Foucault: Lecture 15, 11 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 11 March 1986 lecture, Deleuze continues examining how Foucault traces three “ages” in <i>The Order of Things </i>(begun in the previous session), seeking to address the distinction between life as infinite and life in its finitude. Thus, in the Classical Age, these are the forces of elevation to the infinite (cf. Pascalian anxiety, which Deleuze calls a thought of unfolding (<i>le dépli</i>), and he offers the handy formulation: “force in man + forces of elevation to the infinite yield as composite the ‘God-form’”. Then, continuing to the next “age”, the nineteenth century, with the triple forces of finitude in life, language and labor, that is, a thought of re-folding (<i>repli</i>), Deleuze again notes that the Kantian revolution inspired Foucault to see the nineteenth-century transformation as replacement of the originary infinity with a constitutive finitude, man first encountering the exterior forces of finitude (life, language, labor), and then making finitude his own. The rest of the session is devoted to tracing how these two moments are developed in the successive formations on specific issues: questions of life (Jussieu, Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier, and Darwin), questions of death (Bichat), labor (Adam Smith, Marx and Engels, and David Ricardo) and grammar and philology (Bopp and Schlegel). Each formation corresponds to developments of pleating and folding, leading Deleuze finally to consider a third formation (with Nietzsche, the figure of the Overman), with the “death of man” question which, for Foucault, simply means that the “man-form” is no longer comprehensible to contemporaries, an age of genetic code, cybernetic machines, the revenge and rise of silicon, with which the forces of man now enter into contact, unleashing an “unlimited finite”. Concluding with the poetic vision of Rimbaud’s “Letter of the Seer”, Deleuze suggests that this formation’s “Overman” is charged with rocks, animals, and literature. <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 11 mars 1986, les sujets de discussion comprennent: les forces dans les humains; le rapport des forces aux formes; les forces et l'infini; les forces de la finitude: la vie, le langage, le travail, et où ces forces se replient dans les humains; la métaphore du pli et du dépli chez Foucault; <em>Naissance de la clinique</em> de Foucault et le regard médical; le naturaliste et zoologue français Georges Cuvier et les embranchements de la vie; les figures du pli et du dépli et la vie; Cuvier et la pluralité finie des plans d'organisation; le travail au XVIIe siècle; l'économiste et philosophe écossais Adam Smith et le philosophe allemand Friedrich Engels sur la force de travail; le philosophe et économiste allemand Karl Marx et l'économiste politique britannique David Ricardo sur le travail, le capital et le pli; le pliage des langues; le poète, philosophe et philologue allemand Friedrich Schlegel; grammaire; les flexions comme un élément formel grammatical pur; la philologie romantique allemande et l'idée du vouloir d'un peuple; le rassemblement du langage et le «fini-illimité»; la combinatoire et le code génétique; les inter-captures de fragments de codes; et le Surhomme (<em>Übermensch</em>).</p>