{"id":609,"date":"2011-12-23T15:43:29","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T15:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terrywassall.org\/?p=609"},"modified":"2011-12-23T15:43:29","modified_gmt":"2011-12-23T15:43:29","slug":"foucault-and-the-role-of-the-intellectual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/2011\/12\/23\/foucault-and-the-role-of-the-intellectual\/","title":{"rendered":"Foucault and the role of the intellectual"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The final section of the interview discussed in a\u00a0previous\u00a0post, Truth and Power<\/a>, deals with the role of the intellectual. This is particularly of\u00a0interest \u00a0to me because of current discussions of the public role of intellectuals and Bauman’s writings on the appropriate role of sociologists. Foucault talks specifically about Left intellectuals who had considered\u00a0themselves to be\u00a0offering\u00a0universal truths based upon their analysis of the subject-object of universal history, the\u00a0proletariat. The assumption had been that an obscured, collective form of this universal truth is\u00a0embedded\u00a0in the fate and experience of the proletariat. The intellectual is claimed to be the bearer of this universality in its conscious, elaborated form (page 126). \u00a0This pretension is exposed as\u00a0unsustainable\u00a0and its period is now gone, according to Foucault, and intellectuals need to find another basis upon which to forge the connection between ‘theory and practice’. We are no longer able to pronounce upon the universal, or a once and for all truth. As\u00a0intellectuals\u00a0we are now obliged to work, to theorise and ‘practice’ within the specific locations of our experience and knowledge – housing, education, the laboratory, family and sexual\u00a0relations, and so on. Here we deal with problems that are specific to us and different from those of others. The forms of knowledge,\u00a0explicit\u00a0and tacit, formal and informal, and the types and degrees of reflectivity and ‘cognitive surplus’ vary. The problems that specific intellectuals confront are \u00a0not universal. They are not, for instance, \u00a0the terrain and experience of a\u00a0putatively\u00a0homogeneous, cohesive and\u00a0collectively\u00a0conscious class, either first hand or at a remove.<\/p>\n

Having said that, Foucault believes none the less that intellectuals since\u00a0the\u00a01960s have been\u00a0drawn\u00a0closer to the proletariat (a term he still seems happy to use!) and the masses, for two\u00a0reasons. Firstly there is a common context to their disparate real, material, everyday experiences and troubles. Secondly, and related to the first, they are often confronted (albeit in\u00a0different\u00a0forms) by the same adversaries – the multinational\u00a0corporations, the judiciary and police apparatuses, the property speculators, and we\u00a0could\u00a0add to Foucault’s list the new and growing\u00a0accretions\u00a0of neoliberal managerialism, hedge fund managers, ’embedded’ Goldman Sachs\u00a0alumni\u00a0in undemocratic layers of State and\u00a0government, interpenetrating networks of politicians, State\u00a0executives\u00a0and major corporation leaders – in fact the whole cancerous\u00a0excrescence of corrupt and suppurating\u00a0undemocratic\u00a0forms and modes of corporatism.<\/p>\n

In this sense Foucault sees that the age of\u00a0delusional\u00a0universal intellectuals has given way to a more realistic age of ‘specific’ intellectuals. There seems to be some, useful, overlap here between what Foucault is describing and Gramsci’s\u00a0notion\u00a0of ‘organic’ intellectuals. It also hints that intellectuality itself is\u00a0situated\u00a0and located in its material circumstances and in its forms of reflexivity. Universalism is now replaced by the over-arching system that all specific instances are part of and from which are constructed their specific problems, opportunities, and possibilities for understanding and action. This is not a\u00a0relapse\u00a0into universality since the ‘system’ is itself not universal or fixed. It is historically contingent and changeable. It is the exposure and demonstration of this fact that is crucial; the fact of\u00a0historical\u00a0contingency, the fact that what seems\u00a0unalterably\u00a0real today, what we are persuaded \u00a0is ‘just the way things are’, has in fact had a history, it could have been different and can be different. As a matter of fact, it will be different, one way or another.<\/p>\n

In the circumstances Foucault describes, every individual’s activity is a basis for politicisation. Every corresponding \u00a0form of knowledge is\u00a0capable\u00a0of lateral connection, of the linking of one focus of politicisation to another.<\/p>\n

Magistrates and psychiatrists, doctors and social workers, laboratory technicians and sociologists, have become able to participate, both\u00a0within\u00a0their\u00a0own fields and through mutual\u00a0exchange\u00a0and support, in a global process of\u00a0politicisation\u00a0of intellectuals. (127)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To this list we could \u00a0add teachers,\u00a0administrators, accountants, in fact any occupation to which the addition of the prefix ‘radical’ does not seem completely ludicrous or\u00a0oxymoronic. And how about the fertile and fulminating\u00a0hoards\u00a0of trade\u00a0unionists\u00a0and the myriad and\u00a0variegated\u00a0ranks of Gramsci’s organic\u00a0intellectuals?<\/p>\n

Foucault singles out for particular significance the University and the\u00a0academy. It is here, manifest in the feeling of crisis in the university sector, that the antennae of the educationally\u00a0situated\u00a0intellectuals feel the currents and reverberations of their specific experience, problems and struggles but also have the resources to see and forge the lateral connections with\u00a0distant and other instances of struggle and politicisation and their situated ‘particular’\u00a0intellectuals.<\/p>\n

However, Foucault points to obstacles and a danger. We have a disparate and dispersed\u00a0collection of\u00a0only\u00a0potentially\u00a0networked specific intellectuals. The danger identified is that of<\/p>\n

… remaining at the\u00a0level\u00a0of\u00a0conjectural\u00a0struggles, pressing demands restricted to particular sectors. The risk of letting himself (sic) be manipulated by the political parties or trade unions apparatuses which control these local struggles. Above all, the risk of being unable to develop these struggles for lack of a global strategy or outside support: the risk too of not being followed, or by only very limited groups. (130)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the focus of the specific intellectual is on his or her own particular experience, problems and issues and the attempt to understand and make sense of these in order to have some control, some exercise of autonomy, some say on how they perform\u00a0their\u00a0function. This does not\u00a0necessarily\u00a0and automatically link to others, their experience and problems, their specific location of\u00a0potential\u00a0politicisation. Foucault considers that each intellectual has a three-fold specificity. Firstly, class position (“whether\u00a0as a petty-bourgeois in the service of capitalism or ‘organic’\u00a0intellectuality\u00a0of the\u00a0proletariat”); secondly, the conditions of\u00a0their\u00a0life and work linked to their intellectual field (professional practice, research or laboratory, etc.) but also the political and economic demands to which they must submit or rebel, in university, hospital, whatever their work location; and thirdly, “the specificity of the politics of truth” in our\u00a0society. It is here, Foucault feels, that the specific,\u00a0sectoral\u00a0\u00a0intellectual can have wider effects and implications, beyond the narrow concern with their particular circumstances and problems. This is the ability, as a consequence of their more\u00a0sectoral\u00a0concerns and struggles, to\u00a0challenge\u00a0the ‘regime of truth’ that that is “so essential to the structure and\u00a0functioning\u00a0of our society”. \u00a0My way of understanding this,\u00a0although\u00a0it no doubt misses a lot of the\u00a0subtlety\u00a0and nuance of Foucault’s thought, is that in the act of\u00a0critiquing\u00a0his or her own\u00a0disempowerment, alienation and dissatisfaction, the specific intellectual is calling into question some of the pervasive and powerful assumptions and procedures that bring the specific\u00a0circumstance\u00a0being critiqued into being – organises, regulates,\u00a0legitimates and justifies, sets in motion myriad self-fulfilling and self-reproducing processes and\u00a0routines, creates a whole ecology of attitudes and behaviours, and so on. But this ‘regime of truth’ and its strategies are not entirely specific to one\u00a0sectoral\u00a0set of problems, obstacles and site of resistance. Each act of critique and\/or\u00a0resistance\u00a0has\u00a0the\u00a0potential to challenge and\u00a0undermine\u00a0these assumptions and the ‘reality’ they both produce and maintain. Perhaps the most\u00a0valuable\u00a0contribution intellectuals of all\u00a0types\u00a0and shades can make is, ultimately, to challenge the constitution of the reality they are fighting against and, if nothing else, expose its historicity and contingency and open up the\u00a0possibility to common consciousness that things can be different and it is not counter to\u00a0common-sense\u00a0or Utopian to both hope for change and actively\u00a0to strive to achieve change.<\/p>\n

It seems to me there are some\u00a0parallel\u00a0strands here with Bauman’s ideas on the tendency for intellectuals to have shifted from being legislators of knowledge in\u00a0the\u00a0service of\u00a0the\u00a0State to being interpretors of knowledge in the service of the public domain with a distinct\u00a0emancipatory\u00a0intent. I’ll write a piece on the similarities and differences between Bauman and Foucault in due course focused specifically on the role of intellectuals and the nature of knowledge.<\/p>\n

The last\u00a0post\u00a0and this are a commentary on\u00a0chapter 6, Truth and Power<\/em>, in the collection of interviews and lectures\u00a0Michael Foucault; Power\/Knowledge<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0edited by Colin Gordan, Harvester 1980. I’d be happy for any help on clarifying Foucault’s ideas in this chapter and on what its\u00a0contemporary\u00a0significance\u00a0might be for today’s crisis in education and intellectual life. The whole article is available for download at\u00a0http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/10262971\/Foucault-Truth-and-Power-in-Power-Knowledge<\/a>\u00a0but for some reason the pages are in the wrong order, first to last. They can be printed in the correct order of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The final section of the interview discussed in a\u00a0previous\u00a0post, Truth and Power, deals with the role of the intellectual. This is particularly of\u00a0interest \u00a0to me because of current discussions of the public role of intellectuals and Bauman’s writings on the appropriate role of sociologists. Foucault talks specifically about Left intellectuals who had considered\u00a0themselves to be\u00a0offering\u00a0universal … Continue reading “Foucault and the role of the intellectual”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,31,15,16,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism","category-foucault","category-ideology","category-politics","category-sociology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}