(This is part 2 of the summary, if
you haven't done so, read part one of the summary first)
Michel Foucault's "The Subject and Power" describes the manner in which power
relations determine subjects. In order to track these power relations he
examines different strategies of resisting power. Foucault lists a few such
struggles of his time like women resisting men's power, children resisting
parents, patients resisting the medical establishment etc. and holds that they
all share a few features.
1.
They are not limited to one country or one political system.
2. Resistance
is not directed at entire power fields but rather at the manner in which power
is wielded within the field. For example, criticism of modern medicine does not
denounce its profit driven motivation but rather the way it treats people while
seeking profit.
3.
These struggles are "immediate" in that that engage close by phenomena
and not core issues, not the central enemy but the most adjacent one.
4.
The struggles do not peruse and utopic future of some sort, which makes them
according to Foucault anarchistic in nature.
5.
These struggles question the statues of the individual. On the one hand they
advocate for the right to be different and on the other they protest separation
between people which binds them to binary identities (like the distinction
between homo- and heterosexuals which drives them apart).
6.
These struggles oppose knowledge and skills. On the one hand they protest the tyranny
of knowledge (like with doctors and patients) and on the other hand the criticize
the distortion or concealment of reality (a legacy from Marx's concept of ideology).
7.
Finally, Foucault holds that all these struggles revolve around the question:
who are we? they protest the state's administrative notion of
"population" or "groups" and demand recognition as individuals.
The
essential quality of all these struggles, says Foucault, is that they do not
oppose a group or institution but rather a mode or "technique" of
power. This mode is characterized by operating in the realm of daily life. It
classifies individuals into categories, ties them to their identities, forces
them to be recognized and the recognize themselves in accordance to a law of
truth. Power, for Foucault, turns individuals into subjects (very similar to
what Louis Althusser
says).
According
to Foucault in "The Subject and Power" you can distinguish three
types of politic struggles: struggles against modes of control (e.g. religious,
social etc.), struggles against forms of exploitations which separate people
from the product of their labor (like the socialist/Marxist struggle) and
struggles against different types of subordination which bring individuals
under the power of others while creating subjectivity (what he calls "subjection").
Foucault holds that all these forms of
opposition are prevalent throughout history but that the latter one is becoming
the dominant mode of our time.
Foucault
attributes this to the development of a new form of political power that
appears in the 16th century. This mode of power is manifested in the state but
it originates in a technique of power wielded by the Church. While the state is
often viewed as favoring the interest of the whole over the individual, Foucault
says it both "individualizes" and "totalizes" at the same
time. That is, the state both groups people together and separates them from
one another. Through this they grant them individuality which is in fact
opposite to independent autonomy since it is determined from outside.
For
Foucault this technique of power is based on what he calls "Pastoral
power", which is a topic worthy of its own post, which will be part three of our summary of Foucault's "The Subject and Power".
More about Foucault:
See also:
Knowledge is power, get some:
