An Introduction To Critical Theory - (Understanding The Discursive Nature of History and Culture)

Understanding the Discursive Nature of History and
Culture
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault is a theoretician who is notoriously difficult to categorize; in an

interview he declared famously that he was neither, a Marxist, a Freudian or a post-
structuralist (http://www.foucault.info/foucault/interview.html). Yet, his work par-
takes of the theoretical revolutions initiated by these three movements. As a historian,
he strives to understand the ‘microphysics’ of power by examining the ways in which
power is constructed and manipulated discursively. This attention to the rhetoric of
power is made possible by both structuralism’s and post-structuralism’s analyses of
the intersections of language and culture. Foucault’s constant question of ‘who ben-
efits’ from the manipulations of power through language and psychology is classi-
cally Marxist, while his understanding of the psychological effects of power, such as
repression owes much to Freudian theory.
Forced to describe himself, Foucault would probably say that he was both a histori-
cal archaeologist and a genealogist. In one of his most famous works, The Archaeology
of Knowledge, Foucault remarks that his object of study ‘is … the archive, that is to
Copyright © 2007. Humanities-Ebooks, LLP. All rights reserved.
say the accumulated existence of discourse. Archaeology, as I intend it, is kin neither
to geology (as analysis of subsoil), nor to genealogy (as descriptions of beginnings
and sequences), it’s the analysis of discourse in its modality of archive’ (Cambridge
Companion to Foucault, 29).
Foucault as archaeologist digs up the ossified cultural codes that determine cul-
tural practices—whether these practices have to do with how a culture classifies
and treats madness, criminality, sexuality, or other issues. A cultural practice is the
‘rules’ that govern how a culture treats that which challenges its cherished beliefs. As
archaeologist, Foucault presents us with a detailed account of the subtle changes in
thinking and discourse that determine how a culture treats behavioral nonconformity.
Rich, Jennifer. An Introduction to Critical Theory, Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/columbia/detail.action?docID=3306115.
Created from columbia on 2018-03-20 17:03:16.
Critical Theory 60
One of Foucault’s contributions to the understanding of the treatment of deviance is

his focus on the role of ‘exclusion’ in this endeavor. Without exclusion, there is no
code: rules of behavior are defined by what they exclude as much as by what they
allow. Writing in the ‘Discourse on Language,’ Foucault notes that the ‘production
of discourse’—ways of talking about and understanding—cultural phenomena ‘is at
once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number
of procedures whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance
events, to evade its ponderous awesome mentality’ (Adams 149).
Discourse is a way of talking about a cultural issue or subject; discourse is also
characterized by its censoring function: it both enables and disables thinking in that it
carefully guards—through the language it allows and disallows—the carefully con-
structed borders of the acceptable. Disciplines—categories of study—such as science,
math, psychology are, predictably enough, ideal discursive mechanisms because, as
Foucault explains, they ‘constitute a system of control in the production of discourse
taking the form of a permanent reactivation of the rules’ (Adams 155). Thus, in sci-
ence, for example, a hypothesis must be provable within the paradigms set by scien-
tific analysis. For a scientific hypothesis to be proven to be true, for example, it must
fulfill the condition of reproducibility: if an experiment’s conclusions are not repro-
ducible in various different conditions, then they are not verifiable, and therefore, not
‘true’. While such protocol might seem quite reasonable at first sight, we have only
to think of Galileo Galilei and Gregor Mendel to understand the possibly deleterious
effects of disciplinary control.
In contrast to archaeology, Foucault’s genealogies trace the origins and modula-
tions of a cultural practice from its first articulation to its present day incarnation. In
the article we will now consider, Foucault examines how Jeremy Bentham’s invention
of the panopticon revolutionized the way in which governmental control is exerted

over citizens, both in the penal system and in everyday life.
Panopticism from Discipline and Punish (1975)

Discipline and Punish examines the changing way in which juridical/punitive power
was exerted over citizens from the Middle Ages to the post-enlightenment period.
According to Foucault, the state exerted its power through spectacle up until the late
seventeenth century. As an example of the demonstration of power through spectacle,
Foucault discusses the execution of a Frenchman named Damien for attempted regi-
cide in 1757. Damien’s extended torture and execution is an example of the mecha-
Critical Theory 61
nism by which the state demonstrates its power over ordinary citizens and attempts
to dissuade through awe any potential challenges to the power of the state. One of the
drawbacks to such spectacular demonstrations of power, however, is the production
of dissent: the tortured becomes a figure of pity and the state is cast into the role of
cruel, overly-aggressive torturer. By the early-nineteenth century—some eighty years
later after the execution of Damiens—the use of torture disappeared. Correction of
offenses did not occur through the exercise of overt control over a body, but through
more covert means. Was this change just an accident? Or was there a more sys-
temic change in thinking that promoted this change in the administration of justice?
Foucault believes the latter:
Among so many changes, I shall consider one: the disappearance of torture

as a public spectacle…. And, in any case, how important is such a change,
when compared with the great institutional transformations, the formulation of
explicit, general codes and unified rules of procedure; with the almost universal
adoption of the jury system, the definition of the essentially corrective char-
acter of the penalty and the tendency, which has become increasingly marked
since the nineteenth century, to adapt punishment to the individual offender?
Punishment of a less immediately physical kind, a certain discretion in the
art of inflicting pain, a combination of more subtle, more subdued sufferings,
deprived of their visible display, should not all this be treated as a special case,
an incidental effect of deeper changes? (Discipline and Punish 8)
Foucault concludes that the disappearance of torture coincided with the appear-
ance of the panopticon, an architectural innovation that allowed for the constant sur-
veillance of a ‘multitude’ by an unseen watcher. The panopticon was first employed

in the penal system as a way of ensuring the constant visibility of the jailed and
the invisibility of the jailor. But this invention had more profound and far-reaching
effects: the state itself became a panopticon—watching without being seen and thus
continuously producing in its citizens a sense of being always under surveillance.
Unlike overt spectacles of torture, the panopticon exercises its power invisibly—and
it is this invisibility that makes this exercise of power all the more omnipotent; since
we never know when we are being watched, our behavior conforms to a sense of
always being watched. Discussing the transition to panopticism in the penal system,
Foucault describes the psychological effects of Bentham’s invention:
Critical Theory 62
The heaviness of the ‘old houses of security’, with their fortress-like architec-
ture, could be replaced by the simple, economic geometry of a ‘house of cer-
tainty’. The efficiency of power, its constraining force has in a sense passed
over to the other side—to the side of its surface of application. He who is
subjected to a field of visibility and who knows it, assumes responsibility for
the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he
inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both
roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection (DP, 200).
For Foucault, then, the panopticon is a symptom or a manifestation of a much
broader change in the way in which power is organized by the state both in the eight-
eenth century and today. The panopticon instigates a new ‘physics of power’—one
that does not rely on the material presence of sovereignty—whether in the form of the
king, or his representatives—but one that operates through the ordering of the social
body through a variety of disciplinary mechanisms: school, work, judges, social work-
ers, police, and so on. As citizens of particular states, we are all too familiar with the
panopticon and its functioning: identity cards, surveillance cameras, open offices,
all of these are ways in which our behavior is monitored, and the knowledge of this
continual monitoring also compels us to monitor our own behavior. With the panop-
ticon, then, disciplinary mechanisms change from being punitive to being proactive:
Foucault discusses the post-panopticon school; instead of simply focusing on the
behavior of its pupils it now becomes the site for monitoring parenting as well: ‘The
Christian school must not simply train docile children; it must also make it possible
to supervise the parents, to gain information as to their way of life, their resources,
their piety, their morals. The school tends to constitute minute social observatories
that penetrate even to the adults and exercise regular supervision over them’… (DP
202).
Through his analysis of the panopticon, Foucault pinpoints a wholesale change
in the operations of power that are coincidental with the emergence of the mod-
ern authoritarian state. Unlike traditional histories which view the invention of the
panopticon as a minor event within a more general historical move towards more
humanistic treatment of prisoners, Foucault reads the panopticon as an indication of
the gradual sophistication of oppressive forces coincident with the rise of modern
systems of absolute power. In this focus, Foucault differs from traditional historians
who concentrate on general historical movements—shifts in economics and social
conditions that may account for shifts in ideology and concrete material practices.
Critical Theory 63
In contrast, Foucault engages the petit histoire—the little moment, the seemingly
insignificant event—and this focus compels the power relations and ideologies that
underwrite such seemingly insignificant changes to reveal themselves. In this way,
Foucault is a ‘master of suspicion’ ‘uncovering the unsavory provenance of ostensi-
bly noble enterprises’ (Cambridge Companion to Foucault, 36).
Clifford Geertz
Clifford Geertz’s work introduced semiotics into the study of cultures in anthropo-
logical field work. His belief that culture must be studied like a text—through tech-
niques of literary explication—broke with the traditional anthropologist methodology
of understanding culture as a set of concrete material practices that must be examined
for the way in which they enable society’s continual functioning. This operationalist
approach, as Geertz names it in ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory
of Culture’, focuses on codifying a set of cultural ‘laws’, but fails to take into account
the psychological motivations, habits, idiosyncrasies, and mores that give a culture
its identity and meaning. In the operationalist mode, a wink, for example, would be
described simply as a blinking eye, without attention being paid to the communicative
intention of the wink itself. In order to understand the full range of a culture’s psy-
chology and systems of meaning, Geertz’s methodology is semiotic. As he explains
in ‘Thick Description’
The concept of culture I espouse … is essentially a semiotic one. Believing
with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he
himself has spun, I take culture to be one of those webs, and the analysis of it
to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law, but an interpre-
tative one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social

expressions on their surface enigmatical. (Richter 1368)
In Geertz’s ethnographies (detailed descriptions of cultures), he reads critical cul-
tural events—such as a cock fight—as a text within which is expressed more deep
seated understandings and feelings about the human and cultural psyche, in both the
context of the particular culture and more generally. His descriptions of cultural events
read almost like novels; they are ‘thick’ in the sense that they attempt to give a sense
of the intentionality, motivations, power structures, and individual stakes involved in
the event described. In order to concretize Geertz’s approach, we will examine one of
his most famous and enjoyable articles, ‘Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight’.
Critical Theory 64
Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight

In this article, Geertz recounts his experience staying in a small Balinese village in
the late 1950s. One of the most important events in village life was the cockfight. In
Geertz’s reading, the cockfight was a way in which the village reasserted its internal
hierarchy, exorcised itself of violent impulses forbidden in daily life, and confronted
its hostility and fear of animality. It is in this last cultural peculiarity—this fear of
animality—that Geertz locates the most profound impetus behind the importance of
the cockfight in Balinese life:
The Balinese revulsion against any behavior regarded as animal-like can

hardly be overstressed. Babies are not allowed to crawl for that reason. Incest,
though hardly approved, is a much less horrifying crime than bestiality… Not
only defecation but eating is regarded as a disgusting, almost obscene activ-
ity, to be conducted hurriedly and privately, because of its association with
animality… . In identifying with his cock, the Balinese man is identifying
not only with his ideal self, or even his penis, but also, and at the same time,
with what he most fears, hates and ambivalence being what it is, is fascinated
by—The Powers of Darkness. (‘Deep Play’)
Thus, rather than simply concentrating on the role that the cockfight plays in the
ordering of social life in the village—what a functionalist or operationalist analysis
would do—Geertz considers this facet along with the cockfight’s status as an alle-
gory for the exorcism of ‘the powers of darkness’ that the Balinese feel are contained
within every person. For the esteemed Balinese cockfighters, owners of prestigious
cocks, and participating in the central village matches, the cockfight and the irrational
betting around it are ways in which the culture reaffirms its practitioner’s status and
esteem. The notion of ‘Deep Play’ that Geertz employs in this analysis refers to the
betting system which are central to the cockfighting activity; esteemed cockfighters
engage in betting practices that are financially irrational—they go in ‘over their heads’
and bet quite literally their livelihoods away. Whereas a conventional anthropological
explanation might see this behavior as hopelessly irrational, indicating a deep-seated
cultural addiction that threatens the sanctity of village life, Geertz understands it quite
differently. Again, he interprets this betting as psychological drama; it is not money
which is at stake here, but esteem and status: ‘When a Balinese male talks … about
For the full text of ‘Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight’, please go to:
http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~rfrost/courses/MatCult/content/Geertz.pdf.
Critical Theory 65
‘the true cockfighter’ … it is … not those who bring their mentality of the pea and
shell game into the quite different inappropriate context of the cockfight, the driven
gambler… For such a man [the true cockfighter] what is going on in a match is some-
thing rather closer to an affaire d’honneur (‘Deep Play’) Thus, for Geertz, the cock-
fight becomes the site for the reaffirmation of status for both the individual and the
collectivity. The cocks metonymically suggest their owners: mirroring their psyche,
their caste, their masculinity (the word cock in Balinese also suggests penis); while
the fight itself is a microcosm of the ‘social matrix’, becoming in this way, ‘a status
bloodbath’ (‘Deep Play’).
Examining the cockfight as a text brings out the cultural connotations and psycho-
logical symbolism missed in conventional anthropological explanations; it is for this
reason that Geertz’s work has been widely influential among literary critics. Geertz’s
anthropology provides a model for the textualized reading of culture that has ani-
mated schools of literary criticism such as new historicism and cultural materialism.
Geertz’s methodology may also be considered Foucauldian precisely because Geertz
provides an elucidation of the cultural discourse—the sets of rules, codes, exclusions,
inclusions—that constitute a cultural norm and its most significant cultural manifes-
tations—whether this is a cockfight or a penal system.

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Understanding the Discursive Nature of History and

Michel Foucault is a theoretician who is notoriously difficult to categorize; in an

One of Foucault’s contributions to the understanding of the treatment of deviance is

of the panopticon revolutionized the way in which governmental control is exerted

Panopticism from Discipline and Punish (1975)

Among so many changes, I shall consider one: the disappearance of torture

veillance of a ‘multitude’ by an unseen watcher. The panopticon was first employed

tative one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social

Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight

The Balinese revulsion against any behavior regarded as animal-like can

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