Michel Foucault at the Collège de France 3800-MCCF25-S-OG
Michel Foucault took up his chair at the Collège de France in 1970 and taught there until the last months of his life. During those years, he kept his audience informed of his research, much of which - but not all - was to be presented in his published works (including “Discipline and Punish” and subsequent volumes of “The History of Sexuality”). Foucault's thought appears here as a living process, something that takes shape when confronted with rich historical material and draws the philosopher into the game of reinterpretation, including the reinterpretation of his own ideas.
During the seminar, we will read excerpts from Foucault's lectures in Polish and English translation, relating them - if necessary - also to his other texts. In this way, we will not only reflect upon the most important problems addressed by Foucault from the late 1960s and early 1970s onward (such as the problems of knowledge, power, government, punishment, discourse, techniques of the Self, the subject, and truth-telling), but we will also try to assess to what extent his thought remains actual - both in its purely philosophical dimension and in its complex relations with history and politics.
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Acquired knowledge:
- students will be familiar with the chosen Michel Foucault’s theories and with its applications in the analysis of society and culture
- students will be aware of the chosen norms that constitute and regulate social structures and institutions, and able to identify the sources of these norms, their nature and many ways they influence human behaviour
Acquired skills:
- students will read and interpret selected philosophical texts
- students will be able to identify links between the formation of ideas and social/cultural processes
- students will be able to apply in a correct manner the philosophical vocabulary pertaining to the problematic of the course
Acquired social competence:
- students will be aware of the range of knowledge they acquired and understand the need for continual education
- students will be open to new ideas and ready to change their views in the light of available data and arguments
Assessment criteria
Grading will be based on presentations or essays. Presentations should elaborate the problematic discussed during particular meetings by deepening it and referring to additional sources. Essays should contain well thought out, coherent and informed elaborations of the chosen aspects of the course’s problematic
Number of absences: 2 in a semester
Bibliography
Michel Foucault’s lectures at the College de France:
Porządek dyskursu (1970)
Lectures on the Will to Know (1970-1971)
Penal Theories and Institutions (1971-1972)
The Punitive Society (1972-1973)
Psychiatric Power (1973-1974)
Abnormal (1974-1975)
Trzeba bronić społeczeństwa (1975-1976)
Bezpieczeństwo, terytorium populacja (1977-1978)
Narodziny biopolityki (1978-1979)
Rządzenie żywymi (1979-1980)
Subjectivity and Truth (1980-1981)
Hermeneutyka podmiotu (1981-1982)
Rządzenie sobą i innymi (1982-1983)
The Courage of Truth (1983-1984)
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: