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Post-Structuralism by Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984)

Michel Foucault was born in 1926 and died in 1984. He was French philosopher, historian,
social theorist and literary critic. Foucault’s primary orientation, in terms of ideology, was
towards Marxism. He had joined the Communist Party in 1950-53. He left it around the time
of Stalin’s death, when many others in France did the same. They all questioned what had
been going on in the Soviet Union.

Post-Structuralism

The origin of post-structuralism goes back to Ferdinand Saussure’s structuralism (semiotics).

According to structuralism, language create ideas, its main theme is to find out the source of
meaning. The meaning of the word depends upon its relationship to other words (eg. good
and bad) and the words do not have anything to do with the objects which they signify. It is
the language which gives meaning, thus, the signs have their meaning only through
community agreement (collective shared meaning). It studied the underlying structures
which are inherent in cultural products. Thus, human culture can be understood by means
of structure modelled on language.

Structuralism Post-Structuralism

Meaning is stable, constituted through Meaning is not stable, dependent on interpreter

underlying structure or system rather than a structure

There is a single truth or meaning There are multiple truths and meanings

There is objective reality The reality is constituted only through language

in our mind
They search for universal truths and rules that They are interested in differences in truth rather
govern meaning than universal truth

Post-Structuralism is a movement in philosophy and literary criticism. According to its

approach the ideas of a literary text does not have a single meaning or a singular existence
rather every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning and existence
for a given texts which can be different from the author. Thus, meaning exists only in a
plurality.

Foucault has put into post-structuralism a variety of theoretical inputs. His study was to
work on the linkages of trinity of knowledge, power and truth. He gives importance to
economic and other social institutions but most important aspect of social structure is the
micro-politics of “power” (at institutional levels). Foucault made elaborate case studies
upon various aspects of life and out of which he produced volumes of works on his account,
such as madness and Civilization (1961), The Birth of the Clinic (1963), The Order of Things
(1966), The Archeology of Knowledge (1969), Discipline and Punish (1977) and History of
Sexuality (1976). Through these works he identified the institutions where power plays its
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vital role. According to his generalisation, the institutions include the asylum, the prison, the
hospital, the university, the schools, the factories and industries, the clinic, and the
psychiatrist’s office.

Concept of Discourse

Foucault’s central theme in all discussions is the discourse. For him power, knowledge and
truth are connected through discourses. Power and knowledge is used to control the society
through discourse. For Foucault, in its broad sense, discourse is anything written, said or
communicated using signs (language); which is regularised order of task; and also includes
chains of meaningful statements, institutionalised and practices in routine order. In other
words, discourse is a framework of thinking of a people about a problem or on any give
topic. For instance, the discourse of criminality means how people in a given society think
and talks about crime. And, what is important is that power works through discourse. The
discourse becomes weak or strong in comparison to power. And, according to Foucault
power is knowledge. Thus, in a post-modern condition, there are discourses which are
shaped by knowledge.

Foucault explains how discourse is guided by the people in power – ruling elite or state at
societal level and section of people with knowledge at micro-institutional level – that
through discourse the power is exercised by them. It is a discourse that constructs the
reality, that we see or believe to be real and truth and enslaves people’s consciousness, for
example, the maintaining the slave-master relationship, gender relationship, and state and
citizens relationship.

Generally, it so happens that various thought or theories are not accepted in the society
which is anti-dominant discourse; for instance, the theory that the Sun was the center of
solar system could not be accepted in medieval periods for it being against the Christianity
which held power and constructed discourse during those periods to which he referred as
‘episteme’ (legitimate forms of knowledge for a particular cultural period).

It is in this sense that Foucault was interested in history to explore how discourse changes
throughout the history which he called discursive change.

According to Foucault, every aspect of social life is discourse, such as crime is a discourse, so
are corruption, madness, sexuality, leadership, village, capitalism and environment.

Knowledge and Power

Foucault wanted to uncover knowledge and his search for knowledge led him to find out
power. Ultimately, he connected power with truth. Foucault adopts a number of Nietzsche’s
(German philosopher) interests, most notably the relationship between power and
knowledge. He argued that there was no essential or original definition of truth. Truth is,
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therefore produced by power, and the consequences of the exercise of power are
formulated as truth. However, power is diffused throughout society and hence, it circulates.

Power leads to discursive formation and structure of knowledge. In his book the
Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault stated that the genealogy of power hold key to the
understanding and control of contemporary postmodern society. For him, truth is produced
by power. It is an interpretation tied to the operation of power and domination. A discourse
embodies knowledge (or, rather, what it defines as knowledge) and therefore it embodies
power. There are rules within a discourse concerning who can make statements and in what
context, and these rules exclude some and include others. Those who have knowledge have
the power to fix the flows of meaning and define others. The world is thus made up of a
myriad of power relations and each power generates a resistance; the world is thus a
myriad of power struggle (at various levels).

In his book The Order of Things, Foucault tries to find out the structure of knowledge of a
time and its way of establishing order. This book argues that before the 18 th century man
did not exist at centre, men were subordinated to God. Human knowledge was limited.
God’s was infinite. In the 18th and 19th centuries, God lost his place as the firm centre of all,
who made all knowledge possible. Man became the source of knowledge with springing up
of science.

Another important writing of Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1977), discusses knowledge-
power relationship. Jeremy Bentham presented ideas of Foucault that prisons are an
inspection houses. Prisons are built around an inner tower and having an outer ring of cells,
all of which could be observed from the tower in the middle, called as Panopticon. It has
been presented as a universal model for all buildings involved in activities that required
supervision: hospitals, asylums, workhouses, schools, factories etc. His model of surveillance
provided an answer to the question of how the few could watch the many, so that those
who were watched could always live their lives knowing there was a risk that they could also
be seen. Foucault also explains the reasons that made prison system popular in a capitalist
society. The basic cause for imprisonment has been to discipline the masses of people so
that the rich could live secure life.

In his book, History of Sexuality, Foucault gives a detailed account of power. Taking
reference of repressive approach towards sexuality, Foucault cautions that people will start
asking themselves why they not urge for ending the rule of silence regarding sexuality,
which is considered to be noisiest in their preoccupation. Foucault argues that there was the
“anatomo-politics of the human body,” in which the goal was to discipline the human body
(and its sexuality) – considering sodomy to be forbidden act during renaissance period to
the invention of homosexual and homosexuality during 19 th century. Foucault established
that sex is the truth of life.
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To conclude, it can be said that in a broader way that Foucault has written the present
history of human society. In this society, truth is produced only by virtue of multiple forms
of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth; its
general politics of truth, that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function
as true.