{"id":973,"date":"2016-02-06T12:57:48","date_gmt":"2016-02-06T17:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/?page_id=973"},"modified":"2018-08-11T16:51:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-11T20:51:23","slug":"the-tenth-seminar","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/the-tenth-seminar\/","title":{"rendered":"10\/13 | Subjectivity and Truth &#038; Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">with special guests\u00a0Judith Butler, <a href=\"https:\/\/complit.berkeley.edu\/?page_id=168\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">University of California, Berkeley<\/a>, and\u00a0Stathis Gourgouris, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/cu\/classics\/people\/people.html#sg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Columbia University<\/a><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For this session, because the 1981 lectures <em>Subjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9\u00a0<\/em>(1980-1981)\u00a0have not yet been translated into English, the seminar also discussed the contemporaneous lectures delivered by Foucault at Louvain (which have been translated into English) titled\u00a0<em>Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice<\/em> (University of Chicago Press, 2014).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Foucault 13\/13: Subjectivity and Truth (1980-1981)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FacRsVWrI_k?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 style=\"text-align: justify;\">In 1981, Foucault delivered, back-to-back, two lecture series. First, he gave twelve lessons on <em>Subjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9 <\/em>[<em>Subjectivity and Truth<\/em>, not yet translated into English] at the Coll\u00e8ge de France from January 7<sup>th<\/sup> to April 1<sup>st<\/sup>, 1981. The very next day, Foucault began a second lecture series, <em>Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice<\/em>, which he delivered at the Catholic University of Louvain from April 2<sup>nd<\/sup> to May 20<sup>th<\/sup>, 1981.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Subjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9<\/em> explicitly pursues the line of research <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2016\/02\/07\/introducing-on-the-government-of-the-living\/\">begun the previous year<\/a> regarding the third dimension of Foucault\u2019s research project\u2014namely, beyond knowledge and\u00a0power, the question of the subject and subjectivity\u2014focused specifically on the domain of ancient Greek and Roman sexuality or rather <em>aphrodisia<\/em> (since, as he explains, the term &#8220;sexuality&#8221; is a more modern invention and thus anachronistic). As Foucault underscores on January 7, 1981: &#8220;I would now like to apply the same method [concerning subjectivity] to another domain, the domain of what we call, since relatively recently (less than two centuries), sexuality.&#8221;(<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 16).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In this light, the central question of the 1981 lectures becomes: \u201cHow to \u2018govern oneself\u2019 through actions\u2014actions of which one is oneself the objective, the domain on which they apply, the instrument that they use, and the subject that acts?\u201d (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 299). Foucault returns to texts from Greek and Roman antiquity, with an emphasis on the late Stoics\u2014but ranging from Plato\u2019s <em>Alcibiades <\/em>and Aristotle\u2019s <em>Nicomachean Ethics<\/em>, to Hippocrates and Xenophon, to Cicero\u2019s <em>De finibus<\/em>, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, and Hierocles, to Artemidorus\u2019 <em>The Interpretation of Dreams <\/em>and the <em>Physiologus <\/em>(both circa 200 CE)\u2014in order to study the ancient modes of life through detailed analyses of marriage, marital life, and marital sex, the questions of sexual penetration, monogamy, pederasty, and incest, and the ways in which the ancients shared their normative views.<\/p>\n<h1>From the Arts of Government to the Arts of Living<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">What becomes increasingly evident as Foucault&#8217;s\u00a0research unfolds is that, despite the continuity in the line of inquiry from\u00a0the year before, we are beginning to witness an important displacement in Foucault&#8217;s\u00a0thought from an earlier focus, beginning in 1977 and extending to 1980, on the \u201carts of governing\u201d to a more concerted focus now on the \u201carts of living.\u201d In other words, there is an increasing <em>interiority<\/em> to the object of these arts, these <em>techne<\/em>. While much of the earlier work on madness, the clinic, and the prison\u2014and even, to a certain extent, the first volume on sexuality\u2014examined the conduct of conduct by others, Foucault\u2019s attention to subjectivity is beginning to produce a shift toward the conduct of conduct by oneself. One can feel this reading the 1981 lectures: they are increasingly about arts of living, about modes of existence, about ways of being. They are about what Foucault calls \u201c<em>la fa\u00e7on de se conduire, les modes de vie, les mani\u00e8res d\u2019\u00eatre<\/em>,\u201d \u201c<em>les arts de vivre, l\u2019art de se conduire,<\/em>\u201d \u201c<em>les mod\u00e8les de conduite<\/em>,\u201d or \u201c<em>ces consignes d\u2019existence<\/em>.\u201d (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 29). We have shifted ground to <em>modes of life<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the case of madness, the clinic, or the prison, Foucault maintained, \u201cthe core of truthful discourse regarding the self was held from the outside, by an other\u201d\u2014by the psychiatrist, the doctor, social worker, actuarian, or warden. By contrast, in the domain of <em>aphrodisia<\/em>, the truthful discourse on the self is institutionalized in an entirely different way: by the subject reflecting on him or herself. \u201cThat is to say,\u201d Foucault explains, \u201cit is not organized on the basis of an observation or examination, or of objective rules, but rather around the practice of avowal,\u201d on the basis of a more internal or internalized reflection, on the basis of something that we, ourselves, tell ourselves about ourselves. (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 16-17) It is not like the doctor who tells us we are mad, nor the psychiatrist who tells us we are dangerous; rather, it is we, ourselves, who talk about our own desires, about what <em>we<\/em> desire.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This produces a subtle shift. To be sure, Foucault\u2019s lengthy treatment for instance of Artemidorus\u2019 <em>The Interpretation of Dreams<\/em>\u00a0(with which Foucault will open Volume 3 of the <em>History of<\/em> Sexuality)<em>\u00a0<\/em>shows how the text signals <em>to others<\/em> how they should interiorize sex acts that augur well versus those that are foreboding\u2014and surely, this is governing of the other as well. But the focus is less on particular behaviors (what Foucault refers to as \u201c<em>les arts du comportement<\/em>,\u201d which he associates with the modern period), than on modes of being, on \u201cthe being that we are,\u201d or \u201ca certain quality of being, a certain modality of experiencing.\u201d (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 33) This is not to suggest that other persons do not play an important role; the director of conscience, the spiritual guide is a central figure. But nevertheless, as Foucault explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Every art of living implicates that not only does one learn, but, as we would say with our vocabulary, we interiorize. <em>En tout cas il faut que l\u2019on pense soi-m\u00eame, que l\u2019on r\u00e9fl\u00e9chisse dessus, que l\u2019on m\u00e9dite.<\/em>\u201d (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 34).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This subtle movement from the \u201carts of governing\u201d to the \u201carts of living\u201d serves to reframe Foucault\u2019s research project in relation to the <em>bios<\/em> of biopolitics. Foucault returns to the question of <em>bios <\/em>on March 25, 1981, where he suggests that the term is the closest Greek concept to our modern notion of subjectivity. (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 255) <em>Bios<\/em> is at the heart of these 1981 lectures.<\/p>\n<h1>From biopolitics to \u201cbiopoetics\u201d to \u201cbiotechniques\u201d<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2016\/02\/07\/introducing-on-the-government-of-the-living\/\">As you will recall<\/a>, the turn to subjectivity the previous year, in 1980, was the result of Foucault&#8217;s investigation of <em>biopolitics<\/em>: <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/the-eighth-seminar\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in 1979<\/a> Foucault had explored neoliberalism in order to set the foundation for a study of populations and biopolitics; he had intended to then return to the question of biopower by studying \u201cthe government of the living\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in 1980<\/a>, but instead returned to the ancients to reboot, at an earlier time, his genealogy of the arts of governing\u2014his genealogy of governmentality\u2014thus going back to Sophocles and then the Stoics and early Christian writers. But the return to the ancients in 1980, with a more focused attention on sexuality in 1981, displaces or shifts his attention from biopolitics to \u201cbiopoetics,\u201d and ultimately to \u201cbiotechniques.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Bios<\/em>\u00a0remains the central concept\u00a0\u2014corresponding to the Greek term for these arts of living, of how to conduct oneself\u2014but it has taken on a different valence from the earlier attention to \u201cpopulations.\u201d The focus now is on techniques of the self. The hand-written manuscript of the 1981 lectures proposes a fascinating trajectory from <em>biopolitics<\/em>\u00a0related to the normalization of sexual behaviors, to <em>biopoetics<\/em>\u00a0related to a \u201cpersonal fabrication of one\u2019s own life\u201d and \u201caesthetical-moral conduct of individual existence,\u201d and ultimately to <em>biotechniques<\/em>, a term which Foucault uses in the public lectures. (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 37 n.a).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">From <em>biopolitics<\/em>, then, to <em>biopoetics, <\/em>to <em>biotechniques<\/em> or techniques of the self, or technologies of the self: this is the path that Foucault takes in these 1981 lectures to explore what, he tells us, the Greeks and the Romans practiced under the rubric \u201c<em>tekhnai peri bion<\/em> (techniques of living).\u201d (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 37)<\/p>\n<h1><em>Aphrodisia, <\/em>Flesh, Sexuality<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Foucault declares that he wants to focus the 1981 lectures on \u201cconcupiscence,\u201d what we might call lust or sexual desire. As Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gros notes, Foucault had originally\u00a0planned to dedicate the second of the six volumes of <em>The History of Sexuality<\/em> to a genealogy of concupiscence under the title <em>La Chair et le Corps<\/em> [<em>The Flesh and the Body<\/em>] (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 25-26 n.42; <em>see <\/em>back cover of the original edition of <em>HS <\/em>in 1976). This second volume was intended to be, as Daniel Defert writes in his Chronology, \u201ca genealogy of concupiscence by means of the practice of the confession in Western Christianity and of the direction of conscience, such as it developed after the Council of Trent.\u201d (Defert, Chronologie in <em>Pl\u00e9iade <\/em>edition of the complete works of Michel Foucault, Volume 2, p. xxvii).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">These 1981 lectures, by contrast, will not focus on Christian writings, but rather (mostly) on the late Stoics. Foucault will explore their writings on marriage and conjugal relations (spending a\u00a0lot\u00a0of time on marital relations), monogamy, bodily pleasures, and the love and erotics of boys. This research will contribute to Foucault\u2019s ongoing genealogy of the desiring subject, which would culminate in the\u00a01984 publication of volumes 2 and 3 of\u00a0<em>The History of Sexuality<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Most of the material in\u00a0<em>Volume 3: The Care of the Self<\/em>\u00a0is, in fact, a development of the material that Foucault began to explore in these 1981 lectures,\u00a0<em>Subjectivity and Truth<\/em>, beginning with the opening chapter (\u00ab\u00a0<em>R\u00eaver de ses plaisirs\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>) on Artemidorus, then turning in Chapter 3 to matrimonial relations, in Chapter 4 to the body and regimes of pleasures, in Chapter 5 to the wife, conjugal relations and the pleasures of marriage, and finally in Chapter 6 to the love and erotics of boys, through analyses of texts of the first two centuries CE.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">What Foucault began to\u00a0unearth here in 1981 already\u2014and would build on in his later lectures\u2014is that four-part\u00a0history\u00a0of the desiring subject reflected, first, in the ancient Greek experience of\u00a0<em>aphrodesia<\/em>, second in the Stoic and Epicurean culture of the self in the first two centuries CE, third in the Christian experience of the flesh, and fourth\u00a0in the modern experience of sexuality. (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 78)<\/p>\n<h1>The Centrality of Avowal to the Truthful Discourse of Sexuality<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The avowal is central to Foucault&#8217;s project in his 1981 lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2016\/02\/21\/introducing-subjectivite-et-verite\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Subjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9<\/a><\/em>. As he notes on January 7, 1981, \u201cIn the case of sexuality, truthful discourse (<em>le discours vrai<\/em>) was institutionalized in large part as an obligatory discourse of the subject on himself. That is to say, it was not organized around the observation or examination, but rather around the practice of avowal.\u201d (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 16-17). Foucault\u00a0would emphasize:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A discourse of avowal on an indissociable part of ourselves: it is around this question that we have to understand the problem of the relations \u201csubjectivity and truth\u201d regarding sex. [<em>Discours d\u2019aveu sur une part indissociable de nous-m\u00eame: c\u2019est autour de cela qu\u2019il faut comprendre le probl\u00e8me des rapports \u201csubjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9\u201d a propos du sexe.<\/em>] (<em>S&amp;V<\/em>, p. 17).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This provides the direct link from <em>Subjectivity and Truth <\/em>to the lectures on\u00a0<em>Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice<\/em> that Foucault inaugurates the very next day: he concludes <em>S&amp;T<\/em> in Paris on April 1, 1981, and begins <em>WDTT<\/em> in Louvain, Belgium, on April 2, 1981.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Foucault\u2019s Louvain lectures trace a genealogy of the avowal as a form of truth-telling and focus specifically on the relationship between telling-truth and the rendering of justice. The lectures span Homer\u2019s <em>Iliad<\/em>, Sophocles\u2019 <em>Oedipus Rex<\/em>, early Christian forms of penance, medieval monasticism, the birth of psychiatry, and extend into the late 1970s with the discussion of the 1977 death penalty case of Patrick Henry, who was represented by Robert Badinter.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Louvain lectures represent Foucault\u2019s most explicit engagement with issues of law, rights, and justice\u2014as he himself states in the very first lecture. The lectures raise the question of the manifold ways, throughout history, that acts of truth-telling have formed part of declarations of justice: how acts of avowal contribute to the establishment of new orders of truth that themselves constitute particular instantiations of justice. By focusing on the act of avowal, the Louvain lectures place the human subject at the heart of the inquiry\u2014the human subject who, by avowing a wrong-doing, participates in his own subjectivation, his being made a subject, and his own governance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In this sense, the Louvain lectures contribute centrally to the development of the third dimension of Foucault\u2019s critical apparatus: beyond power and knowledge, the lectures focus attention on the subject. Several years later, in <em>Le Courage de la v\u00e9rit\u00e9, <\/em>Foucault would make his intervention more pointed by emphasizing that it is a \u201cpure and simple caricature\u201d to present what is referred to as the power\/knowledge critique through an account \u201cin which the subject does not have a role\u201d (<em>CV, <\/em>p. 10).<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\"><sup><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The recentering of Foucault\u2019s project on the subject\u2019s implication in his own <em>subjectivation <\/em>and in the production of justice can be illustrated, rapidly, through Foucault\u2019s discussion of the Homeric song regarding Antilochus and Menelaus, the famous episode of the chariot race.<a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\"><sup><sup>[2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Through the Homeric episode, a particular social hierarchy\u2014one in which gods take precedent over humans, and senior heroic figures over the younger heroes\u2014is reproduced by means of Antilochus\u2019 own act of deferring to Menelaus, who he ultimately admits is older, wiser, and stronger than he. What Foucault emphasizes in the episode is that the order of truth, the social hierarchy, is not simply imposed on Antilochus by means of a traditional conception of power, namely of someone \u201cmore\u201d powerful imposing a regime on another who would be \u201csubject\u201d to that power. Nor is it merely maintained or produced through knowledge; it is no mere product of a <em>savoir<\/em>. Rather, Antilochus implicates himself in the production of the social order through a quasi-avowal that functions to establish that very social order in a new way\u2014one, in fact, that may extend even greater legitimacy to the social order. For, had Menelaus imposed his victory over Antilochus by means of a jury composed of more senior heroic figures, the victory itself would not have been received in the same way. By offering Antilochus the opportunity to take an oath, Menelaus allows Antilochus to blame his own youth and exuberance and, in effect, to embrace and himself help restore an order of truth. One can say that Antilochus (re)establishes the order of truth and is thereby deeply implicated in the order that \u201csubjects\u201d him to Menelaus. On my reading, the parenthetical \u201c(re)\u201d can be dropped: the performative aspect of telling-truth is of utmost importance. It is not so much that a prior order of truth is being <u>re<\/u>established, it is more the case that a different order of truth is being enacted. Antilochus is now implicated in that new order of truth in a way that had not been before. He is more wedded to the hierarchical order\u2014at least, at that moment. The episode reveals, succinctly, how avowal and justice are deeply imbricated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the Louvain lectures, Foucault not only explores the multiple ways in which the subject\u2019s avowal constitutes justice (and simultaneously reconstitutes the subject), but gives an account of the increasing importance of avowal in declarations of justice from the medieval to the modern period\u2014the idea, essentially, being that as more traditional forms of veridiction (such as trial by ordeal, torture, and inquisitions) began to lose their hold on truth, the need for voluntary confessions increased proportionally, putting a strain on the justice system. The need for avowal augmented at the same time that the truth of the subject shifted\u2014a shift that Foucault documents in <em>Discipline and Punish<\/em> from the determination of the criminal act to the identification of the delinquent subject. These two changes\u2014the increased need for avowal and the shift to the notion of the delinquent\u2014put immense pressure on the system and, in Foucault\u2019s account, helped pave the way for the production of psychiatric knowledge to fill the gap. But these shifts also created a breach that would undermine traditional processes of justice\u2014what Foucault described as \u201c<em>l\u2019\u00e9pine, l\u2019\u00e9charde, la plaie, la ligne de fuite, la br\u00e8che de tout le syst\u00e8me p\u00e9nal<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A helpful illustration of this is the closing scene of the Louvain lectures, where Foucault discusses the capital sentencing of Patrick Henry in 1977.<a href=\"#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\"><sup><sup>[iii]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Henry had been convicted of the kidnapping and murder of a young child. In a striking closing argument at the end of the capital sentencing trial, the defendant\u2019s attorney, Robert Badinter, tells the jury:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cOf course, the accused has recognized his crime. He has confessed. But what did he say about this crime? What information did he offer you about his crime, about the reasons for his crime, about who he is? You have no idea. He could tell you nothing. Nothing appeared in the investigative interrogations, in the psychiatric examinations, nor even today when he appeared before the criminal court. He said nothing. He did not want to say anything. He could not say anything. In any case, you know nothing about him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Foucault then remarks on this \u201cantimony of our penal reasoning,\u201d closing with Badinter\u2019s final words: \u201cCan you condemn to death someone who you do not know?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The irony should not escape us. Badinter had flipped disciplinary knowledge on its head: rather than being the source of punishment, knowledge of the delinquent\u2014or here, the lack of knowledge\u2014shields the accused. It protects him from the gallows. The need for avowal\u2014avowal of who the accused really is\u2014has ground the penal system to a halt.<\/p>\n<h1>A Reader\u2019s Companion to Discipline and Punish<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It is fascinating to see how <em>Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling<\/em> expands on the discussion of avowal in <em>Discipline and Punish. <\/em>In the latter, avowal is really only discussed within the framework of \u201cthe spectacle of the scaffold\u201d and it has a narrow function there: in the judicial ceremony, confession produces the truth of the crime. The avowal there is important, but narrow: it is the means by which the accused \u201csigns the truth of the information.\u201d It is crucial for the functioning of the system; but it is very much <em>imposed<\/em> upon the accused. It is imposed externally and serves an external function of reflecting the truth of the crime. It has all the trappings of the public exhibition of truth that the sovereign imposes with these brutal early punishments. And for these reasons, it is associated primarily with two elements: with questions of proof and sermons; and with questions of torture. (The connection between avowal and torture is very important in <em>D&amp;P<\/em>, as it is in the first volume of <em>History of Sexuality<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling<\/em> extends this original analysis along two important dimensions: first, it internalizes the avowing practices. They become internalized in the sense that we seem them as voluntarily assumed in daily ethical practices and contexts\u2014for example the daily examination of conscience in the stoic tradition. Avowal is no longer something simply imposed by another in a repressive regime, but part of a daily therapeutic practice that is willingly assumed by the subject. Second, it extends the avowing practices into all periods and forms of relations of power. Avowal is not just associated with the juridical notions of sovereignty. It is everywhere. And it functions at all times as a central mechanism of subjectivation. So it becomes pervasive as a mode of self governance and governance of others.<\/p>\n<h1>Implications of Avowal<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The 1981 Louvain lectures leave us with at least three significant implications. The first suggest how our own practices of reflection can serve <em>to reinforce the relations of power that constrain and limit us<\/em>. This is illustrated with the interpretation of the chariot race. The account is so fascinating because, through his avowal, Antilochus not only restores the social hierarchy, but does so in a way that reinforces it. It would have had much less purchase on him and others if it had been imposed. But he willingly embraces it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Second, the lectures intimate that these practices can be <em>ordinary, daily practices of ethics.<\/em>\u00a0They need not be inquisitorial or oppressive. We subject ourselves in the ordinary course of ethical life. This is illustrated by the stoic examination of conscience: an evening exercise, intended merely to promote a reflective and contemplative life, that functions as a means to reinforce social rules of order.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Third, the Louvain lectures underscore the mysterious <em>force or power to the idea of telling the truth about oneself<\/em>. As Fabienne Brion and I suggest in the course context to the English edition, the lectures could have been called <em>The Power of Truth <\/em>(or the power of telling truth). It is about how telling truth is linked to telling justice, to making something just. It remains mysterious as to what that power consists of. It is, of course, the driving force in the lectures: how it becomes so powerful and important and necessary, that we need to substitute for it because it does not do enough; how psychiatry can be understood as a substitute to tell the truth of the delinquent; and how it creates this breach in the whole system when we do not know or do not have a confession form the defendant. The point of the discussion of Robert Badinter is that it may even defuse punishment.\u00a0The question it raises is: what is it about truth-telling that is so powerful? Why, at the end of the day, do we place so much weight on our avowals?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It may be worth noting that, during and throughout this period, Foucault continues to be deeply engaged politically, forming a committee in June 1981 with Bernard Kouchner and Yves Montand for the defense of the Vietnamese refugees who came to be known as the \u201cboat people,\u201d and, with Pierre Bourdieu in December 1981, called for protests regarding the situation of martial law in Poland, and would work for several months with the CFDT committee for the support to the Polish people. (<em>See <\/em>Daniel Defert\u2019s Chronology in <em>Pl\u00e9iade <\/em>edition of the complete works of Michel Foucault, Volume 2, p. xxxiii-xxxiv).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For background on Foucault&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling<\/em>, you may be interested in viewing this video of a\u00a0lecture on sexual avowal delivered by Judith Butler discussing the 1981 Louvain lectures at the European Graduate School in August 2014.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Judith Butler. Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling. 2014\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nmoguMXPxCI?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<h1>Notes<\/h1>\n<p>1. It is important to emphasize that from the very first, from his <em>Introduction \u00e0 l\u2019<\/em>Anthropologie (1959-1960), written as the complementary thesis to <em>Histoire de la folie, <\/em>Foucault was already focused on the question of subjectivity and truth. In fact, the question that animates his <em>Introduction<\/em> is how our knowledge of man and thus our knowledge of ourselves is possible given the limits of reason\u2014how is it possible for there to be a self, for there to be a subject, that we can know and do things to in a world in which there is no thing-in-itself. Foucault\u2019s early writings on madness, delinquency, and sexuality are three case studies of the way in which subjects have been created, of processes of subjectivation. They are studies of subjectivity\u2014of the particular subject of the madman, of the criminal, of the sexual pervert. So the turn to the subject and practices of the self in the later years is by no means a new development, but a closing of the circle.<\/p>\n<p>2. Michel Foucault had presented a first reading of this Homeric episode in his first annual lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France in 1970-71 in <em>Le\u00e7ons sur la volont\u00e9 de savoir<\/em>, p.\u00a072 et seq, and at a series of lectures at the Universit\u00e9 pontificale catholique de Rio de Janeiro in May 1973, entitled <em>La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 et les formes juridiques. <\/em>(<em>Dits et Ecrits<\/em>, tome II (1970-1975), n\u00b0 139, Paris, Gallimard, 1994, p.\u00a0555-556).<\/p>\n<p>3. For background on the Patrick Henry case, <em>see<\/em> Robert\u00a0Badinter, <em>L\u2019Abolition<\/em>, Paris, Fayard, 2000, p.\u00a037-105. Foucault discussed the case elsewhere in \u00ab\u00a0L\u2019angoisse de juger\u00a0\u00bb (entretien avec R. Badinter et J.\u00a0Laplanche), <em>Le Nouvel Observateur<\/em>, n\u00b0 655, 30 mai-6 juin 1977, p.\u00a092-96, reprinted <em>in <\/em>M. Foucault, <em>Dits et \u00c9crits<\/em>, III<em>,<\/em> n\u00b0 205, p.\u00a0282-297\u00a0; and M. Foucault, \u00ab\u00a0L\u2019\u00e9volution de la notion d\u2019\u2018individu dangereux\u2019 dans la psychiatrie l\u00e9gale du XIX<sup>e<\/sup> si\u00e8cle\u00a0\u00bb, <em>Dits et \u00c9crits<\/em>, III<em>,<\/em> n\u00b0 220, p.\u00a0444.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>[Read post\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2016\/02\/21\/introducing-subjectivite-et-verite\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2016\/02\/21\/introducing-wrong-doing-truth-telling\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>with special guests\u00a0Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley, and\u00a0Stathis Gourgouris, Columbia University For this session, because the 1981 lectures Subjectivit\u00e9 et v\u00e9rit\u00e9\u00a0(1980-1981)\u00a0have not yet been translated into English, the seminar also discussed the contemporaneous lectures delivered by Foucault at Louvain&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/the-tenth-seminar\/\" 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-973","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/973","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=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}