Foucault-Truth and Power PDF

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Foucault: Truth and Power Truth and Power 

Foucault wanted to show the susceptibility of the sciences and scientific statements to pressures of power. o “At this level it’s not so much a matter of knowing what external power imposes itself on science as of what effects of power circulate among scientific statements, what constitutes, as it were, their internal regime of power, and how and why at certain moments that regime undergoes a global modification (55) o In every generation there is a general inclination of thought that affects all disciplines. o Major revolutions in science are due to major paradigm shifts.

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The discussion then moves to structuralism. Foucault is ardent in asserting “I don’t see who could be more of an anti-structuralist than myself”. o Claims that structures, formed by the rulers of society, have led to the devaluation of the “event” in their rage to order the general tide of history. o Structuralist historians ignore aberrant events that do not fit into “those beautiful structures that are so orderly, intelligible, and transparent to analysis. o Foucault says that the study of history has been based on a model of language that focuses on meaning. 

“Here I believe one’s point of reference should not be to the great model of language (langue) and signs, but to that of war and battle. The history which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of power, not relations of meaning.

o Believes that seemingly chaotic occurrences of history are conflicts of power. States that there is an “intrinsic intelligibility of conflicts” that can enlighten us to the reasons behind actions. o Leans toward the “war of all against all” notion. Power flows simultaneously in different directions and different volumes according to the various forms of “power relations” in the “network” of power exchange. 

Discussed the role of the intellectual. Foucault responds with “a discussion of the intellectual, who he says has gravitated from a “universal” intellectual to a “specific” intellectual. o Cites the writer of old as the universal intellectual.

o “the intellectual par excellence used to be the writer: as a universal consciousness, a free subject, he was counter posed to the service of the state or capitaltechnicians, magistrates, teachers”. o Even writers have been coopted in modern society by the structure of the “regime”: the group that rules the society, including government and business. o Society now looks to the university of its knowledge because of the intersection of multiple fields of society. o Led to the devaluation of the “writer of genius” and elevation of the “absolute savant” 

The absolute savant “along with a handful of others has at his disposal. Whether in the service of the state or against it, powers which can either benefit or irrevocably destroy life”

o Writers who are sanctioned by a powerful structure now affect reality rather than simply trooping around in ideological terrain. 

Each society creates a “regime of truth” according to its beliefs, values, and morals.

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Foucault identifies the creation of truth in contemporary western society with five traits: the centering of truth on scientific discourse, accountability of truth to economic and political forces, the “diffusion and consumption” of truth via societal apparatuses” and the fact that it is “the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation” o Individuals would do well to recognize that ultimate truth, is the construct of the political and economic forces that command the majority of the power within the societal web. o There is no truly universal truth at all; therefore, the intellectual cannot convey universal truth. The intellectual must specialize, specify, so that he/she cam be connected to one of the truth generating apparatuses of the society.

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“Truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements (74)

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“Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it” A ‘regime of truth” (74)

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These “general politics and “regimes of truth” are the result of scientific discourse and institutions, and are reinforced and redefined constantly through the education system, the media, and the flux of political and economic ideologies. (73)

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Power is also a major source of social discipline and conformity. In shifting attention away from the “sovereign’ and ‘episodic’ exercise of power, traditionally centered in feudal states to coerce their subjects. o Pointed to a kind of disciplinary power that could be observed in the administrative systems and social services that were created in 18th century Europe such as prisons schools and mental hospitals.

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Systems of surveillance and assessment no longer required force or violence as people learned to discipline themselves and behave in expected ways.

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Fascinated by the mechanism of prison surveillance, and the promotion of norms about bodily conduct, including sex. o Physical bodies are subjected and made to behave in certain ways. As a microcosm of social control of the wider population, through what he called biopower. o Create a discursive practice or body of knowledge and behavior that defines what is normal, acceptable, deviant, etc.

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Sees power as an everyday socialized, and embodied phenomenon. o Norms can be so embedded as to be beyond our perception-causing us to discipline ourselves without any willful coercion from other.

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His ideas about action were concerned with our capabilities to recognize and question socialized norms an constraints. o To challenge power is not a matter of seeking some ‘absolute truth’ but “of detaching the power of truth from the form of hegemony, social, economic, and cultural within which it operates at the present time. o Discourse can be a site of both power and resistance. With scope to “evade, subvert, or contest strategies of power”

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Power stands for political and economic structures of society.

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Knowledge stands for sciences like physics, chemistry, psychiatry, medicine and many more.

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Concept of discontinuity o In empirical forms of knowledge like biology, economics, psychiatry and medicine the rhythm of transformation does not seem to be pertinent to history. o Deals with the concept of event: What escapes our rational grasp. It’s the domain of absolute contingency. o The opposition of event and structure is product of anthropology.

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Historians trying to dismiss the event and the event is shown as inferior order of history.

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Neither trivial nor about beautiful structures that are easy to analyze.

Madness and civilization represents knotted dichotomy of structure and event. o Event was evacuated by structuralism. Calls himself an anti-structuralist. Necessary to realize that there are many events differing in amplitude, chronology, etc.

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o Problem is distinguishing between events and their network/levels and reconstituting the lines with they are connected to each other. o Analysis only in terms of genealogy of relations of force, strategic developments and tactics. o Reference should be war and battle not the great model of language and signs. 

History has a form of war not language but also has no meaning because it works through relations of power.

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History is intelligible and should be susceptible to analyzing smallest details but only about struggles, strategies, and tactics.

o Structure of communication can account for intelligibility of conflicts. 

Dialectic is avoiding the reality of conflicts by reducing it to Hegelian skeleton.

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Semiologists avoid violent, bloody, and lethal character by reducing it to platonic form of language.

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Discursivity: Questions of power addressed to discourse has implications in relations to methodology and contemporary historical researches o Foucault says discourse must be transparent, they need no interpretation or meaning. o Problem of power is posed on the left or right?

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Right: Power was posed in terms of constitution, sovereignty (judicial terms)

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Left (Marxist): power posed in terms of state apparatuses.

Marxism and phenomenology (objective study of subjective topics such as perception/judgements) had an objective obstacle to the forming of this problematic of power and economy? Foucault says yes by giving two ways of analysis: o Constituent subject o Economic: ideology and superstructure/infrastructure

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Genealogical approach: Why it’s necessary? o Wanted to see how problems of constitution (a body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is acknowledged to be governed a.k.a social code) could be resolved by history not madness or criminality. o Can’t be solved by historicizing the subject or fabricating. To get rid of subject one has to dispense with constituent subject. o Come on analysis which can account for constitution of subject with a historical framework  genealogy

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Ideology V. Repression o Ideology: quasi-transparent form of knowledge which is free from all error and illusion and behind the concept of repression. o Repression: behind repression there is nostalgia of a form of power innocent of all coercion, discipline and normalization.

 In Discipline and Punish there is a positive history emerging free of negativity and psychology implicit in ideology and repression. o Difficulty in making use of ideology:

 Supposed to count as truth and the problem lies seeing historically. Now effect of truth are produced in discourses which are neither true nor false.  Concept of ideology refers to concept of subject.  Ideology is a secondary position relative to something which functions as its infrastructure, as its economic determinant etc. o Power is a force that induces pleasure, knowledge, and produces discourse that is why it is accepted and hold good, it’s a productive network and not something whose entire function is repression. 

Repression of Sexuality: Bourgeoisie class represented sexuality. o Campaigns against masturbation and homosexuality in the 18th/19th centuries. o Discourses on sexuality make possible a whole series of interventions of surveillance, circulation, and control which give appearance of repression. (66)

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Power as juridical: tendency to attribute a subject to a great totalitarian modern state which brought with it a bureaucracy. o One must free oneself of juridical schematic o Immutable guilt between those who exercise power and those who undergo it. o Need political philosophy that is not affected by problem of sovereignty so it won’t be around law and prohibition.

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Problem of state: problems in terms of sovereign and sovereignty in terms of law o If phenomena of power is dependent on state apparatuses this means grasping them as repressive. o Not stating state is unimportant but stating that the relation of power and its analysis must be made of state and it must extend beyond limits of state in two senses:

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State can’t occupy all actual power relations

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States can operate on basis of other, existing power relations

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State is super structural in relation to a whole series of power networks that invest body, sexuality, knowledge, technology etc. o Super structural: The institutions and cultures that result from/ reflect the economic system underlying a society. (concept based on others)

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Concept of Population: Problem in political control of population o Does the disciplinary power act alone? Doesn’t It draw support from the conception of population?

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Molar body: body of population with discourses.

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Micro body: body of population with docile, individual bodies.

How is the nature of relationships which are engendered between these different bodies? o 18th/19th century with new technical inventions a new power also emerged which was more important than constitutional reforms/ new forms of government o Foucault thinks that these new technologies of power are concrete/ have precise character. Have a grasp of a multiple and different reality. 

Leftist view: power is that which abstracts, which negates the body, represses, suppresses etc.

o New form of power comes with exercises through social production and social service. 

Obtained productive services from individuals.

o A real and effective incorporation of power needed to gain access to bodies of individuals, their acts, attitudes, and behavior.  

Schools  course of manipulation and conditioning.

New power needed to grapple with problem of population. o Problem of demography, pubic health, hygiene, fertility, housing condition arise

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Political significance of sex: sex is between discipline of body and controlling population (67)

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What is the role of the individual: relation to everyday political struggle? o Intellectual: through moral, theoretical and political choice aspire to be bearer of the universal. 

Means to be the conscience of all

o Can also work within specific sectors where their own conditions of life place them. 

Gives awareness about struggles/non-universal problems

o Intellectuals are close to the proletariat (working class) for 2 reasons:

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Question of real material/everyday struggles

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Confronted in the same category as the proletariat.

Specific and Universal Intellectuals o Specific intellectuals emerged after WWII. 

The discourse of nuclear threat was universal and the atomic scientist intellectuals were wanted by political powers because of their knowledge and at this level they became a political threat.

o Importance comes from techno-scientific structures in economic and strategic domain 

Serve interest of state or capital

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Propagate a scientific ideaolgy 

No longer “writer of genius” but “absolute savant”. Opposes unjust sovereign.

o Dangers specific intellectuals face: 

Remaining at the level of conjectural struggles

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Pressing demands restricted to particular sectors

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Risk of manipulation by political parties and trade union apparatuses

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Risk of being followed by limited groups.

o Role becomes more and more important in proportion to the political responsibilities which he is obliged to accept 

Dangerous to remove from power on ground that his specialty does not concern the masses.

o Intellectual is not the “bearer of universal values”. It’s the person occupying a specific position. The intellectual has threefold specificity:

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Of class position

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Of his conditions of life and work linked to his condition as an intellectual

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Specificity of the politics of truth in our societies.

Truth: induces regular effects of power each society has its own rule/politics of truth. o Truth is centered on the form on scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it. o Subject to constant economic and political incitement o It is object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and consumption o Produced and transmitted under control (dominant if not exclusive) of a few great political/ economic apparatuses.

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o Issue of a whole political debate and social conformation  

Necessary to think of political problems of intellectuals in terms of truth and power o Rule of truth is not merely ideological or super-structural. It was a condition of the formation and development of capitalism. o The essential political problem for the intellectual is not to criticize the ideological contents supposedly linked to science but that of ascertaining the possibility of constituting a new politics of truth. o What we have to change is the production of truth. 

Detach power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time.

Summary: Major Concepts/Ideas 

Discontinuity: intended to show how scientific statements are disposed to pressures of power. o Critiques the manner in which the history of ideas depends on continuities between different historical worldviews. o Argues that even though history of ideas identifies the discontinuity between modes of knowledge it ultimately assumes that these modes are present as a whole. 

Such assumptions fall short in justifying the complexities of discourse.

o Argues that the discursive/ institutional relationships by which discourses emerge are as much governed by disruptions as they are by unified themes, making discontinuity an integral part of discursive formations that are unified. 

Power: Effects of variety of institutions on groups of people and the function that those people perform in either resisting or affirming these effects. o Counter the negative idea f power in which it is solely oppressive and constraining. o Does not concern himself with what external power acts on scientific statements but describes what effects of power circulate in scientific statements. 

Discusses the constitution of the internal regime of power of those scientific statements and the reasons as to why/how those regimes undergo modifications

o Offers exposition that chaotic occurrences of history are actually conflicts of power. 

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Every event and action in history is a manifestation of the exercise of exchange of power.

o Concerned himself with how power works rather than the motives behind the quest for power or the purposes behind it. 

Viewed power as something that has to be constantly performed (strategy) than a possession operating at micro levels as relations of force

o Comparison of power with war-like domination 

Noted that in the case of power the only difficulty is identifying who is fighting against whom as power doesn’t flow in one direction. 

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“Power must be analyzed as something which circulates, or as something which only functions in the form of a chain . . . Power is employed and exercised through a netlike organization…Individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application.” (Power/Knowledge 98) 

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Travels in various directions as per the various forms of power relations in the network of power exchange.

this theory of power made thinkers re-conceptualize power as well as the place of the individual in power relations as active agents in their power dynamics with others.

Intellectuals: argues that people know about their circumstances and can express themselves without the help of a universal theory propounded by a universal intellectual. o Yet they are not able to free themselves of the universal theories because the fo...