The individual human subject is not the origin or holder-together of meaning; structures and language are primary, and subjects are produced by them.
In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
Structuralism responds to problems that preoccupied earlier thinkers, teleology and subjectivity, by diminishing both: in some ways it brackets history and the subject.
Put simply Shore: earlier thinkers worried about where history is heading and about the individual self. Structuralism handles both by making them matter less; in a way it sets history and the self aside.
Calling structuralism anti-humanist is description, not condemnation: it advocates no cruelty, it simply denies that the individual subject centers the system or generates its meaning.
Put simply Shore: calling structuralism "anti-humanist" describes it; it is not an accusation. It favors no cruelty. It only denies that the individual person is the center of the system or the source of its meaning.
In structuralism the subject is radically decentered: meaning is not something people produce; language produces people, more than the reverse.
Put simply Shore: in structuralism the individual is pushed from the center. People do not make meaning; language makes people, more than the other way round.
Lévi-Strauss is captivated by man in the abstract while caring little for actual, particular men.
Put simply Geertz's criticism: Lévi-Strauss is fascinated by humanity in general but cares little for actual, individual people.
Descartes's cogito, Husserl's transcendental ego, Heidegger's Dasein, Sartre's radical freedom: each keeps an indubitable self at the center, and Foucault's early work revolts against that sovereign subject.
Put simply Foucault's early work rebels against the "sovereign subject": the self that philosophers from Descartes to Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre kept at the center as the one thing beyond doubt.
Marx's decentering of the subject through class struggle was answered, late in the nineteenth century, by seeking a total history that reduces all of society's differences to one form.
Put simply Foucault: Marx pushed the individual from the center by explaining society through class struggle. Late in the 1800s, defenders of the self answered by seeking a "total history" that reduces all of society's differences to one pattern.
Against the decentering worked by Nietzsche's genealogy, Foucault says, the sovereign-subject tradition set a search for an original foundation, making reason mankind's telos and demanding perpetual return to it.
Put simply Foucault: against the decentering of the self by Nietzsche's "genealogy," the defenders of the sovereign subject sought an original foundation: reason as humanity's goal, to which thought must always return.
Agency belongs neither to a sovereign self nor to history's momentum; Foucault relocates it largely in language, in discourse, which becomes a key word.
Put simply Foucault: what makes things happen is neither a ruling self nor the forward push of history. It lies largely in language, in "discourse": the organized ways a society talks about things.
Foucault rejects one approach above all, the phenomenological, which gives the observing subject absolute priority and ends in a transcendental consciousness; scientific discourse should be analyzed as discursive practice.
Put simply Foucault rejects above all the phenomenological approach, which gives the observing mind absolute priority and ends in a "transcendental consciousness". The history of scientific discourse should instead be analyzed as "discursive practice": how people speak and write.
Magnetic Mountain reverses the usual order: rather than a subject producing discourse, Stalinist discourse produced the Stalinist subject.
Put simply Kotkin's Magnetic Mountain reverses the usual order: rather than people producing Stalinist discourse, Stalinist discourse produced the Stalinist person.
After God's death comes the subject's, and Foucault admits how much that hurts; he sympathizes with people who find it unbearable.
Put simply Foucault admits how painful it is that, after God's "death," the self loses its central place too. He sympathizes with those who find that unbearable.
When Foucault announces the subject's death, Shore hears mourning rather than gloating, something close to Rousseau's nostalgia for the state of nature.
Put simply Shore: when Foucault declares the self dead, he sounds mournful, not gleeful, a little like Rousseau longing for humanity's lost natural state.
To those who still ask after man's essence, or who start from man to reach truth, Foucault's answer is "a philosophical laugh."
2 links between claims that both use the term. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
FoucaultAgency belongs neither to a sovereign self nor to history's momentum; Foucault relocates it largely in language, in discourse, which becomes a key word. L21 · 11:48
KotkinMagnetic Mountain reverses the usual order: rather than a subject producing discourse, Stalinist discourse produced the Stalinist subject. L21 · 47:12
Shore lists Kotkin's Magnetic Mountain among histories written with Foucault's archaeological method, showing Stalinist discourse creating the Stalinist subject.
FoucaultAfter God's death comes the subject's, and Foucault admits how much that hurts; he sympathizes with people who find it unbearable. L21 · 49:05
ShoreWhen Foucault announces the subject's death, Shore hears mourning rather than gloating, something close to Rousseau's nostalgia for the state of nature. L21 · 49:17
Shore reads Foucault's acknowledgment of the subject's loss as mournful, nostalgic rather than triumphant.
Throughlines that pass through one of these claims.
Terms that appear in the same claims.