Power Relations Exposed in Truth and Power
In "Truth and Power" Michel Foucault revisits the major theoretical trends and questions of his career. He is a thinker who knows no bounds of subject or field. His ideas stretch from literature to science, from psychology to labor. He deals in a currency that is accepted everywhere: truth and power. Foucault spends much of his career tracing the threads of truth and power as they intertwine with the history of human experience. He especially loves to study asylums and prisons because they are close to an encapsulated power structure. Using techniques culled from psychology, politics, anthropology, sociology, and archaeology, Foucault presents a highly politicized analysis of the flow of power and power relations.
"Truth and Power" is an excerpted version of an interview with Alesandro Fontana and Pasquale Pasquino that initially appeared as "Intervista a Miche Foucault" in Microfiseca del Poetere in 1977. The interviewers first ask Foucault to revisit some of his earlier ideas and trace the path of his career. Foucault began looking at asylums, and tried to create his theories with an eye toward French politics of the Left. He soon turned to evaluating other sciences such as biology, political economy, and medicine, and came up with the concept of discontinuity: "It seemed to me that ... the rhythm of transformation doesn't follow the smooth, continuist schemas of development which are normally accepted." The idea of discontinuity became a tag which other critics and thinkers applied to him, much to his dismay. Foucault wanted only to show the susceptibility of the sciences and scientific statements to the pressures of power:
At this level it's not so much a matter of knowing what external power imposes itself on science, as of what effects of power circulate among scientific statements, what constitutes, as it were, their internal regime of power, and how and why at certain moments that regime undergoes a global modification.
This idea echoes Thomas Kuhn's ideas about paradigm shifts in a science, and even reverberates back to Dryden's statements about every age's "universal genius." Dryden stated that in every generation there is a general inclination of thought that affects all disciplines. Kuhn proliferated the idea that major revolutions in science are due to major paradigm shifts.
The discussion then moves to structuralism, where Foucault makes some major statements about the structure of history. Foucault is ardent in asserting, "I don't see who could be more of an anti-structuralist than myself.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.). New York: Pantheon.
Hoover did not do a whole lot he thought the stock market would get better by itself. It just kept getting worse. Hoover would not spend money that the U.S. did not have aka Deficit spending. Meaning he wouldn’t put the United States in debt. Seeming as then we did not have a single penny in debt. He did not have very many public works projects. In fact Hoover had only one public works project the Hoover Dam which only employed 5000 men for 5 years. Hoover’s inability to help people in U.S. made him a very unpopular president.
(Flynn 1996, 28) One important aspect of his analysis that distinguishes him from the predecessors is about power. According to Foucault, power is not one-centered, and one-sided which refers to a top to bottom imposition caused by political hierarchy. On the contrary, power is diffusive, which is assumed to be operate in micro-physics, should not be taken as a pejorative sense; contrarily it is a positive one as ‘every exercise of power is accompanied by or gives rise to resistance opens a space for possibility and freedom in any content’. (Flynn 1996, 35) Moreover, Foucault does not describe the power relation as one between the oppressor or the oppressed, rather he says that these power relations are interchangeable in different discourses. These power relations are infinite; therefore we cannot claim that there is an absolute oppressor or an absolute oppressed in these power relations.
On October 24, 1929, (a.k.a. Black Thursday) the stock market fell 9% and five days later the market fell an unprecedented 17.3%. About 29 million shares of stock changed owners causing, at the time, the biggest stock market crash in the history of the United States.
which caused uneven prosperity. Although the economy was booming in the 1920's most purchasing was done by credit.
America's unevenly distributed wealth played a role in the stock market crash and slowed the recovery. During the "Roaring Twenties" our country prospered tremendously, but our middle and lower class prospered little compared to the upper class. The upper class profits sky rocked and the distance between the classes grew out of control. In 1929 the top .1% had a combined income equal to the bottom 42 percent (2). Much of the money was in the hands of a few families who saved or invested rather than spent their money on American goods causing a greater supply than demand. Three quarters of the population maded just enough to purchase consumer goods. They relied heavy on credit to make purchases and had no savings to protect them (5). By 1929, some 200 corporations controlled over half of all American wealth (2). Most of the industries that were prospering and using their profits to improve manufacturing to the point by the market crash they were supplying more than the demand. Before the depression successful companies were ...
Pierre Bourdieu was a highly influential theorist. He provides a unique and fascinating definition or understanding of power as well as an explanation and analysis into how power works. This work serves to outline what is this specific concept of power means and contains, how it is created, what are the various forms it takes on and in general, how power works. Power is a difficult concept to define conclusively or definitively however, Bourdieu explains power to be a symbolic construct that is perpetuated through every day actions and behaviours of a society, that manipulate power relations to create, maintain and force the conforming of peoples to the given habitus of that society (Bourdieu, 1977). Power, is a force created through the social conventions of a specific community that dictate what is expected or accepted by the people while also determining how they understand the world in which they live (Bourdieu, 1977).
The black Tuesday, October 29th, 1929 has been identified as the symbol of the Great Depression. Stock holders lost 14 billion dollars on a single day trade, and more than 30 billion lose in that week, which was 10 times more than the annual budget of the Federal government.[ [documentary] 1929 Wall Street Stock Market Crash
Problems with Foucault: Historical accuracy (empiricism vs. Structuralism)-- Thought and discourse as reality? Can we derive intentions from the consequences of behavior? Is a society without social control possible?
Sarah Snyder Professor Feola Gov’t 416: Critical Theory Assignment #2 On Foucault, “Truth and Juridical Forms” Michel Foucault may be regarded as the most influential twentieth-century philosopher on the history of systems of thought. His theories focus on the relationship between power and knowledge, and how such may be used as a form of social control through institutions in society. In “Truth and Juridical Forms,” Foucault addresses the development of the nineteenth-century penal regime, which completely transformed the operation of the traditional penal justice system.
...obtain real knowledge Rene Descartes creates what can be considered the most historically significant documents of modern society in “ The Discourse of the Method” and the “Principles of Philosophy” the first major works to challenge the Catholic Church and the Classics.
According to Kathleen C. and Carl A. Cohn’s “School Improvement Initiatives in Long Beach, California: The Quest for Higher Student Achievement, Behavior, and Dress Standards” in Education magazine, which was published on December 22, 1998, Long Beach Unified School District initiated mandatory uniforms for all K-8 students in the fall of 1994. Within the first year, all incidents of school crime, including assaults and weapons violations, declined by 76 percent.
...e stock market crash of 1929, Black Tuesday. Black Wednesday was used to refer to a day of widespread air traffic snarls in 1954 as well as the day the British government was forced to withdraw a battered pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. Black Thursday has variously been used for days of devastating brush fires, bombings and athletic defeats, among other unpleasantness. (The New York Times.)
With few regulations on the stock market in the years leading up to the Great Depression, investors were able to buy stocks on margin, only requiring them to put down ten percent. This caused for wild speculation, and many people funneling their life savings into the stock market, which led to artificially high prices. After Black Tuesday, many people began to believe that the banking system in America was going to fail. Thousands flocked to the banks to withdraw their money. With so much output, and so little input, banks nation-wide began failing. In the first eight months of 1930, seven hundred forty-four banks went under.
In his book regarding school uniforms in America, David Brunsma,PhD and Professor of Sociology, reviewed past studies on the effect of uniforms on academic performance. In his study, he came to the conclusion that there is no connection between a mandatory school uniform and academic achievement. (Wilde 4) (Brunsma) Brunsma also co-authored a study with a Kerry Rockquemore that analyzed a national sample of 10th graders and found “no effects of uniforms on absenteeism, behavioral problems, or substance use on campus” and “no effects” on “pro-school attitudes, academic preparedness, and peer attitudes toward school.” Similarly, it is often brought to attention by supporters that improvements in school safety and student behavior in the Long Beach Unified School District from 1993-95 resulted solely from the introduction of school uniforms; however it is unlikely that that was that case for other reform policies, such as a $1 million project to develop alternative teaching strategies, were implemented around the same time. (Brunsma and