Published Online: June 26 2008 | nh20080626a1
Keywords: Michel Foucault (1926-1984) | Philosopher | France
Foucault Quotes
The quotations I have collected from Michel Foucault's work. This quote should have gone up last month to celebrate the 40th anniversary of May 1968 - but better late than never! □ National History, nh200805. SCIDEA.
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Michel FOUCAULT, 1973. Paris. FRANCE. Demonstration in support of immigrant workers. Photograph by Gilles PERESS. 1973.
Image Reference: PAR100135 (PEG1973004 W00004/07A8).
Copyright © Gilles PERESS and Magnum Photos.
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Quotes of the month (2000)
February 2000
'What is serious, is that, as you continue to write you are no longer read at all and readers going from one distortion to another, reading books on the shoulders of others end up with an absolutely grotesque image of your book' (trans. mod.)
Michel Foucault. (1996) [1984]. 'An aesthetics of existence'. In Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Tr. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. 2nd edition. New York: Semiotext(e).
March 2000
'My role - and that is too emphatic a word - is to show people that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have been built up at a certain moment during history, and that this so-called evidence can be criticized and destroyed.'
Michel Foucault. (1988). 'Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault October 25 1982'. In Luther H. Martin and Patrick Hutton (eds.), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, p.10.
April 2000
'Personally I've never met any intellectuals. I've met people who write novels, others who treat the sick; people who work in economics and others who compose electronic music. I've met people who teach, people who paint, and people of whom I have never really understood what they do. But intellectuals? Never.'
Michel Foucault. (1997). 'The Masked Philosopher'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume One. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, Allen Lane, p. 322.
May 2000
'I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me'.
Michel Foucault (1994) [1971] 'Entretien avec Michel Foucault'. In Dits et Ecrits vol II. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 157-74. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
June 2000
'It is hard to see what kind of objectivity is achieved by the statistical analysis of a questionnaire examining the lies of school age children and their playmates. At the end of the day, the results are reassuring, we learn that children lie mostly to avoid punishment, then to boast of their exploits etc. We can be sure by virtue of these very findings, that the method was quite objective. So what? There are those obsessive peeping toms who, in order to look through a plate glass door, peer through the keyhole'.
Michel Foucault. (1994) [1957]. 'La recherche scientifique et la psychologie'. In Dits et Ecrits vol I. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 137-58. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
July 2000
'[Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing.' (trans. mod.)
Michel Foucault (1987) 'An interview with Michel Foucault by Charles Ruas'. In Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel. Tr. C. Ruas. London: The Athlone Press, p.182.
August 2000
'... from the moment that people were no longer quite sure of having a soul or that the body would return to life, more attention to mortal remains became necessary; these became the only trace of our existence in the midst of the world and in the midst of words.
In any case, it was in the nineteenth century that each person began to have the right to his own little box for his own personal decomposition ... (trans. mod)
Michel Foucault. (1998) [1984]. 'Different spaces'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Aesthetics, method and epistemology. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Two Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Allen Lane, Penguin, p. 181.
September 2000
'My position is that it is not up to us [intellectuals] to propose. As soon as one "proposes" - one proposes a vocabulary, an ideology, which can only have effects of domination. What we have to present are instruments and tools that people might find useful. By forming groups specifically to make these analyses, to wage these struggles, by using these insturments or others: this is how, in the end, possibilities open up.
But if the intellectual starts playing once again the role that he has played for a hundred and fifty years - that of prophet in relation to what "must be", to what "must take place" - these effects of domination will return and we shall have other ideologies, functioning in the same way.'
Michel Foucault. (1988). 'Confinement, psychiatry, prison'. In L. Kritzman, (ed.), Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984. New York: Routledge, p.197.
October 2000
'What appears to me to be indispensable is respect for the reader... I dream of books which would be clear enough about the way they go about things for others to use them freely, but without trying either to blur or hide the original sources. Freedom of use and technical transparency are linked.'
Michel Foucault. (1994) [1983]. 'A propos des faiseurs d'histoire'. In Dits et Ecrits vol IV. Paris: Gallimard, p. 414. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell)
November 2000
'All human behavior is scheduled and programmed through rationality. There is a logic of institutions and in behavior and in political relations. In even the most violent ones there is a rationality. What is most dangerous in violence is its rationality. Of course violence itself is terrible. But the deepest root of violence and its permanence come out of the form of the rationality we use. The idea had been that if we live in the world of reason, we can get rid of violence. This is quite wrong. Between violence and rationality there is no incompatibility.'
Michel Foucault. (1996) [1980]. 'Truth is in the future'. In Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Tr. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. 2nd edition. New York: Semiotext(e), p.299.
December 2000
'In civilizations without ships, dreams dry up, espionnage takes the place of adventure and the police take the place of corsairs.' (trans. mod.)
Michel Foucault. (1998) [1984] 'Different spaces'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Aesthetics, method and epistemology. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Two Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Allen Lane, Penguin, p. 181.
Quotes of the month (2001)
January 2001
'I always try to deal with a subject which can be useful to a maximum number of people. I provide them with instruments which they can then use as they please in their own fields whether these people be psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, educators or I don't know what.'
Michel Foucault cited in Le Nouvel Observateur, 7 April 1975, no. 543, p.54.
February 2001
'A work is definitely not the form of expression of a particular individuality. The work always implies, as it were, the death of the author. One only writes in order to disappear at the same time. The work, in a way, exists on its own as the bare and anonymous flow of language... The work is composed of certain relations within language itself. It is a particular structure in the world of language, discourse and literature'.
Michel Foucault. (1994). 'Interview avec Michel Foucault'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. 111. Paris: Gallimard, p. 660. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
March 2001
'I think it is us who make the future. The future is the way we react to what is happening, it is the way we transform a movement, a doubt into truth. If we want to be masters of our future, we must fundamentally pose the question of what today is'.
Michel Foucault. (1994). 'Le monde est un grand asile'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. 11. Paris: Gallimard, p. 434. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
April 2001
'The law averts its face and returns to the shadows the instant one looks at it; when one tries to hear its words, what one catches is a song that is no more than the fatal promise of a future song.
The Sirens are the elusive and forbidden form of the alluring voice. They are nothing but song. Only a silvery wake in the sea, the hollow of a wave, a cave in the rocks, the whiteness of the beach - what are they in their very being if not a pure appeal, if not the mirthful void of listening, if not attentiveness, if not an invitation to pause?'
Michel Foucault, (1998) 'The thought of the outside'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Aesthetics, method and epistemology. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Two Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Allen Lane, Penguin, pp. 160-1.
May 2001
What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?'
Michel Foucault. (1991) [1984]. 'On the genealogy of ethics: An overview of work in progress'. In Paul Rabinow, (ed.), The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, p. 350.
June 2001
'I don't like obscurity because I consider obscurity to be a form of despotism. One must expose oneself to pronouncing errors. One must expose oneself to possibly saying things which are probably going to be difficult to express, and which obviously are going to make one fumble for words.'
Michel Foucault. (1994) [1978]. 'Sexualité et pouvoir'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. 111. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 137-58. p. 570. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
July 2001
'A progressive politics is one which recognises the historical conditions and the specified rules of a practice, whereas other politics recognize only ideal necessities, univocal determinations, or the free play of individual initiatives.' Michel Foucault. (1996) [1969]. "History, discourse and discontinuity". In Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Tr. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. 2nd edition. New York: Semiotext(e), p. 48.
August 2001
'I never think quite the same thing, because for me my books are esperiences, in a sense that I would like to be as full as possible. An experience is something that one comes out of transformed. If I had to write a book to communicate what I was already thinking, I would never have the courage to begin. I only write a book because I don't know exactly what to think about this thing that I so much want to think about, so that the book transforms me and transforms what I think. Each book transforms what I was thinking when I finished the previous book. I am an eperimenter, not a theorist.'. (trans. mod)
Michel Foucault. (2000) [1980]. "Interview with Michel Foucault". In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, pp. 239-40.
September 2001
Thought does exist, both beyond and underneath systems and edifices of discourse. It is something that is often hidden but always drives everyday behaviors. There is always a little thought occurring even in the most stupid institutions; there is always thought even in silent habits.
Criticism consists in uncovering that thought and trying to change it: showing that things are not as obvious as people believe, making it so that what is taken for granted is no longer taken for granted. To practise criticism is to make harder those acts which are now too easy... [A]s soon as people begin to no longer be able to think things the way they have been thinking them, transformation becomes at the same time very urgent, very difficult and entirely possible. (trans. mod)
Michel Foucault. (2000) [1981]. "So is it important to think?" In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p. 456.
October 2001
'The problem of Islam as a political force is an essential problem for our time and for the years to come. The first condition in approaching it with anything resembling intelligence is to not to start with hatred.'
Michel Foucault. (1994) [1978]. 'Reponse de Michel Foucault à une lectrice iranienne'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. 111. Paris: Gallimard, p. 708. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
'If someone were to ask me how I conceive of what I do, I would reply if the strategist is the man who says 'What does this death, this cry, this uprising matter in the grand scale of things and what does a general principle matter to me in the situation in which we find ourselves?' well I don't care whether the strategist is a politician, a historian, a revolutionary, a supporter of the Shah or of the Ayatolla, my theoretical morality is the opposite. It is 'antistrategic': to be respectful when a singularity rises up and intransigent when power infringes on the universal'. (trans mod.)
Michel Foucault. (1999) [1978]. 'Is it useless to revolt?'. In Jeremy R. Carrette (ed.), Religion and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 134.
..'terrorism... has a totally opposite effect which is to make the bourgeois class even more closely attached to its ideology. ... Using terror for revolution is a totally contradictory idea ...'
Michel Foucault. (1994) [1976]. 'Le savoir comme crime'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. 111. Paris: Gallimard, p. 83. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
November 2001
'For some people, writing a book is always taking a risk, for example the risk of not finishing it. When you know in advance where you want to get to, a dimension of the experience is missing, which consists precisely in writing a book while running the risk of not getting to the end.' (trans. mod) Michel Foucault. (1994) [1984]. 'Une esthetique de l'existence'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. IV. Paris: Gallimard, p. 730. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
December 2001
'But then, what is philosophy today - philosophical activity, I mean - if it is not the critical work of thought on itself? And if it does not consist in the endeavour of knowing how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, rather than legitimating what is already known? There is always something ludicrous in philosophical discourse when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it, or when it presumes to give them naively positivistic instruction. But it is its right to explore what might be changed, in its own thought, through the practice of a knowledge that is foreign to it. The "essay" - which should be understood as the test by means of which one modifies oneself through the play of truth and not as the simplistic appropriation of others for the purpose of communication - is the living body of philosophy, at least if we assume that philosophy is still what it was in times past, i.e., an "ascesis", an exercise of the self, in thought.' (trans. mod)
Michel Foucault. (1992) [1984]. The Use of Pleasure. The History of Sexuality Volume 2, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, pp. 8-9.
Quotes of the month (2002)
January 2002
'...what defines a relationship of power is that it is a mode of action that does not act directly and immediately on others. Instead, it acts upon their actions: an action upon an action, on possible or actual future or present actions. A relationship of violence acts upon a body or upon things; it forces, it bends, it breaks, it destroys, or it closes off all possibilities.'
Michel Foucault. (2000) [1981]. "The Subject and Power". In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p. 340.
February 2002
'Thought is not what inhabits a certain conduct and gives it meaning; rather, it is what allows one to step back from this way of acting or reacting, to present it to oneself as an object of thought and question it as to its meaning, its conditions, and its goals. Thought is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one detaches oneself from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a problem.'
Michel Foucault, (1991) [1984]. 'Polemics, politics and problemizations'. . In Paul Rabinow, (ed.), The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, p. 388.
March 2002
'There is a very tenuous "analytic" link between a philosophical conception and the concrete political attitude of someone who is appealing to it; the "best" theories do not constitute a very effective protection against disastrous political choices: certain great themes such as "humanism" can be used to any end whatever - for example, to show with what gratitude Pohlenz would have greeted Hitler'
Michel Foucault. (1991) [1984]. 'Politics and Ethics: An Interview'. In Paul Rabinow, (ed.), The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, p. 374.
April 2002
'I am probably not the only one who writes in order to remain faceless. Don't ask me who I am, or tell me to stay the same: that is the bureaucratic morality, which keeps our papers in order. It ought to let us be when it comes to writing.' (trans. mod.)
Michel Foucault. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Tavistock, p. 17.
May 2002
'Does there exist a pleasure in writing? I don't know. One thing is certain, that there is, I think, a very strong obligation to write. I don't really know where this obligation to write comes from ... You are made aware of it in a number of different ways. For example, by the fact that you feel extremely anxious and tense when you haven't done your daily page of writing. In writing this page you give yourself and your existence a kind of absolution. This absolution is indispensable for the happiness of the day... How is it that that this gesture which is so vain, so fictitious, so narcissistic, so turned in on itself and which consists of sitting down every morning at one's desk and scrawling over a certain number of blank pages can have this effect of benediction on the rest of the day?'
Michel Foucault, (1969) 'Interview with Claude Bonnefoy', Unpublished typescript, IMEC B14, pp. 29-30.
June 2002
'You see that's why I really work like a dog, and I worked like a dog all my life. I am not interested in the academic status of what I am doing because my problem is my own transformation... This transformation of one's self by one's knowledge, one's practice is, I think, something rather close the the aesthetic experience. Why should a painter work if he is not transformed by his own painting?'
Michel Foucault. (1997) [1983]. 'An interview by Stephen Riggins'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume One. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, Allen Lane, p. 131.
July 2002
'When I say that I am studying the "problematization" of madness,crime, or sexuality, it is not a way of denying the reality of such phenomena. On the contrary, I have tried to show that it was precisely some real existent in the world which was the target of social regulation at a given moment.'
Michel Foucault. (2001). Fearless Speech. Joseph Pearson (ed.). Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), p. 171
August 2002
'Power relations are extremely widespread in human relationships. Now this does not mean that political power is everywhere, but that there is in human relationships a whole range of power relations that may come into play among individuals, within families, in pedagogical relationships, political life etc... Liberation is sometimes the political or historical condition for a practice of freedom. Taking sexuality as an example, it is clear that a number of liberations were required vis-à-vis male power...But this liberation does not give rise to the happy and full essence of a sexuality in which the subject has achieved a complete and satisfying relationship. Liberation paves the way for new power relationships, which must be controlled by practices of freedom.' (trans. mod)
Michel Foucault. (1996) [1984]. 'The ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom.' In Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Tr. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. 2nd edition. New York: Semiotext(e), p. 434
September 2002
'Nothing is fundamental. That is what is so interesting in the analysis of society. That is why nothing irritates me as much as these inquiries - which are by definition meptaphysical - on the foundations of power in a society or the self-institution of a society, etc. These are not fundamental phenomena. There are only reciprocal relations, and the perpetual gaps between intentions in relation to one another.'
Michel Foucault. (1991). 'Space, Knowledge and Power'. In Paul Rabinow, (ed.), The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, p. 247.
October 2002
'Everyone has their own way of changing, or, what amounts to the same thing, of perceiving that everything changes. In this matter, nothing is more arrogant than trying to dictate to others. My way of no longer being the same is, by definition, the most unique part of what I am . Yet God knows there are ideological traffic police around, and we can hear their whistles blast: go left, go right, here, later, get moving, not now... The insistence on identity and the injunction to make a break both, and in the same way, feel like abuses.' (trans.mod.)
Michel Foucault, (2000) [1979] 'For an ethic of discomfort'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p. 444.
November 2002
'"Thought"... is not... to be sought only in theoretical formulations such as those of philosophy or science; it can and must be analyzed in every manner of speaking, doing or behaving in which the individividual appears and acts as subject of learning, as ethical or juridical subject, as subject conscious of himself and others. In this sense, thought is understood as the very form of action - as action insofar as it implies the play of true and false, the acceptance or refusal of rules, the relation to oneself and others. The study of forms of experience can thus proceed from an analysis of "practices" - discursive or not - as long as one qualifies that word to mean the different systems of action insofar as they are inhabited by thought as I have characterized it here.'
Michel Foucault,. (1991) [1984]. 'Preface to The History of Sexuality'. In Paul Rabinow, (ed.), The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, pp.334-5.
December 2002
'We can see, then, how vain and idle are all those wearisome discussions as to whether such and such forms of knowledge may be termed truly scientific, and to what conditions they ought to be subjected in order to become so. The 'sciences of man' are part of the modern episteme in the same way as chemistry or medicine or any other such science... But to say that they are part of the epistemological field means simply that their positivity is rooted in it, that that is where they find their condition of existence. They are not, therefore, merely illusions, pseudo-scientific fantasies motivated at the level of opinions, interests, or beliefs. They are not what others call by the bizarre name of 'ideology'. But that does not necessarily mean that they are sciences'. (trans mod.)
Michel Foucault. (1970). The Order of Things London: Tavistock, p. 365.
Quotes of the month (2003)
January 2003
'I think that the modern age of the history of truth began at the moment when empirical knowledge itself, and on its own, allowed access to the truth. That is, from the moment when, without asking anything else of the subject, without the being of the subject having to undergo any modification or alteration whatsoever, the philosopher (or scientist or anyone looking for the truth) was capable of recognising in him or herself the truth and had access to the truth by the mere act of empirical knowledge.'
Michel Foucault. (2001). L'hermeneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France 1981-1982. Paris: Gallimard Seuil, p. 19.
February 2003
'[In Ancient Greek thought] what one hoped to gain from reading was not an understanding of what the author meant, but to build up for oneself a toolkit of true propositions which were effectively one's own ... It was not a matter of constructing a patchwork of propositions from different places, but of constructing a solid foundation of propositions which could be used as prescriptions, true discourses which were at the same time principles of behaviour'.
Michel Foucault. (2001). L'hermeneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France 1981-1982. Paris: Gallimard Seuil, p. 341.
March 2003
'[In Galen's discussion of parrhesia (frank speech)] It is a matter of showing what I am experiencing rather than simply speaking. I have to show that I who am speaking, I am the one who judges that these thoughts are effectively true. The text says it quite explicitly, one must make it understood that effectively I experience as true the things that I say. And the text adds further, and not only do I experience them and consider them to be true, but further I love them and I am attached to them and my whole life is governed by them.' Michel Foucault. (2001). L'hermeneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France 1981-1982. Paris: Gallimard Seuil, p. 387.
April 2003
'The body: a surface on which events are inscribed (whereas language marks events and ideas dissolve them), place where the Me is dissociated (a Me to which it tries to lend the illusion of a substantial unity), it is a volume perpetually crumbling away. Genealogy, as an analysis of where things come from is thus situated at the point of articulation of the body and history. Its task is to show a body totally imprinted with history, and history destroying the body.' (trans. mod.)
Michel Foucault. (1991) [1971]. 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History'. . In Paul Rabinow, (ed.), The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, p. 83.
May 2003
'Law is not born of nature, near the springs frequented by the first shepherds; law is born from real battles, victories, massacres, conquests which have their dates and their heroes of horror. The law is born in torched villages, ravaged lands; it is born with the notorious innocents suffering in the throes of death as the sun rises.
But this does not mean that the law and the State are a kind of armistice in these wars, or the definitive sanction of victories. The law is not pacification, because under the law, war continues to rage within all the mechanisms of power even the most lawful. It is war that is the motor of institutions and of order: peace, right down to the smallest of its cogs, obscurely engages in war. In other words, we must decypher war in peace: war is the very cypher of peace. Thus we are at war with each other; a battle front runs through our entire society, continuously and permanently, and it is this battle front which places each of us in one camp or another. There is no neutral subject. We are of necessity someone's adversary.'
Michel Foucault. (1997). 'Il faut défendre la société. Cours au Collège de France. 1976. Paris: Gallimard Seuil, pp. 43-44.
June 2003
'The fact that man lives in a conceptually structured environment does not prove that he has turned away from life, or that a historical drama has separated him from it - just that he lives in a certain way, that he has a relationship with his environment such that he has no set point of view toward it, that he is mobile on an undefined or a rather broadly defined territory, that he has to move around to gather information, that he had to move things relative to one another in order to make them useful. Forming concepts is a way of living not a way of killing life.'
Michel Foucault, (1985) 'Life: experience and science'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Aesthetics, method and epistemology. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Two Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Allen Lane, Penguin, p. 475.
July 2003
'In any case, what I would like to point out to you is that all the same when one sees the meaning, or rather the total absence of meaning, that is given to very familiar expressions which crop up everywhere in our discourse, such as rediscovering oneself, freeing oneself, being oneself, being authentic etc; when one sees the absence of meaning and of thought contained in each of these expressions used today, I don't think there there is much to be proud of in the efforts that we are making at present to reconstitute an ethics of the self.'
Michel Foucault. (2001). L'hermeneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France 1981-1982. Paris: Gallimard Seuil, p. 241.
August 2003
'I have never said that madness does not exist, or that it is only a consequence of these institutions. That people are suffering, that people make trouble in society or in families, that is a reality. [...]
It is not a critical history which has as its aim to demonstrate that behind this so-called knowledge there is only mythology, or perhaps nothing at all. My analysis is about the problematization of something which is dependent on our knowledge, ideas, theories, techniques, social relations and economical processes.'
Michel Foucault (1996) [1994], 'Problematics'. In Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Tr. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. 2nd edition. New York: Semiotext(e), p. 408.
September 2003
'Let us take the question of power, political power, replacing it within the more general question of governmentality, that is governmentality understood as a strategic field of relations of power in the broadest sense of the term, not simply the political sense. Thus, if one understands by governmentality, a strategic field of power relations which are mobile, transformable and reversible, I think that the reflection on the notion of governmentality cannot help but but pass both theoretically and practically through the element of a subject that is defined by the relation of self to self. While the theory of political power as an institution ordinarily refers to a juridical conception of the subject of law, it seems to me that the analysis of governmentality - that is, the analysis of power as a group of reversible relations - must refer to an ethics of the subject defined by the relation of self to self. Which means quite simply that in the type of analysis that I have been proposing for a while, you will see that relations of power/governmentality/government of self and others/the relation of the self to the self, all of this constitutes a chain, a thread and that it is there, around these notions that one can, I think, articulate the question of politics and the question of ethics.'
Michel Foucault. (2001). L'hermeneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France 1981-1982. Paris: Gallimard Seuil, pp. 241-2.
October 2003
'After all, the fact that the character of the work I have presented to you has been at the same time fragmentary, repetitive and discontinuous could well be a reflection of something one might describe as a febrile indolence - a typical affliction of those enamoured of libraries, documents, reference works, dusty tomes, texts that are never read, books that are no sooner printed than they are consigned to the shelves of libraries where they thereafter lie dormant to be taken up only some centuries later. It would accord all too well with the busy inertia of those who profess an idle knowledge, a species of luxuriant sagacity, the rich hoard of the parvenus whose only outward signs are displayed in footnotes at the bottom of the page. It would accord with all those who feel themselves to be associates of one of the more ancient or more typical secret societies of the West, those oddly indestructible societies unknown it would seem to Antiquity, which came into being with Christianity, most likely at the time of the first monasteries, at the periphery of the invasions, the fires and the forests: I mean to speak of the great warm and tender Freemasonry of useless erudition.'
Michel Foucault. (1980). 'Two lectures (first lecture: January 7, 1976)'. In C. Gordon (ed.). Tr. Kate Soper. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon, p. 79.
November 2003
In the introduction to a collection of documents entitled 'The Life of Infamous Men' Foucault makes the following remark about his selection of documents for this particular work:
'I haven't sought to unite texts which would be more faithful to reality than others, which would merit selection for their representative value, but texts which played a role in this real of which they speak, and which in return find themselves, whatever their inexactitude, their turgidity or their hypocrisy may be, traversed by it: fragments of discourse trailing the fragments of a reality in which they take part. What shall be read here is not a collection of portraits:. they are snares, weapons, cries, gestures, attitudes, ruses, intrigues for which the words have been the instruments. Real lives have been "played out" in these few sentences; I don't mean by that expression that they have been represented there, but that, in fact, their liberty, their misfortune, often their death, in any case their destiny have been) at least partly, therein decided. These discourses have really affected lives; these existences have effectively been risked and lost in these words'.
Michel Foucault. (1979). 'The life of infamous men'. In M. Morris and P. Patton (eds.). Tr. Paul Foss, Meaghan Morris. Michel Foucault: Power, Truth, Strategy. Sydney: Feral Publications, pp.78-79.
December 2003
'Curiosity is a vice that has been stigmatized in turn by Christianity, by philosophy and even by a certain conception of science. Curiosity, futility. I like the the word however. To me it suggests something altogether different: it evokes "concern"; it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; an acute sense of the real which, however, never becomes fixed; a readiness to find our surroundings strange and singular; a certain relentlessness in ridding ourselves of our familiarities and looking at things otherwise; a passion for seizing what is happening now and what is passing away; a lack of respect for traditional hierarchies of the important and the essential.' (trans. mod.)
Michel Foucault. (1996) [1980]. 'The Masked Philosopher'. In Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Tr. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. 2nd edition. New York: Semiotext(e), p.305.
Quotes of the month (2004)
January 2004
'I dream of a new age of curiosity. We have the technical means for it; the desire is there; the things to be known are infinite; the people who can employ themselves at this task exist. What are we suffering from? From too little: from channels that are too narrow, skimpy, quasi-monopolistic, insufficient. There is no point in adopting a protectionist attitude, to prevent "bad" information from invading and suffocating the "good". Rather we must multiply the paths and the possibility of comings and goings... Which doesn't mean, as is often feared, the homogenization and leveling from below. But on the contrary, the differentiation and simultaneity of different networks.'
Michel Foucault. (1996) [1980]. 'The Masked Philosopher'. In Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Tr. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. 2nd edition. New York: Semiotext(e), p.305.
February 2004
'...is it not perhaps the case that these fragments of genealogies are no sooner brought to light, that the particular elements of the knowledge that one seeks to disinter are no sooner accredited and put into circulation, than they run the risk of re-codification, re-colonisation? In fact, those unitary discourses, which first disqualified and then ignored them when they made their appearance, are, it seems, quite ready now to annex them, to take them back within the fold of their own discourse and to invest them with everything this implies in terms of their effects of knowledge and power. And if we want to protect these only lately liberated fragments are we not in danger of ourselves constructing, with our own hands, that unitary discourse to which we are invited, perhaps to lure us into a trap, by those who say to us: "All this is fine, but where are you heading? What kind of unity are you after?"'
Michel Foucault. (1980). 'Two lectures (first lecture: January 7, 1976)" In C. Gordon (ed.). Tr. Kate Soper. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon, p. 86.
March 2004
'...the power that one man exerts over another is always perilous. I am not saying that power, by nature is evil; I am saying that power, with its mechanisms is infinite (which does not mean that it is omnipotent, quite the contrary). The rules that exist to limit it can never be stringent enough; the universal principles for dispossessing it of all the occasions it seizes are never sufficiently rigorous. Against power one must always set inviolable laws and unrestricted rights.'
Michel Foucault, (2000) [1979] 'Useless to revolt?'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p. 452-3.
April 2004
'This notion of the government of men by truth ... Elaborating this notion means displacing things a little in relation to the now overworn and tired theme of power-knowledge. For the history of thought, my analysis was more or less organized, or revolved around, the notion of dominant ideology. If you like, there are in general two successive displacements: then, from the notion of dominant ideology to that of power-knowledge and now, a second displacement from the notion of knowledge-power to the notion of government by the truth... Discarding the notion of knowledge-power the same way as I discarded the notion of dominant ideology. Well, when I say that, I am perfectly devastated (detruite) because it is obvious that you don't discard something you thought yourself in the same way as you discard what others have thought. As a consequence, I will certainly be more indulgent with the notion of knowledge-power than with that of dominant ideology, but it is up to you to criticize me for that.'
Michel Foucault, (1980) 'Lecture 9 January', (unpublished).
May 2004
'Humanism may not be universal but may be quite relative to a certain situation. What we call humanism has been used by Marxists, liberals, Nazis, Catholics. This does not mean that we have to get rid of what we call human rights or freedom, but that we can't say that freedom or human rights has to be limited at certain frontiers. For instance, if you asked eighty years ago if feminine virtue was part of universal humanism, everyone would have answered yes. What I am afraid of about humanism is that it presents a certain form of our ethics as a universal model for any kind of freedom. I think that there are more secrets, more possible freedoms, and more inventions in our future than we can imagine in humanism as it is dogmatically represented on every side of the political rainbow: the Left, the Center, the Right.'
Michel Foucault. (1988) [1982]. 'Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault - October 25th, 1982'. In Martin, L.H. et al (eds.), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock, pp.9-15.
June 2004
'I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area... I would like the little volume that I want to write on disciplinary systems to be useful to an educator, a warden, a magistrate, a conscientious objector. I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers.'
Michel Foucault. (1994) [1974]. 'Prisons et asiles dans le mécanisme du pouvoir'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. 11. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 523-4. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
July 2004'I am merely emphasizing that the fact of "health" is a cultural fact in the broadest sense of the word, a fact that is political, economic, and social as well, a fact that is tied to a certain state of individual and collective consciousness. Every era outlines a "normal" profile of health. Perhaps we should direct ourselves toward a system that defines, in the domain of the abnormal, the pathological, the sicknesses normally covered by society.'
Michel Foucault. (2000). 'The risks of security'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p.379.
August 2004
`We are doomed historically to history, to the patient construction of discourses about discourses, and to the task of hearing what has already been said'.
Foucault, Michel. (1973). The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Tr. A. M. S. Smith. London: Tavistock, p. xvi.
September 2004
'I am not at all the sort of philosopher who conducts or wants to conduct a discourse of truth on some science or other. Wanting to lay down the law for each and every science is the project of positivism... Now this role of referee, judge and universal witness is one I absolutely refuse to adopt.'
MichelFoucault. (1980). 'Questions on geography'. In C. Gordon (ed.). Tr. Kate Soper. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon, pp. 64-5.
October 2004
'You must not attribute to me the idea that "Muslim spirituality will advantageously replace dictatorship". Since there have been demonstrations and people have been killed in Iran in the name of "Islamic government", it is an elementary duty to ask what content has been given to this term and what animates it... The Islamic problem as a political force is an essential problem for our times and for the years to come. The first condition for approaching it with some measure of intelligence is not to start with hatred.'
Michel Foucault (1994) [1978]. 'Réponse de Michel Foucault à une lectrice iranienne'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. 111. Paris: Gallimard, p. 708. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
'...the "Islamic" movement could set fire to the whole region, overthrow the most unstable regimes and disturb the most solid. Islam which is not simply a religion, but a way of life, a belonging to a history and a civilisation, runs the risk of becoming a giant powder keg, on the scale of hundreds of millions of people.'
Michel Foucault. (1994) [1979]. 'Une poudrière appelée islam'. In Dits et Ecrits vol. 111. Paris: Gallimard, p. 761. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
November 2004
'One has to distinguish between different things in the analysis of an institution. First, there is what can be called its rationality, or its aim, that is, the ends it has in view and the means it possesses for attaining those ends... Second, there is the question of results. Obviously, the results very rarely coincide with the aim; thus the objective of the correctional prison, of imprisonment as a means of improving the individual, has not been achieved.'
Michel Foucault. (2000). 'What is called "punishing"?'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p.385.
December 2004
I think that the word 'rationalization' is dangerous. What we have to do is analyze specific rationalities rather than always invoking the progress of rationalization in general.
Michel Foucault, (2000). 'The subject and power'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p.329.
Quotes of the month (2005-7)
January 2005
'... the State does not have an essence. The State is not universal, the State is not in itself an autonomous source of power. The State is nothing other than the effect, the outline, the moving cross section of a perpetual process of State formation, or perpetual processes of State formation ... The State is nothing other than the changing effect of a multiple regime of governmentalities ... It is a matter of ... undertaking the investigation of the problem of the State starting from practices of governmentality.'
Michel Foucault. (2004). Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France. 1978-1979. Paris: Gallimard, p.79. (This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell)
February 2005
'My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being. The way he thinks is related to society, politics, economics, and history and is also related to very general and universal categories and formal structures. But thought is something other than societal relations. The way people really think is not adequately analyzed by the universal categories of logic. Between social history and formal analyses of thought there is a path, a lane - maybe very narrow - which is the path of the historian of thought.'
Michel Foucault. (1988). 'Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault - October 25th, 1982'. In Martin, L.H. et al (eds.), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock. p.9.
March 2005
'I would now like to start looking at that dimension which I have called by that rather nasty word "governmentality". Let us suppose that "governing" is not the same thing as "reigning", that it is not the same thing as "commanding" or "making the law", let us suppose that governing is not the same thing as being a sovereign, a suzerain, being lord, being judge, being a general, owner, master, professor. Let us suppose that there is a specificity to what it is to govern and we must now find out a little what type of power is covered by this notion.'
Michel Foucault. (2004). Sécurité, Territoire, Population. Cours au Collège de France. 1977-1978. Paris: Gallimard, 2004. p. 119.
April 2005
'Finally, there is a fourth characteristic of power - a power that, in a sense, traverses and drives those other powers. I'm thinking of an epistemological power-that is, a power to extract a knowledge from individuals and to extract a knowledge about those individuals -who are subjected to observation and already controlled by those different powers. This occurs, then, in two different ways. In an institution like the factory, for example, the worker's labor and the worker's knowledge about his own labor, the technical improvements - the little inventions and discoveries, the micro adaptations he's able to implement in the course of his labor - are immediately recorded, thus extracted from his practice, accumulated by the power exercised over him through supervision. In this way, the worker's labor is gradually absorbed into a certain technical knowledge of production which will enable a strengthening of control. So we see how there forms a knowledge that's extracted from the individuals themselves and derived from their own behavior.'
Michel Foucault. (2000). 'Truth and Juridical Forms'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, pp. 83-4.
May 2005
'It is hard for me to classify a form of research like my own within philosophy or within the human sciences. I could define it as an analysis of the cultural facts characterising our culture... I do in fact seek to place myself outside the culture to which we belong, to analyse its formal conditions in order to make a critique of it, not in the sense of reducing its values, but in order to see how it was actually constituted.'
Michel Foucault. (1999) [1967]. 'Who are you, Professor Foucault?. In Jeremy R. Carrette (ed.), Religion and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 91.
July 2005
'Discourse is not life: its time is not your time; in it, you will not be reconciled to death; you may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.'
Michel Foucault. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge.Tr. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock.
October 2005
'My role is to raise question in an effective, genuine way, and to raise them with the greatest possible rigor, with the maximum complexity and difficulty so that a solution doesn't spring from the head of some reformist intellectual or suddenly appear in the head of a party's political bureau.'
Michel Foucault. (2000) [1980]. 'Interview with Michel Foucault'.. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p. 288.
January 2006
'...if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing'
Michel Foucault, (2004) 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), Michel Foucault, entretiens. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 95. (Interview conducted in 1975. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
February 2006
'As soon as you start writing, even if it is under your real name, you start to function as somebody slightly different, as a "writer". You establish from yourself to yourself continuities and a level of coherence which is not quite the same as your real life... All this ends up constituting a kind of neo-identity which is not identical to your identity as a citizen or your social identity, Besides you know this very well, since you want to protect your private life.'
Michel Foucault. (2004). 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), Michel Foucault, entretiens. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 106. (Interview conducted in 1975. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
March 2006
'One must remember that power is not an ensemble of mechanisms of negation, refusal, exclusion. But it produces effectively. It is likely that it produces right down to individuals themselves.'
Michel Foucault. (2004). 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), Michel Foucault, entretiens. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 113. (Interview conducted in 1975. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
October 2006
'For centuries, let's say since Plato, the status of knowledge has been to have an essence which is fundamentally different from that of power. If you become king , you will be mad, enraged and blind. Renounce power, renounce ambition and then you will be able to contemplate truth ... Knowledge appears to be profoundly linked to a whole series of power effects. Archaeology is essentially this detection.'
Michel Foucault. (2004). 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), Michel Foucault, entretiens. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 128. (Interview conducted in 1975. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
July 2007
'It was not a question of a an initially timid, technical, and medical breach of a taboo of discourse, speech or expression that had weighed on sexuality from the depths of time and certainly since the seventeenth or eighteenth century. What I think took place around 1850 ... was not at all a metamorphosis of a practice of censorship, repression, or hypocrisy, but the metamorphosis of a quite positive practice of forced and obligatory confession. I would say that in the West, sexuality is not generally something about which people are silent and that must be kept secret; it is something one has to confess.'
Michel Foucault. (2003). Abnormal. Lectures at the College de France 1974 -1975. London: Verso, p. 169.
December 2007
'Basically, I have only one object of historical study, that is the threshold of modernity. Who are we, we who speak a language such that it has powers that are imposed on us in our society as well as on other societies? What is this language which can be turned against us which we can turn against ourselves? What is this incredible obsession with the passage to the universal in Western discourse? That is my historical problem.'
Michel Foucault. (2004). 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), Michel Foucault, entretiens. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 95. (Interview conducted in 1975. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
Quotes of the month (2008)
January 2008
'A society expresses itself positively in the mental illness displayed by its members, whether it places them at the centre of its religious life, as is often the case amongst the primitive peoples, or whether it seeks to expatriate them by situating them outside social life, as does our culture'.
Michel Foucault. (1966). Maladie Mentale et psychologie. 3rd ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, p. 75. (1st edition 1954. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell).
February 2008
'Painting has at least this much in common with discourse: when it gives rise to a force which creates history, it is political.'
Michel Foucault. [1975] (2007). The Force of Flight. In Jermy Crampton and Stuart Elden (eds.) Space, Knowledge and Power. Foucault and Geography. Aldershot: Ashgate, p. 169.
March 2008
'When, with Rousseau and Pestallozzi, the eighteenth century concerned itself with constituting for the child, with educational rules that followed his development, a world that would be adapted to him, it made it possible to form around children an unreal, abstract, archaic environment that had no relation to the adult world. The whole development of contemporary education, with its irreproachable aim of preserving the child from adult conflicts, accentuates the distance that separates, for a man, his life as a child and his life as an adult. That is to say, by sparing the child conflicts, it exposes him to a major conflict, to the contradiction between his childhood and his real life. If one adds that, in its educational institutions, a culture does not project its reality directly, with all its conflicts and contradictions, but that it reflects it indirectly through the myths that excuse it, justify it, and idealize it in a chimerical coherence; if one adds that in its education a society dreams of its golden age [...] one understands that fixations and pathological regressions are possible only in a given culture, that they multiply to the extent that social forms do not permit the assimilation of the past into the present content of experience.'
Michel Foucault. [1954] (1987). Mental Illness and Psycbology. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 81.
May 2008
'To become a bourgeois intellectual, a professor, a journalist, a writer, or anything of that sort seemed repugnant. The experience of the war had shown us the urgent need of a society radically different from the one in which we were living, this society that had permitted Nazism, that had lain down in front of it, and that had gone over en masse to de Gaulle. A large sector of French youth had a reaction of total disgust toward all that. We wanted a world and a society that were not only different but that would be an alternative version of ourselves: we wanted to be completely other in a completely different world.'
Michel Foucault. (2000) [1980]. 'Interview with Michel Foucault'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press,
June 2008
'May '68 was extremely important, without any doubt. It's certain that without May '68 I wouldn't have afterward done the work I did in regard to prison, delinquency, and sexuality. In the pre-1968 climate, that wasn't possible. ... Problems that in the past had not found any echo, with the exception of antipsychiatry, became current issues.'
Michel Foucault. (2000) [1980]. 'Interview with Michel Foucault'. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Power The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume Three. New York: New Press, p. 282.
This quote should have gone up last month to celebrate the 40th anniversary of May 1968 - but better late than never!
□
Dr. Clare O'Farrell
School of Cultural and Language Studies, Queensland University of Technology. Victoria Park Rd, Kelvin Grove, Qld, AUSTRALIA 4059.
Email: c.ofarrell@qut.edu.au
Website: michel-foucault.com
□
Invited 20080619. Published online 20080626. Scidea Publishing.
Author's works
Notes Michel-Foucault.com for details.
Clare O'Farrell. Michel Foucault. London: SAGE. 2005.
ISBN-10: 076196164X. Awards: Choice
Award for Outstanding Academic Titles for 2006.
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National History: Clare O'Farrell
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Clare O'Farrell. Foucault Quotes. National History, 1 (5), nh20080626a1 (2008). □ doi: 10.3128/nh20080626a1 | ScideaCurrentTOC /ScideaFull | CrossRef
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Advanced ScideaNews: National History: Clare O'Farrell, Foucault Quotes. The quotations I have collected from Michel Foucault's work. This quote should have gone up last month to celebrate the 40th anniversary of May 1968 - but better late than never! [Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Philosopher and Historian of Thought. FRANCE]. □ Title image: Michel FOUCAULT, 1973. Paris. FRANCE. Demonstration in support of immigrant workers. Photograph by Gilles PERESS. 1973. Copyright © Gilles PERESS and Magnum Photos. □ National History, nh200805. SCIDEA.
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