Study Day: Michel Foucault, 'Panopticism' - Questions
Social construction of knowledge: Knowledge is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary simply as "an organized body of information". We all know, however, that this does not capture the complexity of this term. All knowledge is produced, collected and disseminated by human beings living in societies. According to the social constructionist approach to knowledge, "Truth is not a collection of insights floating about, parts of which are sooner or later revealed or discovered, nor does it lie deep within us, waiting to be freed. Truth is produced through discourse (based in science upon ‘proper’ scientific methods and investigations) and its production is involved with relations of power." (Ruth Bleier Social Science and Gender, 1984, p. 195). Institutions are also essential in shaping the content and standing of knowledge systems. Think of ways how societies / institutions shape the production of knowledge, the beliefs its members adhere to and the relative status of different types of knowledge.
Power - knowledge - discourse: For Foucault, power in the modern age operates distinctively through knowledge in the form of discursive practices. These employ sophisticated technologies of surveillance, observation, normalization, calculation, evaluation, and differentiation. That is to say, modern epistemology itself simply is a sophisticated form of power, and not, as has been claimed, a neutral representation of the world of objects by a reasoning subject. The main effect of such power, and the feature he thought of most distinguished it from more conventional political conceptions of power is that it does not negate but actually produces human beings as agents, and thereby involves them as mediums of power in the very exercise of power upon themselves. In other words, the human being is the subject who is both a body that is empowered to act and one that is also subject to power. How do you relate to this conception of power?
Government - knowledge - power: Foucault conceived government in comprehensive terms, referring to the close link between forms of knowledge, power techniques and processes of subjectivation. According to Foucault, governmentality (∼general problematic of government) is not "a matter of imposing laws on men, but rather of disposing of things, that is to say, to impose tactics rather than laws, and if need be to use the laws themselves as tactics. To arrange things in such a way that, through a certain number of means, such and such ends may be achieved." Governmentality therefore does not rely on law but on the operation of certain philosophical, and especially epistemological, presuppositions as these are expressed and institutionalized in the specific knowledgeable practices by which subjects are formed, and things, including of course subjectified human beings themselves as calculable objects, are administered. It does not merely make use of knowledge, it is comprised by knowledge, and therefore deeply dependent upon the products and practices of those experts and institutions of knowledge whose preoccupation is less "one of weaving an all-pervasive web of ’social control’" than of effecting "the calculated administration of diverse aspects of conduct through countless, often competing, local tactics of education, persuasion, inducement, management, incitement, motivation and encouragement." Its object is "to shape the beliefs and conduct of others in desired directions by acting upon their will, their circumstances, or their environment." What is your opinion of this?