Is freedom elusive in liberal societies?
Understanding Foucault's perspective on freedom.
The 21st century has brought with it significant questions of whether freedom and democratic liberal societies are synonymous. The elections of Trump in the US and Duterte in the Philippines provide evidence to bolster such a claim as their actions have limited significant freedoms in their nations, which were once considered torchbearers of “liberal democratic rule”. Trump’s action of stacking the US Supreme Court with six conservative judges who, in a leaked draft judgment, voted to overturn Roe v Wade (guarantees women abortion rights) and the extra-judicial killings of suspected drug-peddlers in the Philippines (denying peddlers their fundamental freedom to a free and fair trial) are testament to the alleged antithetical nature of freedom and liberal societies. It is here that Michel Foucault, one of the greatest political thinkers of the 20th century, opines that freedom is elusive in liberal societies. Thus, I will [attempt to] unpack Foucault’s arguments on freedom across two lines: Individual freedom and Collective freedom. [let’s see where this goes?]
But before we begin unpacking Foucault’s arguments, we must understand the distinction between sovereignty and sociability. Sovereign power is an older form of top-down power that is based on the domination of the individual and collective body by expecting legitimate obedience from the members of the sovereign. The members of the sovereign willingly agree to compel themselves to accepting the terms and conditions enforced by the sovereign and perhaps, coercing them to even take part in actions they would not otherwise partake in. Hence, the sovereign molds itself into a position of authority that holds power against its members.
On the other hand, sociability is a form of networked power that depends upon the membership of individuals and collective bodies in social networks. The assertion of such power is based on the level of acceptance of rules and norms enforced by the said social network on its members. Every social network operates on a certain social standard that must be maintained at all times and the members of these social networks must adhere to and accept these standards. Hence, in this regard, the social network holds power against its members, and not the sovereign as an authoritative figure.
Now, coming back to Foucault. Power in modern societies is the power of the body, individual or aggregate alike. Power over the body or ‘biopower’, as Foucault terms it, is the most dominant form of power in modern, liberal societies. Formerly, this biopower was established by physically punishing individuals who were deviants from the norms set by society for itself, by itself. These norms may or may not be statistically computed, but are the defining factor based on which it is decided who gets characterized as a deviant or not.
Foucault theorizes that deviation and defiance are equivalent, i.e. being a deviant is being defiant. A person who defies the norm needs to be corrected, reclaimed, and cured to be a civilized and acceptable being in society. The reclamation of the body or “subject” is done through a series of punishments. These punishments whilst not always physically torturous, instead may be psychologically torturous. These punishment techniques stem from the idea of streamlining individuals into normalcy through internalizing norms or societal rules through the process of “subjection”. Subjection is the formation of the individual or the subject, either by self-mediation to adhere to norms of society, or by the influence of external authoritative figures who actively or passively discipline the individual. In simpler terms, the shaping of the individual’s identity takes place through the influence of a special form of sociability, biopower.
The Theory of Deterrence given by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century is the precursor to this focal point, i.e. the subjection of an individual, in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (Bentham). According to the theory, the modern forms of punishment are not about upholding the majesty of the sovereign or using physical violence to correct behavior but employ celerity and certainty to normalize the deviants. This would mean that each subject is put under a system of constraints, prohibitions, and obligations under the control of social institutions to normalize them.
Essentially, punishment becomes secondary while exclusion from certain social networks becomes primary to discipline a defiant individual or collective. Now, this exclusion acts on two fronts: individual and collective. Terms of how exclusion from society matters for an individual is based on the dictum of modern society “out of mind means out of sight” (Foucault, 2009). As explained before, the exclusion of any deviant individual to these “sites of reform” aimed to make the deviants attain normalcy, not through physical submission, but through rational understanding and education. Foucault argues that the aforesaid process of reclamation is only possible because of the interconnected nature between power and knowledge under modern conditions.
Typically, in societies, power lies with the bearers and wielders of knowledge. However, under modern conditions, this distinction of knowledge is impossible since exercising modern power requires one to know about the “subject”, and this knowledge about the subjects is often decentralized and distributed amongst the people (Foucault, 2009). Hence, the power of knowledge can only be concentrated when there is a centralization of power through the accumulation of knowledge.
Now, the knowledge about these subjects is compiled through the production of knowledge into various disciplines, as suggested by Foucault. Disciplines were created as auxiliary tools of social power that allow individuals to have power over other individuals, or in some cases, even collectives of individuals. An infamous example of such a system of collecting information to produce knowledge was the introduction of a specialized prison system referred to as the panopticon. In a panopticon, each prisoner is placed inside one cell with two windows, one that allows sunlight to enter and the other that allows the warden or guard to observe the prisoners. The role of the guard is to primarily reprimand the individuals who are deviating from the set daily schedule. The fear of this reprimanding and constant feeling of being observed is what causes the prisoner to automatically adhere to and accept the norms set inside a prison.
The panopticon is an ideological sphere that represents how modern societies internalize and immortalize norms. For instance, wearing certain kinds of clothing in specific settings, acting certain ways in families, and even in how we interact with one another. The idea of being observed by what Adam Smith refers to as the impartial spectator helps in the formation of docile bodies or creatures that follow the norms without any self-awareness (Smith; Foucault, 2009). These sites of reforms follow elements of time regulation (not knowing how long has it been), and partitioning of spaces (not knowing where you are) to form effective spaces like the panopticon.
A similar idea was proposed in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America that modern democratic societies have a tendency to level out their populations, i.e. the deviant members of the societies would be normalized to the level of the statistical average individual (Thorpe). We can expand these views of the individuals to aggregate bodies or collective. The mediation of these collectives is done through the ‘state’, through what Foucault calls governmentality. Governmentality refers to a certain way of thinking about how you govern a certain populus or subject population. Thus, for states, the power comes from the knowledge of knowing a collection of practices to unpack significant changes that occur within a state and what a state is supposed to be like.
In older forms of states, the absolutists governed on the principles of raison d’etat or the reason of the state that focused on the security, territory and population of the state. Hence, for the states, the only constraining power then becomes the relative powerfulness amongst each other. Foucault argues that these older models of states are developed from a tradition of legal and constitutional thinking which sought to impose certain kinds of limits and constraints on the powers of the sovereign. In the modern world, this can be considered equivalent to doing checks and balances in a democracy.
The rise of the modern political economy against an absolutist state was through the introduction of liberalism. Liberalism aimed to tackle the constraining of the economy by the sovereign through the regulation of exchange, division of labor, and specialization. Hence, the introduction of laissez-faire and laissez-passer allowed for the relaxation of economies. This governing of the free market was a requirement of sociability to exist in the modern liberal society.
Finally, Foucault concludes that modern societies are worse than those controlled by sovereign powers. Probably, because modern societies are governed by sociability. Sociability is way harder to quantify and materialize. Who do we hold accountable if we term someone as a defiant incorrectly? The society as a whole is not tangible to b be held accountable. It does not seem to hold any authoritative power like the sovereign either to punish individuals for such defiance. Outcasting someone from society is the most they can do. However, social norms that may not be acceptable in one society, might be in another. The freedom to move and switch societies still remains with the individual.
I also recognize three other problems with Foucault’s conclusion. First, is Foucault claiming that dehumanizing individuals was a preferred method over these internalized methods of disciplining? Sociability could cause psychological distress (maybe a bit on your pocket too if you decide to switch societies), but is the tradeoff with physical pain that bad? Second, do the members of society constantly feel that someone is observing them? We are so self-centered that we feel that we are being observed. Honestly, half the time no one else is observing you because they are too busy being scared of being observed themselves. Who is observing others then? You might think some aunty in your colony is, but that is just an anomaly (Trust me.) And third, does Foucault place an emphasis on the rigid structuring of society to such an extent that individual agency is kept at stake? Individuals still have the freedom to disassociate themselves from these societies and join new ones. While I recognize that this may not be feasible for all individuals or an ideal situation, it is the most that modern liberal societies can offer. (Sometimes you just have to suck it up and deal with it, or just make a little exit)
References:
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Dover Publications, 2007.
Foucault, Michel, and Michel Senellart. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1978-1979. Picador, 2010.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage, 2009.
Smith, Adam, and Ryan Patrick Hanley. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Penguin, 2010.
Thorpe, Francis Newton. “Democracy in America.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 Apr. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1893/12/democracy-in-america/523974/