Comilla University Journal of Social Sciences Volume II, No. 1 January-December 2019 ISSN: 2663-2659
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Implications of Michel Foucault's ideas on Power,
Implications of Michel Foucault's ideas on Power, Subjectification and Resistance
Introduction
Michel Foucault is one of the most influential theorists in contemporary sociological theories and critical thoughts for his groundbreaking theories on the formation and functions of modernity. He was particularly interested in studying the emergence of a distinctively modern form of power, which is firmly connected with different modes of objectification of subjects (Fraser, 1981, P. 276). Michel Foucault argued that since the 16th century a new regime of power emerged in many European and Western societies, which is entirely different from the previous systems regarding the exertion of social and political controls as well as the way of institutionalizing particular knowledge to subjugate and govern the entire population (Fraser, 1981). Foucault's theoretical framework focuses on the complicated relationship between power, subjectification, and resistance and shows how these elements work together upon the social body and life of the human population in modern societies. Foucault's critical theories influenced many scholars in the fields of social sciences and humanities. Furthermore, a wide range of theoretical and ethnographic studies has been done by anthropologists and social scientists who have intensively applied his theoretical ideas in their works. For instance, Aihwa Ong (2003) examined how the technologies of government and social control function upon subject-citizens in America. Nancy Fraser (1981) and Barry Morris (1989), differently used the notions of power and resistance in analyzing the power relations between different groups. Emily Martin (1989) used Foucauldian ideas in explaining medicalization and population control, while, Arturo Escobar (1995) applied Foucault's concepts in studying the critical issues in anthropology of development and post-development.
Furthermore, a number of ethnographic works have been conducted following the theoretical framework of Michel Foucault in studying neoliberal governmentality (See for more: Brady 2014). However, this paper examines two selected ethnographic accounts conducted in the field of anthropology, which had articulated the Foucauldian perspectives on power, subjectification, and resistance in explaining their research questions and ethnographic analyses. One is Aihwa Ong's Buddha is Hiding (2003), where she applied Foucault's theoretical framework in studying the technologies of neo-liberal government and the cultural processes of subjectification of Cambodian refugees in California, USA. The other one is Barry Morris's Domesticating Resistance (1989), where he used Foucault's theory of power and resistance to investigate how power, institutionalization and the political construction of identity work through the interactions between the Aborigines and the State system in Australia.
In this context, this paper critically discusses the Foucauldian ideas of power, subject and resistance, and its influence on ethnographic research and analysis. In so doing, the first section of the paper briefly presents the methodological approach used in selecting ethnographies for review and analysis. Further, this section depicts the theoretical and conceptual ideas of Michel Foucault based on relevant literature. It attempts to indicate how Foucault explained the complicated relationship between power, subjectification, and resistance, which has an
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immense influence on the technologies of government, construction of identities, and interactive power relations in modern societies. The second section of the paper specifically focuses on the works of Aihwa Ong (2003) and Barry Morris (1989) to examine how they have differently adapted Michel Foucault’s theoretical and conceptual ideas to their research and ethnographic analysis.
Finally, the paper tends to argue that in various degrees these ethnographies might be viewed as a representative of Foucauldian theoretical perspectives, and indicate the implications of these perspectives in contemporary anthropological research and ethnographic studies.
Methodological Approach
This paper employs a narrative review approach to select relevant ethnographic works that specifically used Foucault's ideas on power, subjectification, and resistance in studying the role of the State and its apparatuses in implementing social control and governmentality in society. Thus, secondary data sources have been used in this paper for further analysis. Following the narrative review approach, two ethnographies were selected that represent a different scenario of modern state mechanism and governmentality in two different time periods. On the one hand, the ethnography Buddha is Hiding (2003) outlines how a neoliberal governmentality system enacts on the Cambodian migrants' everyday life in the USA. While Domesticating Resistance (1989) represents the contests and conflicts between the Aboriginal Dhan-gadi society and modern state formation in Australia. Both the ethnographies employed Michel Foucault’s understanding of power, subjectification and resistance, and governmentality at the center of their theoretical frameworks. Thus, the selected studies are reviewed and analyzed on the basis of the author’s experiences, relevant theories, and concepts to indicate how different society's social and political controlling mechanisms and the State’s subjugation processes could be understood through Foucault’s theoretical perspective.
Foucault’s Ideas on Power, Subjectification, and Resistance
Michel Foucault was critical of 'reasons' and identified two fundamental problems of modern rational humanism. First, the idea of universal humanity reflects how Europe had constructed some specific standards of modernity and modern life based on the cultural traits of the Europeans. Second, “the values of European Enlightenment immensely contributed to constituting a disciplinary mechanism that imposes an “appropriate identity” on modern people” (Hartwick & Peet, 2009, p. 204). Foucault believed that modern rationality was not liberating but worked as a “force focused on controlling the minds of individuals rather than opening them to many possibilities” (Hartwick & Peet 2009, p. 204). He argued that the disciplinary modes of modern power have evolved in a historical and political context with the direct influence of modern rational humanism.
Therefore, Foucault (1982) emphasized the conceptualization of power and struggles in different historical conditions and identified their relevance to the present circumstances of power relations.
Implications of Michel Foucault's ideas on Power, Subjectification and Resistance
Foucault's concepts of power, subjectification, and resistance are firmly connected and an integral part of his theoretical project on modernity (Heller 1996). There are three modes of objectification by which an individual becomes a subject of modern power; these are modes of inquiry or scientific classification, dividing practice and subjectification (Foucault 1982). First, the mode of inquiry or scientific classification is the practice of making the individual body into a thing or object through the use of scientific knowledge and information. For instance, the objectification of the productive subject in the analysis of wealth and economics or the objectifications of the human being through the documentation of lives in natural history or biology are the examples of scientific classification (Foucault 1982, p. 777). The second mode, 'dividing practice', is very important for understanding the categorization of subjects into social and individual identities. It is a process of social objectification and categorizations that legitimate as well as illegitimate social actions, identity, and physical conditions based on historically and socially produced knowledge and discourses. For instance, the categories between sane and insane, normal and abnormal, sick and healthy all have derived from modern medical science and social practices in Europe during the 19th century which objectified individuals concerning their social, psychological, and physical conditions. Finally, the mode of subjectification is a process by which human beings turn to become subjects. This process significantly differs from the other two ways of objectification in which individuals' identity is passive and structurally constrained (Gordon 1999).
However, subjectification is a process which actively engages individual in the formation of self and identity. Foucault explained how individuals recognize themselves as subjects of sexuality by learning and practicing the ideal forms of sexual behavior (Foucault 1982, P.778). Through the mode of subjectification, individuals internalize a generalized understanding about body, self, and identity, which eventually work as a guideline for their actions and activities. Thus, it is important to identify the position of subjects within the structure as well as the individual's response to the power relations. Although, the legal and institutional models of power do not provide any methodological tool for understanding how the human being is becoming subjects of modern power relations and how they respond to the process of objectification. Foucault (1982) emphasized the significance of studying the forms of resistance against power to examine how a new economy of power relations works in the present time. In this regard, the study of different kinds of struggles helped to analyze the power relations through the antagonism of different strategies.
Foucault (1982) identified three major types of struggles; against forms of domination, forms of exploitation, and forms of subjectivity and subjection. He said that all these struggles is a struggle against a “form of power” that
“categorizes the individual, marks him by his individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him” (Foucault 1982, p.781). This form of power immensely contributed to the making of individual subjects which come under the control and dependence of others as well as “tied to his identity by conscience or
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self-knowledge” (Foucault 1982, p.781). He did not explain how conscience and self-knowledge influence each other in this form of power relationship. Although, Foucault (1982) mentioned that the older concepts of power in feudal and pre- industrial societies misrecognized the subjective consequence of power and only focused on its totalizing facts. However, the modern liberal states have used both the individualizing and totalizing aspects of power and power relations. Thus, the struggles against the forms of subjugation became more critical rather than the struggles against the ways of domination and exploitation in understanding modern power relations (Foucault 1982, p. 782).
The rationalization of specific knowledge about the growth, life, security, and care of the population played a crucial role in the embodiment of power through different institutions such as school, prison, hospital, media, etc. Michel Foucault (1982) believed that power in modern society not only appears in the form of direct violence or straightforward domination; instead, it works through the disciplinary mechanism and the system of knowledge. Therefore, the exercise of power depends on both the interactive actions of individuals and social categories of the population; those who internalize a set of historically defined and politically authorized discourses and practices to maintain the structure and functions of the governing system. Thus, “the internalization of specific discourse within a given system and society plays a vital part in constituting subjective and social identities” (Brooker 2003, p.219). However, it is pertinent to consider that subjective social identities response to diverse modes of objectification in different ways and creates counter-hegemonic positions in modern power relations. Foucault (1982) argued that the modern government constructs a set of authorized guidance, modes of action to enable individuals and groups to exercise power upon each other. The interaction between individuals and groups for using power is not possible without their access to freedom. Foucault noted that "power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar they are free” (Foucault 1982, p. 790). Thus, the relationship between power and freedom is necessary, as well as mutually exclusive. Freedom is essential for exercising power; however, it disappears when power is exercised on subjects (Foucault 1982). Further, he emphasized five major points to understanding the power relationship and the struggles between individuals and groups (Foucault 1982, p. 792). This paper mainly focuses on the third and the fourth points which are helpful in examining the power relationship in a modern liberal state. For instance, “the means of bringing power relation into being” explain how power relations appear in the forms of violence, legislation, and surveillance as part of a governing system.
While the “forms of institutionalization” explains how several institutions work to maintain the social and political regulation of State as well as the distribution of power relations at a certain level (Foucault 1982, p. 792). Foucault argued that modern ‘bio-power’ emerged in the 17th century when the fostering of life, growth, and care of population became the central concern of the State (Ong 2003). He identified two significant changes in the technologies of power since the classical age. First, the anatomy political technique focuses on the individual body; secondly, the bio-political method is concerned at the social body of the
Implications of Michel Foucault's ideas on Power, Subjectification and Resistance
population (Curtis 2002, p. 506). Both of these techniques are fundamental features of modern bio-power, which make strategic use of bodies of knowledge and implement the technologies of government.
Nancy Fraser (1981) outlines a critical analysis of the Foucauldian perspective of modern power. Fraser stated that Foucault's empirical study of modernity defines power as a “productive” force rather than negating, which eventually eliminates the previous understanding of power based on its repressive nature. Secondly, Fraser focuses on Foucault's explanation regarding the
“capillary” nature of modern power, which “operates at the lowest extremities of the social body in everyday social practices” (Fraser 1981, P. 272). This decentralized notion of power provides an alternative in opposition to the idea that power is located primarily in the economic and political structure. Further, she argued that Foucault's genealogy of modern power unveils a new relationship between power and subjects which works through social practices than through the beliefs (Fraser 1981, p. 272).
On the other hand, Kevin Heller (1996) provides a detailed account regarding the Foucauldian perspectives on the relationship between power, subjectification, and resistance. He reexamined Foucault's position on the intentionality and subjectivity and non-subjectivity of power. Unlike Nancy Fraser, he argued that Foucault's analysis of power relations not only emphasizes the intentionality of power to be imposed on the subjects, but the decentralized construction of subjectivity also provides an opportunity to identify both hegemonic and counter- hegemonic subject-positions in power relations. Thus, Heller (1996) argued that in the Foucauldian perspective, resistance is a structural consequence of power- mechanisms and the complicated process of subjectification. Moreover, Foucault's concept of freedom helps to categorize between both the coercive and consensual forms of domination in modern forms of power (Heller 1996, p.79).
The above discussion presents an analysis of Foucault's ideas regarding the relationship between power, subjectification, and resistance and their consequences on the formation and deployment of bio-power and governmentality since the sixteenth century. His genealogy of power involves the interpretation of relations of power, knowledge, discourse, and the body in modern society, which is methodologically different from the current methods of studying power relations. As, the new understanding of power relations identifies various forms of struggle and resistance as a structural response to social and political systems, through which individual and groups becomes an agent of power relationships and exercise power upon each other. However, it is also important to consider that the anti-hegemonic response of the subjects against the hegemonic structure is an integral part of the reformation and management of the governing system.
Foucault's idea of power explains how the technologies of government engage both individual and collective groups to circulate and internalize the policies, programs, and agendas of government at the micro-level of social interaction. The Foucauldian analysis of power, subject, and resistance have been adopted by many scholars in explaining the structuring of governmentality, the technologies
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of government, and the formation of political rationality in contemporary liberal and neo-liberal state societies. Following this discussion, the next section mainly focuses on the ethnographic works of Aihwa Ong (2003) and Barry Morris (1989) to evaluate how they have used Foucault's theories of power relations in their ethnographic research and analyses. Concurrently, this section indicates the significance of using these ideas in studying the formation and implementation of governmentality in contemporary state societies based on the case ethnographies.
Implications of Foucault's ideas in the ethnographic Analyses of Aihwa Ong and Morris Barry
In Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America, Aihwa Ong (2003) provides an ethnographic account of the experiences of Cambodian refugees transitioning to and living in California, USA. Ong (2003) investigates the techniques of government implemented upon the Cambodian people in two different political and social settings of Cambodia and the United States of America. More specifically, she intended to explore how the social technologies of the American government circulate particular values about self-reliance, freedom, and individualism within the subject population through a set of policies, programs, and practices to make them compatible with the economic and social life. Further, she showed that the Cambodian immigrant community negotiates their identities and social and cultural backgrounds to adopt the expected social norms and behaviors of a new political economy and social structure to survive in a new form of power relation. The Cambodian refugees as citizen-subject were constituted and contested in various domains of American life. The strategies to construct self-reliant and entrepreneurial immigrants clashed with a set of alternative ethical values of the citizen-subjects who had struggled to adopt neoliberal rationalities in transforming the “symbol and substance of American citizenship” (Ong 2003, p. 06). Following Michel Foucault's analysis of modern power, discourse, and subjectivity, the author identified the stages of transitions from Cambodian refugees to American citizens through specific forms of governmentality and regulatory systems. She argued that the experience of power and domination before and during the Pot Pol regime in Cambodia was fundamentally different from the power relations and the technologies of government in a modern liberal state like America. Thus, there were a sharp disjuncture between the forms of exercising power and resistance in both countries. On the one hand, in Cambodia, the Buddhist people suffered from the ethnic and political domination aimed at the abolishment of them during the time of Khmer Rouge. Thus, they had to struggle against direct violence and exploitation, which lead them towards a new power relation in America. During their transition and settlement in California, they became the subject of neoliberal rationality and citizen-subject values and had to survive with the forms of subjection rather than exploitation.
The first part of the ethnography portrays a detail description of the life, livelihood, and everyday experience of Cambodian people under the Pol Pot regime. Ong (2003) identified a range of issues regarding the role of religious and
Implications of Michel Foucault's ideas on Power, Subjectification and Resistance
social organizations, power relations, and political structure in Cambodia. The remembrance of the past reflects how Cambodian refugees compare their families and social lives and economic activities with their previous social and religious conditions. As she argued that citizenship is not merely an issue of confirming the legal rights of an individual in a new setting. Rather, it is an identity that shapes and reshapes a set of common values of individual's personal and social life, which means that a set of particular values appropriate for leading life in Cambodia might not be enough for adjusting with the notions of individualism, personhood, religion, gender and power relations in the context of America.
Though, immigrants living in the refugee camps shaped their social and political imaginary of governmentality and citizenship before they arrive in America. For instance, they became the subjects of medicalization and followed the instructions of Aid workers as part of maintaining the image of good refugees, which provides a brief introduction of the social technologies of power in reconstituting social and individual bodies (Ong 2003). The second part of this ethnography reflects the implication of Foucauldian perspectives of the technologies of government in explaining the everyday life of Cambodian immigrants and the self-making of citizen-subjects through their participation and interaction in new cultural and political settings in California. Ong (2003) identified how Cambodian comes to reveal several crises regarding their ethical, generational, sexual, and material identities. Being part of America, and also for becoming an American citizen, the Cambodian immigrants were governed to negotiate their identities as well as obtained effective strategies to change their social and economic conditions. As one of the research participants indicates, “to be American is not an easy thing”
(Ong 2003, p. 219). The Cambodian refugees experienced a wide range of legal, political, and cultural constraints, including economic marginalization and racial discrimination during the citizen making process. Following Foucault's notion of governmentality and bio-power, Aihwa Ong (2003) argued that the social bodies of refugees become the sites of exercising bio-power that portrayed the significance of American values of freedom, self-dependence, and individualism to them through the implementation of policies, programs, and practices of neo- liberalism. Apart from being a productive worker and ideal citizen of America, they learned how to survive with other cultures as well as within their community.
Ong (2003) indicates that the notion of ideal citizenship is a continuous process, whereas bio-power and social regulations work to ensure that people are actively engaged in maintaining their image of ‘good citizen.’ Ong (2003) specifically focuses on the hierarchical order between rich and low-skilled Asian Americans based on their economic and social conditions. She examined how the Cambodians, along with other poor Asian workers, are categorized as risky citizens for not having any entrepreneurial skills. Thus, they went through multiple strategies taken by the State and its social and political apparatuses to improve their economic conditions. Ong (2003) indicates that since the 1970s, the conceptualization of good citizenship has been essentially linked with the duties and responsibilities of an individual for serving the nation by becoming an