order to uncover the roots of present day thinking, we need to study history,
but studying history isn't enough.
We need to study history with a particular eye for the details and accidents that
accompany the beginnings of a certain concept, or a certain way of being.
So we need to study source materials.
We need the body.
And we need to study the lowly conditions of everyday folks, rather than just the
sort of ruling powers of a given time
period.
Genealogy is not about a search for origins in the sense of "where is the
origin of the concept of capitalism?"
but rather in thinking about the sort of messy origins of things,
the way that things develop before realizing they're developing.
Genealogy is not about crafting a single perfect master narrative, but about
picking up in a meticulous and patient manner, as Foucault describes it, on
what appear to be unexpected connections.
He says on page 78 that the secret behind things is that they have no essence.
And similarly, things have no single origin.
Concepts, values, institutions, societies, configurations, all emerge
in a complex and sort of hodgepodge way.
Foucault is interested in showing the heterogeneous nature of existing
institutions, the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself.
The absence of essence and what is imagined to have an essence.
Like Nietzsche, Foucault questions the kind of history that assumes
a perspective outside of history.
History,
he describes on page 87, and here he's talking about effective history,
which he draws from Nietzsche, places within a process of development
everything that is considered immortal.
This kind of history has no constancy and is filled with discontinuities because
that is the nature of the way things are.
And everything has a history in Foucault's sense, even feelings, even bodies.
What we imagine has no history is still historically rooted.
Genealogy is interested in finding the hidden histories of what
appears to be without history.
With that in mind, I want to think a little bit about "Sex, Power, and
the Politics of Identity," which is an interview that Foucault gave.
So Foucault was one of the few out gay philosophers of his day.
But in this interview, we see that he is quite critical of the
gay liberation movement that was happening at the time of his writing.
And one of the reasons for this is that Foucault takes issue with the way that
the gay liberation movement assumed that individuals have a given fixed
identity that needs to be celebrated.
For Foucault, the beauty and promise of both genealogy and also of
questioning the given categories of sexuality that we've been given,
and especially the presumption of heterosexuality that had been dominant
for so much of history, is precisely in not taking them for granted that
identities are fixed, but rather in focusing on discontinuity, on
change, on unforeseen transformations.
So as Foucault describes it on page 164, the gay movement has ,normalized
homosexuality by moving away from the way that it had previously been medicalized.
So individuals were considered perverse, were persecuted, were
put under psychiatric holds, for homosexual activities and desires.
And Foucault says, yes, well, the gay movement responded to that by
saying homosexual desire is normal.
Right?
The problem is that in doing this-- in very importantly resisting the
medicalization of homosexual desires and activities-- the gay liberation
movement had recourse to the idea of a fixed identity or inner truth.
In saying, "this is who I am.
It is normal, accept me."
And for Foucault, that runs against all of his philosophical influences.
Right?
Think back to Nietzsche's idea that there is no inner self to be found.
Your true self is above you.
Not within you.
We are onions without a single core.
And so for Foucault, what we need to do is to see identity as a game.
When we allow ourselves to say, "this is who I am.
I've always been this way.
This is a fixed essence," we're not only kind of running afoul of some
of the continental philosophy that Foucault is influenced by, but we
are also leaving ourselves open to surveillance, to censure, to a kind of a
legal and positivist model of essence.
And that is actually quite dangerous, he thinks.
It's also pretty capitalist in essence, right?
When we're so focused on identity, we're interested in activities and
things on the basis of whether they conform to my given identity, right?
"Is this who I am?"
And we become so obsessed and so fixated on who we are that we fail to recognize
transformative new possibilities.
Sexual identity,
he says on page 166, has been useful, but it is also limiting.