Michelle Foucault
The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self
Ethics.
Identity. Selfhood. Self-Discipline. Discourse. That’s how you could sum up the
latter part of Foucault’s project, if of course you could sum up Foucault's opus. However, like any good philosopher's works, you just can't sum it up. It is always being put to new and different uses. (Which reminds me of the old quote: "The history of philosophy is just one long footnote to Plato.")
Plus, reading Foucault can sometimes make your head do this.
Anyway, once interested
in the genealogy of society, madness, and order, Foucault moved on to the
development of the subject, a.k.a. the person, a.k.a. the human individual. It
is in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self that Foucault seriously delves into how discourses make
us and how we use discourses to make our “selves.”
Foucault contended
that technologies of the self must be comprehended as inextricably connected to
his notion of governmentality:
the guiding rationales individuals and social structures use to regulate and
police norms of thought and behavior. Foucault endeavored to show how the
modern sovereign state and the modern autonomous individual co-determine each
other’s emergence.
While Foucault
was particularly interested in sexuality and the discourses surrounding
sexuality and sexual identity his work has been influential in psychology,
theology, gender studies, organizational communication. We will talk about some
of those later. First, however, some of Michel.
“As a context,
we must understand that there are four major types of these
"technologies," each a matrix of practical reason: (1) technologies
of production, which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2)
technologies of sign systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or
signification; (3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of
individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of
the subject; (4) technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect
by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on
their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to
transform I themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity,
wisdom, perfection, or immortality.” (1988)
Foucault’s opus
indicates the importance of, and interrelationships between, identity, power
and knowledge. For Foucault power does not reside is a particular person or
institution, but is engendered instead in discourses, practices, and procedures
of everyday life and becomes apparent when it is exercised. Power is everywhere
in social relations, and is exercised at all levels of an organization and
society through various discourses and processes. Human beings are made
subjects – or socially constructed – through various disciplinary discourses.
The control of the self is a form of control through the discourses of
power/knowledge.
As Foucault
(1993) noted, in order to study power and the individual one must examine
governmentality, the contact points of the “techniques of domination and
techniques of the self” (p. 203). Governing people…is not a way to force people
to do what the governor wants; it is always a versatile equilibrium, with
complementarity and conflicts between techniques which assure coercion and
processes through which the self is constructed or modified by himself (p.
203-204). Discipline therefore is not simply imposed from the outside, nor is
it always complete, otherwise there would be no place for reflexivity. For
Foucault, governmentality is not negative, but productive. It socially
constructs subjects, reality, objects and rituals of truth.
While subjects
are constructed through discursive processes, they are never powerless, but are
active participants in creating the identities they desire by relying on
various discourses. They can rebel and resist. (Remember Camus?) Individuals have the ability through these
technologies of the self to reflect upon, shape, govern, and be responsible for
their selves within these discourses and resources of power, to transfigure
themselves to achieve a condition “of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or
immortality."
I am an organizational communication scholar and I've been heartily influenced by Foucault. Given the
dynamic complexity of interrelated power relations, organizational scholars
turned to the concept of struggle, an ongoing, interactive, unpredictable,
definition-creating activity that moves beyond the static power/resistance
model of domination. Similarly, because power resides in networks of
relationships, subjects freely call upon differing discourses in order to enact
strategic games, and therefore, play games of identity. In organizations these
issues of identity transcend personal, organizational and occupational lines.
Here are some of my favorite Foucault works and those who have made use of Foucault:
Herrmann, A. F. (2008). Narratives and sensemaking in the new corporate university: the socialization of first year communication faculty. Unpublished dissertation, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.
Michel Foucault's "History of Madness" in English, is the complete version of the English translation called "Madness and Civilization", which since it was abridged, produced some serious misinterpretations. Foucault shows how the idea of "madness" from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the present, has undergone several transformations of meaning. It is excellent...
....and it might make your head do this.
