One example of where Foucault would be useful to technologists in particular is in understanding the role of discourses in perpetuating gender inequalities in technology.
Foucault talked about how we reinforce power relations through the internalization and mobilization of discourse. For Foucault, power is best understood by studying our everyday interactions, instead of examining decrees from those in authority. Power affects us so deeply that we often don't realize how our speech and actions reinforce systems of inequality. Working in software, I see exclusionary comments at least on a weekly basis that almost slip under the radar as being innocuous until you realize that this is exactly the form of power that Foucault analyzes in his studies.
So to answer your question, assuming since you're posting in HN that you're in the software field, you may be interested in reading Foucault if you're interested in obtaining additional analytical tools to understand and improve the currently horrible, exclusionary system that permeates the software world.
As a disclaimer, I'm not saying that Foucault is the only way to understand this phenomenon, nor even necessarily the best. Just trying to point out some concrete ways in which his concepts may be useful in certain scenarios.
If one is still able to use the framing of "inequality" and "exclusion" then it seems as if Foucault hasn't helped much.
"Gender" is a system of resource extraction. Women are not "excluded" in tech and elsewhere, they are literally defined as resources, as objects that have and produce value. Women are not "unequal" -- this implies that within the system of gender, both women and men are people who simply don't have the exact same capital. But men do not view women as people under gender. See Beatrix Campbell's "End of Equality". [0]
It is ultimately impossible to understand any microcosm of oppression through individualism. Women and men are social classes, with "gender" being the name referring to the process of securing class:Men's interests as a whole. Individual anti-woman comments do not "reinforce" "inequality", they are symptoms of gender itself. Noel Ignatiev's essay "The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To To Abolish It" responds to attempts to understand oppression with individualist ideologies [1]:
> Just as the capitalist system is not a capitalist plot, so racial oppression is not the work of "racists." It is maintained by the principal institutions of society, including the schools (which define "excellence"), the labor market (which defines "employment"), the legal system (which defines "crime"), the welfare system (which defines "poverty"), the medical industry (which defines "health"), and the family (which defines "kinship"). Many of these institutions are administered by people who would be offended if accused of complicity with racial oppression. It is reinforced by reform programs that address problems traditionally of concern to the "left" - for example, federal housing loan guarantees. The simple fact is that the public schools and the welfare departments are doing more harm to black children than all the "racist" groups combined.
The difficulty with these claims is that nowhere is there a counter-example to any of the supposed systems of oppression that keep us in thrall. It is a purely utopian analysis that rest on the false belief that humans can be free of the structure that various discourses impose on our relations.
By focusing the analysis on the supposed binary oppositions within and between discursive identities, a great deal of practical, compassionate, utility is lost for the sake of smashing global industrial capitalism with the unrealizable dream of replacing it with some kind of utopian society.
Awareness is the first step and all that. It is absolutely not utopian because there is no cosmic requirement to supply a solution, which by the way is an authoritarian interpretation of the use of Foucault's analyses. There is also no implication that we can be free of discursive relations, and describing problematic (or even historical) aspects of human behavior toward one another does not saddle him with a responsibility to solve them.
In short, you appear to be rebuking Foucault for not doing something he wasn't trying to do anyway. I mean, his words remain, so any utility hasn't been lost and remains for any of us to pick up and...use. So, if you think he didn't take it far enough, feel free to take it where you think it should go!
"utility is lost for the sake of smashing global industrial capitalism with the unrealizable dream of replacing it with some kind of utopian society."
I wasn't really saying anything about capitalism. Analysis of gender, at least, as a system of resource extraction is possible without an axiom of the necessity of the abolition of global capitalism.
As a jew posting on race traitor, maybe he should focus on abolishing the jewish race rather than the white race. Let's replace white with jew in a few choice quotes shall we?
"Now that Jewish Studies has become an academic industry, with its own dissertation mill, conference, publications, and no doubt soon its junior faculty, it is time for the abolitionists to declare where they stand in relation to it. Abolitionism is first of all a political project: the abolitionists study Jewishness in order to abolish it. "
"We at Race Traitor, the journal with which I am associated, have asked some of those who think Jewishness contains positive elements to indicate what they are. We are still waiting for an answer. Until we get one, we will take our stand with David Roediger, who has insisted that Jewishness is not merely oppressive and false, it is nothing but oppressive and false. As James Baldwin said, 'So long as you think you are a jew, there is no hope for you.'"
"The jewish race is neither a biological nor a cultural formation; it is a strategy for securing to some an advantage in a competitive society. "
"The jewish club does not require that all members be strong advocates of jewish supremacy, merely that they defer to the prejudices of others."
Much of Foucault's work is different from projects that you would find in thinkers like Plato or Kant. Kant for example treats cognition as the product of certain universal categories that exist apriori. Chomsky is heavily influenced by this sort of thinking, and for both Kant and Chomsky the product of starting from those premises tends to be an essentialist view of human nature.
Rather than starting with axioms that lead to a sort of universal knowledge, Foucault did studies that could be considered more sociological in nature to show how relations of power affect the way that we experience ourselves and others, i.e., how it fashions our subjectivity. This is what he terms his "archaeological" method in articles like "What is Enlightenment?" http://foucault.info/documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault..... Examples of these studies include his works Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.
At the very least, Foucault's studies show how some of the most significant ways in which we experience the world and ourselves are socially constructed, rather than essential. Identity then becomes political, rather than something that is distinctly our own. In some of his work, he also directly takes on thinkers like Kant in an attempt to show their work as historically situated rather than universal.
D&P is good, but I'd suggest as a first read the first volume of the History of Sexuality. It's a more concise introduction to his thought on the role of power in formation of subjectivity, rather than as something that is top-down. I've seen too many beginners in Foucault get wrapped up in notions like the panopticon in D&P and miss more substantial elements of his thought.
I'd also recommend his essays such as "What is Enlightenment?" for beginners (online: http://foucault.info/documents/whatisenlightenment/foucault....). Even though it may require a few reads, it helps to consider his thought in relationship to thinkers like Kant (who heavily influence linguists such as Chomsky, and Chomsky's view of human nature), and perhaps more importantly it indicates the important role that he considers power to have in the formation of knowledge and subjectivity.
Yeah, the History is a very common introduction too. And the first part of D&P can be... distracting, as one of your siblings mentions.
I also think you're right about What is Enlightenment?, which is a favorite too. You're right that it's important to situate him in history, which this does do well. But then requires that you read some Kant...
Thanks tikhonj for the very well articulated response. I wish that this thread had been pointing directly to your comment rather than the blog post that you responded to!
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Foucault talked about how we reinforce power relations through the internalization and mobilization of discourse. For Foucault, power is best understood by studying our everyday interactions, instead of examining decrees from those in authority. Power affects us so deeply that we often don't realize how our speech and actions reinforce systems of inequality. Working in software, I see exclusionary comments at least on a weekly basis that almost slip under the radar as being innocuous until you realize that this is exactly the form of power that Foucault analyzes in his studies.
So to answer your question, assuming since you're posting in HN that you're in the software field, you may be interested in reading Foucault if you're interested in obtaining additional analytical tools to understand and improve the currently horrible, exclusionary system that permeates the software world.
As a disclaimer, I'm not saying that Foucault is the only way to understand this phenomenon, nor even necessarily the best. Just trying to point out some concrete ways in which his concepts may be useful in certain scenarios.