When some of us hear the name Foucault, we let out a sigh, others ask “Who,” and some even say, “What did you say to me?”. For a time in my life, I was of the first variety. I had heard of Foucault vicariously and, through osmosis, I’d acquired some of what he had to say, but I never read his work for myself. This week, I’ve decided to do just that.
I am beginning with Foucault’s ethical works, which are quite insightful. The topic I will be covering from his book today is derived from Foucault's work on knowledge systems, which I think are extremely relevant for people interested in artificial intelligence and the sensible right, at least. I'll be reviewing: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth, edited by Paul Rabinow.
When I first started Foucault’s work, I was taken aback. From what I’ve heard about the man, I thought his work would have been a relative enigma, even indecipherable. Yet, Foucault’s earlier ethical works are anything but cryptic. Rather, they are very concise, insightful, and – though they deal with their specific subject matters – broadly generalizable.
To understand Foucault, and I think Paul Rabinow does a magnificent job highlighting this fact, you need to explore the French terms he uses to express himself and their semantic roots. For example, Foucault differentiates what I would call experiential knowledge “will to truth” and learned conceptual knowledge “will to knowledge”. When Foucault is expressing the former, he uses the term vérité but if he is expressing matters dealing with the latter, he uses the term savoir. Thankfully, this edition of Foucault’s ethical works notes when he intends to use French to express a concept that is unique and nearly inarticulable in English, helping the reader significantly.
From the first chapters of Foucault’s work, what is clear is that he has a distinct interest in understanding how the theories and theoretical concepts the state implements through its authoritative systems emerged. From reading these chapters, I was left with these questions: what kinds of conditions give rise to a theory; how do we become interested in problems we weren’t before; how do static and transformative knowledge configurations (i.e., theories) take shape?
Foucault’s ethical work seems to really be him trying to distinguish between ways of knowing and knowledge types. For example, we may seek access to knowledge [savoir], and we may do so by learning [connaissance] but are we seeking truth [vérité] or conceptual knowledge [savoir]? And just where is our inquired subject located relative to our desire or will (p. 12)? With these questions, Foucault sets out to juxtapose the truth claims of Aristotle and Nietzsche and what he identifies is that their conceptions of knowledge are contingent upon the environments they came from. For Aristotle, truth is associated with pleasure, and we seek it out because it ultimately pleases us or is good for us and we know we’ve erred when we experience pain (p. 13) For Nietzsche, truth is dependent on one’s ability to falsify some other rival claim affecting the interests of the one falsifying any other claim (p. 14).
From these historical analyses of truth, Foucault argues the European mind has heavily emphasized formal ways of knowing, i.e., theoretical knowledge claims (p. 15). “[T]hey ultimately gave rise to a form of justice linked to a knowledge [savoir] in which truth was posited as visible, easily established, obedient to laws like those governing the order of the world, and whose discovery holds a purificatory value for oneself.” As we shall come to see, the issues embedded in this conceptual way of knowing are myriad.
These conceptual ways of knowing, i.e., theoretical knowledge, can easily be acquired by authoritative structures or Power. With these forms of knowing Power can easily subjugate his followers. For Foucault, the relationship between Power and knowledge is categorized as pouvoir-savoir. Pouvoir-savoir can be described as the union of authority with knowledge, that knowledge being the subject of Power’s interests. I.e., Power’s relationship to the conceptual knowledge produced by connaissance or vérité is, as in all things related to Power, self-serving.
Power uses what I would describe as truth and knowledge matrices to command its authority. In the process of acquiring and making use of these matrices, Power takes up the inquisitorial framework, for instance. This inquisitorial framework is dependent on the correct ordering of facts, restoring the facts – through questioning – to their best condition, and processes by which an adjudicator of a fact set can settle on the reconstitution of those facts based on some standard theory or learned knowledge (p. 18). As a paradigmatic, conceptual structure, any matrix derived from the inquisitorial method, or implementing the inquisitorial method, may not be able to use relevant information because it has no connaissance of it. Thus, we could doubly say that, if these Power-knowledges have not integrated a subset of relevant pieces of information into an inquisitorial analysis of a problem, Power’s interests are not served by their connaissance and, thus, Power does not have the will to know them. In the process, because integral pieces of evidence can be excluded from a knowledge matrix and the inquisitorial method does not account for them, the effect can be a profound injustice.
Foucault highlights how the European prison systems exemplify these Power-knowledges, but I think it is possible to extract only the essentials from his analysis. To start, we must acknowledge that societies are rooted in particular environments, and as the members of a society and society itself interact with its environment, certain problems become evident. People examine and problematize these obstacles, resulting in savoir or theoretical knowledge on the matter. This theoretical knowledge can be rooted in the truth or conceptual knowledge (i.e., vérité or savoir). Conceptual knowledge can be derived from the subject itself or the relations between the concepts defining the savoir through connaissance. What Power does is take the savoir, the conceptual knowledge of the truth, and acts on it as if it’s the truth. I.e., Power takes a theory and imposes it from the top down on a subject that it limits to its theoretical understanding of the subject. However, it has no access to the subject except through the savoir of the subject. And, because Power has an interest in understanding the world through this lens for its personal gain, it does not update its theories through vérité but, rather, iterates upon them in a self-reinforcing way, creating a positive-feedback loop. In other words, Power does not solve the problem through its Power-knowledges; instead, it exacerbates them to the detriment of the society faced with the problem.
Through Foucault’s analysis of psychiatric institutions, I think the reader may find an even clearer understanding of the problem, especially as Foucault juxtaposes psychiatric institutions with medical institutions before Pasture’s discoveries. To spare the reader the minutia, I would like to focus, once again, on the essentials.
Let us imagine that there’s an individual, this individual has a nature, and he can interact with his environment. Then, let us say that, as a result of interacting with his environment, because he has a nature, he expresses certain phenotypes or traits. Another individual can then observe these traits. This observer can then develop concepts to better understand his subject qua subject. In this way, he learns about his subject and develops methods for acquiring knowledge about his subject. Because he knows about this inquisitive method and the conceptual knowledge derived from the inquisitive method, we can call him qualified. With his qualifications, he can update his understanding of the subject and his expressed traits. The problem: if the observer’s qualifications depend on his knowledge of the methods used to derive conceptual knowledge about a subject and conceptual knowledge of the subject, he will tend to understand the subject as a concept (savoir) rather than as he is (vérité). I.e., To become qualified, he is incentivized to understand the subject conceptually through certain methods; these qualifications give him the right to elaborate on the subject; however, he’s not elaborating on the subject per se but the subject as concept; ergo, the relationship between the subject as concept and the theories derived by the observer through his methods of the conceptualized subject feed into one another, creating a positive feedback loop (pp. 48-49).
The observer can counteract this positive feedback loop by looking for counterfactual information to negate his preconceived conceptual understanding of the subject. Yet, this may disqualify him as qualified to speak on a subject. To boot, Power has no interest in counterfactual information. He has a problem to solve. He will use the theories generated by the observer of the conceptualized subject to impose his will on the subject. I.e., through his inquisitorial methodology, he will look for those facts that meet the standards established by the observer. I.e., he will reconfirm the observer’s biases instead of negating them. Through this inquisitorial process, Power will produce injustices because the observer may not be trying to disprove his hypotheses, which he builds his theories on. Rather, he reconfirms and elaborates on the problem. In the process, once again, he will exacerbate society’s problems instead of resolving them because he does not get to the problem’s essence. Power, inevitably, has no interest in resolving these problems; rather, he is interested in perpetuating them to maintain his authority over his subjects and to give them a reason to remain dependent on him.
Take for example the concept of Racism and racist. An observer may come to understand a population or an individual as racist. He will then develop a theory around this concept and relate it to the attributes associated with what it means to be racist. When someone critiques his conceptual understanding of Racism, he may then add criticism or resistance to his theory to the attributes associated with what it means to be racist because he’s qualified to do so. Then, as more people critique or resist his theory, he may attribute his concept to the whole society or a large portion of the society. When this occurs, Power may take up his cause to resolve his problem for him. Power can then subjugate the individuals or group conceptually categorized as racist and apply punitive pressures upon them. These punitive measures can inflame the subjugated group, and generate a response that the observer will add to his attributes defining Racism. Power can then go on to use this new conceptualization of the racists to subjugate the selected population even further.
Throughout this entire cycle, Power has no real interest in thinking about Racism counterfactually. He can acquire wealth, status, and authority by responding to a problem posed by a subset of observers of the subject. The observers, on the other hand, are only feeding their preconceived notions about the subject. If they engaged in counterfactual thinking about the subject, they could have acquired a clearer understanding of him. Instead – and I think it’s apropos to reason along these lines – the observer acts as if he has an incentive to subjugate his subject to his will as a concept for his own benefit; i.e., he’s engaging in motivated reasoning. If he were not engaging in motivated reasoning, he would – at least – be trying to engage in counterfactual thinking. Through this process, he can get an authority to subjugate his opponent and limit potential competition.
On Wednesday, I will reinitiate my examination of Foucault’s work by exploring how a state’s struggle against other powers gives rise to what Foucault calls Biopolitics, Governmentality, and the subject of the state. I will also explore what this process might look like if it were healthy. So far, I am thoroughly enjoying his work. It seems as if he can provide, at least, the sensible right with the necessary tools to unravel their opponent’s claims or to get a clearer understanding of where they’re both going wrong. I hope Foucault's work remains fruitful for me.
Bibliography:
Foucault, M. and Rabinow, P (translator) (1997). Michele Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth. Editions Gallimard.
