Literature Review: Foucault - Selected Works

A University of Melbourne Essay Assignment

Under the 3rd-Year Sociology subject "Critical Theories"

Passed with High Distinction (H1)

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Semester 2, 2013

Literature Review:

Truth and Power (Foucault, 1980)

Supplemented by Foucault (1976, 1984)

Tutor's Comments:

This is an excellent review of Foucault's 'Truth and Power' argument. I would certainly recommend reading 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History' if you haven't done so already. Well done.

Foucault’s writings (1976, 1980, 1984) concern ‘truth’ and its relationship with power. In Truth and Power (1980), he argued against the conventional notion of truth as something that is “discovered and accepted” (p. 132). Instead, truth is a “system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements.” (p.133) This procedural definition allows those in power to decide what is ‘true’ and impose their prescriptions upon others. This paper details Foucault’s conceptualisation of truth and how it is implicated in struggles of power.

            Foucault (1980) created the procedural definition of truth by observing sudden changes in scientific disciplines. These changes were not simply changes in the content or theoretical paradigm in science, but changes in the notions of what science is and what is deemed scientifically acceptable. The change in science’s “internal regime of power” (p.112) alters how some propositions, such as those relating to scientific acceptability, govern other statements, such as statements of laboratory findings. However, Foucault stresses that this is not a semiotic change in “relations of meaning” but rather a change in “relations of power” (p.114) where interested parties strive for hegemony. Truth, then, is not the search for Truth – it is the hegemonic imposition of one party’s notion of ‘truth’.[1] Thus truth is not a product of discourse. Instead, truth, and the criteria for establishing something as true, is a product of social contention and discourse (Foucault, 1976).

            The invocation of truth in power makes power both repressive and productive. Foucault (1980) argues that power tends to be denounced when one’s adversaries have more power. It is akin to how the opponents of Soviet power called the Soviet Union totalitarian. This ‘power-as-chains’ conception fails to see how the technical or tactical deployment of power is also ‘productive’. Foucault (1980) illustrates this by comparing feudal and post-feudal states. Feudalism exercised power by demanding material tributes, loyalty, and symbolic deference. After the 1600s, the emphasis shifted towards capital accumulation and obtaining productive services from individuals. It required a new form of population administration that would allow the state to channel people’s bodies, minds, attitudes, and behaviours towards economic production. This produced new fields of knowledge like demography and public sanitation that generated novel techniques for optimising productivity. It demonstrates how the exercise of power is not merely repressive, but could also produce new knowledge and techniques in the service of those wield it.

            The emergence of distinct fields of knowledge gave rise to “specific intellectuals” (p.126), so named because they specialised in specific technical disciplines. As bearers of domain-specific scientific truth, they gain power when their expertise is called upon for social or economic issues. Foucault’s (1984) Subject and Power calls this “pastoral power” (p.123), where experts use their knowledge for the salvation of others. This concept is derived from Christian pastors who used their religious knowledge to save the souls of the flock. Pastoral power is wielded by various agents like doctors (in issues of health), judges (in legal matters), and other specialists whose ‘true’ knowledge gives them the power to prescribe what others should do for their own good, however ‘good’ is defined. Such knowledge is at risk of being manipulated by political factions, similar to the feudal monarch’s justification of his/her divine right to rule by the appropriation of religion. Yet the political pertinence of expert knowledge also empowers experts to speak with authority and “it would be a dangerous error to discount him[/her] in his specific relation to a local form of power” (Foucault, 1980, p.131). The expert’s claim to truth legitimises his/her claim to power in a specific field, and that power can be a factor in struggles for political domination.

            This means that truth can be a strategy of power. Foucault (1984) uses the term ‘strategy’ to denote the means used to achieve an end, the behaviours informed by how an agent thinks others perceive the situation, and the steps taken to force an opponent to surrender during a confrontation. Every strategy of confrontation strives to become a stable ‘power relation’ where the victor is able to “structure the possible field of action of others” (p.221) and so govern them. In the event of future conflict, a power relation is intended to provide an efficient winning strategy by structuring others’ actions. For example, two warring political factions in a country might find might that a strategy involving election campaigns is less costly than combat. One party might win and establish a power relation where any future challenge of authority by the loser can be nullified by pointing to the winner’s legitimate right to rule based on the results of the election. In this sense, “politics [a strategy] is the continuation of war [the conflict] by other means” where “peace would be a form of war, and the state [institutions] a means of waging it” (Foucault, 1980, p.123). In the same way, society’s incarceration of the mad is the continuation of ‘war’ (over social disorder) by other means (medical truth and knowledge, rather than policing). This is the conclusion of a long chain of thought beginning with the power struggles over what counts as ‘truth’, how truth confers power – most notably pastoral power – and how such power can be strategically deployed in political contests that are, fundamentally, power struggles in-themselves.

            In conclusion, truth is inexorably implicated in the exercise and conflicts of power. Foucault’s (1980) account of truth and power has 5 characteristics. Firstly, what counts as truth depends on the prevailing scientific discourse and the institutions that produce it. ‘Truth’ is not discovered – it is socially established through discourse and contestation. Secondly, it is constantly implicated in economic and political domains where truth is sought for techniques in enhancing productivity and power. Thus power is not merely repressive as is commonly thought but also produces new knowledge and techniques of control. Thirdly, truth is widely held and employed in various areas. Specific intellectuals gain pastoral power but unlike the pastor’s cosmological knowledge of the soul, specific intellectuals only exercise power in their field of expertise. Fourth, truth is predominantly or exclusively produced within a few select institutions, namely those where scientific discourses are created and experts are trained. Lastly, truth can be involved in social or political conflicts and can, in-itself, be contested.

References

Foucault, M. (1976) The Discourse on Language, The Archaeology of Knowledge, New York, Harper Colophon.

___________(1980) Truth and Power, Power/Knowledge, New York, Harvester.

___________(1984) The Subject and Power, in H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (eds.), The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon.

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[1] Internal regime change can be seen in psychology’s shift from unfalsifiable Freudian theories to experimental Behaviourism/Cognitivism and the subsequent revision of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (from DSM II to III) for clinical practice.