Power/Knowledge

Foucault begins by discussing knowledge. He describes a realization that recently there has been a “vulnerability to criticism of things.” He discusses totalitarian theories, but says that those theories are discussed with an understanding that nothing will be done about them. He writes that the spirit of criticism has changed. It no longer relies on other theories, but goes in the direction it pleases. This can give it some independence, but means that it no longer represents a unified theory.
This leads Foucault to discuss how criticism is being suppressed due to an emphasis that leads away from intellectual theory. The importance of context is directly tied to this issue. Here he talks about the functionalism theory; it thus seems to me that he is commenting on social facts and how they have become a distraction that leads away from the whole picture. He sees criticism as working through what he calls “popular knowledge,” which is not common sense exactly, but is the knowledge held by the average person, who is not trying to see life through a sociological perspective. The “historical knowledge” and “popular knowledge” are thus two very important parts of subjugated knowledge.
Subjugated knowledge is “concerned with a historical knowledge of struggles.” This reminded me of the idea that history is written by the conqueror, meaning that those in power control the perspective of history that the people are told. We are told that “knowledge is power.” Foucault determines that true understanding of past struggles cannot occur under a tyrannical control of knowledge. But that understanding is crucial to our understanding of current events. He claims that adherence to strict theory should not be allowed to block discussion of genealogies, which he says is the “anti-science.” “For it is really against the effects of the power of a discourse that is considered to be scientific that the genealogy must wage its struggle.” My interpretation of this is that by imposing a specific view on knowledge, you are limiting where that knowledge can lead you. Theory should open doors to knowledge, not prevent you from entering them. Turning theory into science imposes rules and limitations.
Foucault writes that labeling theories such as Marxism as a science diminishes and disqualifies aspects of them. You cannot force theories to become sciences, as this “isolate[s] it from all the discontinuous forms of knowledge that circulate about it.” I thought he summed this idea up well when he wrote, “a genealogy should be seen as a kind of attempt to emancipate historical knowledges from that subjection, to render them, that is, capable of opposition and of struggle against the coercion of a theoretical, unitary, formal and discourse.”
Foucault then discusses power. He says that recently there has been a new form of power which “permits time and labour, rather than wealth and commodities, to be extracted from bodies.” This new form of labor is tied to the need for material wealth rather then an obligation enforced by a sovereign. This method of enforcement immediately reminded me of capitalism, where the system enforces itself as workers must participate in work so that they can afford to live a materialistic life that is demanded by the system itself. We all know the phrase ‘time is money.’ I also thought of industrialization in general during this discussion of power. Workers are obligated by the system to participate in it, but they do not create unique products, but rather lend their services to whatever mass production is necessary. Later in the passage, Foucault attributed this system to bourgeois society and indicated that it has influenced industrial capitalism and the society which it operates in.
Foucault describes how sovereignty relates to this shift. Sovereignty controls the “displacement and appropriation” of power. He writes that the new system utilizes constant surveillance, while the old system relied on obligations to enforce itself. By controlling goods and wealth, sovereignty made the people dependent. The new system enforces the idea of “minimum expenditure for the maximum return,” which allows the idea that each worker is independent as far as their ability to influence what they contribute and receive in return.
The difference between the systems then leads to the subject of the ideology of sovereignty. Foucault maintains that its system allows a “system of right” which assigns inherent power to itself. This hides its actual mechanism of keeping power. Through democracy, sovereignty has given assumed independence while actually maintaining control according to the mechanisms of the system. It uses scientific disciplinary measures to keep this control. Democracy depends on “an organization based on public right” which is linked to “disciplinary coercions whose purpose is in fact to assure the cohesion of this same social body.” Sovereignty and discipline then contribute to the maintenance of power in society. This refers back to what Foucault was saying about knowledge. To my understanding, we have the power to pursue knowledge, but the realm in which we search is limited by the discipline we are viewing that information through. What seems to present itself as an unlimited spectrum of knowledge is in fact limited by the system used to look at it. Foucault says that these are presented as “natural rules,” or norms.
Foucault explains that he is not trying to outline the limits that have been imposed on knowledge. He has rather been trying to draw attention to how the juxtaposition that sovereignty and discipline has shaped that knowledge. He writes that this has led to a “society of normalization” due to the conflict between the two, which fuels intellectual discourse. It is shaped by the varying balance between the two. Both contribute to the continuation to discourse. To escape these two ideas, a new idea of right must be entertained. Foucault then discusses repression, which connects to sovereignty in that it references the rights of the individual, and to discipline it that its meaning is derived from discourses within the area of science. Thus understanding of repression is tied into the very ideas that it is being used to examine.