Power, Knowledge and Economies of Force

In Plato’s allegory of the cave, everyday life is represented by the prisoner who is bound in the cave, forced to stare at manufactured imagines that only faintly resemble their “real” counterpart outside of the cave. In Plato’s rendering of this story, the slave--that subject constrained by  power relations--can at best gain “true opinions.” There is no “knowledge” obtained in the cave.

Through chance, or cunning, or perhaps even education, the freed slave is led to break her bonds, and escape the cave. Outside the cave, she is no longer a slave. Power relations are suspended. Slowly, as her eyes become adapted to the bright light of truth, she is able to take in the true nature of reality. She obtains “knowledge.”

How deep does this metaphor run? How much of our thinking about the world in which we live is ruled by it?

If we are to take a clue from Foucault, perhaps too much. There is no space outside of the cave.

Now, in the Foucauldian worldview, as in the worldview of pragmatists and other postmodernist thinkers, the world is dynamic and ever-changing. It is a becoming. 

In Foucault’s view, the world is dynamic because it is constitute by a play of unequal forces, a pushing and pulling at the material bodies situated there within. This play of unequal forces creates a space of possibility rather than total determination. That is, it creates an economy. 

The notion of an economy--one quite common across post-structural texts--speaks to the interaction of objects, bodies, desires and material practices within a space of differential value. To borrow the language of Derrida, we are always already situated within multiple discursive and institutional economies. Our own value, within these various economies, is linked up with that of the relative value of others.

Knowledge, in this view, is an attempt to “pin” a subject within the economy. It is an attempt to objectify. It is an attempt to create a Truth.  (As one great example of how Foucault has been used to think about this attempt to create truths about children, I recommend this article by Bernadette Baker.)

In last night’s class, we spoke of the economy of testing, and the way in which that economy is narrowing the spaces of possibility--at least within official institutional spaces and discourses. Children and teachers are both increasingly associated with a single number--a number generated from a test. 

It is a rather brutal regime of Truth. 

What are our options in such cases? Powerful counter-discourses. Discourses that (re)introduce alternative economies. While I have always been somewhat skeptical of claims about schools’ ability to teach character (as these have tended to consist mostly of lectures in conformity), I believe an economy of character is one place teachers can resist. Character is a currency that still holds some weight. As some schools have discovered, test scores alone don’t predict the ability to persevere in uncertain times. Character, rightly defined, does.

Who is the most popular person in a school? Who is the most powerful? Who knows the most? In a totalized institution, a single subject-position would be able to claim all. There would be perfect convergence. But in schools, there is still room for multiple ways of being and of “succeeding.” There are disagreements and contradictions. Adults still recognize various forms of excellence. (And the kids themselves--well, the underbelly of any institution presents a view of what and who matters that can look very different from that proclaimed by the institution itself.) There are multiple economies in play. 

We need to make sure that the diversity and multiplicity of human beings continues to be valued and protected in our society. As teachers, it is our job.