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In critical theory, power-knowledge is a term introduced by the French philosopher Michel Foucault (French: le savoir-pouvoir).According to Foucault's understanding, power is based on knowledge and makes use of knowledge; on the other hand, power reproduces knowledge by shaping it in accordance with its anonymous intentions. [1]
The Archaeology of Knowledge (L’archéologie du savoir, 1969) by Michel Foucault is a treatise about the methodology and historiography of the systems of thought (epistemes) and of knowledge (discursive formations) which follow rules that operate beneath the consciousness of the subject individuals, and which define a conceptual system of possibility that determines the boundaries of ...
Foucault maintains that these techniques were deliberate, cold, calculating and ruthless; the human sciences, far from being "a way at looking at the world" the knowledge/power dynamic/relationship Paradigm was a 'cheap' efficient and 'cost' effective method into a way of producing a subjugated and docile human subject (not only a citizen, but ...
In The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences Foucault wrote that a historical period is characterized by epistemes — ways of thinking about truth and about discourse — which are common to the fields of knowledge, and determine what ideas it is possible to conceptualize and what ideas it is acceptable to affirm as true.
Power/knowledge thus refers to forms of power where the power compares individuals, measures differences, establishes a norm and then forces this norm unto the subjects. This is especially successful when the established norm is internalized and institutionalized (by "institutionalized" Foucault refers to when the norm is omnipresent).
Foucault sees power as the means for constituting individuals’ identities and determining the limits of their autonomy. This reflects the symbiotic relationship between power (pouvoir) and knowledge (savoir). In his study of prisons and hospitals, he observed how the modern individual becomes both an object and subject of knowledge.
In The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966), Foucault showed how history replaced taxonomy, systematic knowledge replaced collections of data. The teaching hospital, la clinique , was established upon the new medical praxis of verifiable observation, which is scientifically more accurate than the old medical praxis based ...
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (French: Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, 1961) [i] is an examination by Michel Foucault of the evolution of the meaning of madness in the cultures and laws, politics, philosophy, and medicine of Europe—from the Middle Ages until the end of the 18th century—and a critique of the idea of ...