Talk:Michel Foucault

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Prologue

I am not sure whether we should have the french quotes in this page along with their translation or not. Shouldn't we just keep the English versions and move the French ones to the French page? Alex 19:42, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

No. The French WQ is welcome to use this page for help, of course, but the standard is to always keep the original language as well as the translation. This is essential for accuracy checks, since only the original appears. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 20:30, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

things are amazingly helpfull and selective thanks

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Michel Foucault. --Antiquary 18:38, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them. (This quote is from the Foucault-Chomsky debate.)

• The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).

• LSD reveals this whole univocal and a-categorical mass to be rainbow-coloured, mobile, asymmetrical, decentered, spiraloid and resonating.

• Cocaine de-anatomizes the sexual localization of pleasure - which is now everywhere in the body.

Camille Paglia & Negative Quotations

Do we really need four different quotes from Paglia, all of which basically say the same thing (e.g. Foucault sucks)? Wouldn't it be enough to just use one quote, if her opinions of him are important enough?

For that matter, all the quotes about Foucault semm to be negative. It's good that we get different perspectives and critical voices, so that an article isn't just a puff piece, but they shouldn't be exclusively critical either. I mean, people that are far more controversial than Foucault (like Sam Harris, for example) get only positive quotations about them in their wikiquote pages. I really think we should balance this out with some positive comments about the man, since he is widely influencial and admired in much of academia.

Please add any positive quotes by notable people that you might wish to about Foucault. Paglia has notably criticized him many times, and I believe 4 quotes by her is not excessive — but do welcome any positive quotes about him you might find. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 22:50, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

It is excessive, considering that she is not a widely known critic and her quotes aren't particularly substantial - they're just abrupt dismissals. I could understand 4 quotes from Chomsky but not from her. --131.111.184.8 00:52, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree with these criticisms of the quality of these quotes. We might at least dispense with all but the first. ~ Ningauble 14:12, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know where the conversation on whether this page should be merged with anti-psychiatry is, but my immediate response is absolutely not. Foucault is quoted saying "I have written a book about the history of psychiatry from the seventeenth century to the very beginning of the nineteenth. In this book, I have said nearly nothing about the contemporary situation, but people still have read it as an antipsychiatry position...Why should so many people, including psychiatrists, believe that I am an antipsychiatrist? It's because they are not able to accept the real history of their institutions, which is, of course, a sign of psychiatry being a pseudoscience. A real science is able to accept even the shameful, dirty stories of its beginning." Michel Foucault in "An Interview by Stephen Riggins", taken from Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth.