Page 135 - Cultural Theory

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••• Tim May and Jason Powell •••

Foucault’s refusal to be characterized in particular ways may be interpreted as a
designed socio-political strategy central to his overall philosophy (Raulet, 1983). He
rejects any allusion to certainty in social and political life and holds that there is no
universal understanding beyond history – placing him at odds with currents in
Marxism, as well as rationalist thought in general. That being noted, we can find
imperatives that receive differing degree of emphasis throughout his work, one of
which is ‘to discover the relations of specific scientific disciplines and particular
social practices’ (Rabinow, 1984: 4). He has raised an awareness that disciplines, insti-
tutions and social practices operate according to logics that are at variance with the
humanist visions that are assumed to be culturally embedded (Powell and Biggs,
1999; 2000). In other words, the overt meanings given to activities do not correspond
to their overall consequences. Whether these outcomes are intended or accidental
was less important to Foucault than the analysis of power. As Barry Smart (1983: 77)
points out, Foucauldian analysis asks of power: ‘How is it exercised; by what means?’,
and second, ‘What are the effects of the exercise of power?’ Within those strategies
and tactics, investigation would need to be centred on the mechanisms, the ‘tech-
nologies’ employed and the consequences of change.
One example of this disjuncture between humanist vision and cultural practices and
its effects on the direction of modernity derives from Foucault’s (1977) analysis of ‘utili-
tarianism’. A pervasive theme of Foucault’s work is the way in which the panopticon
technique ‘would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything perfectly’ (ibid.:
173). Foucault describes how panopticism (based on the design of the utilitarian philoso-
pher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham) becomes a process whereby certain mecha-
nisms permeate social systems beyond actual, physical institutions. Techniques are thus
‘broken down into flexible methods of control, which may be transferred and adapted ...
[as] ... centres of observation disseminated throughout society’ (ibid.: 211–12).
The mechanisms used to extend the reach of centres of power through the social
body will vary depending upon the grounds upon which they are required to oper-
ate. Their function is to rouse and sustain moral interpretations of particular social
behaviours throughout intermittent observation such that their objects come to
internalize their own surveillance around given norms of conduct. One important
facet of Foucault’s analysis of these processes is his preoccupation with historical
periods in which conventional values are in flux as in the case of ‘madness’, ‘disci-
pline’ and ‘sexuality’ (Foucault, 1967; 1977; 1978) and how the emergence of cultural
discourses then inform commonsensical understandings of ‘normality’ (McNay,
1993). There are, in other words, periods in which particular sites and forms of con-
duct are subject to novel mechanisms and technologies in order to facilitate the tran-
sition from one state of affairs to another (Butler, 2000). These technologies may be
overtly applied during periods of flux until moral relations have been accepted, while
during the process of their application they both modify and are modified by the
individuals or groupings charged with their implementation. Although Foucault
does not impose any sense of causality on the development of such discourses, it
is possible to discern the need for both an explicit moral reason and a method of
operation, shaped to whatever new contexts are appropriate.

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