[This article is an incomplete draft. If you wish to see a list of all drafts go to this page.]
Post industrial revolution, institutions regulate human behaviour and experiences to maximise productivity.
They regulate whats possible and not, establish a standard of the normal and abnormal, to maximise cohesion and control.
Foucault wrote all from the perspective of what it felt like to be a gay person in the 20th century, thats where lots of these ideas were inspired. Interestingly, they seem to fit well into people with marginalised illnesses experiences in the 21st century.
The power/knowledge relationship is also really interesting. Experience only becomes knowledge (truth) when it is validated by power. Foucault says the “dispositif” is this intersection of knowledge and power, which leads to “truth”. These are both material and immaterial elements, discourses, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, moral propositions etc. Together, they form truth. Only a cohesion of these dispositifs leads to societally accepted truths. Thus, many true things, are considered false, and many false things, are considered true.
This is super relevant in things like ME, where only certain experiences were turned into truth and others discarded, hence “CFS”.
This, “regime of truth”, then re influences the subjective through discourse. People see themselves through the discouse society has created and therefore act according to the truths society has mandated.
Discourse, shaped by power/truth, inherently excludes many experiences. It only includes the ones validated by the system. Foucault uses the word discursive formation, to refer to those unspoken rules that establish, what can be said, how it can be said, and who can say it.
Ie. see the discursive formation of “madness” in the 18th century, which established madness as a concept, the sufferer as irrational, and the one with the authority on the truth of experience as the “psychiatrist”.
It’s the sort of “soft power” that modern capitalistic “democracies” use instead of the explicit violence used in other systems.
In the sense that it controls how we see our bodies, how we then act and let our bodies act, what part of our experiences we choose to share or dismiss about our own bodies. It is biopower. The power to shape “truth” about bodies.