Foucault's discourse, Virilio and TV

Previously I would have been shy to admid that I only have a vague idea of what Michel Foucault really wanted to say. Foucault's archeology and genealogy of knowledge were the topic of my M.A. thesis a long time ago. Once again, the Wikipedia article about
Foucault contains the essential stuff of Foucault's writings. The article (at its current form) wisely leaves aside the question of autonomous discourse, that I fruitlessly pondered for some years. The question is something like this: In the Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault defines discourse as a collection of énoncé (uttered statements). Foucault strongly proposes that discourse matters more than individual thinkersm or actually any individual and his/her thoughs since they are shaped by discourse. There are "ruptures", quick changes, in the discourse, as Foucault documented in his famous case studies of madness, clinic, and prison. But where does this re-organisation of discourse come about? Is discourse really autonomous or is the something like the individuals' "will to power" behind it?

Nowadays I'm inclined to be lazy and say there is no answer to this question. If we define discourse in a manner that individuals do not matter at all, then it is autonomous. If we define that political pursuits or any human driven "desire to know" is there before the discourse, then it is not autonomous. As far I know, both interpretations are possible based on Foucault's writings.

Foucault was a "public intellectual" and presented some of his ideas informally through interviews, like Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard. My French is not fluent enough to read everything by them in French, but luckily English translations are available. Virilio's La Vitesse de libération was even translated into Finnish by Mika Määttänen.

Much of the discourse of public intellectuals is difficult to follow partially because they invent and use words quite liberally. La Vitesse de libération (escape velocity) is a good example: Virilio applies the idea of a rocket escaping the gravity of planet Earth to cultural contexts. There, gravity could mean our daily attachments such as food, shelter, sexuality and money. Virilio explains (and I have to agree) that using these basics as explanations of cultural phenomena is not satisfactory. Once something (say, Japanese Otaku-culture, computers, or ballet) has developed enough speed, it gets "liberated" from the basics and starts following its own trajectory.

Here's a very vulgar interpretation: a recurring theme in post-war philosophy, anthropology, sociology etc, is that symbols and symbol systems have their own mode of being. In Claude Levi-Strauss's structural anthropology they were still attached to system of exchange and food. We can see Foucault's study of discourse as an explation of how the symbol systems appear (thus he spoke about archeology of discourse and genealogy of discourse). After Foucault, philosophers might not be even interested where symbol systems come from. They just "are there" and seem to affect us as nuch as we affect them.

A simple example: In his book "Myth: A Very Short Introduction" Robert A. Segal discusses several views of myths. The current view of a myth is not "a popular misconception" but simply a "popular conception". Myths indeed guide our behaviour in many situations -- especially social ones since we assume that the other involved parties know and accept the same myth.

I once had an idea that reality TV is turning everyone into ultimate bores. The "reality" that the participants in reality TV shows live in is a myth. However, they seem to accept it so uncritically that even the spectators will probably start calling it reality.