Mamta Kalia

cannot reflect the ideological frameworks,
the end of representation leads us to
‘ whose history gets told? In whose name?
For what purpose?’
On the other hand, in 1980’s, the
second strand of post-structuralist postmodernism,
that of Foucault and Lacan,
accepted the actuality of the textuality
and sign, of representations that do not
represent but emphasised on the power
and the constitution of subject. To the
positivists knowledge was neutral and
objective while to the Marxists it was
politically emancipatory, but for Foucault
and Lacan, it is necessarily bound up
with power, hence suspect. They rightly
question the power inherent in knowledge,
language and discourse. They desire to
undo the institutionalised hierarchies and
hegemony of a single discursive system
through a focus on difference, pluriformty
and multiplicity. This strand stands for
the ‘other’- women, coloured people, non
–heterosexuals and children. Foucauldian
view had a democratising influence within
cultural institutions and in the
humanities, and brought post-modernism
closer to feminism and multiculturalism.
Foucault raised some fundamental
questions: Is it possible to distinguish
between the claims of truth and those
of power? Is power outside the knowledge
or is knowledge distinguishable from
power? Does science, in the age of
development, coming closer to the truth
finally remain far off from the truth?
Does knowledge become more capable
as a technology of repression? Foucault
70 :: April-June 2010
provided five major premises: First, in
the history of modernity there is
unbreakable relationship between
knowledge and power, humanism and
terror, reform and hegemony; and logic
always became helpful to totalise the
forms of hegemony.
Second, power does not have only
one source (state), rather power has
many thoughtful behaviours-rules related
to sexuality, jail, etc a study of which
is possible in many autonomous areas;
there was no history as an enterprise
of freedom, rather there were histories
of power, production and subordination.
Third, the real problem is not the
exploitation of labour but ‘the technology
of body’-i.e., ‘normal’ is entered into
the human body through violent
religious, moral, justicerelated,medicine-related
and sexualityrelated
measure.
Fourth, power is scattered in
numerous speeches and behaviours but
there is no network of individual or
institution(s) or interests in which the
behaviour of power may be sought. Every
speech of power constitutes its own point
of tension and struggle and the resistance
may be only multiple, local and
temporary. Thus power is prior to history.
Fifth, power produces man and puts
him in his fixed place.
Thus these premises are acceptable
but unfortunately Foucault does not give
due focus to question state power, colonial
power and industrial capitalism’s power.