“Third World” Women & Politics (7 of 11)

Thus the current fundamentalist and nationalist mythologies insidiously create and define themselves in an essentialist fashion because they are needed in order to define boundaries and categories, to oppositionally create classes and hierarchies based on power through repression. Unfortunately these politicized religions frequently maintain much the same hegemonic thought patterns, albeit with different dominant players, as were previously inherent within the colonial state. Nationalism may have promised a more egalitarian citizenry, but it has delivered only more of the same hierarchies, with different classes defined as the despised ‘Other.’ As Foucault notes,

In order to be able to fight a State which is more than just a government, the revolutionary movement … must constitute itself as a party, organised [sic] internally in the same way as a State apparatus with the same mechanisms of hierarchies and organizations of powers (1972:59).

The use of the myth-making capabilities and the oppositionally defining tactics of the colonial hegemony has been applied to maintain (sometimes deliberately, sometimes not) the very same colonial hegemonic hierarchies the creators of the new nation-states purported to wish to disassemble. However, blaming current hegemonic repression on previous colonial powers seems a touch simplistic. It may adequately explain some of the conclusions of the readings, but does not explain the existence of repressive societies previous to the arrival of the colonizing powers, nor does it clarify the situation in the United States. If, therefore, an examination of language cannot suffice to explain fundamentalism, another form of discourse must be found.

It would seem then we cannot completely answer or explain repressive fundamentalist thought via the theory which views language as a determinant of culture-making, which states society is formed by language, just as language forms society. Indeed, Foucault’s critique of this ideology demonstrates his belief in its errancy. As the major initiator of the discourse on power, Foucault apparently believes modern apparatuses of power are positive and productive. Their effectivity rests on what he refers to as a politics or regime of truth, rather than being repressively instituted on a regime of falsity, as is currently frequently believed.

The truth on which this application of power is based, in order to be understood, must be emancipated from all the forms of hegemony; social, economic, and cultural. As Foucault states, it is the nature of the technologies of power to traverse and produce things, to induce pleasure, form knowledge, and produce discourse. Consequently, the study of the discourse of power must of necessity be more fruitful in examining the nature of the creation and implementation of society than the study of socio-linguistics, which is only a form or expression of that very discourse of power.

To Foucault, theory is a constructed tool kit; not a system, but rather an instrument or logic concerning the specificity of power relations and the struggles around them. Also, these very struggles must be examined on a case-by-case basis, in order to avoid the theoretical tool kit becoming an integral part of the very cultural system or structure it seeks to examine, and ultimately to expose.

Furthermore, as Foucault himself points out, in his searching for the nature and expression of power within society, he discovered the sciences he was studying were profoundly enmeshed in social structures. This occurred to the point that any previous studies done had simply reiterated unconsciously the very social structures and scientific armatures they were supposed to be critically examining.

The unwitting acceptance of the social status quo was so pervasive that initially the questions Foucault was asking about the nature of power were considered frivolous or unimportant. In addition, as Foucault ruefully notes, it is the nature of the scientific structure to constantly strengthen and entrench itself by incorporating new ideas, reforming them as a part of the very structure and ideology which they attempted to dismantle.

Thus, according to Foucault, power is accepted because it is not merely repressive. It does not only say ‘no,’ but rather it “traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse” (1977:119). In that case, the post-colonial nation-state, formerly oppressed and powerless, might find the ability to once again exercise power — even unjust power — intoxicatingly irresistible.