Well I hope my idea is appreciated here. i have never read it anyone where else so I will take pride in its conception.
French post-modernist/pos-structuralist thinking Michel Foucault claimed that all knowledge is (inevitably) imbued with power. This includes his knowledge- this he freely admits. Merquior, in his book on Foucault that savages him mercilessly, claims this is a form of the Cretan’s liars paradox= ‘Everything I say is a lie. True or false?’ He claims that we try as much as possible to extricate knowledge from power, speicifcally institutions.
Yet, I will go a little bit further. Foucault’s only theory is the only one that becomes less successful as it becomes more successful. Amongst the social science faculties, where his influence has mostly been felt, his post-modern theory of power is the most highly regarded and used. So it is the most imbued with power. To paraphrase my essay,
It doesn’t look like any rival post-modern discourse on power will attract power to its side in the near future, even though the rival discourse is almost certainly a superior discourse, Foucaultianly speaking, than Foucault’s own discourse as it is less institutionalised.
Try to translate it to simple english. You are telling me that knowledge has power. What sort of power? I know knowledge is power. If I know where you are, and where you keep you money, I could therefore kill you and run off with your loot. But you are saying this guy’s knowledge loses power the more it is used.
One critique of Foucault said that Foucault was saying that the is in Knowledge is power is the same as the might in might makes right. Foucault knew though that power is necessarily having power being used against it, otherwise it would just be plain obedience. Foucault also talks about power everywhere being local. When thinkers like foucault talk about power they usually have something more fluid in mind than the usual conception of power. This can plainly be seen in his preface to anti-oedipus (deleuze and Guattari) in which he plainly says, “Do not become enamoured of power” Source: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 Paul Rabinow Series Editor translated by Robert Hurley and others. It is also important to realize that Foucault was mainly talking about power relations as they define the subject, he repeats this several times, see for instance his interview w/ H Beckner, R. Fornet-Betancourt, and A. Gomez-Muller on Jan 20, 1984.
It was Sir Francis Bacon, the great 16th century English philosopher, who wrote, “Scientia est potentia” or “Knowledge is power.” But, of course, Bacon did not identify knowledge with power as Foucault seems to have done. Bacon meant that knowledge gives us power, and he was especially talking of the rise of the experimental sciences at his time. Bacon saw that though having knowledge of the causes of events, we can have control over those events. So that, for instance, by knowing why crops fail (because they were not rotated) we can prevent famine by rotating the crops. Or, in our times, by knowing the causes of a disease like polio, we can develop a vaccine to prevent polio.
That is why knowledge is power. It is because it enables us to have dominion over nature. Foucault’s meaning is much less important, and is on shaky ground.
Smooth. We don’t bear fruit, however, until we begin to scare ourselves.
I started to buy a book on Sir Francis, but failed to bring home the Bacon. I think Bacon mean’t knowledge (in Knowledge is power) more in the form of an efficient cause and Foucault mean’t it more as a final cause.
Foucault’s meaning on shaky ground? You don’t think that people are constantly registered, codified, tested and sorted into demographic groups like Foucault talks about in his books? Do you have any idea how much information telemarketers have on you at this very moment? Far from being on shaky ground, Foucault’s ideas will have an increasing impact in our lives.
I’m sorry if I’m sounding sort of childish, I guess I usually do, but can somebody please explain this a little to me.
For the past few days I keep reading this thread over and over hoping somebody else would say something so that I could just jump back in. It isn’t happening so I really want to understand what the hell this Foucault guy is talking about (I have never heard of him). How is his statement that all knowledge has power related to the liar’s paradox?
Well, after reading Bacon I could comprehend his ways of thinking and find the logic in his theories according to power. But after discovering this thread about Foucault and his points of view, I am really puzzled. Maybe it’s my bad english or lack of skills, but I can’t really understand his statements and the ways which could lead him to such conclusions.
I’m not sure that you can say that what is most popular is the most imbued with power in a foucaultian sense. Given that, there may not be an original paradox, but i will remain silent for a spell and allow the original author time to defend his thesis.
i am not a good source for explaining Bacon, however.
This Is precisely what gavtmcc was talking about. Your replies are platitudes. they don’t say anything. they are classic coffee shop gambits, hollow and full of nothing. give examples. Be specific. Talk about passages in foucault that you have read and you like. Tell us why you think the application of knowledge is power. tell us why you think it’s important for us to know this. tell us things. Give evidence.
now on to the post. As far as I understand Foucault he’s saying that basically something isn’t considered knowledge until it passes a point of usefulness (sorry for the pragmatism influence here) at which point Capitalists, People in government, in churches, in asylums, in the army, in schools say that this knowledge can be used for such and such an end. This doesn’t discredit knowing and it doesn’t mean that you can be all cool and proud that You know things cuz you’re powerful and you can jack off with your mighty self. What this means is that you must constantly find out where the tools of inquiry you use come from.
I can give you plenty of evidence, but if you wana some of the French guy’s sayings, you’ll get nothing from me, because I simply don’t regard those as evidence.
Anyway, don’t you find that sometimes, some of your own posts are rather “hollow”? e.g. uniqor, you posts are hollow. Explain and argue and don’t forget, give evidence.
that is some of it… Foucault is also saying that knowledge in itself, is a violence… the “radical malice of knowledge”… it isnt an act of regarding an outside reality but a practice, an action like any others… (yeah there is lots of pragmatist overtones here) … that knowledge “will only belong to the order of results, events, effects… there is a battle, and knowledge is the result of this battle”
which is a very melodramatic and sadistic-toned way of saying that knowledge is the outcome of pragamtic interactions with our enviroment… it’s some form of a pragmatist anti-representationalist vision of knowledge which he does his best to make sound menacing and scary… perhaps with good reason… that’s up to you really…
where it gets interesting is in looking at how these pragamtic situations in which knowledge is constructed, being the outcomes and causes of political-social etc circumstances, create (not distort) what we know…
“in actual fact the political and economic conditions are not a viel or an obstaclke for the subject of knowldge but the means by which subjects of knowledge are formed”
so knowledge, well pretty much everything, but knowledge was one of Foucaults principal objects of inquiry, is created in the medium of power… keeping in mind that foucault defines power not as a necessarily restrictive/constraining/oppressing ensemble of actions and forces but as also creative, positive, constructive… the power to have subjectivity, to be an agent, to speak… these are all instances of the excersise of power in the modality of powers… etc etc…
not sure if that adds much… quotes from Foucault’
s “truth and judicial forms (1973)”
“Tell us why you think the application of knowledge is power.”
I don’t think that’s the case, as I’ve implied in my earlier posts, I think that’s bull. You think that I think that is the case. This is one of the main problems in arguement: too often, we make arogant assumptions.
No, I didn’t read all Foucault. But my first post in this topic wasn’t aimed at the guy at all, but rather Pinnacle of Reason’s post, which I quoted above. About Foucault, one thing that I know is: whatever he said about this issue, about anything, is not evidence for no nothing! If you seriously regard it as evidence… no you won’t.
I believe this is a big mistake, as it is an application of a platonistic view of truth to a philosopher which is obviously anti-platonistic.
In order to see his claim as a Cretan’s Liar paradox you still have to see truth as a correspondentist.
A thing which obviously foucault does not as he identifies truth with power and denies that we can know it in any other form, as he believes that there is no way to see truth separated from it.
Please excuse me if I’m simply having memories of my memories, but my understanding of Foucault’s position say’s that knowledge is power in itself because the acquisition of knowledge create’s precepts that intrinsically ‘color’ any action. The moment you ‘know’ you now have a precept that will, to some degree, govern your percepts which in turn, controls your actions. (much pragmatism here) All ‘knowledge’ intrinsically carries latent power in that knowledge in any form equals the world view from which action is projected.
I think Bacon mean’t knowledge (in Knowledge is power) more in the form of an efficient cause and Foucault mean’t it more as a final cause.