Existentialism and its critics: Foucault, "The Thought from Outside"

For Oct 14 we'll read Michel Foucault's essay on Maurice Blanchot titled "The Thought from Outside." Find the PDF in the Google Drive folder linked at the bottom of this description 👇 (scroll to the bottom for the link). Please take the time to read and engage with the text, as this is required to participate in the discussion.

Upcoming readings:
Sept 23: Sartre, "What is Writing?"
Sept 30: Sartre on existential project (SfM pt. 3)
Oct 7: Sartre on dialectical reason (CDR, Intro)
Oct 14: Foucault, "The Thought from Outside"
Oct 21: Derrida, "The Outside and the Inside"
Oct 28: Derrida, "The Outside I̶s̶ the Inside" and "The Hinge"

See this link for the full reading list: https://bit.ly/eksistence

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Foucault on the thought from outside
In this piece, Foucault elaborates on his vision of anti-dialectical thought by drawing on the writings of Maurice Blanchot. Straddling the border between art and philosophy, thought from outside resists the totalizing movement of dialectical interiority. It does not seek to rescue the human subject from its fateful alienation (whether ideal or material) in a triumphant return to self. On the contrary, in keeping with "the death of the human," this thought pursues the decentering, dispersal, disappearance of the subject on the surface of an impersonal linguistic field. Language itself seduces the subject towards this exteriority by exerting an irreversible force of attraction. It does this not through its referential capacity or its grammatical form but, echoing Heidegger, through its very being qua language. It discloses a differential and disjunctive space where language flows and rumbles, submerging every origin into an enigmatic void.

In previous discussions we traced the existential moment of the 30s and 40s, with its mood of abandonment, anxiety, boredom, and despair. Against this bleak background, the anguished subject seized its authentic future in the decisive temporality of an existential project.

Now Foucault shows us the ethos of the late 20th century European West: a decentered, desubjectivized discursive space haunted by an unspoken law, which conceals its sovereignty in its very application; a non-experience of a non-self punctuated by negligence, forgetting, and dissimulation; a spectral companion who both is and isn't other than oneself; a patient waiting for the new in the throes of a transgressive attraction, a jouissance inscribed in the very being of language.

Existentialism encounters the postmodern
We began this series by reading several foundational texts by Sartre, de Beauvoir, Heidegger and Marcel. Next we followed Sartre's debate with the Marxism of his time throughout the 40s and 50s. Now we are exploring existentialism's engagement/encounter with the post-modern philosophy of the 60s and beyond. Sartre's work lays out key themes to be taken up by later French thought, including otherness, language, transcendence and exteriority, while his dialectical turn gives figures like Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze a critical point of departure to form their own anti-dialectical thought.

We'll follow this French encounter between Sartre and his successors through several themes:

• The question of humanism
• Language, writing and difference
• Philosophy of history
• The other
• Sexuality
• The event

See this link for a full description, reading list and questions for reflection: https://bit.ly/eksistence

Group rules & process

• Everyone is welcome, but speaking priority will be given to people who have done the reading.
• I suggest spending 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
• Virtual meeting courtesy applies: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
• Keep comments concise and on topic.
• We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Bring your questions, comments, favorite passages, criticisms, etc to the meeting.

All readings can be found in this Google folder:[ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VPRdvZYmUKBY3cSxD8xC8sTYtSEKBXDs](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VPRdvZYmUKBY3cSxD8xC8sTYtSEKBXDs)

Art: Mediterranean Landscape, 1953 - Nicolas de Staël