In "The
Subject and Power" (1982) Michel Foucault summarizes his perceptions on
the human subject and manner in which it is determined by power structures
(offered in long detail in his previous works). Foucault (like other French
philosophers of his time like Louis Althusser) rejects the humanist notion of a free and
rational subject for a view of it as determined by a system of power relations.
At the base of Foucault's view in "The Subject and Power" is the base
assumption that power is not wielded through oppression but rather through the manufacturing
of "individuals". Foucault notes the double meaning of
"subject", both a self-aware topic of something and something which
is controlled, subjected. Both of these meaning s intertwine in the manner
Foucault analyses relations between the subject and power.
Foucault
starts his description of power as turning
the subject into an object, an object of knowledge, of language and of the
power which is mediated through them and that create subjects. He describes
three manners of objectification which turn individuals into subjects. The
first way is modes of inquiry aspiring to the status of science which produce "objective"
knowledge about the subject, thus objectifying life itself. The second practice
of objectification Foucault describes has to do with separation and distinction
such as those drawn between mad and sane, criminals and law abiding citizens (notions
offered in his "Discipline and Punish" or "Madness and Civilization").
The third mode of objectification has to
with the manner in which individuals turn themselves into subjects by identifying
themselves in relations to larger structures, like for example sexual
orientation (discussed in Foucault's "History of Sexuality").
These
processes are related according to Foucault to specific forms of political
rationality, a mode of thinking described by Max Weber which is concerned with appropriating
means to ends. This instrumental rationality, according to Weber, takes over
modernity which seeks control over society (like Weber's example of bureaucracy.
see also in our summary on Weber's rationality and modernism). But unlike Weber that described a general
rationality as the markings of modernity, Foucault draws our attention to more
specific types and modes of rationality which developed in different fields
such as sexuality, psychiatry and science which he thinks predate modernity and
even Enlightenment.
The
next part of our summary of Michel Foucault's "The Subject and Power"
will discuss how he analyses these power relations by examining different ways
of resisting power (see also part 3 of the summary)
See also:
Knowledge is power, get some:
