What is a dispositive

Foucault Studies

Volumn , Issue 10, 2010, Pages 85-107

  Bussolini, Jeffrey ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

Author keywords

Agamben; Apparatus; Appareil apparato; Deleuze; Dispositif dispositivo; Dispositive; Foucault

Indexed keywords

EID: 84891815412     PISSN: None     EISSN: 18325203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.22439/fs.v0i10.3120     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. The Agamben essay is Che cos'è un dispositivo? (Roma: Nottetempo, 2006);
2. the English translation (along with other essays) is What is an Apparatus?, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford University Press, 2009). Although Agamben's essay contains extensive etymological and conceptual treatment of the specificity of the dispositive, he suggested the English translation ?apparatus", due in part to earlier renderings and an important etymological tie with Kafka's ?Apparat.? It is not my purpose here to take issue with the translations or the task of the translators, which my teacher Joan Stambaugh laughed and called ?a thankless job", nor to argue for a philosophical neologism or trendy term. Rather, this is a somewhat dry and straightforward consideration of the two concepts in terms of etymology and contemporary philosophical usage.
3. Graham Burchell", Translator's Note", in: Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France 1973-1974, edited by Jacques Lagrange, translated by Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2008), xxiii.
4. Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 124. For all sources cited in French or Italian versions, English renderings are by me.
5. Michel Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population: Cours au Collège de France, 1977-1978 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2004), 10.
6. Foucault, Sexualité, 140.
7. Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits, vol. III
8. quoted in Giorgio Agamben, Che cos'è un dispositivo? (Roma: Nottetempo, 2006), 3-4. This is one of the only places where Foucault considers the concept in a more general sense, usually he uses it only in relation to specific historical processes, for instance the dispositive of sexuality or the dispositive of security. This is consonant with his methodological precept against universals and favoring instead the analysis of particular situations. In fact Agamben maintains that ?dispositives are, precisely, that which in the Foucauldian strategy take the place of universals", 13.
9. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: PUF, 1965).
10. Ottorino Pianigiani, Vocabolario etimologico della lingua italiana (Firenze: Edizioni Polaris, 1991), 427.
11. Pianigiani, 68; J.E. Mansion (ed.), Heath's Standard French and English Dictionary (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1948), 43;
12. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), referenced on Perseus Project web site, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=apparatus&la=la#lexicon, Sept. 16, 2010.
13. Giorgio Agamben, Il Regno e la Gloria: per una genealogia teologica dell'economia e del governo (Milano: Neri Pozza, 2007), 217. He also adds that he is less interested in studying Glory than glorification, 218.
14. Giorgio Agamben, Stato di eccezione (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003).
15. Agamben, Regno, 253.
16. I am indebted here to the very interesting considerations on "Foucault and political theatricality" by Corey McCall, presented at the Foucault Circle, 2008.
17. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).
18. Foucault, Sécurité, 267.
19. Gilles Deleuze", Qu'estce qu'un dispositif?", Michel Foucault philosophe (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 186.
20. Agamben, Dispositivo, 7.
21. Martin Heidegger", The Question Concerning Technology", in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, edited and translated by William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, 1977). Indeed Agamben repeats a version of Heidegger's contention about the ?proper use of technology? in relation to the dispositives.