Biopower/Geopolitics...

If you get a minute, check this out:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/

I found this section of the article particularly pertinent:

"Google's system isn't unique. Democratic governments around the world -- in Sweden, Canada and the UK, for example -- are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.

Many are also passing data retention laws, forcing companies to retain information on their customers. In the U.S., the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act required phone companies to facilitate FBI eavesdropping, and since 2001, the National Security Agency has built substantial eavesdropping systems with the help of those phone companies.

Systems like these invite misuse: criminal appropriation, government abuse and stretching by everyone possible to apply to situations that are applicable only by the most tortuous logic. The FBI illegally wiretapped the phones of Americans, often falsely invoking terrorism emergencies, 3,500 times between 2002 and 2006 without a warrant. Internet surveillance and control will be no different."

Thoughts?

As We Go Syllabus: Assignments for 02/02/2010

Power Knowledge: Ch. 3, 9, 10

Understanding Foucault: Finish

Power Gone Underground

From Understanding Foucault:

"The question Foucault asks is, how did the ideals, theories, and discourses of freedom, revolution and Enlightenment come to be 'taken over' by the procedures and practices of biopower?" (p. 66)

"In other words, while the ideals of the Enlightenment (justice, liberty, equality, reason) were supposed to reform society (in areas such a prisons, education and health), what actually happened was that a set of disciplinary techniques, quite different from Enlightenment ideals, virtually took over the running of institutions (the army, schools, hospitals), and organized the way in which power operated in society." (p.66)

"In a sense, the Enlightenment project of evacuating the place of power (because power no longer belonged to, nor could be associated with anyone) can also by understood as an invitation to power to conceal itself." (p. 67)

After reading the chapter, "Relations of Power" I am left wondering if I agree with Foucault or not...do I really agree that the place of power is evacuated- that power belongs to no-one?

I don't know...part of me agrees that power is a fickle thing...but it seems to reside with certain people or certain positions...at least for periods of time...to me it makes more sense that power is no longer assumed because of a claim to it (i.e. the King claims power as a divine privilege)...but certain people do seem to have it...and in a concealed fashion...I mean our text uses Rupert Murdoch as an example of this type of power...talk about concealed...most people don't know he is the media mogul that he is (I own OutFoxed...maybe we should get together and watch it).

I don't know what to think about this concealed power...power gone underground.

Furthermore, if the Enlightenment project failed (or at least didn't fully succeed) how am I to understand what has become of "democratic" ideals...

Related Readings

thanks for sending that article, skylar.  i added a related readings section to the side of the blog so we can share. 

Power and resistance

before our current readings, talk of resistance against a dominant power (especially as discussed by cultural marxists like Paul Willis) left me cold.  so what if the lads (in Willis') study resisted school and the idea that it could empower them by expressing working class pride and ambitions that didn't value school?  what does that do for them?  what do these resistances (or, according to Gramsci) cracks in hegemony really do?  but the Foucaultian idea that power never achieves what it might set out to do, that it is not simply resisted, it is diverted, is more hopeful for me.  the example of prisoners (again, in our reader) is a good one.  discursive formations create prisoners as lazy, deviant, bad, criminals. but prisoners take on that identity, find each other in prison, and learn from each other to be better criminals.  not the intention of the state, which power serves.  so counter discourse are par for the course. 

thoughts?

Discipline

our readings are so rich and complicated that it's hard to know where to insert myself in discussion with the texts.  so much easier to think of it as a conversation with you all.

i'm blown away by Foucault's notion that knowledge "makes us its subjects" as discussed in our Understanding Foucault book. connecting two ideas of discipline - the verb as in repressing or punishing, and the known as in a subject to be mastered or regulation of the self - is very useful for keeping both the (constructed) idea that knowledge improves us and subjects us the exercise of power on us.  somehow, when i think of knowledge allow, i have a harder time holding those two ideas and how they work together in my head.  unpacking "discipline" has helped me understand or fathom that dynamic differently.  makes it harder to separate knowledge into good/innocent and bad/oppressive types. 

Epistemes - oh my!

The text does such a good job of laying out the major epistemes (?) of knowledge privilege! the transition from "God" rule - which I always read as "father" rule, transitioning to scientific rule, to an increasing "man" rule". I'm particularly interested in how this shifting epistemes alter language. Society seems so stuck on the correct definition of everything, without giving any thought to the political, economic and/or cultural history of a word or concept.

One of my classes this quarter is focusing on welfare policy. For my homeowrk this week, I read an essay that traced the word "dependency" throughout history, illustrating its transition through the god episteme (that supported dependency as a natural condition of ruler/serf relations, scientific episteme (which privileged those who joined the working economy), to the current masculine defined sense of dependency which relies on old expectations of coverture and slavery. For me, this really shows how power is rationalized through social interactions, creating subjects that rely on the illusion of independence to help ourselves feel a bit of power. Gloomy, huh?

NAMES in Discursive Formations

Hi, Ladies...this is from my notes and thoughts from the chapter in our Foucault reader about Discursive Formations. My notes are below, followed by my own thoughts, which are bolded to distinguish them from the notes.

· Discursive formations are the organizing principles of an episteme

· Depend on three major factors: disciplines, commentary, and author

· For instance the discourse of madness:

o In our current episteme is owned by the disciplines of psychology, sociology, and medicine

o Experts in this field provide commentary

o Authors (NAMES) then become owners of the discourse: Freud, Jung, Adler, Lacan, etc.

· “These ‘names’ hold a privileged place in the discipline- the commentaries and theories they produce carry what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’, and practitioners continually reinterpret their works, providing commentaries on commentaries ad infinitum. Whether an act or a person is considered mad or not might depend on which ‘expert’ carried the most capital.” (p. 22)

· “This combination of disciplines, commentary, and authors constitutes a kind of machine which produces the so-called ‘truth of madness’ which edits out and condemns anything that doesn’t fit within the ‘discursive formation’ at either a local level (discipline-based) or general (culture-based) level.” (p.23)

But how were these names given privilege? Group consensus? Where is the history of the "loser" or other names (somehow this makes me think of Thorndike vs. Dewey)? We "lose" what the "loser" thought- sometimes it is buried totally and other times it becomes the underdog? I don't know- just trying to apply all of this to my experience and context.

All of this reminds me of when I went to the Jewish museum in NYC about five years ago and listened to a discussion at a kiosk in the museum on abortion- which illustrated that rabis throughout the ages had deliberated, taken dispute with one another, quarreled, and disagreed about the morality/ethics of abortion. Some had been supportive, others not supportive. The kiosk traced this "controversial" issue back very far to show that it was an issue that had been around for a very long time.

I remember how much this concerned me not because I have a deep, personal investment in the abortion issue but because of the way in which abortion is talked about in contemporary society (our current episteme). Many conservative (and often religious) groups behave and "talk" as though this has always been a settled, consistently thought about idea from Judaism all the way down to Christianity. This kiosk display clearly showed that it wasn’t- not even by the very religious leaders and people that constitute these groups.

Which leads me to question- where does authority come from? How are these "NAMES" that Foucault talks about given privilege? Is it communal? Does the community decide? What is the relationship between power and authority? These "NAMES" become authoritative voices- but how? What is the process/event that allows or facilitates that within an episteme?

And...further down the rabbit hole we go...

Question -

I found an article on postmodernism and Foucault today in reading my homeowrk for my Gender & Public Policy class. Would love to post/attach this, as if I think it's applicable to our discussion. I have it saved as a PDF. Is there a way to upload?

As We Go Syllabus: Assignments for February 22, 2010

Foucault IPeeps Study

By Feb. 22, 2010 Meeting (3:00 p.m.- 5:00 p.m.):

Foucault Reader Chapters 1-5

Power & Knowledge Truth & Power and Power & Strategies Optional: Questions on Geography

Blog as desired (minimum once per week)

Patty First Post- Feeling Postie

We are sitting in Melissa's charming kitchen determining our syllabus, and enjoying homemade cookies, coffee, and diet coke! Does it get any better?!?!?

Hi Melissa -
thank you for sharing your house with the Ipeepers!