Foucault's Problems

Bogdan asked me a good question the other day, about why things are always "problems" or "problematised" in Foucault: the "problem" or "problematising" of the subject, the "problem" or "problematising" of modernity.

Does this mean anything other than something becoming an issue or a question? And what does that mean?

It's probably true, to start with, that French academics do perhaps use the word "problem" where an English academic would use either "issue" or "question", and in a way that is more or less synonymous with the latter. It is certainly the case that where an anglophone academic might refer to their "topic", subject area etc, French academics will commonly refer instead to their "problematic". On that level, we can just see it as a stylistic element without deeper significance.

There is also however a history of the notion of the "problem" in philosophy that I did some work on a while ago—based especially on an article by Emile Bréhier, "La notion du problème en philosophie", which actually started out by saying that we bandy about this word in a way that seems more or less synonymous with other words, like "question", and asked whether it had a more specific sense.

There are some aspects of the term that may be relevant to Foucault's use, though I wouldn't want to claim he is consciously referring to these in his choice of words.

The earliest technical sense of the term "problem" was in geometry, where it can be defined in contrast with the "theorem".

• A theorem demonstrates properties of a figure (eg. the triangle in Pythagoras' theorem) that can be deduced from the definition of that figure.
• A "problem" also indicates properties of a figure, but these are not ones that can be deduced from its definition, but can only be shown by carrying out an operation on the figure.

Thus the OED gives the geometrical sense of a theorem as "a proposition embodying merely something to be proved, as distinguished from a problem which embodies something to be done." (my italics) A theorem is—at least in principle—a purely intellectual operation, whereas a problem is both intellectual and practical.

This difference actually gave rise to philosophical debate (cf. the commentary on Euclid's Elements by the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus) regarding the relative status of problems and theorems in geometry, as problems seemed to defy the image of truth as eternal and belonging to the intelligible realm alone by suggesting that there were some truths that were actually generated in an operation taking place in time and space rather than being contained in their intelligible essence.

But, moving on from its origins, a "problem" is still, in everyday parlance, a phenomenon which demands both thought and some kind of practical intervention, these often being fused together: if there is a "problem" with my shower head, I have to do something to determine what the problem is and resolve it, and these actions are also stages of development of my knowledge. A thinker like John Dewey is someone who places the notion of the "problem" at the center of his epistemology because of this way it combines intellectual and practical elements (or rather shows how they can't be separated) and also shows knowledge to have stages rather than simply being an abstract relation between subject and object.

Bringing it back to Foucault, if we consider the way Foucault refers to something, eg. sex, being "problematised" at a given era, it is clear that for Foucault this means both that becomes an object of theoretical investigation, something to be known, and also an area of practical intervention: in that way the notion of a "problem" captures something of the power/knowledge fusion better than if we said it becomes an "object" or a "question".

More generally, if things—eg. the subject, truth—are "problems" in Foucault, this implies, from a geometrical perspective, that these are terms whose sense is not given in their definition but relies rather on a process of construction.

I'm not saying that Foucault is implicitly referring to geometry, but I do think the choice of the term "problem" (of the subject, truth, etc.) rather than, say, "concept" or "theory", does bely a difference of this sort, a difference which certainly is carried on in certain philosophical debates (Kant, for example, who made his name arguing against the worth of "analytic" truths, ie those deducible from concepts, and suggested all concepts, even geometrical ones, must be constructed—his term—in experience).

Foucault in da House

I mentioned how the television show House made me think of Foucauldian themes sometimes (the main character generally refuses to have a subjectivity), and there's one specific example I want to present, because I think it helps with the thread that runs through discussion of Foucault's methodology, namely that he is interested in noting "positivities" rather than engaging in interpretation: ie. staying at a 'surface' level of discourse and practices.

The plotline of House a couple of weeks ago: a young woman comes into the hospital who has been raped and who won't talk about it, or about anything to anyone except Dr House. He doesn't want to talk to her, being a general misanthrope, but ends up doing so, and all of his colleagues repeat to him how he must get her to talk about the rape. In the end, she does, and his colleagues congratulate him on successfully initiating the healing process, to which he responds: "Gee, and I thought what I did was make a girl cry."

The Foucauldian aspect of this response isn't, as I see it, about showing something that is generally thought to be a good thing (initiating healing) to be a bad thing (making people cry). Or even about attacking the veracity of the psychological theory that has it that we cope with bad experiences better if we talk about them.

It strikes me as Foucauldian because it's a very literal, surface reading: it's "positive" in two senses:
—"positivist" in the traditional sense, because it avoids reference to hidden explanatory terms, it's almost behaviourist
—because it looks to see what is "produced" rather than what is "revealed", it acknowledges that he "did" something, rather than just "allow something to come out"

Foucault on the Bus

It's very easy (too easy? it's not exactly a scientific survey if you're only looking for positive evidence) to find "Foucauldian" phenomena in the newspapers. Last week we connected issues from Foucault's idea of bio-politics and "Body of the Condemned" essay to the coverage of Saddam Hussein's hanging and the "death of citizenship" in Guantanamo Bay.

But I had a more banal Foucauldian moment this week that was a throwback to our first topic, looking at the knowledge/power regimes surrounding the practice of confession in our society, and specifically the confession of sexual details.

I've been picking up the free daily Redeye newspaper, and last week they had an article on the hoary old issue of whether you should tell someone you're intimate with the number of previous sexual partners you've had.

There's a lot that's Foucauldian about this even when the issue is just treated as one of social/personal etiquette: the value of honesty in this regard tends to be treated as either an end in itself when it comes to intimate relationships, or as part of a healthy relationship to the self - ie. to be comfortable with yourself is to be comfortable with your sexual past is to be comfortable with disclosing it.

But the connection didn't occur to me until I was reading the numerous letters that responded to the article on Monday, the most strident of which was from an individual who had worked with an HIV/AIDS program for the last 5 years and who argued the necessity of disclosure of sexual history on sexual health safety grounds (this had also been briefly raised in the original article).

Now, I should preface this by saying I risk betraying my 'foreignness' in the delicate area of sexual etiquette, but "where I come from" (not just Australia, but a subset defined by age, education, location etc.), sexual health safety is about a) using condoms and b) getting tested regularly for STDs, and thus the pertinent question to ask a prospective sexual partner is a) "Where is the condom?" and b) "Been tested recently?".

Asking about number of sexual partners struck me as a singularly indirect, unreliable and - as the rest of the discussion made clear - "subjectifying" line of inquiry if what one is actually interested in is the presence or absence of disease. An im-pertinent question.

Blogs and Foucault

Welcome to my Foucault blog site - "Flog" (a bit of a joke on Foucault's interest in disciplinary practices - sorry).

I ask students to set up and write blog postings for two main reasons:

1. it's an informal space for expression that some people find more attractive than speaking in class and that in all cases allows for more creative and personal associations - links, pictures, stories etc.
2. the bulk of the assessment for the course will be based on written submissions, and I think the sooner one starts writing on the subject, having to formulate sentences and ideas, the better. Having to write something down can bring up both ideas and problems we didn't realise existed.

This actually fits into a couple of key Foucauldian themes. The first is that this is definitely what Foucault would call an "incitement to discourse", even an incitement to "confess". Pedagogical practices at all levels for some time has moved from fewer but more stringent "testing" experiences, designed as hoops to jump through or fall down on, to more "continous assessment" practices where there are more tasks set, more feedback given and which are thus designed to provide an image of the student to themselves and to the teacher in a way that is not as clearly related to success/failure. No doubt we can see both good and bad aspects of that (interestingly, this trend is often presented as a "student-driven" change).

Having said that, you can also make a connection between blogging and the development of practices of formation of the self or creating the self as a work of art. This starts from the notion that there is a raw subjective material that doesn't contain an essence but is rather the "stuff" that is progressively refined and developed into something that didn't exist before. In this sense, the blog is not valued for its confessional quality but as a starting point for further revision and reflection.

You are not graded or "assessed" on individual blogs, but rather your synthesis of the material at the end, and your level of participation overall (ie the regularity of your posting). I and everyone else in the class will be able to view and comment on class blogs at any given time because I think we can all learn from and teach other.