If you believe, as Foucault did, that there is no truth-as-such, only whatever is produced by “regimes of truth,” then it is literally impossible for you to speak truth to power. Why? Because truth reduces to power.
And when truth reduces to power, what you are left with is exactly what you see with the critical theory mob—an interminable contest of wills. They really believe that the exercise of power is all that there is when it comes to social change.
For example, here is Ibram X. Kendi: “An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change.”
Here he is again: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
What he is saying here is that he has no interest in persuading you. He wants to lay hold of the reins of the state and exercise power over you.
Where do such totalitarian notions come from?
Here is Foucault:
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 are charged with saying what counts as true.
Foucault, Michel. POWER/KNOWLEDGE: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. 1972-1977. Pantheon Books, New York. p 131.
And:
“Truth” is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements. “Truth” is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A “regime” of truth. This regime is not merely ideological or superstructural; it was a condition of the formation and development of capitalism. … The essential political problem for the intellectual is not to criticize the ideological contents supposedly linked to science, or to ensure that his own scientific practice is accompanied by a correct ideology, but that of ascertaining the possibility of constituting a new politics of truth. The problem is not changing people’s consciousnesses — or what’s in their heads — but the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth. It’s not a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power (which would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time. The political question, to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienated consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself. Hence the importance of Nietzsche.
Foucault, Michel. POWER/KNOWLEDGE: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. 1972-1977. Pantheon Books, New York. p 133.
A dense block of postmodernist obfuscation, to be sure, but worth parsing to understand where it goes wrong. And how it leads to the woke mob’s totalitarian impulses.
The driving idea is that there is no truth-as-such, only whatever is produced by “regimes of truth.” In other words, truth is always and everywhere a sociopolitical construct determined by power.
What’s remarkable about this is its gobsmackingly obvious confounding self-referentiality. If truth is always and everywhere purely a function of political power, then what exactly does Foucault have to be upset about? The only plausible answer is that he feels that someone else is exercising the power and not him. After all, if truth just is a product of power—hegemonic political power—then to what exactly can he appeal in order to rally us to his cause?
If, as Foucault argues, truth is merely a function of “the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true,” then what can he possibly hope to offer us except an exercise of his own power, power rooted ultimately in his own vainglory? If truth reduces to power, then there can be no power-independent criteria for assessing whether his exercise of power is somehow superior to the alternatives.
If his theory is correct, how can he expect to persuade anyone to take up his cause? The fact is, he can’t. His theory undercuts itself. We can’t take it to be true without inferring that it’s false. It’s pure gibberish. If justice, for example, isn’t distinct from power, then it’s impossible to distinguish between Foucault’s oppression and Foucault’s petty resentments.
Are there ways we can attempt to salvage Foucault from his own theory? Isn’t he trying to liberate us from oppression? What about when he says that he is addressing the problem of “detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time?” This sounds vaguely liberating, but upon even cursory scrutiny it’s clear it offers no real escape from the problems his theory creates for itself.
One problem is how. If truth reduces to political power—that is, the former is inextricably a function of the latter—then how can “the power of truth” be “detached” from any particular form of political power? Foucault’s entire theory hinges on the idea that ultimately the two are one and the same. That’s what a “regime of truth” is.
And remember, for Foucault, it is power that is determinative, otherwise he would simply point out that the regime is mistaken or lying, like normal critics do. But that is not what he does.
At least, not until it suits his purposes.
After building an entire theory that truth is a product of hegemony, suddenly, just when it’s convenient to his argument, Foucault spins around and assumes he is quite able to “detach the power of truth” from political power and (presumably) re-attach it to some other form of political power.
But if that’s possible then truth must have its own power independent of political power, or else what is it exactly that he is detaching and re-attaching? And if truth has its own, independent power—the power to persuade and convict and induce right belief—then what else could this power be other than the power of truth itself?
And if truth has this power by virtue of being true (the traditional, realist view), then Foucault’s claim that truth is reducible to political power is false.
Sneaky Foucault is caught in his own trap. His theory suddenly and capriciously grants truth its own reality as a real source of power independent of political power because that is what his argument requires at that moment. Unfortunately for Foucault, this completely contradicts the rest of his theory.
But even if we ignore all of this and grant Foucault the problem of how, there is still the original problem: the problem of why. If truth just is power, political power, why detach it from any particular form of hegemony? Wouldn’t we simply be exchanging one regime of truth for another—both equally exercises of power? We are still left with the basic problem of how it is possible to identify a problem with any particular exercise of power. His own theory prevents him from appealing to truth independent of political power because his entire theory rests on the assertion that there is no such thing.
But of course, if the claim is that all truth is merely political power—that is, determined not by correspondence with reality but by the epistemic diktats of “regimes”—then we need only apply the claim to itself and we can dismiss it as yet another an exercise of political power. We can simply claim that Foucault’s claim is itself merely a product of particular form of hegemony, one rooted in the vainglory of Foucault and whatever “regime” he intends to impose. And in doing so our claim would be exactly as valid as Foucault’s claim against the “forms of hegemony” he complains about.
Again: the question Foucault cannot hope to answer (without cheating) is the question of why we should prefer one form of power over another.
I say “without cheating” because of course he must at some point appeal to truths that stand as true independent of power, i.e., the very thing his theory denies is possible.
For Foucault, truth is only ever a sociolinguistic epiphenomenon of “regimes of truth,” which are defined by power relations. “Truth” is always in sneer quotes. It has no reality independent of the controlling and disciplining sociolinguistic constructs whose function is to further the interests of those in power. But his analysis is pointless if we are stuck in regimes of truth. At some point he must appeal to criteria outside any particular regime of truth in order provide a justification for why we ought to change. The problem, of course, is that his theory closes off any such appeal.
For example, you might argue that human beings have a natural right to be free from “forms of hegemony.” But a disciple of Foucault simply cannot make that appeal without falling into contradiction. After all, says Foucault, truth is always and everywhere determined by the application of political power and “is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.”
But historic defenses of natural rights do not appeal to power in the Foucauldian sense. Indeed, the distinctiveness of the concept of a natural right is precisely that it does not derive ultimately from political power. It is a check on political power. So any attempt to contrive a justification for natural rights that derives from “forms of constraint” is doomed from the start. If natural rights are just products of forms of constraint then we must remove them from the list of criteria that might help us discern why we should choose one form of constraint over another.
Because in order to compare forms of political power we must appeal to real things that aren’t themselves mere derivations of forms of political power.
The upshot of all this is that, if I grant Foucault his theory, I can simply wave away any appeal to natural rights—or any other source of values—as yet another exercise in power, and when I do so I am consistent with Foucault. And when the disciple of Foucault appeals to natural rights—or any other source of values independent of political forms of constraint—he contradicts Foucault.
Foucault himself does this when he slips and suggests that we can “detach the power of truth from particular forms of hegemony.”
And so we’re left with a confounding self-referentiality that fatally undermines the entire edifice of Foucauldian criticism.
At least it does if your goal is to achieve something other than an exercise in power for its own sake.
Which brings us full circle to Ibram X. Kendi and the totalitarian impulse that drives the critical theory mob.
“An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change,” says Kendi.
And: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Consider Kendi’s words in light of Foucault. He and the rest of the critical theory mob have no interest in speaking truth to power. Why? Because they believe from Foucault that truth reduces to power.
The only aim open to them is to impose power.