A QUICK SKETCH OF FOUCAULT'S CAREER

Four phases: deviance, discourse, power, and ethics

It's customary to divide Foucault's career into distinct phases, and I won't hesitate to use such divisions myself. Still, I want to insist that the divisions are in many ways artificial and misleading: there is a continuity in Foucault's work, despite the shifts in his subject matter and vocabulary; and I am not in way attempting to deny that fact.

Okay, with that disclaimer out of the way . . . there are at least four phases. In the first phase, Foucault is chiefly interested in the history of the treatment and discussion of "deviance." (The category of "deviants" would include madmen, witches, homosexuals--anyone who "deviates" from the norm.) During this phase, he produces works like Madness and Civilization (1961) and The Birth of the Clinic (1963).

In the second phase, his chief interest is "discourse." What exactly does he mean by that? Joan Scott gives us a good idea when she explains that a discourse includes not only specific words and phrases, but a whole set of rules for deciding what's true and what's false, what's valuable and what's trivial or worthless. This phase takes Foucault to the late -sixties, and it includes Les mots et les choses (1966) and The Archeology of Knowledge (1969).

In the third phase, Foucault is obsessed with the question of "power." This obsession is not at all unrelated to his earlier interests, of course, and in fact Foucault spends a lot of time exploring the ways in which new "discourses" and new "technologies of power" are used to control or "discipline" the behavior of "deviants." This phase begins in the late -sixties and runs through the mid-seventies. It includes such works as "What is an Author? (1969), "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" (1971), Discipline and Punish (1975), and the first volume of History of Sexuality (1976).

Finally, in the fourth phase, Foucault's interest shifts to the issue of "ethics." It's important to note, in considering his work on this issue, that Foucault does not understand "ethics" in the usual way, as a synonym for "morals." His concern is with what he calls "technologies of selfhood," which include religious practices and sexual practices. This phase includes the second and third volumes of History of Sexuality (both 1984).

KEY DATES AND EVENTS

1926 Foucault is born in Poitiers; his father is a surgeon.

1950 Foucault joins French Communist Party (PCF).

1951 Though not yet finished with his own degree, Foucault begins to do some teaching at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS); one of his students is Derrida.

1953 Foucault discovers Nietzsche, leaves PCF.

1955 Foucault takes a teaching position in Sweden.

1961 Madness and Civilization

1963 Derrida gives a lecture on Madness and Civilization, in which he describes Foucault's reading of Descartes as a case of "structuralist totalitarianism." These remarks lead to a major falling-out between Derrida and Foucault. In 1971 Foucault responds by calling deconstruction a "minor pedagogy." The two men will not be reconciled until 1981.

1966 Foucault, Les Mots et les choses, translated into English as The Order of Things. This work becomes an best-seller in France, and it transforms Foucault into a celebrity.

1969 Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge

1970 Foucault earns a permanent appointment at College de France, the most prestigious academic institution in France. At about this time, Foucault also becomes politicized and begins his participation in left-wing and ultra left-wing rallies and demonstrations. By the time of his death he will be as famous for his political work as he is for his scholarship.

1971 Foucault begins to do advocacy work with prisoners. His experiences with them will lead directly to his next major project, which is . . .

1975 Foucault, Discipline and Punish. At this time, he takes first trip to California and has his first experiences with S/M and LSD. He will return to California in 1979, 1980, and 1983.

1976 Foucault, History of Sexuality, volume 1

1978 Foucault visits Iran to report on Khomeini revolution. He is surprisingly sympathetic to the revolutionaries.

1980 First cases of AIDS diagnosed in NY and San Francisco.

1984 Foucault, History of Sexuality, volumes 2 and 3. Foucault dies of AIDS--in the same hospital whose history he had analyzed in Madness and Civilization.