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2007-8 Africa Topic Guide

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Introduction

There is probably no more relevant kritik on a topic about public health assistance than biopower. Biopower is the state management of the health of the population and the resolution requires the state to do exactly that.

Despite this direct linkage, I think it is problematic to write an argument that is simply titled "Foucault" or “Biopower” (or the combination of the two) for a number of reasons.

First, Michel Foucault did not necessarily have one set of coherent views. In interviews in the early 1980s, Foucault indicates that many of the ideas he had early in his career he no longer held at the end of his career, and one can see this as Foucault shifts his focus from archaeology to genealogy, and then, at the end of his life, to ethics. To simply call an argument "Foucault" assumes that there is a coherent body of work. That is simply not the case.

Second, it is not clear that Foucault was drawing any particular conclusions from his arguments. Some scholars claim that he was simply exploring how things are rather than making arguments for how things ought to be. Arguments presented in debates usually make, or at least imply, the latter claim. It is not clear that Foucault would support using much of his work in the way that it is used in modern debates, particularly the convention presentation of biopower as a kritik style-disadvantage (affirmative=biopower, biopower=bad).

Third, much of the evidence read in debates on Foucault is drawn from secondary sources whose authors have interpreted the work of Foucault and applied it to the contemporary era. This is not the work of Foucault himself, but of other scholars whom he may or may not agree with.

Fourth, there is really no intellectual consensus as to what Foucault was often saying or what the implications of his work are. Many individuals who have studied Foucault for their whole lives argue vehemently with one another. Wading into this debate has been somewhat difficult for me because I am not a Foucault scholar.

Despite these reasons not to write an essay on Foucault, I have chosen to do so for a couple of reasons. First, it is simply become the accepted title of an argument. The arguments I have included here revolve around some of the basic ideas that are traditionally associated with an argument called "Foucault." Second, I think it is useful starting point for many of the ideas that Foucault introduced and also for many of the ideas that other scholars have chosen to run with and make arguments out of. This essay introduces most of these arguments, and remainder of the book provides a lot of the evidence that you will need to debate them. It is important to understand the basic concepts behind Foucault’s work before attempting to understand how that work is relevant to national service.

Biopower

The argument introduced in the book is based on Foucault's notion of "biopower." Biopower refers to the ability of the government to regulate and observe the day to day life of the population. Foucault refers to it as “regulation of population¼,” consisting of “comprehensive measures, statistical assessments, and interventions aimed at the entire social body or at groups taken as a whole” (Foucault, 1978, 145-6). Specifically, this includes measures to protect the public from threats, such as environmental threats and security threats, and to collect information on the population. It also includes efforts to manage the population in order to facilitate the proper functioning of the state and the economy. Efforts to regulate the population in order to protect them from security threats fit this definition.

Foucault argues that biopower is bad because once the state starts to intervene in the management of the population the state becomes intertwined with it and is able to press the population into its own service, either directly or indirectly. Foucault argues that this contemporary acceptance of biopower is what is responsible for making wars more deadly in this century than ever because now wars are waged not only in the names of populations but with and through those populations. The power to protect the populations, he argues, is the same power to annihilate them.

Disciplinary Power

Another “technique of power” (that supports biopower) is “disciplinary power.” Foucault argued that power produces knowledge. As explained, one of the areas that power manifests itself is in the human sciences (sociology, psychology, etc). The human sciences (the disciplines) enable the expansion of social control through power by producing a scientific reasoning/justification for how individuals ought to behave and how they ought to act. Directing individuals to act in particular ways is a way of disciplining them so that they behave in particular ways. There is excellent evidence that social scientists (the case workers, psychologists, and political scientists who will design and participate in any national service program) rely on the use of this disciplinary power.

Normalization

Normalization is arguably a means of exerting disciplinary power. The only reason that I have separated it is that I do not think that it is necessarily dependent on the human sciences. Even in a world where the human sciences do not exist as a justification for normalization, normalization would probably still exist and it would still be arguably bad to normalize people.

Power

Although Foucault denied it in the introduction to THE USE OF PLEASURE and in his essay, “The Subject and Power” in BEYOND STRUCTURALISM AND HERMENEUTICS, claiming that the focus of his work was on the human subject, much of the secondary scholarship that has been written about Foucault has been written about what Foucault thought about power. This is the manifestation of the argument in debate, it is the central idea that I have organized this essay around.

Although we could debate about how central the notion of "power" is to Foucault's work, what is quite clear is that Foucault thought that power was an important phenomenon to be studied. Foucault's major observation in regards to power is that power is not something that solely comes from the top‑down (from a King, from a tyrant, from the government), but it is something that arguably inevitably manifests itself in every relationship at the micro level, even when such power is resisted. In DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH, Foucault examines how power changed from what he described as the “classical era” the 16^th and early 17^th centuries – to the late 17^th to early 19^th centuries. In the classical era, power was concentrated in the state and the governing apparatuses, in the early 17^th and 19^th centuries that power became concentrated in the disciplines – asylums, hospitals, schools, and prisons. Foucault argues that power in these settings is potentially even more devastating because these disciplines are “nonegalitarian and asymmetrical” (Foucault, 1979, p. 222). These institutions, particularly when they are administered by the state, also serve to legitimate the state, potentially form a tight, coupling power grip (Foucault, 1980, p. 25).

To challenge power, one should not look toward limiting the state apparatus, but to challenging disciplinary practices. He writes:

If one wants to look for a non-disciplinary form of power, or rather, to struggle against disciplines and disciplinary power, it is not towards the ancient right of sovereignty that one should turn, but towards the possibility of a new form of right, one which must indeed be anti-disciplinarian, but at the same time liberated from the principle of sovereignty (Foucault, 1980, 108).

Much of the general link evidence is based on this notion because it simply argues that attempting to control power at or through different levels of government is unlikely to accomplish anything and is only likely to mask any power that may be present.

But, how do this micro‑level power get transmitted? Foucault argued that all of the human sciences (psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics), define people at the same time as they describe them and work together with certain institutions (psychiatric institutions, schools, prisons, factors, and courts) to have effects on people.

Foucault gives the example of the panopticon a place power is present but accepted, and hence facilitated. The idea of the panopticon was popularized by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. In this panopticon, Bentham imagines a system in which discipline is maintained not because someone is always watching a prisoner but because the prisoner never knows when he is or is not under surveillance. Bentham argues that since the prisoner never knows when he or she is being watched, the prisoner begins to accept unconditionally the restrictions that he or she is placed under. These conditions are something that are unconditionally accepted. Whitaker (1999) explains:

The Panopticon is a kind of theater; what is staged is "the illusion of constant surveillance: the prisoners are not really always under surveillance, they just think or imagine that they are." The point is discipline or training. As the prisoners fear that they may be constantly watched, and fear punishment for transgression, they internalize the rules; actual punishment will thus be rendered superfluous (p. 33)

The Construction of the Subject

Arguably, the construction of subjectivity, not power, is the central focus of Foucault’s work. He wrote in 1982 that:

I would like to say, first of all, what has been the goal of my working during the last twenty years. It has not been to analyze the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations for such analysis. My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects (1982, p 208)

There is considerable scholarly debate about how Foucault thought our subjectivities are constituted. Some argue that Foucault argued that the "subject" (normally an individual), is constructed through the identities that other individuals ascribe to it through language and acceptable social practice. Others (Dews, 1989) argue that, at least in Foucault’s later works, particularly the HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, v 3, Foucault argues that the self is more active and autonomous. Gordon (1999) contends that, drawing on Heidegger, Foucault does agree that the subject has an “ontological freedom” that creates the potential for individual definition.

Foucault’s theory of subjectivity (how subjects are produced) is intertwined with his theory of power because subjects are produced through the various manifestations of power that have already been discussed. To the extent that those manifestations are totally determined by power (as many scholars read the early Foucault to say), the more difficult it is to escape it.

Genealogies

One important means of work for Foucault was genealogy. It is difficult to define precisely what a genealogy is, but generally I think it is safe to say that it is an investigation of some practice or institution that critically evaluates the practices origins and founding ideas.

Some debaters have used genealogies in debates with some success. Mostly these genealogies have simply articulated the history of something and their success, in my opinion, was largely due to their opponent's ignorance. Genealogies are not simply histories of something, nor are the prescriptive ‑‑ something that results in a plan. As the evidence in the answer section indicates, they are not history and should not be used to justify particular policies.

Debating Foucault on the Affirmative

The most important thing to debating Foucault on the affirmative is to try to get the negative to isolate what specific argument Foucault (or another source) is making so that you can debate that particular argument. Is the negative's argument a critique of biopower, of disciplinary power, of normalization, or of something else? As explained in the introductory essay, Foucault's thought was incredibly complex and should not be simply essentialized as only one argument. If you can pin the negative down to what specific Foucault argument that is being made in the 1NC, you will have a better chance of answering the argument properly and of preventing the negative from mutating their argument too much in the 1AR.

Second, you should make the negative defend a specific alternative to the kritik. What will the negative do to escape these power relations? This is a problem that has haunted Foucault scholars for generations. One common alternative that has been suggested is resistance, but as the evidence in the answer section indicates, Foucault simply said that resistance increases power, leaving Foucault with no practical alternative (Fraser, 1989, pp. 27-31). Taylor (1984) and Wolin (1988) also make this argument.

Foucault may not have been haunted by this if his work was descriptive rather than prescriptive. As the quote that introduces this book explains, a critique, for Foucault, was simply to show what is self-evident. A demonstration of what is self-evident, however, will not accomplish much in a world of policy‑making. This is the equivalent of the affirmative standing up and reading their harms without a plan or any solvency evidence.

Third, you should defend the notion that the government still exercises power in a number of problematic ways that should be restrained. Although Foucault argues that most power has shifted to the micro level, he does NOT argue that the power of the government should not be limited or that those powers will simply re‑appear at the micro level. In fact, scholars argue that he says that we should make efforts to control power at both levels of government ‑ the permutation.

Fourth, you should use Foucault's own theories against the Foucault argument. Foucault argues that power inevitably invites resistance. He explains that “there (are) no relations of power without resistance” (Foucault, 1980, p. 142). So, if there is more of X power after the 1AC is read or voted for, that expression of power will simply be resisted as a matter of course. This is certainly as much resistance as the negative would be able to offer on their own.

Another theory of Foucault that you can use to fight off the negative's critique is that because power is fluid at the micro level, you cannot simply attack it or criticize it. This is one area that Foucault differed from other social reformers. Marxists, for example think that all power is concentrated in the moneyed classes and feminists think men have all the power. Foucault, however, argued that power is manifest in many different ways and at many different, intertwined levels. Traditional critiques that criticize particular individuals or groups (such as capitalists) for holding all the power are vulnerable to this argument.

Foucault's own theory of the constitution of the subject also denies many of the implications that negatives argue. Negatives will usually rely only in part on Foucault's argument and contend that, for example, when the affirmative labels someone as an "American” they are constituting that person's identity/subjectivity. The affirmative can steal the show, however, when they ask the affirmative for an alternative. The permutation to do both enables relabeling because it, according to Foucault, is what makes the resistance to the label possible. And, since identity is not permanent and/or objective, a re‑constitution of it is always possible.

Similarly, Foucault argues that power relations are not unchangeable (proving that the permutation can solve). Foucault describes power relations as “changeable, reversible and unstable.” He says that “they can modify themselves, they are not give once and for all.” Foucault (1988, 12).

Fifth, you should exploit some of the evidence that the negative will likely read to answer the permutation. Usually, this evidence will make arguments that center around the idea that once you use X you will never be able to overcome it. If this argument is true, it also takes‑out the alternative to the critique. Certainly if the negative's alternative is able to overcome the status quo, the permutation can overcome the status quo plus the 1AC. The 1AC isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the affirmative plan.

Sixth, you should debate uniqueness. Usually, and is the case in this volume, critique shells are presented as non‑unique disadvantages ‑ the affirmative uses/relies on/supports/condones biopower and biopower will kill everyone on the planet. Well, maybe, but there is lots of biopower now, there will be biopower without the plan, and the overall effect that the affirmative will have on biopower is likely to be very small at best. Although the negative will argue that critiques don't have to be unique, you should use the following to mock them: If this were true, we could run a Malthus Disadvantage when you save one life and simply argue that the idea of saving lives will cause the earth to eventually have 13 billion inhabitants and cause global extinction. After all, “It’s not what you do it’s what you justify.”

Seventh, you should argue that much of the “impact” evidence to the critique is intentionally exaggerated by Foucault in order to drive home his point. There is evidence in the answer section of the book that makes this argument and Megill (1985, 242-7, 342-6) also makes the argument.

Eighth, you could criticize Foucault from another theoretical perspective. Many feminists have been critical of Foucault on a number of grounds. Hartstock (1990) and Brodribb (1992) criticize Foucault, and other postmodernists, for failing to outline an alternative political agenda that will protect their interests. Braidotti (1994) criticizes Foucault for failing to develop an adequate theory of the subject that will permit political agency. As described in the section on subjectivity above, if the subject is constituted/determined by outside forces, agency is not possible. McNay (1991) explains:

The emphasis that Foucault places on the effects of power upon the body results in a reduction of social agents to passive bodies and cannot explain how individuals may act in an autonomous fashion. This lack of a rounded theory of subjectivity or agency conflicts with a fundamental aim of the feminist project and to rediscover and re-evaluate the experiences of women (1991, p. 125).

Not all of the reaction to Foucault’s work by feminist scholars is negative. Bartky (1990) argues that “disciplinary” practices include cosmetics and fashion and that these practices oppress women in the same way that other disciplinary practices identified by Foucault do.

Ninth, you should argue that the kritik is a sweeping generalization that attempts to criticize an entire system of thought. Palmer (2001) notes that “Foucault rejected (in principle, at least) generalization and universalization in favor of considering specific and particular contexts and environments; and was reluctant (most of the time) to make universal normative judgments. Throughout his work he explored a wide range of power relationships operating in different human contexts and spaces at different times” (p. 340).

Debating Foucault on the Negative

When running any kritik, and Foucault in particular, the negative should be able to articulate a relatively specific alternative. One good alternative to articulate when running a Foucault critique is “social movements” or consciousness raising. Braidotti (1994) argues that women in consciousness raising groups have been able to overcome the disciplinary practice of femininity.

The ability to articulate a relatively specific alternative will also help the negative overcome the problem with the “power inevitable argument.” Foucault, for example, argued that reversals in power relationships are possible through collective resistance if it is executed properly. Explains that “it is doubtless the strategic codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution possible” (Foucault, 1978, p. 96).

Specifically, Foucault did speak in favor of feminism. Foucault describes it as a “movement of affirmation” (Foucault, 1980, 219-20) that has the potential to create new schemes of politicization” (29). Foucault argues that these new schemes of politization are necessary to challenge power.

Second, you should be sure to explain your link in great detail and to explain the notions of biopower, disciplinary power, and normalization. Until I took a couple of weeks to sit down and sift through the work of Foucault, I did not understand what these notions were, and I have judged a good number of Foucault debates!!!! You shouldn’t assume that your judges have this knowledge and if you want the decision to go the “right” way, you should explain these concepts to them.

Biopower/Foucault Shell

A. BIOPOLITICS IS ORGANIZED AROUND THE IDEA OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Nikolas Rose, Professor of Sociology, and Director of the LSE's BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology, THE POLITICS OF LIFE ITSELF: BIOMEDICINE, POWER, AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 2007, pp. 24

Biopolitics, here, was not exhausted by sterilization, euthanasia, and the death camps. Many "citizenship projects" were organized in the name of health. In the education of German citizens in the Third Reich, in eugenic education campaigns in the United States, Britain, and many European countries, making social citizens involved instructing those citizens in the care of their bodies—from school meals to toothbrush use, inculcation of the habits of cleanliness and domesticity, especially in women and mothers, state regulation of the purity of food, interventions into the workplace in the name of health and safety, instructing those contemplating marriage and procreation on the choice of marriage partners, family allowances, and much else. The citizen here was not merely a passive recipient of social rights, but was also obliged to tend to his or her own body and, for a woman, those of her spouse and offspring While the state would engage in measures for preserving and managing the collective health of the population, whether this be in seeking to shape reproduction or trying to eliminate toxins, individuals themselves must exercise biological prudence, for their own sake, that of their families, that of their own lineage, and that of their nation as a whole.

B. DISCIPLINARY LIBERALISM’S BIOPOWER NECESSITATES EXTERMINATION AND ANNIHILATION

Michel Foucault, Director of Institute Francais at Hamburg, THE FOUCAULT READER, 1984, p. 259-260.

Since the classical age, the West has undergone a very profound transformation of these mechanisms of power. "Deduction" has tended to be no longer the major form of power but merely one element among others, working to incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimize, and organize the forces under it: a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them. There has been a parallel shift in the right of death, or at least a tendency to align itself with the exigencies of a life-administering power and to define itself accordingly. This death that was based on the right of the sovereign is now manifested as simply the reverse of the right of the social body to ensure, maintain, or develop its life. Yet wars were never as bloody as they have been since the nineteenth century, and all things being equal, never before did regimes visit such holocaust on their own populations. But this formidable power of death-and this is perhaps what accounts for part of its force and the cynicism with which it has so greatly expanded its limits-now presents itself as the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations. Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital. It is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race, that so many regimes have been able to wage so many wars, causing so many men to be killed. And through a turn that closes the circle, as the technology of wars has caused them to tend increasingly toward all-out destruction, the decision that initiates them and the one that terminates them are in fact increasingly informed by the naked question of survival. The atomic situation is now at the end point of this process: the power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of the power to guarantee an individual's continued existence.

C. EXPOSING THE COERCIVE POWER DYNAMICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH DISCOURSE OPENS SPACE TO DEVELOP ALTERNATIVE DISCOURSES AND EXERCISE INDIVIDUAL RESISTANCE

Deborah Lupton, Social Sciences Lecturer- University Western Sydney, 1995, The Imperative of Health: public health and the regulated body, p. 160-1

It is important to bear in mind that such pedagogical processes have themselves the potential to be confining and authoritarian, perpetuating rather than challenging relations of power. Donald points to the paradox in teaching people to be autonomous and “think for themselves;” in doing so, one is directing them to behave in certain ways, thus restricting their autonomy. This dilemma, I believe, does not negate attempts to demystify the taken-for-granted nature of public health and health promotion, to expose their epistemological bases, to construct alternative positions, viewpoints, and knowledges with the awareness of their nature as cultural practices. To disrupt the confining nature of the types of subjects and bodies offered by public health and health promotion, it is necessary to realize their contingent, constantly moving and dispersed nature, to acknowledge that “positions of resistance can never be established once and for all. They must, instead, be perpetually refashioned to address adequately the shifting conditions and circumstances that ground them.” The point is not to seek a certain “truth,” but to uncover the varieties of truth that operate, to highlight the nature of truth as transitory and political and the position of subjects as inevitably fragmentary and contradictory. If it is acknowledged that discourse formations and subject positions are not bounded systems, but are open to dispersal, contradiction, contestation and opposition, then the opportunity to construct alternative discourses and subject positions is facilitated. Public health and health promotion become recognized as institutions that reproduce accepted understandings of truth and certain versions of the subject within specific historical and social conditions. There may seem to be a certain lack of security and order in this approach to subjectivity and the social world, particularly in this post-Enlightenment age, when individuals are acculturated to accept the notion of the unified self as the ideal towards which they should strive. But ontological uncertainty, ambivalence and fragmentation need not be negative. As Smart (1993) has asserted, “the prospect of living without certainty or necessity may cause us to respond with fear, anxiety, and insecurity, but equally it allows us to live with imagination and responsibility, it constitutes a site, space, or clearing for political possibilities, rather than a distinctive political strategy. He argues that this perspective allows individuals to assume responsibility with others for their shaping of their destiny, rather than accepting fate, providing a space for the acknowledgement of differences and diversity, new ways of relating, new forms of experience and the social. As this suggests, the “resistance” emerging from such processes of interrogation need not be confined to the micro-level. Individual recognition of the processes by which one’s own subjectivity is shaped through the discursive practices and regulatory activities of institutions such as public health and health promotion in ways that are often confining and discriminatory, if articulated and shared by others may lead to collective action that seeks to contest taken-for-granted imperatives and strategies.