Gilles Deleuze

Seminar on Foucault, 1985-1986

Part III: Power

Lecture 16, 18 March 1986

Transcribed by Annabelle Dufourcq; time stamp and additional revisions, Charles J. Stivale

Translated by Billy Dean Goehring; additional revisions and time stamp, Charles J. Stivale

Part 1

… Yes. This succession of three forms: god-form, human-form, overman-form—we ought to recognize that it isn’t an exhaustive list. I mean, it occupies a very restricted and localized time frame; since we discussed the 17th-18th centuries as classical thought, the thought of the 18th-19th centuries in conjunction with the form “human,” and then the form “over-man” at the end of the 19th into the 20th, let’s go ahead and add uh… the 21st century. And all that covers a very narrow and localized, European timeline. But what does this timeline demonstrate, as confined as it is? It shows us what these forms depend on, what we could call an archaeology, or perhaps better still, a geology of thought.

These forms, in effect, depend on certain operations of thought, and what remains for us to do is to try and define these geological movements of thought. This is what I’d like to focus on today, because last time we did a relatively good job of identifying these geological movements of thought, which produce the forms I just enumerated. I said in a certain way that the form “God” is the product of an archaeological or geological movement of thought we can call the unfold. The unfold.

And the form “man,” if you followed me last time, is the product of an archeological or geological movement of thought we can call the fold. And you won’t be surprised, reading Foucault, to see the extent to which the un-fold and the fold constitute two patterns, even at the level of style. I’d say that The Order of Things is a sort of often lyrical song, founded on these two operations, the movement of unfolding and the movement of folding, of refolding. And what I tried to show the last two sessions is simply how the form “God” depends on a generalized un-fold, how the form “man” depends on a generalized re-fold. It’s as though thought found something essential about these exercises, in unfolding, or in folding something. We’re missing the third archaeological movement, a third geological movement on which the form “over-man” would depend.

If the term is missing in Foucault, it hardly matters: we can always invent one for our purposes, and what naturally should correspond to the over-man, and which is neither the fold nor the un-fold, is the over-fold [le surpli]. Then we would have our conceptual trinity of geological movements: to unfold, to fold, to fold over; the unfolding, the fold, the over-fold. But this wouldn’t constitute a totality but comprise the geological movements which correspond to three periods within an, again, short and localized time frame. So much so that the issue I would like to emphasize today, finally, is precisely the death of man and the over-man, granted that these aren’t anything to fear; this business about the death of man and the over-man is much simpler than people make it out to be.[1]

Moreover, what does Foucault mean, then, in the text, “What is an author?” when he says: “let’s hold back our tears”?[2] The death of man is nothing to cry about. There isn’t anything to cry about; save your tears. I mean, this is central to Foucault’s thought, since recently, after his death, there are so many idiots saying, oh, he said he believed in the death of man, so he didn’t believe in anything, etc. … We must not exaggerate, because the first thing to consider with the death of man, understood as the disappearance of the form “man” to the benefit of another form—well, we ought to ask ourselves whether the form “man” was all that good.  In the end, the form “God,” the form “man,” are substantial forms, but even in terms of good and evil, is the form “God” really all that good, for thought and for the way of thinking about what exists? Was the form “man” really all that good? All we can hope for in the form “over-man,” if there is a new form emerging, is that it at least not be worse than its two predecessors, the form “God” and the form “man.” And there is every chance that it will be no worse than the preceding ones; it will have its drawbacks and so on, but we have to keep a cool head as we approach it.

So, I come back to our general principle. Why this succession of forms and corresponding geological operations? I’d like to spend most of our session today trying to get a handle on the movements of the over-fold—i.e., the movement which forms the over-man, as distinct—and of the un-fold and the fold. But as I was saying, let’s return to our general principle. Our general principle is that every form, whatever it may be, is a composite of forces. If we don’t understand that, we won’t understand anything. Every form is a composite of forces, or if you prefer, a composite of force relations. Forces are extrinsic, i.e., a force has no interiority, it is related to the outside by other forces, so force relations are extrinsic.

As a result, I can say: we should consider, in the case of the succession, God – man – over-man, we should consider the composite of forces within man, on one hand, of forces within man, on the one hand and, on the other hand, outside forces.

If I say, this is the general proposition, two problems arise. For each period considered — the first problem — with what outside forces do the forces within man enter into relation? Second question: what form results when outside forces relate to the forces within man at a certain moment? It won’t necessarily be the form “man.” I’m trying to better respond to the objection one of you made; last time, his question—one of you said that “‘forces within man’ already assumes man. It presupposes a form, ‘