Power/Knowledge:Selected Interviews & Other Writings (1972-77)

Michel Foucault. (1980). Colin Gordon (Ed). New York: Pantheon Books.

Prison Talk (pp. 37-54)
"With the prisons there would be no sense in limiting oneself to discourses about prisons; just as important are the discourses which arise within the prison, the decisions and regulations which are among its constitutive elements, its means of functioning, along with its strategies, its convert discourses and ruses, ruses which are not ultimately played by any particular person, but which are none the less lived, and assure the permanence and functioning of the institution. All of this has to be brought together and made visible by the historian." Foucault asserts that power exists in a capillary form as it operates on body, actions, attitude, and discourses in granularity of every day life. Foucault's suggested study of history is to use a magnifying instrument to make unseen visible. By looking into one particular incident, one may not only reveal the same domain but also add another layer to history. His particular contribution to the study of history is that he started to investigate the relation between power and knowledge. He argues, "the exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power." His comments on university is of interest: "The university hierarchy is only the most visible, the most sclerotic and least dangerous form of this--relation of power and knowledge-- phenomenon...Diffused, entrenched and dangerous, they operate in other places than in the person of the old professor."

Truth and Power (pp.109-133)
This conversation records Foucault's perspective on truth and power and methodological approach to knowledge. By the productive aspect of power, he means power that 'traverses and produces things, induces pleasure, forms knowledge and produces discourse' through the whole social body. According to him, this is a new 'economy' of power--biopower in Hardt and Negri's term. He emphasizes study of power goes beyond the State and sovereignty because the State can only operate on already existing power relations, not regulating all the powers. Detaching power from sovereignty and law, he suggests redefining power as a form of warlike domination, peace as a form of war and the State a means of waging it. As reflected in Hardt and Negri's work, Foucault stresses permanent war in civil society, and questions the role of army and military in this society. [It is interesting to find overlaps with regard to constant war and characteristics of power between Hardt & Negri and Foucault.] Unlike in feudal societies, power is exercied through 'social production' that intends to obtain productive services from individuals in their concrete life, Foucault argues, and thus power has to permeate the bodies of individuals, acts, attitudes and behaviors, as seen in school discipline.

His perspective on intellectuals also meets Hardt and Negri's. Foucault emphasizes 'specific' intellectuals rather than 'universal' intellectuals. He asserts that 'specific' intellectuals, experts or savant, specialized in certain domain of knowledge, maintains concrete awareness of struggles, thus drawn even closer to the proletariat since they confront the same adversary as the proletariat in their own struggles. Their growing importance is exemplified by Foucault with physicists debating in political realm at the turn of the century. He finds the real importance of specific intellectuals in the extention of 'technico-scientific structures' in the economic and strateific domain. Foucault stresses that unlike universal intellectuals, who were the writers of genius and opposed the unjust sovereignity, specific intellectuals are a group of handful people who possess at their disposal power, which can either produce or destroy life. [Here again resonates the concept of biopower by Hardt and Negri.] Foucault continues, the pitfall of experts' struggles lies in lack of a 'global strategy' or 'outside support.' In other words, isolation or singularity lacking network is a problem. [Grounding in this idea, Hardt and Negri argues that a distributed communication network can be an instrument for orchestrating these struggles.]

Foucault says, "truth isn't outside of power." According to him, truth is produced by constraints and induces power through the regime of truth, or the general politics of truth, of each society. The regime of truth is explained by him as follows, "the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded values in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true."

He suggests that political problems for intellectuals should be placed in terms of power and truth rather than science and ideology. In this way, he argues that professionalization of intellectuals, which distinguishes intellectual labors from manual labors, can be 'envisaged' in a new way. Thus, according to him, emancipating truth from power does not hold the same importance as "detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony at social/economical/cultural levels."

The History of Sexuality (pp.183-193)
Foucault argues that one should go beyond focusing on a negative grid of power in terms of justice, technology and strategy and need to see a productive side of it--'bio-power' or 'somato-power'--which operates on the body itself bypassing the subject's consciousness. He also emphasizes on certain power, which is not a projection of sovereign's power. He calls this power the concrete and 'changing' soil that sovereign power is grounded. He criticizes the existentialism with the notion that it lays everything at individual responsibility, while those with a political/economic perspective limit their views to the market economy or capital exploitation. Thus, he brings about new schemas of politicisation for political anaylsis.