Foucault and the Faces of Power
Before I get to discussing the first half of The History of Sexuality, I want to introduce the idea of the three faces of power, analyzed and summarized by Steven Lukes in Power: A Radical View. It was one of the texts used in the PoliSci class Richard and I took last semester, and I found myself thinking about it as I read Foucault this week.
Basically, the first face of power focuses on measuring concrete, observable behavior in community decision-making: A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something B wouldn’t otherwise do. A’s power exists only when B changes his behavior in response to a direct conflict.
The second face of power goes beyond concrete decision-making to address the mobilization of bias, or “a set of predominant values, beliefs, rituals and institutional procedures (‘rules of the game’) that operate systematically and consistently to the benefit of certain persons and groups at the expense of others” (Bachrach and Baratz in Lukes 21). Power can be used not only to influence people’s decisions, but to control which issues are allowed to enter the decision-making arena to begin with. Or, as Foucault writes, “Silence itself – the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers – is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies” (27). When Foucault describes “a new regime of discourses…things were said in a different way; it was different people who said them, from different points of view, and in order to obtain different results,” he is referring to the second face of power, which determines how and which issues are discussed (27).
The third face of power is the use of power to shape social forces, institutional practices, and individuals’ decisions, until eventually “people’s wants may themselves be a product of a system which works against their interests” (Luke 38). Unlike the second face of power, which explains how the status quo can be maintained through coercion, influence, authority, force, and manipulation, the third face of power “offers the prospect of a serious sociological and not merely personalized explanation of how political systems prevent demands from becoming political issues or even from being made” (Lukes 40). The third face of power requires the subordinate group’s acquiescence to their powerlessness, either in the form of “wholesale internalization of dominant values and definitions” or “very partial assimilation, from an uneasy feeling that the status quo, while shamefully iniquitous, is nevertheless the only viable form of society” (Fermia in Lukes 8). When Foucault writes about “the implantation of perversions,” a “visible explosion of unorthodox sexualities,” and how modern society has “if not created, at least outfitted and made to proliferate, groups with multiple elements and a circulating sexuality… [that were] drawn out, revealed, isolated, intensified, incorporated, by multifarious power devices,” it’s a clear description of the effects of the third face of power (45, 49, 47-48).
I know I’m trying to summarize an entire semester into a few paragraphs, so hopefully an example will make things clearer. Let’s say I’m standing by a vending machine, and I want to buy a Coke. If my friend walks over and tries to convince me to buy a Sprite, she’s demonstrating the first face of power. If, however, the machine only sells Diet Coke and Diet Sprite because of the obesity epidemic, the debate is limited by the second face of power. Finally, if the machine sells both Coke and Diet Coke, and I choose the Diet Coke because TV and magazines tell me I have to be skinny to be beautiful, the third face of power is at work, making me want something that conflicts with my real interest in buying a Coke.
Foucault’s repressive hypothesis, then, is making two arguments, one for the second face of power and one for the third, and I think the second-face argument is more convincing. Foucault presents persuasive evidence of a shift in the discourse of sex from marriage relations to “the sexuality of children, mad men and women, and criminals; the sensuality of those who did not like the opposite sex; reveries, obsessions, petty manias, or great transports of rage” (39). But I’m not convinced that the shift in discourse caused the society-wide, third-face effects of actually “producing more species” of “minor perverts” (Foucault 43).
Tags: Ariana, Foucault, reading responses
February 7th, 2011 at 11:59 am
Ariana,
It’s useful to have this overview of Steven Lukes’ theory of power, which was initially published in 1974 and reissued in 2005, as a backdrop of points of comparison and contrast. Lukes and Foucault were writing around the same time, although at that point Foucault was known for Discipline and Punish and History of Sexuality, vol. 1, an Introduction, had not yet been published. Foucault shifts his view of power in some crucial ways between these 2 works. In other words, power is not only disciplinary according to the Sexuality volume (much more on that in class). What they share is an effort to rethink the ways that power was being described, mostly by sociologists and political scientists, especially in light of the Marxist view of power. Lukes remains far closer to a Marxist perspective, however, and I will point out some of these differences here so that we can talk about them more in class.
I should also point out that Lukes is critical of the way that the first and second faces of power have been employed in analysis and that his third face is the one that he uses to critique the shortcomings of the first two. So his contribution is partly to disagree with the standard view of power as merely visible behavior, as those who employ the first face would have it, and also to disagree with those who see power as the second face, because they too see it as serving an intentional force. He moves toward the ideological view in which people have a false consciousness that moves them against their own interests (closer to the book What’s the Matter with Kansas, for example). In other words, Lukes sees power as more in the hands of the State as an intentionally self-serving force of domination.
This view is what Foucault is breaking from. He distinguished domination from power. Domination does not allow fluidity of power relations in his view and hence, no possibility of the practice of freedom. For him, power should be thought of as power relations that create conditions for resistance and change. Also, the State is not a uniform entity for him, but rather, run through with various and sundry, often clashing relations of power stemming from numerous institutional forces and discourses associated with them. This is set out in the next sections, 4 and 5.
In other words, it is more accurate to see Lukes and Foucault as proponents of conflicting views than to place Foucault within Lukes’ categories. You might ultimately agree more with Lukes, but then it would be to show why he is more accurate in his descriptions than Foucault. It is also possible to bring them closer together in some ways—but first it is crucial to see their points of disagreement. One of them to think about is the use of ideology. Lukes builds upon that concept whereas Foucault disputes it.
So my question for you for class is to ask you why you think Foucault would dispute the concept of ideology?
February 7th, 2011 at 5:13 pm
I find it really interesting to see the “faces of power” being discussed. I actually learned about them when I took a class last year that discussed politics and culture. It was largely discussed in terms of patriarchy, and the face of power that relates to people taking for granted an ideology without true consideration.
I personally was not reminded of any specific face of power when reading the first parts in Foucaults’ book. I felt that Foucault, from early on in the book, was attempting to do an analysis, not necessarily through the lens of those in power. For me the very first chapter is what makes me think Foucault would dispute any unilateral argument; his own is based on questions. I think that any argument one were to proffer would then need to be run through the questions he proposes at first, which have an inquisitive rather than judgmental tone, in my opinion. However, I would not say that I think Foucault would necessarily dispute the concept of an ideology in general. I think in fact it could perhaps play very well into his way of thinking.
The way I interpreted his argument to some degree was that the repressive hypothesis was perpetuated by those who had been “repressed,” not only because it is how the people had been brought up, but also because continuing on with the martyrdom of trying to achieve a better position within the major discourse. To me this undermines the direct definition of each face of power, and the argument that the issue is power-based in a one-dimensional way. A word he often uses to describe the conversation about sex is “discursive.” In my mind the use of this words plays into two parts; the first is that Foucault is illustrating the seemingly unrelated conversation and attempting to draw his points from those anecdotes. The second is pointing out how trivial and rambling the conversation is pertaining to sex and sexuality, and is lacking in a pointed fashion, subsequently playing into the inability to wriggle out of the repressive nature that everyone has become so accustomed to.
In terms of power this speaks to how disorganized the view is on who is in power- meaning in my mind that Foucault, like Professor Quinby says, thinks there is not a uniform entity to which he can ascribe responsibility. It is a multitude of people, institutions, etc. I am not sure on the whole of what kind of idealogy Foucaukt could agree with, but I do not think he would dispute all ideologies, let alone the concept of one.