Foucault: Lecture 5, 19 November 1985

<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 19 November 1985 lecture, in a session lasting over 3 hours, Deleuze provides a thorough review of previously covered material: statements distinct from words, sentences and propositions; intermixing of language systems (cf. Proust); rules of passage between levels of statements. Deleuze then defines different aspects of the statement: its “primitive function” and its “derivative function”, the latter with three facets, the “author function” (vs. the subject of enunciation), the unassignable “one”, the “one speaks” as the being of language. To clarify these distinctions, Deleuze considers examples from Beckett and Fitzgerald, and also from Sartre on the dream and perception, i.e., the discursive object being the world that surrounds a statement, the object at the limit of the vector field, with the discursive concept located at the intersection of the heterogeneous systems through which the statement passes. Continuing the recap, Deleuze summarizes the two main topics outlined to date, namely, the question of the archive (seeing and speaking, the visible and the statable) and the importance of constructing a corpus of words, sentences and propositions in a particular formation. The previous session’s discussion about light falling and language gathering is linked to painting (cf. Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin), and concerning the being of language, Deleuze considers the medical statement as a regime of light, of visibility, with knowledge located at the conjunction of seeing and speaking. He then shifts the gap between seeing and speaking or, with Blanchot’s term, the “non-relation” between these (cf. <i>The Order of Things</i>), then the primacy of the statement over the visible (cf. <i>The Archaeology of Knowledge</i>), and then conquests, seizures, captures of the statement by the visible and struggle for release of the statement from the visible (cf. <i>This is Not a Pipe</i>). Deleuze then considers Foucault’s neo-Kantianism in Foucault, first distinguishing the point of view of God, for which there is no given, and the point of view of infinity, distinct from finite thought. Outlining Kant’s view, Deleuze relates these to Foucault’s perception (in the three kinds of texts identified earlier) of the gap between seeing and speaking as well as to the problem of knowledge when confronted with this gap, with both Kant and Foucault resorting to a third party’s intervention into this gap, with Foucault offering “mysterious art that will bring together statements and visibilities through a non-relation”.<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 19 novembre 1985, les sujets de discussion comprennent: l'énoncé et les variables extrinsèques; la logique et la linguistique des propositions; l'hétérogénéité de l'énoncé; l'énoncé et les champs de vecteurs; le sujet, l'objet et le concept de l'énoncé; Blanchot et le <em>on</em> inassignable; l'écrivain irlandais Samuel Beckett; l'énoncés et propositions; <em>L'archéologie du savoir </em>de Foucault; le philosophe français Jean-Paul Sartre, le rêve et la perception; l'archive audio-visuelle et l'énonҫable; la lumière et le corpus des choses, des objets, des états de choses et des qualités sensibles; la peinture; les tableaux comme un régime de lumière qui conditionne tout le reste de la philosophie de Foucault; les rapports entre l'énonҫable et le visible; la disjonction entre voir et parler; <em>La trahison des images</em> (<em>Ceci n’est pas une pipe</em>) de l'artiste belge René Magritte; Foucault, le philosophe allemand Immanuel Kant, et la différence dans la nature des deux facultés de l'esprit humain (l'espace-temps comme forme d'intuition, et le concept); que la forme de tout concept est <em>a = a</em>; l'espace et le temps comme formes de réceptivité; <em>je pense</em> comme forme de spontanéité personnelle; l'intuition comme un déséquilibre fondamental chez humains; que du point de vue de l'infini, ou de Dieu, tout est concept; création <em>ex nihilo</em>; le philosophe allemand Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz et différence comme étant dans le concept (que Kant oppose); Kant, la finitude constituante, et l'irréductibilité du donné au concept; la philosophie du XVIIe siècle, et l'infini et le fini; le mathématicien et écrivain français Blaise Pascal et les ordres de l'infini; et Kant, le jugement esthétique et le schématisme de l'imagination.</p>