Knowledge is Power: A Foucauldian PerspectiveBy: Aldrin F. Quintero, MIE, MA

This paper was presented during Conference-Workshop in celebration of the World Philosophy Day 2014 on December 6, 2014, at the Leong Hall Auditorium, Ateneo de Manila University.  

Abstract

This paper makes power its central focus. It examines the main assumptions implicit in the predominant conceptions of power in the wider social theory which informs, and is informed by it. This essay is a review of the theories on power of Michel Foucault.   It shows how Foucault's mode of analysis of power, can be used to understand the power relations of a modern society and on what some of the implications of adopting a Foucauldian approach to the study of management and organizations might be.

I. Introduction

Many human beings have been involved in a power struggle of some sort since the

beginning of time. Between power in the business world, classroom, and government it is often

clear who is subordinate and who is dominant. Subordinates may at times feel powerless;

however, they can gain satisfaction out of aesthetics and hidden transcripts because of the

personal freedoms it represents to them. The struggle for power resulted in many people

becoming corrupt and single minded.Power is something many desire where people often change

and become evil in their attempts to acquire it

The history is full of anecdotes where those who were in powerful position or those who

had control over the medium or language have manipulated the truth to either maintain their

stranglehold on the powerful position or have attempted to gain the power. Those in leadership

or so called position of power need to have a control on other people and their environment and

so that they can maximize their chance of securing a flourishing and long control over others. By

exercising the way to power, they are taking advantage of their natural gifts to achieve their full

potential, which may include achieving dominance over others.They also understand that to gain

and maintain this power it is very important that truth is on their side. If people have belief in

something and if it can be ensured that people believe it to be true then it enhances the feeling of

power of the person who holds the belief.

The choice between good and evil is a decision every man must make

throughout his life in order to guide his actions and control his future.   This

element of choice, no matter what the outcome, displays man's power as an

individual.   Any efforts to control or influence this choice between good and

evil will in turn govern man's free will and enslave him.   In the novel A

Clockwork Orange,   the author uses symbolism through imagery, the

characterization of Alex, and the first person narrative point of view to prove

that “without the ability to choose between good and evil, Man becomes powerless

as an individual."

To do so the laws of society are created by those who are in position of power. Although

the law of the day claims to be written in a rational objective language but rules and regulations

actually represents the interest of those who are writing those laws. Those who have power or

have control over the language or discourse have created laws with double ethics, where one set

of rules, regulations and roles exists for the rulers and another set exists for their subjects.

The Cogito

The discovery of Cogito, the thinking self has become the foundation of what knowledge

is. With this, man gave power unto himself to transform nature and put nature under his disposal.

Thus, ultimately, what nature’s means depends on man, for truth now is not merely truth in itself,

but the truth for man, from being-in-itself to a being-for-itself.

But this being-for-itself or truth as “truth for man” has given man tremendous power and

possibilities, most especially in the political realm. When power is translated into the public

sphere it can mean control. Thus, it is not only nature that is under man’s dominion, but the

world itself and the destiny of mankind. The way life is lived thereby depends on the way

institutions are governed. Conflict, which has become inevitable with the thirst for more power

by a few men, defines the way things are and will be.

Accordingly, truth just is the property of increasing the feeling of power: to say that a

belief (statement, representation, etc.) is true is just to say that it increases the feeling of power in

the one who holds the belief.

II. Rationale

Foucault on Power

Michel Foucault, the French postmodernist, has been hugely influential in shaping

understandings of power, leading away from the analysis of actors who use power as an

instrument of coercion, and even away from the discreet structures in which those actors operate,

toward the idea that ‘power is everywhere’, diffused and embodied in discourse, knowledge and

‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault 1991; Rabinow 1991). Power for Foucault is what makes us what we

are, operating on a quite different level from other theories:

‘His work marks a radical departure from previous modes of conceiving power and

cannot be easily integrated with previous ideas, as power is diffuse rather than concentrated,

embodied and enacted rather than possessed, discursive rather than purely coercive, and

constitutes agents rather than being deployed by them’ (Gaventa 2003: 1)

Foucault challenges the idea that power is wielded by people or groups by way of

‘episodic’ or ‘sovereign’ acts of domination or coercion, seeing it instead as dispersed and

pervasive. ‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’ so in this sense is neither an

agency nor a structure (Foucault 1998: 63). Instead it is a kind of ‘metapower’ or ‘regime of

truth’ that pervades society, and which is in constant flux and negotiation. Foucault uses the term

‘power/knowledge’ to signify that power is constituted through accepted forms of knowledge,

scientific understanding and ‘truth’:

Truth and Power

‘Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of

constraint.  And it induces regular effects of power.  Each society has its regime of truth, its

“general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as

true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the

means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the

acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true’

(Foucault, in Rabinow 1991).

These ‘general politics’ and ‘regimes of truth’ are the result of scientific discourse and

institutions, and are reinforced (and redefined) constantly through the education system, the

media, and the flux of political and economic ideologies. In this sense, the ‘battle for truth’ is not

for some absolute truth that can be discovered and accepted, but is a battle about ‘the rules

according to which the true and false are separated and specific effects of power are attached to

the true’… a battle about ‘the status of truth and the economic and political role it

plays’(Foucault, in Rabinow 1991). This is the inspiration for Hayward’s focus on power as

boundaries that enable and constrain possibilities for action, and on people’s relative capacities

to know and shape these boundaries (Hayward 1998).

Foucault is one of the few writers on power who recognize that power is not just a

negative, coercive or repressive thing that forces us to do things against our wishes, but can also

be a necessary, productive and positive force in society (Gaventa 2003: 2):

‘We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it

‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’.  In fact power

produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.  The individual

and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production’ (Foucault 1991: 194).

Power is also a major source of social discipline and conformity. In shifting attention

away from the ‘sovereign’ and ‘episodic’ exercise of power, traditionally centered in feudal

states to coerce their subjects, Foucault pointed to a new kind of ‘disciplinary power’ that could

be observed in the administrative systems and social services that were created in 18th century

Europe, such as prisons, schools and mental hospitals. Their systems of surveillance and

assessment no longer required force or violence, as people learned to discipline themselves and

behave in expected ways.

Foucault was fascinated by the mechanisms of prison surveillance, school discipline,

systems for the administration and control of populations, and the promotion of norms about

bodily conduct, including sex. He studied psychology, medicine and criminology and their roles

as bodies of knowledge that define norms of behavior and deviance. Physical bodies are

subjugated and made to behave in certain ways, as a microcosm of social control of the wider

population, through what he called ‘bio-power’.  Disciplinary and bio-power create a ‘discursive

practice’ or a body of knowledge and behavior that defines what is normal, acceptable, deviant,

etc. – but it is a discursive practice that is nonetheless in constant flux (Foucault 1991).

A key point about Foucault’s approach to power is that it transcends politics and sees

power as an everyday, socialized and embodied phenomenon. This is why state-centric power

struggles, including revolutions, do not always lead to change in the social order. For some,

Foucault’s concept of power is so elusive and removed from agency or structure that there seems

to be little scope for practical action. But he has been hugely influential in pointing to the ways

that norms can be so embedded as to be beyond our perception – causing us to discipline

ourselves without any willful coercion from others.

Contrary to many interpretations, Foucault believed in possibilities for action and

resistance. He was an active social and political commentator who saw a role for the ‘organic

intellectual’. His ideas about action were, like Hayward’s, concerned with our capacities to

recognize and question socialized norms and constraints.  To challenge power is not a matter of

seeking some ‘absolute truth’ (which is in any case a socially produced power), but ‘of detaching

the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic, and cultural, within which it

operates at the present time’ (Foucault, in Rabinow 1991: 75). Discourse can be a site of both

power and resistance, with scope to ‘evade, subvert or contest strategies of power’ (Gaventa

2003: 3):

‘Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it…  We

must make allowances for the complex and unstable process whereby a discourse can be both an

instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling point of resistance and a

starting point for an opposing strategy.  Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it,

but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart’ (Foucault

1998: 100-1).

The powercube is not easily compatible with Foucauldian understandings of power, but

there is scope for critical analysis and strategic action at the level of challenging or shaping

discourse – for example taking the psychological/cultural meaning of ‘invisible power’ and

‘hegemony’ as a lens with which to look at the whole. Foucault’s approach has been widely used

to critique development thinking and paradigms, and the ways in which development discourses

are imbued with power (Gaventa 2003, citing the work of Escobar, Castells and other ‘post-

development’ critics).

Some Implications of Foucauldian Theorizing on Power for Organizational Analysis

Though he was reluctant to admit it at the time, power was central to many of Foucault's

own analyses. His studies s of the clinic and the prison in particular yield most insight into the

application of his theorizing on power. The implications of adopting a Foucauldian stance are

many. The following would seem to be most pertinent to research on management and

organizations.

First, the use of Foucault's genealogical method permits an historical understanding of

how power has come to be exercised in individual organizations. The emphasis is on

organizational processes - how power is instantiated in the routine discursive practices of

everyday organizational life - in particular how organizational practices function in both more

formal and overt as well as more subtle and discreet ways through the techniques of

discipline, surveillance and normalization to constitute individuals as organizational subjects.

Second, a Foucauldian study does not limit a discussion of power to a description of its

effects without ever relating those effects to causes or a basic nature of power (Foucault, 1982).

However, motives (why particular subjects act in particular ways) are not part of the grid of

analysis.

Third, a focus on the role of individuals (agency) and structure in producing and

maintaining power relations is enabled, though it remains impossible within a Foucauldian

perspective to determine where, or with whom, power relations originate. Foucault admits that it

is not always easy to identify exactly where power lies:

No-one, strictly speaking, has an official right to power; and yet it is always being

exerted in a particular direction, with some people on one side and some on the other. It is often

difficult to say who holds power in a precise sense, but it is easy to see who lacks power

(Foucault, 1977b, p. 213).

Indeed, it is fair to say that Foucault is not always interested in who exercised power,

although he sometimes is, particularly in respect of any analysis of 'struggles'. "This theme of

struggle only really becomes operative - if one establishes concretely - in each particular case -

who is engaged in struggle, what the struggle is about, and how, where, by what means ... it

evolves" (Foucault, 1980b, p. 164). The focus is oriented more towards how power was

exercised though discussion necessarily recounts who benefited and who suffered (who is

secondary to how). Notably, however, in any discussion of agents, the attractions of

reductionist psychology are resisted: The focus is not on individual personality, cognitive

style or attitudes rather on how agents might have been conditioned to act in particular ways.

Fourth, a Foucauldian approach allows for the study of organizations to be freed from the

functionalist notions of progress and continual refinement.

Fifth, researchers using a Foucauldianapproach of interpretive analytics as Dreyfus and

Rabinow (1982) preferred to call it, are encouraged to accept that they have no privileged

external position outside the practices which they are studying, and that they have been involved

in and shaped by disciplinary power and other normalizing practices.

Sixth, a conundrum for organizational theorists is posed. Though a case study approach is

both a practicable and appropriate application of Foucauldian method, the question of

generalisability arises. Foucault claims a certain homogeneity of organizational forms, where, as

he sees it the underlying dynamics of organizations are all essentially alike despite their

differences in surface features (Burrell, 1988).

Thus do we allow for the possibility of a theory of organizations based on a Foucauldian

perspective? Clegg (1989) argues that a general theory of organizations is not possible as far too

many contingencies can enter into the picture - for example "the unforeseen external agencies

who enter the field of action of action, or whose powers effect those already there, but also the

competency of agencies in the struggle" (p. 112). Do we accept that "the reality of

organizations is that they reflect and reproduce a disciplinary society", and that in talking about

organizations, we develop discourse and classification schemes for their analysis, and so we

actively contribute to this discipline as Burrell (1988, p. 233) suggested? All the more so, then, to

talk of organizations in conventionally functionalist ways is to reproduce a functionalist

conception. Are we left with the "middle level conceptual refinement and empirical application"

recommended by Clegg (1989) as maybe a more useful strategy for our researches?

So what can be done? We could use a Foucauldian conception of power/knowledge as an

alternate way of theorizingorganizations provided we look for what Burrell labels the "Same and

the Different" (1988, p. 234). We can ask what is similar to other organizations and what is

different from other organizations we study with respect to how power is exercised? It is in

unmasking how power is exercised that we reveal the possibilities for resistance and

hence, maybe, even, variety in organizational forms.

Seventh, in practical terms, this review of a Foucauldian conception of power both in

terms of what it is and what it is not, raises the question of what can be said about power and

how it can be said. Power can only ever be exercised; in Foucault's words, "power is not

something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip

away" (1980a, p. 94). The interest in Foucauldian analyses can be only in the present and in the

past insofar as the past informs the present. The future cannot be accounted for. Potential power

simply does not exist. Power and knowledge are conflated: the traditional positivist distinctions

between power and knowledge (or practice and theory) are dissolved (Marsden &Townley,

1996). Where power is described, knowledge is implicated and vice versa. Power/knowledge

emerges as an heuristic device for organizational analysis denoting a relationship of

interdependency and productivity. The focus is on how power produces specific effects,

not on whether those effects might be conceived positively or negatively. Foucauldian

discourse on power is circumscribed. It is mostly focused on how power is exercised and to

what effect. Of necessity, but secondarily on who and on what structures are implicated in the

particular power relations being investigated. And, almost never does Foucauldian analysis focus

on why power is being exercised or what motives could be imputed.

III. Conclusion

This paper has reviewed three fundamentally different conceptions of power in order to

clarify a Foucauldian position and the implications of adopting this kind of perspective in

analyses of management and organizations.

Paradigmatically, Foucault's work remains difficult to define. Although his theories reject

most of the assumptions implicit in functionalist explanations, theyretain some similarities

with radical structuralist perspectives.

Foucault's theories onpower straddle the radical humanist / radical structuralist divide,

a division seen as problematic by various commentators, particularly Hopper and Powell (1985)

who argue that the separation is based on a contentious reading of Marx's arguments and that the

concerns of radical structuralist analysis should not be seen as incompatible with those stressing

consciousness, both being "dialectical aspects of the same reality" (p. 451). Indeed, as Burrell

and Morgan's (1979) taxonomy portrays, the main differentiating factor between the radical

paradigms is one of subjectivity/objectivity which may be better conceived of in relative

rather than in dichotomous terms. Gioia and Pitre (1990, p. 594) make an argument for

bridging across blurred paradigm boundaries, highlighting the subjective-objective and

regulation-radical change dimensions as continua. They contend that proponents of radical

structuralism and radical humanism share the value for activism and change but differ mainly in

their levels of analysis and in their assumptions about the nature of reality.

Radical structuralistsassume underlying objective class and economic structures whereas

radical humanists assume the subjective social construction of deep structures at a micro- level.

Arguably then, a clear-cut categorisation of Foucault in terms of the mutually exclusive

dichotomies upon which Burrell and Morgan (1979) base their taxonomy is problematic at best.

Yes it is precisely this paradigmatic fence sitting that renders Foucault's theories on power

novel and interesting, and affords the opportunity for a re-evaluation of the exercise of power in

organizations.

Ultimately a Foucauldian approach to power relies on empirics for its explanation, but

not in any consciously positivistic way for it accepts the ubiquitous nature of power and denies

functionalist interpretations of progress. Foucault's challenge to the rationalist/functionalist

pretensions of modern systems of power means that organizational life can no longer be seen as a

continual refinement of strategems of power for more and more noble ends. Normalizing

practices which facilitate the exercise and maintenance of power, rather than ideologically

derived explanations are the focus of a Foucauldian study.

Adopting a Foucauldian perspective, one might learn how power is exercised in

particular organizations, what programs, strategies and technologies support power relations,

and who the beneficiaries and sufferers are in the web of power relations. An informed

critique of power has significant implications for understanding the nature and role of

organizations and for the resistance of power strategems - strategems which appear to be, but

never are, neutral and independent. Some of the implications of Foucault's theorizing on power

and the use of the power/knowledge construct as an heuristic device for organizational analysis

were discussed in this paper with final emphasis being placed on the use of 'power' in a

nominalist sense, defining precisely what can be said about power within a Foucauldian-

inspired discourse which should be oriented to specific management or organizational

contexts.

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