Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

had been trapped. Through Nietzsche, I had
become a stranger to all that. I’m still not
quite integrated within French social and
intellectual life. If I were younger, I would
have immigrated to the United States
(Foucault, in Martin, 1988:9).
Foucault’s rejection of modernism begins with his rejection of this Cartesian-Kantian
beginning, preferring ‘otherness’ to ‘sameness.’ “The modern thinker assumes that the
perceptions of the inquiring self provide accurate representations of an external world and
hence a valid basis for knowledge of that world” (Grenz, 1996:127). According to
Foucault, Western society has made a number of fundamental errors. He argues that
scholars have wrongly believed, “(1) that an objective body of knowledge exists and is
waiting to be discovered, (2) that they actually possess such knowledge and that it is
neutral or value-free, and (3) that the pursuit of knowledge benefits all humankind rather
than just a specific class” (ibid. 131). Foucault rejected the notion of a disinterested
knower, or unbiased observer (a basic notion of science), thus rejecting the traditional
construction of knowledge. Knowledge is, for him, a power struggle: not objectively
discovered, but collectively constructed. Those with the greatest power establish
knowledge and truth, therefore truth is a product of the process, and it establishes our
reality. Of truth, Foucault said:
The important thing here, I believe, is that truth
isn’t outside power, or lacking in power:
contrary to a myth whose history and functions
would repay further study, truth isn’t the
reward of free spirits, the child of protracted
solitude, nor the privilege of those who have
succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a
thing of this world: it is produced only by
virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it
induces regular effects of power. Each society
has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of
truth: that is, the types of discourse which it
accepts and makes function as true; the
mechanisms and instances which enable one to
distinguish true and false statements, the
means by which each is sanctioned; the
techniques and procedures accorded value in
the acquisition of truth; the status of those who
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa