Foucault's
series of lectures range a variety of topics, from philosophical
theories to the interpretation of war and its effect on power. In
this section given in January 1976, Foucault wishes to discuss one
academic point, precisely: "how does truth establish the limits
to power's rights?"
Foucault
immediately brings into play two symbolic notions of power, that
of sovereignty and that of domination. He argues that
both of them provide insight into the power relations of society
through their interaction of power and right. Historically speaking,
the sovereignty had worked up until the Revolution, and he
argues that it worked rather well. The division of power through a
hierarchical scale gives the provions to the right of
power, which is the truth invested in the creation and suspension of
power.
Foucault
claims that it is the discourse of truth that decides that power
relations,
"We
are obliged to produce truth by the power that demands truth and
needs it in order to function." Henceforth, Foucault argues that
behind the right to any sort of power, there must be a philosophical
discourse on truth and the subject's relation to it. This
is visible in his notion of sovereignty and domination. In
the former, he claims that the right to power was invested in the
king, that he was the grandest historical actor of his time. In the
sense of domination, however, Foucault puts a monder twist into the
power relations claiming that domination is simply a construction of
truth-rights that determine who exercises power and who is
obliged to obey. This notion of dominative power can be
viewed as the successor to the notion of sovereign power.
Now
that Foucault has established his discourse concerning truth in
the realm of power and right, he
aims to develop it in relation to war and society. It is the "rules
of right, mechanisms of power, truth-effects. Or: rules of power, and
the power of true discourses." These three criteria are
the boundaries that Foucault sets up in order to create
a penetrative perspective into the notion of war.
He
introduces "right as a vehicle which relates not to sovereign
power but rather domination." Namely, to what extent does right
play in the relation to war - who has the ability to call for war,
and why must one be obliged to obey these rules. This social contract
binding us together illuminates the power relations that lie beneath
the conscious surface yet still determine the very nature of our acts
to this day. Hence, he concludes that right "must be viewed not
in terms of a legitimacy that has to be established, rather in terms
of the procedure of subjugation it implements." Foucault here is
saying that right and power are elements that work together in such a
way that they are construction, constantly defining the boundaries of
its own extent. The extent, we will see, is Foucault's primary
interest. His goal it to place and examine power in its extremities,
the outskirts of power, and its extent on society
Furthermore,
this leads to the notion of war which he deems to be an extreme
representation of power relations. Claiming the politics is war
without fighting, Foucault acknowledges that society is in a constant
state of war as a means to maintain social stability. This
subjugation and domination of people through power, and to what
extent they have the right to do so, illuminates the fact that
society is based on war. War is a necessity to social life, for it is
in the continuous struggle between domination and being dominated
that society is able to maintain an equilibrium that does not tip too
far one way or the other. Henceforth, it can be said that Foucault
views war as the extreme limit of power, which acts as something to
maintain the social stability and equilibrium of society. Simply put,
it is the extreme of power that provides the stability to society
through its use of truth and right in the forms of sovereignty and
domination
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