Foucault: Intellectuals and Power
Nildo Viana[*]
Michel Foucault's work is widely known worldwide and has a great influence on academics and various social movements. In this sense, it is interesting to approach his thesis on intellectuals, which, in his work, is closely linked to the question of power. Thus, we will analyze the basic propositions of Foucault's conception about intellectuals and their relationship with power, to demonstrate our thesis that they are not sustainable.
Undoubtedly, Foucault's work has already received several criticisms, some deeper and more elaborate, others less. However, in general, they started from a perspective that would also deserve to be criticized. From those who questioned Foucault only as a pretext to defend his indefensible ideas (Baudrillard, 1984 ) , to those who drew up a broader and more comprehensive analysis, but which did not leave the outline (Mandosio, 2011), we have a set of questions about his thinking that would deserve a critical analysis. Here, our focus is only on his conception of intellectuals, and, secondarily , his relationship with power, which is well united in Foucault's thought .Obviously, that, at certain times, this sends to other issues, which will be occasional and according to the needs of the development of reflection and criticism.
Foucault and the Specific Intellectual
The main element of Foucault's thought about intellectuals is the creation of the figure of the “specific intellectual”. This mysterious figure, imaginative and innovative creation, basically, removing the ideological frame offered by Foucault, is something very common and commonplace. However, it is necessary to first show the inversion to carry out the reinversion of reality. Foucault creates the figure of the specific intellectual as opposed to the “universal intellectual” :
“This new figure has another political significance: it allowed, if not to weld, at least to re-articulate very neighboring categories, which were previously separate. The intellectual was par excellence the writer: universal conscience, free subject, he was opposed to those who were only competences at the service of the State or Capital (engineers, magistrates, teachers). From the moment that politicization takes place from the specific activity of each one, the threshold of writing as a sacralizing mark of the intellectual disappears, and then transversal connections of knowledge to know can occur, from one point of politicization to another. Thus, magistrates and psychiatrists, doctors and social workers, laboratory workers and sociologists can, in their own place and through exchanges and articulations, participate in a global politicization of intellectuals. This process explains why, if the writer tends to disappear as a figurehead, the professor and the university appear, perhaps not as main elements, but as 'exchangers', privileged crossing points. The cause of the transformation of the university and teaching in politically sensitive regions is undoubtedly there. The so-called university crisis should not be interpreted as a loss of strength, but, on the contrary, as a multiplication and reinforcement of its power effects in the midst of a multiform set of intellectuals in which practically everyone is affected by it and refers to it. All the exasperated theorizing of the script that was witnessed in the 60's, was undoubtedly nothing more than the swan's song: the writer struggled to maintain his political privilege. But the fact that it was just a 'theory', that he needed scientific collateral, supported by linguistics, semiology, psychoanalysis, that this theory had its references in Saussure or Chomsky , etc., that produced such mediocre literary works, all this proves that the activity of the writer was no longer the place of action ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 9-10).
This new type of intellectual, the new prototype of the revolutionary and challenger, emerges at a certain time.
“It seems to me that this figure of the 'specific' intellectual developed after World War II. Perhaps the atomic physicist - say in a word, or better, with a name: Oppenheimer - was the one who made the articulation between universal intellectual and specific intellectual. It is because it had a direct and localized relationship with the institution and scientific knowledge that the atomic physicist intervened; but since the atomic threat concerned the entire human race and the fate of the world, its discourse could at the same time be the discourse of the universal. Under the protection of this protest that concerned everyone, the atomic scientist developed a specific position in the order of knowledge. And, I believe, for the first time, the intellectual was persecuted by political power, no longer because of his general discourse, but because of the knowledge he held: it is at this level that he constituted himself as a political danger ”(Foucault, 1989, p. . 10).
This is true of intellectuals in the Western world as well as those of the former Soviet Union. However, the specific intellectual “had been preparing for a long time behind the scenes, he had been present in a corner of the stage since, say, the end of the 19th century” (Foucault, 1989, p. 11). And where does Foucault find an example of these early and still incomplete specific intellectuals? In 19th century evolutionary biology:
“It is undoubtedly with Darwin, or rather, with post-Darwinian evolutionists, that he begins to appear clearly. The stormy relations between evolutionism and socialists, the rather ambiguous effects of evolutionism (for example, on sociology, criminology, psychiatry, eugenics), mark the important moment when, in the name of a 'local' scientific truth - important as it may be - the scientist intervenes in contemporary political struggles ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 11).
Thus, "Darwin represents the tipping point in the history of the Western intellectual". Biology and physics were “the areas of formation of this new character, the specific intellectual” (Foucault, 1989, p. 11)[1] . From the 1920s onwards, the figure of the specific intellectual gains space and form with the development of technical-scientific structures and, at the same time, puts itself at risk:
“Let us admit, like the development of technical and scientific structures in contemporary society, the importance acquired by the specific intellectual a few decades ago and the acceleration of this movement since 1920. The specific intellectual encounters obstacles and is exposed to dangers. Danger of being limited to struggles of the conjuncture, to sectoral demands. Risk of letting yourself be manipulated by political parties or by union apparatus that direct these local struggles. Risk mostly unable to develop these struggles for lack of a comprehensive strategy and the external poles. There is also the risk of not being followed or of being only very limited groups ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 12).
Faced with this situation, Foucault has nothing left but to propose the reworking of the function of the specific intellectual. This, he soon hastens to correct, does not mean the need to return to the universal intellectual. The specific intellectual occupies a strategic place and is constrained “to assume political responsibilities as an atomic physicist, geneticist, computer scientist, pharmacologist, etc.” (Foucault, 1989, p. 12).
Foucault derives from this discussion the question of truth. The truth does not exist far or out of power, or even without it. It belongs to this world and is inextricably linked to it, with each society creating its “regime of truth”, types of discourse accepted and considered to be true; mechanisms and instance that distinguish between false and true statements; techniques and procedures valued to arrive at the truth; the status of those who define the truth. It is inserted in the social process, intertwined with economic and political power, with consumption and diffusion, subjected to the control of large political and economic apparatus , being the object of debate and struggle. The intellectual should not be seen as having universal values, but someone who has a specific position linked to the general functions of the truth device in our society.
“In other words, the intellectual has a triple specificity: the specificity of his class position (petty bourgeois in the service of capitalism, 'organic' intellectual of the proletariat); the specificity of his living and working conditions, linked to his condition as an intellectual (his research domain, his place in the laboratory, the political demands to which he is submitted, or against which he revolts, at the university, at the hospital, etc. .); finally, the specificity of truth politics in contemporary societies. It is then that his position can take on a general significance, that his local or specific combat has effects, has implications that are not only professional or sectoral. It works or struggles at the general level of this regime of truth, which is so essential for the structures and functioning of our society. There is a fight 'for the truth' or, at least, 'around the truth' - it is understood, once again, that by truth I do not mean 'the set of real things to discover or make accepted', but the ' set of rules according to which the true is distinguished from the false and attributed to the true specific effects of power '; it is also understood that this is not a fight 'in favor' of the truth, but around the status of truth and the economic-political role of intellectuals not in terms of 'science / ideology', but in terms of 'truth' /power'. It is then that the question of the professionalization of the intellectual, of the division between manual and intellectual work, can be asked again ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 13).
Behold, Foucault says that this seems "very confusing and uncertain" and that "is just a hypothesis". Hence he says that he presents some proposals to reduce confusion . And for that, he defines truth as a “set of regulated procedures” for the institution of the veracity of the statements and for this reason it is closely linked to the power system . It produces and supports it and it induces effects of power that reproduce it. It is not something superstructural, as in the Marxist conception , but “condition for the formation and development of capitalism” (Foucault, 1989, p. 14). Hence he puts his basic thesis on the role of the intellectual:
“The essential political problem for the intellectual is not to criticize the ideological contents that would be linked to science or to make sure that his scientific practice is accompanied by a just ideology; but to know whether it is possible to constitute a new policy of truth. The problem is not to change people's 'conscience', or what they have in mind, but the political, economic, institutional regime for producing the truth ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 14).
The big political issue is the truth, it is not a question of freeing it from the power system, which would be mere chimera, since it is power . The point is to detach the truth from the forms of hegemony in which it works.
This is the opposite of universal intellectual as existed in s 19th and 20th centuries This was derived from the "justice of man," the law, which is opposed to despotism in the name of the universality of justice and the fairness of a law. This was born, according to Foucault, of the jurist. "The 'universal' intellectual derives from the jurist-notable and has its most complete expression in the writer, with meanings and values in which everyone can recognize himself " (Foucault, 1989, p. 11). The specific intellectual, on the other hand, is very different from the “notable jurist”, his model is that of the “expert scientist”.
The Intellectual, the Masses and the Power
Derived from this discussion, Foucault stands before the problem of theory and the masses. The cursed intellectual and the socialist intellectual were politicized through their position in bourgeois society, in which they had a relationship with the capitalist production system and its ideology, which marginalized it, or else through their own discourse that presented a certain truth showing political relations where you didn't see it before. These two forms did not coincide , but they were not strangers to each other and therefore the cursed intellectual and the socialist met. They were confused in a moment of strong reaction of the power, as after 1848, of the Paris Commune, and also of 1940, being persecuted and rejected[2] . The relationship between the intellectual and the masses has changed:
“Now, what intellectuals have recently discovered is that the masses do not need them to know; they know perfectly, clearly, much better than they do; and they say it very well. But there is a system of power that bars, prohibits, invalidates this discourse and this knowledge. Power that is not only found in the higher levels of censorship, but that penetrates very deeply, very subtly in the whole fabric of society. The intellectuals themselves are part of the power system, the idea that they are will the agents 'awareness' and speech is also part of this system. The role of the intellectual is no longer that of putting 'a little ahead or a little aside' to tell everyone's changing truth; rather, it is the struggle against forms of power exactly where it is, at the same time, the object and the instrument: in the order of knowledge, of the 'truth', of the 'consciousness' of the discourse ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 71 ).
The theory does not translate (or express, apply) a practice, as it is a practice itself. However, it is “local and regional”, “not totalizing”. It struggles against power, seeking to make it visible, precisely where it is most invisible. According to Foucault, it is not a question of fighting for “awareness” , since it has been acquired by the masses for a long time, but to destroy the power to take it alongside all who fight for it. A given theory is nothing more than "the regional system of that theory". Deleuze agrees and advances the discussion with Foucault: “the theory does not total; the theory multiplies and multiplies. It is power that by nature operates totalizations and you say exactly that theory by nature is against power ”(apud. Foucault, 1989, p. 71). Thus, the reform is “stupid and hypocritical”, says Deleuze, but not the reform claimed, which is “demanded by those to whom it concerns, and then it ceases to be a reform, it is a revolutionary action that by its partial character is determined to question the totality of power and its hierarchy ”(apud. Foucault, 1989, p. 72).
It is in this context that Foucault returns to the question of power: “where there is power, it is exercised. Nobody is, properly speaking, its owner; and yet, it always works in a certain direction, with one on one side and the other on the other; it is not known for sure who has it; but you know who doesn't have it ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 75). So, the fight must be “focused”[3] , fragmented:
“ Each fight develops around a particular focus of power (one of the countless small focuses that can be a small boss, an HLM guard, a prison director, a judge, a union leader, a newspaper editor-in-chief ). And if designating the outbreaks, reporting them, making them public is a struggle, not because no one was aware of it yet, but because talking about it - forcing the institutional information network , naming, saying who did it, what did, designate the target - it's a first inversion of power. If speeches such as those of prisoners or prison doctors are struggles, it is because they confiscate, at least for a moment, the power to speak of the prison, currently monopolized by the administration and its reforming cronies. The fight discourse is not opposed to the unconscious: it is opposed to the secret ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 76).
Each one struggling where he suffers oppression, serves the cause of the proletarian revolution. Hospital patients, women, prisoners, etc. These struggles are part of the revolutionary movement, as long as they are radical, “without compromise or reformism” , without the intention of reorganizing power with the “change of title”. By combating all the mechanisms of coercion and power everywhere, in which power is reproduced, then they are linked to the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. Finally, the conclusion is as follows:
“This means that the generality of the struggle is certainly not done through the totalization that you [Deleuze - NV] spoke about a little while ago , through the theoretical totalization, of the 'truth'. What gives generality to the struggle is the power system itself, all its forms of exercise and application ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 78).
Specific Intellectual or the Praise of Specialization Idiotism
Foucault's intellectual production appears to be broad, the product of scholarship and in-depth research. However, the pompous facade of a large building only hides the modest hovel that is the real one behind the illusion. The discussion of specific intellectual and universal intellectual in Foucault is devoid of concreteness, it is mere metaphysical and impoverishing speculation , because when he speaks of real and concrete individuals, he reduces them to metaphysical things and when he puts metaphysical things, he attributes them a concrete character.
What Foucault calls a specific intellectual is the expert. He is the professional intellectual, a product of capitalist development, belonging to a new social class, arising from the needs for the social division of capitalism's work. What he opposes to the specific intellectual is the universal intellectual and this is the intellectual in the “political sense” and not “sociological or professional of the word” (Foucault, 1989, p. 10). Basically, the specific intellectual is the intellectual as a member of the intellectuality, a new social class, which has its multiple divisions and subdivisions , from the division of the class fraction to the division by professional categories. The universal intellectual is an abstraction, it is the image of the engaged intellectual or of the various conceptions related to the “role of the intellectual”, where he is charged with a political and social position and function. It is about his “ideological self-image” (Viana, 2011 a ). This is generally presented as having a universalist vocation and as a representative of universal human rights (Viana, 2011 a ). Foucault's position is a frontal opposition to Sartre's (1994) conception , according to which the “moral” (ideal) intellectual must be universalist, fight against ideologies and for the truth, while the intellectual, a member of the class of intellectuality, has to be overcome by this moral endowment.
Sartre's contrast between these two types of intellectuals is acceptable because he distinguishes the class being from the intellectual and refuses it, presenting his must-be, which is the negation of his being. It does not disregard the concrete, the class being, it only denies it and does so in the sense of placing it alongside the revolutionary class of our time, the proletariat . What Foucault does is to refuse any commitment to social transformation by appealing to the specific intellectual, who would be reduced to his specificity, to his class determination and, therefore, as a product of capital and for capital. Adding the illusory claim that he would thus be “revolutionary”.
Foucault just gives a new name to something old: the flesh-and-blood intellectual, part of the intellectual as a social, professional class , is now called “specific intellectual” and valued as such[4] . The “moral” or “ideal” intellectual, approached from Fichte and Hegel to the present day, who seek to emphasize the intellectual's commitment to humanity , even if in a bourgeois perspective, is simply dismissed by Foucault. In other words, just continue with your specialist work and everything is resolved.
What he adds again is that the questioning in this respect has a contesting character, which is totally meaningless. This is for two reasons: first, from the specialization itself, there is no questioning, only execution and reproduction. Even in an extremely conservative sense, which can even be fascist[5] . Second, in this situation there are no elements for questioning. A doctor has to treat the sick and that is what he is dedicated to, he does not address the problem of the social production of the disease and if he does that, he is the humanist doctor, the one who, not because of the profession and interests generated by it, but against it , advances and seeks to go further. The doctor has an interest in the disease, as this is his reason for being a specialist. Only by being humanistic (abstract or bourgeois, or concrete or revolutionary) will you be able to overcome your technical, specialized, limited universe and your individual / professional interests (therefore, specialist) to carry out a critique of the institutions, ideologies and pseudo-solutions presented the medical sphere. That is why many times the doctor, even knowing the determinations that act in his daily practice, including pharmaceutical capital and the use of problematic drugs that create new diseases, does not rebel, as that would be to act against him even as a professional.
Foucault proposes this for several reasons. The first, already mentioned, is the self - assessment of your research object . He reveals this himself, saying that when he wrote History of Madness or The Birth of the Clinic ( Foucault, 1997; Foucault, 1980 ) , what concerned him was the relationship between knowledge and power, and that his study of medicine and psychiatry showed the links between these two terms, what was related to the institutions (hospice and hospital) . However, and here his secret is revealed, this was not considered important , that is, it was not valued by others:
“What 'baffled' me a little, at the time, was the fact that this question that asked me did not interest those who I asked it at all. They considered that it was a politically unimportant problem, and epistemologically without nobility ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 2).
Thus, his next task was to “ennoble” and value his objects of study, that is, his research, publications and himself. But how can something that has no social value or for other groups and classes (it has no value for the exploited classes or for the intellectuals) be valued? Now, the strategy is simple: try to bring it closer to the “masses”, on the one hand, and, on the other, to the intellectual. This is what Foucault actually did.
However, it was a difficult task, because what Foucault sought to revalue, had just been extremely undervalued in the previous historical period. The figure of the specific intellectual constructed by him is that of the specialist. That is why he finds his precedents in the 19th century, when the natural sciences increased their division of internal work and the human sciences emerged. It is the creation of increasing intellectual specialization and Darwin is a paradigm in the case of biology, in which he came to supplant Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who was a philosopher and scholar, who developed a broader and less ideological theory of evolution, but still too abstract and it was his successor who impoverished the analysis of the evolution of species with his specialization and methodological poverty. However, the specialist intellectual represented by Darwin was not only an intellectually poorer figure, but also more conservative, and his ties to power and eugenics are not free (Viana, 2001 ; Marco, 1987 ; Prenant, 1940 ; Viana , 2009 a ; Viana , 2003 ) .
His discussion of Oppenheimer is meaningless or the only explanation is his “function to impress the reader” (Mandosio, 2011, p. 54) . This atomic physicist would have been persecuted for having a specific knowledge[6] , as in the quote made at the beginning of this article and not because of its “general discourse”. However, the reality is quite different. Oppenheimer has always participated in disputes and general political issues (civil war in Spain, when he was a supporter of Republicans, financed anti-fascist organizations, etc.) and was persecuted by marchartism, due to his old links with the left-wing or Communist Party. This had nothing to do with his specific knowledge, and Foucault cites a single example that not only does not confirm his hypothesis, but contradicts it.
Another motivation of Foucault is the conservative attempt to recover the legitimacy of the university and specialized scientific knowledge. In his concern to praise the specific intellectual, he mentions the professor and the crisis at the university, as well as doctors, psychiatrists, sociologists and others. The universal intellectual, the writer, disappears and in his place comes the professor and the university. The university crisis is cited explicitly by him to say that it does not mean "loss of strength". Now, the crisis of the university of which he refers is caused by the insurgency of the radical student movement of the late 1960s, when there is a process of questioning this institution, science (in general and in the case of specialized disciplines such as sociology and anthropology), the in- intellectual production generated by it, which reached greater intensity in Italy, Germany and, mainly, in France.
One of the triggers of this whole process was the Fouchet Plan for university reform , which precarized the French system of higher education. However, Foucault participated in the production of this reform:
“In 1965, he was a member of the École Nationale d'Administration jury, a hotbed of French high bureaucracy, and participated (as a member of a commission) in the reform of the University launched by Minister Christian Fouchet, which will come into force in 1967 - 'one of the great projects of Gaullism and more particularly of Georges Pompidou, the Prime Minister ', remembers Didier Éribon, informing that' Foucault took his participation in the establishment of the reform very seriously '. They even offer him the post of deputy director of higher education in the Ministry of National Education. This proposal, which he had accepted, went nowhere due to an orchestrated campaign against him on account of his sexual preferences ”(Mandosio, 2011, p. 41)[7] .
Foucault, who was also invited by the government to participate in the reform of the penal system, seeks to recover the university precisely because he was always on the side of power and was even a participant in the university reform contested by Parisian students. As Mandosio rightly said, “the invention of the 'specific intellectual', which Foucault's commentators take seriously, was an operation aimed at recovering the image of university professors, very tainted after May 1968” (Mandosio, 2011, p. 56 ). Basically, Foucault is part of the group of intellectuals at the service of power who sought, intentionally or not, depending on the case, to carry out a preventive cultural counter-revolution ( Viana, 2009b ) , resuming themes, ideas, criticisms, present in the movement that culminated with the May 1968, but removing its criticality by depoliticizing these themes and issues and it does so precisely by removing its insertion in the totality of social relations[8] .
The critique of everyday life, the critique of instrumental reason, etc., in which the element of the criticized reality is closely linked to the reproduction of social totality, that is, capitalism, which shows its link with power (state and capital) ) , are abandoned and replaced by criticism of isolated objects . Thus, it produces ideologies isolating the daily and despolitizam, unlike the critical previously performed by Debord ( 1997 ) and in situ the cionistas by Henri Lefebvre ( 1990 ), among others, or criticism of instrumental reason performed by the School Frankfurt, which is transformed into a depoliticized and irrationalist critic of reason in general ( Viana, 2009b ) , among other examples that could be cited.
Mandosio states that "if Foucault had less courted Marxist-Leninists after May 1968" and had taken a look at Raol Vaneigen's book , The Art of Living for the New Generations , "I would not have forced so many doors wide open". Undoubtedly, reading this Situationist text, and several others by Debord, Lefebvre, Marcuse, Gorz, Sartre, among others, would have been sufficient. But if Foucault had any awareness or connection to and non eft official since the 1920s, already know that much of what he said , thinking being innovative is something quite old and has been themed in a much more profound way than the ride superficial that it provides for the question of intellectuals, power, etc.
Did Foucault intentionally contribute to this preventive intellectual counterrevolution process? His concern with the “university crisis” and rescuing the “specific intellectual” does not seem to be just a naive exercise in following the trends. Foucault was a follower of fashions, but a whole contingent of structuralist intellectuals from before May 1968 became post-structuralist later, and to name the names of Baudrillard, Lyotard, Castoriadis, Jacques Le Goff and the entire third generation of the School of the Annales in historiography with its “history in crumbs” is sufficient. Foucault, who was a representative of structuralism ( Viana, 2009b ; Mandosio, 2011), only resolved to criticize the idea of universal intellectual and that had a second objective in addition to re-legitimizing the specific intellectual: to criticize the conceptions prior to May 1968, explicitly structuralism, but, implicitly, its strongest opponents in the years of its hegemony and validity: Marxism and existentialism.
What he calls the “exasperated theorizing of writing” of the 1960s, refers, on the one hand, to the idea of the universal intellectual (represented more explicitly and fundamentally by Jean-Paul Sartre, but which had links with pseudomarxism and with Marxism, marginalized and defended by a few individuals and activists in France at that time) and the category of totality, present in structuralism, Marxism and pseudomarxism and in a way in Sartrean existentialism at that time - which became increasingly closer to Marxism[9] .
What Foucault calls “ specific intellectual ” is the specialist, a product of capitalist development, whose new needs expand the social division of labor and its subdivisions, creating more specializations and specialists, as occurred at the general level of society or at a specific level in each specialization, as in the case of sociology (Viana, 2011), to name just one example. However, Foucault's conception is a mere metaphysical abstraction that does not account for and does not want to approach concrete reality. The specialist cannot confront the power, at most, he can moderately contest only his apparent side, his appearance and request interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity , teamwork, local reforms, etc.
The specialist, or “specific intellectual”, is unable to contest, because in the sphere of specific knowledge there is no room for any radical questioning, including because, coming out of Foucault's metaphysical abstraction, individuals located in certain social relations, an instance of delimited performance that creates values, conceptions and self-interests, it does not turn against it, as it would turn against itself. The only possibility to break with these conceptions and values, is to override your class interests and others like those of the professional category, with no prospect of gaining anything from it . And the only ones who can do this need to be “universal intellectuals”, both in the sense of having a conception of totality and of having different, broader, sentimental and intellectual connections, which go beyond professional and class specificity. Without leaving the realm of specialization, identification with the profession, the class, etc., a radical critique of society or aspects of it cannot be carried out.
The i specific ntelectuais before the "masses"
The thesis of the new role of the intellectual, that instead of questioning himself and his position must accept and reproduce his small space of action, we also have new relationships between the intellectual and the "masses". According to Foucault, the intellectual has a triple specificity: the class position, the specificity of living and working conditions, and his position before the politics of truth in today's society. These three elements are complementary and, therefore, reveal the basic theses of Foucault's ideology about intellectuality.
The first point is only mentioned by Foucault, because he considers that the intellectual , by his class position, is a “petty bourgeois” in the service of capitalism or “organic intellectual” of the proletariat. The silence on this aspect is curious, and later, in another text and moment, he returns to discuss the question of the proletariat. That is why we only highlight Foucault's silencing and analytical misunderstanding . The intellectual, like any other individual of any other class, cannot be understood only by reference to the class position. Unless “class position”, for Foucault, signifies class situation or belonging. In the latter case, it is only for superficial pseudo-Marxists that the magic word "petty bourgeoisie" has any effect or meaning. The intellectual is not a bourgeois, small or large, because he does not extract more value from the proletariat. Undoubtedly, he gets part of the global added value, but not as capital but as income, donated by the bourgeoisie in exchange for his services to capital (Viana, 2011 a ).
However, what Foucault, confusingly seems to mean, is that the class position is the position assumed in relation to one or the other class. Or he defines himself as a petty bourgeois in the service of the proletariat's power or organic intellectual. Here, again, the figure of the petty bourgeois has no meaning, because as a social class the petty bourgeoisie is politically insignificant and has no power of attraction over other social classes. In that sense, he could only be like the bourgeois, who is really in the service of capital. The other option is, using Gramsci's misguided and problematic term, is to be an “organic intellectual” of the proletariat. Foucault makes no reference to Gramsci, because if he did, it would be another reason to contest his thesis, as it shows an incomprehension of the meaning of the term in this author.
However, the most curious thing is that Foucault does not say how the specific intellectual, say, to use one of his examples, a pharmacologist, would assume a petty bourgeois or proletarian position in his specialized activities ? This is a mystery, since to take the first position (or rather, the bourgeois position), it would be enough to do what Foucault advises, work in his specific domain without major concerns and, to assume the second position, he should fight his own specific activity and risk losing it, which would mean becoming a “universal intellectual”. Foucault's thesis is an insoluble contradiction.
The second point, about his specificity of living and working conditions, he also does not discuss, which shows another silence. What Foucault does is only generic statements about how a specific intellectual, being what he is, is opposed to power. It does not analyze any specific case, because if it did, it would have to refute its own thesis and history itself does that, after all we are in a society marked by millions of specific intellectuals and nothing is changing in the world, mainly thanks to them or, when changes, it's for the worse. It is enough to see philosophers like Foucault and all post-structuralists and notice that nothing but a new pseudo-critical conformism is what is installed. Oppenheimer's case, the only one he cites, contradicts his thesis.
The third point is the only one he really addresses and is the most abstract and ideological, in the Marxist sense of the term. According to Foucault, there is a struggle around the truth regime in our society and the role of the specific intellectual is to act precisely there. Their local or specific struggle has implications for the regime of truth, which would be essential for the structures and functioning of our society. However, Foucault immediately warns that the truth to which he is referring is not the “set of true things” , whether to discover, or to make one accept, but the “set of rules by which the true and the false are distinguished” and attribute itself to the real specific effects of power. This sweet contradiction - the truth is just a set of rules imposing the definition of what is true or false and then speaks of the “true specific effects of power”, in which the derived word (“true”) assumes the role previously refused. "Real things". However, a more serious contradiction exists in all this and Habermas had already warned of it:
“ Foucault's concept of power does not authorize the notion of a counterpower articulated in a philosophy of history and based on cognitive privileges. Every counterpower moves on the horizon of power it fights and becomes, as soon as it emerges victorious, into a power complex that causes another counterpower. Neither can genealogy break this cycle by activating the revolt of unqualified types of knowledge and mobilizing oppressed knowledge 'against the pressure of theoretical , unitary, formal and scientific discourse '. Whoever defeats the theoretical vanguards of today and overcomes the existing hierarchy of knowledge represents himself the theoretical vanguard of tomorrow and builds a new hierarchy of knowledge. In any case, he cannot claim for his knowledge any superiority according to criteria of truth claims that transcend local conventions ”(Habermas, 2002, p. 393).
The struggle against the truth regime produces another truth, another power[10] . This is Foucault's insoluble contribution (Habermas , 2002 ). And the contradiction becomes stronger if we remember that the truth does not refer to a set of rules of imposition of what is true and false, and, therefore, it does not refer to true things, but to devices of power and, thus, one truth on the other, one power on the other . If there is no exchange and the solution is to abandon the struggle over the regime of truth, then you fall into immobility, conformism, impotence. If the solution is to fight and impose a new regime of truth, then it is a new power, which does not lead to any effective change, no social transformation. It would only lead to a “change of ownership ”, which he himself questioned, which is yet another contradiction.
Another contradiction is that which lies in its definition of truth. If the truth is just a way of exercising power and has nothing to do with the traditional concept , then the struggle over the truth is a mere struggle for power and any truth said as well. Is what Foucault said true? According to his own thesis, it is just a game in which he wants to impose his power on others and, therefore, has no validity. In other words, based on this thesis that he presents, everything he said loses the ability to be true and soon has no value. His relativistic discourse, like all relativism, is an autophagic discourse, which destroys itself (Viana, 2002b). However, it is also a discourse of intellectuality and serves for the reproduction process of existing society, it is at the service of power, it is a conservatism disguised as neutrality , a more refined positivism (Viana, 2000b).
Thus, the specific intellectual either has no role or must be fought for reproducing power. Interestingly, Foucault states that "intellectuals have recently discovered" that "the masses do not need them to know", because "they know perfectly, clearly, much better than they do; and they say it very well ”(Foucault, 1989, p. 71). Here it seems a revolutionary conception of defense of the self-management of struggles on the part of the proletariat (or of the “masses” , a term that he takes turns with the proletariat, which implies that they mean the same thing to him) .
However, it is a non- revolutionary conception , because, in stating that the “ masses ” are already aware , what he does is the praise of the proletariat as a determined, alienated class, dominated by capital. This ideology thus only reinforces the domination of capital. The apology of the proletariat as a determined class is the negation of the proletariat as a self-determined and therefore revolutionary class. Since Marx, the issue of proletarian self-emancipation has been highlighted, which occurs via the transition from a determined class (through capital) to a self - determined class against capital and itself as a class, in which instead of seeking to preserve its class situation it seeks its own abolition, abolishing class society in general (Viana, 2011c).
What matters here, however, is the role of the specific intellectual. Now, if the masses know, then what is the role of the specific intellectual? And the intellectual in general? Foucault says that there is a system of power that prevents the manifestation of the consciousness of the masses, which is present throughout society. Intellectuals themselves are part of that system, as well as the idea that they are agents of consciousness. Now the masses know, but they cannot say. So, there is consciousness, what is not is its manifestation. And what would its manifestation be necessary for? And what is this conscience, a new regime of truth that imposes a new power? Foucault cannot answer these questions, as the limits of his relativistic and positivist ideology do not allow it . The problem is the manifestation of this already existing consciousness and the role of intellectuals is not to stay in front or side, but where power is, in its own activity, in the order of knowledge and discourse. Thus, the intellectual is not an agent of conscience , but struggles only in his instance, which is a contradiction.
The point, in fact, is that for Foucault, theory is a practice, only local and regional, and therefore not totalizing. The theory, according to Deleuze, which has Foucault's endorsement, “does not total”, only “multiplies”. Hence the thesis that it is up to the power to make “totalizations” . If power is what makes totals, then totality must be abandoned. This is the discourse of post-structuralist conservatism and can be seen both in the historiography of mentalities and in the work of Lyotard ( 1986 ) , among countless others. Power is totalizing, so theory, opposition, cannot be totalizing.
Here the opposition between universal intellectual and specific intellectual gains greater clarity. However, the curious thing is how one can take such a speech seriously, since being the totalizing power, the resistance being local, then how could he overcome the power? This could be illustrated with a game of chess, in which the white pieces are organized as a set orchestrated by the king and the black pieces move in disorderly without any coordination. Pawn after pawn falls, until the strongest pieces also and in a very short time checkmate occurs. Of course, in reality, this would be much worse, since not all “ black pieces ” would even be in opposition to the white ones, and many would be fighting each other. This type of ideology benefits those who hold power and is a step backwards from May 1968, in which it was sought to articulate the student struggles with the proletariat and in this context they opened a breach that almost enabled an attempt at social revolution.
But the conservative character is revealed even more with the statements of Deleuze, approved by Foucault: all reform is stupid and hypocritical. Is this right. But the alternative solution is much worse : the claimed reform, demanded by those who need it, is not reform, it is "revolutionary action" . Basically, what is questioned here are state reforms (which hypocritically and stupidly Foucault has always supported and helped to implement) and the reforms claimed by sectors of the population would be revolutionary action. This is not explained and justified. Is the reform of the prison system “revolutionary action”? What's revolutionary about that? The big question is that the two post-structuralist ideologues want, exactly with the discourse against totalization, to abolish any possibility of revolution, in the authentic sense of the term, that is, a social revolution, which can only be total and not only local (and this not only referring to groups, places, but also in a broad sense, it must overcome the social division of labor and , therefore, what is conventionally called “economic”, “political”, “cultural”, etc., the which is already in Marx, but also in Foucault's countrymen, such as Debord and the Situationists, Lefebvre, etc.).
Any partial reform calls into question the totality of power and its hierarchy. Of course, it is a mere unsubstantiated statement, which is common in the case of Deleuze and Foucault. Nothing justifies such a claim, and moreover, it reveals something more. It reveals the fall of the welfare state, the integrationist state that emerged with transnational oligopolistic capitalism in crisis from the end of the 1960s ( Viana, 2009b ). It is an ideology and a new political proposal, which will later be implemented by the neoliberal state and will be reinforced by countless other more specific ideologies and proposals, constituting a micro-reformism .
Hence the character of the struggle is based on isolated outbreaks and the target becomes the prison director, the little chief, the union leader, and the class struggle turns into micro-reformism and individual and personal struggle. However, it is the isolated and decontextualized individual, and, in this sense, just another resemblance to neoliberalism, the individual is held responsible. The problem is the secret, but the reason for the secret and its relationships and links are never explained. And so, the problem of bureaucracy, for example, is only a matter of denunciation and discourse against bureaucrats and the institution as a metaphysical abstraction, and not against bureaucracy - class and organization - and its raison d'être, the social division of work established for the reproduction of capitalism. From this derives another brilliant thesis by Foucault, the generality of the struggle does not occur in the theoretical totalization (obviously not, because it is only part of the struggle, it is in practice that the articulation of the struggles occurs, only that such articulation only occurs with the development of awareness of relationships and wholeness). It is not known how the struggle of the sick in hospitals (fight against what? This would be a question to be answered), the struggle of women, prisoners, etc. they are part of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, provided they are radical and without compromise or reformism.
It remains to be seen how such struggles could be radical in their isolated locations and focuses? Will the patient revolt against the hospital? Against doctors? Against treatment? And what will you propose in place? If it were not tragic, it would be comical to imagine a scene in which a group of patients leaving a hospital, some crawling, claiming the abolition of hospitals, or a change of direction (or, what would be more appropriate, their transformation into a madhouse). .). Obviously, there are elements to criticize in hospitals, in treatments, etc., but to think that patients in a hospital would effect such an attitude is only to create meaningless abstract speculations and that they do not know how someone takes it seriously. All the more so as any of the alternatives mentioned above are mere reforms and quite restricted, even if it is not just in a hospital, or in all, it affects only one institution of society. And what connection does this have to the revolutionary movement of the proletariat? This is yet another mystery that only the mystics Foucault and Deleuze could answer, with their esoteric knowledge .
Final considerations
In summary, Foucault's discussion of intellectuals and power only reveals the link of this intellectual with the power relations expressed in his ideology, which only manifests the concrete relationship that others have already shown (Mandosio, 2011). The idea of a specific intellectual in replacing the universal intellectual is just the contemporary form assumed by one of the ways of the dominant ideology in order to demobilize and withdraw the commitment that some intellectuals had with the proletarian struggle for human emancipation.
However, it also has the role of legitimizing and justifying micro-reformism and the disarticulation of social struggles in general. Basically, both of these things provoke an attempt to isolate the proletariat in its struggle for social transformation , as it seeks to distance intellectuals and other exploited and oppressed groups from a more general and articulated struggle, generating fragmentation, isolation, in addition to producing ideologies. who reinforce this (and do this by saying that they are doing just the opposite) . May 1968 is the great ghost that this ideology seeks to hide.
This ideology, along with others, had a certain effectiveness and could strengthen the r conservative tendencies within the intelligentsia - who can devote their expert exercises uncompromised with the pretext of being a specific intellectual - and microrreformismo in social movements, organizations policies and proposals produced by groups or individuals.
However, the analysis that goes beyond his own discourse shows, in fact, that the link between intellectuals and power is indissoluble, not only with the power relations in the institutions, as Foucault wants, but with the state power that throws its tentacles on all of them, as Foucault himself demonstrated in his practice. The only way for the intellectual not to serve power is to deny both his bond of specialist (“specific”) and the claims of abstract universalism and other ideologies about his role and role, as well as breaking with his class and professional identification. The intellectual can only be revolutionary by denying himself as an intellectual and fighting for the revolutionary transformation of society alongside the proletariat.
Bibliographic references
Abramczuk , André A. The Myth of Modern Science. Proposal for Analysis of Physics as the basis of Totalitarian Ideology . São Paulo, Cortez, 1981.
Baudrillard , Jean. Forget Foucault. Rio de Janeiro, Rocco, 1984.
Debord , Guy. The Spectacle Society . Rio de Janeiro: Counterpoint, 1997.
Foucault , Michel. The words and things. 4th ed. São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 1987.
Foucault , Michel. History of Madness . 5th edition, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1997.
Foucault , Michel. Microphysics of Power . 8th edition, Rio de Janeiro, Grail, 1989.
Foucault , Michel. The Birth of the Clinic . 2nd edition, Rio de Janeiro, Forensic, 1980.
Habermas , Jürgen. Philosophical Discourse of Modernity . São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 2002.
Lefebvre , Henri. Everyday Life in the Modern World . São Paulo: Ática, 1990.
Lidsky , Paul. Los Escritores Contra la Communa . Mexico, Siglo Veintiuno, 1971.
Lyotard , Jean-François . The Postmodern . Rio de Janeiro, José Olympio, 1986.
Mandosio , Jean-Marc. The Longevity of an Imposture: Michel Foucault . Rio de Janeiro: Achiamé, 2011.
Marco , Nélio. What is Darwinism . São Paulo, Brasiliense, 1987.
Prenant , Marcel. Darwin . Mexico, Ediciones Quetzal, 1940.
Sartre , Jean-Paul. In Defense of Intellectuals . São Paulo, Ática, 1994.
Viana , Nildo. Karl Marx's Theory of Social Classes . Mimeo. 2011c.
Viana , Nildo. The Impossibility of Relativism . In: Philosophy and its Shadow . Goiânia, Germinal Editions, 2000b.
Viana , Nildo. Darwin and the Competition in the Scientific Community . Culture Fragments . Ifiteg / UCG. Vol. 13. Jan./Feb. 2003.
Viana , Nildo. Darwin Nu . Revista Espaço Acadêmico. Year VIII, num. 95. April 2009a.
Viana , Nildo. Darwinism and Ideology . Post Revista Brasiliense of Postgraduate Studies in Social Sciences, Brasília, v. 5, p. 45-78, 2001.
Viana , Nildo. State, Democracy and Citizenship. The Dynamics of Institutional Policy in Capitalism. Rio de Janeiro, Achiamé, 2003.
Viana , Nildo. Foucault: Philosophy or Fetishism . In: Philosophy and its Shadow . Goiânia, Germinal Editions, 2000a.
Viana , Nildo. Intellectual: Class Belonging and Individual Autonomy . Mimeo. 2011a.
Viana , Nildo. Introduction to Sociology . 2nd edition, Belo Horizonte, Autêntica, 2011b.
Viana , Nildo. Capitalism in the Age of Integral Accumulation . São Paulo, Ideas and Letters, 2009b.
Viana , Nildo. Values in Modern Society . Brasília, Thesaurus, 2007.
Viana , Nildo. University and Specialization: The Egg of the Serpent. Revista Espaço Acadêmico, Maringá / PR, v. 2, n. 18, p. 1-5, 2002.
-------
Arti go originally published in:
VIANA, Nildo. Foucault: Intellectuals and Power. In: MARQUES, Edmilson and BRAGA, Lisandro ( orgs .). Intellectuality and Class Struggle . São Carlos: Pedro and João Editores, 2013.
[*] Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences / UFG - Federal University of Goiás; PhD in Sociology / UnB - University of Brasília.
[1] This conception has no continuity with the ideology of the epistemes developed in As Words and Things (Foucault, 1987), a work of his structuralist time, which he seeks to pretend that there was no break in his thinking, something difficult to to sustain. Obviously, neither the previous ideology (Viana, 2000 a ; Mandosio, 2011), nor the later, are supported.
[2] Foucault's precision here is doubtful, since he does not cite concrete examples and it is enough to recall the position of the intellectuals who, in their overwhelming majority, were against communists and the proletarian revolution (cf. Lidski, 1971).
[3] Obviously not in the Guevarist sense, but in localized struggles.
[4] It is worth remembering that Foucault includes doctors, psychiatrists, etc. in this situation, and does so to recover the importance of these sectors, which, according to him, are disqualified by the scientific sphere and were his “object of study” . Everyone seeks to value their object of study, because thus they value, at the same time, their research and themselves. This self-assessment process is only one chapter in the process of social formation of values (Viana, 2007).
[5] This resembles the film The Human Question (Nicolas Klotz, France, 2007). In this, the central character is a psychologist who the company asks to make a list of workers to be dismissed and he, using some criteria of psychology, makes the list. Subsequently, he is called to investigate the case of one of the directors involved with Nazism and ends up meeting a former truck driver who was taking Jews to the gas chambers and he explained that their justification for agreeing with this was: “we are just doing our job ”. Soon, the psychologist became aware that his justification and practice was not very different. The film only reveals a cruel truth: the specialist is anti-humanist, and humanism is anti-specialist. The praise of specialization and specialists is the serpent's egg (Viana, 2002) that can shock fascism.
[6] A statement that has no real basis. Foucault cites Oppenheimer as a case that, in essence, contradicts his thesis and does not present any more examples that show that someone is persecuted for having a “specific,” that is, specialized knowledge. This is more serious if we note that it is possible to establish links in physics such as specialized knowledge and “totalitarian systems”, which is something that deserves further study and already has some sketches (Abramczuk, 1981).
[7] "All of this, underlines Éribon, totally ridicules the essayists [Ferry and Renault] who wanted to untangle in the works published by Foucault in the 60s the founding schemes of a '68 thinking' in close relation to the events of the same name ' ”(Mandosio, 2011, p. 41).
[8] That is why it does not make any sense to speak of “sudden disillusionment with political engagement” (Habermas, 2002, p. 360) on the part of Foucault from May 1968, as he never effectively joined any engagement and will rehearse this, in prisons, after this process, which even approaches Maoists, after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in an opportunistic way, like so many other intellectuals. Mandosio shows his ties to power, before, during and after May 1968, an event with which he has no relationship (Mandosio, 2011).
[9] Obviously, the conception of the totality of these trends was different or even radically different, in some cases (structuralism and Marxism, for example).
[10] The concept of power in Foucault is metaphysical (Viana, 2000 a ; Viana, 2003).