{"id":878,"date":"2015-11-15T00:35:28","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T00:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/testing.elotroalex.com\/foucault\/?page_id=240"},"modified":"2018-08-11T16:36:34","modified_gmt":"2018-08-11T20:36:34","slug":"613-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/613-2\/","title":{"rendered":"6\/13 | &#8220;Society Must Be Defended&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"clearfix entry-content\">\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">with special guests\u00a0Ann Stoler, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newschool.edu\/nssr\/faculty\/?id=4d54-6777-4e7a-6732\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The New School<\/a>,\u00a0Partha Chatterjee, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/cu\/mesaas\/faculty\/directory\/chatterjee.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Columbia University<\/a>, and\u00a0Robert Gooding-Williams, <a href=\"https:\/\/philosophy.columbia.edu\/directories\/faculty\/robert-gooding-williams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Columbia University<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Foucault 13\/13: Society Must Be Defended (1975-1976)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZssgB2gXqcU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>At two key junctures in his 1975 lectures\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2015\/11\/08\/foucault-513-biblio\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Abnormal<\/a><\/em>, Foucault turns his attention to the way in which the figure of the abnormal gives way, in the last years of the nineteenth century, to \u201cthe problem of heredity, racial purification, and the correction of the human instinctual system by purification of the race.\u201d (<em>Abnormal<\/em>, p. 133;\u00a0<em>see also<\/em>\u00a0pp. 316-318). In those passages, Foucault begins to develop the\u00a0hypothesis that psychiatry gave birth to a new form of racism, different than traditional ethnic racism, that\u00a0he refers to as \u201cracism against the abnormal.\u201d (<em>Abnormal<\/em>, p. 316). Foucault proposes, provocatively, that this new form of racism ultimately would be combined with the more traditional form of racism to trigger some of the worst excesses of the twentieth century: \u201cthis neoracism as the internal means of defense of a society against its abnormal individuals, is the child of psychiatry, and Nazism did no more than graft this new racism onto the ethnic racism that was endemic in the nineteenth century,\u201d he states (<em>Abnormal<\/em>, p. 317). These passages from\u00a0<em>Abnormal\u00a0<\/em>combine Foucault\u2019s renewed interest in heredity and degeneration, and in racism, with his long-time fascination for theories of social defense and civil war.<\/p>\n<p>It is to these exact themes that Foucault turns in 1976 in perhaps his most famous and well known lectures,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2015\/11\/17\/foucault-613-biblio-society-must-be-defended\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>\u201cSociety Must Be Defended.<\/em>\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Most well known because they were the first to be published in French, and also because, very early, they were (at least the first two lectures) translated into English and published in 1980 in\u00a0<em>Knowledge\/Power<\/em>. In fact, their integral publication in French in 1997 would inaugurate the series that we are studying\u00a0this year in Foucault 13\/13.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cSociety Must Be Defended\u201d<\/em>\u00a0announces key themes in Foucault\u2019s work. Several of them would be published just a few months later, with the release on 17 November 1976 of his <em>History of Sexuality\u2014Volume 1<\/em>\u00a0(<em>La Volont\u00e9 de savoir<\/em>): the notions of biopolitics and security, of population, and of race. It is in these lectures and\u00a0<em>La Volont\u00e9 de savoir\u00a0<\/em>that Foucault famously compared sovereign power to biopolitics through the lens\u00a0of those two now-famous epigraphs, respectively, \u00ab\u00a0faire mourir ou laisser vivre\u00a0\u00bb (<em>to cause death or let live<\/em>) and \u00ab\u00a0faire vivre et laisser mourir\u00a0\u00bb (<em>to make live and to let die<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>In these 1976 lectures as well, Foucault returns to themes developed previously, especially to the question of civil war and to his earlier direct engagement with Hobbes (which he had silenced since\u00a0<em>The Punitive Society<\/em>\u00a0in 1973). We also find here a fascinating discussion of the acturial turn (in the French edition on pages 223 et seq.) that is highly suggestive and will be developed in 1978-79.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cSociety Must Be Defended\u201d\u00a0<\/em>is, for the contemporary critical thinker, a font of ideas, leads, and research avenues\u2013in Foucault\u2019s own words, a collection of \u201csuggestions for research, ideas, schemata, outlines, instruments.\u201d (<em>SMBD,\u00a0<\/em>p. 2)\u00a0As he would provocatively say:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>do what you like with them. Ultimately, what you do with them both concerns me and is none of my business. It is none of my business to the extent that it is not up to me to lay down the law about the use you make of it. And it does concern me to the extent that, one way or another, what you do with it is connected, related to what I am doing<em>. (SMBD, p. 2)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With us to reread and discuss these 1976 lectures, we are delighted to welcome Ann Stoler, Robert Gooding-Williams, and Partha Chatterjee. As early as 1995, Ann Stoler drew importantly on these 1976 lectures to formulate the argument of her seminal book,\u00a0<em>Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault\u2019s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things\u00a0<\/em>(Durham, Duke University Press, 1995). As Emmanuelle Saada writes, \u201cAnn Stoler\u2019s reading of Foucault in colonial situations remains indispensable.\u201d It is for us a particular pleasure to have Professor Stoler in conversation with Columbia Professors Gooding-Williams and Chatterjee. Welcome to Foucault 6\/13!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>[Read post <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2015\/11\/17\/intro6-13\/\">here<\/a>. \u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>with special guests\u00a0Ann Stoler, The New School,\u00a0Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University, and\u00a0Robert Gooding-Williams, Columbia University At two key junctures in his 1975 lectures\u00a0Abnormal, Foucault turns his attention to the way in which the figure of the abnormal gives way, in the&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/613-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1700,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-878","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1700"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}