Foucault, History And The War On Terror
September 6th, 2009 
Print This Post
Filed Under General
Foucault, History And The War On Terror
The objective of political critique is, or has always traditionally been, to uncover instances of domination of individuals by forces of power in the present and to ascertain the possibility of securing individual freedom from domination in the future. This essay comprises the first part of a longer study whose intention was to establish the utility of Michel Foucault’s critical method as a mode of political critique and its effectiveness both in bringing to light the nature of any such instance of domination and determining if, or to what extent, such domination can be overcome.
The problematic nature of the justifications for the War on Terror acted as my primary point of reference, allowing me initially, to demonstrate the manner in which an immediate investigation into the war’s historical background is able to reveal beyond the rhetoric employed to secure their acceptance, the inconsistencies and contradictions that underlie the claims to self-evidence upon which such justifications rest.
Despite the effectiveness of such a critique, however, I proceeded to posit Foucault’s critical method as a means by which a more fundamental critique can be effected. I argued that Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical modes of analysis not only allow us to destabilise such claims to self-evidence, but that they do so by undermining and escaping the theoretical presuppositions upon which they and their attendant critiques are constructed. On this basis, I was able to demonstrate the manner in which Foucault’s methodology allows us to reveal some of the more unacceptable consequences of those presuppositions, within which, the former critique may itself, upon investigation, be considered complicit.
PART ONE
The Problem of Rhetoric and the Critique of Self-Evidence
I
On September 11th enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country…Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom…Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.[1]
George W. Bush, “Speech to Congress”, 20th September 2001.
The acts of terrorism perpetrated against the United States on September 11th 2001 engendered dem
1000
ands for—and assurances of—a proportionate response almost as soon as the suspected perpetrators were publicly identified. Freedom itself, it was said, was under attack. To bring those that carried out those attacks to justice, it was claimed, was necessary in order to defend freedom and protect the way of life of the ‘civilized world’. The democratic ideals upon which western society was founded had apparently been threatened and it was in the interests of the security of the present and the prosperity of the future that such ideals be defended from the danger they now faced.
The fight against terrorism that such attacks provoked was not just America’s fight but the fight of ‘all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.’[2] The ‘terrorist parasites’ that carried out the attacks represented ‘evil and war’ while states that harboured or supported such terrorists constituted an ‘axis of evil’ that threatened global security. Freedom from terror, ‘the most basic liberty of all’[3] according to Tony Blair, was that which was at stake.
Indeed, this was an ‘extraordinary moment for progressive politics.’ The idea of community, Blair declared, ‘the governing idea of modern social democracy’, would allow social justice to be delivered in the modern world on the basis of a society ‘shaped around mutual responsibility.’ The ‘fight for freedom’ that civilization was now engaged in was thus a fight for justice too, ‘justice not only to punish the guilty, but justice to bring those same values of democracy and freedom to people round the world.’
Yet all of this rhetoric, intended as it was to justify the case for war, is, as we shall see, inherently problematic as far as its claims to truth are concerned. Such seemingly self-evident distinctions as those drawn between the civilised world and some supposed ‘axis of evil’, for example, not only use the notion of terrorism as a convenient catch-all term for any act, state or organisation opposed to American, and thus, the so-called civilised world’s interests, but such apparently clear-cut distinctions belie the historical circumstances out of which they arose.
There is obviously good political reason for this. One would not, for instance, be in a position to argue very persuasively the case for war by maintaining anything other than a clear distinction between oneself and some malignant Other necessarily opposed to the interests one is seeking to defend, since it is the threat to those interests posed by that Other that acts as justification for one’s acting in their defence. Nor would it aid one’s argument to allow for the possibility that the historical contingencies which underlie that distinction be used to demonstrate the latent hypocrisy upon which that distinction was founded. To allow that some of the most undemocratic and repressive regimes in the world be counted amongst one’s allies rather than amongst those ‘enemies of freedom’ against which the War on Terror was declared, for example, would clearly not be conducive to building a strong moral case for such a war. To count as allies such states as Indonesia: responsible for the genocide of the East Timorese and the repression of internal dissidents, Russia: whose military has devastated Chechnya killing 50,000 since 1999, China: whose security forces massacred thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and Turkey: whose war against its Kurdish population has brought fierce international condemnation, [4] for example, would, if such a clear distinction were allowed to lapse into ambiguity, prove problematic for the maintenance of such a moral justification as that offered with regards the War on Terror.
Just as problematic would be the United States’ own questionable record concerning its perpetrating and sponsoring of possible acts of terrorism. As Chomsky outlined in an interview regarding the background to the attacks of 9/11, for instance, in the case of Nicaragua, the U.S. was condemned by the World Court for ‘
1000
unlawful use of force and violation of treaties’[5] when in the mid-eighties it attacked the country. The United States’ response was to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on it to adhere to international law and to escalate its offensive operations. Moreover, the thirteen year support of the Mujahideen opposition to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which led to the recruiting, financing and arming of the jihadists that now threaten the United States’ own interests, to give just one example, marks the United States’ own vacillating relationship with those they now regard as terrorists as problematic in itself. Thus, if one is to avoid accusations of self-interested hypocrisy, the distinction between oneself and that aforementioned Other must remain distinct. It should allow no room for contention regarding the contingencies that underlie its present exploitation and that malignant Other must be regarded as fundamentally opposed to the civilised ideals whose defence provides the moral ground for waging war against it. In this way, justification can be grounded in the interests of humanity, and responsibility can be renounced on the basis of the moral principles at stake.
But to disregard the context out of which these distinctions could emerge, is to overlook the contradictions that underlie their allusions to necessity. To claim justification for a War on Terror on the basis of the defence of civilized ideals from an evil necessarily set against destroying them, for instance, is to ignore ‘the many deep and perfectly legitimate grievances that the Arab world has against the U.S.’[6] and to disregard the historical background against which they emerged, thus absolving the United States of responsibility for any part its foreign policy may have played in the fuelling of such hatred. If such rhetoric as we have outlined can be considered as unsound as we have claimed, therefore, it is necessary that the contingencies which underlie its claims to truth be brought to light so as to reveal the essential historicity upon which its distinctions should be seen as being grounded. In this way, we may reveal such allusions to necessity as resting on rather less necessary foundations than may have first appeared and any actions committed in the name of such supposed morality as being motivated by rather less virtuous intentions than may initially have been offered.
II
Thus far we have illustrated the difficulties inherent in claiming as self-evident that which can be revealed as historically constituted and why it may be advantageous to do so. The uncovering of such historicality is exactly that which Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical analyses seek to achieve. But as we shall go on to demonstrate, such analyses seek more than simply to bring to light historical events that have been discarded in order to demonstrate the contradictions that underlie any claims to self-evidence; they seek to undermine the theoretical bases upon which such claims may rest.
As Foucault stated in a 1978 interview, for example, his historical methodology is one which aims at rediscovering ‘the connections, encounters, supports, blockages, plays of forces, strategies, and so on, that at a given moment establish that which subsequently counts as being self-evident, universal, and necessary.’[7] By revealing the multifarious discourses, disciplines, procedures and plays of forces that conditioned its expression, Foucault sought not simply to write an alternative history to that which is given in order to replace it, he sought to ascertain the manner in which such an articulation could assume the guise of self-evidence that it was allowed to present.
The former notion of historical critique can be seen as corresponding to the examples offered above in our undermining of the justifications for the War on Terror. But in seeking simply to uncover the historical ‘truth’ beneath that which is presented as historical fact in order that it will come to supplant the falsity t
de7
hat currently holds, such a critique can be seen as relying on the same theoretical presuppositions as that which it opposes. As a consequence, it is left exposed to the same misconceptions that prejudiced the latter. The notion that historical occurrences form part of a continuity from a given origin to an event is still employed. Such concepts as cause and effect, influence and meaning are still made use of. Events are still seen as belonging to a wider explanatory structure to which they can be attributed in order that the underlying justification for their occurrence—the ‘real’ account of that which happened—can hope to be revealed. In doing so, just as in the notion of history that it opposes, any discontinuity, inconsistency or historical rupture that exists between events in the substitute history one seeks to write, is neglected in favour of constructing the historical totality that will satisfy one’s initial intention.
Such a total description, as Foucault argues, ‘draws all phenomena around a single centre – a principle, a meaning, a spirit, a world-view, an overall shape.’[8] For Hegel, this was the realisation of a universal Geist or objective consciousness through which absolute freedom can be achieved. For Marx, it was the establishment of a classless communist society in which alienation and domination will have been overcome. For the simple historical critique we have been outlining, we may suggest that the unifying principle to which historical events can be related, is the desire to realise historical ‘truth’ in order that the individual may liberate himself from the ‘untruth’ propagated by the forces of power. But as Foucault writes, such abstract hypotheses of unity obscure the very processes that refute their own validity, since ‘beneath the great continuities of thought, beneath the solid, homogeneous manifestations of a single mind or of a collective mentality…several pasts, several forms of connexion…several teleologies [exist].’[9]
It is thus that Foucault seeks to write not sequential histories from origin to incidence, but to write the history of the changes, transformations and historical accidents that contribute to the emergence of any singular event. His intention is to focus on the event itself and not to subordinate it to any underlying coherence that can account for its existence. Rather than seeking simply to explain the events that constitute a given period in terms of a single underlying significance, Foucault’s method of writing history necessities that the historian describe the diffuse events that underlie those that are immediately apparent and investigate the historical forces that constitute their being. As Foucault writes, history ‘is not a single time span: it is a multiplicity of time spans that entangle and envelop one another.’[10] On this basis, an event such as the War on Terror should not be regarded as the culmination of an historical progression of effects following causes; nor should a critique of the justifications for such a war base itself simply on revealing the historical ‘reality’ that underlies their problematic claims to truth. Instead, if we are to achieve any sense of such an event beyond those explanations offered rhetorically and engage in a critique that escapes the theoretical prejudices upon which such rhetoric is based, it is necessary that we embark upon an analysis that seeks the revelation of the multiple concealed histories from which such an event should be seen as stemming. It is necessary, in
219
other words, that any historical study engage with the historical strata and sedimentary layers that constitute the history of any given object of knowledge, the unity, limits, laws and relations of which, unlike those of the presupposed totality of traditional analysis, are not taken as given, rather, it is their description and definition that the new historiography seeks to effect.
Such ‘general’ or ‘effective’ history as Foucault seeks to write rejects the ‘metahistorical deployment of ideal significations and inde
1000
finite teleologies;’[11] it rejects the traditional pursuit of continuity and the idea of historical development. Indeed, adopting the Nietzschean notions of Herkunft and Entstehung as descent and emergence respectively, Foucault argues that the genealogical method of writing history seeks to disrupt the identity and truth of a unified origin from which such continuity may stem, in order to uphold the absolute singularity of events and to analyse them according to their historical situation. In the case of descent, for instance, such an analysis does not seek to establish a linear progression of causally connected events; on the contrary, it seeks ‘to identify the accidents, the minute deviations, the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations’[12] which any such appearance of unity seeks to conceal. Genealogy does not profess to go back in time to reactivate the essence of a long-since concealed truth on whose basis the contradictions and discrepancies of a given period can be accounted for. Its task is not to demonstrate ‘that the past actively exists in the present [and] that it continues secretly to animate the present, having imposed a predetermined form on all its vicissitudes.’[13] Rather, the objective of such an analysis is to identify the faults and instabilities that underlie those objects of analysis previously considered unified and immobile.
On the other hand, an analysis of emergence refers to ‘a moment of arising’. Emergence does not designate historical occurrences as the culmination of a particular process of development. Rather, it characterises events as the latest manifestation of a continual play of forces. As Foucault writes, though it may at present appear as such, the eye was not always intended for contemplation and punishment was not always employed as method of setting an example. The eye, for instance, was initially utilized according to the requirements of hunting and warfare and punishment has been employed, amongst other things, as a means of obtaining revenge, of creating fear and for the purposes of excluding an aggressor. As such, the emergence of historical events becomes regarded not as the realisation of some previous intention but as the momentary consequence of the conflict between a network of contending forces.
Foucault’s critical method is thus fundamentally opposed to the attempt to establish universal architectonics or theoretical unities by which all phenomena of a given field can hope to be explained. The aim of genealogy, for instance, is not to arrive at objective knowledge by collating empirically gathered facts to a presupposed hypothesis as in the manner of the sciences. Indeed, genealogy, as ‘anti-science’, opposes the idea that history can be conceived in terms of a gradual refinement of historical knowledge towards the realisation of objective truth. To conceive of historical development as such, Foucault maintains, is to undertake historical analysis within ‘the final refuge of the dialectical order.’[14] In the Hegelian sense already noted, history constitutes a continuous confrontation between a thesis and an antithesis leading to progressively superior syntheses until an objective historical Geist is reached. For the Marxist conception that took its leave from that of Hegel, history advances on the basis of a process of class struggles between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat culminating in the revolution of the working class. But as Foucault argues, such an account encloses individuals within a totality whose realisation lies beyond them. Though freedom may be that towards which history is heading, individuals within that history are at best its ‘unwitting authors’. The freedom to determine one’s own history and the meaning of one’s own existence is thus subordinated to the individual’s being swept up in the flow of events towards the eventual historical culmination which renders meaningful all present thought and action. As such, history, as both an individual project and an overarching unity, remains untouchable.
Moreover, the idea that history can be conceived teleologically is problematic insofar as such a notion can be seen to justify such actions as those we have been discussing. If an event such as the War on Terror can be justified on the basis of spreading the ideals of progress, pluralism, tolerance and freedom around the world, any action carried out in the name of such a virtuous objective becomes not an overtly aggressive act intended to protect one’s own self-interest, but a morally justified undertaking intent on civilising, democratising and, in short, westernising, those ‘uncivilised’ states in question.
But history should not be seen as progressing from a succession of violent struggles to a state in which the rule of law or some utopian harmony finally triumphs over warfare. On the contrary, since history is characterised by nothing but ‘the violent or surreptitious appropriation of a system of rules’[15] in order that their meaning may be inverted and they may be redirected against those who had initially imposed them, historical development becomes more appropriately conceptualised in terms of a series of interpretations and dominations, the emergence of which, it is the task of genealogy to reveal.
It is in part against such exploitations of the teleological conception of history that Foucault’s critical method is set. Genealogy in particular, in seeking to disrupt those self-evidences upon which our knowledge and the disciplines and practices built upon it are founded, seeks in turn the rediscovery of the contingencies, plays of forces, power struggles and dominations which led to their emergence. It aims to reveal beneath any claim to necessity or universal truth, not a point of origin or an essential meaning to be uncovered, but the underlying difference and disparity that characterises those diverse interpretations which have sedimented through time. As Foucault states, the critical objective of the genealogical method is to facilitate the ‘insurrection of subjugated knowledges.’[16] In other words, genealogy is a means by which one can reveal beneath the apparently immovable edifice of any global theoretical construction erected in the name of truth, the techniques and procedures which contribute to the establishment of the domains in which ‘the practice of true and false can be made at once ordered and pertinent.’[17] It is this notion of the production of truth and falsity which Foucault aimed to resituate ‘at the heart of historical analysis and political critique.’[18] It is to the manner in which Foucault sought to achieve this objective and the theoretical and practical consequences of his genealogical studies, therefore, to which we shall at this point turn.
[1] George W. Bush, “Speech to Congress”, 20th September 2001, (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html), (11th March 2008).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Tony Blair, “Speech at the Labour Party annual conference”, 2nd October 2001, (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/speeches/story/0,,590775,00.html) (all in paragraph that follow), (11th March 2008).
[4] Green, Penny, “A Question of State Crime”, Scraton, Phil, ed., Beyond September 11: An Anthology of Dissent (London: Pluto Press, 2002), p. 72 (all examples).
[5] Chomsky, Noam, 9/11 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), p. 23.
[6] Mandel, Michael, “This War is Illegal and Immoral, and it Won’t Prevent Terrorism”, Beyond September 11, p. 82.
[7] Foucault, Michel, “Questions of Method”, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 3: Power, ed. James D. Faubion (London: Penguin Books, 2002), pp. 226-7.
[8] Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 10.
[9] Ibid, pp. 4-5.
[10] Foucault, Michel, “Return to History”, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 2: Aesthetics, ed. James D. Faubion (London: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 430.
[11] Foucault, Mic
1000
hel, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 2: Aesthetics, ed. James D. Faubion (London: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 370.
[12] Ibid., p. 374.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Foucault, Michel, “On the Ways of Writing History”, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 2: Aesthetics, ed. James D. Faubion (London: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 280.
[15] Foucault, Michel, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, p. 378.
[16] Foucault, Michel, “Two Lectures: Lecture One”, Power/Knowledge ed. Colin Gordon (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1980), p. 81.
[17] Foucault, Michel, “Questions of Method”, p. 230.
[18] Ibid.
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
Visit www.elgweilointrepido.com for more politics and philosophy.
El Gweilo Intrepido – Travel, Politics, Photography and Everything in Between.
Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Philosophy Articles Via RSS!
Additional Articles From – Home | Reference & Education | Philosophy
Buying (affording) textbooks during a recession
Tips On Reading Your Facial Skin Moles
Reflections on a Mitzvah
50,000 To Visit Rebbe’s Resting Place in Queens
Dear Rebbe, I Have A Story For you
Still the Rebbe Reaches Out
Far Right Gains Shock Hungarian Jewish Community
New Synagogue to Rise in Derbent
Passenger of Air France 447, Member of French Jewish Community
How to Improve Your Child’s Study Skills by Discovering Their Learning Style
Popularity: 6% [?]
Comments
Leave a Reply