POWER AS THE OMNIPRESENT FORCE
A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY OF FOUCAULT’S UNDERSTANDING OF POWER
Introduction
The thoughts of Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) on sexuality, po-wer and knowledge have been widely discussed by philosophers, historians, sociologists, and sexologists. This paper focuses on an issue taken from his thought of power which has been described in his work The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, especially in part 4 on The Deployment of Sexuality, section 2 on Method. In this work, Foucault analizes the way power works. He holds that power exists primarily in the human relation, comes from everywhere and links to everything. Thus power is an omnipresent force.
In this paper I deal more with the problem, “What does Foucault mean by power as the omnipresent force?” In order to address this question, first of all, I will present Foucault’s critique of “juridico-discursive” concept of power. Secondly, I will discuss on Foucault’s understanding of power which shows the novelty of his concept. And finally, I will offer some critical notes of Foucault’s concept of power.
- I. Foucault’s Critique of “Juridico-Discursive” Concept of Power
Foucault begins his critique of “juridico-discursive” concept of power with an analysis of sexual repression in the Western history. He builds up his discussion primarily to ideas of radical social theory, like Reich and Herbert Marcuse, who made sexuality a central issue in their syntheses of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. He acknowledges that the beginning of 17th century witnessed a relatively open discourse about sexuality. Sexual practices, as Foucault says, “had little need of secrecy.”[1] On the one hand, at the personal level, repression power acts negatively toward sexuality. On the other hand, repression at social level concures with the development of industrial and capital society, which diverts energy to productive labor.
Under Victorian bourgeoisie then sexuality confined and moved into the home only as a function of reproduction. As a result, silence became the law. And silence as law became a model, norm, and truth for couples and families. Parents’ bedroom was acknowledged as a single locus for sex: “Repression operated as a sentence to disappear, but also as an injunction to silence, an affirmation of nonexistence, and, by implication, an admission that there was nothing to say about such things, nothing to see, and nothing to know.”[2]
Sexual repression that became more intensive has been found in the Catholic pastoral service and the practice of the Sacrament of Penance after the Council of Trent. In Foucault, there is an evolution of the confession of sexual transgressions to the confession of desire:
“... Not only will you confess to acts contravening the law, but you will seek to transform your desire, your every desire, into discourse. Insofar as possible, nothing was meant to elude this dictum, even if the words it employed had to be carefully neutralized. The Christian pastoral prescribed as a fundamental duty the task of passing everything having to do with sex through the endless mill of speech.”[3]
In the 18th and 19th centuries, when absolute monarchies’ power came under critics, they constructed themselves as systems of law, expressed themselves through theories of law and made their mechanisms of power in the form of law: “The history of the monarchy went hand in hand with the covering up of the facts and procedures of power by juridico-political discourse.”[4] In other words, in the history of the Western societies power is not essentially repressive to sexual desire, instead they join to one another. Thus says Foucault, “Where there is desire, the power relation is already present.”[5] In this context, he then further steps to introduce an significant analysis of power starting by defining a specific domain to be produced by relations of power, and then determines the instruments of power in order to make his analysis viable. But this analysis is possible only if it frees itself completely from a power, which he calls “juridico-discursive of power.”
It is then important to see what Foucault means by juridico-discursive of power. In him, it is a concept which justifies the two realities consisting of “both thematics of repression and the theory of law as constitutive of desire.”[6] Such concept explains the way repression of instinct and the theory of law work in what Foucault finds it contradictory. Insomuch as this concept regards power as an external hold on desire, it leads to the promise of a “liberation.” On the contrary, as long as it sees power as constitutive of desire itself, it leads to the “affirmation” which one is always and already caught of it.[7] According to Foucault, everyone who works in the political field will always encounter such juridico-discursive of power since it has been lingering from the early western societies.
This concept of power has five principal characters. The first one is “the negative relation.” This character exists between power and sex. Sex is always something that power constrains: “Where sex and pleasure are concerned, power can ‘do’ nothing but say no to them; what it produces, if anything, is absences and gaps; it overlooks elements, introduces discontinuities, separates what is joined, ailed marks off boundaries. Its effects take the general form of limit and lack.”[8] The second one is “the insistence of the rule.” This character identifies power as a law. The way power acts, treats and understands sex depends on the rule of law. It means that sex is placed and translated by power within the context of the law. This power maintains sex through language, or even creates a discourse that is a rule of law. The third character is “the cycle of prohibition.” In this context, power acts only to forbid and to control or to suppress sex. Its law is a law of prohibition in which sex rejects itself since the suppression of sex itself is a punishment.[9] The fourth one is “the logic of censorship.” By this, he means that power rejects and denies sex to exist since it has its own censorship mechanism that forbids someone to talk something (sex) that does not exist. It is tabooed even-though it had been declared. The logic of power exerted on sex is the paradoxical logic of a law that might be expressed as an injunction of nonexistence, non manifestation, and silence.[10] And the last is “the uniformity of the apparatus.” In him, power operates in the same manner at all levels of institutions, from the top to the bottom. Power also works in a uni-formity and comprehensive manner, and reproduces mechanism of law, taboo and censorship. This form is the law of transgression and punishment with its interplay of licit and illicit. Whether someone attributes to it, the form of the prince who formulates rights of the father who forbids, of the censor who enforces silence, or of the master who states the law, in any case he or she schematizes power in a juridical form, and defines its effects as obedience.[11]
The modern societies, says Foucault, have accepted juridico-discursive of power because it is tolerable. It has ability to hide its own mechanism to impose secrecy to others and indispensable to the latter. Since Middle Age’s Monarchy, the rule of law is equivalent to power. It was presented itself as agency of regulation, arbitration and demarcation. Moreover, it identified its will with the law and acted through mechanisms of interdiction and sanction. Foucault concludes: “Law was not simply a weapon skillfully wielded by monarchs; it was the monarchic system’s mode of manifestation and the form of its acceptability.”[12]
- II. Foucault’s Concept of Power: Power as the Omnipresent Force
Foucault has criticized juridico-discursive concept of power as incapable of doing nothing except what is allowed by power, centers on statement of law and operates taboos which ask for obedience. The power is equal to law and, the law is sovereignty. The questions are: “What does Foucault mean by power? And what does Foucault mean by power as the omnipresent force? Why must it be omnipresent force?”
Foucault holds that the term “power” sometimes leads us to a number of misunder-standing of its nature, form and unity. For him, power is not an obedience of citizens to institution, neither a mode of subjugation of law, or a general system of domination[13] of a group over another. He says:
By power, I do not mean “Power” as a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the citizens of a given state. By power, I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugation which, in contrast to violence, has the form of the rule. Finally, I do not have in mind a general system of domination exerted by one group over another, a system whose effects, through successive derivations, pervade the entire social body. The analysis, made in terms of power, must not assume that the sovereignty of the state, the form of the law, or the over-all unity of a domination are given at the outset; rather, these are only the terminal forms power takes.[14]
Power, in contrast, is the multiplicity of force relations; it is a process in human rela-tions; it is a support as well as strategies. Foucault states:
It is seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multi-plicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystalliza-tion is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation—of the law, in the various social hegemonies.[15]
By this definition, Foucault wants to show that power is not an institution or a structure but a specific force people provide with complex strategic situation in a particular society. This power produces everything from one moment to another, comes from everywhere and links to all things. It is what Foucault means “the omnipresent of power.” And why it should be omnipresent? Foucault explains,
The omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. And “power,” insofar as it is permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-reproducing, is simply the over-all effect that emerges from all these mobilities, the concatenation that rests on each of them and seeks in turn to arrest their movement.[16]
In his analysis regarding power as the omnipresent force, Foucault advances five pro-positions. First of all, power is not a thing that someone can have or not have or is subject to it. It cannot be “acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away.”[17] Power, in contrast, is exercised from one point to another in any relation.[18] Se-condly, power is not an exteriority of economic process, knowledge and sexual relationship. Conversely, power is immanent in these relationships and determines their internal structure. Thirdly, power does not come from above but below; it has no connection to rules or ruled by any model of power relations. It is independent of all ruling powers.
Fourthly, power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective. Foucault says that these characteristics of power relations, in fact, are intelligible because they are imbued through and with calculation of “a series of aims and objectives.”[19] Although it is possible to identify designs and strategies in power relations but there is no one can exercise this power because power relations have their own rationality characterized by tactics which no one can direct these relationships. As he says it is “an implicit characteristic of the great anonymous, almost unspoken strategies which coordinate the loquacious tactics whose ‘inventors’ or decision makers are often without hypocrisy.”[20]
Fifthly, in Foucault resistance is a part of power and immanent in power. “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power,” he holds.[21] In other words, the resistance is present everywhere in the network of power. Therefore, Foucault says, “there is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances.”[22] Some of these resistances can be possible, necessa-ry, improbable; some are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, or violent and others are quick to compromise, interested, or sacrificial.[23] It does not mean that resistances are only passive reactions with respect to basic domination. For Foucault resistances can mobilize groups or individuals in definitive way and inflame certain points of the body, certain moments in life and certain types of behavior. It even occasionally becomes great radical ruptures or revolutionary.
Foucault, then, moves toward an analysis on mechanism of power. In his thought, “System-and-Sovereign has captivated political thought for such a long time.”[24] Machiavelli was one of the thinkers who conceived the force relationship and decipher power mechanism on the basis of strategy that is immanent in force relationship. In the spare of power relation, one cannot talk about sexuality in terms of one unilateral power relations. Instead, one must produces “discourses of sex in the field of multiple and mobile power relations.”[25] Foucault advances to set up four rules, not as methodological imperatives but as cautionary prescriptions.
First, “rule of immanence.” This rule reminds that there is always connection between techniques of knowledge and power; there is no exteriority, even they have specific roles and are linked together on the basis of their differences: “Between techniques of knowledge and strategies of power, there is no exteriority, even if they have specific roles and are linked together on the basis of their difference.”[26] Second, “rule of continual variations.” Foucault says that relations of power-knowledge are not in static forms of distributions, they are “matrices of transformations.” He gives an example of child sexuality in the 19th century. Initially, children are excluded entirely and discourse take place between parents and psychiatrists. Later, psychiatrists interview children directly, and suggest that the parents are often ultimately responsible for the child’s disorder.[27] Third, “rule of double conditioning.” Here he says that all “local centers” of power are part of larger strategies and all larger strategies rely on local centers of power, but one does not emulate the other. Fourth, “rule of the tac-tical polyvalence of discourses.” He maintains that in discourse of sexuality, power and knowledge are joined together. This togetherness is the result of discourse. It never once royals or raises up against power but transmits and produces power; it reinforces, under-mines, exposes and makes power possible. In the same manner, silence and secrecy are dwelling places for power. For this reason Foucault adds, “Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy.”[28]
Foucault comes to conclude that power as the omnipresent force does not take the form of law. In contrast, it must replace the privilege of law in terms of its objective, the privilege of prevention with strategic efficacy, the privilege of power with the analysis of a multiple and mobile field of force relations producing effects of domination. In short, power as the omnipresent force is “the strategical model, rather than the model based on law.”[29] This is the essential trait of Western societies which is expressed in war, in every form of welfare and in political power.
- III. Critical Notes of Foucault’s Concept of Power
Gazing at Foucault’s understanding of power, I would offer here some critical notes regarding his concept of power. My questions are: “What is the contribution of Foucault’s concept of power? Does Foucault’s concept of power really mean something new?”
Foucault begins his theory of power by recounting the history of sexuality at the behest of repressive hypothesis. He aknowlegdes that the 17th century was the age of repression which reached its zenit with Virtorian bourgeoisie and the practice of the Sacrament of Panence under Catholic Church after the Council of Trent. In his mind, “What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they didecated themselves to speaking of it as infinitum while exploiting it as the secret.”[30]
In his commentary of Foucault’s volume 1 of The History of Sexuality, Carol A Pollis says that Foucault’s approach to sex dramatically changed the field of sexology in opening up a new way of thinking about sex and its relation to power: “His approach, attempting to break down the givens with which so much history and social science begin and to isolate characteristic forms through which power operates in modern society, raises important issues concerning philosophies of history and science in relation to sexology.”[31] Foucauldian model then offers important contribution to creating method for developing theory in the human sciences such as sexology, history and philosophy.
In his approach to sex and power, Foucault says that power is not a negative but a positive force which produces everything from one moment to another, comes from everywhere and links to all things. In brief, power which operates in our society is the omnipresent force. This concept, as Peter Digeser states, not only “differing dramatically from what is found in the mainstream of political science,”[32] and formulates “an idea of power that differs completely with a certain number of postulates that has marked the traditional leftist position,”[33] but also criticizes traditional analysis of political and philosophical study that relies on the primacy of production.[34] To Foucault power is something noneconomic. It is something that “not possessed but exercised,”[35] and exists only in action primarily in the relationship of force.[36]
I come to realise that power as the omnipresent force is Foucault’s new concept since he offers not only a new radical alternative to social, political and philosophical studies but also helps everyone comprehend a fresh point of view of power: power is not something possessed but exercised. For politicians or intellectuals, Foucault’s concept of power reminds that power as something possessed while relying on the basis of economic or of power itself in gaining political possission tends to corrupt, and even sometimes becomes fearfull and immoral in the political field. But power as something exercised helps one to build up interpersonal relationship, bilateral and international relationship, toward a better world for all mankind since power itself primarily rests on human relationship.
Foucault argues that the history of the West is characterized by integration of law and power. Power, then, constituted the power of juridical monarchy even plays a central role in modern forms of the state. Habermas reminds that in this identification of law-power-mo-narchy, Foucault has ignored not only some of the key doctrines that emanated from the period of the juridical monarchy but also the real progress achieved through the “rule of law” in securing the constitution of political relations and in winning guarantees of liberty and legality which were to have some practical significance.[37] As Habermas says, Foucault: “... is utterly distorted by the fact that he also filters out of the history of penal practices itself all aspects of legal regulation.”[38] In the welfare-state democracies of the West, Habermas argues, the spread of legal regulation has the structure of dilemma, because it is the legal means for securing freedom that themselves endanger the freedom of their presumtive bene-ficaries. By linking power to law, “Foucault so levels down the complexity of societal mo-dernization that the disturbing paradoxes of this process cannot even become apparent to him.”[39]
The same problem arises upon Foucault’s history of sexuality. In Foucault, sexuality is equivalent to discourse and power formation that validate innocent demands for truthfulness in regard to stimulations, instinctive desires, and experiences. In addition, at the end of the 18th century a net of truth techniques has been drawn about masturbating child, histerical woman, the perserved adult and the procreating couple. To this point, Habermas says, “Foucault simplifies the highly complex process of a progressive problematization of internal nature into a linear history.”[40]
- IV. Conclusion
Foucault holds that the “juridico-discursive” of power has dominated modern societies. Such idea has impinged on both thematics of repression and the theory of law as constitutive of desire. This model begins at the 17th century in which repressive power acted negatively on sexuality. Under Victorian bourgeoisie and followed by some Catholic teaching, power that bears on sexuality is associated with law and prohibition. Such characteristic of juridico-discursive of power fails to appreciate the positive and productive nature of power since it relies upon the law and prohibition, censorship, obedience and uniformity of the apparatus. Power in juridico-discursive is equivalent to law, and the law is sovereignty.
Power, in Foucault, is not an obedience of citizens to institution, neither a model of subjugation of law, nor a general system of domination of a group over others. Conversely, power is the multiplicity of force relations, a process in human relation and a support as well as strategies that we provide in a particular society. This power produces everything from one moment to another, comes from everywhere and links to all things. This is “the omni-presence of force” which shows the novelty of Foucault’s understanding of power since it does not rely on the primacy of production (thus against the Leftist and Marxist position) but primarily in the human relationship. Unfortunatelly, the crucial point of Foucault’s analysis of power is the identification of law-power-monarchy. By this, he ignores the real progress toward liberty and legality which have some practical significance while tending to expel law as being essentially pre-modern.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Digeser, Peter. “The Fourth Face of Power.” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 54, No. 4, November 1992, [journal on-line]; available from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2132105; Internet; accessed 9 August 2008.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Panthon Books, 1978.
“Afterword. The Subject and Power.” Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. Second edition with an afterword by and an interview with Michel Foucault. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve Lecturers. Translated by Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987.
Paras, Eric. Foucault 2.0. Beyond Power and Knowledge. New York: Other Press, 2006.
Pollis, A. Carol. “The Apparatus of Sexuality: Reflections on Foucault’s Contributions to the Study of Sex in History.” The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 23, No. 3, August 1987, [journal on-line]; available from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2812146; Internet; accessed 9 August 2008.