What do Foucault and his Theory of Knowledge and Power tell us?
Foucault's primary concern is freeing ourselves from the identities created and imposed on us by Western political and state institutions over the last two centuries. To achieve this, it is necessary to rebuild a subjective experience after shedding these identities. History of Madness (1961) discusses the set of subjective experiences filled with well-defined identities imposed on mental illness.
The Birth of the Clinic (1963) explores the history of disease as an identity and a well-defined set of experiences, and the emergence of related institutions; The Order of Things (1966) analyzes life, labor, and language, examining how these were constructed as different subjective experiences in various periods of Western history; Discipline and Punish (1975) investigates how the identity and subjectivity of criminal inclination were constructed, how boundaries were drawn, and how various institutional practices were employed.
The History of Sexuality (1976) applies these analyses to sexuality, examining how we have become subjects of the experience called sexuality.
Foucault’s main issue is freedom—how these imposed identities that limit freedom were formed and how we can escape them. Subjectivity or subjective experience refers to an individual's relationship with their existence through consciousness, designing their existence in their mind within the framework of these defined identities. For instance, madness is a subjective experience of identity shaped in the human mind as a form of existence and a way of being, treated differently in Western thought since the 18th century.
Subjective experience involves a relationship between a person's existence and their consciousness, gaining representation in the mind through certain discourses. The most comprehensive text by Foucault on how subjectivity and subjective experience are constructed is the introduction to The History of Sexuality, which is sometimes included as a preface in certain editions and also written under the pseudonym "Maurice Florence" in a philosophy dictionary.
Subjectivity is established along three axes:
The problematization of behavior (e.g., crime, illness) and the creation of a field of "scientific knowledge" related to it.
Following this field of knowledge, the establishment of normative systems for how practices related to this knowledge should be conducted and controlled—these systems include institutions (e.g., hospitals, schools) and normative systems that operate as a whole.
On the third axis, stemming from knowledge and power, is the individual entering into a relationship with their existence through consciousness and imagining their existence in their mind through these discursive and non-discursive fields—this third axis is the ethical axis in the Hellenistic sense.
People re-conceptualize their existence through the subjective experience they create, making everything an object of this conceptualization. Foucault’s fundamental issue is the liberation from being the object of this conceptualization and achieving freedom: the liberation of the subject from being problematized and objectified.
NOTE: The brief introduction to Foucault's theory above was written thanks to the readings I did from Prof. Ferda Keskin, which largely enabled me to grasp the big picture of Foucault during my preparations for the doctoral qualification exam. This short introduction is intended to explain Foucault in a simple, clear, and understandable language for the reader. Many of you have probably heard that a sign of understanding a subject is being able to explain it in a way that your grandmother can understand. While this is often due to grandmothers being more patient and better at appearing to understand than grandfathers, it is always a risk the reader must take.
DrKyr.
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