NOTES ON MICHEL FOUCAULT
French historian and philosopher (1926-1984)
DISCOURSE:
Discourse: a group of statements which provide a language for talking about, and
“representing” a topic  a discursive formation.
A discourse refers to the rules of formation of statements which are accepted as
scientifically true. A discourse is a question of what governs statements, and the way in
which they govern each other.
Discourse is about production of knowledge through language, and through practices.
The language in which we describe “facts” interferes in the process of describing what is
“true” or “false”.
Power produces knowledge  power is implicated in what is considered to be “true” or
“false”  power and knowledge imply one another.
POWER/KNOWLEDGE (from The History of Sexuality)
Power: a multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and
which constitute their own organization.
Here, Foucault is not referring to a group of institutions that ensure the subservience of
citizens of a state, a mode of subjugation as a set of rules, or a system of domination in
which there are rulers and the ruled.
According to Foucault, power is omnipresent, not because it embraces everything
uniformly, but because it comes from everywhere.
Foucault’s propositions on power:
 Power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of non-egalitarian
and mobile relations
 Relations of power are immanent in other types of relations
 Power comes from below – there is no binary opposition between the ruled and
the ruler.
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 Where there is power, there is always resistance. Resistance is never exterior to
power.
 One is always inside power. There is a plurality of resistances which exist in the
field of power relations.
 Discourses can be an effect or instrument of power. But they may also be a point
of resistance.
 Discourse transmits and produces power, but it also undermines and exposes it.
“Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it, any
more than silences are. We must make allowance for the complex and unstable
process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also
a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an
opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also
undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it.”
From Power/Knowledge:
According to him, right-wing social scientists always perceive power in terms of
sovereignty and law. And Marxists see power in terms of the state apparatus.
Foucault, on the other hand, was interested in how power is exercised and what its
techniques and tactics were.
With these concerns, he studied psychiatry and penal institutions (prison system).
Although these may seem unimportant, for him, psychiatry and penal institutions are
essential to the general functioning of the wheels of power.
Foucault’s criticism of two concepts makes clear his understanding of power: the Marxist
concept of “ideology” and the Freudian concept of “repression.”
He opposes ideology because this concept always stands against something that is
supposed to count as truth. Ideology always refers to a Subject. It is always secondary to
an infrastructure; a material, economic determinant. In Marxism, “base determines
superstructure,” that is, the relations of production determine the ideas. As Marx said, “in
every epoch, the ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.” Marx and Marxist thought seeks
to unravel that ideological stratum to get down to truth, which is the conflictual
relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The Subject who is capable of
knowing this truth is the working class-in-itself.
Foucault says that, rather than ideologies, he is interested in how “effects of truth” are
produced within discourses – which are neither false nor true.
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He opposes the concept of repression because this concept is only about the effect of
power as repression, that is, “power that says no,” that prohibits. It is a juridical
conception of power.
For Foucault, repression is a negative conception of power. And as such, it is incomplete.
*What makes power hold good, what makes people accept it, is that it produces things, it
induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse.
According to his analyses, the “productivity of power” increased after the 18th century in
Europe. A new “economy of power” emerged. Procedures that allowed effects of power
to circulate in a continuous, uninterrupted manner emerged.
Example: In The History of Sexuality, Foucault was concerned with emerging discourses
about infant (children’s) sexuality and homosexuality, among other things. It is often
considered that the emerging bourgeois society of the 18th and 19th century Western
Europe repressed child sexuality and homosexuality as undesirable, sick, abnormal, etc.,
but Foucault rejects this view.
For him, by constantly writing about infant sexuality or homosexuality as a disease, as
abnormal, etc., in fact, the medical discourse created an infant sexual identity, it
sexualized the parent-child relationship, and also, it created a homosexual identity (as
well as a heterosexual one). It should be stressed that until the 19th century,
homosexuality was considered to be an act that a person might engage in the course of
his/her life. Although it was condemned, homosexuality was not considered to be an
identity. But the medical discourse created a homosexual identity. This opened the way
for the creation of a subjectivity around homosexuality, of homosexual desire, etc. Later,
in the second half of the 20th century, homosexual identity became the starting point for
“resistance,” namely, the gay rights movement in the west.
DISCIPLINES (From Discipline and Punish)
Closely related to Foucault’s analysis of power is his concept of “discipline” or
disciplines.
Discipline is a type of power, a modality for its exercise. It comprises a whole set of
instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets. It is a “physics” of
power, an “anatomy” of power, or a technology of power.
Disciplines are techniques for assuring the ordering of human groups with the following
aims: to exercise power at the lowest cost and maximum efficiency and effectiveness; to
increase the docility and utility of the people who are disciplined.
Disciplines emerged in the course of 18th-19th centuries in Western Europe at the
historical conjuncture of two processes: (a) The increase in national populations, and the
increase in the population of institutions which needed to be controlled (such as schools,
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hospitals, prisons, armies, etc.) (b) The growth in the productive apparatus (the
production of commodities, and the “production” of health, education, etc.)
What distinguished the disciplines from previous forms of power based on repression and
violence are the following features:
 Discipline objectifies the people on whom it is applied. This type of power forms
a body of knowledge about the individuals it disciplines, rather than the
deployment of visible signs of sovereignty.
 Population increase and growth of capitalism are interrelated. Disciplining
techniques would not have been possible without the latter, or useful, without the
former.
 There is a parallel between the emergence of a formally egalitarian juridical
framework and a parliamentary, representative political regime in Western
Europe, and the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms.
 Representative regime promises sovereignty by the people, but at the same time,
panopticism and the disciplines guarantee submission of the people.
“The ‘Enlightenment,’ which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.”
The main example that Foucault uses here is the “Panopticon,” a surveillance
technique “invented” by Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian theorist, for the observation
of prisoners. The panopticon consisted of a tower from which, the prisoners down on
the ground could be watched at all times.
According to Foucault, in the modern prison system, “the codified power to punish
becomes the disciplinary power to observe.”
The idea with the panopticon or more generally with the disciplines is that, when one
knows that one is being watched, one becomes more docile and more “useful.” Thus,
discipline is a more efficient instrument of power than repression. (Remember the
movies “Kafka” and “Brazil”).
TECHNOLOGIES OF POWER (from “The Body of the Condemned” in Discipline and
Punish)
Technology of power: the very principle of both the humanization of the penal system
and of the knowledge of man.
History of penal law and the history of the human sciences derive from a common matrix.
The body itself is invested by power relations. The body is a useful force only if it is both
a productive body and a subjected body.
In all punishment, the body is at issue: the body and its forces, their utility and docility,
and their distribution and submission.
The technology of the body is diffuse.
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Microphysics of power: Power exercised on the body is not a property, but a strategy; its
effects of domination are attributed not to appropriation, but to dispositions, maneuvers,
tactics, techniques. This power is exercised, it is not possessed; it is not the privilege of
the dominant class, but an overall effect of its strategic positions.
This power invests the people who “do not have power,” it is transmitted through them
and by them. At the same time, people resist the grip of this power.
Body Politic: a set of material elements and techniques that serve as weapons, relays,
communication routes, and supports for the power and knowledge relations that invest
human bodies and subjugate them by turning them into objects of knowledge.
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