The Power of Foucault: An Examination into Problems of Phenomenology

The impact Foucault has made on English studies is quite possibly the most important revolution the field has undergone to date. Foucaldian terminology is found disseminated throughout English studies and represents the position of authority Foucault is currently placed within. Terms such as Power/Knowledge, The Body, Discourse, while not in and of themselves created by Foucault, nevertheless take on the meanings for which Foucault has used them. This has created a necessary need to rely on Foucault in order to establish a contemporary typology concerning literature and rhetoric. Foucault's inquiry into the ideology of academic departments is used to question English as an academic discipline; critics and theorists such as Stuart Hall, Diana Fuss, and David Bartholomae are working to develop discourses that question the stringent politics of canonicity and textual analysis, and they have found in Foucault a firm foundation to rest their critiques upon. In his essay "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms" Stuart Hall uses Foucault as the spine of his argument that culture is interwoven into the fabric of literary narrative. Hall deconstructs elements of structuralism and Marxist ideology using power/knowledge as the normative basis for his inquiry while legitimating Foucault as an established authority concerning how knowledge is produced through the organization of cultural institutions. Feminist thinkers such as Diana Fuss and Judith Butler both invoke Foucault: Fuss to discuss Foucault's notion of the "subject-position" in order to, "help us to read texts and to textualize readers" (586); while Butler uses Foucault to open a discussion concerning the oppression of gender and sexuality in terms of the body. Similarly, specifically in the field of rhetoric and composition, James A. Berlin in his book Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 uses Foucault to discuss the development of rhetoric and composition programs in American universities. Berlin pays specific attention to the power that ideology plays in determining the way composition and rhetoric are taught in the university system. David Batholomae, on the other hand, relies on Foucault to advance the notion that teaching composition should be a means of initiating students into the discourse of the university, thereby placing importance upon discourse communities as a standard for rhetorical argument. These cursory examples point to the proliferation of Foucault within English studies; Foucault's influence is part and parcel of a beginning discourse which challenges previously existing structural emphasis upon literature and rhetoric. In no way can we be exhaustive in defining the influence of Foucault in terms of English, especially since the field is now so wide and variegated, and for which Foucault is disseminated throughout the field accordingly.

From these examples it is clear that Foucault has become an authority in English studies concerning the ideology of power structures; his analyses into the organization of academic disciplines has moved critics and theorists of English literature and rhetoric to become more forceful in advocating strong changes in the field. However, while Foucault's strength rests in the dismantling of ideological apparatuses, there is an absence of inquiry in Foucault concerning the relationship between consciousness and knowledge in terms of textual creation. By insisting on discourse as genealogy, meaning that knowledge is not determined, or posited as a fixed object for consciousness, Foucault breaks apart the traditional organization of human sciences; Foucault replaces the hierarchical teleology of traditional academic structures, evidenced by the Hegelian dialectic, with a more fluid movement between discourses themselves. What is lost in this analysis, however, is the locus for consciousness and knowledge; instead of knowledge as a progression towards an objectified meaning it is developed through a continuum of interrelated discourses with no fixed antecedents. Knowledge is no longer created but produced, and the dialectic, which posited interaction between subjective and objective as the impetus for progression in human thought, is replaced with discourse, a mode of discussion that can be divorced from the active intention of the dialectic participants.

The problem with this genealogical chain, however, is a problem of phenomenological metaphysics, specifically the relationship between the mode of creation and the object created. For example, in his essay "What is an Author?" Foucault discusses the author as being an initiator of discourse and not a creator of meaning, a differentiation which divests the author of what Foucault feels is the mythological importance that is often associated with such a person. The author, "is functional in that it serves as a means of classification" (123), setting apart certain texts in order to satisfy a cultural need for authentication. Authentication is a problem for Foucault here because it is not a necessary function of the discourse that a text may either produce or enter into; authentication is merely a means of signifying a set of discourses within the parameters laid down by the classification of the category of "author." Removing the author from the intention of the text allows Foucault to call into question the objectives of phenomenology as a field of inquiry, thereby divesting phenomenology of its power to posit consciousness as a ruling force of nature. Nonetheless, because Foucault cannot assert that texts are not the product of the mind and because he cannot assert a metaphysical existence for knowledge outside of human engagement with subjective and objective forces, Foucault's own analyses into the relationship between the author and the text pose strong phenomenological problems that are left isolated and cut off from discussion by Foucault's own non-phenomenological terminology.

The argument that Foucault creates here is very careful and extremely delicate; Foucault is trying to assert a line of demarcation between the discourse the text engages in and the discourse an author may want to produce. It is the idea of intention that Foucault is attempting to remove, thereby setting aside the ego, or the persona, that is created by the narrative structure of a given text. A key to understanding Foucault at this point rests within the notion of narration. Foucault states that:

. . . it would be false to consider the function of the author as a pure and simple reconstruction after the fact of a given text as passive material, since the text always bears a number of signs that refer to the author. Well known to grammarians, these textual signs are personal pronouns, adverbs of time and place, and the conjugation of verbs. But it is important to note that these elements have a different bearing on texts with an author and on those without one. In the later, these "shifters" refer to a real speaker and to an actual deictic situation, with certain exceptions such as the case of indirect speech in the first person. When discourse is linked to an author, however, the role of "shifters" is more complex and variable. (129)

Foucault differentiates between the author and the narrative structure of the text, underlying the separation of the author from the text through the persona the author creates in order to write. In this way, Foucault can distance the text from phenomenological inquiry by removing any question concerning the conscious creation of thought. However, the inquiry into this phenomenological relationship has not ended merely because Foucault chooses to focus his attentions elsewhere. Indeed, by his own methodology, it becomes important to question Foucault's authority by examining that which he ignores in the same way he inquires into the penal system by discovering the "common matrix" (Discipline 23) where law and history overlap. This absence of inquiry may ultimately reduce Foucault's insistence on discourse over dialectic to an ideological position just as tenuous as the fields for which he himself attacks so rapaciously. This absence may also prove to become problematic within the burgeoning field of English, as the ideological foundation of contemporary theory and criticism becomes mired within Foucault's own solipsism.

The phenomenologists of the 20th Century, specifically Heidegger, Husserl, and Merleau- Ponty, identified the text as a place where knowledge is arranged in such a way as to point to a condition of being inherent within human consciousness itself. Maurice Natanson, a theorist in the field of literature and phenomenology, states that:

Phenomenology, then, is a discipline of correlates. The noetic intends the noematic. In the life-world, the correlates are taken for granted; they form a movement of pre-reflective awareness in which the "intentiveness" of consciousness is hidden from the ordinary activity of perception. Such hiddenness is not an ontological state of affairs. There is nothing to "look inside," as it were. Or "looking inside," there is nothing to find. Correlations of meaning do not occupy space; if anything, such correlations as we are speaking of are temporal in character. It is temporality, however, which is at issue here, not time in the sense of chronology. (26)

Natanson's remarks demonstrate a methodology that phenomenologists have applied towards the study of literary texts. "The 'object' of concern," according to Natanson, "is the irreal, not the 'thing' that parlormaids polish or the reeds that basket weavers bend" (26) meaning that the physical text itself is not in question, but that the essence consciously created within the text is the focus of inquiry. This methodology is grounded in identifying the process of creation and not by imposing or extracting meaning on or from the text. Phenomenologists regard literature as a relationship between the essence within the text and the essence of the texts origin, specifically the knowledge that an author organizes in order to create the text. Again, Natanson writes that, "Not fact but essence is the gateway to phenomenology. To understand intentionality as the axis of phenomenology is to recognize that it is essential and not factic aspects of reality which are at issue" (26). Natanson is clearly aligning himself with Heidegger, who writes that, "The origin of something is the source of its essence. The question concerning the origin of the work of art asks about its essential source" (149). Heidegger's criticism here is an application of the hermeneutics into the essence within a work of art; his assertion is meant as a method of interpreting the relationship between the creator and the created, which in this case is between the author and the text.

This phenomenological study between the author and the text is in stark contrast to Foucault, who asserts that:

. . . the "author-function" is tied to the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine, and articulate the realm of discourses; it does not operate in a uniform manner in all discourses, at all times, and in any given culture; it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a text to its creator, but through a series of precise and complex procedures; it does not refer, purely and simply, to an actual individual insofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos and to a series of subjective positions that individuals of any class may come to occupy. (What is an Author 130-131)

Foucault is concerned here with identifying the ideological apparatuses that would insist the author is the locus where knowledge is produced. It is this point between the author and the text that Foucault creates serious phenomenological problems in his analyses. The use of Foucault as an authority is problematic because of his deliberate attempt to keep phenomenological metaphysics from his discourse. In one instance, keeping discourse at such a level of inquiry into power/knowledge structures focuses attention on the causal nature of thought, and the direct consequences of overbearing systems such as Structuralism. However, in another instance, the need to posit consciousness within textual discourse is also important because there is still no formal construction of a phenomenological inquiry into texts. In fact, if we trace the line of inquiry from New Criticism to Reader-Response Criticism we can see that the issue of the relationship between the author and the text is fraught with basic problems of phenomenological metaphysics. From the New Critics to Northrop Frye there has been an insistence on a scientific based approach to the study of literature that starts with the removal of the author from the intention of the text and culminates in the categorizing of literature as a study of genre and terminology. The ancillary line of inquiry in Reader-Response Criticism poses even more specious questions concerning the relationship between the author and the text by positing meaning and interpretation within communities, an interpretation that also removes the author from the locus of meaning. These theories are constructed upon an ideology of exclusion; they are theories whose own propositions cannot be argued from outside the interpretive communities themselves, leaving a gap between themselves and other forms of theoretical inquiry.

Indeed, it would seem that using Foucault's discourse is apropos when faced with such stringent lines of theory. However, by ignoring phenomenological metaphysics Foucault creates a methodology that is just as hemmed in by ideology as any of the other theories. While ideology is a factor in human development, it is so by imbrication, existing with other arenas of knowledge such as epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, etc. By limiting his vocabulary to ideological definitions, Foucault fails to explain or to discuss the metaphysics of phenomenology. Foucault may be refusing to discuss phenomenology for fear of reanimating the ideological prejudices associated with the field; however, because of the indefinite nature of the relationship between the author and the text, any attempt to step around this relationship necessarily loses its footing and creates a mode of inquiry that has no metaphysical outlet, thereby reducing the ontology of consciousness to a set of cultural reactions. However, the real problem with Foucault's anti-phenomenological view is not the failure of phenomenology itself, a field of philosophical inquiry which has only been represented by a handful of thinkers; it is a problem with a specific phenomenological structure, that of the Hegelian dialectic, which Foucault attempts to break away from. The movement from Hegelian dialectics to Foucauldian discourse represents a significant break with philosophical tradition, a tradition which has held the idea that the individual is the source of reason and of philosophic inquiry. The grand narrative of philosophy that started with Plato's assertion to question the world ends with the systematic hierarchy of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, where the whole of philosophic history is categorized by Hegel according to specific periods of intellectual development and is meant to represent a teleology towards absolute knowledge. Foucault trades in the grand narrative of Hegelian phenomenology for small units of discourse; instead of an all-encompassing representation of reality, Foucault settles for a series of discussions concerning what constitutes inquiry itself. There is no systematic, developed epistemology in Foucault, but rather an advanced form of scepticism that refuses any classification. In Foucauldian analysis, genealogy is preferable to dialectic hierarchy because knowledge can be examined more closely as a product of structured phenomenon, instead of being a part of an all-encompassing puzzle. Foucault takes great pains to avoid any formal approach towards his genealogical inquiry; instead, he poses questions into the makeup of philosophical, political, and social structures. Foucault asserts that, "it is really against the effects of the power of a discourse that is considered to be scientific that the genealogy must wage its struggle" (Power/Knowledge 84), directly pointing to Hegel's attempt to scientifically categorize knowledge. Foucault here breaks up Hegel's systematic dialectic into a discourse more identifiable in form, reducing the dialectic to an evaluation of power struggles that produce knowledge rather than actualize the goal of Spirit.

Of course, because Foucault has consciously arranged his analyses around a critique of phenomenology, it is proper for theorists and critics to also avoid analyzing literature in such terms. Phenomenology, according to Foucault, fails to posit anything outside of consciousness, thereby reducing thought a specialized category. Foucault writes that:

Phenomenology . . . reoriented the event with respect to meaning: either it placed the bare event before or to the side of meaning - the rock of facticity, the mute inertia of occurrences - and then submitted it to the active processes of meaning, to its digging and elaboration; or else it assumed a domain of primal significations, which always existed as a disposition of the world around the self, tracing its paths and privileged locations, indicating in advance where the event might occur and its possible form. (Theatrum 175)

In this instance, Foucault analyzes phenomenology as being a static and privileged discipline, one which has used philosophy as a means of legitimizing itself as a science. Phenomenology is a field of study which attempts to place a value upon consciousness, both subjective and objective; phenomenology places a scientific structure upon the development of thought, a structure that necessarily closes off discourse within the walls of consciousness. What Foucault either does not realize, or does not care to acknowledge, is that the heart of the phenomenological inquiry is not necessarily an attempt to arrange thought into a quantified system, such as Hegels's, but is an inquiry into existential ontology. One only needs to invoke Sartre here to understand that the realm of objective reality is a realm of relations between the existence of active egos which attempt to posit themselves in accordance with one another. Sartre writes:

The problem of the body and its relations with consciousness is often obscured by the fact that while the body is from the start posited as a certain thing having its own laws and capable of being defined from outside, consciousness is then reached by the type of inner intuition which is peculiar to it. Actually if after grasping "my" consciousness in its absolute interiority and by a series of reflective acts, I then seek to unite it with a certain living object . . . I am going to encounter insurmountable difficulties. But these difficulties all stem from the fact that I try to unite my consciousness not with my body but with the body of others. (401)

Here consciousness is an act of intentional reflection, which then moves outward from the thing (the body) towards other bodies as a means of connecting together essences. This connection is an act of invention and creation based upon the indeterminate nature of consciousness, which is forced to reflect itself onto something (an object, a person) in order to assert its existence. In asserting existence there must necessarily be a dialectic between individual consciousness in order to produce a harmony of being, rather than an anarchy of nothingness. A phenomenological study of literature would help re-orient discussion concerning the relationship between intention, reflection, and consciousness, possibly allowing for a more coherent unity between the varying ideologies that are discussed in the current climate of literary theory.

Because of Foucault's assertions into the nature of power that academic disciplines hold, it is easy to see just why Foucault has become such an important figure for the study of English Literature. Literary theory is undergoing a fierce revolution concerning the methodology used to approach textual analysis. Indeed, the field of literary studies itself at present is a large and variegated field, resulting in a plethora of theories and critiques that often fight one another for supremacy. Varying ideologies have emerged that have created certain problems in the philosophy concerning textual analysis; evaluating consciousness and knowledge in relation to the text has become swept aside in order to argue the merits of certain subject positions within literature, such as Postcolonial theories or Gender Studies. Indeed, it seems, coincidentally, that where Foucault's lacks influence is in the identification of the relationship between consciousness and knowledge as these concepts relate to the text. Texts, for Foucault, do not have an intrinsic meaning outside of their relation to other texts. In turn, authors do not create texts but, "produce not only their own work, but the possibilities and the rules of formation of other texts" (What is an Author 131). An author is not a creator but a initiator of discourse, who may spur on future discussion concerning a line of inquiry, but is never the absolute locus of knowledge concerning any field. Texts become mediums for which discourse flows through, rather than where meaning is imbedded or discovered. The author is a function of discourse, one point in a genealogy of thought traced through many different lines of thinking. If an author is referred to it is because that author has initiated a discourse, not created a school of thought. In this way Foucault is deftly able to side-step discussion concerning the location or placement of consciousness and knowledge. Pertaining specifically to academic disciplines, Foucault writes that, "[disciplines] constitute a system of control in the production of discourse, fixing its limits through the action of an identity taking form of a permanent reactivation of the rules" (Archaeology 224). The very act of aligning knowledge into a field of study necessarily constitutes a form of power over not only what is taught, but what is thought and discussed, a proposition which may seem an elemental necessity for the purpose of organizing a body of education, but is nonetheless fraught with political and ideological implications. Such organization can never be an objective science of knowledge, since the decisions concerning such organization are grounded within temporal politics. Furthermore, as Foucault goes on to state, "Every education system is a political means of maintaining or modifying the appropriateness of discourses with the knowledge and power they bring with them" (227), meaning that once organized, an academic discipline must necessarily control the means of the production of knowledge in order to ensure the future of that discipline. But if it is true that the aligning of knowledge constitutes power, then it is also true that Foucault's own alignment of discourses also signifies a form of ideology, which is just as subject to inquiry and criticism as the fields Foucault chooses to focus his attentions upon. Therefore, we must allow for a more rigorous inquiry into Foucault, examining what is at stake when investing so strongly in the thinking of a person whose own analyses are fraught with questions concerning the metaphysics of phenomenology.

Works Consulted

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Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1972.

-----. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979.

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-----. "Theatrum Philosophicum." Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault. Ed. and Intro. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.

-----. "What is an Author?" Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault. Ed. and Intro. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.

Fuss, Diana. "Reading Like a Feminist." Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed. Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer. 4th ed. New York: Longman, 1998.

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