Foucault and prison

G Deleuze - Deux régimes de fous, 2003 - degruyter.com
G Deleuze
Deux régimes de fous, 2003degruyter.com
Gilles Deleuze: So you want to begin with the GIP. You will have to double-check what I tell
you. I have no memory; it is like trying to describe a dream; it's rather vague. After'68, there
were many groups, very different groups, but necessarily compact ones. It was post-68. They
survived; they all had a past. Foucault insisted on the fact that'68 had no importance for him.
He already had a history as an important philosopher, but he was not burdened with a
history from'68. That is probably what allowed him to form such a new type of group. And this …
Gilles Deleuze: So you want to begin with the GIP. You will have to double-check what I tell you. I have no memory; it is like trying to describe a dream; it’s rather vague. After’68, there were many groups, very different groups, but necessarily compact ones. It was post-68. They survived; they all had a past. Foucault insisted on the fact that’68 had no importance for him. He already had a history as an important philosopher, but he was not burdened with a history from’68. That is probably what allowed him to form such a new type of group. And this group gave him a kind of equality with other groups. He would never have let himself be taken in. The GIP allowed him to maintain his independence from other groups like the Proletarian Left. There were constant meetings, exchanges, but he always preserved the complete independence of the GIP. In my opinion, Foucault was not the only one to outlive a past, but he was the only one to invent something new, at every level. It was very precise, like Foucault himself. The GIP was a reflection of Foucault, a Foucault–Defer invention. It was one case where their collaboration was close and fantastic. In France, it was the first rime this type of group had been formed, one that had nothing to do with a party (there were some scary parties, like the Proletarian Left) nor with an enterprise (like the attempts to revamp psychiatry).
The idea was to make a “Prison Information Group.” It was obviously more than just information. It was a kind of thought experiment. There is a part of Foucault that always considered the process of thinking to be an experiment. It’s his Nietzschean heritage. The idea was not to experiment on prisons but to take prison as a place where prisoners have a certain experience and that intellectuals, as Foucault saw them, should also think about. The GIP almost had the beauty of one of Foucault’s books. I joined whole heartedly because I was fascinated. When the two of them started, it
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