An introduction to the work of Michel Foucault

Excerpts from my PhD thesis (Pierlejewski, 2022 p26-30)

Dr Mandy Pierlejewski

Power

For Foucault, power was always a focus. He does not see power as a top-down force, oppressing individuals, but as something which exists between people in their relationships with each other and the social body. Foucault was interested in what he called the “capillary” form of power. The power which is exercised within the social body rather than upon it from above. Foucault describes it in an interview entitled Prison Talk thus:

 “power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives” (Foucault, 1980a p39).

We exist within a dense network of power relations, which influence our lives in every way.

Foucault saw power as a productive force rather than a purely repressive one. In Truth and Power, Foucault describes it as a “productive network which runs through the whole social body” (Foucault, 1994b p120). He discusses power as a producer of discourse, knowledge and pleasure. It also produces subjectivity as regimes of truth determine which kinds of subjectivities can and cannot be produced. Technologies of power, such as normalisation, surveillance and examination produce particular kinds of subjects (Foucault, 1977).

Power, for Foucault, is very closely related to knowledge. The mechanisms of power produce certain kinds of knowledge. This knowledge, this knowing of people, then acts to regulate their existence so that power produces knowledge and knowledge produces power. For Foucault, knowledge and power were inextricably linked and were referred to as “power/knowledge” in some texts (Foucault, 1980).

Discourse

Discourse, for Foucault, is the way we talk and think about a particular subject and how this generates power. When a topic is put into discourse, the language used to discuss it defines what it means in societal practices. Foucault explores the discourse of sex in The History of Sexuality Volume 1 (Foucault, 1978). This text tracks the emergence of discourses about sex, changes to discourse and the effect of these discourses on experience. He examines the relationship between discourse, power and experience in terms of pleasure. Discourses about sex generate power because they insert themselves into every aspect of our lives. Discourses determine what can be said and what cannot be said, what is subversive, transgressing limits of acceptable speech, and what is permitted. The impact of these discursive practices in terms of sex, act to change the very experience of sex. Discourse is thus linked to pleasure because it defines boundaries, making certain practices illicit and in doing so, multiplying disparate sexualities. This link between discourse, power and experience can be seen in many other fields including education.

Disciplinary Power

In addition to the exploration of the operation of power through discourse, Foucault also examines other forms of power/knowledge through his work. An example, which I have used in some of my work, is disciplinary power. This is the power to regulate and govern individuals which is developed in  Discipline and Punish (Foucault, 1977), amongst other texts. I studied this text as part of my second year in the social theories of learning group and wrote Constructing Deficit Data-Doppelgangers (Pierlejewski, 2020) as an assessment for this module. This paper uses Foucault’s work extensively and explicitly to explore the regulation of preschool children. I focus on a child from a marginalised group- bilingual children, examining how the techniques of power, outlined in Discipline and Punish, can be seen to operate within the current early years sector. This paper can almost be seen as an exercise in applying Foucault’s ideas to practice. It gave me a grounding in Foucauldian theory which I build on in subsequent papers. The key techniques of power which I examined in Constructing Deficit Doppelgangers were as follows:

• Hierarchical observation, by which teachers observe the child to produce knowledge of the child which is then used to rank each individual within the class. A vast body of evidence is collected through observation and this data is then used to make normalising judgements.
• Normalising judgements, which involved comparing children to a norm in order to determine who is normal and abnormal
• The examination combines both hierarchical observation and normalising judgements in a process which makes each child into a case to be studied. The examination “introduces individuality into a field of documentation” (Foucault, 1977 p189) as every detail about the child must be known and recorded.

Datafication and Surveillance

I describe these practices as aspects of datafication. Datafication is defined by Bradbury and Roberts-Holmes as a disciplinary technology which produces subjectivity and changes practice through the increased prominence and significance of data. It is “something that happens to people, values and cultures as well as practices” (Bradbury, & Roberts-Holmes, 2017 p7). Laney (2001, in Bradbury and Roberts-Holmes 2017) identifies three areas of datafication which have emerged in the recent move to a more technology-driven world; the increased volume of data, a greater variety of data and an increase in the velocity with which data is produced and processed.

Hierarchical observation is a key part of datafication as it is the surveillance which results in the generation of data. Data consist of comparisons with norms which act as normalising judgements. As the examination “introduces individuality into a field of documentation”, datafication is a means by which the subject is captured and fixed in a “whole mass of documents” (Foucault, 1977 p189).

Bradbury, A. & Roberts-Holmes, G. (2017) The Datafication of Primary and Early Years Education : Playing with Numbers. Oxon: Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.

Foucault, M. (1978) The History of Sexuality Volume I: The Will to Knowledge. I. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Foucault, M. (1980) Power-Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault, M. (1994) Power Essential Works 1954-84. London: Penguin.

Pierlejewski, M. (2020) Constructing Deficit Data Doppelgängers: The Impact of Datafication on Children with English as an Additional Language. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 21 (3), pp. 253–265.

Bradbury, A. & Roberts-Holmes, G. (2017) The Datafication of Primary and Early Years Education : Playing with Numbers. Oxon: Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.

Foucault, M. (1978) The History of Sexuality Volume I: The Will to Knowledge. I. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Foucault, M. (1980) Power-Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault, M. (1994) Power Essential Works 1954-84. London: Penguin.

Pierlejewski, M. (2020) Constructing Deficit Data Doppelgängers: The Impact of Datafication on Children with English as an Additional Language. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 21 (3), pp. 253–265.

Pierlejewski, M. J. (2022) Datafication : From Doppelganger to Praxis A Teacher ’ s Story. University of Manchester.