WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.339 We are diving deep today, tackling an intellectual 00:00:03.339 --> 00:00:06.690 figure who, well, He fundamentally tore up the 00:00:06.690 --> 00:00:09.169 rulebook on how we understand power, knowledge, 00:00:09.369 --> 00:00:12.490 and even our own sexuality. We are. We're talking 00:00:12.490 --> 00:00:14.410 about Michel Foucault. Michel Foucault. And when 00:00:14.410 --> 00:00:16.250 you say he tore up the rulebook, that's not an 00:00:16.250 --> 00:00:18.929 exaggeration. Not at all. Foucault, born Paul 00:00:18.929 --> 00:00:22.109 Michel Foucault in 1926, wasn't just a historian 00:00:22.109 --> 00:00:25.370 or a philosopher. He was, you could say, a master 00:00:25.370 --> 00:00:28.370 genealogist of the modern world. A genealogist. 00:00:28.570 --> 00:00:30.949 What does that mean in this context? It means 00:00:30.949 --> 00:00:34.369 he traced the lineage of our ideas. His work, 00:00:34.409 --> 00:00:36.450 which spanned his entire life until his death 00:00:36.450 --> 00:00:39.570 in 1984, it just fundamentally challenged the 00:00:39.570 --> 00:00:41.770 assumption that concepts like, say, truth or 00:00:41.770 --> 00:00:44.829 sanity or sexuality are natural or timeless. 00:00:45.130 --> 00:00:47.649 Exactly. He showed us that they are, in fact, 00:00:47.649 --> 00:00:49.770 historical inventions, things that were created 00:00:49.770 --> 00:00:52.289 at a specific time for a specific reason. Absolutely. 00:00:52.350 --> 00:00:55.070 And we talk about influence. Foucault was a true 00:00:55.070 --> 00:00:57.250 heavyweight. I mean, he is consistently cited 00:00:57.250 --> 00:00:59.490 as one of the most essential and, let's be honest, 00:00:59.549 --> 00:01:01.850 often explosive post -World War II scholars. 00:01:02.070 --> 00:01:04.530 His ideas are just... They're everywhere in modern 00:01:04.530 --> 00:01:07.209 thought. They really are. So our mission today 00:01:07.209 --> 00:01:10.750 is to try and navigate his very complex life 00:01:10.750 --> 00:01:12.790 and work. We want to extract the core concepts, 00:01:12.930 --> 00:01:15.870 power, knowledge, subjectivity, and really understand 00:01:15.870 --> 00:01:18.250 why his radical analysis of institutional control 00:01:18.250 --> 00:01:21.930 remains so indispensable for analyzing the 21st 00:01:21.930 --> 00:01:23.930 century. That's the core mission. Foucault's 00:01:23.930 --> 00:01:26.290 whole career was really dedicated to demonstrating 00:01:26.290 --> 00:01:29.310 the intricate, and I'd say often insidious, relationship 00:01:29.310 --> 00:01:32.310 between power, knowledge, and liberty. He wanted 00:01:32.310 --> 00:01:34.760 to show us how established authorities You know, 00:01:34.760 --> 00:01:37.599 be they medical, penal, academic, how they deploy 00:01:37.599 --> 00:01:40.519 what is presented as scientific knowledge as 00:01:40.519 --> 00:01:44.079 a very sophisticated and deeply effective form 00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:46.340 of social control. And always through institutions. 00:01:46.700 --> 00:01:48.959 Always through institutions. And to give you, 00:01:48.959 --> 00:01:50.920 the listener, a sense of scale here, we aren't 00:01:50.920 --> 00:01:53.739 just discussing some campus celebrity. The historical 00:01:53.739 --> 00:01:56.280 analysis he performed in works like Discipline 00:01:56.280 --> 00:01:59.900 and Punish and The History of Sexuality. They 00:01:59.900 --> 00:02:03.000 are among the 25 most cited social science books 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:05.090 of all time. That is just, it's a staggering 00:02:05.090 --> 00:02:07.849 reach for someone dealing with such dense academic 00:02:07.849 --> 00:02:10.689 material. It is. The fact that a historian's 00:02:10.689 --> 00:02:13.530 texts on the prison system and the history of 00:02:13.530 --> 00:02:16.680 medicine can achieve that status. It just tells 00:02:16.680 --> 00:02:19.120 you how profoundly they resonated. So today, 00:02:19.199 --> 00:02:21.080 we're going to trace the path of the man who 00:02:21.080 --> 00:02:23.580 went from being an obsessive, a deeply troubled 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:26.419 youth, someone who openly indulged in what he 00:02:26.419 --> 00:02:29.520 called limit experiences, to becoming this high 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:33.240 -flying academic who radically redefined how 00:02:33.240 --> 00:02:35.439 we understand the purpose of prisons, the function 00:02:35.439 --> 00:02:37.840 of hospitals, and maybe most crucially, our most 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:41.000 intimate sense of self. Okay, so let's unpack 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:43.349 this journey. Because the person who would become 00:02:43.349 --> 00:02:46.689 this great critic of institutions, he started 00:02:46.689 --> 00:02:49.150 out firmly inside them. Oh, very much so. Paul 00:02:49.150 --> 00:02:51.629 Michel Foucault was born in Poitiers. His family 00:02:51.629 --> 00:02:53.770 was prosperous, upper middle class, socially 00:02:53.770 --> 00:02:56.150 very conservative. It's hard to reconcile that 00:02:56.150 --> 00:02:58.370 kind of stable traditional background with the 00:02:58.370 --> 00:03:01.050 revolutionary ideas he later developed. It is. 00:03:01.090 --> 00:03:04.110 And that contrast seems to have fueled a tremendous 00:03:04.110 --> 00:03:07.009 internal conflict right from the beginning. His 00:03:07.009 --> 00:03:08.909 home life was tense. His father was a successful 00:03:08.909 --> 00:03:11.520 surgeon. And Foucault later described him. quite 00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:15.139 darkly as a bully. A bully. A bully who subjected 00:03:15.139 --> 00:03:17.659 him to stern punishment. So you have this nominal 00:03:17.659 --> 00:03:19.860 Catholic upbringing. And while he was intellectually 00:03:19.860 --> 00:03:22.300 brilliant, I mean, excelling in history, Greek, 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:25.620 Latin, French, he famously struggled with mathematics. 00:03:25.819 --> 00:03:29.659 He saw it as rigid, inaccessible. And that tension. 00:03:30.250 --> 00:03:32.770 It seems to have manifested in some extreme psychological 00:03:32.770 --> 00:03:35.830 distress very early on. This wasn't just, you 00:03:35.830 --> 00:03:38.129 know, typical teenage angst. No, no. He attempted 00:03:38.129 --> 00:03:41.289 suicide around 1948. And again in the years after 00:03:41.289 --> 00:03:44.310 that, he had periods of really intense psychological 00:03:44.310 --> 00:03:47.319 turmoil. And the state of his mind. during his 00:03:47.319 --> 00:03:49.740 time at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, 00:03:49.879 --> 00:03:53.979 the ENS, is just. It's deeply revealing about 00:03:53.979 --> 00:03:56.060 his intellectual path. Absolutely. You have to 00:03:56.060 --> 00:03:57.939 picture this. He wasn't decorating his room with 00:03:57.939 --> 00:04:00.419 typical student posters. He adorned his walls 00:04:00.419 --> 00:04:02.860 with Prince of Francisco Goya's images of torture 00:04:02.860 --> 00:04:05.620 and war. Like the disasters of war. Exactly. 00:04:05.979 --> 00:04:08.960 This reflects an early, intense fascination with 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:11.699 violence, the macabre, and the absolute limits 00:04:11.699 --> 00:04:14.080 of human suffering. These were the very limits 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:16.120 he would later trace in his work on punishment. 00:04:16.269 --> 00:04:18.889 and madness. And we know the ENS doctor at the 00:04:18.889 --> 00:04:21.470 time, he attributed these suicidal tendencies 00:04:21.470 --> 00:04:25.850 to the distress Foucault felt about his homosexuality, 00:04:25.870 --> 00:04:29.170 which in post -war France was a profound social 00:04:29.170 --> 00:04:32.769 taboo. It was. But instead of retreating, Foucault 00:04:32.769 --> 00:04:35.370 did the opposite. He actively sought out danger, 00:04:35.509 --> 00:04:38.250 he pushed boundaries, he explored the underground, 00:04:38.610 --> 00:04:42.029 often perilous Parisian gay scene, and he experimented 00:04:42.029 --> 00:04:44.560 with drug use. So there's a key connection there 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:47.180 to his philosophy. It's the key connection. Long 00:04:47.180 --> 00:04:49.560 before he formally theorized limit experiences, 00:04:50.279 --> 00:04:52.699 Foucault was living them. He was exploring what 00:04:52.699 --> 00:04:55.180 society defined as deviance, as distress, as 00:04:55.180 --> 00:04:58.579 the non -normative. His time at the ENS was marked 00:04:58.579 --> 00:05:01.800 by this obsession with transgressive... literature 00:05:01.800 --> 00:05:04.199 figures like Saad and Bataille people who were 00:05:04.199 --> 00:05:05.939 trying to write themselves outside of conventional 00:05:05.939 --> 00:05:08.240 morality. So the intersection of his personal 00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:10.939 identity, society's judgment of it, and this 00:05:10.939 --> 00:05:13.540 fascination with transgression, that directly 00:05:13.540 --> 00:05:15.660 laid the groundwork for madness and civilization. 00:05:16.139 --> 00:05:17.819 It's the seed of everything that comes later. 00:05:18.100 --> 00:05:19.800 So while he was living through this internal 00:05:19.800 --> 00:05:21.899 battle, he was also getting a really rigorous 00:05:21.899 --> 00:05:24.540 intellectual foundation. Yes, he studied under 00:05:24.540 --> 00:05:27.600 the historian and philosopher Jean Hippolyte 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:31.019 at the Lycée Henri IV. And Hippolyte instilled 00:05:31.019 --> 00:05:33.699 in him this fundamental conviction that philosophy 00:05:33.699 --> 00:05:36.220 cannot operate in a historical vacuum. It has 00:05:36.220 --> 00:05:39.360 to be grounded. It has to be. Any true philosophical 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:42.420 inquiry, Foucault decided, must be developed 00:05:42.420 --> 00:05:44.800 through meticulous, rigorous study of history. 00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:48.120 And this historical lens. It briefly led him 00:05:48.120 --> 00:05:51.060 into political alignment with communism. It did. 00:05:51.180 --> 00:05:53.759 Under the encouragement of his tutor, the Marxist 00:05:53.759 --> 00:05:56.319 philosopher Louis Althusser, Foucault joined 00:05:56.319 --> 00:05:59.439 the French Communist Party, the FCP, in 1950. 00:06:00.079 --> 00:06:01.480 But this was a pretty short -lived dalliance, 00:06:01.579 --> 00:06:03.680 right? He was never a doctrinaire Marxist. Not 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:06.459 at all. He famously rejected the idea that history 00:06:06.459 --> 00:06:08.779 was solely driven by economic class struggle. 00:06:08.939 --> 00:06:10.779 He found that too simplistic. And he left pretty 00:06:10.779 --> 00:06:13.560 quickly. By 1953, he was out. He was completely 00:06:13.560 --> 00:06:16.019 disillusioned by the pervasive atmosphere of 00:06:16.019 --> 00:06:18.819 bigotry. There was the obvious homophobia he 00:06:18.819 --> 00:06:21.660 experienced firsthand within the party ranks. 00:06:21.839 --> 00:06:23.560 Of course. And then the broader anti -Semitism 00:06:23.560 --> 00:06:26.139 that was on display during the Soviet doctor's 00:06:26.139 --> 00:06:28.560 plot in the early 1950s. Right, where Jewish 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:30.850 doctors were false. accused of conspiring against 00:06:30.850 --> 00:06:33.970 Soviet leaders. Exactly. So for Foucault the 00:06:33.970 --> 00:06:37.209 party had just it had failed the test of genuine 00:06:37.209 --> 00:06:41.069 liberation and ethical consistency. But the real 00:06:41.069 --> 00:06:43.970 fundamental intellectual watershed moment that 00:06:43.970 --> 00:06:46.250 happened during a trip to Italy around that same 00:06:46.250 --> 00:06:49.589 time 1953. Yes. This is when he immersed himself 00:06:49.589 --> 00:06:51.850 in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche particularly 00:06:51.850 --> 00:06:54.970 untimely meditations. And he called this a revelation. 00:06:55.560 --> 00:06:58.259 It was. We really need to linger here because 00:06:58.259 --> 00:07:01.699 Nietzsche remained a core fundamental influence 00:07:01.699 --> 00:07:04.600 for the rest of his life. He basically dictated 00:07:04.600 --> 00:07:07.379 Foucault's entire intellectual trajectory. So 00:07:07.379 --> 00:07:09.399 what did Nietzsche offer him? What was the revelation? 00:07:09.860 --> 00:07:12.060 Nietzsche offered him a way out of the intellectual 00:07:12.060 --> 00:07:14.660 corner Foucault felt trapped in. What corner 00:07:14.660 --> 00:07:16.899 was that specifically? What was the prevailing 00:07:16.899 --> 00:07:18.959 philosophical climate he was trying to escape? 00:07:19.180 --> 00:07:21.360 Well, at the ENS, the dominant modes of thought 00:07:21.360 --> 00:07:24.600 were Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism. 00:07:24.839 --> 00:07:26.519 All brilliant in their own right, of course, 00:07:26.680 --> 00:07:29.139 but Foucault found them restrictive. How so? 00:07:29.720 --> 00:07:32.139 Existentialism, even with its emphasis on freedom, 00:07:32.420 --> 00:07:35.199 still often centered on a search for an authentic 00:07:35.199 --> 00:07:39.500 pre -existing subject or self. Marxism sought 00:07:39.500 --> 00:07:43.180 a universal historical path moving toward a predetermined 00:07:43.180 --> 00:07:45.620 endpoint, which was communism. And Nietzsche 00:07:45.620 --> 00:07:47.620 gave him a way to break from that. Nietzsche 00:07:47.620 --> 00:07:50.399 allowed him to reject that whole pursuit of universal 00:07:50.399 --> 00:07:54.149 truths or destiny. Untimely meditations argues 00:07:54.149 --> 00:07:56.610 for a form of history that doesn't look for ultimate 00:07:56.610 --> 00:08:00.430 origins or grand narratives. Instead, it investigates 00:08:00.430 --> 00:08:02.949 the messy, the contingent, the often violent 00:08:02.949 --> 00:08:05.370 beginnings of our concepts. It gives philosophy 00:08:05.370 --> 00:08:08.389 the tool of genealogy. Precisely. A way to study 00:08:08.389 --> 00:08:10.649 the accidents, the power struggles, the sheer 00:08:10.649 --> 00:08:13.069 arbitrary nature of how things came to be, without 00:08:13.069 --> 00:08:15.350 projecting some fixed human nature or historical 00:08:15.350 --> 00:08:18.250 endpoint onto the material. This was the break 00:08:18.250 --> 00:08:20.790 he needed. And that conceptual break was reinforced 00:08:20.790 --> 00:08:23.949 by culture, too. He cited seeing Samuel Beckett's 00:08:23.949 --> 00:08:26.490 Waiting for Godot in Paris around that time as 00:08:26.490 --> 00:08:28.569 another major break from those schools of thought 00:08:28.569 --> 00:08:31.189 that insisted on meaning and destiny. Right. 00:08:31.310 --> 00:08:33.590 So equipped with degrees in philosophy and psychology, 00:08:33.929 --> 00:08:36.309 he starts his professional career and his early 00:08:36.309 --> 00:08:39.330 experiences directly informed his later critique 00:08:39.330 --> 00:08:42.230 of power. He spent time as an unofficial intern 00:08:42.230 --> 00:08:44.669 at the St. Anne Hospital, right? In the Psychiatric 00:08:44.669 --> 00:08:47.470 Institute. He did. This was hands -on research. 00:08:47.710 --> 00:08:49.909 He was studying the doctor -patient relationship. 00:08:49.990 --> 00:08:52.629 He was aiding in experiments. This experience 00:08:52.629 --> 00:08:55.649 just showed him firsthand the institutional mechanisms 00:08:55.649 --> 00:08:58.970 of medical knowledge, how the expert establishes 00:08:58.970 --> 00:09:02.289 dominance, how illness is defined and controlled. 00:09:02.590 --> 00:09:04.350 The groundwork for madness and civilization. 00:09:05.100 --> 00:09:07.740 And the birth of the clinic. All of it. And that 00:09:07.740 --> 00:09:10.419 led to his first book, Melody Mentale Personalite 00:09:10.419 --> 00:09:14.360 in 1954, which was conceptually radical for the 00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:16.940 time. It theorized that mental illness itself 00:09:16.940 --> 00:09:20.139 was culturally relative. A perspective that drew 00:09:20.139 --> 00:09:22.700 on Marx, Heidegger, anthropologists like Margaret 00:09:22.700 --> 00:09:25.649 Mead. All of them. But surprisingly, Foucault 00:09:25.649 --> 00:09:28.230 later came to absolutely despise this work. He 00:09:28.230 --> 00:09:30.049 actually tried to prevent its republication, 00:09:30.090 --> 00:09:32.230 feeling it was too conventional, too psychological, 00:09:32.309 --> 00:09:34.970 and just lacked the radical intellectual force, 00:09:35.110 --> 00:09:37.830 the fire and flair of his later projects. And 00:09:37.830 --> 00:09:41.049 that dissatisfaction drove him abroad for five 00:09:41.049 --> 00:09:44.149 crucial years. He served as a cultural diplomat 00:09:44.149 --> 00:09:47.309 in Sweden, Poland and West Germany. And these 00:09:47.309 --> 00:09:51.889 years away from the sort of. intense French academic 00:09:51.889 --> 00:09:55.909 scene allowed him to develop his ideas free from 00:09:55.909 --> 00:09:58.370 the immediate scrutiny of his peers. His time 00:09:58.370 --> 00:10:00.110 in Sweden was intellectually productive, right? 00:10:00.149 --> 00:10:02.169 He was gathering material for madness and civilization. 00:10:02.529 --> 00:10:05.070 He was at Uppsala University, but his doctoral 00:10:05.070 --> 00:10:08.110 thesis was actually rejected there. A positivist 00:10:08.110 --> 00:10:10.649 historian felt his methods were too speculative, 00:10:10.750 --> 00:10:13.309 not rigorous enough. Another little foreshadowing 00:10:13.309 --> 00:10:16.090 of later critiques. And his time in Poland. That 00:10:16.090 --> 00:10:18.669 provided the ultimate real -world lesson in institutional 00:10:18.669 --> 00:10:21.490 surveillance. Oh, yes. He was the director of 00:10:21.490 --> 00:10:23.629 the French Cultural Center in Warsaw, and during 00:10:23.629 --> 00:10:25.529 this period he became involved in a relationship 00:10:25.529 --> 00:10:28.190 with a Polish security agent. A security agent? 00:10:28.269 --> 00:10:30.570 What was the context there? It was classic Cold 00:10:30.570 --> 00:10:33.409 War stuff. The agent was trying to use Foucault's 00:10:33.409 --> 00:10:35.610 homosexuality, which was illegal and severely 00:10:35.610 --> 00:10:38.250 punished in Poland, to either blackmail him or 00:10:38.250 --> 00:10:41.009 compel him to act as an informer. An entrapment 00:10:41.009 --> 00:10:43.799 attempt. A blatant one. And when it became clear, 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:47.220 it escalated into a diplomatic scandal, forcing 00:10:47.220 --> 00:10:50.139 Foucault to abruptly flee to West Germany. So 00:10:50.139 --> 00:10:52.360 the man who would spend his life analyzing how 00:10:52.360 --> 00:10:55.360 institutions watch and categorize people, he 00:10:55.360 --> 00:10:57.820 was himself an early target of state surveillance 00:10:57.820 --> 00:11:00.980 and disciplinary power. That period abroad then 00:11:00.980 --> 00:11:03.759 culminates in his return to France and the establishment 00:11:03.759 --> 00:11:06.240 of his first truly revolutionary philosophical 00:11:06.240 --> 00:11:09.649 method, which he termed Archaeology. Archaeology 00:11:09.649 --> 00:11:11.730 is such a fantastic metaphor for what he was 00:11:11.730 --> 00:11:14.149 doing. It's about digging down through the layers 00:11:14.149 --> 00:11:16.870 of history, not to find continuous progress, 00:11:17.009 --> 00:11:20.029 but to unearth the hidden rules, the very foundation 00:11:20.029 --> 00:11:22.710 that made knowledge possible in a given period. 00:11:22.970 --> 00:11:25.370 So his archaeology sought to examine the historical 00:11:25.370 --> 00:11:28.389 conditions of truth itself. Exactly. Not what 00:11:28.389 --> 00:11:31.789 is true, but what was it possible to say as true 00:11:31.789 --> 00:11:34.269 at this time. And his first three major histories, 00:11:34.509 --> 00:11:37.220 madness and civilization. The Birth of the Clinic 00:11:37.220 --> 00:11:39.539 and The Order of Things all use this approach. 00:11:39.759 --> 00:11:41.600 So let's start with the one that gave him his 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:44.360 initial fame, Madness and Civilization from 1961. 00:11:44.860 --> 00:11:47.500 This book was monumental. Foucault wasn't just 00:11:47.500 --> 00:11:50.279 writing a history of psychiatry. He was arguing 00:11:50.279 --> 00:11:53.120 that madness, as we understand it, is a social 00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:55.259 construct that's distinct from mental illness. 00:11:55.659 --> 00:11:58.759 He traced how society defines, excludes, and 00:11:58.759 --> 00:12:01.379 manages those it labels mad. And he showed that 00:12:01.379 --> 00:12:03.559 these definitions shift dramatically over time. 00:12:03.799 --> 00:12:05.980 In the Renaissance, for instance, madness was 00:12:05.980 --> 00:12:08.200 often interwoven with creativity or mystical 00:12:08.200 --> 00:12:11.179 fate. It had a place in the culture. Right. It 00:12:11.179 --> 00:12:14.139 had a kind of cultural resonance. Then, in the 00:12:14.139 --> 00:12:16.740 classical age of the 17th and 18th centuries, 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:19.019 something shifts dramatically with what Foucault 00:12:19.019 --> 00:12:21.559 calls the Great Confinement. And that confinement 00:12:21.559 --> 00:12:23.899 is key. It's absolutely key. Madness suddenly 00:12:23.899 --> 00:12:25.899 became tangled up with other forms of social 00:12:25.899 --> 00:12:28.720 deviance. Poverty, criminality, unemployment, 00:12:29.159 --> 00:12:31.480 illness. And all of these people were confined 00:12:31.480 --> 00:12:34.159 together in massive institutions like the Hopital 00:12:34.159 --> 00:12:36.519 General in Paris. So madness was no longer a 00:12:36.519 --> 00:12:39.039 tragic fate. It became a moral one. Moral failing 00:12:39.039 --> 00:12:42.740 linked to idleness and disorder. Precisely. And 00:12:42.740 --> 00:12:45.940 he argues that the modern medicalized view of 00:12:45.940 --> 00:12:48.500 mental illness only emerged after the Enlightenment. 00:12:48.559 --> 00:12:51.460 Once the moral and political rationale for that 00:12:51.460 --> 00:12:54.320 confinement had kind of run its course, it became 00:12:54.320 --> 00:12:57.019 a medical problem rather than a moral one. The 00:12:57.019 --> 00:13:00.279 book resonated so strongly that it became a foundational 00:13:00.279 --> 00:13:03.100 text for the anti -psychiatry movement in the 00:13:03.100 --> 00:13:06.470 1960s. It did. Though while he appreciated the 00:13:06.470 --> 00:13:09.070 spirit of the movement, Foucault later distanced 00:13:09.070 --> 00:13:12.070 himself slightly. He argued they sometimes missed 00:13:12.070 --> 00:13:14.970 the historical nuance. They focused on the evil 00:13:14.970 --> 00:13:18.029 of institutions rather than the structural logic 00:13:18.029 --> 00:13:20.330 that made the institutionalization of madness 00:13:20.330 --> 00:13:22.970 possible in the first place. Then came the birth 00:13:22.970 --> 00:13:25.730 of the clinic in 1963, where he applied this 00:13:25.730 --> 00:13:28.389 archaeological method to medicine. And here he 00:13:28.389 --> 00:13:30.149 introduced the pivotal concept of the medical 00:13:30.149 --> 00:13:32.929 gaze. The medical gaze is such a powerful idea. 00:13:33.230 --> 00:13:34.970 Foucault wasn't interested in the history of 00:13:34.970 --> 00:13:36.649 medical breakthroughs, you know, the story of 00:13:36.649 --> 00:13:38.710 penicillin. He was interested in how the spatial 00:13:38.710 --> 00:13:41.230 reorganization of hospitals and the institutionalization 00:13:41.230 --> 00:13:43.250 of clinical teaching in the late 18th century 00:13:43.250 --> 00:13:45.809 created a new way of looking at the human body. 00:13:45.990 --> 00:13:49.269 Before this, doctors relied heavily on symptoms 00:13:49.269 --> 00:13:51.610 on what the patient told them. On the narrative, 00:13:51.750 --> 00:13:55.730 yes. But post -1800, particularly with the rise 00:13:55.730 --> 00:13:58.789 of autoxies and pathology, the body became an 00:13:58.789 --> 00:14:02.169 object, an object of systematic, objective observation, 00:14:02.509 --> 00:14:05.169 classification, and intervention, even while 00:14:05.169 --> 00:14:07.549 the patient was alive. The doctor's gaze cuts 00:14:07.549 --> 00:14:10.669 through the subjective narrative to the objective 00:14:10.669 --> 00:14:13.509 truth of the lesion or the organ. Exactly. And 00:14:13.509 --> 00:14:16.110 then the book that brought him unexpected fame, 00:14:16.409 --> 00:14:19.340 The Order of Things. an archaeology of the human 00:14:19.340 --> 00:14:22.639 sciences in 1966. This explored a much broader 00:14:22.639 --> 00:14:25.860 question. How did man become an object of knowledge 00:14:25.860 --> 00:14:28.500 in the first place? And here he introduced the 00:14:28.500 --> 00:14:31.480 concept of the episteme. Okay, so that is a highly 00:14:31.480 --> 00:14:34.340 technical, dense term. If we think of Foucault 00:14:34.340 --> 00:14:36.820 as digging up historical foundations, what exactly 00:14:36.820 --> 00:14:39.220 is the episteme? You can think of the episteme 00:14:39.220 --> 00:14:41.860 as the invisible underlying architectural blueprint 00:14:41.860 --> 00:14:44.379 of knowledge for a specific historical period. 00:14:44.600 --> 00:14:49.879 The unspoken unquestioned rules. the conditions 00:14:49.879 --> 00:14:52.860 of truth that determine what is acceptable scientific 00:14:52.860 --> 00:14:56.360 discourse, what is considered rational, and what 00:14:56.360 --> 00:14:58.600 questions can even be asked in the first place. 00:14:58.779 --> 00:15:01.500 So it's the mental furniture of an era that the 00:15:01.500 --> 00:15:04.000 people living within it can't perceive. Right, 00:15:04.100 --> 00:15:06.259 because it's the air they breathe. And that's 00:15:06.259 --> 00:15:10.019 why the book caused such a stir. Foucault argued 00:15:10.019 --> 00:15:12.500 these conditions shift traumatically, like a 00:15:12.500 --> 00:15:15.159 geological upheaval, making certain types of 00:15:15.159 --> 00:15:17.740 thought possible in one era and utterly impossible 00:15:17.740 --> 00:15:20.419 in the next. And he analyzed the episteme of 00:15:20.419 --> 00:15:22.559 the Renaissance, which was based on resemblance 00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:25.220 and analogy, then the classical age, based on 00:15:25.220 --> 00:15:27.519 representation and order, and finally the modern 00:15:27.519 --> 00:15:30.559 age, based on history and man as both subject 00:15:30.559 --> 00:15:33.279 and object of knowledge. The book was a surprise 00:15:33.279 --> 00:15:35.759 French bestseller. And because he was describing 00:15:35.759 --> 00:15:37.759 these underlying, seemingly fixed structures 00:15:37.759 --> 00:15:40.399 of knowledge, he got temporarily associated with 00:15:40.399 --> 00:15:42.159 the structuralist movement, people like Lévi 00:15:42.159 --> 00:15:45.740 -Strauss and Lacan. An association he soon vehemently 00:15:45.740 --> 00:15:48.230 rejected. Right. And if the episteme is supposed 00:15:48.230 --> 00:15:51.350 to be invisible, how did Foucault manage to spot 00:15:51.350 --> 00:15:53.769 these shifts when they are supposedly invisible 00:15:53.769 --> 00:15:56.299 to the people living within them? That's precisely 00:15:56.299 --> 00:15:58.980 the challenge that led him to evolve his method. 00:15:59.179 --> 00:16:01.919 He rejected structuralism because they were seeking 00:16:01.919 --> 00:16:04.720 universal, timeless, ahistorical structures. 00:16:05.440 --> 00:16:07.820 Foucault was doing the opposite. He was focused 00:16:07.820 --> 00:16:10.779 on historically localized practices of discourse. 00:16:11.340 --> 00:16:13.980 So this shift, the move from describing the structure 00:16:13.980 --> 00:16:17.480 of acceptable knowledge, archaeology, to explaining 00:16:17.480 --> 00:16:20.440 the messy, nonlinear process of how those structures 00:16:20.440 --> 00:16:23.080 change, is what spurred the evolution of his 00:16:23.080 --> 00:16:25.379 method in the 1970s. And that's where we get 00:16:25.379 --> 00:16:28.460 genealogy. Genealogy, the corrective method. 00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:30.220 Heavily influenced by Nietzsche's historical 00:16:30.220 --> 00:16:33.019 method, genealogy focuses explicitly on the roles 00:16:33.019 --> 00:16:36.019 power relations play in society. Instead of searching 00:16:36.019 --> 00:16:39.500 for the noble origins of an idea, genealogy investigates 00:16:39.500 --> 00:16:42.220 its ignoble, contingent, and often violent beginnings. 00:16:42.580 --> 00:16:44.779 It focuses on the battles and struggles that 00:16:44.779 --> 00:16:47.259 caused the episteme to shift. So archaeology 00:16:47.259 --> 00:16:49.480 describes the structure, and genealogy explains 00:16:49.480 --> 00:16:52.059 the power -based friction that leads to succession. 00:16:52.519 --> 00:16:55.440 Exactly. And this methodological shift is what 00:16:55.440 --> 00:16:58.120 truly defines his most influential later work, 00:16:58.279 --> 00:17:01.240 culminating in Discipline and Punish in 1975 00:17:01.240 --> 00:17:05.299 and The History of Sexuality in 1976. Now, we 00:17:05.299 --> 00:17:07.079 arrive at the concept Foucault is universally 00:17:07.079 --> 00:17:09.660 known for power. Yeah. But we have to stress 00:17:09.660 --> 00:17:12.279 that Foucault's definition of power is radically 00:17:12.279 --> 00:17:14.039 different from the one most of us carry around. 00:17:14.259 --> 00:17:17.279 Absolutely. He fundamentally rejected what he 00:17:17.279 --> 00:17:20.039 called the hydraulic or economic model of power. 00:17:20.180 --> 00:17:22.539 He was very critical of the liberal view that 00:17:22.539 --> 00:17:25.799 power is simply what the state holds or the Marxist 00:17:25.799 --> 00:17:27.779 view that it's owned by an oppressive class. 00:17:28.099 --> 00:17:30.099 He found these incomplete. Deeply incomplete 00:17:30.099 --> 00:17:33.000 because they only describe power as a negative 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:35.680 force, as a tool that says no. Right. Something 00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:38.380 that represses or prohibits. And he argued. that 00:17:38.380 --> 00:17:40.799 focusing solely on that subtractive nature of 00:17:40.799 --> 00:17:43.900 state power laws, police, censorship has effectively 00:17:43.900 --> 00:17:46.720 hidden other far more pervasive forms of power 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:48.700 that are actually productive. Productive. They 00:17:48.700 --> 00:17:51.079 create things. They create things. They create 00:17:51.079 --> 00:17:54.660 subjects, knowledge, reality itself. For Foucault, 00:17:54.819 --> 00:17:57.640 power is not a commodity you possess or a crown 00:17:57.640 --> 00:18:00.759 you wear. He described it instead as a complex 00:18:00.759 --> 00:18:03.480 group of constantly changing force relations, 00:18:03.839 --> 00:18:07.359 a network that results from inequality or difference. 00:18:07.619 --> 00:18:09.579 So it comes from everything and therefore exists 00:18:09.579 --> 00:18:11.859 everywhere. It's instantiated through specific 00:18:11.859 --> 00:18:14.740 techniques, practices, discourses, rather than 00:18:14.740 --> 00:18:17.460 being centrally held. So power isn't necessarily 00:18:17.460 --> 00:18:20.180 top -down. Right. It operates at the micro level 00:18:20.180 --> 00:18:23.599 first. through singular tactics, how you speak, 00:18:23.799 --> 00:18:25.680 how you arrange your office, how a parent disciplines 00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:28.900 a child. And these micro tactics then aggregate 00:18:28.900 --> 00:18:31.579 into macro level strategies, which is what we 00:18:31.579 --> 00:18:33.660 traditionally recognize as state policy or social 00:18:33.660 --> 00:18:35.940 structure. And crucially, and this is so important 00:18:35.940 --> 00:18:38.539 because power relations are fluid and constantly 00:18:38.539 --> 00:18:41.339 changing. They always include an element of resistance. 00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:44.009 There's always pushback. Always. Power cannot 00:18:44.009 --> 00:18:46.490 be exercised without the possibility of resistance. 00:18:46.930 --> 00:18:49.470 Otherwise, it would just be brute force. And 00:18:49.470 --> 00:18:51.829 this is why change is always possible, even if 00:18:51.829 --> 00:18:54.230 escaping the network of power entirely is not. 00:18:54.430 --> 00:18:56.890 The whole point of his work was to show the mechanisms 00:18:56.890 --> 00:18:59.589 of power so that we might resist them more effectively. 00:18:59.950 --> 00:19:01.990 And to make this evolution of force relations 00:19:01.990 --> 00:19:05.250 clear, Foucault detailed three distinct historical 00:19:05.250 --> 00:19:07.809 forms of power that have shaped Western society, 00:19:08.109 --> 00:19:11.690 marking this shift from overt coercion to internalized 00:19:11.690 --> 00:19:14.160 control. So let's begin with the oldest and most 00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:17.539 obvious, sovereign power. This is the traditional 00:19:17.539 --> 00:19:20.299 pyramid -like structure where power is explicitly 00:19:20.299 --> 00:19:23.240 held by a single sovereign think, an absolute 00:19:23.240 --> 00:19:26.180 monarchy. Its action is fundamentally subtractive 00:19:26.180 --> 00:19:28.720 and public. Right. The sovereign has the absolute 00:19:28.720 --> 00:19:31.500 right to take life, wealth, services, or labor 00:19:31.500 --> 00:19:33.900 from their subjects. And its manifestation in 00:19:33.900 --> 00:19:37.200 punishment was gruesome spectacle. In Discipline 00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:39.599 and Punish, Foucault opens with a shocking detailed 00:19:39.599 --> 00:19:42.500 account of the torture of Robert -Francois Damien, 00:19:42.619 --> 00:19:45.180 who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV in 00:19:45.180 --> 00:19:49.000 1757. That opening passage is infamous for its 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:52.519 clinical, almost detached cruelty. It's meant 00:19:52.519 --> 00:19:55.480 to shock you. So describe what happened to Damien's 00:19:55.480 --> 00:19:58.359 and why Foucault chose it as the ultimate illustration 00:19:58.359 --> 00:20:00.799 of sovereign power. Damien's was subjected to 00:20:00.799 --> 00:20:03.819 public torture for... hours his flesh was torn 00:20:03.819 --> 00:20:06.680 with hot pincers molten lead was poured into 00:20:06.680 --> 00:20:09.500 his wounds and finally he was drawn and quartered 00:20:09.500 --> 00:20:12.799 by four horses the executioners even had to hack 00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:14.900 off his joints to finish the job because the 00:20:14.900 --> 00:20:17.119 horses weren't strong enough it's just horrific 00:20:17.119 --> 00:20:19.640 it is but this wasn't just punishment for the 00:20:19.640 --> 00:20:22.400 man it was a ritual it was designed to repair 00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:25.500 the damage done to the king's body the sovereign's 00:20:25.500 --> 00:20:28.059 mystical political body which had been offended 00:20:28.059 --> 00:20:31.079 by the crime the spectacle was meant to reinstate 00:20:31.210 --> 00:20:33.349 the overwhelming authority of the sovereign for 00:20:33.349 --> 00:20:35.710 all to see. But Foucault noted that this spectacle 00:20:35.710 --> 00:20:38.849 was, it was expensive, it was time consuming, 00:20:38.930 --> 00:20:41.319 and ultimately it was counterproductive. Deeply 00:20:41.319 --> 00:20:44.019 counterproductive, spectators often sympathized 00:20:44.019 --> 00:20:46.720 with the victim suffering rather than the sovereign's 00:20:46.720 --> 00:20:49.779 authority, which could lead to unrest. The system 00:20:49.779 --> 00:20:52.819 was just inefficient for a rapidly industrializing 00:20:52.819 --> 00:20:55.940 society that needed productive, predictable citizens. 00:20:56.359 --> 00:20:59.039 And that inefficiency led to the emergence of 00:20:59.039 --> 00:21:01.039 the second and for Foucault, the most defining 00:21:01.039 --> 00:21:04.880 form of modern power, disciplinary power. Which 00:21:04.880 --> 00:21:06.799 starts roughly at the end of the 18th century. 00:21:07.259 --> 00:21:09.519 Punishment shifts away from the body and towards 00:21:09.519 --> 00:21:12.119 the management of the soul or the mind through 00:21:12.119 --> 00:21:14.839 the new penitentiary system. And the key concept 00:21:14.839 --> 00:21:17.400 here is that disciplinary power is productive. 00:21:18.299 --> 00:21:21.180 It's not just about stopping bad behavior. Its 00:21:21.180 --> 00:21:24.220 goal is to make bodies useful and obedient for 00:21:24.220 --> 00:21:26.759 the state and the economy. It instills rational 00:21:26.759 --> 00:21:29.950 self -control. meaning power becomes internalized 00:21:29.950 --> 00:21:32.930 by the individual. It's about molding, not subtracting. 00:21:33.029 --> 00:21:35.710 And this molding operates through three primary 00:21:35.710 --> 00:21:38.390 overlapping technologies, which Foucault found 00:21:38.390 --> 00:21:40.890 in institutions like schools, hospitals, barracks, 00:21:40.890 --> 00:21:42.730 and factories, not just in prisons. Let's take 00:21:42.730 --> 00:21:45.250 the first one, hierarchical observation. Hierarchical 00:21:45.250 --> 00:21:47.730 observation. This just means bodies are placed 00:21:47.730 --> 00:21:49.890 in spaces where they are constantly visible to 00:21:49.890 --> 00:21:53.109 a hierarchy of observers. The architecture itself 00:21:53.109 --> 00:21:56.670 facilitates surveillance. In a factory or a classroom, 00:21:56.890 --> 00:22:06.859 the form... And second, normalizing judgment. 00:22:07.460 --> 00:22:10.279 This establishes a baseline, a norm, and then 00:22:10.279 --> 00:22:12.779 it punishes deviations from that norm, even very 00:22:12.779 --> 00:22:15.279 small ones. This is the use of techniques like 00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:18.240 rank, grades, and exams to categorize, reward, 00:22:18.500 --> 00:22:20.980 or penalize behavior. So it moves beyond simply 00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:23.630 judging a crime. which sovereign power does, 00:22:23.789 --> 00:22:26.490 to judging whether your performance, your attitude, 00:22:26.529 --> 00:22:29.210 or your body measures up to some established 00:22:29.210 --> 00:22:32.829 expectation. Exactly. And third, the exam. This 00:22:32.829 --> 00:22:34.509 is the ultimate technique because it combines 00:22:34.509 --> 00:22:36.950 observation with normalizing judgment. It brings 00:22:36.950 --> 00:22:39.470 them together. It does. The exam objectifies 00:22:39.470 --> 00:22:42.410 and individualizes the observed bodies. It creates 00:22:42.410 --> 00:22:44.970 extensive individualized documentation files, 00:22:45.170 --> 00:22:48.109 records, grades, psychological profiles, tracking 00:22:48.109 --> 00:22:49.809 your development, and comparing your results 00:22:49.809 --> 00:22:52.470 against the established norm. It transforms the 00:22:52.470 --> 00:22:55.230 individual into a case study. The genius and 00:22:55.230 --> 00:22:58.710 the horror of disciplinary power is that it requires 00:22:58.710 --> 00:23:02.490 surprisingly little overt force. The ultimate 00:23:02.490 --> 00:23:05.289 expression of this power, the formula, as Foucault 00:23:05.289 --> 00:23:08.329 called it, is Jeremy Bentham's panopticon. The 00:23:08.329 --> 00:23:11.289 panopticon. It's an architectural design for 00:23:11.289 --> 00:23:14.450 an optimal prism, a circular building with individual 00:23:14.450 --> 00:23:18.170 cells facing a central... unseen guard tower. 00:23:18.390 --> 00:23:20.569 Right. So the subject in the cell knows they 00:23:20.569 --> 00:23:22.630 might be watched at any given moment, but they 00:23:22.630 --> 00:23:25.210 never know for sure. And the consequence is that 00:23:25.210 --> 00:23:27.809 the subject internalizes the surveillance. The 00:23:27.809 --> 00:23:31.109 power operates automatically. The prisoner regulates 00:23:31.109 --> 00:23:32.990 their own behavior as if they were constantly 00:23:32.990 --> 00:23:35.609 being watched, ensuring obedience even when the 00:23:35.609 --> 00:23:37.490 guard is absent. You become your own warden. 00:23:37.529 --> 00:23:40.450 You become your own warden. And this model, Fuku 00:23:40.450 --> 00:23:42.930 argued, extended far beyond the prison walls 00:23:42.930 --> 00:23:45.589 and became the organizational logic for modernity. 00:23:46.200 --> 00:23:48.759 Think about contemporary life. Corporate surveillance 00:23:48.759 --> 00:23:51.839 software monitoring employee productivity, personalized 00:23:51.839 --> 00:23:54.559 marketing tracking, or even performance review 00:23:54.559 --> 00:23:57.920 systems in large organizations. They're all variations 00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:00.660 of the panoptic formula. They force the subject 00:24:00.660 --> 00:24:03.079 to become responsible for their own normalization. 00:24:03.319 --> 00:24:05.680 Which brings us to the third and final form of 00:24:05.680 --> 00:24:07.740 power, which operates on an entirely different 00:24:07.740 --> 00:24:11.859 scale. Biopower. biopolitics. So a disciplinary 00:24:11.859 --> 00:24:14.940 power manages the individual body. Biopower manages 00:24:14.940 --> 00:24:17.740 the population, the collective bios or life of 00:24:17.740 --> 00:24:20.579 the species. It emerged alongside disciplinary 00:24:20.579 --> 00:24:23.220 power in the 18th century but operates on a macro 00:24:23.220 --> 00:24:25.079 level. So it's less concerned with telling one 00:24:25.079 --> 00:24:27.200 person how to behave and more concerned with 00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:30.599 optimizing and controlling aggregate data. Exactly. 00:24:31.130 --> 00:24:34.069 Birth rates, life expectancy, public health, 00:24:34.349 --> 00:24:38.390 migration, crime statistics. It rests on internalized 00:24:38.390 --> 00:24:40.589 norms of collective health and security. And 00:24:40.589 --> 00:24:43.359 sex and sexuality are central to biopower. They're 00:24:43.359 --> 00:24:45.940 the nexus where the individual body and the population 00:24:45.940 --> 00:24:49.140 intersect. On a disciplinary level, non -reproductive 00:24:49.140 --> 00:24:51.619 acts might be pathologized. But on the biopower 00:24:51.619 --> 00:24:53.880 level, the state regulates contraception, it 00:24:53.880 --> 00:24:56.420 promotes specific family structures, and historically 00:24:56.420 --> 00:24:58.640 it encouraged certain social groups, those deemed 00:24:58.640 --> 00:25:01.859 fit, to reproduce, while actively discouraging 00:25:01.859 --> 00:25:03.880 or preventing others like criminals or the poor 00:25:03.880 --> 00:25:06.609 from having children. It sounds chillingly scientific. 00:25:06.950 --> 00:25:09.089 And this is where Foucault introduces his great 00:25:09.089 --> 00:25:12.269 paradox regarding biopower. Though modern state 00:25:12.269 --> 00:25:14.930 actions are often motivated by the ambition to 00:25:14.930 --> 00:25:18.829 protect life itself, concealed under norms of 00:25:18.829 --> 00:25:21.829 collective health or humanitarian rhetoric. Foucault 00:25:21.829 --> 00:25:24.089 argues that biopower has historically killed 00:25:24.089 --> 00:25:26.670 more people than previous sovereign power systems. 00:25:27.049 --> 00:25:29.690 That sounds incredibly counterintuitive. How 00:25:29.690 --> 00:25:32.450 can a system designed to protect life be more 00:25:32.450 --> 00:25:34.990 lethal than one based on... sovereign's right 00:25:34.990 --> 00:25:37.650 to kill because sovereign power takes life in 00:25:37.650 --> 00:25:41.210 the name of the law it executes an offense biopower 00:25:41.210 --> 00:25:43.869 conversely kills in the name of life what do 00:25:43.869 --> 00:25:46.589 you mean it justifies mass violence by stating 00:25:46.589 --> 00:25:48.950 it is eliminating a biological threat to the 00:25:48.950 --> 00:25:51.950 population's health purity or security it is 00:25:51.950 --> 00:25:54.009 the administration of life and death in the name 00:25:54.009 --> 00:25:56.400 of the collective norm The clearest historical 00:25:56.400 --> 00:25:59.000 example, which Foucault explicitly analyzed, 00:25:59.279 --> 00:26:01.519 is the rise of eugenics in the 19th century. 00:26:01.700 --> 00:26:03.980 It arose directly from biopolitical concerns 00:26:03.980 --> 00:26:06.839 inspired by Darwin's theories and Francis Galton's 00:26:06.839 --> 00:26:08.720 application of them. Right. The middle class 00:26:08.720 --> 00:26:11.160 began to fear that rapid population growth in 00:26:11.160 --> 00:26:14.019 urban slums, with all its disease and crime, 00:26:14.240 --> 00:26:16.640 was preventing natural selection and causing 00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.380 a spread of negative qualities. And the biopolitical 00:26:19.380 --> 00:26:22.359 response was to introduce state controls, sometimes 00:26:22.359 --> 00:26:24.859 subtle, sometimes brutal, including forced... 00:26:24.779 --> 00:26:27.779 sterilizations, to manage the biological destiny 00:26:27.779 --> 00:26:30.460 of the population in the name of future collective 00:26:30.460 --> 00:26:33.339 health. And the extreme culmination is Nazi Germany. 00:26:33.539 --> 00:26:36.619 Exactly. The motivation for genocide was articulated 00:26:36.619 --> 00:26:39.220 not as an act of personal vengeance, which would 00:26:39.220 --> 00:26:41.960 be sovereign power, but as a necessary surgical 00:26:41.960 --> 00:26:44.740 action to protect German health and eliminate 00:26:44.740 --> 00:26:47.440 threats to the racial collective. So biopower 00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:50.180 makes mass death possible by reframing it as 00:26:50.180 --> 00:26:52.759 a public health imperative. a crucial concept 00:26:52.759 --> 00:26:54.940 for understanding modern security states and 00:26:54.940 --> 00:26:57.740 humanitarian crises. Foucault's analysis of power 00:26:57.740 --> 00:27:00.500 forces us to confront the individual body and 00:27:00.500 --> 00:27:02.440 the formation of the self, or what he called 00:27:02.440 --> 00:27:05.920 subjectivity. If power is productive and it's 00:27:05.920 --> 00:27:08.319 everywhere, it means we have to challenge the 00:27:08.319 --> 00:27:10.759 traditional platonic view that the body is just 00:27:10.759 --> 00:27:13.619 a container for some objective hidden soul. He 00:27:13.619 --> 00:27:15.759 argues that the body is anything but objective 00:27:15.759 --> 00:27:18.920 or outside of history. It's a surface, a text 00:27:18.920 --> 00:27:21.619 that is continuously shaped by cultural norms, 00:27:21.799 --> 00:27:25.000 diet, fashion, work habits, medical interventions. 00:27:25.319 --> 00:27:27.720 Disciplinary power is literally inscribed upon 00:27:27.720 --> 00:27:30.319 it, molding us into specific kinds of workers, 00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:32.980 students or patients. And this is where we get 00:27:32.980 --> 00:27:36.319 that truly iconic reversal. Foucault turns Plato's 00:27:36.319 --> 00:27:39.019 the body is the prison of the soul completely 00:27:39.019 --> 00:27:42.680 on its head. He posits that the soul is the prison 00:27:42.680 --> 00:27:44.680 of the body. That is a provocative statement. 00:27:45.230 --> 00:27:47.690 What exactly does Foucault mean by the soul here? 00:27:47.789 --> 00:27:49.869 He's not talking about a spiritual soul. No, 00:27:49.869 --> 00:27:52.589 no. He means the social soul, the internalized 00:27:52.589 --> 00:27:55.750 self. The soul is the knowledge of what we ought 00:27:55.750 --> 00:27:57.890 to be, the conscience, the sense of identity, 00:27:58.130 --> 00:28:00.470 which is the product of continuous surveillance 00:28:00.470 --> 00:28:03.410 and normalization imposed by disciplinary techniques 00:28:03.410 --> 00:28:06.289 like schools and prisons. So the soul is the 00:28:06.289 --> 00:28:08.630 internalized mechanism that disciplines the body, 00:28:08.789 --> 00:28:11.890 making it obedient and useful, confining its 00:28:11.890 --> 00:28:14.109 spontaneous desires within the bounds of social 00:28:14.109 --> 00:28:17.609 acceptability. Exactly. And he applied this critique 00:28:17.609 --> 00:28:21.029 most explosively to sexuality, arguing that sex 00:28:21.029 --> 00:28:24.450 itself is not a timeless biological truth, but 00:28:24.450 --> 00:28:27.349 a normative pseudoscientific historical construct 00:28:27.349 --> 00:28:30.230 used as an instrument of power and knowledge. 00:28:30.509 --> 00:28:32.109 He was particularly frustrated by the popular 00:28:32.109 --> 00:28:34.890 discourse of the 1960s and 70s, which was all 00:28:34.890 --> 00:28:38.230 about the liberation of sexuality. He was. He 00:28:38.230 --> 00:28:40.970 contended that true liberation is a fantasy because 00:28:40.970 --> 00:28:43.710 escaping one set of norms simply ensures another 00:28:43.710 --> 00:28:46.440 slightly. different set rushes in to fill the 00:28:46.440 --> 00:28:48.720 void. So he believed the goal of critical theory 00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:51.380 is not to achieve liberation. No, but rather 00:28:51.380 --> 00:28:53.960 to constantly question and deny any identities 00:28:53.960 --> 00:28:56.759 posited as natural or essential. This brings 00:28:56.759 --> 00:28:58.900 us to the core mechanism by which we are all 00:28:58.900 --> 00:29:03.309 created and controlled. or subjectivity. A difficult 00:29:03.309 --> 00:29:05.869 word, but a crucial concept. It's the process 00:29:05.869 --> 00:29:08.609 where power simultaneously creates us as subjects. 00:29:08.710 --> 00:29:10.769 It gives us an identity while simultaneously 00:29:10.769 --> 00:29:13.730 oppressing us using those social norms. We are 00:29:13.730 --> 00:29:15.930 subjected to norms and we become subjects who 00:29:15.930 --> 00:29:18.029 adhere to them. The example Foucault uses in 00:29:18.029 --> 00:29:20.190 the history of sexuality is the invention of 00:29:20.190 --> 00:29:22.950 the homosexual. Right. Before the 19th century, 00:29:23.049 --> 00:29:25.130 power controlled the axotomy was a temporary 00:29:25.130 --> 00:29:28.029 deviation, one of many forms of transgressive 00:29:28.029 --> 00:29:30.460 behavior. It was something you did. But medical 00:29:30.460 --> 00:29:32.740 and psychological discourse, operating under 00:29:32.740 --> 00:29:34.720 these disciplinary and biopolitical systems, 00:29:34.960 --> 00:29:38.019 it transforms sodomy into the homosexual species, 00:29:38.420 --> 00:29:41.859 an identity. Exactly. The person was then defined 00:29:41.859 --> 00:29:45.059 not by an act, but by a fixed nature. a past, 00:29:45.180 --> 00:29:48.079 a childhood, a type of life. This creation of 00:29:48.079 --> 00:29:50.980 a defined, medicalized identity allowed for intense 00:29:50.980 --> 00:29:54.059 discrimination and normalization, forcing individuals 00:29:54.059 --> 00:29:56.380 to locate their entire identity within this one 00:29:56.380 --> 00:29:59.640 category. And yet, as Pucco noted, this process 00:29:59.640 --> 00:30:02.279 of subjection is never total. The very establishment 00:30:02.279 --> 00:30:05.000 of the homosexual subject also paradoxically 00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:07.720 led to the creation of institutions, gay bars, 00:30:07.960 --> 00:30:10.019 support groups, and movements like the Pride 00:30:10.019 --> 00:30:12.710 Parade. demonstrating how resistance is always 00:30:12.710 --> 00:30:15.589 woven into the fabric of power itself. It gives 00:30:15.589 --> 00:30:17.910 the subjected a common vocabulary and a place 00:30:17.910 --> 00:30:19.789 from which to fight back. We can see this in 00:30:19.789 --> 00:30:22.569 contemporary life, too. If you think about the 00:30:22.569 --> 00:30:25.250 pressure to maintain a perfectly curated, often 00:30:25.250 --> 00:30:28.150 professionalized, digital self on social media, 00:30:28.349 --> 00:30:31.690 the authentic self demanded by these platforms 00:30:31.690 --> 00:30:35.509 is not a liberation. It's a new subjectivity. 00:30:35.690 --> 00:30:38.220 That's a great example. We are subjected to the 00:30:38.220 --> 00:30:40.799 norms of visibility, of metrics, of personal 00:30:40.799 --> 00:30:43.079 branding, and we become subjects who willingly 00:30:43.079 --> 00:30:45.640 perform that labor, monitoring ourselves according 00:30:45.640 --> 00:30:48.160 to platform algorithms and corporate expectations. 00:30:48.519 --> 00:30:51.519 So if we're all chased by these historical and 00:30:51.519 --> 00:30:54.420 cultural forces, where does that leave the concept 00:30:54.420 --> 00:30:57.119 of freedom? If power is everywhere, is freedom 00:30:57.119 --> 00:30:59.599 just an illusion? Well, Foucault defined freedom 00:30:59.599 --> 00:31:01.579 not as an escape from power, which he saw as 00:31:01.579 --> 00:31:03.880 impossible, but as what we can do within our 00:31:03.880 --> 00:31:06.700 specific historical context. So freedom is conditioned 00:31:06.700 --> 00:31:08.720 on awareness. It's conditioned on awareness. 00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:11.779 Once we know how power has shaped us, we retain 00:31:11.779 --> 00:31:14.119 the capacity to change the factors that limit 00:31:14.119 --> 00:31:17.099 us. Freedom, then, is not a state of being, but 00:31:17.099 --> 00:31:19.359 a continuous practice. And this leads directly 00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:21.670 to the practice of critique. Which Foucault saw 00:31:21.670 --> 00:31:24.150 as an alternative to the modern search for certainty, 00:31:24.450 --> 00:31:27.410 critique is the constant rigorous questioning 00:31:27.410 --> 00:31:30.349 of who we are right now. It means tracing the 00:31:30.349 --> 00:31:32.890 messy contingent processes that led to our current 00:31:32.890 --> 00:31:35.710 state of being. This critical ontology of the 00:31:35.710 --> 00:31:39.029 present is Foucault's ultimate tool. It is. It 00:31:39.029 --> 00:31:41.130 shows that the way things are is not necessary, 00:31:41.430 --> 00:31:44.230 not inevitable, but merely constructed by historical 00:31:44.230 --> 00:31:47.250 accidents and power struggles. And if it's constructed, 00:31:47.329 --> 00:31:50.269 it can be dismantled or changed. And in his later 00:31:50.269 --> 00:31:52.990 work, he turned to antiquity to explore practical 00:31:52.990 --> 00:31:55.710 ways individuals achieved this form of active, 00:31:55.789 --> 00:31:58.190 resistant freedom, focusing on the ancient Greek 00:31:58.190 --> 00:32:01.430 term epimelia hutu. The care for the self. This 00:32:01.430 --> 00:32:03.630 was presented as a philosophical counterpoint 00:32:03.630 --> 00:32:06.349 to the modern, often neurotic, search for the 00:32:06.349 --> 00:32:09.430 true self. The modern notion often assumes the 00:32:09.430 --> 00:32:11.849 self is some hidden treasure that introspection 00:32:11.849 --> 00:32:14.390 or confession will reveal. But Foucault argues 00:32:14.390 --> 00:32:17.210 that the self is not discovered. It is constituted 00:32:17.210 --> 00:32:19.579 or created in the very activity. we perform to 00:32:19.579 --> 00:32:22.420 find it. That is a significant difference. You 00:32:22.420 --> 00:32:24.720 don't find your true self. You build your ethical 00:32:24.720 --> 00:32:27.799 self through deliberate actions. Exactly. The 00:32:27.799 --> 00:32:30.240 goal is to create an ethical self through specific, 00:32:30.339 --> 00:32:33.319 formalized practices, what he called technologies 00:32:33.319 --> 00:32:36.599 of the self. This includes things like stoic 00:32:36.599 --> 00:32:39.519 contemplation, the ascesis, where you review 00:32:39.519 --> 00:32:42.000 your past actions and contemplate future actions 00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:44.720 to ensure they align with your values. So it's 00:32:44.720 --> 00:32:47.279 a fascinating return to classical ethics. But 00:32:47.279 --> 00:32:49.759 does Foucault ultimately offer hope that these 00:32:49.759 --> 00:32:53.299 practices allow us to truly escape power? He 00:32:53.299 --> 00:32:56.539 adds a critical caution While these techniques 00:32:56.539 --> 00:32:59.559 are about ethical self -creation, the form for 00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:02.200 this ethical subject is, in large part, already 00:33:02.200 --> 00:33:04.640 constituted by the external power structures. 00:33:04.819 --> 00:33:07.599 The schools, the workplaces, the government systems 00:33:07.599 --> 00:33:10.319 that shape our lives. So we're always creating 00:33:10.319 --> 00:33:13.119 a self in relation to power. Even in the act 00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:15.559 of resistance. The ethical struggle is continuous. 00:33:15.579 --> 00:33:17.819 It's never finally resolved. Foucault was not 00:33:17.819 --> 00:33:20.619 merely a quiet academic. He was a highly engaged, 00:33:20.859 --> 00:33:23.299 militant intellectual who brought his radical 00:33:23.299 --> 00:33:25.220 theories directly into the... political arena. 00:33:25.380 --> 00:33:27.559 His work was absolutely inseparable from his 00:33:27.559 --> 00:33:30.319 action. In 1971, he co -founded the Groupe d 00:33:30.319 --> 00:33:33.079 'Information sur les Prisons, or GIP. The GIP. 00:33:33.400 --> 00:33:37.140 Their mission was direct and provocative, to 00:33:37.140 --> 00:33:40.259 expose poor prison conditions and, crucially, 00:33:40.440 --> 00:33:43.119 to give prisoners and ex -prisoners a voice in 00:33:43.119 --> 00:33:45.490 French society. They wanted to circumvent the 00:33:45.490 --> 00:33:47.690 usual channels of authority. They didn't want 00:33:47.690 --> 00:33:49.990 reforms dictated by bureaucrats. They wanted 00:33:49.990 --> 00:33:52.410 to hear from the confined. They employed radical 00:33:52.410 --> 00:33:55.710 techniques, staging protests related to prison 00:33:55.710 --> 00:33:58.150 riots, directly challenging the state's monopoly 00:33:58.150 --> 00:34:00.309 on information. So he was putting his theories 00:34:00.309 --> 00:34:03.410 into practice. He was. Foucault and the GIP believed 00:34:03.410 --> 00:34:05.809 the penal system was actively hardening petty 00:34:05.809 --> 00:34:08.250 criminals into delinquents through its disciplinary 00:34:08.250 --> 00:34:11.489 techniques, thereby proving his theoretical point 00:34:11.489 --> 00:34:14.789 in real time. put him directly in conflict with 00:34:14.789 --> 00:34:17.110 the police. He was also deeply committed to anti 00:34:17.110 --> 00:34:19.630 -racist campaigns. Very much so. Following a 00:34:19.630 --> 00:34:21.690 wave of perceived racist violence against North 00:34:21.690 --> 00:34:23.750 African migrant workers, he became a leading 00:34:23.750 --> 00:34:26.969 figure in protests in the early 1970s. And this 00:34:26.969 --> 00:34:29.489 commitment led to that famous incident in 1972, 00:34:29.889 --> 00:34:32.610 where Foucault was arrested alongside his literary 00:34:32.610 --> 00:34:35.929 hero, Jean Genet. Right, during a protest against 00:34:35.929 --> 00:34:39.650 the police killing of an Algerian worker. Foucault 00:34:39.650 --> 00:34:41.929 understood that the state's use of violence and 00:34:41.929 --> 00:34:44.210 its classification of certain bodies as dangerous 00:34:44.210 --> 00:34:47.170 or disposable was a core function of biopower, 00:34:47.289 --> 00:34:49.489 and he was willing to put his own body on the 00:34:49.489 --> 00:34:52.230 line to resist it. Yet his politics were often 00:34:52.230 --> 00:34:55.670 complex and controversial. particularly his reporting 00:34:55.670 --> 00:34:58.530 on the 1978 Iranian revolution for an Italian 00:34:58.530 --> 00:35:00.849 newspaper. Yes, that was very controversial. 00:35:01.170 --> 00:35:03.789 He visited Tehran and met with opposition leaders, 00:35:04.010 --> 00:35:07.050 and he expressed a sense of awe regarding Ayatollah 00:35:07.050 --> 00:35:10.190 Khomeini's Islamist movement, describing it as 00:35:10.190 --> 00:35:12.949 a potentially revolutionary political spirituality. 00:35:13.389 --> 00:35:15.349 And he was heavily criticized for this. He was, 00:35:15.469 --> 00:35:18.389 particularly by Iranian expatriates and the French 00:35:18.389 --> 00:35:20.829 press, who saw him as minimizing the violent 00:35:20.829 --> 00:35:23.510 potential of the regime. Foucault's defense was 00:35:23.510 --> 00:35:26.170 that Islamism was undeniably becoming a major 00:35:26.170 --> 00:35:28.550 political force and the West needed to treat 00:35:28.550 --> 00:35:31.010 it with respect and analysis rather than immediately 00:35:31.010 --> 00:35:33.630 dismissing it as irrational. He was trying to 00:35:33.630 --> 00:35:35.710 understand a non -Western eruption of resistance, 00:35:36.110 --> 00:35:38.250 even if he didn't endorse its eventual outcome. 00:35:38.510 --> 00:35:41.650 That was his position. Meanwhile, his academic 00:35:41.650 --> 00:35:45.110 star just continued to rise. His lectures at 00:35:45.110 --> 00:35:47.349 the prestigious Collège de France became essential 00:35:47.349 --> 00:35:50.269 events in Parisian intellectual life. And the 00:35:50.269 --> 00:35:53.070 1970s brought him frequently to the United States, 00:35:53.230 --> 00:35:55.969 where his popularity grew immensely, particularly 00:35:55.969 --> 00:35:58.329 at UC Berkeley. And it was during one of those 00:35:58.329 --> 00:36:01.750 California visits in 1975 that Foucault had that 00:36:01.750 --> 00:36:06.130 profoundly life -altering LSD experience in Death 00:36:06.130 --> 00:36:08.769 Valley. That is just an incredible detour from 00:36:08.769 --> 00:36:11.090 the highest halls of French academia to a life 00:36:11.090 --> 00:36:13.570 -altering acid trip in the California desert. 00:36:13.909 --> 00:36:16.829 Is that kind of limit experience essential to 00:36:16.829 --> 00:36:19.119 how he views the construction of the self? It 00:36:19.119 --> 00:36:21.539 absolutely was. While in the desert, listening 00:36:21.539 --> 00:36:24.179 to Richard Strauss and Charles Ives, Foucault 00:36:24.179 --> 00:36:26.440 reported that the experience profoundly changed 00:36:26.440 --> 00:36:28.900 his life and his work. He called it the greatest 00:36:28.900 --> 00:36:30.699 experience of his life. And the intellectual 00:36:30.699 --> 00:36:33.550 consequence was immediate and dramatic. It was. 00:36:33.829 --> 00:36:36.750 It led him to completely scrap the nearly finished 00:36:36.750 --> 00:36:39.269 second manuscript of The History of Sexuality 00:36:39.269 --> 00:36:42.510 and rethink the entire project. He pivoted from 00:36:42.510 --> 00:36:44.889 analyzing the mechanisms of prohibition to focusing 00:36:44.889 --> 00:36:46.989 on the historical ways people construct themselves 00:36:46.989 --> 00:36:49.690 ethically, the very reason he began exploring 00:36:49.690 --> 00:36:52.929 the ancient Greek care for the self. During these 00:36:52.929 --> 00:36:55.829 visits, he also openly engaged with the San Francisco 00:36:55.829 --> 00:36:58.849 sadomasochistic gay scene. He did. He saw people 00:36:58.849 --> 00:37:01.710 there actively designing new ethical and consensual 00:37:01.710 --> 00:37:04.369 rules for pleasure. He praised these activities 00:37:04.369 --> 00:37:07.110 as the real creation of new possibilities of 00:37:07.110 --> 00:37:09.429 pleasure, which people had no idea about previously. 00:37:09.730 --> 00:37:12.369 It was a practical, real -world instantiation 00:37:12.369 --> 00:37:14.889 of his philosophical project. His life ended 00:37:14.889 --> 00:37:17.670 tragically in 1984 from complications of HIV 00:37:17.670 --> 00:37:20.389 AIDS. He was the first major public figure in 00:37:20.389 --> 00:37:22.800 France to die from the disease. An event that 00:37:22.800 --> 00:37:25.380 significantly changed mass awareness of the pandemic 00:37:25.380 --> 00:37:28.480 and spurred activism. In fact, his partner, Daniel 00:37:28.480 --> 00:37:31.340 DeFert, founded the first national HIV AIDS organization 00:37:31.340 --> 00:37:35.159 in France, AIDS, in Foucault's memory, solidifying 00:37:35.159 --> 00:37:37.860 his practical legacy. Foucault's influence is 00:37:37.860 --> 00:37:41.699 just immense. It spans critical theory, criminology, 00:37:41.880 --> 00:37:45.059 post -colonialism. Edward Said's Orientalism 00:37:45.059 --> 00:37:48.460 is a Foucauldian text in many respects, and feminist 00:37:48.460 --> 00:37:50.760 philosophy, particularly in Judith Butler's work. 00:37:51.130 --> 00:37:53.710 But this influence came wrapped in persistent, 00:37:53.929 --> 00:37:56.710 powerful criticism. We should probably touch 00:37:56.710 --> 00:37:59.389 on the three major intellectual debates surrounding 00:37:59.389 --> 00:38:02.909 his legacy. Okay. First, the charge of immoralism, 00:38:02.929 --> 00:38:05.349 which was famously crystallized in that 1971 00:38:05.349 --> 00:38:08.530 televised debate with the philosopher Noam Chomsky. 00:38:08.610 --> 00:38:11.369 Right. Chomsky, who bases his critique of injustice 00:38:11.369 --> 00:38:14.889 on a universal, fixed human nature, was genuinely 00:38:14.889 --> 00:38:17.150 struck by Foucault's total rejection of those 00:38:17.150 --> 00:38:19.909 ideas. If there is no universal human nature, 00:38:20.070 --> 00:38:22.190 what is the basis for saying torture is wrong? 00:38:22.869 --> 00:38:25.329 Chomsky later recalled Foucault seeming completely 00:38:25.329 --> 00:38:28.389 amoral. And Foucault's response was that he didn't 00:38:28.389 --> 00:38:30.809 need a fixed nature to critique injustice. He 00:38:30.809 --> 00:38:32.710 just needed to show that the conditions that 00:38:32.710 --> 00:38:35.230 create injustice were historically contingent 00:38:35.230 --> 00:38:37.739 and therefore could be changed. The charge of 00:38:37.739 --> 00:38:40.059 crypto -normativity, articulated most forcefully 00:38:40.059 --> 00:38:42.940 by Juergen Habermas. Habermas argued that Foucault's 00:38:42.940 --> 00:38:46.059 critique is fundamentally self -refuting. If 00:38:46.059 --> 00:38:48.920 Foucault claims there is no universal basis for 00:38:48.920 --> 00:38:51.960 justice or freedom, how can he consistently argue 00:38:51.960 --> 00:38:54.360 that prison conditions are intolerable? Right. 00:38:54.659 --> 00:38:57.239 Habermas asserted that Foucault's entire critique 00:38:57.239 --> 00:39:00.619 secretly relies on the very enlightenment ideals 00:39:00.619 --> 00:39:03.650 like freedom from domination. that he claims 00:39:03.650 --> 00:39:05.789 to be historicizing away. In other words, he's 00:39:05.789 --> 00:39:07.969 using the ladder of enlightenment to tear down 00:39:07.969 --> 00:39:10.550 the building of enlightenment, but he needs the 00:39:10.550 --> 00:39:13.090 ladder to stand on, a concise way to put it. 00:39:13.210 --> 00:39:16.389 And third, the most radical philosophical broadside 00:39:16.389 --> 00:39:20.159 came from Jean Baudrillard's 1977 tract. Forget 00:39:20.159 --> 00:39:22.360 Foucault. Baudrillard didn't just critique the 00:39:22.360 --> 00:39:24.960 ideas. He asserted that Foucault's extensive 00:39:24.960 --> 00:39:27.639 discourse on power and sexuality wasn't challenging 00:39:27.639 --> 00:39:30.599 power at all. It was simply mirroring it, or 00:39:30.599 --> 00:39:33.480 maybe even marking its demise. What was Baudrillard's 00:39:33.480 --> 00:39:35.699 ultimate claim? He claimed that the very possibility 00:39:35.699 --> 00:39:38.500 of academics talking about power with such detached, 00:39:38.760 --> 00:39:41.139 definitive understanding, codifying it, writing 00:39:41.139 --> 00:39:43.659 histories of it, meant that its intense revolutionary 00:39:43.659 --> 00:39:47.050 period was already here and now over with. So 00:39:47.050 --> 00:39:49.869 Foucault's analysis was an elegant obituary, 00:39:49.949 --> 00:39:52.849 not a battle plan. That's a good way to put it. 00:39:53.130 --> 00:39:55.730 And Foucault never formally replied, which some 00:39:55.730 --> 00:39:57.809 saw as an admission of the critique's power. 00:39:58.230 --> 00:40:00.530 And of course, we must mention the critiques 00:40:00.530 --> 00:40:03.150 from historians who repeatedly criticized him 00:40:03.150 --> 00:40:05.670 for what they saw as a lack of empirical precision 00:40:05.670 --> 00:40:08.389 and sweeping generalizations. But regardless 00:40:08.389 --> 00:40:11.300 of the critiques, The sheer force of his insights 00:40:11.300 --> 00:40:13.739 into how knowledge and power intersect to shape 00:40:13.739 --> 00:40:17.039 our world makes him an indispensable intellectual 00:40:17.039 --> 00:40:20.139 touchstone. He gave us the vocabulary to understand 00:40:20.139 --> 00:40:23.300 modern forms of control that simply weren't visible 00:40:23.300 --> 00:40:25.980 before. So we've traced Foucault's path from 00:40:25.980 --> 00:40:28.300 a deeply conflicted youth obsessed with limit 00:40:28.300 --> 00:40:31.039 experiences to the man who gave us the tools 00:40:31.039 --> 00:40:33.980 to analyze modern social control. We've covered 00:40:33.980 --> 00:40:37.000 his core revolutionary argument that power is 00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:39.949 not purely repressive or subtractive. but profoundly 00:40:39.949 --> 00:40:42.269 productive. It's productive. It shapes everything 00:40:42.269 --> 00:40:44.550 from the structure of our institutions like the 00:40:44.550 --> 00:40:47.849 omnipresent panopticon to our deepest, most personalized 00:40:47.849 --> 00:40:50.409 sense of self and sexuality. And that productive 00:40:50.409 --> 00:40:52.590 nature is the key takeaway for you, the listener. 00:40:52.829 --> 00:40:55.590 It is. Foucault's work offers what he called 00:40:55.590 --> 00:40:58.530 a critical ontology of the present. It is a tool. 00:40:58.710 --> 00:41:02.130 It compels us to investigate the historical contingencies 00:41:02.130 --> 00:41:05.079 of our current reality. By showing that the way 00:41:05.079 --> 00:41:08.019 things are, the definitions of sanity, of criminality, 00:41:08.139 --> 00:41:10.820 of health, is not necessary but constructed, 00:41:11.199 --> 00:41:14.340 he opens up the possibility for deliberate, thoughtful 00:41:14.340 --> 00:41:16.699 change. It forces you to question not just the 00:41:16.699 --> 00:41:19.380 system but yourself within the system. Precisely. 00:41:19.539 --> 00:41:23.360 If, as Foucault suggests, the self is constituted, 00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:25.619 created in activities such as the ones employed 00:41:25.619 --> 00:41:28.019 to find the self, then we have to constantly 00:41:28.019 --> 00:41:30.480 ask, what everyday practice are you currently 00:41:30.480 --> 00:41:33.349 performing? Maybe it's the ritualistic. use of 00:41:33.349 --> 00:41:35.710 a fitness tracker to optimize your body or the 00:41:35.710 --> 00:41:37.750 constant curation of your professional biography 00:41:37.750 --> 00:41:40.349 online or even the way you talk about your mental 00:41:40.349 --> 00:41:42.530 health. Practices that you assume are simply 00:41:42.530 --> 00:41:45.030 natural. But might actually be shaping you into 00:41:45.030 --> 00:41:47.530 a particular kind of subject, one dictated by 00:41:47.530 --> 00:41:50.369 invisible forces of power knowledge. That awareness, 00:41:50.469 --> 00:41:52.789 that constant critique is the most crucial and 00:41:52.789 --> 00:41:54.849 perhaps the most demanding practice Foucault 00:41:54.849 --> 00:41:55.530 leaves us with.