
Foucault’s work on power - Petiver
https://aeon.co/essays/why-foucaults-work-on-power-is-more-important-than-ever
======
benbreen
I agree with John Searle on this one - it's unfair to Foucault (who despite
his eccentricities is actually an engaging and lucid thinker IMO) to lump him
together with obscurantists like Derrida:

"With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time
you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if
you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I
once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I
am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of _obscurantisme
terroriste_ (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said,
“What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He writes so obscurely you
can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you
criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’
That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that. So I wrote an article about
Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said
yes.

Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That’s very unfair to Foucault. He was
a different caliber of thinker altogether."

~~~
brudgers
There's a bit of slight of hand in criticizing Derrida for not being clear.
For example, computer science utilizes obscure notation and concepts and not
understanding something is generally attributed to the mental acuity of the
reader.

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_the_Steve_Kind.txt)

~~~
canjobear
The common response is that with computer science you can easily find an
expert who can explain the uncontroversial consensus interpretation of some CS
notation, whereas with Derrida et al. you'll just get more confusion.

~~~
psyc
I think a major difference is that when a professional has to coin new jargon,
they are _usually_ intending to achieve as much clarity as possible.

~~~
mbrock
I've always thought of Derrida as some kind of shaman poet sorcerer who uses
philosophy as the material for secretive experiments, which makes me not so
upset when I can't understand him.

------
randomaxes
My favorite introduction to Foucault is Hubert Dreyfus' essay on Being and
Power:
[http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_being.html](http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_being.html)

The key insight for me is the discussion of "the clearing". The clearing opens
the way for new opportunities while suppressing other possibilities in
exchange. This concept can be used readily to analyze the durability of
certain new technologies and their effect on society. For example, Facebook
clearly creates a new way to communicate, but that channel then eliminates
other forms of communication in exchange.

The language of pervasive and hidden power is essential for a clear view of
what the Silicon Valley is becoming.

------
woodandsteel
Foucault has a lot of important insights. My problem with him is he seems to
have no real idea of how things could ever be better, and hence no way to
choose between the various available overall options. Society is just
oppressive power, and the only course of action seems to just be endless
vigilance and resistance.

~~~
gumby
Consider him to be one of the "butterfly collectors" of this kind of social
power analysis. Not everyone has to be able to develop a field; for that to
happen someone has to recognize and try to catalogue it.

If you're not familiar with the metaphor, it refers to one of the development
phases of a scientific discipline: before there was a theory of physics, many
people described and classified various phenomena. The term comes from
biology; even before Linneus, people described and collected all sorts of
species; then Linneus provided a taxonomy to fit them into; and now we have a
theory of genetics.

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macawfish
Last night I had a dream that I was telling someone to check out Michel
Foucault. I specifically remember spelling their name and telling them they
should look him up.

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camdenlock
It... it really doesn't, and this article makes that fact quite plain.
Foucault's philosophies are nuggets of well-worn common sense extrapolated out
into billowing collections of unnecessary text.

I wonder if anyone has done the kind deed of whittling his most oft-cited
gaseous emanations down to their core common sense origins. That'd save a lot
of time for those of us not interested in a career in academia.

~~~
barce
The first page of "Discipline and Punish" is a very clear description of the
drawing and quartering of a regicide. I am not sure what nuggets you are
referring to. Citations, please. I think he is arguing against "whittling...
down to their core common sense origins," because such origins are illusory.

~~~
jseliger
_Citations, please_

This is a hilarious comment, given that Foucault's _History of Sexuality_
contains almost no citations!

If you are interested in why Foucault ought to be a laughingstock, see
Windshuttle's _The Killing of History_ : [https://www.amazon.com/Killing-
History-Literary-Theorists-Mu...](https://www.amazon.com/Killing-History-
Literary-Theorists-Murdering/dp/1893554120) or the many essays Camille Paglia
wrote on him. Her latest book has a reprint of "Review: Junk Bonds and
Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf."

------
golemotron
The thing that Foucault's thought misses is that there are many ways of seeing
the world. You can see it in terms of power, but then confirmation bias may
lead you to a place of deep social distrust not unlike our current zeitgeist.

~~~
barce
I think you misread the article. Foucault's point is that there are many ways
of seeing power. "Foucault sought to unburden philosophy of its icy gaze of
capturing essences."

~~~
golemotron
Enumerating ways of seeing power can lead to an obsession with it. The fact
that he has been cited by so many underscores this. When people are
preoccupied with whether they are one-down or one-up you end up with perpetual
status seeking among individuals and groups, where one's worth is perceived as
tied to that status. Does that seem familiar?

~~~
brudgers
It's been a while since I read Foucault, but I don't recall him being much
concerned with marginal and fleeting differences of power in the add-
out/deuce/add-in spectrum. The differences I recall are more at the scale of
rights to commit violence and obligations to receive it. Such differences of
power are in part sustained by the idea that it is common sense that things
are that way because that is the way things are naturally ordered.

------
lutusp
Foucault? The physicist Foucault [1] responsible for the Foucault Pendulum and
many other advances? Or the philosopher Foucault [2] responsible for some
unfalsifiable fluff of great interest to philosophy department tea parties --
conversations that typically return to Jacques Derrida [3], the "show-stopper"
who thought there was no basis for shared, objective truths, and whose views
are regularly discussed as though their decoded meaning doesn't contradict the
possibility of their productive discussion.

It's a sign of the times that, in Web searches, Foucault the philosopher
completely buries Foucault the physicist.

(I got snookered into reading this because "power" has a meaning in physics
apart from its meaning in philosophy -- the former of which actually means
something.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Foucault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Foucault)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida)

~~~
cuspy
Ironically, your conveyance of your opinion in this dismissive register with
no substance, just the affect of smug certainty, is a perfect example of why
the relationship between language and power deserves attention today. Your
post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that
has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like
"objective truths", notions which no decent self-critical scientist would
accept. Your post's voice assumes the appearance of a disciplinary authority
without actually engaging substantively with the ideas under discussion. So,
in effect you've provided the best possible support for the article's
argument.

~~~
pjlegato
The proposition that there is no such thing as objective truth is itself a
proposition of a supposed objective truth.

Postmodernism is therefore paradoxical and logically invalid, in a broad and
categorical sense. Adhering to it is therefore irrational and no different
than any other non-falsifiable religion that must simply be accepted on faith,
without any logical proof or reasoning.

~~~
erikpukinskis
You did great up to

Postmodernism is therefore paradoxical ... Adhering to it is therefore
irrational

All ideas are paradoxes, and yet we must adhere to some. The act of mapping
reality to words necessarily creates lies. Imagining you have some ideas which
aren't paradoxes is self delusion. And attempting to not have ideas is death.
Therefore adhering to paradoxical ideas is rational.

I would say a hallmark of sanity is the ability to work within paradoxes.

~~~
lutusp
> All ideas are paradoxes ...

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The idea that there are an infinity of primes is not at all paradoxical, it's
an uncontroversial factual assertion. Most of mathematics shows the same
property.

> The act of mapping reality to words necessarily creates lies.

Not the words out of which scientific theories are constructed. Evolution.
Biology. Physics. These are falsifiable (they must be to qualify as scientific
theories), but they are not _lies_ \-- a word that means false claims made by
a speaker who knows his claims are false. You're misusing the word "lies" to
refer to something else.

> Imagining you have some ideas which aren't paradoxes is self delusion.

See above. Your claim that all ideas are lies is the essence of the postmodern
position. A postmodernist first denies the existence of shared, objective
truths, then tries to start a dialogue requiring what's just been denied.

> I would say a hallmark of sanity is the ability to work within paradoxes.

That's certainly true, but it doesn't follow that all is paradox, or that all
statements are lies.

