Introduction and background:
Foucault's constant emphasis on
power and on discourse provides a unifying core on his work.
In his view complex differential power relationships extend to every
aspect of our social, cultural and political lives, involving all manner
of (often contradictory) 'subject-positions', and securing out assent
not so much by the threat of punitive sanctions as by persuading us to
internalize the norms and values that prevail within the social order.
view of history:
(¡° vs. Lyotard's grand narrative/small
Foucault's works are based on a vision of
history derived from Nietzsche. He expressed his indebtedness to Nietzsche
for having outlined a conception of history called genealogy. The
method of genealogy involves a painstaking rediscovery of struggles, an
attack on the tyranny of what he calls ¡¦totalizing discourses¡¦
and a rediscovery of fragmented, subjugated, local and specific knowledge.
It is directed against great truths and grand theories.¡]p.80¡^
¡P Foucault rejects the Hegelian
teleological model, in favour of Nietzschean tactic of critique through
the presentation of difference. The gap between the past
and the present underlines the principle of difference at the heart
of Foucault's historiography.
Work in Different Stages:
Reason and unreason :
Foucault's early work is mainly concerned
with the growth of those disciplines which are collectively known as the
social or human sciences. As an answer to the question of how the human
sciences are historically possible and what the consequences of their existence
are. In his first book, Madness and Civilization, Foucault describes
how madness comes in the 17th.c to be perceived as a social
problem. The 'madship' was replaced by the 'madhouse'; instead of embarkation
there was confinement.
Foucault often uses the term Genealogy to
refer to the union of erudite knowledge and local memories which allow
us to establish a historical knowledge of struggles and to make
use of this knowledge tactically today. Genealogy focus on local, discontinuous,
disqualifies, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a unitary body
Madness during the 19th c. began
to be categorized as social failure. The asylum of the age of positivism
was not a free realm of observation, diagnosis and therapeutics, it became
a juridical space where one was accused, judged and condemned¡Xan
instrument of moral uniformity. The birth of the asylum can be seen
as an allegory in the constitution of subjectivity.
Is subtitled ¡¥An Archaeology of
Medical Perception¡¦; this perception of ;gaze; is formed
by the new, untrammelled type of observation, condense a general historical
argument into a tracing of the emergence of specific institutions.
Deal largely with the structure of scientific
discourses. There is a whole new 'regime'¦ of discourse which makes
possible the separation of what may be characterized as scientific from
what may bot be characterized as scientific.
The Order of Things
Archaeology of Knowledge
Looking back on his early work, Foucault conceded
that what was missing was a consideration of the effects of power.
In his later work, where Foucault is concerned
with power and knowledge, and talk about 'apparatus' which is a structure
of heterogeneous elements such as discourses, laws, institutions. The apparatus
contains strategies of relations of forces supporting, and supported by,
types of knowledge.
A struggle over meaning
One of the main themes of this dossier is
the problematic division between the innocence of unreason and the guilt
of crime. This work is truly interdisciplinary in that one can approach
it from the point of view of history, politics, literature, psychiatry,
or the law. This book gives us an idea of how a particular kind of knowledge
such as medicine or psychiatry is formed. It also exemplifies one of Foucault¡¦s
main preoccupations: the attempt to rediscover the interaction of discourses
as weapons of attack and defence in the relations of power and knowledge.
I, Pierre Riviere¡K A Case of Parricide
in the 19th Century
Foucault argues that knowledge is a power
over others, the power to define others. In his view knowledge ceases to
be a liberation and becomes a mode of surveillance, regulation, discipline.
Focuses on the moment when it become understood
that it was more efficient and profitable to place people under surveillance
than to subject them to some exemplary penalty. This transition in the
18th century corresponds to the formation of a new mode of exercise
of power. So that punishment takes the form of a ritual intended not to
'reform' the offender but to express and restore the sanctity of the law
which has been broken.
In contrast to monarchial power,
there is disciplinary power, a system of surveillance which is interiorized
to the point that each person is his or her overseer.
The transformation of Western societies
from monarchical power to disciplinary power is epitomized in Foucault's
description of the Panopticon, an architectural device advocated
by Jeremy Bentham towards the end of 18thc. According to Foucault.
The Panopticon is a machine in which everyone is caught and which no one
Weber, following Nietzsche, argued that
scientific rationality focused on means but not on ends. Instrumental
reason cannot tell us anything about how to live our lives. Foucault
reiterates the fears of (Nietzsche and) Weber: science uncovers the mythology
in the world, but science itself is a myth which has to be superseded.
Sexuality and power
It closes to the theories of 'critical theorists'
of the Frankfurt School, such as Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer.
One of the main points of the book is that
sexuality is far more a positive product than power was ever repression
of sexuality. Foucault¡¦s work shows how in the 18th
c. processes of training and regulation of human bodies emerged in a wide
range of specific institutional locations: in factories, prisons and schools.
And then, at the beginning of 20th
The History of
Sexuality; Volume one: An Introduction
c., the discourse on sex became a matter
of science. Foucault's main example of a modern discourse on sexuality
The fundamental thesis of the book is that
sexuality is not a natural reality but the product of a system of discourses
and practices which form part of the intensifying surveillance and control
of the individual.
III. Power and
The individual subject was an empty entity,
an intersection of discourses.
Modern power operates through the construction
of 'new' capacities and modes of activity rather than through the limitation
of pre-existing ones.
The relations of power do not emanate from
a sovereign or a state; nor should power be conceptualized as the property
of an individual or class.
The exercise of power itself creates and causes
to emerge new objects of knowledge.
A relationship of power is that it is a mode
of action which does not act directly and immediately on others. It acts
upon their actions: an action upon an action.(p.427)
At the very heart of the power relationship,
and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the
intransigence of freedom.
The analysis, elaboration and bringing into
question of power relations and the 'agonism' between power relations and
the intransitivity of freedom is a permanent political task inherent in
all social existence.
Every power relationship implies, at least
in potentia, a strategy of struggle.
III. Foucault and
1.the similarities of Foucault and
Foucault and Althusser regard humanism as
an error; anti-humanists argue that unconditional emancipation is a fantasy,
and that fantasy are dangerous.
2.the differences of Foucault and Althusser
Both emphasize the necessity of applying certain
anti-humanist theories to the reading of texts
Both produced work that raises problems rather
tan provides solutions.
Foucault is often depicted as some sort of
freewheeling relativist in contrast to Althusser.
Foucault argues that the character of the
knowledge of the human sciences is different from that of the natural sciences.
But Althusser thinks that science produces its own objects and that is
itself the product of social practices.
Foucault rejects the concept of ideology.
critique of Marxism
Power is not located in the state apparatus;
it passes through much finer channels and is much amore ambiguous, since
each individual has at his or her disposal at least some power.
It should be remembered that the reproduction
of the relations of production is not the only function served by power.
The system so f domination and the circuits of exploitation certainly interact,
intersect and support each other, but they do not coincide.
Foucault is deeply antagonistic to the Marxist
concept of ideology, the reasons is as below:
Firstly, it always stands in virtual opposition
to something else which is supposed to count as truth.
Secondly, analyses which prioritize ideology
trouble him because they always presuppose a human subject on the lines
of the model provided by classical philosophy.
Thirdly, ideology stands in a secondary position
relative to something which functions as its base, as its material economic
Foucault therefore stresses the importance
of local, specific struggles and believes that they can have effects and
implications which are not simply professional or sectoral.
What's the relationship of Nietzsche's theories
of power with Hegel's dialectic theories and their influences to post-structuralists
Is there any familiar tendency of Lyotard's
narrative theories with Foucault's genealogy?
Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism,
"Foucoult and the Social Sciences"
Foucault, "The Subject and Power." Ed. Brian Wallis.
Art Aafter Modernism : Rethinking Representation.¡@New York
: David R. Godine Publisher, 1984.