Michel Foucault (1926–1984) is
one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Plenty of information about his life and
works is available on the internet. However, this write-up provides a
simplified overview of his complex and yet extremely exciting ideas, which
might help a beginner to start reading his dense texts.
( For his biography click here. Two websites michel-foucault.info and foucault.info are very useful. Stanford Encyclopedia entry is also useful. The documentary on his life is available online.)
Foucault who began his
research in philosophy and psychopathology was intrigued by the phenomenon of
madness in the western civilization. Though the west was familiar with the
phenomenon of madness right from the Greek times and they were represented in the
plays and other texts, the scientific and disciplinary study of the phenomenon
begins only in the nineteenth century. However, before this process of
objectification of mad people, the processes of their social exclusion and
confinement began in the seventeenth century.
This historical observation
has multiple implications:
1.0 What is considered to be universal, constant,
essential and invariant like phenomenon of madness is actually historically variable
one. It has not remained identical over time and it varies from culture to
culture. It is actually historically discontinuous.
What was madness for the
Greeks was not what madness was for the Elizabethans (famous examples of Lady
Macbeth, Hamlet or King Lear comes to my mind) and it is no longer the same
thing in the nineteenth century.
This implication applies to
other cultural phenomenon or societal categories like ‘ literature’ ‘sexuality’
, ‘punishment’ ‘ author’ or even ‘ human body’ and ‘ man’ which are often considered invariable and essential
( ahistorical). Hence one of the gestures of Foucault is to demonstrate
that these categories are historically variable across cultures and periods.
Foucault goes on to analyze social mechanisms that brought about these shifts
in meaning and functions of these categories.
Foucault’s classic essay ‘What is an Author?’ treats the whole category of ‘ author’ as a variable and
constructed category whose function he goes on analyze. Apart from madness, Foucault
maps these shifts and functions of other social categories like sexuality,
punishment and governmentality.
1.1 This implies we need a
different model for understanding history and practicing historiography. In contrast to the linear model of history
based on some idea of ‘ progress’ or ‘development’ which begins with some point
of ‘origin’ and ends with ‘ contemporary’ point, we need a model of history
which does not privilege the idea of origins , essences, identity and ‘
development’, in short a non-teleological model of history. Foucault turns to Nietzsche’s
idea of ‘genealogy’ which underscores non-identity, discontinuity and is not
based on the ideas of origin or progress. Foucault, like Nietzsche also emphasizes
the role of writing history to impact the present times, i.e. the idea of “effective
history”. See his essay, "Nietzsche,Genealogy, History".
Foucault’s treatment of the idea
of author, madness or sexuality is hence, ‘genealogical’.
2.0 The emergence of the
disciplines of knowledge like social sciences of psychiatry , linguistics,
anthropology and the reduction,
subjugation, marginalization, domination of people as ‘ the object of study’,
their ‘ othering’ (e.g colonialism) are not two distinctive or divergent phenomenon but
proverbially “ two sides of the same coin”. That is, both these phenomenon are
produced by the same underlying social
and historical mechanisms. Hence the task of a historian of ideas is to
uncover these underlying social mechanisms or the epistemological grids,
specific to the historical periods (Foucault calls such a grid ‘episteme’).
Such an operation resembles structuralism. However, Foucault terms it ‘archeology
of knowledge’.
The domain of knowledge and
the domain of exercise of power are not seen as mutually exclusive. This brings
us to the next great Nietzschean theme in Foucault’s writing of ‘Will to Truth’
being inseparable from ‘Will to Power’. Foucault
uses the term ‘discourse’ in a specialized sense to indicate a unified
mechanism of producing, circulating, consuming and controlling both knowledge
and power. In Foucauldian view, most of the social categories seen as universal,
pre-discursive and constant by the ‘common sense’ are actually products and effects
of discourses or are ‘discursive constructs’.
.jpg)
This means we have to
radically rethink what we mean by both knowledge and power.
2.1 We cannot see knowledge as a great ‘ascetic’ renunciation of material
power or something which is distant from political domain, nor can we see knowledge
as inherently liberating, emancipating and benevolent.
We will also have to rethink
what we mean by modernity and the Enlightenment is. We cannot think that
modernity is something which is better than previous periods like the Middle Ages
(as many Marxists, neo-Marxists or even progressive liberals do). This
skepticism makes Foucault a ‘postmodern’ thinker who questions the very basis
of progressivism.
2.2 We cannot think of
power as something which is operating ‘top- down’ from the State onto people,
nor can we think about it as being merely coercive or repressive (as many Marxists,
neo-Marxists or even progressive liberals do). Power is pervasive and creative. It produces
knowledge, disciplines, institutions, even selves and people.
Foucault sees power as ‘actions
which control and regulate other actions’. These actions may be on one owns
actions or the actions of the others. One of the concerns in Foucault’s later
works is to see how people use power/knowledge to shape and manufacture themselves and their lives (biopolitics)
and govern themselves in contemporary
times.
Influence and Criticism
Foucault’s influence in
contemporary culture studies and social sciences is immense. One of the most
influential and famous application of Foucault’s theorization is Edward Said’s Orientalism ( 1978) which argues the discipline
of producing knowledge about the East ( Orientalism) cannot be seen
independently of project of colonialism and that the whole discourse of producing
knowledge about the East actually produced
the East as an object to be dominated and consumed. Said’s book inaugurated contemporary postcolonial
studies.
The idea that gender and
sexuality are not ‘pre-discursive’ givens or universals but are discursive
constructs whose effects and functions vary historically and socially and are
open to archeological and genealogical analysis which Foucault elaborates upon
in his classic History of Sexuality volumes
(1976-84) are central to contemporary
Gender and sexuality studies.
Many scholars have been
extremely critical of Foucault.
The German historian
Hans-Ulrich Wehler attacks Foucault of being historically inaccurate and having
tendency to oversimplify. Nancy Fraser claims that Foucault's work is a mixture
of "empirical insights and normative confusions". Richard Rorty points
out that Foucault's 'archaeology of knowledge' is fundamentally negative, and
thus fails to adequately establish any 'new' theory of knowledge per se.
One can look for more
information on Foucault- Habermas Debate and Foucault-Chomsky Debate.
