Foucault and the Problem of Power

The problem of power. This sentence really has two meanings. The first, and perhaps more plain meaning is that power and systems of control and domination are problematic in that they can unfairly constrain action. The second: it is just difficult to adequately talk about power. What is it? How does it work? There has been a hot of hot air spoken about 'power', and it takes on almost an occult-like meaning (and Foucault is partly to blame for this). I do think, however, that one can make sense of power, specifically Foucault's use of the term, and speak more sensibly about it. However, in order to address the first problem of power, I must attend to the second, and I will do so now.

What exactly is 'power'? It is absolutely fundamental to Foucault's project, but its nature is not clearly stated. He states that 'power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere... power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society' (Foucault, 1990, p. 93), so in this sense is not merely agentic or structural. However, Foucault also states, 'power exists only when put into action' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 219). So, how are we to make sense of these seemingly irreconcilable statements? First, it would be erroneous to look at these statements ahistorically. There was a trajectory to Foucault's project and he changed his mind on certain points (for instance, the large breaks or discontinuities between different epistemes, or paradigms, was gradually replaced by a subtler continuity between epochs of thought). So, this apparent inconsistency between these two statements may indeed be only an illustration of Foucault changing his mind, however, I think there is more to it than that. I think that these two statements extend one another - they point to two different ways in which power is exercised and operates. This I will illustrate and explain through an exegesis and interpretation of Foucault's work on power.

Given these assertions that i) 'power comes from everywhere...', ii) 'power exists only when put into action', and iii) 'power is... [a] cluster of relations', we have what appears to the beginnings of a formulation of an idea of 'power'. These three statements, I think, can be described as referring to three different ways in which power, as Foucault understood it, can be exercised. Respectively, (i) refers to society and its norms, (ii) refers to intentional action, and (iii) refers to discursive systems.

It is suggested by these statements that power can only be exercised in a state of relation. It gets put into action, and only then can its effects be made present. But the fact that power can only be exercised in relations presupposes that the ability to exercise power is already present prior to the relation. At this point, I think that it will prove useful to introduce some of the thoughts of John Searle that he explores in his books, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (2010), and Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power (2007). In doing so, I aim to augment this investigation of Foucault, since I see Searle as a contributor to this topic.

In these two books, Searle argues that the existence of power has to be separated from what is it usually confused with: its exercise. Power is an ability, a disposition or a force that is able to be exerted. However, that ability exists prior to its exercise, and it can exist without ever having been exercised (Searle, 2010, p. 145). 

What exactly is this ability? It can be any ability inherent to the entity that possesses it. For instance, one's car has the ability to be driven at top speed even if one never does so, and the Prime Minister has certain abilities that he may never exercise, ie dissolving parliament. So, the existence of power is to be separated from its exercise, and the existence of the ability is prior to its exercise

1) Existence of Power: the ability A that X has which enables X to do some particular action Y.

Though this general notion of power as 'ability to do something' can apply to a vast array of entities, the certain kind of power that is of concern here is social or political power - the power that human beings have over other human beings. This sort of power differs from that of the car engine in that human who exercise such power do so in order create possibilities and opportunities in order realise ulterior purposes. This sort of power is a specific form of social reality which forms much of our institutional reality. In order to see how this works, specifically regarding Foucauldian notions of power, a key term that must be explored: 'discourse'.

Discourse is a murky term in Foucault. In fact it is not until the near end of his Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) that he gives discourse something of a definition, namely '[it is] an entity of sequences of signs in that they are enouncements (statements)' and that '...[it can be described as] a certain way of speaking...'(Foucault, 2002A, p. 121, 213). This 'way of speaking' constitutes relations between signs and objects, subjects and other statements in a more or less formal way through the 'accepted concepts, legitimised subjects, taken-for-granted objects, and preferred strategies, which yield justified truth claims' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. xxiv).

At its core, this account states that institutional facts are products of speech acts that assign status functions to certain things (objects, or states of affairs). According to Foucault, the relationship between discourse and institutional reality is at times circular and constitutive. For instance, say a couple gets married in a church. At the end of the ceremony, the priest declares 'I now pronounce you man and wife'. This speech act uttered by the priest performs the function of marrying the couple, but not by itself. The speech act itself has its meanings but meaning alone is not enough to get people married. I, for instance, cannot walk down the street saying 'I now pronounce you husband and wife' to passersby and have them become thus married. Additionally, intentionality is not enough. I could sincerely want to have people get married every time I say, 'I now pronounce you husband and wife', but that will not work. This certain declarative speech act only has the power to function marry people, and thus create a social fact, if the right person says it, and for a person to be 'the right' person, they also must be recognised to be so. So, in the case of the priest, he can create the institutional fact of marriage because he was declared a priest when he was inaugurated by a bishop, and thus given the authority to perform such an exercise. The people participating in the marriage recognise the authority of the priest to perform such an act and assent to the proceedings.

This example illustrates the constitutive and circular nature of the relationship between discourse and institutions as certain statements are only 'constituted as serious by the current rules of a specific truth game in which they have a role' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 54). So, the discursive practices (such as speech acts, and ceremonies) can constitute institutional facts (like marriage), however, the continuing practice of the institution of marriage reinforces the already existing discursive practices (Foucault, 2002A, p. 120-124). This is can be formulated in the Searlean terms: X counts as Y in context C.

In the case of marriage, within the context C (a religious ceremony), the phenomenon X (the couple) has the symbolic status Y (being married). So, institutional and social facts are created via speech acts and these speech acts in embedded in certain discourses (ie: marriage, eligibility, religiosity, etc). But how does this relate to the exercise of power?

Power via discourse is not necessarily the enforcement of prohibitions but is also the expression of language and practices that obey certain rules which have been created by particular cultural conditions, rules and expectations that have been laid out by those very institutions. This has been demonstrated in the marriage example.

According to Foucault, discourses are formulated by our use of language, and we often fail to realise the ways in which our own language community constitutes what we talk about. Our language practices are arbitrary and yet have become second nature to us, and as such, without knowing it, we group similar objects, separate distinguishable ones, and thus constitute categories and its members (ie, race, gender, worker, et cetera).

An object is constituted by what Foucault calls, a 'unity of discourse'. The unity of discourse on a particular object 'would be the interplay of rules that define the transformation of these objects, their non-identity through time, the break produced in them, the internal discontinuity that suspends their permanence' (Foucault, 2002A, p. 36). To make sense out of this idea, let's take 'madness'. 

For instance, we constitute the object of 'madness' by a set of rules that allows us to say that one is 'mad' (or not) together with the interplay of rules that defines the madness as dissolved (cures, treatment, rehabilitation). The key point that Foucault is making here is that the unity of discourses on madness, for instance, would not be based upon the existence of the object 'madness' itself; it is not something that was waiting 'out there' in the world for us to discover it, but rather it would be the resultant categorisation of the rules and practices that make possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time and the practices that obey and constitute such rules. To elaborate further, Foucault thinks that discourses play the role of 'legitimating' power by emphasising the construction of current 'truths' and they are maintained by what power relations they carry with them. The objects that have been constituted by the unity of discourse embody the ideas of the discourse, and the reflection of those ideas within the object perpetuate the discourse.

[For instance, a] factory is not an inert pile of bricks, wood, and metal. It incorporates or actualizes schemas....The factory gate, the punching-in station, the design of the assembly line: all of these features of the factory teach and validate the rules of the capitalist labor contract...In short, if resources are instantiations or embodiments of schemas, they therefore inculcate and justify the schemas as well...Sets of schemas and resources may properly be said to constitute structures only when they mutually imply and sustain each other over time (Sewell, 1992 in Haslanger, 2011, p. 194).

The surprising conclusion that Foucault arrived at was that individuals, like objects, are so constituted. Individuals, like objects, are constituted by discourses because individuals in language communities are categorised and shaped, but unlike objects, behave, according to the background assumptions generated by the discourses.

The idea behind Foucault's account is that for someone to be 'mad', for instance, that person must be in a community wherein people have a concept of 'madness' and also regard that person as falling within the bounds of that concept. As stated above, people are divided by the concepts of their language community, but they are not divided by the concept, per se. There must be individuals who use the concept to divide (Root, 2002, p. S632, fn.5).

This can be formulated as such:

(2) Discursive Division: Category K divides people iff they divide themselves by K. Furthermore, madness M is a K iff it is used to divide people at a site S. A person is M at site S iff M is used by people to divide people at site S.

Categories that are used to divide people can imbue those people with certain abilities that can be enacted in certain ways. This is not meant to sound mysterious. If, at site S, in context C, a person Y satisfies the constraints needed to fulfill a category K, which is used to divide people.    

According to Foucault, this is an exercise of power and it is not something that can be owned, but rather something that is manifested in a certain way:

Power must be analyzed as something which circulates, or as something which only functions in the form of a chain . . . Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organization . . . Individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application (Foucault, 2003, p. 29). 

I’d augment this above quote slightly to read, ‘Individuals are the vehicles of power, not [only] its points of application’. This provides some added clarity by removing the occult-like suggestiveness and bridges the gap between individual exercises of power and the aggregate discursive practices.

With all the above facets in mind, it appears that a Foucauldian understanding of Power is a capacity or force, and it is exercised in various ways in order for one person or persons to make another person or persons do something. Power relations are the strategies that individuals use to control the conduct of others (Foucault, 1997, p. 298). Given this, the formulation is as follows:  

(3) Exercise of Power: A exercises power over B if A affects B in a significant manner (ie, making B do/want something that B would not have otherwise done/wanted) in context C. 

For example, a parent A exercises power over his or her child B when A orders/scolds/rewards B in order that the child behave in a way that is appreciated by the parent. It is important to note that A can exercise power over B even if A is not successful in achieving their goal. For instance, a parent can still exercise power over their child even if the child does not comply with the requests, orders, or scolding by the parent. This is because A can exercise power over B under one description, and then that exercise of power can have unintended consequences. Those unintended effects of the initial exercise of power can be acted upon, and perpetrated, and thus power is being exercised unintentionally with regards to that effect.

As stated at the outset, there are three rather mysterious Foucauldian statements: i) 'power comes from everywhere...', ii) 'power exists only when put into action', and iii) 'power is... [a] cluster of relations'. Given what has been stated thus far, I think that it is now the case that certain formulations of Foucauldian notions of power can be made to address each of these claims.

The most mysterious one is (i) 'power comes from everywhere...' How are we to make sense of this? It cannot literally mean that power, and specifically social/political power, the power that people have to make others do something comes from all things and all spaces. I think that this rather mysterious sentence is referring to something like 'social pressure'. This pressure to conform to the norms of society is exercised constantly so that one conforms to the norms. And even if one does not wish to transgress the norms of society, one will still feel the force of that power. The power that would be exercised against a transgressor lies dormant - this is because if power is the ability to get someone to do something whether or not they want to do it, and one has that ability whether or not they ever use it, then it is latent. This dormancy, or latency is, seemingly, a part of its very ability to affect others – it acts as a threat (Searle, 2010, p. 156-158). For instance, if I wished to walk down the street naked, I would immediately experience the social sanctions that would be thrust upon me as a result of my transgression against the 'wearing clothes in public' norm. However, perhaps if we were not pressured to conform to such a norm, as some people do (nudists, and 'naturalists'), then, perhaps, we would not do what we currently do, which is abide by the norm.

The second statement 'power exists only when put into action'. This sentence can be interpreted as referring to the exercise of power. Power is an ability, but the exercise of power is having that ability be manifested. This may seem at odds with the above notion of dormant social pressure, however, as stated previously, power can be exercised under one description, however, that exercise can have unintended effects. So, power exists when it is put into action, however, it can be put into action unconsciously.

Thirdly, 'power is... [a] cluster of relations'. Power is 'integrated into a disparate  field  of possibilities brought to bear upon permanent structures' (Foucault, 1983, p. 219). Power cannot be exercised in isolation. There have to be two actors that form a network for power to be exercised. These relations form a web into which we are locked. Our lives are infused in invisible systems of power. These systems are formed through combinations of discourses, institutions, common practices, shared backgrounds and understandings, et cetera. It is through this sort of web of institutions, meanings, practices et cetera that humans can exercise power over other humans.

References:


Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 1983.

Foucault, Michel. An Introduction. Vol. 1 of History Sexuality. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1990.

_____________. Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York, NY: Routledge, 2002A.

_____________. Society Must Be Defended. Edited by David Macey. Translated by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-1976. New York, NY: Picador, 2003.

Haslanger, Sally. "Ideology, Generics, and Common Ground." In Feminist Metaphysics: Explorations in the Ontology of Sex, Gender and the Self, edited by Charlotte Witt, 179-207. New York, NY: Springer, 2011.

Searle, John. Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007.

___________ Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.