How The Subject and Power Demonstrates the Necessary Synthesis of the Genealogical and Archaeological Method
Michel Foucault’s understanding of the subject, subjectification, and the movement of power in society is complimented by a critical understanding of the symbiotic relationship between archaeology and genealogy in his work. The subject and its role are arguably the most important aspect to Foucault’s philosophy as a whole. That is to say, this paper seeks to clearly articulate the subject as Foucault understands it, so that his critique of institutions, such as the prison, the asylum, and the hospital can be understood as institutions of subjectification. Foucault comes to this conclusion by specifically using the genealogical method of analysis, his method of ‘unfolding’ historic power relations with (and not as a response to nor critique of) his archeological analysis.
Firstly, we will look at what Foucault means exactly by archaeology and genealogy. The words, of course, have their own meaning specific to the context of Foucault’s work, but their colloquial or common meaning can be usefully applied here as well. Specifically put, archaeological analysis is like finding the remains of an ancient city which our contemporary society was built on top of; Foucault is then asking “what are the structural points of this ‘ancient city’ that hold up our current city?” We see this with Madness & Civilization (1961), almost literally to the prior example, where Foucault tracks the spaces and epistemology of the era (the early renaissance) that once held lepers, as what makes possible the subjectification and confinement of the insane (to clarify, both the physical spaces and the epistemology are what would go on to make possible our contemporary epistemology). We see the same thing with The Order of Things (1966), where the social consciousness that created the art, literature, and science of the time was the groundwork for contemporary art, literature, and science to become what it is now. To conclude, archaeology is the study of the past’s ways of thinking, its epistemes, and how knowledge formed within a given epoch (and what made possible the knowledge to form in the first place).
Genealogy, however, is different from archaeology not because it contrasts or opposes this style of analysis, and the assumption that genealogy was supposed to ‘replace’ archaeology is wrong; instead, genealogical analysis is only possible once a thorough archaeology of the subject matter has been done. Foucault borrows the ‘neologistic spirit’ of the term from Friedrich Nietzsche (most notably, from his book The Genealogy of Morals (1887)), where Nietzsche searches to understand what morals are, how they operate, and why ‘good’ and ‘evil’ exist in the first place. In short, Nietzsche finds that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ come from the way different institutions of power (such as the church and the state) would categorize ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to control people, and subject them to the institution’s will. Genealogy is tracking power, similarly to archaeology, but specifically as it relates to subjects and subjectivity; genealogy is literally, after all, the study of the origins of people, yet Foucault’s genealogy admits that there is no one original point to history and ideas. He writes, in Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, that The Genealogy of Morals “rejects the metahistorical deployment of ideal significations and indefinite teleologies. It opposes itself to the search for ‘origins.’”(4) Foucault also clarifies, by referencing a quote from Nietzsche’s The Wanderer and His Shadow (1878), that the idea of an ‘origin’ “is no more than ‘a metaphysical extension which arises from the belief that things are most precious and essential at the moment of birth.’” (2)
What this all means is that 1. The task of genealogy is never “done,” as in, unlike dialectics (Hegelian or Marxist), genealogy opposes the idea that there is some final point which events lead to overtime. 2. Similar to literal genealogical studies in anthropology (searching for the genes and ancestors of people), genealogy has no one origin. If one were to trace back their lineage, they would find that their family tree grows out farther and farther, until one finds that the similarities between oneself and their 30th great-grandparent, for example, are negligible. In that way, the importance of Foucault’s genealogy is not on the origin, rather the current thing itself and why that thing is the way it is. This is the significance of Nietzsche’s statement earlier, the idea that things are “most precious and essential” as their ‘origin,’ and that the primacy of the origin is, at best, arbitrary.
In The Subject and Power (1982), Foucault puts the genealogical and archaeological model to use in order to understand A) what the subject is, B) what power is, C) how these 2 relate and influence one another, and finally, as Foucault himself writes, D) “to study… the way a human being turns himself into a subject.”(2) To tackle this, then, we will go in order. First, the subject, excluding its colloquial usage, such as the ‘subject’ of this paper (although it should still apply), is essential one who undergoes the process of subjectification:Foucault writes that “the subject is either divided inside himself or divided from others. This process objectivizes him. Examples are the mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the criminals and the ‘good boys.’”(2) The subject is someone who’s injected an identity from an other’s source of power, with some form of logic, such as the sciences (i.e., biology ‘subjectivizes’ people to being ‘human;’ economics as ‘laborers,’ etc.) This is possible because “the human subject… is placed in power relations”(2), specifically by an other subject, a source of power.
Power, for Foucault, is better understood not as a ‘noun’ or something that stands and exists on its own, but rather an action, or an ‘exercise,’ which creates a “power relation” among subjects. For example, Foucault writes that the “medical profession… exercises an uncontrolled power over people's bodies, their health, and their life and death.” (4) What’s more, Foucault writes, is that “if we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others.”(10) Power is specifically the relations between one and another (or many) person(s). Even when the subject is “divided inside himself,” the division first begins because of or with an other, and this is precisely what Foucault means by ‘pastoral power.’ He writes, most insightfully, that “this form of power cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of people's minds … it implies a knowledge of the conscience and an ability to direct it.” (7) This comes from the ‘confession,’ when, in order to cleanse one’s sins, one must confess to the priest or pastor. The confession controls how people relate to and ‘know’ both their actions, as confession is the admittance that what one has done is a sin, and the ‘admittance’ that the institution, the church, has power of the knowledge of their sins over themselves. This subjectification and control of the subjects’ minds (to where one thinks of themselves as a ‘sinner’ confessing to, not just God, but also the ‘priest’) is what makes pastoral power especially important to Foucault, as this ‘style of exercising power’ has spread beyond simply the church. He writes that “we should distinguish between two aspects of pastoral power-between the ecclesiastical institutionalization, which has ceased or at least lost its vitality since the eighteenth century, and its function, which has spread and multiplied outside the ecclesiastical institution.” (7)
When reading Foucault’s works, it seems that this ‘mind-focused’ style of subjectification has become the dominant style in the world today. This is why Foucault says power “is not a function of consent… [nor] a renunciation of freedom,”(12) as it is precisely this ‘willingness’ to confess, to subjugate oneself, that gives institutions so much power over the subject. This is realization of subjectification is the common theme relating the subject and power in the modern day across Foucault’s books. After all, the goal of contemporary psychiatry is not to physically constrain the mentally ill, but to get people to receive a diagnosis, to (willingly and consensually) take medication or to receive therapy. With prisons (as explained in Discipline and Punish (1977)), incarceration and control over subjects moved from explicit control in the sovereign society, that is the gruesome torture such as of Damiens the regicide, in order to deter further crime, to the power like that of a panopticon, where people learn to self-discipline. Over time, power ‘disperses’ itself: power is no longer seen solely in the hands of the king, and the resistance can be clearly directed against the king. Now, instead, power is spread across many institutions, and even the subject themselves, or at least, it seemingly is, as the pastoral power would like us to believe.
In conclusion, the subject is ‘the subject’ because of various power relations. These power relations can be understood with the genealogical analysis of the evolution of other power relations; conversely, the archaeological mode of analysis looks for the relationship that subjects have with knowledge, and how that knowledge makes possible the possibility of thought, as in, archaeology uncovers why we come to think what we think. In this way, the subject, their relationship to power (as in, how is power exerted over them) and how they understand power (as in, what they ‘know’ of the power and how they know how the power to be exercised) is a prime example of how archaeology and genealogy are not conflicting with one another, but rather two aspects of analyzing the same thing: the subject and how it is subjectivized.
Citations
Foucault, P. M., Madness & Civilization, 1961, Vintage, New York.
Foucault, P. M., The Order of Things, 1966, Vintage, New York.
Foucault, P. M., Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 1971,
Foucault, P. M., The Subject and Power, 1982
Foucault, P. M., Discipline and Punish, 1977
Nietzsche, F. W., The Genealogy of Morals, 1887
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