212. Pervasive power
Here I start a series on power, using the work of Michel Foucault, with
some additions, criticism and modifications.
Michel Foucault used the customary definition of power as ‘actions upon actions’. Power is the potential, and its exercise, to affect the choices and actions of people. I also adopted that notion, in item nr. 50 of this blog. Thus, power can be positive, in creating novel options, eliminating constraints on choice, or negative, in reducing options or imposing choice.
According to Michel Foucault, knowledge is tied up in relationships,
social systems, institutions, which constitute and exert power. He famously
analysed such systems in psychiatric wards, health clinics, and prisons.
I find this useful, but I do run into the following
problem. Institutions are ‘enabling constraints’. They are humanly constructed
rules, guidelines, values, models, etc. that enable and guide actions but in
doing so necessarily also constrain them. A path through a swamp enables its
crossing but also constrains walk to the path, not to drown. A teacher offers a
perspective and in so doing focuses and thus narrows attention. Since
institutions both enable and constrain actions they entail both positive and
negative elements of power. They enact power of normalization.
Heidegger talked of the need and difficulty of getting
away from ‘Das Man’, the force of convention.
Then all institutions entail power. Language, traffic
signs, advertising, values, … Since there can be no society without
institutions, and no self without society, and institutions are everywhere,
power is everywhere. Then, what do we do with the idea that knowledge is tied
up with power?
The notion works only when we differentiate specific
types (positive, negative) of power, the structure of a system, levels and
concentration of power, forms and degrees of subordination and coercion, and
bring in associated notions of authority, legitimacy, forms of force, debate,
appeal, redress, ….
Foucault in fact did that, by focusing on specific
cases (madness, illness, imprisonment). He was, in fact, against intellectual
universalism and demanded analysis to apply to specific cases. Here, I do want
to add more general considerations. I reject absolute universals but want to
maintain generalization by abstraction, as a method of science.
Foucault made a distinction between ‘connaissance’ as
state of knowledge, and ‘savoir’ as the process of its constitution[i]. From that I make a distinction
between ‘substantive knowledge’ and ‘procedural knowledge’ or ‘being in the
know’.[ii] This connects with a
distinction between ‘scientific’ and ‘political rationality’. Being ‘in the
know’ one knows who is what, in what roles, who are accepted as ‘legitimate
speakers’, who has authority in what, what legitimate discourse is, on what
subjects, with what terms, with what meanings, according to what logic, on what
occasions, and on what locations. Foucault conducted such analysis, as I will
discuss in later items in this blog.
Not being ‘in the know’, one will be marginalized,
ignored, or disciplined, no matter how much relevant substantive knowledge one
has. This is how intellectuals often become ineffective. When in political
wrangling a plan of action has finally been arrived at, at great cost of
lobbying and compromise, those ‘in the know’ are not going to let themselves be
side-tracked by some lone, errant intellectual or band of outsiders. Or even
voters.
Earlier, in item 206, I suggested that in the Greek
crisis, what happened was that, as I would now say, ‘the Greeks were not in the
know’.
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