Power, Religion, and Simulacrum— Foucault on the Cult of Dionysus
Keywords:
Dionysus, Foucault, governance, individual, popular religion, power, simulacrum
Abstract
This article examines a passage concerning the cult of Dionysus in Michel Foucault’s 1970–71 lecture series Lectures on the Will to Know (2013; Leçons sur la volonté de savoir 2011). The article shows how the intensification of ritual prescriptions is associated with socio-political changes. The cult of Dionysus is located in the political field, and the passage is contextualized by literature from classical scholarship. The discussion is embedded in the analysis of truth: the cult and the societal aspects are connected to power in Foucault’s 1970–71 lectures by the key theoretical concept of simulacrum.
The article deals particularly with legislation as one of the societal changes Foucault associates with increased ritualism: the introduction of publicly recognized laws—visible to all and applied by everyone—implies power that is exercised through and by all citizens. The cult of Dionysus is analyzed as an anti-system in opposition to prevailing social practices and official religious forms. Foucault points out that the cult manages to slip away from certain traditional systems of power. The article claims, however, that as the official status of the cult is strengthened in the classical era, performing the rites also serves the individualization process of the new political culture and its legislation, which is not necessarily liberating. In this way, the inaugural lecture series is connected to Foucault’s later work on governmentality—techniques of governing the self and the others.
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Aristotle (1934). Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19. Trans. H. Rackham. London: Harvard University Press.
Defert, Daniel (2011). “Situation du cours.” In Foucault, Michel, Leçons sur la volonté de savoir. Cours au Collège de France 1970–1971, 255–79. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil.
Deleuze, Gilles (1983). “Plato and the Simulacrum.” The MIT Press 27: 45−56.
Detienne, Marcel (1986). Dionysos à ciel ouvert. Paris: Hachette.
Detienne, Marcel (1987). “Orpheus.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 11, ed. Mircea Eliade. MacMillan & Co LTD.
Detienne, Marcel (1996). The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece. Trans. Janet Lloyd. New York: Zone Books.
Euripides (1850). Bacchae. The Tragedies of Euripides. Trans. T. A. Buckley. London: H.G. Bohn. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a 1999.01.0092
Foucault, Michel (1970). The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock Publications.
Foucault, Michel (1976). Histoire de la sexualité I. La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, Michel (1983). Foucault’s lecture at Berkeley 1983. http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpfoucault4.htm.
Foucault, Michel (1985). The Use of Pleasure. Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel (1994a). “Michel Foucault explique son dernier livre” [1969]. In Dits et écrits I, ed. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, 771–79. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel (1994b). “Sur l’archéologie des sciences. Réponse au Cercle d’epistemologie, Cahiers pour l’analyse” [1968]. In Dits et écrits I, ed. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, 696–731. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel (1994c). “Sur les façons d’écrire l’histoire” [1967]. In Dits et écrits I, ed. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, 585–600. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel (1997). “Technologies of the Self” [1982]. In Michel Foucault. Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, 223–51. New York: The New Press.
Foucault, Michel (1998). “The Thought of the Outside” [1966]. In Foucault. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. James D. Faubion, 147–69. New York: The New Press.
Foucault, Michel (2000). “Questions of Method” [1980]. In Michel Foucault. Power, ed. James D. Faubion, 223–38. New York: The New Press.
Foucault, Michel (2001a). “La prose d’Acteon” [1964]. In Dits et écrits I, ed. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, 354−65. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel (2001b). “Le retour de la morale” [1984]. In Dits et écrits II, ed. Daniel Defert, François Ewald and Jaques Lagrange, 1515–48. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel (2001c). “Structuralisme et poststructuralisme” [1983]. In Dits et écrits II, ed. Daniel Defert, François Ewald and Jaques Lagrange, 1250–76. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel (2001d). “Theatrum philosophicum” [1970]. In Dits et écrits I, ed. Dan- iel Defert and François Ewald, 943−67. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel (2004). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978. Ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Grahan Burchell. London: Palgrave Mac- millan.
Foucault, Michel (2008). Le gouvernement de soi et des autres. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil. Foucault, Michel (2009). Le courage de la vérité. Le gouvernement de soi et des autres II. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil.
Foucault, Michel (2011). Leçons sur la volonté de savoir. Cours au Collège de France 1970–71. Ed. Daniel Defert. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil.
Foucault, Michel (2013). Lectures on the Will to Know. Lectures at the Collège de France 1970–1971 and Oedipal Knowledge. Trans. Graham Burchell. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gagarin, Michael (2008). Writing Greek Law. New York: Cambridge University Press
Gernet, Louis (1964). Droit et la Société dans la Grèce ancienne. Paris: Sire.
Heidegger, Martin (1961). An Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Gar- den City, New York: Anchor Books.
Homer (1984). Iliad. Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kalimtzis, Kostas (2000). Aristotle on Political Enmity and Disease. An Inquiry into Stasis. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.
Lawrence C. Chin (2006). “Orphism.” In A Genealogy of Philosophic Enlightenment in Classical Greece. http://www.lawrencechin2011.com/scientificenlightenment1/ orphism.html.
Marx, Karl (1999) Capital. A Critique of Political Economy Vol. 1. The Process of Production of Capital. [1867]. Trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. https://www.marx- ists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1923). The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism [1886].
Trans. WM. A. Haussmann. London: G. Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan. https://archive.org/details/thebirthoftraged00nietuoft.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2013). Beyond Good and Evil [1886]. Trans. Helen Zimmern. The Project Gutenberg eBook. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-html
Plato (1968). Laws. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10–11. Trans. R.G. Bury. London: Harvard University Press.
Plato (1969). Republic. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5–6. Trans. Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Plato (1921). Sophist. Plato in Twelve volumes, Vol. 12. Trans. Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Seaford, Richard (2006). Dionysos. London & New York: Routledge.
Smith, Daniel W. (2006). “The Concept of the Simulacrum: Deleuze and the overturning of Platonism.” Continental Philosophy Review 38:89–123.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre (1988a). “The Tragic Subject: Historicity and Transhistoricity.” In Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, 237–47. New York: Zone Books.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre (1988b). “Oedipus Without the Complex.” In Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, 85–111. New York: Zone Books.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre (1991). “In the Mirror of Medusa.” In Mortals and Immortals: collected essays, ed. and trans. Forma I. Zeitlin, 141–50. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre (2009). Kreikkalaisen ajattelun alkuperä. Trans. Tuomas Parsio. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto.
Published
2015-12-29
How to Cite
Tirkkonen, S. (2015). Power, Religion, and Simulacrum— Foucault on the Cult of Dionysus. Stasis, 3(2). Retrieved from https://stasisjournal.net/index.php/journal/article/view/45
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