Politics, Philosophy, Culture:
Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984
ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, 1988

Self Portraits
Chapter I: The Minimalist Self

In a 1983 interview published in Ethos, a Canadian journal, Stephen Riggins begins by questioning Foucault about the "cultural ethos of silence" and "the transformation of the self through one’s own knowledge" (3). This interview was recorded in English. Foucault discussed how his experience in the Catholic school system helped him learn about different types of silences, including "very sharp hostility,…deep friendship, emotional admiration, even love" and how as child in a politically-charged area he found it "both very strange and very boring" that people were obligated to speak all the time (3-4). He describes when he and filmmaker Daniel Schmidt spent 10 hours together, but talked for a total of 20 minutes. Foucault stated, "Silence…a specific form of experiencing relationships with others…I’m in favor of developing silence as a cultural ethos" (4).

Foucault mentioned, "I have suffered and I still suffer from a lot of things in French social and cultural life"; he says that his "freedom for personal life was very sharply restricted" (4-5). As a result, he left France in 1955 and spent time in Sweden and Poland, then later returned to France in 1961. He commented about the "restrictions and oppressive power of the Communist party" in Poland (5). Foucault also lived in West Germany, and he spent "two years in Tunisia for purely personal reasons" (4). Foucault admitted that Americans flocked to Paris in the 1920s and 1930s for personal freedoms, but now (1980s) "they come to have a taste of an old traditional culture," not for freedom (5).

In the early 1950s, Foucault worked as a psychologist at Hopital Ste. Anne in Paris for more than two years. He was not "officially appointed," but was a student studying psychology because, at the time, "there was no clear professional status for psychologists in mental hospital" (6). When asked by Riggins if something at Hopital Ste. Anne may have given a negative impression of psychiatry, Foucault replied, "Oh no…It was one of the best in Paris."

Foucault had fond memories of his childhood in a provincial town called Poitiers in 1930s and 1940s, though the greatest emotional memories were tied to "the political situation," e.g., when "Chancellor Dollfuss was assassinated by the Nazis" in 1934 and the classroom fighting when "refugees from Spain arrived" (7). Foucault commented, "I think that boys and girls of this generation had their childhood formed by these great historical events. The menace of war was our background, our framework of existence" (7). Foucault continued, "Maybe that is the reason why I am fascinated by history and the relationship between personal experience and those events of which we are a part. I think that is the nucleus of my theoretical desires" (7).

When asked about the origin of his decision to become a philosopher, Foucault answered, "I don’t think I ever had the project of becoming a philosopher. I had not know what to do with my life…I knew one thing: school life was an environment protected from exterior menaces, from politics…Knowledge as a means of surviving by understanding" (7).

Foucault reflected back on his studies in Paris. He stated that "Marxism, Hegelianism, and phenomenology" were the "philosophical currents" studied. "I must say I have studied these, but what gave me for the first time the desire of doing personal work was reading Nietzche" (8).

He also discussed the political situation that led to the student uprisings in 1968. In France in 1968, "you had to as a philosopher a Marxist, or a phenomenologist, or a structuralist, and I adhered to none of these dogmas" (8). Foucault also explained that psychiatry and the history of medicine "had no real status in the political field. Nobody was interested in that" (8). After 1968, Marxist declined and cultural interests entered the scene. "My work had nearly no echo, with the exception of a very small circle, before ‘68" (8).

Responding to questions from Riggins, Foucault explained that the use of references to sexual fantasies in The History of Sexuality is meant to distinguish the relationship among "what we do, what we are obliged to do, what we are allowed to do, what we are forbidden to do in the field of sexuality and what we are allowed, forbidden, or obliged to say about our sexual behavior…It’s not a problem of fantasy; it’s a problem of verbalization" (8).

Foucault explained his thoughts on repression by suggesting that repression "is part of a much more complex political strategy regarding sexuality. Things are not merely repressed. There is about sexuality a lot of defective regulations in which the negative effects of inhibition are counterbalanced by the positive effects of stimulation" (9).

He called women’s hysteria and children’s masturbation his most striking examples that support his hypothesis in the History of Sexuality. Foucault claimed that parents took pleasure in raping [rape is the word Foucault uses] "the sexual activity of their children…It is not only a matter of power, or authority, or ethics; it’s also a pleasure" (9). The result was "intensification both of anxieties and of pleasures" (10).

Foucault comments on the historical fact that Greco-Roman and 18^th century bourgeois societies had a stronger relationship with sexuality as reproduction. He states, "What strikes me is the fact that now sexuality seems to be a question without direct relation with reproduction. It is your sexuality as your personal behavior which is the problem." (11) As an example, Foucault explains that homosexual was a non-issue in 18^th century because "if a man had children, what he did besides that had little importance…From the 19^th century on you see that behavior like homosexuality came to be considered an abnormality." Foucault explains, "Sexuality is not the secret but it is still a symptom, a manifestation of what is the most secret in our individuality" (11).

Riggins comments how Foucault loves the color white, avoids traditional French décor, like causal clothes (white pants, white tee-shirt, and black leather jacket); he also mentioned that Foucault suggested earlier he especially appreciated the straightforwardness and strength of pure black and white. Riggins also mentions the mention of "that austere monarchy of sex" in the History of Sexuality and how Foucault does not fit the image of the sophisticated Frenchman who makes an art out of living well—Foucault agrees that "a good club sandwich with a coke. That’s my pleasure" (12). Foucault admits that he has trouble allowing himself to experience pleasure; he calls complete total pleasure as related to death because "the real pleasure would be so deep, so intense, so overwhelming that I couldn’t survive it. I would die" (12). He continues by suggesting his inability to organize his life in a way that allows him middle-range pleasures is "the reason why I’m not a social being, why I’m not really a cultural being, why I’m so boring, in my everyday life. It’s a bore to live with me" (13).

Foucault talked about his love for music and how it contrasts from the role of music in French society. He stated, "Of course French culture gives no place to music, or nearly no place. But it’s a fact that in my personal life music played a great role" (13). Foucault’s relationships with musicians influenced his intellectual life (13).

Foucault agrees with Riggins that, at first, more artists and writers than philosophers, sociologists, or other academics respond favorably to his work. Riggins also asked about the relationship between Foucault’s philosophy and the arts? Foucault answers by explaining that he is not a good academic—his true interest is related to aestheticism and resolving the "strange relationship between knowledge, scholarship, theory, and real history" (14).

MF explains that he understands the importance of knowledge, but "I have the feeling knowledge can’t do anything for us and that political power may destroy us" (14). He suggests that he worked hard, not for academic status, but rather his own transformation (knowledge=truth). "This transformation of one’s self by one’s own knowledge is, I think, something rather close to the aesthetic experience" (14).

Foucault explains that The History of Sexuality is not a code of ethics for how to act; it is instead "the relationship you have to yourself when you act…The relationship that I think we need to have with ourselves when we have sex is an ethics of pleasure, of intensification of pleasure" (15). Foucault does not see himself as helping people to find the deep truth about the world and themselves. He says, "I have done nothing [in this work] other than write the history of psychiatry to the beginning of the 19^th century," yet people mistakenly believe him to be "anti-psychiatry" because "they are not able to accept the real history of their institutions which is, of course, a sign of psychiatry being a pseudo-science" (since a real science would accept all of its history). "People have to build their own ethics, taking as a point of departure the historical analysis sociological analysis and so on, one can provide for them" (16).

Riggins refers of Foucault’s appearance in the November 1981 issue of Time and how he achieved a "certain kind of popular status" (16). Foucault explained that he believes that academic need to be able to explain their research: "When a newsman comes and asks for information about my work I try to provide it in the clearest way I can" (16).

Gerard Raulet begins his interview, which was later published as "Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault" in Telos in Spring 1983, asking for the origin of post-structuralism. This interview was conducted in French and translated. Foucault evades the question by suggesting that no one really understands what structuralism is precisely and, instead, feels it’s more important to understand the history behind came to be known as structuralism. "I am not sure how interesting it would be to attempt a redefinition of what was known, at the time, as structuralism. It would be interesting, though, to study formal thought and the different kinds of formalism that ran through Western culture during the 20^th century" (18). Foucault goes on to provide an account of structuralism with the 19^th and 20^th centuries. He then states, "That is how I would situate the structuralist phenomenon: by relocating it within the broad current of formal thought" (18).

Raulet questions whether there is a link between the student uprisings and the emergence of Critical Theory. Foucault believe there wasn’t a direct link, yet the student uprisings provided fodder for the use of Critical Theory. He continues by explaining that the dissonance and civil unrest associated with Marxists and non-Marxists inspired an anti-dogmatic counter discourse that became structuralism. "The range of interplay between a certain kind of non-Marxist thinking and these Marxist references…inspired…an anti-dogmatic violence that ran counter to this type of discourse" (19).

Raulet refers to Vincent Descombes’ book Le meme et l’autre and discusses the possibility of Lacan and Nietzsche uniting Marx, Freud, and structuralism. Foucault admits he has not read this work, but he doesn’t believe the connections are that simple. He suggests that Marxism, phenomenology, structuralism, and Freudianism (and varying combinations of these four) each became "the new bride" at different points in history. He admits that undoubtedly individuals influenced these emergences along the way. Though, Foucault says of himself, "I have never been a Freudian, I have never been a Marxist, and I have never been a structuralist" (22). He explained the historiographies regarding knowledge and truth that he wrote were not Freudian, Marxist, or structuralist. Foucault admits that he, Canguilhem, and Deleuze were all wooed by Nietzsche as an alternative way of thinking at the time (1960s-1970s). "I would say that everything which took place in the sixties arose from a dissatisfaction with the phenomenological theory of the subject, and involved different escapades, subterfuges, break-throughs, according to the direction of linguistics, psychoanalysis, or Nietzsche (24). Foucault continued, "But the first people who had recourse to Nietzsche were not looking for a way out of Marxism. They wanted a way out of phenomenology" (24).

Raulet also asks about the relationship between science, knowledge, and reason, particularly in The Archaeology of Knowledge. Foucault explains "the history of science has played an important role in the philosophy of France" (25). He tries to resolve the history of reason while looking to the three "great forms: scientific thought, technical apparatus, and political organization" (25). Foucault believe philosophy harnesses these great forms in light of the Kantian question: Was ist Aufklarung? (25).

Critical theory, "the Frankfort School" [from Weber to Habermas], was hardly known in France in the 1930s and 1940s; it was received much better in England and the United States. "The understanding that might have been established between the Frankfort School and French philosophical thought—by way of the history of science and therefore the question of the history of rationality—never occurred" (26).

Foucault discussed the trap of the critique of reason. "I think that the blackmail…in every critique of reason or every critical inquiry into the history of rationality (either you accept rationality or you fall prey to irrationality) operates as though a rational critique of rationality were impossible, or as though a rational history of all the ramifications and all the bifurcations, a contingent history of reason, were impossible" (27). Foucault points to how Canguilhem isolated the dominant form of rationality in his work to illustrate how rationality is just one form among others. "True, I would not speak about one bifurcation of reason, but more about an endless, multiple bifurcation—a kind of abundant ramification" comparable to how the self and technai compares "to any technique of production" in "Greek and Roman antiquity" (28). Foucault comments of how each bifurcation is not a "unique phenomenon"; each rupture or branching is "situated as a historical phenomenon" with consequences and ramifications (28).

Foucault explains his position as unique from phenomenology. "I do not believe in a kind of founding act whereby reason, in its essence, was discovered or established…I have tried to analyze forms of rationality: different foundations, different creations, different modification in which rationalities engender one another, oppose and pursue one another" (28-29).

In answering Raulet’s question, Foucault declares that he has absolutely no ambition or interest in defining a new science, which gives reason back its truth—a universal science. His interest is applying the forms of rationality "by the human subject itself" (29). He suggests his interest encompasses the human subject and the quest for truth within "an ensemble of complex, staggered elements where you find that institutional gameplaying, class relations, professional conflicts, modalities of knowledge, and, lastly, a whole history of the subject of reason are involved" (30). Foucault states, "It is an analysis of the relation between forms of reflexivity—a relation of self to self—and, hence, of relations between forms of reflexivity and the discourse of truth, forms of rationality and effects of knowledge" (30).

Foucault explains that he used the term archaeology rather than history because he is not as interested in the history of ideas as much as "trying to discern beneath them how one or another object could take shape as a possible object of knowledge" (31). "By using the word archaeology rather than history, I tried to designate this desynchronization between ideas about madness and the constitution of madness as an object" (31). Foucault no longer uses the term archaeology.

Foucault discusses how he believe that there is no true or single Nietzscheanism. He uses Nietzschean concepts in 1880s regarding "the question of truth, the history of truth, and the will to truth were central to his work" (32). Foucault explains "my own problem has always been the question of truth, of telling the truth, the wahr-sagen—what it is to tell the truth—and the relation between "telling the truth" and forms of reflexivity, of self upon self" (33).

In response to Raulet’s comments on how Nietzsche "makes no fundamental distinction between will to knowledge and will to power," Foucault believes there is a "perceptible displacement in Nietzsche’s text between those which are broadly preoccupied with the question of will to knowledge and those which are preoccupied with will to power" (33). Foucault admits that it has been years since he read Nietzsche, yet "the actual history of Nietzsche’s thoughts interests me less than the kind of challenge I felt one day, a long time ago, reading Nietzsche for the first time" (33).

Raulet asks Foucault about post-modernity, or the "breaking apart of reason" where "reason has only been one narrative among others in history" (34). Foucault answers by suggesting he is troubled by not understanding the clear meaning of modernity, and he cannot conceptualize the problem behind post-modernity. "While I see clearly that behind what was known as structuralism, there was a certain problem—broadly speaking, that of the subject and the recasting of the subject—I do not understand what kind of problem is common to the people we call post-modern or post-structuralist" (34). Foucault also mentions that he sees multiple transformations of reason, not a collapse of reason; therefore, in opposition to Raulet, he suggests, "Other forms of rationality are created endlessly. So there is no sense at all to the proposition that reason is a long narrative which is now finished, and that another narrative is under way" (35).

Concerning the nature of the present, Foucault talks about the "fragility in the present—in managing to grasp why and how that-which-is might no longer be that-which-is. In this sense, any description must always be made in accordance with these kinds of virtual fracture which open up the space of freedom understood as a space of concrete freedom, i.e., of possible transformation" (36). Foucault explains that, for this reason, he believes the work of an intellectual needs to be properly situated in "a base of human practice and human history" (37). Foucault describes the interplay between forms of rationality and other forms of power where there is "exchange, transmissions, transferences, and interferences" as "the microphysics of power" (37).

Foucault makes three points regarding his thoughts and interests regarding the microphysics of power. First, with regard to the study of "the rationality of dominations," he tries to "establish interconnections which are not isomorphisms" (38). Second, Foucault explains that in discussing power relations in regard to "forms of rationality that can rule and regulate," he is NOT referring to "Power with capital ‘P’," but power upon the totality of the social body (38). Finally, Foucault declares that he is not attempting to construct a theory of power.

Raulet asks Foucault to comment about the silence of the Left in France at the time; he says, "as soon as the Left comes to power, no one on the Left has anything to say" (40). In a lengthy answer, Foucault summarizes, "…Instead of complaining about the silence of intellectuals, we should recognize much more clearly their thoughtful reserve in response to a recent event, a recent process, whose outcome we do not yet know for certain" (42).

Foucault clarifies that he has never said that knowledge is power or vice versa; these quotes have been mistakenly attributed to him. He studies the relationship between knowledge and power (43).

In discussing the decline of Marxism, Foucault examines two circuits of thought in the 1950s in France: University thought vs. open/mainstream thought. He talks about how each operated almost independently from one another. Then, he transitions to the importance of culture as a framework. He states, "Everything is present, you see, at least as a virtual object, inside a given culture…It is a part of the function of memory and culture to be able to reactualize any objects whatever that have already featured. Repetition is always possible; repetition with application, transformation" (45). Foucault explains that Marxism may disappear, but it may also reappear at a later time. He admits to Marxist influence in The Archaeology of Knowledge (46).

This interview was conducted by Alessandro Fontana (who collaborated with Foucault on I, Pierre Riviere) for originally for Panorama, an Italian weekly publication; it reappeared in Le Monde in the July 15-16, 1984 issue. Foucault discusses the research involved in his works, but admits that there is not "a great difference between these books and the earlier ones"; he made relatively little change over time (48). "I have tried to analyze how areas such as madness, sexuality, and delinquency may enter into a certain play of the truth, and also how, through this insertion of human practice, of behavior, in the play of truth, the subject himself is affected" (48). Foucault admits to Fontana that with much credit to Nietzsche this amounts to a new genealogy of morals.

Foucault comments on how morality and personal ethics have disappeared over the ages and how he believes we need to reexamine these areas. He states, "From Antiquity to Christianity, we pass from a morality that was essentially the search for a personal ethics to a morality as obedience to a system of rules…And to this absence of morality corresponds, must correspond, the search for an aesthetics of existence" (49). Foucault points to a change in philosophical theory and discourse as a rationale for this change.

"I do believe that there is no sovereign, founding subject, a universal form of subject," declares Foucault. He explains, "I believe, on the contrary, that the subject is constituted through practices" of subjection to or liberation from "a number of rules, styles, inventions to be found in the cultural environment" (50-51).

In response to Fontana’s question: Is there truth in politics? Foucault answers, "I believe too much in truth not to suppose that there are different truths and different ways of speaking the truth. Of course, one can’t expect the government to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. On the other hand, we can demand of those who govern us a certain truth as to their ultimate aims, the general choices of their tactics, and a number of particular points in their programs: this is the parrhesia (free speech) of the governed, who can and must question those who govern them, in the name of the knowledge, the experience they have, by virtue of being citizens, of what those who govern do, of the meaning of their action, of the decisions they have taken (51-52). Thus, we (the governed) have a right and responsibility to ask questions about the truth.

Foucault discusses the problem of readers in relation to a body of works by a particular author [likely himself]. "It doesn’t bother me particularly if a book, given that it is read, is read in different ways. What is serious is that, as one goes on writing books, one is no longer read at all, and from distortion to distortion, reading out of others’ readings, one ends up with an absolutely grotesque image of the book" (52). Thus is Foucault’s dilemma: Do you point out the distortions, or allow the work to become "a caricature of itself" (52). Foucault’s solution is to only allow an author’s name to be used twice and to use pseudonyms the rest of the time, so that "each book might be read for itself" (53). He admits that there are a few great authors for whom "knowledge is the key to its intelligibility," but for most works, the author need not be known. "For someone like me—I am not a great author, but only someone who writes books—it would be better if my books were read for themselves, with whatever faults and qualities they may have" (53).

Theories of the Political: History, Power, and the Law
Chapter 4: Politics and Reason

These two lectures, part of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, were given in October 1979 at Stanford University. They highlights the Christian influence on individual control "enacted within the experience/knowledge/power triad" and examine politics and reason for the individual (57).

Foucault frames these two lectures within the following context: "Western thought has never stopped laboring at the task of criticizing the role of reason—or the lack of reason—in political structures" (58). He also contextualizes through the role of philosophy. "Since Kant, the role of philosophy has been to prevent reason going beyond the limits of what is given in experience; but from the same moment—that is, from the development of modern states and political management of society—the role of philosophy also been to keep watch over the excessive powers of political rationality—which is rather a promising life expectancy" (58).

Foucault discusses three cautions in regarding to the link between rationalization and power. First, avoid generalizing a whole rationalization of a society or culture, since "each of them are grounded in a fundamental experience: madness, illness, death, crime, sexuality, etc" (59). Second, ensure that you understand the principles behind the kind of rationality you use. Finally, "we have to refer to much more remote processes" (beyond the Enlightenment) "to understand how we have been trapped in our own history" (59). Foucault explains that these three posits were outlined in his previous works. Foucault states, "What I am working on now is the problem of individuality—or, I should say, self-identity as referred to the problem of "individualizing power" (59).

Foucault examines "the development of power techniques oriented towards individuals and intended to rule them in a continuous and permanent way" (60). He analogizes that if the state is the political form of a central power, then the pastorship is the individualizing power. In the first lecture, Foucault plans to outline "the origin of the pastoral modality of power," and, in the next lecture, he plans to illustrate how pastorship "happened to combine with its opposite, the state" (60).

He begins with the metaphor of a deity as a shepherd leading a flock and describes a number of typical Hebrew pastoral themes. First, "The shepherd wields power over a flock rather than over a land" (61). Second, "The shepherd gathers together, guides, and leads his flock" (61). Third, "The shepherds role is to ensure the salvation of his flock" which contrast from the Greco-Roman focus on the food of the polis (62). Finally, kindness. "The shepherd has a target for his flock. It must either be led to good grazing ground or brought back to the fold" (62). The flock is the shepherd’s constant concern: theme of keeping watch/devotedness; "the shepherd’s power implies individual attention paid to each member of the flock" (63). Foucault foreshadows his next lecture by suggesting, "Clearly, the development of pastoral technology in the management of men profoundly disrupted the structures of ancient society" (63).

Foucault resorts to a lengthy discussion of Plato to illustrate the relationship between the pastoral and state models. He states, "They deal with the relations between political power at work within the state as a legal framework of unity, and a power we can call pastoral whose role is to constantly ensure, sustain, and improve the lives of each and every one" (67). Foucault finds through the evolution of Hebrew to Christianity as evidence of the emergence of the "technology of power" (68). First, "the shepherd must render an account—not only of each sheep, but of all their actions, all the good or evil they are liable to do, all that happens to them" (68). Second, the shepherd’s work is done because it is his will, not the law. Third, Christian pastorship implies a peculiar type of knowledge between the pastor and each of his sheep (self-examination and the guidance of conscience)" (69). Finally, the most important transformation is that of Christian mortification, or "a kind of relation from oneself to oneself. It is a part, a constitutive part of the Christian self-identity" (70).

Foucault comments, "Our civilization has developed the most complex system of knowledge, the most sophisticated structures of power: what has this kind of knowledge, this type of power made of us?" (71). He asks, In what ways are those fundamental experiences—madness, suffering, death, crime, desire, and individuality—connected even if we are not aware of it, with knowledge and power?" (71).

Foucault begins his second lecture with a brief review. "I have tried to show how primitive Christianity shaped the idea of a pastoral influence continuously exerting itself on individuals and through the demonstration of their particular truth" (71). He then previews, "I would like at this time, leaping across many centuries, to describe another episode which has been in itself particularly important in the history of this government of individuals by their own verity" (71). Foucault sites changes in the cultural, economic, and sociopolitical (feudalism) as reasons for the move from pastoral influence to the formation of the state beginning in the Middle Ages.

For this lecture, Foucault aims to "pin down the specific type of political rationality the state produced" (73). He explains that the rationality of state power is "formulated especially in two sets of doctrines: the reason of state and the theory of police" (73).

Foucault provides definitions of the reason of state from Botero, Palazzo, and Chemnitz and considers four commonalities within these definitions. First, "Reason of state is regarded as an art, that is, a technique conforming to certain rules" (74). Second, "the art of government is rational, if reflexion causes it to observe the nature of what is governed—here, the state" (75). Third, "Reason of state is also opposed to another tradition" (76). "Finally, we can see that reason of state, understood as rational government able to increase the state’s strength in accordance with itself presupposes the constitution of a certain type of knowledge" (76). In summary, "reason of state is not an art of government according to divine, natural, or human laws…It’s government whose aim is to increase this strength within an extensive and competitive framework" (77).

Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century German and Italian authors do not find police to be "an institution or mechanism functioning within the state, but a governmental technology peculiar to the state; domains, techniques, targets where the state intervenes" (77). The example text (Turquet de Mayenne’s AristoDemocratic Monarchy) illustrates political utopias as well as the negative aspects of life. For example, in one work, the "officer’s role was to have been mainly a moral one"…"to foster among the people ‘modesty, charity, loyalty, industriousness, friendly cooperation, honesty’" (77-78). The text also illustrate themes, such as the "poor requiring help; the unemployed; those whose activities required financial aid…diseases, epidemics, and accidents, such fire and flood" (78). Foucault says this text demonstrates three concepts. First, "The police appears as an administrative heading the state, together, with the judiciary, the army, and the exchecquer" (78). Second, "The police includes everything (regarding a live, active, productive man)" (79). Finally, "Such intervention in men’s activities could well be qualified as totalitarian" (79). In summary, Turquet’s book provides evidence that, "as a form of rational intervention wielding political power over men, the role of the police is to supply them with a little extra life; and by so doing, supply the state with a little extra strength. This is done by controlling communication, i.e., the common activities of individuals (work, production, exchange, accommodation)" (79).

Foucault sites less obscure works to persuade the critic: Delamare’s Compendium and several German textbooks. "Delamare says that the police must see to eleven things within the state: religion; morals; health; supplies; roads, highways, town buildings; public safety; the liberal arts; trade; factories; manservants and laborers; the poor" (80). The textbooks by Huhenthal (Liber de Politia), Willebrand (Precis for the Police), and Von Justi (Elements of Police). The Huhenthal and Willebrand texts are comparable to Delamare’s Compendium. The Von Justi text states the police "enable the state to increase its power and exert its strength to the full" and "foster both citizens’ lives and the state’s strength" (82). This text also draws up a Polizeiwissenschaft, or "an art of government and a method for the analysis of a population living on a territory" (83).

Foucault thoughts are four-fold in regard to the art of government. First, "Power is not a substance…Power is only a certain type of relation between individuals" (83). Second, "As for all relations among men, many factors determine power. Yet rationalization is also constantly working away from it" (84). Third, "those who resist or rebel against a form of power cannot merely be content to denounce violence or criticize an institution" (84). Finally, "the state has been one of the most remarkable, one of the most redoubtable, forms of human government" (84).

Foucault concludes his lecture with the following: "Political rationality has grown and imposed itself all throughout the history of Western societies…Its inevitable effects are both individualization and totalization. Liberation can only come from attacking, not just one of these two effects, but political rationality’s very roots" (85).

In this lecture given in 1983 at College de France, Foucault interprets Kant’s Was ist Aufklarung? (What is Enlightenment?). This lecture also appeared in the May 1984 issue of Magazine litteraire.

Foucault is entranced by Kant’s "question of the present, the question of what is happening now…The question bears on what this present actually is, it bears firstly on the determination of a certain element of the present that is to be recognized, to be distinguished, to be deciphered among all others" (87). Foucault tells us, "In the answer that Kant tries to give to this question, he sets out to show how this element becomes the bearer and the sign of a process that concerns thought, knowledge, philosophy; but it is a question of showing how he who speaks as a thinker, as a scientist, as a philosopher, is himself part of process and (more than that) how he has a certain role to pay in this process, in which he is to find himself, therefore, both element and actor" (87-88).

In regard to discourse and Kantian notions of the present, Foucault states, "Discourse has to reassess its being in the present on the one hand, to find its proper place in it, and, on the other hand, to decipher its meaning, to specify the mode of action that it is capable of exercising within that present" (89). The question of sensitivity to time is what the Kantian modernity means to Foucault. "The Aufklarung is a period, a period that formulates its own motto, its own precepts, and which says what it has to do, both in relation to the general history of thought and in relation to its present and to the forms of knowledge, ignorance, and illusion in which it is able to recognize its historical situation" (89).

Foucault explains the Kantian notion of constant progress: "In short, the attribution of a cause will be able to determine only possible effects, or, to be more precise, the possibility of an effect; but the reality of an effect will be able to be established only by the existence of an event. It is not enough, therefore, to follow the teleological thread that makes progress possible; one must isolate, within history, an event that will have the value of a sign…A sign of the existence of a cause, of a permanent cause, which throughout history itself, has guided men on the way of progress" (90). "It must be a sign that it has always been like that (the rememorative sign), a sign that shows that things are also taking place now (the demonstrative), and a sign that shows that it will always happen like that (the prognostic sign)" (91). Foucault explains that this way "we can be sure that the cause that makes progress possible has not just acted at a particular moment, but that it guarantees a general tendency of mankind as a whole to move in the direction of progress" (91). Through this system of signs, Kant is "alluding to the traditional reflections that seek the proofs of the progress or non-progress of humankind" (91).

In addition to examining the Aufklarung, Kant sees "the Revolution as at once event, rupture, and overthrow in history, as failure, but at the same time as value, as sign of a disposition that is operating in history and in the progress of humankind" (95).

Foucault believes that Kant’s analysis of the "two questions—What is the Aufklarung and What will be done with the will to revolution—together define the field of philosophical interrogation that bears on what we are in our present" (95). Foucault concludes this lecture by suggesting, "This is not an analytic of truth; it will concern what might be called an ontology of the present, an ontology of ourselves" (95).

This interview was conducted by Pierre Boncenne in 1978; segments of this interview reappeared in L’Express in the July 6-12, 1984 issue.

When asked about his interest in the problem of madness, Foucault commented that he didn’t have any interest in a vocation as a writer; it was rather, "a series of circumstances—studying philosophy, then psychopathology, then training in a psychiatric hospital and being lucky enough to be there neither as a patient nor as a doctor…to look at things in a fairly open-minded, fairly neutral way, outside the usual codes" (96). Foucault mentioned that this topic was "certainly not well received in academic circles, but especially not…circles that ought to have been interested in this sort of question" (97). In regard to Madness and Civilization, Foucault tells us, "At first, there was no reaction from on the part of psychiatrists"(98). Then after the student uprisings in 1969, "certain psychiatrists met at a conference in Toulouse and, led by Marxists, all trumpets blazing, declared that I was an ideologist, a bourgeois ideologist...my book was seen as a work of ‘anti-psychiatry’" (99).

Foucault calls Order of Things "the most tiresome book I ever wrote" (99). In response to this work as discontinuity, Foucault states, "For me, this [Order of Things] is not at all a way of declaring the discontinuity of History; on the contrary, it is a way of posing discontinuity as a problem and above all as a problem to be resolved. My approach, therefore, was quite the opposite of a philosophy of discontinuity" (100).

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault hoped "not to tell story, or even to analyze the contemporary situation, because that would have needed much greater experience than I had and a connection with penitential institutions much deeper than I had. No, what I wanted was to write a history book that would make the present situation comprehensible and, possibly, lead to action" (101). He hoped that Discipline and Punish would be read "by a wider public than one made up of students, philosophers, or historians" (101).

Since each of his works, whether how madness or the prison system, seemed to lead to the same question: what is power, Foucault decided to probe this question as related to sexuality and "what prohibits, what prevents people from doing something," yet it "power [seemed] something much more complex than that" (102). Foucault illustrates how one should not link sex to repression—"it was more powerful to admit sex than to forbid it" (102). Foucault discusses sexuality as a taboo subject; he states, "sexuality is something people in our societies dare not talk about…The discourse on sexuality was organized in a particular way, in terms of a number of codes" (102).

Foucault declares that there must be strategies of power, or technique through which we accept or reject decisions. When asked whether he could be charged with reducing everything to power, Foucault explains that "power is the problem that has to be resolved" (104). He states, "What struck me, observing the human sciences, was that the development of all these branches of knowledge can in no way be dissociated from the exercise of power…So the birth of the human sciences goes hand in hand with the installation of new mechanisms of power" (106).

Foucault distances himself from the "exact" sciences, he claims only to examine the human sciences. Yet, despite this fact, the exact sciences are still influence by power. "Science has become institutionalized as a power through a university system and through its own constricting apparatus of laboratories and experiments" (107). Foucault admits that science produces truths and that truths are a form of power. He believes we need to examine how "the truth has been given this value, thus placing us absolutely under its thrall" (107).

By specific intellectual, Foucault refers to the work of a specialist, such as a doctor, lawyer, and technician, as to carry out that "essentially critical work" (107). Foucault considers himself a specific intellectual in regard to theory. He comments about his relation to the public. "The relationship between us and our reading public was never clearly established. It was as if our books were being asked to provide not so much the extra imaginary dimension that used to be expected of them, but in a more considered, longer-term view of society" (109).

Chapter 7: Power and Sex

This interview was conducted by Bernard-Henri Levy in 1977; it was translated by David Parent and published originally on March 12, 1977 in Le Nouvel observateur and also later published in a 1977 volume of Telos.

Foucault sees his work, The History of Sexuality, as a much needed chronicle of "sex and the search for truth in our societies; he finds sexuality to be more than "simply a means of reproducing the species and more than "a means to obtain pleasure and enjoyment (111)" Sex "has always been the forum where both the future of our species and our truth as human subjects are decided" (111)

Foucault points to Christian confession where "sex has been the central object of examination, surveillance, avowal, and transformation into discourse" (111). He stress two facts: "the clarification of sexuality occurred not only in discussions but also in the reality of the institutions and practices" and "that numerous, strict prohibitions exist" (111).

In response to Levy’s question about the "dawn of another new history" [one associated with the political history of the production of truth], Foucault suggests, "The achievement of true discourses (which are incessantly changing, however) is one of the fundamental problems of the West. The history as true—is still virgin territory" (112).

Foucault mentions that he will examine the "state of sexual misery" and provide "concrete studies" in subsequent volumes of The History of Sexuality. He says, "The problem is to know whether the misery should be explained negatively by a fundamental interdiction, or positively by a prohibition relative to an economic situation (Work, don’t make love): or whether it is not the effect of much more complex and much more positive procedures" (112).

Foucault points out that, beginning in the 18^th century, "tremendous importance was suddenly ascribed to childhood masturbation" (113). "Children’s sex became both a target and an instrument of power. A specific "sexuality of children" was constituted—precautions, dangerous, constantly in need of supervision" (113). Foucault explains the idea of professions suggesting that sexual misery stemming from repression is a "formidable trap"; "this type of discourse is, indeed, a formidable tool of control and power" (114).

Sexual liberation, to Foucault, means "movements that start with sexuality, with the apparatus of sexuality in the midst of which we’re caught, and which make it function to the limit; but, at the same time, they are in motion relative to it, disengaging themselves and surmounting it" (115). Foucault mentions homosexuals and women as examples.

Foucault tells us, "Some say that the child’s life is sexual. From the milk-bottle to puberty, that is all it is" (116-117). Authors Scherer and Hocquenghem claims that society deprives children of their right to pleasure; the "sex grid is a veritable prison"; "This stems from the idea that sexuality is not feared by power, and instead, is far more a means through which power is exercised" (117).

Foucault explains that he has always been interested in the problem of the "effects of power and the production of truth," "the economic of untruth," and "the politics of truth"; in the History of Sexuality, Foucault indicates "the interdictions, the refusal, the prohibition, far from being essential forms of power, are only its limits, power in its frustrated or extreme forms. The relations of power are, above all, productive" (118).

Foucault states three reasons for his interests: 1) power in the West hides within political life, 2) the nature of the economy and its affects upon politics, and 3) the power of the state versus (no power for) the individual. With these interests, Foucault hoped to "investigate what might be most hidden in the relations of power; to anchor them in the economic infrastructures; to trace them not only in their governmental forms but also in the infra-governmental or para-governmental ones; to discover them in the material play" (119).

Levy sees a division between The History of Sexuality and Foucault’s other works, which he suggests feature a sense of naturalism. Foucault comments, "A certain theory, the idea that under power with its acts of violence and its artifice, we should be able to rediscover the things themselves in their primitive vivacity: behind the asylum walls, the spontaneity of madness; thorough the penal system, the generous fever of delinquency; under the sexual interdict, the freshness of desire. And also a certain aesthetic and more choice: power is bad, ugly, poor, sterile, monotonous, and dead; and what power is exercised upon is right, good, and rich" (120).

Foucault sees philosophy as asking the same questions throughout history: "What is happening right now, and what are we," and how do we relate to what’s happening right now. (121). Therefore, "that is why contemporary philosophy is entirely political and entirely historical" (121).

Foucault believes the fate of politics and revolutions are mutually intertwined. "For politics is a field that has been opened by the existence of the revolution, and if the question of the revolution can no longer be posed in these terms, then politics is in danger of disappearing" (122). Also, resistance and power are linked as well. "It [resistance] does not predate the power which it opposes. It is coextensive with it and absolutely its contemporary"…"as soon as there is a power relation, there is a possibility of resistance" (123).

Foucault points out that, though Marxist analyses mention class struggle, "they pay little attention to one word in the phrase, namely, struggle" (123).

This 1978 address to the Law and Psychiatry Symposium at York University in Toronto targets the concept of the homicidal manic.

After a brief case study, Foucault explains, "The penal machine can no longer function simply with a law, a violation and a responsible party. It needs something else, a supplementary material. The magistrates and the jurors, the lawyers too, and the department of the public prosecutor, cannot really play their role unless they are provided with another type of discourse, the one given by the accused…his confession" (127).

The lawyer in the case made a starting remark, "Can one condemn to death a person one does not know?" (127). Foucault details the Garofalo principle [formulated by Garofalo] and evolution of criminology, "‘Criminal law knows only two terms, the offense and the penalty. The new criminology recognizes three, the crime, the criminal, and the means of repression" (127). "Legal justice today has at least as much to do with criminals as with crimes…resorting to the criminal over and above the crime was justified by practice, and to adjust the general provisions of laws and legal codes more closely" (128).

Foucault explains another evolution in criminology. "The intervention of psychiatry in the field of law occurred in the beginning of the nineteenth century, in connection with a series of cases whose patterns was about the same, and which took place between 1800 and 1835" (128). Each case presents some form of dementia transformed into "furor," involves a major offense, and takes place in a domestic setting, and was committed without monetary or emotional rationale.

Before this evolution, Foucault mentions psychiatry had been "an aspect rather than a field of medicine" (133). Now in attempting to "rationalize the confused area where madness and crime mix," psychiatrists establish a "new domain for themselves" (133). Yet, "what was involved was less a field of knowledge to be conquered than a modality of power to be secured and justified…it functioned as a sort of public hygiene" (134). Psychiatrists treated "social dangers"; "insanity seemed to them to be linked to living conditions (overpopulation, overcrowding, urban life, alcoholism, debauchery) or because it was perceived as a source of danger for oneself, for others" (134).

After outlining the history of psychiatry, Foucault draws several conclusions. First, "the intervention of psychiatric medicine in the penal system…is neither the consequence nor the simple development of the traditional theory of the irresponsibility of those suffering form dementia or furor" (139). Second, the intervention of psychiatry in the penal system is due to medicine functioning as "public hygiene" and as "transforming the individual". Third, "the reasons for the intervention of medicine in the criminal field and the reasons for the recourse of penal justice to psychiatry are essentially different" (139). Fourth, the court’s inability to understand the motives of a homicidal manic: "the monstrous act." Fifth, "the theme of the dangerous man is inscribed in the institution of psychiatry as well as of justice" (139). Finally, "there will be a considerable transformation of the old notion of penal responsibility" (140).

Foucault turns toward an analysis of the relationship between psychiatry and penal law "from the first congress on Criminal Anthropology (1885) to Prinz’s publication of his Social Defense (1910)" (140). Psychiatry "abandoned the notion of monomania"; it was "no longer confined to some great crimes" (140-141). Criminal Anthropology called for "putting aside legality" and for "a true depenalization of crime" where "legally irresponsible subject [are] to be released" (143-144). At the second meeting of this Association, it was declared that "The commission of medical experts to whom the judgment ought to be referred should not limit itself to expressing its wishes; on the contrary, it should render a real decision" (145). This erupted in direct conflict with codes established by the International Association of Penal Law and the positivistic thinking of the 19^th century and eventually led to a decline of criminal anthropology. It was civil law that later assisted in depenalization of crime.

Foucault credits civil law’s "notion of accident and legal responsibility" changes in the penal system. He says, "civil legislators emphasized a certain number of important principles," including focusing on causes rather than fault, re-visiting the chain of events, the understanding that risk is part of society, and focusing on minimizing not eliminating risks (147-148).

In 1905, the International Union of Penal Law defined a "dangerous being" using a number of "legal codes, rules, and memoranda" (149), and it became "accepted in judicial thought" (151).

Overall, Foucault suggests that the dangerous individual play an essential role in medico-legal criminology. "When a man comes before his judges with nothing but his crimes…when he has nothing to say about himself, when he does not do the tribunal the favor of confiding to them something like the secret of his own being, then the judicial machine ceases to function" (151).

This interview was conducted by Didier Eribon in 1981 for the French newspaper Liberation; it was translated by Alan Sheridan. It was conducted shortly after the election of Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, and it addresses thought, conflict, and theory.

Eribon brought up the fact that Foucault declined to comment on Mitterrand on election night and asked if he would comment now. Foucault evaded the question, "I consider that voting in itself is a form of action. It is then up to the government to act in its turn" (152). Foucault said he was struck by three things. First, the socialists are the "only ones to grasp the reality of those problems [raised by the people] and to react to them" (152). Second, "these problems" led to a "left-wing logic—the logic for which Mitterrand was elected" (153). Third, the "declared choices of the government" have not followed with the majority of public opinion on the subjects of the death penalty or the question of the immigrants (153).

Foucault comments about Mitterrand’s election, "It seems to me that this election has been felt by many people as a sort of victory, a modification in the relationship between those who govern and the governed" (153). Foucault explains that "we must escape from the dilemma of being either for or against [the government]…To work with a government implies neither subjection nor total acceptance" (154).

In response to Eribon’s two declarations (Foucault’s move from critic to reformist and "criticism made by intellectuals leads to nothing)," Foucault explains the work of intellectuals are constantly working on problems and "to say that this work produced is nothing is quite wrong" (154). "We must free ourselves from the sacrilization of the social as the only reality and stop regarding as superfluous something so essential in human life and in human relations as thought. Thought exists independently of systems and but which always animates everyday behavior" (155). Foucault calls criticism "a matter of flushing out thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such…I think the work of deep transformation can only be carried out in a free atmosphere, one constantly agitated by a permanent criticism" (155).

Foucault defines the role of the intellectual as not carrying out reform, but rather "how far the liberation of thought can make those transformations urgent enough for people to want to carry them out and difficult enough to carry out for them to be profoundly rooted in reality" (155). "Out of these conflicts, these confrontations, a new power relation must emerge, whose first, temporary expression will be a reform" (156). Foucault says that he has not retired as an activist; his role has just changed to that of an intellectual.

Chapter 8: The Dangerous Individual

 Foucault begins with a recounting of a trial in 1975 in which the defendant refused to speak other  than to acknowledge the crimes that he committed.  Both the judge and jury members  encouraged the accused to speak in order to explain or defend himself, which he refused to do,  causing frustration for the legal system.  
 
Foucault claims that the legal “machinery jams” in a case like this, because the judicial system  expect more of the defendant: “Beyond admission, there must be confession, self-examination,  explanation of oneself, revelation of what one is” (126).  The penal system cannot simply  function with just the crime and responsible criminal. “The magistrates and the jurors, the  lawyers too, and the department of the public prosecutor, cannot really play their role unless they  are provided with another type of discourse, the one given by the accused about himself, or the  one which he makes possible for others, through his confessions, memories, intimate disclosures,  etc. If it happens that this discourse is missing the judge is relentless, the jury is upset” (126-7).
 
The cause of this is a shift in penal justice.  For a long time, the penal system viewed the criminal  as the party that performed a specific criminal act, “today, the crime tends to be no more than the  event which signals the existence of a dangerous element—that is, more or less dangerous—in  the social body” (128).  This shift from seeing the criminal as an agent of an act to a type of  person to that threatens the social body is tied to “psychiatrization of criminal danger” (128).
 
Foucault goes through a series of criminal cases which took place between 1800-1835, which  helped establish the “intervention of psychiatry in the field of law” (128-9).  All of these cases  had four things in common.  First none of the criminals fit the traditional definition of dementia  or furor, in which case the actions of the criminal would be excused under the law: “It was  stressed in each case that there was no previous history, not earlier disturbance in thought or  behavior . . . the crime would arise out of a state which one might call the zero degree of  insanity” (130).   Second, the crimes were of the most serious nature: “almost all murders,  sometimes with accompanied by serious cruelties” (130).  The psychiatric intervention was odd  because “The more serious the crime, less usual it was to raise the question of insanity” (130),  but “psychiatry was able to penetrate penal justice in full force . . . by tackling the greatest  criminal event” (131).  Third, the crimes all took place in the domestic setting, making them  “crimes against nature, against those laws which are perceived to be inscribed directly on the  human heart” (131). “Finally, all of these crimes were committed with out reason, I mean  without profit, without passion without motive, even base on disordered illusions” (131).
 
Because psychiatrist viewed themselves not only as doctors but also as public hygienists fighting  against the social dangers, they established a new type of insanity: monomania or homicidal  mania (134).  This illness was unique to psychiatry because it established insanity as a crime that  can violate even the laws of nature and for which there are no warning signs, except for the  professional trained to spot them (134-5). 
 
Foucault then goes on to question why judges would accept a type of insanity that turned “a  criminal into a madman whose only illness was to commit crimes” (135-6).  Because psychiatry  had been integrated into the penal system at the level of punishment, the focus on punishment  had changed: “punishment bears on the criminal himself rather than on his crimes, that is what  makes him a criminal, on his reasons, his motives, his inner will, his tendencies, his instincts”  (137).   This lead to punishment on a type of individual, not on a type of action.  Homicidal  mania was accepted because there were actions that were clearly crimes being committed by  individuals who didn’t appear to be criminals: “All the indictments prove that that in order for  the punitive mechanism to work, the reality of the offense and a person to whom it can be  attributed are not sufficient; the motive must also be established, that is, a psychologically  intelligible link between the act and the author” (138).  This legal logic lead to a paradox: “the  legal freedom of a subject is proven by the fact that his act is seen to be necessary, determined;  his lack of responsibility proven by the fact that his act is seen to be unnecessary” (140). 
 
Foucault then jumps to the late 19th century, when monomania is abandoned in criminal  psychiatry for two reasons: “the negative idea of a partial insanity . . . was gradually replaced  that mental illness . . . may attach the emotions, the instincts, spontaneous behavior, leaving the  forms of thought virtually intact” and “the idea of mental illness . . . may present one particular  symptom or another at one stage or another of their development, not only through individuals  but also at the level of several generations” (141).  Therefore, any criminal act was no longer  viewed as a separate act, but part of a larger process. 
 
Along with this new view of criminal behavior comes a “collective fear of crime, the obsession  with this danger which seems to be an inseparable part of society itself, [which] are thus  perpetually inscribe in each individual consciousness” (142).  Added to this is the failure of the  penitentiary system to prevent crime and reform criminals (143). “For all sorts of reasons . . .  there was a very strong social and political demand for a reaction to, and a repression of, crime”  (142).  “[Criminal Anthropologists] concluded that there should be three main types of social  reaction to crime or rather to the danger represented by the criminal: definitive elimination (by  death or by incarceration in an institution) temporary elimination (with treatment), and more or  less relative and partial elimination (sterilization and castration)” (144).
 
Foucault argues reformations in civil law influenced the changes in penal law. “This  transformation in civil law revolves around the notion of accident and legal responsibility” (146).   The development of no-fault liability by civil legislators “introduced into law the notion of  causal probability and risk, and they brought forward the idea of a sanction whose function  would be to defend, to protect, to exert pressure on inevitable risks” (148).  This idea was grafted  onto penal justice: “After all, what is a ‘born criminal’ . . . if not someone who, according to a  causal chain which is difficult to restore, carries a particularly high index of criminal probability,  and is in himself a criminal risk?” (148)  For Foucault the primary problem of modern penal  justice “was the problem of the dangerous individual” and how society could identify and protect  itself from him (149).  
 
Chapter 9: Practicing Criticism
 
After some opening comments on the recent French elections, Eribon leads Foucault to reflect on  the role of the critic with the political culture. 

“We must escape from the dilemma of being either for or against [a particular government  administration] . . . To work with the government implies neither subjection nor total  acceptance” (154).  Foucault continues by discussing the effect of criticism on politics, noting  that many political reforms are on the agenda because they are issues that intellectuals brought to  public attention. He then turns to a discussion of the relationship between criticism and reform.  “A critique is not a matter of saying things are not right as they are.  It is a matter of pointing out  on what kinds of assumptions . . . the practices that we accept rest” (154).  
 
He continues by noting that thought exists in even the “most stupid institutions” (155). “In these  circumstances, criticism (and radical criticism) is absolutely indispensable for any  transformation.  A transformation that remains within the same mode of thought . . . can merely  be a superficial transformation” (155) “It is not therefore a question of there being a time for  criticism and a time for transformation . . . the work of deep transformation can only be carried  out in a free atmosphere, on constantly agitated by a permanent criticism” (155).
 
Foucault goes on to explain that the role of the intellectual is “making conflicts more visible, of  making them more essential than mere confrontations of interests or mere institution immobility.   Out of these conflicts, these confrontations, a new power relation must emerge, whose first,  temporary expression will be a reform” (156).  He continues by explaining that all of his  theoretical work has a relation to his own experiences.  In responding to a comment by Eribon  about his optimism, Foucault concludes with “There’s an optimism that consists of saying things  couldn’t be better.  My optimism would consist rather in saying that so many thing can be  changed, fragile as they are, bound up more with circumstances than necessities, more arbitrary  than self-evident, more a matter of complex, but temporary, historical circumstances than with  inevitable anthropological constants” (156).
 
Chapter 10: Social Security
 
Foucault starts by stressing three points about social security: First, the “system of social  guarantees . . . is coming up against economic obstacles”, “Secondly, this system worked out in  the period between the two wars . . . is now reaching its limits”, and “Lastly, social security,  whatever its positive effects, has also had ‘perverse effects’: in increasing rigidity of certain  mechanisms and a growth in dependence” (159).  Bono posits the question of how to “reconcile  this ‘infernal couple’: security-dependence?” (159), to which Foucault responds with that the  “positive demand: that for a security that opens the way to richer, more numerous, more diverse,  and more flexible relations with one self and one’s environment, while guaranteeing to each  individual real autonomy” (161).
 
Foucault continues by discussing the two negative tendencies of the system: “an effect of  dependency by integration and an effect of dependency by marginalization or exclusion”  claiming that the system benefits the individual only if he is integrated within the society (162).   He describes the current social system as a question of “infinite access of each individual to a  number of possible allowances” (163).  When the authorities have to choose who is allowed  access to social services, especially in cases of medical care, “the individual wonders about the  nature of his relationship with the state and begins to feel his dependence on an institution whose  decision-making powers he had hitherto only dimly perceive” (163).  Returning to the issue of  marginality, he claims “Our systems of social security impose a particular way of life to which  individuals are subjected, and any person or group that, for one reason or another, will not or  cannot embrace that way of life is marginalized by the very operation of the institutions” (165).
 
In order for reform of the social system Foucault claims that two things must change: “Firstly,  we . . . have to transform the field of social institutions into a vast experimental field, in such a  way as . . . to get the desired change” (165), “Secondly—and the is a crucial point—there would  be considerable work to be done in renewing the conceptual categories that dominate the way we  approach all these problems . . . For the moment, then, we completely lack the intellectual tools  necessary to envisage in new terms the form in which we might attain what we are looking for”  (166).
 
Foucault reflect on the historical fact that the social system was implicitly to be for health needs,  and that the need for health “has no internal principle of limitation” (169).  This has lead to a  complicated issue of a “right to health,” since good or bad health are not rights, they are physical  facts (170).  He contends that individuals can have a right to work conditions that decrease the  likely hood of illness or injury and compensation when injury or illness is within the  responsibility of a certain authority, but that is not the key issue of the current health concerns.   Rather, it is a questions of the “means of health” and the “right of access to these means to  health” (170).  Continuously discussions need to be taking place about the limits placed upon  individual access to the means of health. These discussions will bring to light questions of what  risks to life the state allows individuals to face, akin to the questions of risks to life that the state  asks of the solider (171).
 
Foucault highlights that the discussions he is encouraging are already taking place, only not at a  public level: “The question I’m asking is whether a ‘health strategy’—this problematic of  choice—must remain silent . . .There is a paradox here: this strategy is acceptable, in the present  state of things, providing it stays silent” (172).  If it is not silent, then there is a risk of public  outrage against the practice. “But I think it is pointless to avert one’s gaze: we must try to get to  the bottom of things to confront them” (172).
 
Responding to Bono’s question of how “can social security contribute to an ethics of the human  person?” (176),  Foucault reflects that “social security has at least contributed by posing a  number of problems, notably by posing the question of what life is worth and the way in which  one can confront death” (176).  Foucault closes with presenting the idea of a clinic where people  who were dying would be allowed to enjoy themselves, and then “disappear, as if by  obliteration” (176).  Foucault does not want to bring back the pageantry of traditional death  rituals, rather he wants “to give meaning and beauty to death-obliteration” (177).
 
Chapter 11: Confinement, Psychiatry, Prison
 
The dialog opens with a discussion of how the Soviet Union was applying psychiatry to their  policing actions.  Foucault claims that this is nothing unique to the USSR, because “Psychiatry  immediately perceived itself as a permanent function of social order and made use of the  asylums for two purposes: first to treat the most obvious, the most embarrassing cases and, at the  same time, to provide a sort of guarantee, an image of scientificity, by making the place of  confinement look like a hospital” (180).  He continues claiming that the “true vocation of  psychiatry” is public hygiene (180-1), psychiatry has always intervened when public health, “in  the sense of public order” is threatened (181).
 
Foucault move to the concept of the right of confinement, where family members could have an  individual confined with the co-signature of a psychiatrist (188); in France this right was so  widely used, at all levels of the culture, that when it was abolished in the Revolution, the society  greatly missed this right (188).  The key to the right of confinement is that the individual to be  confined is “perceived as dangerous” (188).  The concept of danger is the tie between psychiatry  and penal law in the West: “all these things . . . are institutions intended to react to danger”  (188).  And an individual can be considered “dangerous ‘for himself,’ when it can’t be proven  that he is dangerous ‘for others’” (189).
 
The role of psychiatrists in the penal system is not to decide whether an individual is responsible  for their actions, rather they are to answer the question “Is the individual dangerous?” (191).  Despite the fact that being dangerous “is not an illness . . . is not an illness . . . is not a symptom”  (191), the legal and penal system use it as a criteria to remove people from society that they do  not know what to do with (191). 
 
Foucault shifts the discussion to his involvement in helping reform France’s sex laws; he claimed  that most areas in the laws give him no problems, i.e. “in no circumstances, should sexuality be  subject to any kind of legislation whatever” (200).  However, two situations cause a problem for  him with this stance: “One is rape and the other is children” (200).  When Foucault suggests that  rape be treated the same way as any other violent act, both women in the discussion said that it  shouldn’t be, that it is a unique sexual offense (200-1).  As the conversation begins to focus upon  the violence of rape, Foucault draws attention to the fact that they are defining rape in terms of  violence and not as what is unique about rape, “Yet both of you, as women, were immediately  upset at the idea that one should say: rape belongs to the realm of physical violence and must  simply be treated as such” (204). 
 
On the subject of children and sexual consent, Foucault opened with “I’d be tempted to say: from  the moment that the child doesn’t refuse, there is no reason to punish any act” (204); however, he  recognizes the fact that for parents, their child being coerced into sex clearly don’t see it that  way, and there are situations where adults use their authoritative relationship with the children to  coerce sex—“especially [the problem] of step-fathers, which is very common” (205).  This is  complicated with the fact that “the ‘legal protection’ given to children is an instrument put into  the hands of parents” (209). 
 
Chapter 12: Iran: The Spirit of a World Without Spirit
 
Foucault starts by claiming that the important question about Iranian revolution is “what has  happened in Iran that a whole lot of people, on the left and on the right, find somewhat  irritating?” (211)  He claims that Western intellectuals usually observe two dynamics in  revolutions, “the contradictions in that society, that of the class struggle or of social  confrontations” and “a vanguard . . .that carries the whole nation with it” (212-13), and that Iran  showed neither.  He raises the question of the role that religion played to erase these two  elements in the uprising.
 
Foucault then addresses the idea of the “collective will” of a governed people: “I don’t know  whether you agree with me, but we met, in Tehran and throughout Iran the collective will of a  people . . . This collective will, which, in our theories, is always general, has found for itself, in  Iran, an absolutely clear particular aim, and has thus erupted into history” (215).   

When Blanchet compared the feeling in Iran to the Cultural Revolution in China, Foucault  countered that there were still a conflict among the people in China: “Now what struck me in  Iran is that there is not struggle between different elements.  What gives it such beauty, and at the  same time such gravity, is that there is only one confrontation: between the entire people and the  state threatening it” (216).  Foucault claims that at the heart of the revolution is not just a change  of relationship with the government, but a change with every aspect of their daily life and being,  which is where Islam played a role (217-18). 
 
While amazed about at the unchoreographed unity of expression against the Shah, Foucault,  Briére, and Blanchet all expressed concern about the rising prejudice in the revolution: against  Jews, against women, against Americans (222-4).  “What has given the Iranian movement its  movement its intensity has a double register . . . But this double affirmation can only be based on  traditions, institutions that carry a charge of chauvinism, nationalism, exclusiveness, which have  a very powerful attraction for individuals” (224). 
 
Chapter 13: The Battle for Chastity
 
Foucault focuses on the way that Cassian discusses the concept of chastity in the Institutions and  in his Confessions.  In order to examine how Cassian understood chastity, Foucault looks at how  he defines the concept of fornication.  Cassian includes fornication among eight principle vices,  included with greed, avarice, wrath, sloth, accidie, vainglory, and pride (228, footnote).  While  this is a common structure for the Medieval church, “Cassian’s specifications obviously have a  different meaning” (228).
 
Foucault then focuses on the relationship that fornication has with the other vices.  The group of  eight are broken into pairs, where greed and fornication are put together for several reasons: both  are innate, both involve bodily participation, “over-indulgence in food and drink fuel the urges to  commit fornication” (228).  In addition, fornication leads through a chain of causation to other  vices: avarice, wrath, sloth, and accidie (228).  While it does not directly lead to vainglory and  pride, as these two vices occur once the individual has over come the others, fornication can be  the result of them: “When the soul only has itself to battle, the wheel comes full circle . . .  showing the inevitable continuance of the struggle and the threat of a perpetual recurrence”  (229).  Finally, it is the only vice that is both based within the body and that is necessary to  completely eliminate, as the only other bodily vice, greed, cannot be completely excised as food  is necessary to survival (230).
 
Foucault then turns to Cassian’s definition of fornication, which consists of three types: “the  ‘joining togther of the two sexes’. . . the second takes place ‘without contact with the woman’. . .  the third is ‘conceived in the mind and the thoughts’” (231).  This is a change from the already  existing trilogy of sexual sins: “adultery, fornication (meaning sexual relations outside of  marriage), and ‘the corruption of children’” (231).  Foucault highlights the two key differences  between Cassian’s understanding and the tradition view of fornication.  First, he conflates the  physical aspects of adultery and fornication, instead of dealing with them as separate vices.   Secondly, he spends most of his time on the mental aspects of his definition of fornication: “he  was passing over fornication as a physical union of two individuals and only devoting serious  attention to behavior which up till then had been severely censured only when leading up to real  sexual acts” (233).  However, Foucault argues that Cassian’s view on chastity was not purely  negative as “it concerns a different reality to that of a sexual connections between two  individuals” (233).
 
Foucault moves through Cassian’s stages of chastity, from rejecting carnal urges to the final  stage where even the individual’s dreams are free of sexual temptation. “Amid all this  description of the different symptoms  of fornication . . . there is not mention of relationships  with others, no acts, not even any intention of committing one” (234).  Rather what exists is the  purity of the mind, whether working against external stimuli or the “dark corners of the mind”  (235).   Cassian moves his ethical battle away from a traditional idea of ethics: “We are now far  away from the rationing of pleasure and its strict limitation to permissible actions; far away too  from the idea of as drastic a separation as possible between mind and body” (235). 
 
Instead, Foucault argues, what Cassian has developed is a way to analyze the self, by keeping a  continuous watch over what types of thought the individual has. “This has nothing to do with a  code of permitted or forbidden actions, but is a whole technique for analyzing and diagnosing  thought” (239).  Foucault claims that this form of analyzing the self has two characteristics that  standout: “This subjectivization is linked with a process of self-knowledge which makes the  obligation to seek and state the truth about oneself and indispensable and permanent condition of  this asceticism” (240); and “this subjectivication, in its quest for the truth about oneself,  functions through complex relations with others,” struggling with the Enemy, receiving help  from the Lord, confession, submission, and obedience to the members of the order (240).
 
Foucault ends with the observation that the ethics that Cassian puts forth is not a new invention  with Christianity; rather the roots of it can be seen in antiquity.  In fact, more changes in ethical  understanding occurred during antiquity than happened when Christianity was introduced into  the West (240-1). 
 
Chapter 14: The Return of Morality
 
Barbadette and Scala start the interview with a comment on the different style that Foucault used  in his latest books, The Uses of Pleasure and The Care of the Self.  Foucault acknowledges that  his style had changed, in part because his approach to his work had changed: “[In my earlier  works], I tried to locate three major types of problems: the problem of truth, the problem of  power, and the problem of individual conduct.  These three domains of experience can only be  understood in relation to each other, not independently” (243).  Foucault critiques his earlier  works stating that he only focused on the first two experiences; now that he has added the third  experience “it seemed to provide a king of guiding thread which . . . did not have to resort to  some what rhetorical methods of avoiding one of the three fundamental domains of experience”  (243).
 
Foucault then moves on to the issue of style of life within antiquity, which he claims was central  to experience in that era: “stylization to the relation to oneself, style of conduct, tylization of the  relation to others.  Antiquity never stopped posing the question of whether it was possible to  define a style common to these different domains of conduct” (246). When Barbadette and Scala  ask if he was impressed with the Greeks, Foucault answers no.  Because they were caught up  with the question of style of life and the universality of this style, they mainly expressed the idea  of style through religious expression; so Foucault claims “All of Antiqity seems to me to have  been a ‘profound mistake’” (244). Foucault continues by claiming that he would “try to speak  well of [this morality], stating that for the Greeks, questions about style of life were limited to  whom they applied.  While the question of morality became universally applicable in the Roman  Empire, it “was never a question of making it an obligation for all.  Morality was a matter of  individual choice” (245).  
 
Barbadette and Scala then asked “Is writing central to the ‘culture of the self’?” (246). Foucault  argues that writing has been important to the formation of the self, but not central.  Plato never  developed a formation of the self based on writing, memory, or editing.  The Romans taught it  through the structure of their lessons, and Christianity formulated “extremely extensive  penitential functions which involved taking account of oneself, telling about oneself to another,  but without anything being written” (247).
 
Reflecting on the relation between the morality of Greek antiquity and contemporary west,  Foucault claims that while “from a strictly philosophical point of view” (247) the two have  nothing in common, in the types of behaviors they prescribe they are “extremely close” (247).   “It is important to point out the proximity and the difference, and through their interplay, to show  how the same advice given by the ancient morality can function differently in a contemporary  style of morality” (247).
 
When asked about his turn to the Greeks in his new books and whether the trend to turn to the  Greeks in scholarship was some form of nostalgia, Foucault claims, “Trying to rethink the  Greeks today does not consist of setting off Greek morality as the domain of morality par  excellence  . . . The point is rather to see to it that European thinking can take up Greek thinking  again as an experience which took place once and with regard to which one can be completely  free” (249). 
 
Responding to a question about the role that Heidegger plays in his work, Foucault  acknowledges the influence of Heidegger, despite the lack of his writing on Heidegger.  “I think  it is important to have a small number of authors with whom one thinks, with whom one works,  but about whom one does not write” (250).
 
When Barbadette and Scala comment on how the titles of Foucault’s books don’t necessarily  match what is inside, Foucault responsed with two reasons for this. “It’s clumsy of me, but once  I choose a title I keep it. I write a book; I rework it; I discover new problematics; but the book  retains its title” (251).  “In the type of books I write I try to circumscribe a type of problem that  has not been circumscribed before. . . . I need to be able to bring out a certain kind of problem at  the end of the book which cannot be reformulated into the title” (251).
 
Barbadette and Scala point out that Foucault’s introduction of the subject in the new books took  his work in a new direction, which might be in conflict with his earlier texts.  Foucault  acknowledges that his introduction of the subject is something which he had avoided in his  earlier work, but his interests in doing so was “how the problem of the subject did not cease to  exist throughout this question of sexuality” (253).  For Foucault “It is the experience which is the  rationalization of a process, itself provisional, which results in a subject, or rather, in subjects”  (253).   When asked whether the Greeks had a comment of subjectivity, he responds in the  negative: “Which does not mean that the Greeks did not strive to define the conditions in which  an experience would take place—an experience not of the subject but of the individual, to that  extent that the individual wants to constitute itself as its own master” (253).  While he sees the  insertion of an obliged universal morality via Christianity as “catastrophic” (254), he does not  think it advisable to try to apply the morality of antiquity to modern morality without taking in  account the effect that Christianity has had on the development of modern morality (254).
 
Foucault closes with comments on his view of philosophy.  Unlike the skeptical program, which  he claims tries to apply established ideas in new arenas of study and which is trying to establish a  very focused by unimpeachable area of knowledge, he is aiming for “a use of philosophy which  may enable us to limit the areas of knowledge” (254).
 
Chapter 15: The Concern for Truth
 
Foucault opens the interview acknowledging that he change the direction of his History of  Sexuality from the one presented in volume one.  Explaining why he set out a plan that he finally  did not follow: “Out of laziness . . . I had dreamt that I had at last reached an age when all one  has to do is to unroll what is in one’s head.  It was at the same time a kind of presumption and a  way of giving up” (255-6).  Describing the two new books Foucault claimed they fit, like his  other works, in the history of thought. “The history of thought means not just the history of ideas  or of representations, but also an attempt to answer this question: how is a particular body of  knowledge able to be constituted” (256).  He continues by stating that in all his books he is  attempting “is to write the history of the relations between the thought and truth; the history of  thought as such is thought about truth.  All those who say, for me, truth doesn’t exist are being  simplistic” (257).  Claiming his goal is to examine how sexuality is problematized, he explains,  “Problematized does not mean representation of an existing object, nor the creation by discourse  of an object that doesn’t exist.  It is the totality of discursive or non-discursive practices that  introduces something into the play of true and false and constitutes it as an object for thought”  (257).
 
Ewald posits that the two new books “emerged from the same problematic” (257), but they still  seemed different.  Foucault responds that he has changed direction with the problematic: “When  I was dealing with madness, I started out from . . . the problem that madness poses for others.   Her I set out from the problem that sexual behavior might pose for individuals themselves . . . In  the first case, I had to find out how madmen were ‘controlled’; in the second, how one ‘controls’  oneself” (258).  
 
Foucault continues by reflecting on the fact that morality in antiquity was not more “’tolerant,’  liberal, and accommodating” (258).  He then argues that in antiquity, prohibition of sexual acts  do not create discourses on morality.  Looking at marriage, which required a prohibition on the  part of the woman, very little discourse exists; however, men’s relationship with boys, which  was permitted, was the cause of a large amount of discourse on the appropriate behavior in this  type of relationship: “It is not, therefore, prohibition that accounts for the forms of  problematization” (259).
 
Foucault reflects on the art of the self: “That is what I tried to reconstitute: the formation and  development of a practice of self whose aim was to constitute oneself as the worker of the beauty  of one’s own life” (259).  For Foucault, the techniques of self are not limited to sexual practices;  “I don’t think there can be a morality without a number of practices of self” (260).  And while  they may occur along with rules of morality, “Practices of self take on the form of an art of self,  relatively independent of moral legislation” (260).
 
In reflecting on the sexual morality of antiquity: “the sexual act itself, its morphology, the way in  which one seeks and obtains one’s pleasure, the ‘object’ of desire, do not seem to have been a  very important theoretical problem in Antiquity” (260); rather the role one held in the  relationship, when it took place, and the quality of the relationship. For example, in the  relationship men had with themselves, women, and boys “self-control assumes three different  forms; there is no one single domain that would unify them all” (261)  In addition, self control  was only an issue for “the individual who must be master of himself and master of others” (262).   Finally, while there were prohibitions on sexual behavior in Greece, “they were of very little  interest . . . compared with the overriding concern with retaining self-control” (262).
 
Reflecting on how his work relates to the present: “Genealogy means that I begin my analysis  from a question posed in the present” (262).  The present issue for his history of sexuality: “For a  long time many people imagined that the strictness of the sexual codes, in the form that we know  them, was indispensable to so-called ‘capitalist’ societies” (262-3).  However, these prohibitions  have been lifted with much more ease than should be expected if this was the case; “people were  wrong when they believed that all morality resided in prohibition and that the listing of the  prohibitions in itself solved the question of ethics” (263). 

Reflecting on the role of the intellectual: “What can the ethics of an intellectual be . . .if not this:  to make oneself permanently capable of detaching oneself from oneself” (263).  This detachment  is the work of constantly changing “not only others’ thought, but also one’s own. This work of  altering one’s own thought and that of others seems to me to be the intellectual’s raison d’être”  (263-4).  The act of wanting to this change for Foucault is “to be an elaboration of self by self, a  studious transformation, a slow, arduous process of change, guided by a constant concern for  truth” (264).  However, the role of the intellectual isn’t “to tell others what they have to do”  (265).
 
Foucault ends with a discussion on the silence of intellectuals in political matters.  He contends  that intellectuals haven’t been silent.  However, when politicians say that intellectuals are being  silent they can have two meaning: either “Since we don’t want to hear you, shut up.” (266), or  “Say some of the things we so much want to hear. . . . We needed others beside us to maintain a  discourse on the rationality of the government . . . We wanted to bring you back into the game;  but you deserted us in the middle of the ford and there you are sitting on the bank” (266).   Foucault suggests that intellectuals might reply to this second discourse with: “When we urged  you to change your discourse, you condemned us in the name of your most worn-out slogans.   And now that you are changing direction, under pressure of a reality that you are not capable of  perceiving, you are asking us to provide you, not with the the thought that might enable you to  confront it, but with a discourse that would conceal your change” (266).  Foucault concludes  with “Nothing is more inconsistent than a political regime that is indifferent to truth; but noting  is more dangerous than a political system that claims to lay down the truth” (267).
 
Chapter 16: Sexual Morality and the Law
 
This discussion was focused on the hopes that the legal regulations of sexual practices in France  would be removed.  Foucault expressed optimism that this could be done: “This regime is not as  old as all that . . . it was only during the nineteenth century and above all in the twentieth . . . that  legislation on sexuality became increasingly oppressive” (271-2).  A commission had been  established to revise the laws, and it was making moves towards reform. “However, it would  seem that for several months now, a movement in the opposite direction has begun to emerge”  (272).  This counter movement is disturbing because it is wide spread through the West, it calls  for stricter legal and penal reactions, and it “is unfortunately supported very often by press  campaigns, or by as system of information carried out in the press” (272). 
 
Hocquenhem introduces the petition to decriminalize relationships between adults and minors,   “a petition that has been signed by a lot of people who are suspect neither of being particularly  pedophiles themselves nor even of entertaining extravagant political views” (273).  He noted that  the moves toward decriminalization that the panel had seen turned out to be an illusion; “it is  rather the opposite that is taking place, with new arguments being used” (273).  These arguments  directly linked child sexuality with child sexual exploitation, pornography and prostitution.  This  response “serves only to stress the traditional prohibition . . . on sexual relations without  violence, without money, without any form of prostitution, that may take place between majors  and minors” (274).
 
Danet comments “what takes place with the intervention of psychiatrists in court is a  manipulation of the children’s consent, a manipulation of their words” (274).  He also brings up  the issue of common law, which has been used as a social control on adults how have special  access to children, always trying to root out a threat to society (274-5).
 
Foucault turns to the use of common law in sexual repression: “this legislation was characterized  by the odd fact that it was never capable of saying exactly what it was punishing” (275).  Despite  numerous terms used in the laws (attacks, outrageous acts, decency), none of them are ever  defined.  “It is certainly a fact that this legislative apparatus . . . was never used except in cases  when it was considered to be tactically useful” (275), for example, it was used to regulate child  prostitution in the 19th century (276).   However, the new tactic exists not in undefined terms of  decency; rather, the claim is “there are people for whom others’ sexuality may become a  permanent danger” (276).  The goal has now turned to legal protection of this threatened  population (children), supported by other social institutions (277).
 
Hocquenhem notes that this approach not only creates a new type of crime, but also a new type  of criminal: “There then exists a particular category of the pervert . . . of monsters whose aim in  life is to practice sex with children” (277). This creation of a type of criminal then makes the  question of whether there is a crime irrelevant: “The crime feeds totally upon itself in a manhunt,  by the identification , the isolation of the category of individuals regarded as pedophiles. It  culminates in that sort of call for a lynching sent out nowadays by the gutter press” (278). 
 
Danet added that the social hatred towards the criminal is also applied to the legal personnel  whose job it is to defend them: “anyone who defends a pedophile may be suspected of having  some sympathy for that cause.  Even judges think so themselves” (279).  “What I mean is, just  because one is involved in a struggle against some authority . . . this does not meant one is on the  side of those who are subjected to it” (280).
 
Foucault expands on the idea of legal protection for specific populations: “sexuality will no  longer be a kind of behavior hedged in by precise prohibitions, but a kind of romaing danger, as  ort of omnipresent phantom . . . a threat in all social relations, in all relations between members  of different age groups, in all relations between individuals” (281). 
 
Hocquenhem and Danet clarify that what the petition is discussing is consensual relationships  between adults and minors, and claim that the issue of child rape is not their focus, that rape of  any type is another issue (283).
 
Responding to questions about establishing an age of consent, Foucault reflects: “Consent is one  thing; it is a quite different thing when we are dealing with the likelihood of a child being  believed” when talking about his sexual feelings, affections, relationships (284).  “But after all,  listening to a child . . . provided one listens with enough sympathy, must allow one to establish  more or less what degree of violence if any was used or what degree consent was given.  And to  suppose that a child is incapable of explaining what happened and incapable of giving his  consent are two abuses that are intolerable” (284).  “In any case, an age barrier laid down by law  does not make much sense. . . . after all there are eighteen-year-old girls who are practically  forced to make love with their fathers or stepfathers; they may be eighteen, but it’s an intolerable  system of constraint” (285).
 
Chapter 17: Sexual Choice, Sexual Act: Foucault and Homosexuality
 
Responding to John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, Foucault states  that the way Boswell defines the concept of gay “provides us both with a useful instrument of  research and that the same time a better comprehension of how people actually conceive of  themselves and their sexual behavior” (287).  “Sexual behavior is not, as it is too often assumed,   a superimposition of  . . . desires which derive from natural instincts . . . and of permissive or  restrictive laws which tell us what we should or shouldn’t do” (287).  Rather it is more; sexual  behavior is “the consciousness of what one is doing, what one makes of the experience, and the  value on attaches to it” (287).
 
O’Higgins brings up the question of class consciousness and homosexuals, should homosexuals  see themselves as a distinct class?  Foucault replies: “I would say that the homosexual  consciousness certainly goes beyond one’s individual experience and includes an awareness of  being a member of a particular social group” (288), although this collective consciousness has  not remained consistent over time.  Furthermore, in the current socioeconomic moment  “homosexuals do not constitute a social class” (289).   

Moving on to political goals for the homosexual movement, Foucault posits “the question of  freedom of sexual choice must be faced” (289), which he clarifies from freedom of sexual acts.  “I don’t think we should have as our objective some sort of absolute freedom or total liberty of  sexual acts” (289), because some sexual acts like rape that should not be allowed. Secondly,  “posing the question of the place in a given society which sexual choice, sexual behavior and the  effects of sexual relations between people could have with regard to the individual” (289).  He  doesn’t necessarily support specific practices, rather “we are dealing here with a whole series of  questions concerning the insertion and recognition—within a legal and social framework—of  diverse relations among individual which must be addressed” (289).
 
O’Higgins brings up the debate in California over whether homosexuals should be allowed to be  teachers.  Foucault responds, “Sexual practices simply fall outside the pertinent factors related to  the suitability for a given profession” (290).  Moreover, “The fact that a teacher is a homosexual  can only have electrifying and intense effects on the students to the extent that the rest of the  society refuses to admit the existence of homosexuality” (290).  On the question of homosexual  teachers seducing their students: “in all pedagogical situations the possibility of this problems is  present; one finds instances of this . . . much more rampant among heterosexual teachers” (291). On the issue of a homosexual style:  “I don’t think it make much sense to talk about a  homosexual style” (292).  “It seems to me that it is finally and inadequate category . . . in that we  can’t really classify behavior . . . and the term can’t restore a type of experience” (292).   When  O’Higgins suggests that there may be a type of style to homosexual relationships, Foucault  replies, “In a society like ours where homosexuality is repressed, and severely so, men enjoy a  far greater degree of liberty than women . . . this has resulted in a certain permissiveness with  regard to sexual practices between men” (293).  This liberty lead to a situation that “reversed the  standards in such a way that homosexuals came to enjoy even more freedom in their physical  relations than heterosexuals” (293).
 
O’Higgins next brings up an article by Phillip Rieff which addresses the way that repression  allows a society to function.  Foucault responds, “Well, the important question here, it seems to  me, is not whether a culture without restraints is possible or even desirable but whether the  system of constraints in which a society functions leaves individuals the liberty to transform  them” (294).
 
O’Higgins asks about the relative prudishness in heterosexual erotica verses homosexual erotica.   Foucault suggests that prudishness is a result of the acceptance of the practices; in antiquity,  similar prudishness accompanied homosexual literature (295-6). “The experience of  heterosexuality, at least since the middle ages, has always consisted of two panels; on the one  hand, the panel of courtship . . . and, on the other hand, the panel of the sexual act . . . all the  aesthetic elaboration of the west, were aimed at courtship” (296).  Modern homosexuality,  however, has not been allowed to develop a courtship ritual, so the focus has been on the sex act:  “This is why the great homosexual writers of our culture (Cocteau, Genet, Burroughs) can write  so elegantly about the sexual act itself, because the homosexual imagination is for the most part  concerned with reminiscing about the act rather than anticipating it” (297).
 
Responding to O’Higgins’s suggestion that the homosexual “coming out” has lead to more  diverse forms of sexuality to make themselves present, Foucault claims that the easy access to  sex has made people interested in ways to intensify their sexual practices: “That is to say, sexual  relations are elaborated and developed by and through mythical relations” (299).
 
Responding to the relatively more open acceptance of bisexuality for women than men: “This  probably has to do with the role women play in the imagination of heterosexual men.  Women  have always been seen by them as their exclusive property” (299), which has allowed women  more access to each other, because men are more interested in keeping other men away from the  women.  “By the same token, heterosexual men felt that if they practiced homosexuality with  other men this would destroy what they think is their image in the eyes of their women.  They  think of themselves as existing in the minds of women as master” (299).  Men are not expected  to be in any type of passive role. Continuing on to gay relationships “I think what bothers those  who are not gay about gayness is the gay life-style, not sex acts themselves” (301).  “[The]  common fear that gays will develop relationships that are intense and satisfying even though they  do not conform to the ideas of relationship held by others” (301).
 
O’Higgins closes by asking if there something that intellectuals add to the discourse on sex,  perhaps tolerance.  Foucault responds: “It is perhaps true that in intellectual circles these thing  are talked about more openly  but that is not necessarily a sign of greater tolerance” (302).  It is  not a matter of having a “intellectual discourse on sex” (303); rather it is “a question of asinine  discourse and intelligent discourse” (303).
 
Chapter 18: The Functions of Literature
 
On the role of literature in his own work, Foucault claims: “For me literature was something I  observed, not something I analyzed, or reduced, or integrated into the very field of analysis”  (307).  Later in his work Foucault took “a negative position, trying to bring out positively all the  non-literary or parallel discourses that were actually produced at a given period, excluding  literature” (308).
 
He continues by posing the question: “among all the narratives, why is it that a number of them  are sacralized, made to function as ‘literature’” (308).  After pointing out the institutional  connections between literature and the university, Foucault moves on to the intransensitivity of  literature: “This was, indeed, the first step by which we were able to get rid of the idea that  literature was the locus of every kind of traffic, or . . . the expression of totalities” (309).  While  this move has lead to some “unraveling of the totality of sacralizations” of literature, it has also  led to re-sacralizing literature (309).  The question becomes one of how “a culture decided to  give it this very special, very strange position” (310).  “Our culture accords literature a place that  in a sense, is extraordinarily limited: how many people read literature? . . . But this same culture  forces on all its children, as the move towards culture, to pass through a whole ideology, a whole  ideology of literature during their studies” (310).
 
Reflecting on his own work on literature: “For me Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot, Klossowski  were ways of escaping from philosophy” (312).  “These exits and entrances through the very  wall of philosophy made permeable—therefore, in the end derisory—the frontier between the  philosophical and the nonphilosophical” (313).
 
Chapter 19: Contemporary Music and the Public
 
Foucault opens will comments about the typical response to contemporary music, how it has lost  touch with the culture: “But on the contrary, what is striking to me is the multiplicity of links and  relations between music and all the other elements of culture” (314).  For him the important  question is “this music which is so close, so consubstantial with all our culture, how does it  happen that we feel it, as it were, projected afar and placed at an almost insurmountable  distance?” (315).
 
Boulez makes commentary about how all music has had its inner and outer circles of participants  and that contemporary music is no different (315-16).  Foucault: “One must take into consideration the fact that for a very long time music has been tied  to social rites and unified by them” (316).  He then turns to the multiple relationships individuals  have with a variety of types of music: “Each is granted the ‘right’ to existence, and this right is  perceived as an equality of worth. Each is worth as much as the group which practices it or  recognizes it” (316).  Boulez critiques Foucault’s pluralistic approach to music: “Everything is  good, nothing is bad; there aren’t any values, but everyone is happy. . . . The economy is there to  remind us, in case we get lost in this bland utopia”: some music makes money, some cost money,  some “have nothing to do with profit” (317). 
 
Foucault addresses how some of the practices that are meant to help individuals have access to  music actually harm their relationship with it, namely the recording industry.  “What is put at the  disposition of the public is what the public hears.  And what the public finds itself actually  listening to, because it’s offered up, reinforces a certain taste” making the acceptance of different  forms of music more difficult (317).
 
Boulez brings up the obsession with the past within the music culture, especially with specific  dates of performances: “One sees a pseudo-culture of documentation taking shape, based on the  exquisite hour and fugitive moment” (318).
 
Foucault comments on how the form of contemporary music my ostracize certain individuals:  “Certainly listening to music becomes more difficult as its composition frees itself from any kind  of schemas, signals, perceivable cues for a repetitive structure” (318).  Boulez responds with the  question if it isn’t an issue of contemporary listener’s “lack of attention” (319), and  unwillingness to put the effort into learning about the music to appreciate it.
 
Foucault draws a difference between contemporary painting and music: “Painting, since  Cézanne, has tended to make itself transparent to the very act of painting . . . Contemporary  music on the contrary offers to its hearing only the outer surface of its composition” (320).  “It is  not a music that tries to be familiar; it is fashioned to preserve its cutting edge” (321).
 
Boulez wraps up with an critique against totaling judgements against music, while still  maintaining  level of value (321).  He also highlights that the experiments in musical form have  opened up new ways of listening (322).
 
Chapter 20: The Masked Philosopher
An interview with Christian Delacampagne, in which Foucault appeared anonymous in the published form
 
Delacampagne opens with asking about the anonymous state of the interview.  Foucault responds  “In our societies, characters dominate our perceptions” (323); therefore anonymity was  suggested from “nostalgia for a time when, being quite unknown, what I said had some chance of  being heard” (323).
 
Addressing the question about the role of intellectuals is contemporary society, Foucault  comments: “[The intellectual is] guilty about pretty well everything . . . In short, the intellectual  is raw material for a verdict, a sentence, a condemnation, an exclusion” (324).
 
Asked if the exploitation contemporary philosophers make of their names is the reason behind  the anonymity, Foucault states, “If I have chosen anonymity, it is not . . . to criticize this or that  individual, which I never do” (325).  Rather it is a way he can say to the reader get beyond the  public persona and address what is actually being said (325).
 
Turning to the topic of criticism: “I can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would not  try to judge, but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch  the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea-foam in the breeze and scatter it” (326).  On  the relationship between critics and writers: “The first feel misunderstood and the second think  the first are trying to bring them to heel.  But that’s the game” (326).  Part of the reason for the  feelings of antagonism is “the extreme narrowness of the place where one can listen and make  oneself heard” (327).
 
Responding to Delacampagne’s question about the lack of great writers, Foucault claims: “On  the contrary, I believe that there is a plethora.  What we are suffering from is not a void, but  inadequate means for thinking about everything that is happening” (327).  Additionally, in  society “there is an enormous curiosity, a need, a desire to know” (327).&