Foucault: Lecture 17, 25 March 1986

<p><em>The Deleuze Seminars</em> is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8.</p>

<p>"Foucault" was a 26-lecture seminar given from October 1985 to June 1986. In these lectures, Deleuze offers his interpretation and analysis of French philosopher Michel Foucault's work. Examining the theoretical foundations and major themes of Foucault's philosophy, Deleuze dedicates several lectures to each of what he calls the "three axes" of Foucault's thought. This seminar coincides with the publication of Deleuze's book <em>Foucault</em> (1986).</p>

<p>In the 25 March 1986 lecture, after reviewing the previous overview of formations, Deleuze suggests that the “man-form” was at its peak when language was dispersed; that is, as language gathers itself (<i>se rassemble</i>) through the action of new forces, the “man-form” is destined to disappear, as language attains its being in literature, as entirely distinct from linguistics. He then returns to his question about why Foucault does not treat similarly the other two forms of finitude, life and labor, and speculating on how this “reuniting” (<i>rassemblement</i>) would function for labor and biology, Deleuze provides hypotheses on why Foucault does not make this explicit correlation himself, with Georges Comtesse providing a complementary perspective. Then, Deleuze turns to constitutive force in the third formation: the first is the decoupling (<i>décrochage</i>) of literature from linguistics; second, biology’s decoupling from the raw (<i>brut</i>) being of life, implying the discovery of genetic codes, for which Deleuze considers how molecular biology currently examines different evolutionary schemas; third, a brute being of labor is prefigured in the shift toward digital machines, labor confronted with its own outside, and the revenge of silicon over carbon. Facing these triple forces, The “Overman” enters into relations with new forces, that Deleuze calls an “overfold” (<i>surpli</i>), and then, to describe the Overman’s efforts, Deleuze draws from Rimbaud’s “Letter of the Seer” (also evoked in the final paragraph of <i>Foucault</i>), detailing different characteristics of the Overman/Seer’s efforts. Despite reaching the end of the power-knowledge relation, Deleuze will still consider how this new formation implicates questions of law and rights, particularly as related to the possible liberation of life, labor and language.<o:p></o:p></p>

<p>This dataset for the new version includes four files, the translation and transcription of the session in Open Data Text (odt) format, an aggregate version of the audio recordings in a single mp3, and the original Paris-8 French transcription of the recorded lecture. The aggregate audio file has been downsampled.</p>

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<p><em>Les Séminaires de Deleuze</em> sont une collection d'enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents complémentaires des conférences que le philosophe français Gilles Deleuze a donné lors de sa carrière à l'Université de Paris 8.</p>

<p>«Foucault» était un séminaire de 26 conférences donné d'octobre 1985 à juin 1986. Dans ces conférences, Deleuze offre son interprétation et son analyse de l’œuvre du philosophe français Michel Foucault. En examinant les fondements théoriques et les thèmes majeurs de la philosophie de Foucault, Deleuze consacre plusieurs conférences à chacun de ce qu'il appelle les «trois axes» de la pensée de Foucault. Ce séminaire coïncide avec la publication du livre de Deleuze <em>Foucault</em> (1986).</p>

<p>Dans la conférence du 25 mars 1986, les sujets de discussion comprennent: les forces qui composent les humains; l’infini et la pensée classique; le mécanisme du dépli ou déploiement; le répli des forces de la finitude, de la vie, du travail et du langage aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles; la dispersion du langage comme corrélat de la forme Homme dans <em>Let mots et les choses</em> de Foucault; le rassemblement du langage dans la littérature moderne; l'être du langage comme différent de la linguistique; le langage, la linguistique, la littérature et la vie; le XIXe siècle et l'historicité de la vie comme dépendante du milieu; Cuvier et la diachronicité du langage; le savoir, le langage du dehors et le langage de la vie; la folie; Nietzsche, la notion du Surhomme, et les derniers hommes; le décrochage de la littérature de la linguistique, et de la biologie de l'être brut de la vie; les codes génétiques; la biologie moléculaire, carbone et silicium; l’agrammaticalité; les forces dans les humains et les forces du fini-illimité; et le surpli comme pliage sur le dehors.</p>