Colin SegerW(h)ither Social ChangeIDCE 30242Dr. Asher5/16/11

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← Foucault and Resistance Within Power/Knowledge:← A review of the literature

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The consideration of Foucault’s insight into power is an endeavor that is steeped in com-

plexity. Terms such as ‘disciplinary space' and ‘subject’ must be considered in their intended

context and not in colloquial or everyday parlance. The organization and systematization inher-

ent to the social sciences and much of modern institutional behavior are similarly necessary to

contextualize in a certain manner, in one sense liberating for the identification of individuality, in

another for their judgment of the individual against a normalized framework.

The goal of this paper is to paint a picture of the complexity of Foucault’s power/knowl-

edge relationship in order to make plain some of the recurring themes, as well as to create a basis

for the exploration of possible paths to resistance in social arrangements that perpetuate modes of

inequality. A firm grounding in Foucault and the various interpretations of his work is necessary

to complete this task. Though a thorough examination of Foucault’s works could be called for, a

subset of his writings and a large sampling of those who have studied and written on his ideas is

justified, and indeed necessary, to make plain power/knowledge and possible forms of resistance

from a larger and more varied body of work.

Rouse, Joseph. 2005. “Power/Knowledge”. In The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Edited by Gary Gutting. Cambridge University Press.

Foucault’s work on power as an output of the modernist and Western occupation with so-

cial science is set in vivid detail by Joseph Rouse. Foucault outlined his theory of power through

his inquiry into the changing nature of the human sciences. Rouse takes up what others would

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call ‘early Foucault’ and his outline of practices of “discipline surveillance and constraint” (p.

95). ‘Early Foucault’ initially based his insight into power/knowledge on the consequences of a

new power structure that could no longer rely on the spectacle of discipline in the public sphere .

The new “disciplinary space” opened up by the social sciences worked not as a unilateral

force grounded in the legitimacy of the sovereign, but rather, it operated by making the subject

more visible and knowable to the arbiters of the social sciences. The “science” of the social sci-

ences made explicit the knowable subject by creating metrics where humans could be evaluated

along a set of criteria that could be compared against others (p. 95). “Presences and absences” of

behavior were consequently codified and normalized in order to shape how the subject operated

in the social realm (p. 95).

The retooling of the social sciences as a result of enlightenment thinking sought to bring

all aspects of behavior under the gaze of the social scientist. In turn, when a certain behavior

was known, further refinement through observation, discipline and restraint, was attained

through a repeat of this regime of codification. Knowledge, derived from the social sciences,

was implemented in the control of human beings through the application of norms generated

from social science inquiry. Behavior could thusly be judged as normal or abnormal making a

range of behavior unacceptable or undesirable. This entailed a form of power that was coercive

towards meeting the norm and not applied from above.

This new form of power, given the quasi famous moniker of power/knowledge, expressed

through creation of knowable behavior was:

instituted initially as means of control or neutralization of dangerous social ele-ments, and evolved into techniques for enhancing the utility and productivity of those subjected to them. They were also initially cultivated within isolated institu-tions (most-notably prisons, hospitals, army camps, schools, and factories), but then were gradually adapted into techniques that could be applied in various other contexts. (p.96)

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For Foucault, these techniques, made possible by the enlightenment project and gleaned from the

social sciences for individuating and evaluating the subject, were imported into the control of the

subject through the changing modality of power. A subject was no longer a ‘subject’ of a divine

king (p. 95). Nor could they be considered one of a ‘people’ with little or no individuation. In-

stead, the technical term ‘population’ became viable for the expression of problematics, also un-

covered by the social sciences, that demanded more specificity.

The creation of an aggregation of knowable subjects into a knowable public was not un-

dertaken purely for unilateral subjugation and control. Instead, the creation of norms as a disci-

plining practice in the social sciences became, in itself, a system against which others could be

judged, dissected and quantified. Within this frame, populations were disciplined through nor-

malized judgment and rendered docile and moldable along the lines of a normal statistical mean

that could simultaneously provide homogeneity against that mean while providing individualiz-

ing marks by identifying gaps, stratification and difference (p. 98).

Foucault, Michel. 1982. The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry 8 (4):777-795.

Foucault recognized that the study of power was not one of historically grounded theory

or uncovering a methodology of the exercise of power. Previous incantations of the subject, as

expressed through the subjectivity inherent in the social contract, gave rise to legal models con-

cerned with the just use and moral rightness of the use of power by a sovereign. Other models of

power, concerned with the institution of the newly minted social arrangement emergent from the

Westphalian nation-state, indeed called into question the validity of the social arrangement of the

state itself and consequently actions of unilateral power conducted in its name or by it (p. 778).

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For Foucault, the focus of his inquiry “has not been to analyze the phenomena of power,

nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis” (p. 777). Instead, his goal has been to un-

cover what he describes as modes under which “human beings are made subjects” (p. 777).

Through the historical inquiry into the subjectivity of human beings in a western cultural context,

Foucault comes to uncover different modes of power left un-conceived by statist and legal con-

ceptions of power. The power that Foucault describes grounds itself in the objectification inher-

ent in the modes of inquiry that “try to give themselves the status of sciences...” (p. 777).

Further insight into the objectivising totality of the subject is documented in the “dividing

practices” Foucault sees in the subject itself. The ‘practices’ happen in two ways. First, the sub-

ject, through the power/knowledge created by social science, is divided internally between differ-

ent conceptions of the self. The second facet of dividing practices is the division between sub-

jects. Dichotomies amongst and between individuals are well documented by Foucault in previ-

ous inquiries; “the mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the criminals and the ‘good boys’”

to name a few (p. 778).

For Foucault, power was not a tangible that could be observed by studying its manifesta-

tion in those who held it. A certain preconceived notion and necessary objectification of the

term ‘power’ is necessary in order to create models of how it is exercised in an oppositional and

vested way. Foucault argued that power could only be analyzed through its historical context.

Studying decisions and the push and pull of oppositional and friendly forces of historical rela-

tions could in fact lead to an analytics and understanding of power as it circulated through soci-

eties.

Creating an economy of power relations within his study of subjectivity necessitated the

consideration of struggles against power and authority. However, taking oppositions created by

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the division between subjects, the power of men over women for example, in the discourse of so-

cial sciences cannot be conceived of as mere anti-authority struggles (p. 780). Foucault recog-

nized that power and struggle were linked in ways that were not merely oppositional.

Intimate links across nations and peoples fixated instead on the scope and focus of power

amongst individual practices, the power over the body of an individual as held by a doctor for in-

stance (p.780). The struggle against power was also found to be “immediate” in that struggles

were directed toward closer threats without expectations of finding “a solution to their problem

at a future date (that is, liberations, revolutions, end of class struggle)” (p. 780). In this, Foucault

found that revolutions could be ideological in nature but were based in an inequality in the scope

or focus of power relations.

Contemplating the practice of the social sciences, Foucault found that these ‘sciences’

were also questioning the status of the individual both by asserting the right to be different as

well as the right to belong to a community, a movement or any other social organization. Power,

and the intimacy of knowledge to its usage, is also a contestation or struggle against power. If,

as Foucault suggests, power is knowledge of “competence and qualification” then struggles

against it are struggles not against truth or an objective reality that is created from social science,

but instead, they are struggles against “secrecy, deformation, and mystifying representations im-

posed on people” (p. 781). Lastly, struggles within the Foucaultian sense of power “are a refusal

of these abstractions, of economic and ideological state violence, which ignore who we are indi-

vidually, and also a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who

one is” (p. 781). In essence, the question of how power and struggle are linked, is the question

of who we are.

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Morris, Brian. 1996. Western Conceptions of the Individual. Oxford: Berg. Original edition, 1991.

Decidedly less enthusiastic about the insight Foucault has provided is Brian Morris, de-

voting just four and a half pages to “Power and the human Subject” in a book entitled “Western

Conceptions of the Individual.” Morris faithfully reproduces the scope of the Foucaultian ap-

proach and the implications for the individual through liberal usage of other theorizers on Fou-

cault. The globalized theorizing of other concepts of power are taken into account while the

Foucaultian perspective is allowed to breathe in the air of its value as a critique of scientificity

inherent in other concepts of power.

The “scientific discourse” for Morris is rightly a summary of Foucault’s break with Al-

thusser, the Frankfort school, and their distinction of things, into an arena of possibility framed

through the context of power/knowledge (p. 439). Marxist conceptions of power as vested in the

state as well as Frankfort School concepts of power as a knowable thing are thusly problema-

tized. Power is not to be tamed according to Morris‘ reading of Foucault. Instead the study of

the “techniques and tactics of domination” is the purview of Foucault’s inquiry (p. 439).

This new “disciplinary technology” which emerges from Foucault’s inquiry into the

Prison are found to be manifest in workshops, schools and hospitals as well as other social ar-

rangements. Another facet of this notion of power is that it is resolutely not in the hands of any

one person (p. 439). Conversely, power not manifest as a tangible thing and not held by any in-

dividual can only operate through an organization of networks that is concomitant with the

process of Western industrialization and economic organization. Morris quotes Foucault on this

point:

When I think of power, I think of its capillary form of existence, of the extent of which power seeps into the very grain of individuals, reaches right into their bod-

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ies, permeates their gestures, their posture, what they say, how they learn to live and work with other people. (p. 439-440)

Power for Foucault permeates the very living substance of the individual and effects all or nearly

all facets of their creation of reality and physical space.

Though power permeates the modern Western individual, Morris notes that in Fou-

cault’s later work he does not imply that the individual is created from the effects of the power/

knowledge circulation (p. 440). The later work of Foucault focuses on the individualizing nature

of power/knowledge and how individuals turn themselves into subjects. The totalizing and indi-

vidualizing power that coerces and is accepted by the individual in their own metacognitive and

physical creation is traced to the model of the good pastor in Western Christianity (p.440-441).

Hartmann, John. 2003. Power and Resistance in the Later Foucault. In 3rd An-nual Meeting of the Foucault Circle. John Carroll University, Cleveland, OH.

Recounting the turn from studying power circulation to how the subject creates them-

selves is John Hartmann. In Hartmann’s recounting of Foucault’s shift of focus, power exists in

an antagonistic symbiosis with resistance. However, resistance as a set of techniques for the re-

action or negation of power is problematic for a positive resistance in the Foucaultian sense of

the term. As ‘resistance’ is not conceived of as external to ‘power’ the potentiality of a positive

reaction against a pervasive behavior changing subjectivity is problematic at best (p. 3). Hart-

mann, through his reading of Foucault’s works, implies that the Foucaultian multiplicity of nodes

where power circulates:

...leads to a conception of resistance in which it is the possibility of reversal within specific force relations, the contestation of specific objects and impositions of power on subjects, that is fundamental to the creative possibilities for resis-tance within power. The problem in this rendering of power and resistance is that

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resistance becomes entirely reactive in this model, or merely a reacting-to power and not a positive action on its own terms. (p. 3-4)

Reactive assertions against power are therefore of concern to the totalizing and individualizing

sense of governmentality that Foucault creates in his earlier thought.

To reconcile the negative resistance Foucault needed to conceive of a resistive technique

that would not occupy the same negative symbiosis with power. Three guiding principles seem

to be considered of importance for Foucault’s ‘transition’ to a genealogical discussion of critical

resistance and governmentality. First and possibly most important, Foucault uses what Hart-

mann describes as the “idea of a non-fascistic way of life” (p. 4). Second, Foucault traces the

roots of his biopolitical analysis further into antiquity. Third, Foucault draws on Kant to outline

a “model of critique as limit-attitude” while contrasting these Kantian concepts against the So-

cratic provocation of “truth-telling” (p. 5). Through these insights, Hartmann invokes a differ-

ence of thought in Foucault between The History of Sexuality Vol. I and Volumes II and

III. In the latter works Foucault recounts the role of “recalcitrant flesh resistant to the word of

God” as part of the principle differences in mechanisms for the control of the self inherent be-

tween the Roman and Christian eras (p. 6).

The depth of Christian subjectivity has implications for the technology of the state. It is

not a radical change in subjectivity. Instead, Foucault asserts, the change is in the mechanisms

and techniques used to enforce that subjectivization of populations. Furthermore, it uncovers a:

...particularly insidious alliance between the emergence of governmentality and the Christian pastoral which results in the police becoming the specific technol-ogy of the State. In policing all aspects of life, the police, as instrument of the State, comes to take over the role of pastoring to a population or flock. (p. 7)

Subjectivity in the Christian era therefore is a fundamentally different set of power relations than

could be found in the Hellenic and Roman periods.

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The period between The History of Sexuality Vol. I and the second and third vol-

umes marks a break within Foucault’s own line of thinking. However, the break opens up a

realm of possibility for resistance towards the forms of power that have arisen from the pastoral

turn. More importantly this resistance is positive and involves a structuring of techniques of the

self that allow the subject to positively resist the technology of the State and its governmentality

(p. 8-9).

Hartmann outlines the change in an essay Foucault wrote in between The History of

Sexuality Vol. I and Volumes II and III:

In other words, the analysis of power in “The Subject and Power,” through the emphasis on the effect of action upon action, also serves to highlight the positive manner in which the subject is able to act upon his or herself, or the relation of oneself to oneself. While Foucault does not abandon the idea of force relations outlined in Volume I, he does complicate and recast it – if power functions through the structuration of a field of possible actions, resistance to power should not only be understood in terms of agonistic force relations, but in terms of a cre-ative traversing of the field of possible action. Resistance – positive resistance – is no longer merely reversal, but consists in a subject’s becoming-autonomous within a structured set of institutions and practices through immanent critique. (p. 10)

The subject, in Foucault’s later work, within the constraints of domination and subjugation has

access to positive resistance against governmentality through locating and examining boundaries

of domination. Power, as a system that adapts and constricts with each movement of the subject,

can be resisted against when possible movement is considered through critique outside of the

limits dictated by circulating power.

Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Paul Rabinow. 1983. Michel Foucault: Beyond Struc-turalism and Hermeneutics. Second ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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Incorporating the increased complexity of the later Foucault, Dreyfus and Rabinow’s re-

counting of the Foucaultian concept of power is careful in representing the philosopher’s insight

into the circulating idea of power. Primarily, Foucault was diligent in pointing out that his ideas

did not amount to a theory (p.184). Neither was it an ahistorical or objective recounting of his-

tory. Instead:

“Foucault’s aim is to isolate, identify and analyze the web of unequal relation-ships set up by political technologies which underlies and undercuts the theoreti-cal equality posited by the law and political philosophers. Bio-power escapes from the representation of power as law and advances under its protection. Its “rationality” is not captured by the political languages we still speak. To under-stand power in its materiality, its day to day operation, we must go to the level of the micropractices, the political technologies in which our practices are formed.” (p. 185)

Resulting from this understanding of political technologies and their effects on the body, a num-

ber of conclusions can be drawn.

The first conclusion drawn from the micropractices of political technology that Foucault

uncovers is that power is not solely the exercised or potential power wielded by a political insti-

tution. Instead, power is a productive force that moves from the top down as well as from the

bottom up. It finds its productive power in the collective goal assigned or created by an institu-

tion, society or group. Political technologies employed cannot be identified with a specific insti-

tution, however, finding localizations within institutions can and does tend to compel the cre-

ation of further productive actions of political technologies across institutions and between them

(p.185).

The inter-structural nature of power leads to a second insight for understanding the Fou-

caultian essence of power. “Power is a general matrix of force relations at a given time in a

given society” (p. 186). Foucault’s study of the prison is an example of a matrix (the prison)

with a specific society (prisoners and guards) in a shared, if unequal, surveillance and disciplin-

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ing function. His third insight comes on the heels of this relationship. Domination of one indi-

vidual over another, or many others, is not denied to exist. But even in the most intentional or

unequal of hierarchical relationships both the master and slave are encapsulated in an operation

of defining the ‘self’ through the relations formed amongst and between them. Autocoloniza-

tion, a term that Dreyfus and Rabinow use to describe this process, is the essence of power rela-

tions leaving neither party untouched in any encounter with power (p. 186).

The processes involved in the internal reorganization of the subject do not happen in a

vacuum, nor are they directly intended to change the subject in such a manner. This forth dictum

that Foucault uncovers is important for his analytics of power relations: the intelligibility that he

uncovers in his studies, which would otherwise be obscured by the everyday decision making

that takes place in institutions and societies. Termed a “local cynicism of power”, the political

act of making a decision is in itself an attempt to remove personal or secret motivations from de-

cisions (p. 187). At this level, specific acts, contestations and positional maneuvering is gener-

ally straightforward within the political decision making process and is intelligible through inter-

pretation. However, and most importantly, this process does not imply an intelligible subject of

shared belief amongst and between political actors that can be abstracted and studied. Dreyfus

and Rabinow quote Foucault’s famous proclamation that power relations are “intentional and

non-subjective” (p. 187)

The fifth and final insight into power that Foucault offers addresses the rift that is opened

by power possessing an inherent intentionality and no final purpose. The answer, for Foucault,

was in the practice of decision making in the local cynicism of power. When decision makers

within a local cynicism of power encountered “specific obstacles, conditions and resistances” a

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sort of historical internal logic emerged through the process of autocolonization and the voli-

tional engagement of discussion and a certain pragmatism towards solutions (p. 187).

Any certain directionality implied from this process is not an inherently stable functional-

ism nor an historical equilibrium. Inequality has existed and does exist. A lack of directionality

pointed at a final purpose and only arising as a consequence “from petty calculations, clashes of

wills, meshing of minor interests” cannot lend itself to a theory that requires a certain belief

about directionality and certainly a final purpose (p. 188). In this regard, Foucault has problema-

tized theories of power and much of the descriptive ability of social science theorists who rely on

them.

Conclusion

The new study of power/knowledge is indeed a complex tangle of ideas. However, the

inquiry of Foucault and those who have studied him have rightly called into question the

paradigmatic conceptions of the individual and the role circulating power has in conditioning and

affecting ones own subjectivity. But in this objectifying and individualizing process, as it most

certainly cannot be called a theory, the ground work for an analytical inquiry into the resistance

against the way power has formed is laid out through the contestation, through confrontation and

familiarization, with the various ways that power has manifested in conceptions of self held by

an individual.

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Works Cited

Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Paul Rabinow. 1983. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Second ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1982. The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry 8 (4):777-795.

Hartmann, John. 2003. Power and Resistance in the Later Foucault. In 3rd Annual Meeting of the Foucault Circle. John Carroll University, Cleveland, OH.

Morris, Brian. 1996. Western Conceptions of the Individual. Oxford: Berg. Original edition, 1991.

Rouse, Joseph. 2005. “Power/Knowledge”. In The Cambridge Companion to Fou-cault. Edited by Gary Gutting. Cambridge University Press.