In the two lecture of "Society must be defended" held at the Collége
de France in 1974 Michel Foucault outlines his concepts of genealogy and
disciplinary power, there by offering an alternative understanding of war and advocating
a decentralized view of power. His genealogy consists in the coupling of two
contrasting forms of subjugated knowledge, the scholarly legitimated but
neglected or forgotten historical content and the disqualified, local
knowledge, that did not adhere to scientific standards of validity. For
Foucault, it is essential not to introduce this unearthed knowledge into the
prevailing discourse by claiming its scientific validity but, instead to aim to
deconstruct the very discourse that determines what is to be considered as a
valid form of knowledge and the implicated power effects, that is the
scientific discourse. In this respect, Foucault takes Marx a step further and
reveals how Marx himself was caught in the ideological structure by trying to
make his argument conform to the prevailing discourse of valid knowledge in his
aspiration to establish “the science of history”. Like Tolstoy, Foucault tackle
the inevitable question: “What is power?”. Aiming for a “non-economic” analysis
of power he assumes analysis power as a relationship of force and repression as
its mechanism. Inverting Clausewitz, political power is the continuation of war
by political means. This alternative conception of war goes against the
conventional definiton of war as armed conflict between certain groups. In Foucault’s
definition physical violence is not the essential characteristic of war and,
what is more, the absence of physical violence does not imply the state of
peace. This notion goes hand in hand with Galtung’s conception of violence, who
goes beyond its visible, direct and physical manifestation to include
structural and symbolic forms of violence. As Foucault claims, the means of
this war is violence inherent in social institutions, systems, culture and
symbols. In turn, Galtung suggests a positive understanding of peace as absence
of all forms of violence in achieving social equality. Yet, he conceives of
peace as a process instead of an achievable end state while according to Foucault’s
conception of war peace appears to be an unachievable utopia.
In the second lecture, Foucault focuses
on the “how of power”, in other words, he tries to understand power from within
society, from how it operates rather than who operates it. Power is inextricably
tied to truth and right. While producing itself discourses of truth the discourse
of right, historically related to legitimate authority and sovereignty, today functions to
conceal underlying forms of domination. Hence, similar to Tolstoy Foucault
suggest a less centralized approach to power that becomes apparent in his methodological
precautions.
Instead of focusing on who has the power
in a juridical form he looks at the institutions and mechanisms, how power is
manifest in relationships and networks constituting individuals. It is by
investigating the effects of power in the periphery, in the margins and
extremeties where the excavated knowledge becomes useful. Hence he advances a
bottom-up approach to power. For example he argues that a top-down explanation
from bourgeois interest could explain the exclusion as well as the promotion of
madness and has hence no explanatory value at all. Taking an ascending approach
would reveal that merely the mechanisms of exclusion, control and surveillance
proved to be very efficient and useful to bourgeois interest who then appropriated
the disciplinary power as the main tool of industrial capitalism.
To conceal these mechanisms of power the
public discourse of right and democracy ensures the social cohesion of the
people. The scientific discourse emerges where discourse of right and
disciplinary mechanisms meet: it constructs what is considered to be “normal”
in society imposing further cohesion under the disguise of neutrality.
Foucault’s critique of scientific
discourse is reflected in the tendency of social sciences to adapt methodology
and epistemology of the natural sciences, assuming neutrality, objectivity with
the aim of establishing law-like statement concerning human interaction and
top-down explanations. Foucault, however advocates and employs a bottom-up,
interpretive approach aiming at understanding rather than explaining.
His concept of normalization is very
present in the contemporary society in social norms and pressure to conform as
in wearing certain kinds of clothes and brands, listening to certain types of
music always undergird by the imperative to consume. Social media have in this
respect taken up a prominent role in spreading and constructing these norms.
Indeed, in a way they render Foucault’s surveillance mechanisms largely
obsolete by encouraging the public promotion, optimization and finally,
commodification of the individual via facebook, twitter and co. In other words,
the social body has come to discipline itself by forcing everyone who wants to
take part in social life to make the private sphere public. The ubiquitous
willingness to reveal intimate details of private life has rendered the Orwell's coercive surveillance state obsolete.
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