History 200C/Humanities 270      Foucault and History             Spring 2007

            

Mark Poster    Office KH230

 

Time: 4-7pm                  Room KH 200E

 

 

Required Texts for History 200C

  1. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, eds., The Essential Foucault (The New Press)
  2. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Pantheon)
  3. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol.1 (Pantheon)
  4. Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended (Picador)
  5. Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject (Palgrave)
  6. Michel Foucault, “Different Spaces” (Electronic Reserve)
  7. Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Control Societies” (Electronic Reserve)

 

Seminar Topics and Reading Assignments

April 2 Introduction: History and Theory in a Postmodern Age

April 9 Foucault and the History of the Self

 “What is Enlightenment?” “What is Critique?” and “What Is An Author?”  in The Essential Foucault , pp. 43-57, 263-278, 377-391

 

April 16 Foucault and Poststructuralism

“Truth and Power,” and “Nietzsche, Genealogy and History,” in The Essential Foucault, pp. 300-318, 351-369 and Society Must Be Defended, pp. 1-42

 

April 23 Foucault and Poststructuralism II

“Governmentality,” “Questions of Method,” and “The Subject and Power,” in The Essential Foucault pp. 229-258, 126-144

Foucault, “Different Spaces”

 

April 30 Foucault on Language and Action

Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 1-169

 

May 7 Foucault and Surveillance

Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 170-325

Deleuze, “Postscript on Control Societies”

 

May 14 Foucault and the History of Sex

Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1

 

May 21 Foucault and Ethics

“Technologies of the Self,” “Genealogy of Ethics,” and “Ethics of Concern of the Self as Freedom,” in The Essential Foucault, pp. 145-169, 102-125, 25-42

Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject

 

May 28 Holiday (No Class)

 

June 4 Foucault and the History of Race and the History of Psychiatry

“The Birth of Biopolitics” and “Security, Territory, Population” in The Essential Foucault, pp. 202-207, 259-262

Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, at least Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 11

 

Recommended: Foucault, Abnormal and Foucault, Psychiatric Power

 

 

Writing Assignments

There will be one paper (15 to 20 typewritten and double spaced pages) due at the end of the quarter in which you will be asked to explore some aspect of Foucault’s writing. This may focus on your own research project when that it appropriate. Papers are due June 13th, noon, in my mailbox.