What is Michel Foucault's post-structuralism

In this lesson from a PROFESSOR we are going to explain the Poststructuralism by Michel Foucault (1926-1984), French philosopher, historian, and activist, of great influence on philosophy of the second half of the 20th century with works such as: madness and civilization (1960), Words and Things (1966), Ltoarcheology of knowledge (1969), Watch out and punish (1975,) history of sexuality (1976) or The use of pleasure 1984.

Foucault, as a post-structuralist, will defend historicity within human processes, question the objectivity given to the social sciences and will criticize the universal structures of structuralism by not taking into account the context that surrounds them and put aside the dualistic concept/binary relations (signified-significant).

If you want to know more about the Poststructuralism by Michel Foucault, keep reading this article. Class begins!

Index

1. What is poststructuralism and examples
2. What is the thought of Michel Foucault and post-structuralism
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3. Foucault's stages of thought
4. Knowledge and madness according to Foucault
5. Power according to Foucault

He poststructuralism takes place in France during the second half of the 20th century within the social Sciences. Having a special incidence in sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history/archeology or the literature of Europe and the United States.

This theoretical and epistemological movement, which is contemporary with may 68 (student protests against capitalism and imperialism), was born as a current critical of the structuralism of Cluade Lévi-Strauss, but without leaving it entirely. Hence draw the boundaries between structuralism and post-structuralism be so complex

However, poststructuralists are going to question objectivity, neutrality and logic that had been inserted into the study of social sciences with structuralism. That is to say, structures are not something objective and may be biased by one's own interpretations, history or culture, and therefore, there is subjectivity in its meaning.

Finally, within this current the philosophers of the Frankfurt School already Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habernas, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Lacan, Judith Butler and Julia Kristeva. Although many of them refused to be labeled as post-structuralists.

The poststructuralism of Michel Foucault will defend the following ideas:

• Reality is not a neutral representation, but it is a construction carried out under the idea of ​​objectivity.
• The individual has sufficient capacity to interpret reality around you from different perspectives or interpretations.
• The individual is made up of a set of elements or characteristics (knowledge, gender, work, education...) that define it.
• Language is what creates reality because it shapes people's thoughts, forges the self and the forms/modes of representation.
• The interpretation of a text must be done knowing that it is the result of various interpretations, ideas or prejudices of its creator.
• Everything in our society is built (language, identity, sexuality...), therefore, it can also be deconstructed.
• Our sexuality and our bodies, through power structures, are controlled and repressed. Thus, sexual freedom implies control over our body and desires.

Likewise, the thought of our protagonist is characterized because he did not seek to answer the great questions of philosophy, but to interpret these questions to understand the answer and analyze it critically.

We must bear in mind that the thought of Foucault it divides in three major stages in which he emphasizes a specific theme:

1. Decade of the 60, knowledge and madness. At this stage, his works Madness and Civilization, Words and Things or The Archeology of Knowledge stand out.
2. Decade of the 70, the power. At this stage, his work Discipline and Punish stands out.
3. 80s, sexuality. In this stage, his works Historia de la sexualidad or The use of pleasure stand out.

for our protagonist knowledge is the only one freedom of being, since, having knowledge about things allows us to identify the true reality and know how power works. In this way, he tells us that to find knowledge we must dig into the texts and search for the origin of the human sciences.

Thus, through this "archaeological methodology", Foucault will tell us that in each historical stage there has been a constructed majority discourse it has always depended on the context in which it was created. Therefore, speech changes throughout history and thought cannot be universal.

On the other hand, another of the issues most analyzed by the French philosopher was the craziness. He carried out a detailed study throughout history that he divided into three stages:

• Renaissance: We speak of the marginalized as those people who were outside the prototype of the imposed individual. It would be a group made up of: witches, criminals, the poor, lepers...
• Classic or Enlightenment Age: Madness is defined as a pathology and the entire group of marginalized is introduced into that of the insane.
• Contemporary age: Madness is recognized as a disease and is introduced into the discourse of the power of medicine, psychiatry. Now, the madman changes his status: he goes from being excluded in society to being confined.

We live in one disciplinary and normative society in which a whole series of structures authorities of power that are present in all spheres (at school, in the hospital, in jail, in the workplace...), that tell us how should we act and what should we do. That is, it has created a domestication machinery from a central power structure that we internalize without realizing it and that is introduced into our body in an indivisible way. It is what he defines, as the anatomopolitical.

Therefore, for Foucault the power in our society it permeates everything and is not centralized in a single figure or institution, but rather is distributed everywhere as mechanisms of power or sub-powers that create power relations and that they exercise in society through two ways: the discursive (legal frameworks and mandates) and not discursive (prisons, armies, security cameras…).

However, for our protagonist, within this power structure there are failing mechanisms (cracks) and that, therefore, can be destroy or change. For this reason, Foucault will say that we cannot change the structure as such, but we can change its devices/mechanisms (law, decree, abusive practices, behaviors, humiliations...) and what he defines as the everyday fascism: the one that lives within us and that we have internalized through the discourse of power.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is Michel Foucault's post-structuralism, we recommend that you enter our category of Philosophy.

• Ramon X. Indroduction to the philosophy's history. UAM. 2015
• Harris, M. The development of anthropological theory. S.XXI.2002