Preview only show first 10 pages with watermark. For full document please download

On Foucault And Habermas

Judging from the dismissive tone of Habermas’ lecture on Foucault alone

   EMBED


Share

Transcript

  Introduction Judging from the dismissive tone of Habermas’ lecture on Foucault alone, one might infer that the two thinkers occupy diametrically opposed positions. And indeed, it would be hard todispute the claim that Habermas and Foucault disagree in a very critical way about the status of reason and its relation to knowledge and power; while Foucault’s rejection of Truth, in  Disciplineand Punish , was foundational to postmodernism, one could certainly read Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action as an attempt to rework the concept of modernity. In this essay, however, Iargue that possibilities for reconciliation between the two theorists exist, despite this fundamentaldisagreement. While strict adherence to either thinker would not permit the reconciliation weoutline, I propose a less dogmatic perspective that acknowledges the shortcomings of eachapproach. Specifically, I argue that the similarity between Foucault’s call for a release of “subjugated knowledges” and Habermas’ call for protection of the lifeworld suggests that bothrecognize the need for individuals to be maximally exposed  if modern society is to avoid fosteringcertain pathologies in its members. This concept of  exposure, which is our term, constitutes thecrux of our proposal. 1 Foucault on Knowledge In his lecture entitled Some Questions Concerning the Theory of Power: Foucault Again ,Habermas summarizes Foucault’s thesis very aptly: “[T]he formation of power and the formationof knowledge compose an indissoluble unity” (272, Lecture 10). Before considering why 1 For purposes of clarity, it may help to outline the structure of our argument. We begin by considering Foucault’sargument that power subsumes all the epistemological conditions in modern society. We treat Habermas’ critique,specifically focusing on his accusations that Foucault suffers from presentism, crypto-normativism and relativism. Thisdialogue allows us to frame our larger argument: the concerns raised by Habermas lead us to pinpoint a latentegalitarianism in Foucault's position. We argue that because Habermas overestimates Foucault's pessimism, he himself fails to acknowledge Foucault's egalitarian streak. While we acknowledge that this fact does not resolve certaintheoretical inconsistencies in Foucault, we argue that a wholesale rejection of Foucault's position does not follow(whereas Habermas seems to believe it does). Rather we argue that a limited reconciliation of the two thinkers throughthe aforementioned notion of maximal exposure is highly plausible. 1  Habermas finds Foucault’s defense of “such a strong thesis” inadequate, it makes sense to consider Foucault’s position in greater detail. Let us do so by expanding on the notion of “knowledge”.Foucault argues that power  2 grounds forms of knowledge that appear intrinsically objective(science, for example).   In his opinion, the value we accord to science has naught to do with itstruthfulness or objectivity, but rather everything to do with the kind of clout it carries. For example, when writing about Marxist and Freudian ambitions to be considered scientific, heargues:Even before we can know the extent to which something such as Marxism or  psychoanalysis can be compared to a scientific practice…it is surely necessary toquestion ourselves about our aspirations to the kind of power that is presumed toaccompany such a science…When I see you straining to establish the scientificity of Marxism I do not really think that you are demonstrating once and for all thatMarxism has a rational structure and that therefore its propositions are the outcomeof verifiable procedures; for me you are dong something altogether different, youare investing Marxist discourses and those who uphold them with the effects of a power which the West since Medieval times has attributed to science and hasreserved for those engaged in scientific discourse. (84-85, Power/Knowledge).Foucault believes, then, that he is exposing the process which the label “scientific” masks. Bodiesof knowledge achieve exposure due to the “coercion of a theoretical, unitary, formal and scientificdiscourse (85, Power/Knowledge). 3 Those who claim to disqualify certain sets of knowledge (or,equivalently, endorse certain sets over others) necessarily embrace these coercive techniques in the process; indeed, the role of disqualifier of knowledge implies an influence that is itself derived 2 Power ought not to be understood in a wholly conventional, relational sense. Rather, it is best understood as a“technique”. As Foucault writes, “[t]he power in the hierarchized surveillance of the disciplines is not possessed as athing, or transferred as a property; it functions like a piece of machinery. And, although it is true that its pyramidalorganization gives it a 'head', it is the apparatus as a whole that produces 'power' and distributes individuals in this permanent and continuous field  ” (177, Discipline and Punish, my emphasis). Foucault's characterization of thestruggles that oppose the effects of power further elucidates the relation-less nature of power: “They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and ideological state violence which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusalof a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is” (212, The Subject and Power). 3 As evidenced by the qualifier “since Medieval times”, these claims are grounded in a historical story. However, for our purposes, it will be sufficient to note that they apply to modern society, which is what we concerns us in this essay. 2  from the power intrinsic to “privileged” types of discourse, such as science. 4 Fortunately, thesolution (though Foucault might hesitate to term it that) suggests itself: those forms of knowledgethat have been consigned to the status of nonscientific – that have been “subjugated” – must befreed and heard. 5 Foucault sees this as the task of the genealogy he is attempting.In addition to this more conventional conception of what the term “knowledge” refers to,Foucault, in employing it, wants to discuss what we might call self-knowledge: how the individualcomes to look at herself and her place in society – how she experiences individualization. Whilemany social theorists (Mill, for example) have located individual independence in this process,Foucault argues that, with the advent of modern society and its associated mechanisms of discipline, this process of individualization is directed – in the final analysis – by a disciplinaryapparatus that distributes the individual in a “permanent and continuous field” of power (177,Discipline and Punish). This power “is exercised...by comparative measures that have the 'norm' asreference” (193, Discipline and Punish). Thus, far from choosing  6  what norms she would like toadopt in a way that an independent individual freely would, the modern individual is constructed 4 “Which speaking, discoursing subjects – which subjects of experience and knowledge – do you then want to‘diminish’ when you say: ‘I who conduct this discourse am conducting a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist’?”(85, Power/Knowledge). 5 “By comparison, then, and in contrast to the various projects which aim to inscribe knowledges in the hierarchicalorder of power associated with science, a genealogy should be seen as a kind of attempt to emancipate historicalknowledges from that subjection, to render them, that is, capable of opposition and of struggle” (85,Power/Knowledge). 6 It might seem that Foucault believes that the notion of freely “choosing” does not disappear. He writes, “power isexercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free” (221, The Subject and Power). However, this pointmerely illustrates that the kind of power that modern society exercises upon individuals is not relational and does notthereby depend on overt constraint; “the issue is not voluntary servitude” (221, The Subject and Power). Rather,Foucault wants to stress that the modern disciplinary apparatus works in much less explicit ways. Having stressed that,we do note that the objection has its merits; Foucault does believe that the “intransigence of freedom” makes resistance possible (222, The Subject and Power). 3  through a subtle yet persistent disciplinary procedure. 7 This apparatus molds her to a norm that, asa result, owes its pervasiveness entirely to the effects of power. 8  Prior to reconstructing Habermas' response, it may be worth stressing that Foucault'scritiques of purportedly objective knowledge and of what we have called self-knowledge are notdisparate arguments, but rather highly interrelated. First, the power-dependence that Foucaultchronicles in both forms of knowledge emerged as a result of the same historical development: asFoucault writes, “[w]hen the normal took over from the ancestral, and measurement from status,thus substituting for the individuality of the memorable man that of the calculable man, thatmoment when the sciences of man became possible is the moment when a new technology of  power and a new political anatomy of the body were implemented” (193, Discipline and Punish).This historical simultaneity implies that the creation of one apparatus bears responsibility for bothtrends; its suggests that they are similar in a more significant way. Indeed, when Foucault describesthe modern “order that the disciplinary punishments must enforce” as “defined by natural andobservable processes” (179, Discipline and Punish), we begin to see that the kinds of abstractionsthat mediate the process of normalization also facilitate the task of a scientific discourse; sciencerequires society and individuals to be “natural” and “observable”. This interpretation makes senseof Foucault's description of this historical development as “the transition from the historico-ritualmechanisms for the formation of individuality to the  scientifico-disciplinary mechanisms” (193,Discipline and Punish, my emphasis). Thus, though we treated them distinctly, we stress that thetwo processes are largely contiguous. 7 Moreover, this construction reaches into the individual in an extensive way: “Through this micro-economy of a perpetual penality operates a differentiation that is not one of acts, but of individuals themselves, of their nature, their  potentialities, their level or their value” (181, Discipline and Punish). 8 “In short, the art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power is aimed neither at expiation, nor even precisely atrepression...The perpetual penality that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutionscompares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes ” (183, Discipline and Punish). 4