Foucault and the Critique of Modernity

This post is not a biographical work on Michel Foucault, but a quick sketch of his life and the environment in which he was educated and these help to better understand the philosophical (since his academic formation is psychology and history) aspects of his works: (a) research and analysis of philosophy’s traditional critical project in a new historical manner, and (b) critical engagement with the thought of traditional philosophers.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is one of the French figures usually associated to the radical postmodern philosophies. Despite his bourgeois origins, he sympathized early with vulnerable groups such as artists, homosexuals, and prisoners. Like many young thinkers of his generation, Foucault was largely influenced by the (a) French tradition of history and philosophy of science represented by Georges Canguilhem, (b) French avant-garde literature with the writings of Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, and (c) philosophical milieu and its methods of writing history based on archaeology and genealogy techniques.

The purpose of this post is to explore and reflect upon Foucault’s critique of modernity. First, an analysis of his historiographical approaches (archaeology and genealogy) is provided. Second, Foucault’s postmodern perspectives on the nature of modern power and his argument that the modern subject is a construct of domination are explained. Third, the political implications of Foucault’s genealogical method are analyzed as well as his work on technologies of the self. Finally, by taking the examples of institutions and technologies, this post provides some indications of the conservative aspects of Foucault’s work.

Postmodernism and the Critique of Modernity

Modernism was the cultural revolution of the 20th century, which is as important as Romanticism for the 19th century and the Enlightenment for the 18^th century. The word modern has its origins in the early medieval modernus, meaning that which is present, of our time, and by extension, new, novel, or contemporary. From about 1900 to the 1960s, modernism reigned as a succession of varied movements and styles that reacted against historicism and recognized individual perception and experience as the cornerstone of the creative process.

Postmodernism arrived in the mid-1960s and reached its apex in the early 80s. Postmodernism is an intellectual current that rejects the Enlightenment project of modernity. This involves, among others, a radical critique (and often uncritical rejection) of objectivity, the a priori subject as source of meaning, authenticity, and authority, the importance of truth and abstract reason, the teleological approach of history, the universalizing grand narratives that aspire to completeness and the distinction between high and low culture. For postmodernists, science is nothing more than a narration, myth, or a social construction. 

Analysis of Foucault’s Historiographical Approaches

Archaeology and genealogy are the two approaches Foucault applied to his critique of historical reason. To understand these historiographical models, one should trace the evolution of philosophy from its beginnings with Socrates (and his project of questioning knowledge) to Kant (for whom philosophy is the critique of knowledge) through Descartes (rationalism), Locke (empiricism), and Hume (induction). For instance, Hume thought that expectations are built up based on recurrent experiences that the world in the future will be similar to the past, without any knowledge of anything. For Kant, reality is the sum of what can be experienced. He added that the mind has a set of rules for how experience must be constructed. Kant concluded that the rules must always apply to reality.

Foucault rejected this prescriptive definition of knowledge that establishes a set of conditions which, if met, would equate knowledge with truth, making it certain and definitive. He created a set of rules which can account for how men, at a specific time and place and in particular domains do produce knowledge, separate this knowledge from error, opinion, and beliefs. Foucault did not only accept the scandal of existing knowledge (men at different times and places have known differently), he made this scandal the focal point of his analysis, seeking to identify (using archaeology) the historical conditions of possibility of knowledge.

The history of knowledge, he argued, can be written only on the basis of what was contemporaneous with it, and certainly not in terms of reciprocal influence but in terms of conditions and a priori’s established in time. By using Nietzsche’s genealogy, he described his conception of history as genealogy by delegitimizing and proving the objectiveness of the present and the foreignness of the past. Foucault rejected any form of global theorizing, avoided totalizing forms of analysis and was critical of systematicity. He showed that ideas are usually taken to be permanent truths about human nature and society changes in the course of history.

Knowledge, Power, and Foucault’s Perspectives

Foucault’s theory of power is opposed with classical approaches based on a juridico-political conception of power (Hobbes, Machiavelli) or on class oppositions and domination (Marx). Foucault’s works explored the shifting patterns of power within a society and the ways in which power relates to the self. This led to different appearances of power such as disciplinary power, bio-power, governmental power and repressive power. Discipline and Punish followed Madness and Civilization and The Birth of the Clinic was the next stage in Foucault’s massive project of tracing the genealogy of control institutions (asylums, teaching hospitals, and prisons) and the human sciences were symbiotically linked with them (psychiatry, clinical medicine, criminology, penology).

The main concern of Foucault throughout his publications was the relationship between knowledge and power and the articulation of each on the other. Nietzsche thought that a will to power motivates human behavior and that traditional values had lost their power over society. For Foucault, following Nietzsche, knowledge ceases to be a liberation and becomes a mode of surveillance, regulation, and discipline. Foucault opposed the humanist position that once we gain power, we cease to know (because it makes us blind) and that only those who are no way implicated in tyranny, can attain the truth. For Foucault, such forms of knowledge as psychiatry and criminology are directly related to the exercise of power. He added that power itself creates new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of information.

Technologies of the Self and Political Implications of Foucault’s Genealogical Method

The third major shift of Foucault’s work is the focus on technologies of the self, ethics, and freedom in the 1980s. Technologies of the self are practices by which subjects constitute themselves within and through systems of power. These systems often seem to be either natural or imposed from above. Foucault theorized that the body is a subject of technologies of power. These technologies are established through discourses of “expertise” such as medicine, law, and science. Through these discourses or truth games, individuals develop knowledge about themselves, while bodies become the site of domination through technologies of power, practices of discipline, and surveillance.

Foucault’s work on modern power and government inspired other works (for example, neoliberalism of the New Right) to explore politics and political institutions. Similar to Foucault’s genealogies, most of these works embody hostility to the humanist notions of the subject and truth. This hostility sets up various themes which can be seen as constitutive of a Foucauldian approach to the study of political institutions. These themes can be found in Foucault’s work on power and government. They can be divided into those arising from a critique of traditional structuralism, a critique of the subject, and a rejection of objectivism.

Foucault’s genealogies provided examples for a political science that would take seriously the anti-foundationalist view that we have neither pure experiences nor pure reason. Such view certainly overlaps considerably with Foucault’s concern to decentralize structures, analyze the ways in which individuals are constructed by their social context, and renounce appeals to a natural or immanent reason.

Critical Comments on Foucauldian Perspectives

Having outlined some of Foucault’s arguments against technologies and institutions, the first criticism of his work is that he refused to see any advantage in modernity in some domains like medicine. Unlike Habermas who thought that science is unproblematic when it operates according to the rules of right, Foucault failed on repressive forms of rationalization and never delineated some progressive aspects of modernity. For him, all aspects of modernity are disciplinary, which is quite difficult to accept. Foucault’s analysis did not focus so much on the question of right but rather on the mechanisms through which power effects are produced. Instead of fixing the legitimacy of science or asking what the proper domain of certain knowledge is, Foucault examined the role of certain knowledge in the production of effects of power.

The second criticism of Foucault’s work is that he disregarded the fact that domination has its basis in the relations of production, exploitation, and in the organization of the state. In line with Poulantzas’ criticisms, one can note that Foucault neglected to study the modern form of the state and its derivation from capitalist perspective of production. He did not see that all social phenomena always occur in relation to the state and class division. He exaggerated the importance of disciplinary techniques in the modern state and thus neglected the continued importance of violence, legal coercion, and law in general. Unlike Poulantzas who saw some virtues (reproducing consent) to law and state (involves in constituting social relations and winning mass support), Foucault emphasized only the repressive, prohibitive side of law and the positive productive side of (state) power.

Conclusion

Foucault’s work can be summarized in three major shifts from the archaeological focus on systems of knowledge in the 1960s, to the genealogical focus on modalities of power in the 1970s and to the focus on technologies of the self, ethics, and freedom in the 1980s. Foucault contributed in many fields in the humanities and social sciences. As a member of postmodernist movement and in line with their deconstruction paradigm, he tried to show the problematic and suspicious aspects of rationality, knowledge, subjectivity, and the production of social norms. He thought that the quest of power invaded social and personal life and pervaded schools, hospitals, prisons, and social sciences. Foucault saw a link between power, truth and knowledge and he argued that liberal-humanist values became entangled with, and the supports of technologies of domination. He criticized both macro theorists who see power only in terms of class or the state, and micro theorists who analyze institutions and face-to-face interaction while ignoring power altogether.