Discourse analysis practices a ‘joyful positivism.’ It accords not even a relative autonomy to philosophical discourse. It does not deal with the one Urschrift which every metaphysics of presence has supposedly forgotten, but rather with the many forgotten techniques which were invented to counteract forgetting.
So Michel Foucault, arguably the best thinker and philosopher of the 20th century and original gangster of critical theory, had a set of morals all of his own that we should all consider paying mind to.
Foucault lived and achieved success through a moral code of only three steps.
1. The refusal to accept as self evident the things that are proposed to us.
Don't accept anything as fact. Everything can and should be questioned.
Why should we believe that which is presented to us as fact, for most societal recommendations or instructions are norms, not rules.
A perfect example of this is gender norms. “you’re a boy so you can’t/shouldnt wear a skirt” (but like why?, thats not a rule, thats not a fact, thats nonsense.)
2.The need to analyze and to know, since we can accomplish nothing without reflection and understanding thus, the principle of curiosity.
research, understanding and falling on your own conclusions. most of what we know and believe has been told to us not achieved through self discovery or experience.
most of the time when we believe we’re thinking were actually listening and repeating. So what have you not heard before and why?
3.The principle of innovation, to seek out in our reflections those things that have never been thought or imagined.
Again, figure out what have you not heard, been taught, or seen, and why you haven’t heard, been taught, or seen this.
what is it? and why can it or can it not come to be?
get a new perspective.
SO Basically…
Refusal~ Curiosity~ Innovation
and remember. “The enlightenment that inspired the liberties also invented the disciplines” M.F. (the OG)
“Given the historical modifications that are taking place it does not seem necessary that the author function remains constant in form, complexity and even in existence.” – M. Foucault in What Is an Author?
de “eus” (of selves) is an essay on authorship and the freedom of creation.
This collaborative work is part of an on-going research on authorship - by Fátima São Simão* - and its impacts on the creation of artistic and economic value, within the Doctoral Programme in Art and Design of the Faculty of Fine Arts of University of Porto. As a result of a series of interviews made to artists, performers, entrepreneurs, researchers and other professionals in the field of culture (including the artists involved in this project), de “eus” (the expression in the title resembles the word “god” in Portuguese - “deus”) invites to a reflection on the multiple dimensions of authorship and the complexity of rights, liberties and limits that they can enclose.
*PhD candidate in Art and Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto
Je suis un artificier. Je fabrique quelque chose qui sert finalement à un siège, à une guerre, à une destruction. Je ne suis pas pour la destruction, mais je suis pour qu'on puisse passer, pour qu'on puisse avancer, pour qu'on puisse faire tomber les murs.
Io sono un artificiere. Fabbrico qualcosa che alla fin fine serve a un assedio, a una guerra, a una distruzione. Io non sono per la distruzione, ma sono a favore del fatto che si possa passare, che si possa avanzare, che si possano abbattere i muri.
Michel Foucault, Entretien avec Roger-Pol Droit(1975)
Alright, if you have read Library of Souls you know about the Panloopticon an its function. Months ago I got an ask on my other mphfpc blog about the meaning of its name and at first it had to do with the Ancient Greek word “pan” which means “all” + loop + ticon, because, you know, it’s supposed to be a door to other loops. It makes sense.
But this week I developed another theory about how Riggs might’ve come up with this name. For this I have to tell you about a French philosopher named Foucault. In 1975, he published his book “Discipline and Punish” about personal and institutional discipline and different subjects that I won’t go into right now because it’s not that important for the point I’m going to make. Foucault stated that, if institutional discipline is taken too far, it will have a negative effect on society, but that it is in general a “good” thing because when you when you know or think that you are being watched you start to behave differently (think Orwell’s “1984″).
In his book, Foucault invokes the idea of another philosopher and social theorist, Jeremy Bentham, an Englishman. This idea was something called the Panopticon - a type of building, a prison, that looks something like this:
The cells along the walls have two mirrors facing the outer wall and the inner wall. The guard in the centre of the panopticon is able to watch all prisoners all the time, but the prisoners aren’t able to notice when he is watching them, thus creating a constant fear that they may or may not be watched.
If translated loosely, Panopticon means “place where everyone and all can be watched”.
And I don’t know if Riggs is into philosophy, but I thought this was a very plausible theory for the origin of the Panloopticon.
“Se puede amar perfectamente sin que ame el otro. Es una cuestión de soledad. Por ese motivo es que en el amor siempre sobran las demandas de uno hacia el otro. Este es su gran defecto, pedirle siempre algo al otro, mientras que el estado de pasión entre dos o tres personas permite una comunicación intensa”.
Much of my research deals with the ways in which bodies are disciplined and how they go about resisting that discipline. In this piece, adapted from one of the answers to my PhD preliminary exams written and defended two months ago, I “name the disciplinary strategies that are used to control bodies and discuss the ways that bodies resist those strategies.” Additionally, I address how strategies of embodied control and resistance have changed over time, and how identifying and existing as a cyborg and/or an artificial intelligence can be understood as a strategy of control, resistance, or both.
In Jan Golinski’s Making Natural Knowledge, he spends some time discussing the different understandings of the word “discipline” and the role their transformations have played in the definition and transmission of knowledge as both artifacts and culture. In particular, he uses the space in section three of chapter two to discuss the role Foucault has played in historical understandings of knowledge, categorization, and disciplinarity. Using Foucault’s work in Discipline and Punish, we can draw an explicit connection between the various meanings “discipline” and ways that bodies are individually, culturally, and socially conditioned to fit particular modes of behavior, and the specific ways marginalized peoples are disciplined, relating to their various embodiments.
This will demonstrate how modes of observation and surveillance lead to certain types of embodiments being deemed “illegal” or otherwise unacceptable and thus further believed to be in need of methodologies of entrainment, correction, or reform in the form of psychological and physical torture, carceral punishment, and other means of institutionalization.
Scott Midson’s Cyborg Theology and Kathleen Richardson’s An Anthropology of Robots and AI both trace histories of technology and human-machine interactions, and both make use of fictional narratives as well as other theoretical techniques. The goal of Midson’s book is to put forward a new understanding of what it means to be human, an understanding to supplant the myth of a perfect “Edenic” state and the various disciplines’ dichotomous oppositions of “human” and “other.” This new understanding, Midson says, exists at the intersection of technological, theological, and ecological contexts,and he argues that an understanding of the conceptual category of the cyborg can allow us to understand this assemblage in a new way.
That is, all of the categories of “human,” “animal,” “technological,” “natural,” and more are far more porous than people tend to admit and their boundaries should be challenged; this understanding of the cyborg gives us the tools to do so. Richardson, on the other hand, seeks to argue that what it means to be human has been devalued by the drive to render human capacities and likenesses into machines, and that this drive arises from the male-dominated and otherwise socialized spaces in which these systems are created. The more we elide the distinction between the human and the machine, the more we will harm human beings and human relationships.
Midson’s training is in theology and religious studies, and so it’s no real surprise that he primarily uses theological exegesis (and specifically an exegesis of Genesis creation stories), but he also deploys the tools of cyborg anthropology (specifically Donna Haraway’s 1991 work on cyborgs), sociology, anthropology, and comparative religious studies. He engages in interdisciplinary narrative analysis and comparison,exploring the themes from several pieces of speculative fiction media and the writings of multiple theorists from several disciplines.
Much of my research deals with the ways in which bodies are disciplined and how they go about resisting that discipline. In this piece, adapted from one of the answers to my PhD preliminary exams written and defended two months ago, I “name the disciplinary strategies that are used to control bodies and discuss the ways that bodies resist those strategies.” Additionally, I address how strategies of embodied control and resistance have changed over time, and how identifying and existing as a cyborg and/or an artificial intelligence can be understood as a strategy of control, resistance, or both.
In Jan Golinski’s Making Natural Knowledge, he spends some time discussing the different understandings of the word “discipline” and the role their transformations have played in the definition and transmission of knowledge as both artifacts and culture. In particular, he uses the space in section three of chapter two to discuss the role Foucault has played in historical understandings of knowledge, categorization, and disciplinarity. Using Foucault’s work in Discipline and Punish, we can draw an explicit connection between the various meanings “discipline” and ways that bodies are individually, culturally, and socially conditioned to fit particular modes of behavior, and the specific ways marginalized peoples are disciplined, relating to their various embodiments.
This will demonstrate how modes of observation and surveillance lead to certain types of embodiments being deemed “illegal” or otherwise unacceptable and thus further believed to be in need of methodologies of entrainment, correction, or reform in the form of psychological and physical torture, carceral punishment, and other means of institutionalization.
Scott Midson’s Cyborg Theology and Kathleen Richardson’s An Anthropology of Robots and AI both trace histories of technology and human-machine interactions, and both make use of fictional narratives as well as other theoretical techniques. The goal of Midson’s book is to put forward a new understanding of what it means to be human, an understanding to supplant the myth of a perfect “Edenic” state and the various disciplines’ dichotomous oppositions of “human” and “other.” This new understanding, Midson says, exists at the intersection of technological, theological, and ecological contexts,and he argues that an understanding of the conceptual category of the cyborg can allow us to understand this assemblage in a new way.
That is, all of the categories of “human,” “animal,” “technological,” “natural,” and more are far more porous than people tend to admit and their boundaries should be challenged; this understanding of the cyborg gives us the tools to do so. Richardson, on the other hand, seeks to argue that what it means to be human has been devalued by the drive to render human capacities and likenesses into machines, and that this drive arises from the male-dominated and otherwise socialized spaces in which these systems are created. The more we elide the distinction between the human and the machine, the more we will harm human beings and human relationships.
Midson’s training is in theology and religious studies, and so it’s no real surprise that he primarily uses theological exegesis (and specifically an exegesis of Genesis creation stories), but he also deploys the tools of cyborg anthropology (specifically Donna Haraway’s 1991 work on cyborgs), sociology, anthropology, and comparative religious studies. He engages in interdisciplinary narrative analysis and comparison,exploring the themes from several pieces of speculative fiction media and the writings of multiple theorists from several disciplines.
Back in the spring, I read and did a critical comparative analysis on both Cressida J. Heyes’ Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies, and Dr. Sami Schalk’s BODYMINDS REIMAGINED: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Each of these texts aims to explore conceptions of modes of embodied being, and the ways the exterior pressure of societal norms impacts what are seen as “normal” or “acceptable” bodies.
For Heyes, that exploration takes the form of three case studies: The hermeneutics of transgender individuals, especially trans women; the “Askeses” (self-discipline practices) of organized weight loss dieting programs; and “Attempts to represent the subjectivity of cosmetic surgery patients.” Schalk’s site of interrogation is Black women speculative fiction authors and the ways in which their writing illuminates new understandings of race, gender, and what Schalk terms “(dis)ability.
Both Heyes and Schalk focus on popular culture and they both center gender as a valence of investigation because the embodied experience of women in western society is the crux point for multiple intersecting pressures.
