Beneath rationalization: Elias, Foucault, and the body1

doi:10.1177/1368431015602355

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Beneath rationalization: Elias, Foucault, and the body1

Journal Article•DOI•

Beneath rationalization: Elias, Foucault, and the body1

Bowen Paulle¹, Mustafa Emirbayer²•Institutions (2)

University of Amsterdam¹, University of Wisconsin-Madison²

01 Feb 2016-European Journal of Social Theory (SAGE Publications)-Vol. 19, Iss: 1, pp 39-56

TL;DR: The authors show how three distinct biographical and intellectual factors were important in guiding them toward this discovery: (1) their shared exposure to philosophical traditions associated with Heidegger's break from Husserl; (2) their common, sustained contact with clinical practices; and (3) the traumatic events each experienced in relation to intentional injury and death.

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Abstract: Elias and Foucault ended up making the same core discovery about the same fundamental social process, which we term the ‘social constraints towards self-discipline’ process. We show how three distinct biographical and intellectual factors were important in guiding them toward this discovery: (1) their shared exposure to philosophical traditions associated with Heidegger’s break from Husserl; (2) their common, sustained contact with ‘clinical’ practices; and (3) the traumatic events each experienced in relation to intentional injury and death.

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Journal Article•

The loneliness of the dying

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Hølge-Hazelton B

08 Jun 1994-Sygeplejersken

TL;DR: In this age of modern era, the use of internet must be maximized, as one of the benefits is to get the loneliness of the dying book, as the world window, as many people suggest.

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Abstract: In this age of modern era, the use of internet must be maximized. Yeah, internet will help us very much not only for important thing but also for daily activities. Many people now, from any level can use internet. The sources of internet connection can also be enjoyed in many places. As one of the benefits is to get the on-line the loneliness of the dying book, as the world window, as many people suggest.

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128 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Interpersonal Violence as an Intrinsic Part of The Civilizing Process: A Neurosociological Approach

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Andreas Braun

01 Aug 2019-Archives Europeennes De Sociologie

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider interpersonal micro-level violence as an intrinsic part of the civilizing process, and supplement Elias's assumptions of drive control and self-constraint with recent neuroscientific findings.

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Abstract: Even though Elias himself does not focus on an explicit theory on violence in The Civilizing Process, due to his research question on pacific social processes, violence is not generally theoretically excluded. Against this backdrop, and contrary to criticisms regarding a general loss as well as a biological rather than a sociological explanation of violence, and besides theories that explain meso and macro-level violence within Elias’s framework, this article considers interpersonal micro-level violence as an intrinsic part of the civilizing process. Especially by supplementing Elias’s assumptions of drive control and self-constraint with recent neuroscientific findings, it is possible to conceptualize interpersonal micro-level violence as situational exceedance of a subjective threshold of pain. Here, despite a normative civilized frame of behavior, aggression, as a (neuro)biologically-based reactive drive, is no longer controlled by socially learned self-constraint, leading to violence as a subjectively perceived rewarding behavior and socially performed action.

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12 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Civilising the police: reconceptualising the role of the state in theories of American policing

[...]

Christopher D. O’Connor¹, Phillip C. Shon¹•Institutions (1)

University of Ontario Institute of Technology¹

27 Feb 2019-Global Crime

TL;DR: The three eras in American policing have become the default theoretical framework within the study of criminal justice, explicitly and implicitly shaping the disentanglement of American policing as discussed by the authors and criminal justice.

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Abstract: The three eras in American policing – political, reform, and community – has become the default theoretical framework within the study of criminal justice, explicitly and implicitly shaping the dis...

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10 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber.By Rogers Brubaker. Allen & Unwin, 1983. 119 pp. Cloth, $22.50; paper, $8.95

[...]

Steven Seidman¹•Institutions (1)

University at Albany, SUNY¹

01 Dec 1985-Social Forces

9 citations

Dissertation•

Cinema : an invention without a future? The career prospects for first-time feature film directors in the Australian Film Industry

[...]

Paul James Healy

01 Jan 2016

TL;DR: This paper found that prospective feature film directors start out with a high degree of optimism and are adept at positioning themselves through a range of strategies which ensure that they can make a living by utilising their knowledge of the ways in which the entire film and television sector operates.

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Abstract: The initiative for this research project first emerged from a set of statistics, which appeared on the Screen Australia website in 2011 with no accompanying explanation. Over a thirty-year timeframe, the figures showed that almost 66% of feature film directors make only one feature film. The question of how feature film directors build a sustainable career within this sector formed the foundation of this study. This research project involved a series of qualitative case studies, which focused on trying to reach an understanding of what constitutes the ‘essentials’ of a director’s career. An online survey was used to capture and measure some quantifiable data: Gender; educational level and duration; type of education; preference for course content; and professional experience were some of the targeted data categories. Drawing on concepts from critical theory, political economy, education, and filmmaking disciplines the study examines the way that workers make a career in a precarious and uncertain industry. The results show that prospective feature film directors start out with a high degree of optimism and are adept at positioning themselves through a range of strategies which ensures that they can make a living by utilising their knowledge of the ways in which the entire film and television sector operates. The study concludes that the primary barrier to an individual career and an extensive body of work seems to be due chiefly to the restrictions imposed on production levels by government policy settings and general economic volatility.

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4 citations

References

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Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. (Trans A. Sheridan).

[...]

Michel Foucault¹•Institutions (1)

Collège de France¹

01 Jan 1979

17,729 citations

Book•

Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977

[...]

Michel Foucault, Colin Gordon

01 Jan 1980

TL;DR: The Eye of Power: A Discussion with Maoists as mentioned in this paper discusses the politics of health in the Eighteenth Century, the history of sexuality, and the Confession of the Flesh.

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Abstract: * On Popular Justice: A Discussion with Maoists * Prison Talk * Body/ Power * Questions on Georgraphy * Two Lectures * Truth and Power * Power and Strategies * The Eye of Power * The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century * The history of Sexuality * The Confession of the Flesh

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15,638 citations

"Beneath rationalization: Elias, Fou..." refers background or methods in this paper

...In 1951, Foucault aggregated in philosophy from the École Normale. For obvious reasons, revealing their intellectual sources requires that we take seriously the subtle play of philosophical ideas in which they were steeped during highly formative years of their lives. We have to start with the ‘father of phenomenology’. Husserl argued that it is impossible to separate consciousness itself from the objects towards which it is directed. To return to the ‘things themselves’ was, as he put it, to enact a useful ‘phenomenological reduction’ based on this insight. This reduction allowed, Husserl argued, for the systematic interrogation of how consciousness is – for the most part tacitly, and here he spoke of the ‘natural attitude’ –directed towards, for example, time. Anticipating later developments in sociology and other disciplines (thanks to intermediaries like Alfred Schütz), Husserl claimed that his method revealed for the first time the basic (empathic or inter-subjective yet essentially ego-based) mental structures allowing the objects spontaneously taken for granted in one’s everyday lifeworld to ‘constitute themselves’ in consciousness. Innovative as his approach was, Husserl remained within a framework positing separate subjects knowing external objects. It is precisely this subject/object and internal/ external duality against which Husserl’s most (in)famous student reacted. With the publication of Being and Time, which was dedicated ‘in friendship and admiration’ to Husserl when originally published in German in 1927, Heidegger rebelled against the notion that analyses of actual ways of being should begin with – or be based on – isolated, selfenclosed subjects standing over against external objects (that are being contemplated). Instead of positing the centrality of subject/object dichotomies to the human situation, Heidegger developed the more thoroughly relational and processual notion of ‘always already’ situationally enmeshed, socially familiarized, and affectively predisposed beings forced to cope in real time (cf. Dreyfus, 1991).(4) The conspicuous hyphens connecting the term ‘being-in-the-world’ signify Heidegger’s escape from the subject/object duality and his attempt to grasp the meaning of being through concepts suitable for a holistic analysis of a unitary phenomenon. ‘Philosophy’, as Collins (1998: 748) remarks, was ‘set on a new course’. Cagey as Foucault evidently felt he needed to be on this subject, it has been well known for some time that Heidegger’s critique of Husserl had an enormous influence on him. As Miller (1993: 50–1) illustrates, Foucault’s first publication (in 1954) was warmly sympathetic to the ‘great Heideggerian psychiatrist’ Ludwig Binswanger; Foucault’s The Order of Things ([1966] 1994) ‘clearly alludes to without explicitly naming’ Heidegger; and on his deathbed it seems Foucault confessed to having been a Heideggerian all along. More importantly, Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982) detail exactly how Foucault’s mature works were grounded in Heidegger’s brand of existential phenomenology....
[...]
...Here it must immediately be added that some of Foucault’s ([1984] 1988; [1984] 1990) final...
[...]
...In 1951, Foucault aggregated in philosophy from the École Normale. For obvious reasons, revealing their intellectual sources requires that we take seriously the subtle play of philosophical ideas in which they were steeped during highly formative years of their lives. We have to start with the ‘father of phenomenology’. Husserl argued that it is impossible to separate consciousness itself from the objects towards which it is directed. To return to the ‘things themselves’ was, as he put it, to enact a useful ‘phenomenological reduction’ based on this insight. This reduction allowed, Husserl argued, for the systematic interrogation of how consciousness is – for the most part tacitly, and here he spoke of the ‘natural attitude’ –directed towards, for example, time. Anticipating later developments in sociology and other disciplines (thanks to intermediaries like Alfred Schütz), Husserl claimed that his method revealed for the first time the basic (empathic or inter-subjective yet essentially ego-based) mental structures allowing the objects spontaneously taken for granted in one’s everyday lifeworld to ‘constitute themselves’ in consciousness. Innovative as his approach was, Husserl remained within a framework positing separate subjects knowing external objects. It is precisely this subject/object and internal/ external duality against which Husserl’s most (in)famous student reacted. With the publication of Being and Time, which was dedicated ‘in friendship and admiration’ to Husserl when originally published in German in 1927, Heidegger rebelled against the notion that analyses of actual ways of being should begin with – or be based on – isolated, selfenclosed subjects standing over against external objects (that are being contemplated). Instead of positing the centrality of subject/object dichotomies to the human situation, Heidegger developed the more thoroughly relational and processual notion of ‘always already’ situationally enmeshed, socially familiarized, and affectively predisposed beings forced to cope in real time (cf. Dreyfus, 1991).(4) The conspicuous hyphens connecting the term ‘being-in-the-world’ signify Heidegger’s escape from the subject/object duality and his attempt to grasp the meaning of being through concepts suitable for a holistic analysis of a unitary phenomenon. ‘Philosophy’, as Collins (1998: 748) remarks, was ‘set on a new course’. Cagey as Foucault evidently felt he needed to be on this subject, it has been well known for some time that Heidegger’s critique of Husserl had an enormous influence on him. As Miller (1993: 50–1) illustrates, Foucault’s first publication (in 1954) was warmly sympathetic to the ‘great Heideggerian psychiatrist’ Ludwig Binswanger; Foucault’s The Order of Things ([1966] 1994) ‘clearly alludes to without explicitly naming’ Heidegger; and on his deathbed it seems Foucault confessed to having been a Heideggerian all along....
[...]
...While the administrators of Foucault’s expansive ‘apparatuses’ genuinely believed that they were increasingly ‘reasonable’ technicians of ‘souls’, unbeknown to themselves they were most basically enmeshed in interlocking sets of ‘normalizing’ practices targeting human bodies. So the secret, Foucault tried to demonstrate, is that the most fundamental dimension of life involved in the shift towards the disciplinary society is not at all shrouded in secrecy. ‘Discipline is a political anatomy of detail’, he declared ([1975] 1979: 139), and once you see how this works – within the bodily structure at the most basic level – you see what players in the heat of the game’s action cannot possibly see....
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...On Foucault’s unpublished translation of Elias’s ([1979] 1985) The Loneliness of Dying, see...
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Book•

The History of Sexuality

[...]

Michel Foucault

01 Jan 1976

9,739 citations

Book•

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

[...]

Antonio R. Damasio

01 Jan 1994

TL;DR: The authors argued that rational decisions are not the product of logic alone - they require the support of emotion and feeling, drawing on his experience with neurological patients affected with brain damage, Dr Damasio showed how absence of emotions and feelings can break down rationality.

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Abstract: Descartes' Error offers the scientific basis for ending the division between mind and body. Antonio Damasio contends that rational decisions are not the product of logic alone - they require the support of emotion and feeling. Drawing on his experience with neurological patients affected with brain damage, Dr Damasio shows how absence of emotions and feelings can break down rationality. He also offers a new perspective on what emotions and feelings actually are: a direct view of our own body states; a link between the body and its survival-oriented regulation on the one hand, and consciousness on the other. Written as a conversation between the author and an imaginary listener, Descartes' Error leads us to conclude that human organisms are endowed from their very beginning with a spirited passion for making choices, which the social mind can then use to build rational behaviour.

...read moreread less

9,648 citations

Book•DOI•

The order of things : an archaeology of the human sciences

[...]

Michel Foucault

01 Dec 1971

TL;DR: The Prose of the World: I The Four Similitudes, II Signatures, III The Limits of the world, IV the Writing of Things, V The Being of Language 3.Representing: I Don Quixote, II Order, III Representation of the Sign, IV Duplicated Representation, V Imagination of Resemblance, VI Mathesis and 'Taxinoma' 4. Speaking: I Criticism and Commentary, II General Grammar,III The Theory of the Verb, IV Articulation, V Designation, VI Derivation,

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Abstract: Publishers Note, Forward to the English Edition, Preface Part I: 1.Las Meninas 2.The Prose of the World: I The Four Similitudes, II Signatures, III The Limits of the World, IV the Writing of Things, V The Being of Language 3.Representing: I Don Quixote, II Order, III The Representation of the Sign, IV Duplicated Representation, V The Imagination of Resemblance, VI Mathesis and 'Taxinoma' 4. Speaking: I Criticism and Commentary, II General Grammar, III The Theory of the Verb, IV Articulation, V Designation, VI Derivation, VII The Quadrilateral Language 5. Classifying: I What the Historians say, II Natural History, III Structure, IV Character, V Continuity and Catastrophe, VI Monsters and Fossils, VII The Discourse of Nature 6. Exchanging: I The Analysis of wealth, II Money and Prices, III Mercantilism, IV The Pledge and the Price, V The Creation of Value, VI Utility, VII General Table, VIII Desire and Representation Part 2 7. The Limits of Representation: I The Age of History, II The Measure of Labour, III The Organic Structure of Beings, IV Word Inflection, V Ideology and Criticism, VI Objective Synthesis 8. Labour, life, Language: I The New Empiricities, II Ricardo, III Cuvier, IV Bopp, V Language Became Object 9. Man and His Doubles: I The return of Language, II The Place of the King, III The Analytic of Finitude, IV The Empirical and the Transcendental, V The 'Cogito' and the Unthought, VI The Retreat and the Return of the Origin, VII Discourse and Man's Being, VIII The Anthropological Sleep 10. The Human Sciences: I The Three Faces of Knowledge, II The Form of the Human Sciences, III The Three Models, IV History, V Psychoanalysis and Ethnology, VI In Conclusion

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7,353 citations