Power/Knowledge/Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth
Bruss, Neal H.
POWER/KNOWLEDGE SELECTED INTERVIEWS AND OTHER WRITINGS, 1972-1977 Michel Foucautt Edited by Colin Gordon Pantheon, $12.95, 270 pp. MICHEL FOOCAOLT. THE WILL TO TROTH Alan Sheridan Methuen,...
...Thus, Foucault rejects the idea that power is created by specific economic processes, or is the particular attribute of special classes...
...Foucault's fine-grained studies of cultural notions were accompanied by broad methodological statements: as a whole, his writing suggested the evolution of a discipline as substantial as the ones it opposed...
...Until recently, these fascinating, enlightening studies were to be understood as counter-moves in a scholarly debate...
...Foucault's "archaeology of knowledge" was to be an alternative not only to the history of ideas but to France's reigning methodologies and philosophies: existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, psychoanalysis, humanism, and Marxism...
...This model, and Foucault's idea that opportunities for power are ubiquitous, explains his gloomy characterization of power as "a sort of generalized war which assumes at particular moments the form of peace and the State...
...Heal H. Brass THROUGHOUT his career, Michel Foucault has investigated cultural notions which underlie the modern social sciences and politics...
...Foucault's technique is to look into small, seemingly unimportant practices, rather than events which proclaim their own significance...
...The interviews in Power/Knowledge convey what Foucault understands about power, the study of power, and the change in his own career...
...Complex institutions exist as apexes of pyramids of power which have these particular "local" practices as their bases, but, as Foucault puts it, The summit and the lower ele-' ments of the hierarchy stand in a relationship of mutual support and conditioning, a mutual 'hold' (power as a mutual and indefinite 'blackmail...
...The opportunity for exerting one or another form of power comes into being constantly, everywhere, for everyone - as does the possibility for resisting power...
...Foucault's studies of particular cultural notions - madness, diagnosis, normality, correction, sexuality - expose the "micro-" practices of power which arise from the triangle's base to support the institutional apex...
...But the concept of power might suggest other applications: vigilantism, quietism, or the pursuit of an unenlightened self-interest...
...One person exercises control over another through cultural practices, and these practices evolve through ordinary social relations...
...As Sheridan quotes from Discipline and Punish, There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations...
...Power should be examined at its ultimate destinations rather than in its general mechanisms, in "local, regional material institutions," rather than in social contracts...
...He looks at the autobiography of a peasant who murdered his family, rather than at the statements of the great legal philosophers, or at the birth of the clinic, rather than at progress in medicine...
...In his recent writing on power, Foucault has focused that vast effort on a single point...
...Five methodological precautions, follow from this view of power and its interplay with knowledge...
...Two of its most important features have not fully emerged, however...
...The integration of power in a society should not be deduced from its apex downward, but should.be the product of "an ascending analysis . . . starting . . . from its infinitesimal mechanisms, which each have their own history, their own trajectory, their own techniques and tactics...
...For Foucault, power is the control of human bodies by other humans - even, and perhaps especially, the control of children by parents and teachers, and of patients by psychiatrists...
...Particular tactics of power, Foucault states, were invented and organized from the starting points of local conditions and particular needs...
...power - and that to study power was more important than to found an alternative to phenomenology or Marxism...
...More important, the implications of his concept of power do not sort out neatly...
...The excitement of Foucault's earlier work grew out of its aim,' 'to reconstruct and de-mythologize the origins of modern knowledges of Man," as Gordon puts it...
...And Sheridan's comprehensive, well-written and profusely illustrated account of Foucault's previous books is an ideal way to retrace the steps to the study of power, even for a person who has read many of Foucault's'books already.cault's'books already...
...The enterprise is a re-motivation of Nietzsche's "genealogy of morals," and yet Foucault "prefers to remain silent" on his use of Nietzsche to discourage wrong-minded critical responses to his own work...
...Sheridan's concluding chapter, and a conclusion to Power/ Knowledge by its editor, Colin Gordon, suggest that it is the focus on power which reveals how much Foucault's research challenges other intellectual and political disciplines...
...His books tell how the madman succeeded to the social role of the leper, how the human body became an object for inspection, how surveillance and control replaced corporal punishment, and, most recently, how sex became a matter for earnest discussion, study, and regulation...
...Power should not be taken to be a phenomenon of "one individual's consolidated and homogenous domination over others, or that of one group or class over others," but should be analyzed "as something which circulates . . . [which] is employed and exercised through a net-like organization . . . [in which individuals] are not only its inert or consenting target [but] also the elements of its articulation...
...To oppose the idea that power makes men mad, deluded, or stupid, Foucault offers the concept of "Power/ Knowledge," that power and knowledge reciprocally generate and amplify each other...
...But the change in attitude has led Foucault to replace his earlier methodological writing with new tools for the study of power...
...In fact, Discipline and Punish, a study of the origins of imprisonment, and the first of six projected volumes on the history of sexuality were written after Foucault's change of attitude...
...The ordering and control of sexuality, shows, required nothing less than a new science of sexuality for reference...
...Power should not be approached "internally," in terms of the motives or strategies of the powerful, but externally, in terms of "those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors...
...In any case, Foucault's remarks in Power-Knowledge create enthusiasm for taking the analysis of power further...
...THE WILL TO TROTH Alan Sheridan Methuen, $8.95, 244 pp...
...This revelation did not stop Foucault from investigating cultural concepts in "local" practices...
...Finally, neither power nor its knowledge should be confused with the ideology which often accompanies them: in particular, mechanisms of power such as "methods of observation, techniques of registration, procedures for investigation and research, and apparatuses of control" are not forms of ideology...
...They took shape in piecemeal fashion, prior to any class strategy designed to weld them into vast, coherent ensembles...
...Sheridan's Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth is a clear, fair commentary on Foucault's works which explains how Foucault arrived at the study of power...
...Power/Knowledge" explains why all the "local" practices Foucault has studied have carried with them the need for evidence, techniques of observation, criteria of normalcy, and rationales for modifying behavior...
...Foucault has applied his view that power offers itself to everyone by creating means for French prisoners to work for their own political ends...
...But the development of Foucault's work, and the French political upheaval of 1968 revealed to Foucault that his entire career had been a study of only one thing...
Vol. 108 • April 1981 • No. 8
