Michel Foucault
Janis will lead discussion on this on Friday 20 July 2018
We are looking at Michel Foucault, focusing on his conceptions of Power Relations.
Achtung ! Warning – Foucault isn't easy. Hope you'll enjoy the puzzle. Bonne Courage;
Below are notes on Foucault and Power; Suggested Videos and Articles;
Questions for Discussion. If any discussion questions come to mind as you are reading, great if you could email them to me.
In 2007, Foucault was listed as the most cited scholar in the humanities by the SI Web of Science among a large quantity of French philosophers, the compilation's author commenting that "What this says of modern scholarship is for the reader to decide—and it is imagined that judgments will vary from admiration to despair, depending on one’s view".
Not everyone is a Foucault Fan, Wehler is scathing.
Foucault has frequently been criticized by historians for what they consider to be a lack of rigor in his analyses. For example, Hans-Ulrich Wehler harshly criticized Foucault in 1998.
Wehler regards Foucault as a bad philosopher who wrongfully received a good response by the humanities and by social sciences. According to Wehler, Foucault's works are not only insufficient in their empiric historical aspects, but also often contradictory and lacking in clarity.
For example, Foucault's concept of power is "desperatingly undifferentiated", and Foucault's thesis of a "disciplinary society" is, according to Wehler, only possible because Foucault does not properly differentiate between authority, force, power, violence and legitimacy
In addition, his thesis is based on a one-sided choice of sources (prisons and psychiatric institutions) and neglects other types of organizations as e.g. factories. Also, Wehler criticizes Foucault's "francocentrism" … concludes that Foucault is "because of the endless series of flaws in his so-called empirical studies ... an intellectually dishonest, empirically absolutely unreliable, … seducer of Postmodernism".
Foucault's contribution
What was Foucault's contribution that made him the leading French Intellectual after Sartre in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's? Is Foucault relevant today?
Foucault gave perspective on how we can view the world in our current time, especially Power Relations. He gave a different way of looking at History. Not as a series of events but as a history of ideas and perspectives and changing epistemes. He argued for the significance of an episteme in determining what was considered 'true' at a point in time. How a particular narrative won over against others and how those holding this narrative by consequence held Power.
When the narrative loses credence, power is lost. This differs from the Sovereign King who held power irrespective.
Episteme – Public Consciousness. Sum total of complex relationship of ideas both conscious and sub conscious that determine the nature of public thought.
Each period in History is characterized by an interweaving network of assumptions about the world that conditioned the beliefs and propositions that we accepted as true.
The Episteme functioned to determine what society considered to be scientific or rational.
What can be believed to 'self evident'
Useful to read this extract before going to the references below.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/
Extract on Power/ Knowledge
At the core of Foucault’s picture of modern disciplinary society are three primary techniques of control: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and the examination.
To a great extent, control over people (power) can be achieved merely by observing them. So, for example, the tiered rows of seats in a stadium not only makes it easy for spectators to see but also for guards or security cameras to scan the audience. A perfect system of observation would allow one “guard” to see everything (a situation approximated, as we shall see, in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon). But since this is not usually possible, there is a need for “relays” of observers, hierarchically ordered, through whom observed data passes from lower to higher levels.
A distinctive feature of modern power (disciplinary control) is its concern with what people have not done (non-observence), with, that is, a person’s failure to reach required standards. This concern illustrates the primary function of modern disciplinary systems: to correct deviant behavior. The main goal is not revenge (as in the case of the tortures of pre-modern punishment) but reform, where reform means primarily coming to live by society’s standards or norms. Discipline through imposing precise and detailed norms (“normalization”) is quite different from the older system of judicial punishment, which merely judges each action as allowed by the law or not allowed by the law and does not say that those judged are “normal” or “abnormal”. This idea of normalization is pervasive in our society: e.g., national standards for educational programs, for medical practice, for industrial processes and products.
The examination (for example, of students in schools, of patients in hospitals) is a method of control that combines hierarchical observation with normalizing judgment. It is a prime example of what Foucault calls power/knowledge, since it combines into a unified whole “the deployment of force and the establishment of truth” (1975 [1977: 184]). It both elicits the truth about those who undergo the examination (tells what they know or what is the state of their health) and controls their behavior (by forcing them to study or directing them to a course of treatment).
On Foucault’s account, the relation of power and knowledge is far closer than in the familiar Baconian engineering model, for which “knowledge is power” means that knowledge is an instrument of power, although the two exist quite independently. Foucault’s point is rather that, at least for the study of human beings, the goals of power and the goals of knowledge cannot be separated: in knowing we control and in controlling we know.
The examination also situates individuals in a “field of documentation”. The results of exams are recorded in documents that provide detailed information about the individuals examined and allow power systems to control them (e.g., absentee records for schools, patients’ charts in hospitals). On the basis of these records, those in control can formulate categories, averages, and norms that are in turn a basis for knowledge. The examination turns the individual into a “case”—in both senses of the term: a scientific example and an object of care. Caring is always also an opportunity for control.
Bentham’s Panopticon is, for Foucault, a paradigmatic architectural model of modern disciplinary power. It is a design for a prison, built so that each inmate is separated from and invisible to all the others (in separate “cells”) and each inmate is always visible to a monitor situated in a central tower. Monitors do not in fact always see each inmate; the point is that they could at any time. Since inmates never know whether they are being observed, they must behave as if they are always seen and observed. As a result, control is achieved more by the possibility of internal monitoring of those controlled than by actual supervision or heavy physical constraints.
The principle of the Panopticon can be applied not only to prisons but also to any system of disciplinary power (a factory, a hospital, a school). And, in fact, although Bentham himself was never able to build it, its principle has come to pervade aspects of modern society. It is the instrument through which modern discipline has been able to replace pre-modern sovereignty (kings, judges) as the fundamental power relation.
Foucault's discussions on power and discourse (use of Language) have inspired many critical theorists, who believe that Foucault's analysis of power structures could aid the struggle against inequality.
They claim that through discourse analysis, hierarchies may be uncovered and questioned by way of analyzing the corresponding fields of knowledge through which they are legitimated.
ARTICLES AND VIDEOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBJTeNTZtGU
The School of Life – Foucault Animated Overview (8 min video)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
Get an overview of Foucault's Biographical details and the scope of his work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qzoOhhh4aJg
An Interview with Foucault – Get to know the man Himself in his own words. English sub titles. The thinking behind is work. How he comes to his ideas. (15 min video)
http://www.powercube.net/analyse-power/forms-of-power/
Types of Power : Visible, Hidden, Invisible
https://aeon.co/essays/why-foucaults-work-on-power-is-more-important-than-ever
Foucault – Power Short Article
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UBpI7PxwjzU#fauxfullscreen
Foucault, power, governmentality and International Relations. Governmentality is used by Foucault as another word for Power (12 min video)
Good Summary; Scandinavian perspective; Interesting to consider Globalization and Power Plays.
https://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/foucault-power-is-everywhere/
Foucault – Power is all Pervasive
https://medium.com/amor-mundi/why-metoo-is-not-for-me-a8472da49034
Confession, Knowledge, Power. Power through having information. Losing Power through confession.
Foucault – Todays Refugee Crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTJ_4oVKDFY
Hans Sluga Lecturer at Berkely University discussing Foucault overview – Radio
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KWTXVPHc7dU
Australian Lecturer on Foucault Governmentality / Power; Local References,
Does Foucault apply specifically to Western Democracies or can his work be generalised across all Countries and Forms of Government?
QUESTIONS NEXT PAGE
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
FREEDOM
A prominent critique of Foucault's thought concerns his refusal to propose positive solutions to the social and political issues that he critiques. Since no human relation is devoid of power, freedom becomes elusive—even as an ideal.
Q Is Freedom elusive? Are we ever free of Power Relations? Is it a matter of concern?
SURVEILLANCE
Foucault wrote extensively about the role and implications of Surveillance. Power relationships created by actually being or imagining you are being observed.
Q To what extent has recent technology increased surveillance?
Are you conscious of being observed in your daily life?
Do you constrain or modify your behaviour as a result? Do you forsee any consequences of this surveillance down the track?
TESTING
Foucault drew attention to the extent that testing and evaluation was increasingly being used and the Power relations this produced.
Driving, school, University, job applications battery of tests,
monitoring health – breast scans, blood pressure, cholestrol – checked
Testing then categorizes, dictates what is possible and importantly what is not open to you. The bureaucracy accumulates information on people.
To what extent are we increasingly being subjected to testing?
TYPES OF POWER: VISIBLE, INVISIBLE, HIDDEN
Q Where do we see examples of these different types of Power. ?
To what extent is 'invisible power' operating ?
POWER RELATIONS
POWER OVER (REPRESSIVE) AND POWER TO BE (PRODUCTIVE)
Q What power relations can be identified in family, work place, community;
Who has power over you? Over whom do you have power?
Where are you able to use Power Positively?
Where do you see power structures operating in Australia?
Australia's International Power Relations?
TRUTH IS NOT ABSOLUTE – FORMED IN A PARTICULAR EPISTEME – TRUTH DETERMINED BY THOSE WHOSE NARRATIVE PREVAILS OVER OTHERS – THEY HOLD THE POWER
Q How do we cope/ function in a world in which we accept that “what is true today, may not be true tomorrow”?
Q What are current contested Narratives in Australia and the World at large?
Which narratives are prevailing? In science, Politics, Economics, Health, Education
Where Have there been significant shifts in the dominance of narratives.?
Examples Climate Change
George W Bush – The Prevailing narrative for why US had to go into Iraq.
Arabs are Barbaric and Islam is Dangerous, therefore they cannot be trusted with weapons of mass destruction. This is accepted by a sufficient majority to become normative. Self Evident.
In Germany WW11 – Jewish people are dangerous. They are diseased, evil, like rats – threat to our existence. They must be eliminated from the earth. This narrative has prevailed for hundreds of years.
NEXUS OF POWER / KNOWLEDGE
see article above Stanford Philosophy
Q Where do you see knowledge / information being used as a source of Power
Q “Experts” someone with relatively more knowledge exercising their own self interest and creating Power relationship. Problem of getting different medical opinions; legal advise;
How do we evaluate “expert” advice?
CHANGING EPISTEMES AND NARRATIVES. WHICH ARE LOSING /GAINING CREDENCE.
SEE POWER CHANGES
Q Where do we see this happening in the world today.? One day a President the next a criminal. One day a terrorist and the next a President.
Changing concepts of Mental Illness and Treatment
Changing conceptions of Sexuality, Gender , Race.