Power / knowledge

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In Michel Foucault's theory, power / knowledge form two intertwined concepts. Both emphasize the close relationship between power and knowledge. For Foucault, more extensive and detailed knowledge enables new possibilities of control, which in turn enables the possibilities for further inquiries and disclosure, and thus further knowledge. Even if power and knowledge are not the same, they share many common elements. In Surveillance and Punishment he writes: ... that there is no power relationship without a corresponding field of knowledge being constituted, and no knowledge that does not at the same time presuppose and constitute power relationships.

While Foucault deals extensively in his work with the origins and shaping of knowledge, in the 1970s he particularly researched the connection between power and knowledge. This is particularly pronounced in the works Surveillance and Punishment and the first volume of Sexuality and Truth . His conceptions of biopower were particularly influential in these works , while his general considerations on power met with highly contradicting reactions.

With the connection between power and knowledge, Foucault attacked the position of science as an objective and outside of power relations sphere of knowledge . In the Foucault-Habermas debate , several representatives of political philosophy accused Foucault of giving up the standpoint of knowledge outside power. Because of his theory, he is incapable of criticizing power and domination with justification.

Position in the factory

Questions about the history of knowledge pervade Michel Foucault's entire early work. He was mainly concerned with the question of how certain collections of knowledge gain authority and how individual fields of knowledge can connect with one another. Foucault found discourse formations that determined which concepts could be connected to one another and how statements were to be organized thematically. To be effective, statements must be "serious" and then also credible. Both seriousness and credibility are ascribed to the statements from outside. The discourse formations discovered by Foucault determine which statements are considered "serious" and who has the authority to make such serious statements. Then the discourse formations determine which questions and processes are relevant in order to determine the credibility of serious statements. The discourse formations themselves change over time. Many of Foucault's earlier texts deal with changing these formations.

Knowledge is organized within certain discursive fields that are not only constituted by individual statements, but also by objects, practices , research programs, skills, social networks and institutions. Some elements within these fields are strengthened and are also adapted and reproduced in other contexts. Others remain isolated and become ignored curiosities. Individual statements, skills, etc. do not represent knowledge, but only become and remain significant through use and connection with other statements. As with power relations, individual groups come into conflict with other knowledge groups. These conflicts in turn trigger further research, statements and further technical developments. Where knowledge does not meet with resistance, there is a risk of no further statements being made, of being isolated and ultimately forgotten.

Techniques of Discipline

The inclusion of power in his research into knowledge marks the transition from Foucault's early work into his second, genealogical phase. Foucault began to expand his field of investigation into the volume Surveillance and Punishment . While he had previously dealt with the impact of institutions on the discursive field, he now placed the changes in the discourse field in a practical field of monitoring, disciplining and punishment. Surveillance, discipline and punishment create, on the one hand, new possibilities of social control, but, on the other hand, also enable new knowledge about people.

In Surveillance and Punishment , Foucault contrasts the pre-modern penal systems with those of the 18th and 19th centuries. The systems of the premodern are characterized by physical violence , as shown in torture and corporal punishment . The penal systems are purely destructive, unsystematic and aim to destroy what is to be punished. In their effect they are purely negative. The change that Foucault sees since the Enlightenment is that from irregular but massive interventions by destructive force to uninterrupted restrictions that went along with a much detailed knowledge of humans. Since then, punishments have aimed more at the mind than the body. The goal was no longer revenge, but the reshaping of the person and reintegration into society. While premodern forms of power did little more than destroy the body, discipline and training can, to a large extent, reconstitute the body, evoke new actions, gestures, skills, and ultimately new personalities.

Originally, the techniques described by Foucault were introduced to neutralize and control dangerous elements of society and evolved into techniques that increased the usefulness and productivity of these people. They also began to develop within individual institutions (prisons, hospitals, barracks, etc.), but were expanded and rearranged so that they could be used in a variety of contexts. These techniques in turn determined new objects of knowledge such as certain biographical units such as delinquency , homosexuality , hyperactivity , developmental structures such as adequate knowledge for a certain age or significant distributions such as family histories for certain diseases, a "low-income household" and signs of certain conditions of life even like cholesterol levels .

New knowledge

The techniques of control and discipline led to new forms of knowledge for Foucault. On the one hand, they generated new systematic knowledge about individual individuals. Practices of surveillance, confession and documentation constitute the individual as an object that can be described and analyzed. The 19th century developed numerous programs to identify, classify, measure and calculate objects and people. This became particularly clear in the age of imperialism through colonial masters, missionaries and travelers, who gathered a wealth of knowledge about the colonies visited and made it manageable.

Human sciences and the state enter into a close relationship. While the human sciences rely on government action to collect and document data, the government needs them to effectively discipline and construct its own legitimacy .

The knowledge gained in this way went into the development of the concept of population and its analysis and treatment through statistics . This expansion of knowledge is accompanied by the constitution of normalization , which is shown, for example, by the normal distribution of statistics. Normalization homogenizes on the one hand in the normal point, on the other hand it strengthens individuality, since it makes the deviation of the individual from normality recognizable. Individuals are examined for their relationship to the "normal state" through a large number of interviews, examinations and tests. Deviations from the value defined as normal can lead to exclusion or treatment .

Sovereignty and Power Analysis

In his analysis of power, Foucault accuses political philosophy, with its focus on the power of the sovereign and his legitimacy, of sticking to the categories of monarchy . The great institutions of power that developed out of the Middle Ages - monarchy and state power apparatus - developed amid dense, entangled, contradicting power relationships that were tied to a multitude of objects. They gained acceptance by presenting themselves as outside or above these conflicts. The concept of sovereignty follows from this logic of representation, just as legitimacy is supposed to present a concept outside the conflicts that is able to decide them.

Foucault, in turn, stated that although many forms and practices of sovereignty still exist, these have gradually been replaced by power relationships that do not function according to the idea of ​​sovereignty. They depended on disciplining and regulating power while also producing. These power relations are distributed through extensive social networks and do not exercise power in one direction only. They are also instrumental in the production of important goods such as knowledge, health, wealth or social cohesion. Traditional conceptions of sovereignty and legitimacy are not in a position to grasp these diverse power relations, conceptions such as human rights or justice are inadequate means to criticize the modern power / knowledge connection.

Foucault uses a dynamic concept of power for this. Power is not something that an individual can acquire, own, hold or lose. Power is distributed across complex social networks, and it comes from everywhere. In disciplining societies, practices can only contain power if a certain number of agents direct their actions towards an object, whereby the necessary network often also requires instruments (buildings, documents, etc.) such as practices and rituals. Long-term power relations can exist as well as large-scale power structures, but these require constant reproduction through the smallest power relations. Resistance is an integral part of the system: The network shows numerous points of resistance that can be counterpart, goal, support or instrument within power relationships. These points are just as changeable and variable as the overall power relations.

As a result, however, no negative understanding of power is possible, as is prevalent in many sciences. Power is productive and produces something real: It produces knowledge about the individual, truth rituals and subject areas.

Foucault often describes power in metaphors of war and, in reverse of Carl von Clausewitz, as "politics as a continuation of war by other means". He understands the war metaphor as a counterpart to the economic metaphor, which describes politics in terms of rules and laws. Like war, the totality of power has no meaning and can only be described in tactical terms; in addition, there are no rules that stand outside the totality of power and regulate it.

Power / knowledge and the standpoint of science

From Foucault's point of view, it follows that knowledge is not independent of power. The tradition of critical science to criticize power with the help of knowledge that is outside of this power is therefore irrelevant. Foucault tells his expansion of power and knowledge as a counter-story to the popular narrative of the Enlightenment . While the standard Enlightenment narrative tells of liberation and humanization, Foucault describes precisely these practices as an expansion of prison society and control over individuals. At the same time, however, he denies that there is an independent point of view from which this development could be criticized. Attempting to position knowledge or truth against power, he contradicts, since it is not possible that the expression of knowledge has to occur within power relations. These networks are subject to constant change and are produced from one moment to the next.

While Foucault was politically engaged and active in the disputes of his time, he defends himself against a prominent observer position. The indissoluble connection between power and knowledge does not allow one to take a sovereign standpoint from which these conflicts can be critically assessed. He accused this epistemological sovereignty of the same problems as the sovereignty of the king. For one thing, it would overlook all of the micro-practices in which knowledge is produced. On the other hand, she herself would strive for power, since her aim is to eliminate all conflicting concepts of knowledge and viewpoints. Foucault opposes genealogy , which is supposed to enable knowledge to defend itself against the theoretical, uniform and formal structure of scientific discourse.

reception

Foucault formulates his positions from a critical position vis-à-vis traditional political power concepts, which are mostly based on sovereignty and legitimacy . Numerous critics accuse him that by renouncing these positions Foucault undermines his own point of view, from which he could criticize today's manifestations of power. Foucault's position on power is one of the starting points of the Foucault-Habermas debate . Other critics are Charles Taylor and Richard Rorty . Taylor accuses Foucault that there is no independent truth for him, that there is no way to judge that one power system is better than another and that there is accordingly no justification for fighting to change one power system. For Rorty, Foucault's power theory is followed by a hopelessness that leads to fatalism.

Remarks

  1. Monitoring and punishing p. 39
  2. a b Rouse p. 95
  3. Rouse p. 96
  4. Rouse p. 113
  5. Claude Mangion: Philosophical Approaches to Communication Intellect Books, 2011 ISBN 1841504297 p. 61
  6. a b Rouse p. 97
  7. a b c d Claude Mangion: Philosophical Approaches to Communication Intellect Books, 2011 ISBN 1841504297 p. 80
  8. Rouse p. 98
  9. Rouse p. 100
  10. Claude Mangion: Philosophical Approaches to Communication Intellect Books, 2011 ISBN 1841504297 p. 79
  11. Rouse p. 101
  12. a b Rouse p. 102
  13. ^ Rouse p. 105
  14. Rouse p. 109
  15. ^ Rouse p. 110
  16. Rouse p. 112
  17. a b Bernadette Loacker: Kreativ precarious: Artistic work and subjectivity in Postfordism transcript Verlag, 2010 ISBN 3837614182 p. 146
  18. Rouse p. 111
  19. ^ Rouse p. 106
  20. ^ Rouse p. 107

literature

  • Michel Foucault: Monitoring and Punishing. The birth of the prison . 9th edition. Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch 2271, Frankfurt am Main (German first edition) 1994 / new edition 2008 (original title: Surveiller et punir - la naissance de la prison, Paris 1975, translated by Walter Seitter), ISBN 978-3-518-38771-9
  • Michel Foucault: The will to know. Sexuality and Truth 1 , Frankfurt am Main 1983. ISBN 3-518-28316-2 (French edition Histoire de la sexualité, vol. 1: La volonté de savoir, Paris 1976).
  • Jouseph Rouse: Power / Knowledge in: Gary Gutting (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Foucault Cambridge University Press 2003 ISBN 978-0-521-60053-8 pp. 95-122