Posts tagged Foucault.

gowns:

Another thing to distrust is the tendency to relate the question of homosexuality to the problem of “Who am I?” and “What is the secret of my desire?” Perhaps it would be better to ask oneself, “‘What relations, through homosexuality, can be established, invented, multiplied, and modulated?” The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of one’s sex, but, rather, to use one’s sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships. And, no doubt, that’s the real reason why homosexuality is not a form of desire but something desirable. Therefore, we have to work at becoming homosexuals and not be obstinate in recognizing that we are.

…

I would like to say, finally, that something well-considered and voluntary like a magazine ought to make possible a homosexual culture, that is to say, the instruments for polymorphic, varied, and individually modulated relationships. But the idea of a program of proposals is dangerous. As soon as a program is presented, it becomes a law, and there’s a prohibition against inventing. There ought to be an inventiveness special to situation like ours and to these feelings, this need that Americans call “coming out,” that is, showing oneself. The program must be wide open. We have to dig deeply to show how things have been historically contingent, for such and such reason intelligible but not necessary. We must make the intelligible appear against a background of emptiness and deny its necessity. We must think that what exists is far from filling all possible spaces. To make a truly unavoidable challenge of the question: What can be played?

- excerpts from 1981 interview with foucalt, “friendship as a way of life”

lol hmm thats interesting

betterbooktitles:

Michel Foucault: The Archaeology of Knowledge

Reader Submission: Title and Redesign by @Snoddy

This paper unearths the relation between French philosopher Michel Foucault and the US Black Panther Party (BPP). I argue that Foucault’s shift from archaeological inquiry to genealogical critique is fundamentally motivated by his encounter with American‐style racism and class struggle, and by his engagement with the political philosophies and documented struggles of the BPP. The paper proceeds in four steps. First, I assess Foucault’s biographies and interviews from the transitional period of 1970–72 that indicate the fact and nature of this formative encounter. Second, I turn to some of the writings of BPP leaders and to the theme of politics and war as they articulated it. Third, I address this same theme of politics as war as it gets taken up and rearticulated by Foucault between 1971 and 1976, with an eye to the degree to which the philosophies and struggles of the Black Panthers silently, yet profoundly, inform Foucault’s genealogical work. I conclude by raising some ethical and political questions pertaining to the criteria of truthful speech in scholarly discourse.

— Michel Foucault, “Practicing Criticism”  (via golehyas)

…Those who subvert social norms are, ostensibly, people who have forgotten that they can be seen, publicly, at any time. Therefore, when they transgress social norms—by expressing physical affection for a person not visibly coded as the opposite sex, for example, or by being fat and rejecting social and bodily invisibility—they need to be reminded of this omniscient social gaze, and in the absence of institutional discipline, must be punished so they do not transgress again. This is the mechanism by which a dude who sees me in a vividly-colored dress, walking alone as though I either don’t know or don’t care that I am defying bodily norms, feels compelled to scream “UGLY FAT BITCH” at me. He is applying social discipline and teaching me a lesson: Everyone can see you, and your body and/or behavior are unacceptable…

(via guerilla mama medicine)

jaded16india:

maishaparadox:

queerinsurrection:

oh foucault.

[image: top black and white photo is Lady Gaga wearing something akin to a bikini with the text “I was born this way” printed across the image; bottom black and white photo is Foucault sitting on a couch with a bookcase full of books in the background with the text “No, you’re a product of power relations” printed across the image]

bahaha theory jokes: my liberal arts is showing

TUMBLR WINS SOMETIMES.

— Foucault, 1966 (via noapparatusexceptgutfear)