York University – Creating Positive Change



Topics: F’s conceptual Themes for your Essays P 1 & P 2For all topics: use the link for F’s concepts: on Body: Is it ‘Knowledge/Power’ or ‘Truth’? Knowledge/power: Power of experts shapes knowledge that makes the body docile (see how docility is formed in the my FW notes on Body) What is Science or Knowledge or Expertise on the ‘Body” ? What is the ‘Body’ as it is presented in image media vs. critical media?Find movies or shows that show beauty or youth as scientifically modified by experts in surgery or those in Art (e.g., photographic expertise) Each society creates a "regime of truth" according to its beliefs, values, and mores. Foucault identifies the creation of truth in contemporary western society with five traits: the centering of truth on scientific discourse, accountability of truth to economic and political forces, the "diffusion and consumption" of truth via societal apparatuses, the control of the distribution of truth by "political and economic apparatuses," and the fact that it is "the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation." Individuals would do well to recognize that ultimate truth, "Truth," is the construct of the political and economic forces that command the majority of the power within the societal web. There is no truly universal truth at all; therefore, the intellectual cannot convey universal truth. The intellectual must specialize, specify, so that he/she can be connected to one of the truth-generating apparatuses of the society. As Foucault explains it:'Truth' is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements.'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of truth. (Cite source: )Topic 3Schools: Does it go beyond teaching the necessary disciplines for gaining an education? Does it use its power to teach obedience to simply controlling students ?How is the school portrayed in the media? What is the freedom gained through self-discipline in seeking true education? ( use TV or video shows or movies where Univ or schools are portrayed as disciplinarians or as training grounds for life of work/partying to escape the thinking about ethics and shaping the freedom of the self)Foucault see my notes on F’s themes on knowledge/info…Process of Constructing the Docile Bodies through Disciplines, the new political technology of the body (137) :Cellular (located bodies in enclosures)Organic (Specified repetitive activities)Genetic (Trained and timed in hard work of production)Combinatory (Division of labour and organizing ranks & classes as units of production- Marx, Capital, vol. 1. 311-12) (isolation)See how I have applied to our readings: e.g., Morrison, Giroux,… in my notes on F’s themes on knowledge/info…F’s care of the self: Truth telling and technologies of the self Why truth? … and why must the care of the self occur only through the concern for truth? [This is] the question for the West. How did it come about that all of Western culture began to revolve around this obligation of truth…? (Foucault 1997a, p 281).As Foucault indicates, the compulsion to tell the truth is highly valued in our society. It is enshrined in how our laws operate. For instance, in court witnesses are required to swear an oath to tell the truth and they may be charged with perjury if they lie. Similarly, insurance will be cancelled if we do not tell the truth or disclose relevant information. Societal values certainly operate in the disciplinary regimes of schools and how they pursue regimes of ‘truth’. In doing so, schools shape the student’s self and their identities. Yet schools seldom formally perform this task or even consciously attempt it, despite government educational goals often referring to the type of person they are trying to form, citing variations on the theme of a ‘good’ citizen.In ‘Technologies of the self’ (1988b), … To him, liberation is not enough and the practices of freedom do not preclude liberation, but they enable individuals and society to define ‘admissible and acceptable forms of existence or political society’ (Foucault 1997a, p 283). He rejected Sartre’s idea that power is evil, stating instead that ‘power is games of strategy’ (Foucault 1997a, p 298) and that the ways of avoiding the application of arbitrary, unnecessary or abusive authority ‘must be framed in terms of rules of law, rational techniques of government and ethos, practices of the self and of freedom’ (Foucault 1997a, p 299).Foucault’s main aspects of the self’s relationship to itself or ‘ethical self- constitution’ point to various ways that education of young people can help them to ethically constitute themselves: by ethical work that a person performs on their self with the aim of becoming an ethical subject; the way in which individuals relate to moral obligations and rules; and the type of person one aims to become in behaving ethically.(Cite Source )Topic 4Are consumers prisoners? Consumers and power of media, .e.g., in popular advertising vs. critical mediaMovies, Ads, TV shows: How Hollywood, univ branding and commercial corporate ads entrap customers/students – ‘discipline’ the body to unconsciously imbibe the ‘truths’ See my notes on F’s concepts on the Body…Foucault :Foucauldian arguments as applied to Stereotypes: Power vs. racial/gender issuesExternal factor: PowerInternal factor: SelfIndividual social bodies unconsciously acknowledge and accept the disciplinary power (internalized surveillance) Certainty of control is constructed by the self who spontaneously designs own subjection Mechanisms of discipline: Surveillance Surveyed and legitimized Described, judged, measured Essentialized Classified, organized, and labeled Power/knowledge created by this ‘science’ comes from statistical analysis and qualitative groupings made by experts Viewed and scrutinized, itemized, measured and enumerated in data banks Very different relationship to space and time and to existential experienceFoucault’s arguments on how power operates in the construction of a Docile Body through the three stages: Objectified Body Controlled Body Disciplined bodyTopic 5Uses of Social Media in everyday life or in social or political mobilizationOR Facebook and PrivacyChoose one of the following 3: 1. Use and limitations of social media for social or political mobilizing ; 2. Student activities as portrayed on the social media; 3. Voyeurism on the social media. How does critical media portray them?Subjectification (Fr. Subjectivation): the construction of the individual subject - construction of one’s identity – individuation vs. dividuation (see lec 5 notes )Read article: FEMININE SUBJECTIVITY IN CYBERSPACE by Mairi PileggiSM and privacy – self-exposure vs. care of the self Social networks and popularity of one’s identity On You tube, and other SM images: explore for e.g. voyeuristic postings by individuals and explore F’s subjectification process - How student-identities are constructed on SM – role of ‘confessions’ Topic 7Truth Regimes: Law, TQM, Management designs vs. Truth to Personal Autonomy?Discipline and Punish in the work/Business world and Personal autonomy/privacy See Kelly’s articles how corporations manage and discipline their workers – find shows/movies/ you tube videos that you can show as examples related to your your argumentsSee topic 2 info aboveAlso download the article The Concept of Truth Regime, by L Weir, (2008) from: 8Propositional knowledge (Codes, rules, obedience and conformity) vs. Personal knowledge/Knowledge of selfExamples of rules and laws that claim our obedience vs. truth and personal integrity – popular media vs. critical media portrayals of popular/famous people’s court cases. Collect visual materials and cartoon/lyrics on how TV ‘court reality shows ‘ use pronouncements and propositional judgments Aesthetics, Method, And Epistemology:by Michel Foucault ed paul robinow and james faubionFouc’s savoir: To know or to be known – to know as well as knowledgea theorem, a continent, atom, etcIt can be quite abstract or concrete – such knowledge is not genuine if its object is nonexistent or false - it need not be the product of a reliable method or pedagogy –it need not be precise or fully justified – it can fall short of proof—a domain not of things known or things to be known –Connaissance: relatively superficial mode of knowledge, grounded in incomplete information or incomplete research or knowledge of minimal degree- it could only be translated as cognition or learning or a body of learning or expertise – tied to highly developed apparatuses of justification , modes of competence supported by well-crystallized apparatuses of background training.Non-propositional knowledge i.e., knowledge by acquaintance – “This cultural crisis had a devastating personal impact on both Nietzsche and Foucault, for both of whom philosophy was not a matter of propositional statements about the “real” world. It was rather an act of self-disclosure , as Nietzsche wrote to Carl von Gersdorff about his Zarathustra , so that – as he also explained to Peter Gast – “some pages seem to be almost bleeding.”10 And, as Foucault pointedout, in describing his own work, what he writes is always an experience book.”Source: up this easy explanation: read: F’s Archeology of Knowledge Summary: read: 9Internet, plagiarism and academic qualityInstances of media encouragement of plagiarism or cheating – examples from popular media : shows, movies, etc. vs. critical media - Collect visual materials and cartoon/lyrics on how cheating is viewed favourably in the business world, by students, by other professionals who believe in not getting caught as the criteria of success.See resources for Topics 4 and 8 above- your focus is F’s concepts of how power shapes the truth and thus the absence of ‘care of the self’ and ethics of the ic 10What is the purpose of the university? Does the university shape the intellect or tailor the students for jobs?Popular media vs. critical media portrayals of education, students, faculty, university and other educational issues or personalities.Collect visual materials and cartoon/lyrics on how students. Univ., profs are portrayed in pop movies and TV showsF and knowledge: see my notes on F’s conceptual themes on Knowledge and infoF and the Intellectual:Read: look up: 11Docility and Commodification of the bodyPopular and critical media portrayals of commercialized versions of the Body: women or/and men - collect visual materials and cartoons/lyrics from TV shows on Extreme Makeovers or Hollywood portrayals of docility as feminineBuild your framework from my notes on F’s themes –concepts on body Topic 12 Technologies of modification of body-parts Popular vs. critical media versions of the Body, definition of beauty, surgical modifications, Tattooed body, etc.Build your framework from my notes on F’s themes –concepts on body Topic 13Students’ Knowledge and preferences on gender/ race Popular vs. critical media images on racialized/ sexualized body and its expressions – collect visual materials from TV or Hollywood movie portrayals of discrimination against women/ minorities- cartoon/lyrics opposing such stereotypesBuild your framework from my notes on F’s themes –concepts on body e.g., Docile body concepts- use race/gender of students affecting their choice of discipline or their stereotypes in education/workplace. Add some of the elements of how power shapes the knowledge that they have and their oppositional forces have - see my lec 5 on PowerTopic 14Power vs. TruthContent and influences of TV ‘Reality’ shows vs. critical media’s take on themYou may use TV reality shows, read: : read: your framework from my F’s Knowledge/information conceptual themesTopic 15Expertise vs. Self-knowledgePower and influence of Experts, Technologists, professional and other specialists in various fields of knowledge. Is it controlling or freeing one from popular notions of the Self?Find movies/TV shows that have representations of experts/professionals with power and how that power shaoe the individual who is the object Five factors in power relations:1) System of differentiations: status, wealth, social differences, expertise, etc.2) Types of objectives pursued by those acting on others' actions3) Instrumental modes of that action4) Forms of institutionalization5) Degrees of rationalizationfrom "The Subject and Power"Outline by John Protevi / Permission to reproduce granted for academic useprotevi@lsu.edu / for the quotation below explaining Expertise: Gutting, G ary(2005) The Cambridge Companion to Foucault , CUP. Cambridge, UK.“The examination also reveals the new position of the individual in?the modern nexus of power/knowledge. It situates individuals in?a ‘network of writing’ (DP, 189). The results of examinations are?recorded in documents that provide detailed information about the?individuals examined and allow power systems to control them (for?example absentee records for schools, patients’ charts in hospitals).?On the basis of these records, those in control can formulate?categories, averages, and norms that are in turn a basis for?knowledge. The examination turns the individual into a ‘case’ – in?both senses of the term: a scientific example and an object of care?(and, of course, for Foucault, caring implies controlling). This?process also reverses the polarity of visibility. In the premodern?period, the exercise of power was itself typically highly visible?(military presence in towns, public executions), while those who?were the objects of knowledge remained obscure. But in the modern?age the exercise of power is typically invisible, but it controls its?objects by making them highly visible. And the highest visibility?now belongs to those (criminals, the mad), whose thick dossiers are?maintained and scrutinized by armies of anonymous and invisible?functionaries.?He begins by outlining the contrasts between modern and?premodern approaches. There are four major transitions:?(1) punishment is no longer a public display, a spectacular?demonstration to all of the sovereign’s irresistible force majeure,?but rather a discrete, almost embarrassed application of constraints?needed to preserve public order.?(2) What is punished is no longer the crime but the criminal, the?concern of the law being not so much what criminals have done?as what (environment, heredity, parental actions) has led them to?do it.?(3) Those who determine the precise nature and duration of the?punishment are no longer the judges who impose penalties in?conformity with the law, but the ‘experts’ (psychiatrists, social?workers, parole boards) who decide how to implement?indeterminate judicial sentences.?(4) The avowed purpose of punishment is no longer retribution (either?to deter others or for the sake of pure justice) but the reform and?rehabilitation of the criminal.?A large part of the history of modern sexuality is the secular?adaptation and expansion of these religious techniques of selfknowledge.?Confession may no longer be made to a priest but it is?surely made to one’s doctor, psychiatrist, best friend, or, at least, to?oneself. And the categories that define the possibilities of one’s?93?Modern sex?sexual nature are not self-chosen but accepted on the authority of?‘experts’ in the new modern sciences of sexuality: the Freuds, the?Kraft-Ebbings, the Havelock Ellises, the Margaret Meads. Such?experts present as discoveries about human nature what are?actually just new social norms for behaviour.?what Foucault came to call a ‘history of the subject’. This?had already begun to emerge in Discipline and Punish, where?Foucault occasionally noted how the objects of disciplinary control?could themselves internalize the norms whereby they were?controlled and so become monitors of their own behaviour. In?the context of sexuality, this phenomenon becomes central, since?individuals are supposed to discern their own fundamental nature?as sexual beings and, on the basis of this self-knowledge, transform?their lives. As a result, we are controlled not only as objects of?disciplines that have expert knowledge of us; we are also controlled?as self-scrutinizing and self-forming subjects of our own knowledge”Topic 16Is surveillance and piracy being perpetrated by IT users (individuals) or do IT corporations spy on individuals (Facebook, PC corps., Media corps, etc)? If so why?Popular vs. critical media examples of the power of IT corporations, content of the web and individuals engaged in piracy – find internet piracy instances and popular views on them- cartoon that depict such issuesHow surveillance turns the body docile – use the framework concepts from my notes on F’s themes on the Body.How corporate power , e.g., Samsung’s piracy of patented Apple codes, is easily pirates others brand name products , while individuals are threatened by corporate power against downloading movies, music, ic 17:Biopower & the Corporate Media (J.A. Persaud’s topic)Source: essentially means power over bodies. The idea comes to us from the work of Michel Foucault. In the mid-1970s, Michel Foucault outlined a programme of seminars to be delivered over the following five years at the Collège de France. These seminars were all intended to address the question of biopolitics. The last lesson of his 1975-76 seminar, later published under the title Society Must Be Defended (2003), provides an introductory commentary on this new direction in his work. As is characteristic of much of his work, Foucault here provides a dense amalgam of questions and propositions that raise issues such as the state and liberalism; the genealogy of biological conceptions of race; and the difference between sovereignty-based and liberal accounts of political constitution, life and law. Foucault himself never followed through with this ambitious research project but we are now beginning to recognise that his formulation encapsulates many of the most pressing intellectual, political and social problems and challenges of our time.Foucault was interested in a very specific articulation of political power and the biological, which he glossed as 'state biopolitics': the convergence of state racism, practices of public health and evolutionary biology in the late nineteenth century. But Foucault was, as always, writing a history of the present, and his 'now' was the novel conjunction of vital practices and state power of the mid-twentieth century welfare state, the lingering colonialisms of the post-World War II era and the invention of human rights. In Foucault’s formulation of the concepts of biopolitics, biopower and governmentality we are able to see the connection between issues as diverse as the implications of the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’, the human genome project, food, sexualities, reproduction, abortion, maternity, HIV/AIDS, the trade in human body parts, human trafficking, prostitution, race politics, crime and policing and much else.Within this intellectual framework we are able to take up the dominant challenges of our time in a way that brings together South African issues and questions with a dynamic contemporary international conversation about human life in all its complexity, about death, and about the relation of both to politics. This work will place us in a position to reformulate in powerful ways the terms of articulation between biology and politics -- their exercise and operation at micro and macro levels. While the idea of 'biopolitics' risks turning into a catch-all generality, the diversity of knowedges and practices with which the term engages is indicative of the questioning force the biopolitical problematic possesses.Also read this webpage: view: ................
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