Abstract
In my two case studies that follow this chapter, I rely heavily on Foucault’s analysis of power/knowledge relations as I attempt to practice the sort of critique which I am here calling politics of truth. This chapter will therefore be focused on Foucault’s idea of power, the relation between power and knowledge, the application of power/knowledge analysis to natural sciences, and the “politics of truth.” In the first section I consider the development of the concept of power in Foucault’s work of the early seventies and then how Foucault used it in Discipline and Punish to analyse the practice of incarceration and in The History of Sexuality to analyse attitudes toward sexuality. The second section is concerned with the relation between knowledge and power. I argue that although power/knowledge relations are diverse and must be studied in their particular and concrete details, there are two general (overlapping) types of power/knowledge relations that can be identified in Foucault’s historical analyses. One has to do with how humans are classified, labelled and studied; the other has to do with biopower, i.e., how, on one hand, populations are managed (“bio-politics of the population”), and, on the other hand, how individuals are disciplined (“anatomo-politics of the human body”).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The idea of human kinds has been investigated by Ian Hacking, for instance in Ian Hacking’s (1986), “Making up people.” Hacking later proposed the term “interactive kinds” instead of “human kinds,” see Hacking (1999, p. 103ff). Hacking has rejected that label as well, claiming that there is no such distinct and definable class of people that can be called a “human kind” or “interactive kind,” see Hacking (2007).
- 2.
As has been pointed out (Esposito 2008, pp. 16–18), Foucault did not coin the term biopower, its use goes back at least to 1905.
- 3.
For details about the story of Henrietta Lacks, see Skloot’s (2010) wonderful book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
- 4.
“What is Critique” as well as some of the other lectures and a related interview have been published in English translation in a collection with the title The Politics of Truth (Foucault 1997).
- 5.
Hacking (1999) has made this point nicely in his book The Social Construction of What?, see Chap. 1 “Why ask what?”.
References
Achbar, Mark (ed.). 1994. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Montréal: Black Rose Books.
Callebaut, Werner (ed.). 1994. Taking the Naturalistic Turn, or How Real Philosophy of Science is Done. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Esposito, Roberto. 2008. Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge, and the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon. Trans. A. Sheridan Smith. Originally L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1969.
Foucault, Michel (ed.). 1975. I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother. New York: Pantheon Books. Originally Moi, Pierre Revière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère… Paris: Gallimard, 1973.
Foucault, Michel. 1977a [1971]. Revolutionary Action: ‘Until Now’. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, 218–233. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. This discussion was originally published in Actuel in 1971.
Foucault, Michel. 1977b. Discipline and Punish. New York: Pantheon. Trans. A. Sheridan. Originally Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.
Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality I: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon. Trans. R. Hurley. Originally Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.
Foucault, Michel. 1980a [1976]. Two Lectures. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, 78–108. New York: Pantheon. These two lectures were given in 1976, but first appeared in Italian translation in Michel Foucault, Microfisica del Potere (Turin, 1977).
Foucault, Michel. 1980b [1972]. On Popular Justice: A Discussion with Maoists. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, 1–36. New York: Pantheon. This discussion was originally published in Les temps moderne in 1972.
Foucault, Michel. 1980c [1977]. The Confession of the Flesh. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, 194–228. This conversation was originally published as “Le jeu de Michel Foucault” in Ornicar? in 1977.
Foucault, Michel (ed.). 1980d. Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1980e [1976]. Questions on Geography. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, 63–77. This interview first appeared as “Questions à Michel Foucault sur la géographie,” in Hérodote 1 (1976).
Foucault, Michel. 1988 [1984]. On Power. In Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and other Writings 1977–1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, 96–109. New York and London: Routledge. This interview was conducted in 1978, but appeared first, and then only in part, in L’express in 1984.
Foucault, Michel. 1989a [1971]. Rituals of Exclusion. In Foucault Live: Interviews, 1966–84, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, 63–72. New York: Semiotext(e). This interview was originally published in Partisan Review in 1971.
Foucault, Michel. 1989b [1984]. The Concern for Truth. In Foucault Live: Interviews, 1966–84, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, 293–308. New York: Semiotext(e). Trans. J. Johnston. This interview appeared first in Le Magazine littéraire, May 1984.
Foucault, Michel. 1989c [1976]. I, Pierre Rivière. In Foucault Live: Interviews, 1966–84, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, 131–136. New York: Semiotext(e). Trans. J. Johnston. This interview first appeared in Cahiers du cinéma in November 1976.
Foucault, Michel. 1997. What is Critique? In The Politics of Truth, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, 23–82. New York: Semiotext(e). This is the text of a lecture given on May 27, 1978. First published in the Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie, t. LXXXIV, 1990.
Foucault, Michel. 2000 [1971]. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In Essential Works Volume 2: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. James Faubion and Paul Rabinow, 369–391. London Penguin Books. This essay first appeared in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971.
Foucault, Michel. 2002a [1977]. Truth and Power. In Essential Works Volume 2: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. James Faubion and Paul Rabinow, 111–133. London: Penguin Books. This interview first appeared in Italian translation as “Intervista a Michel Foucault,” in Michel Foucault, Microfisica del Potere (Turin, 1977).
Foucault, Michel. 2002b [1978]. About the Concept of the “Dangerous Individual” in Nineteenth-Century Legal Psychiatry. In Essential Works, Volume 3: Power, ed. James Faubion and Paul Rabinow, 176–200. London: Penguin Books. First published in English in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry in 1978.
Foucault, Michel. 2003 [1976]. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976, ed. Arnold Davidson, Mauro Bertani, Alessandro Fontana, and François Edwald. New York: Picador.
Foucault, Michel. 2007 [1978]. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978, ed. Arnold Davidson, Michel Senellart, and François Edwald. New York: Picador.
Foucault, Michel. 2008 [1979]. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, ed. Arnold Davidson, Michel Senellart, François Edwald, and Alessandro Fontana. New York: Picador.
Foucault, Michel. 2014 [1980]. On the Government of the Living: Lectures at the Collège de France 1979–1980, ed. Arnold Davidson, Michel Senellart, François Edwald, and Alessandro Fontana. New York: Picador.
Foucault, Michel, and Gilles Deleuze. 1977 [1972]. Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation Between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, 205–217. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hacking, Ian. 1986. Making Up People. In Reconstructing Individualism, ed. Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna, and David E. Wellbery, 222–236. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; republished in Ian Hacking. 2002. Historical Ontology. London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hacking, Ian. 1992. ‘Style’ for Historians and Philosophers. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 23 (1): 1–20.
Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social Construction of What?. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hacking, Ian. 2007. Kinds of People: Moving Targets. Proceedings of the British Academy 151: 285–318.
Koopman, Colin. 2013. Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Kornblith, Hilary (ed.). 1994. Naturalizing Epistemology, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press.
Landecker, Hannah. 1999. Between Beneficence and Chattel: The Human Biological in Law and Science. Science in Context 12: 203–225.
May, Todd. 1993. Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, Politics, and Knowledge in the Thought of Michel Foucault. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Miller, James. 1994. The Passion of Michel Foucault. New York: Doubleday.
Pickering, Andrew. 1984. Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1969. Epistemology Naturalized. In Ontological Relativity & Other Essays, 69–90. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rabinow, Paul, and Nikolas Rose. 2006. Biopower Today. BioSocieties 1 (2): 195–217.
Rose, Nikolas. 2009. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rouse, Joseph. 1987. Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Shackel, Nicholas. 2005. The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology. Metaphilosophy 36: 295–320.
Skloot, Rebecca. 2010. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Random House.
Sterelny, Kim, and Paul E. Griffiths. 1999. Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Árnason, G. (2018). Power, Knowledge, and the Politics of Truth. In: Foucault and the Human Subject of Science. SpringerBriefs in Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02813-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02813-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02812-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02813-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)