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lec 1 fouc fw 22 sep09
Lec 1
Foucault and Ethics/Truth
Purpose of the university: its mission
Academe in search of:
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Philosophical foundations of knowledge
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Methods of developing Self-knowledge
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Methods of inquiry into the world
Morrison (2000): University must examine, evaluate, posit and reinforce values.
Giroux (2002): Corporate culture has intruded into and taken over the university
Tsoukas (1997):
• As we have begun to think in this information society that greater knowledge would
lead us to transparency in society
• Knowledge has come to mean information
• Useful information is understood as “objectified, abstract, decontextualized
information”
Applying Foucauldian framework to Morrison:
Genealogy of Power/Knowledge
1. Biopower
2. Instrument:
• Governmentality
3. Self:
• Passive, Docile, Normalized Object
4. Place:
• School & University
• Medical Labs & Machines
• ‘House Of Certainty’
5. Mechanisms:
• Biopolitical learning & research
• Techno-scientific Inventions to Normalize the personal Body/Mind & Social
Body
Genealogy of Power/Knowledge (cont’d)
6.
Technique of discipline
• Fear of social failure
• Fear of joblessness
• Goal: control over body & its objectification
7.
Knowledges/Discourse:
• Power to expertise
• Creation of instrumental knowledge
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8.
• Discourse: Normalization (as Student)
Historical Process:
• Subjectification
• Education
• Disciplined for workplace
1. Biopower
-Power to expertise
-Power produces knowledges
-Controls the births, deaths, reproduction and illnesses of a population
Instrument:
2. Governmentality
• Centralized, increased power of university administration and business corporate world
• Power of surveillance/reinforcement of rules
• Construction of expert or professional "knowledges" , institutions and disciplines (e.g.,
business, political science, economics, medicine, psychology, psychiatry)
• Experts also command the power of governmentality.
3. Self: Passive, Docile, Normalized, Objectified
- “Consensual conformity” of students/faculty and constraining the “docile bodies”
through admissions/hiring , financial and behavioural control.
- Faculty/students are examined, tested and isolated by administrative experts to become
passive and docile bodies
- Willingly they subject themselves to Internet education, research technologies and
become normalized and subjectivized
4. Place:
In School/Class/labs – Students/faculty are given an identity number
Isolated and reggulated as individual learners
5. Mechanisms:
Business and politics empowers technologies and experts as scientific advancements
Techno-scientific research and inventions to normalize the ‘abnormal’ Self & Social Body
Genealogy of Power/Knowledge (cont’d)
6. Technique of discipline
• Threat/Fear of social failure
• Threat/Fear of joblessness
• Goal: control over Body & its objectification
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7. Knowledges/Discourse:
1. Power to Knowledge /Expertise: The university system regulates and monitors hiring,
teaching and research procedures – This power is disciplinary – it fits knowledge to the
expectations of Business and socio-political expectations of what is ‘normal’
2. Creation of instrumental knowledge
• Internet and other new technologies have the power to intrude into the
creation of ‘knowledge’
3. Discourse: subjectification/normalization - No longer are student/faculty as individuals
in a position to shape one’s ‘self’ through questioning/expressing their ethical values
8. Historical Process:
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Emergence of professionalism: rise of schools/universities
Treatment of
individuals/society depend on professional expertise
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Industrial/technical revolution: Learning for the needs of business and workplace
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Subjectification: The authority of knowledge-experts, curriculum to learn the
procedures of workplace routinization – this power seriously manipulate “the subject’s
consciousness” to fit the business and technological world of profit
Morrison (2000): University must teach students to examine their own values and those of society.
Process: Interrogation of U’s purpose:
Students/ profs. must be encouraged to:
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do public volunteer service
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debate readings and their political implications
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do research for public good not private profit
•
interrogate complex ethical problems
University’s role:
• Guard civic freedoms through ensuring democratic practices
• Examine social problems and individual responsibilities in establishing ethics/truth in
behaviour
Giroux:
Higher education
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is seen as a commodity
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embodies value of market driven self interest
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promotes consumer life styles
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produces market identity
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lacks accountability & social responsibility
Giroux: Corporate funding of and corporate culture in higher education:
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reduces ability of the state and civil society
• Driven by profit motive - ‘pure’ (vs.‘applied’) research
• Experiments at the cost of ethics
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advances vocational learning vs. pure knowledge
Olivieri:
Corporate profit vs. ethical research
The university, a school of learning, has turned into an industry: Why and How?
University is a:
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Key component in a meritocracy, the sine qua non of an open market
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Billion $ business - most high school graduates attended college
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Profit producing machine : Six times the revenue the steel industry generates
Lack of ethics in corporate strategies & in stock markets
Disciplinary power
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Cultural values determine how society exercises control over its people.
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Who defines what is ‘normal’?
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What impact does ‘non-normal’ label have on those who are so designated?
• Who are those who get to control the ‘non-normal’ people?
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Why and how the designators control the designated?
Disciplinary power (cont’d)
The answers to these questions change over time as power arrangements in society shift. e.g:
Historical periods in ‘knowledge’ construction and dissemination:
1. Priests controlled knowledge & dissemination
2. State and private Endowments set up universities & curricula.
3. Professionals as experts accredit & regulate ‘what’ is knowledge
4. Information technologies create and disseminate so called ‘knowledge’
5. Corporate funding impacts, regulates and interferes with the autonomy of the university (a
repository of knowledge).
Foucault’s argument:
The ruling/regulating power ultimately decides and develops the systems for managing and controlling
people: e.g.,
In different periods, power creates or changes:
Law
Education
Professions
Market regulations, etc.
Tsoukas:
• the ‘know how’ of those participating in the events reported is transformed into the ‘know that’
• Information reductionism
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Knowledge is viewed as a manual
Information is defined by the chosen representations – they exist independently of human
agents
“A world that is seen as consisting of sums of information, makes social engineering a very
tempting way of thinking and acting. Foucault dubbed the kind of action associated with social
engineering ‘governmentaIity’ ”
Tsoukas:
• Popular public assumption is: “if those in charge ‘know’ what is going on, they can manage a
social system better. ‘To know’ in this context means having information on the variation of
certain indicators that are thought to capture the essence of the phenomenon at hand”.
• Giddens’ ‘expert systems’ - the significant growth of specialized, codified, abstract knowledge.
• Social engineering presupposes that a real phenomenon can be reduced (Reductionism) to be
measurable, standardizable and auditable