ALLAHABAD BIBLE SEMINARY
ASSIGNMENT
BD 1ST YEAR (English)
Subject: Understanding of Indian Society.
Topic: State and Power : Ideology and
Question of Power-Michel Foucault and
Gramsci.
Submitted by : Thiekrotluong Hmar
Submitted to : Ms. Imnuksungla Longkumer
Subbmitted on:6/4/2022
1
Introduction.
In this paper, there is a comparative analysis between Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci,
concept of “Power and ideology” will be tried. In the first part of this paper Gramci,s philosophy
with some special reference to Machiavelli. In the second part it will discuss the Foucauldian
perspective will be analyzed with the aim of finding the major point between the two.
1.Gramsci:
Gramsci was an Italian journalist and activist who is known and celebrate for highlighting and
developing the role of culture and education within Marx’s theories of economy, politics and
class.Gramsci was the founder of the Italian Communist Party. He was therefore, literally “man
of action”. As an intelligent leader he participate in the mass popular movement during the First
World War, and afterward he involve heavily in the Italian politics as a member of Italian
Communist Party. He was born in 1891, died at the ages of 46 as a consequence of health
problems he developed while imprisoned by the Fascist Italian Government 1
Gramsci’s first tries to understand the human nature in propounding power. For Gramsci, there is
no definite human nature. Man and women are the “Complex the social relation”. Thus human
are not Static, they change with the social relation, it becomes. This becoming does not Start
from unity but goes toward unity. The humanity found in each individual is compose of three
element: The individual himself, the natural world, and other men. According to the Gramsci,s
Understanding, “one can change himself, modify himself to the extent that he change and
modified the complex relation of which he is the hub. To create one’s personality means to
acquire consciousness of them. To be conscious of them already modifies them.” In the sense
knowledge is power. Power in Gramsci analysis resides in ideology. In other words, to be
conscious of the complex network hegemonic force-within which an individual realizes himself
already, generates power. 2
Here comes the effect of Machiavelli for Gramsci and the basis of his conception of power
surrounded in “The Relations of Force”. Power resides in the complex relations of force within
society. It is present and observable; it is real. This power is mainly exerted by the main
conventional class through the medium of ideology: by working on the popular mentality via the
institutions of civil society and thus establishing domination using the State devices. In
Gramsci’s conception then power, ideology and the philosophy of action are close .3
1
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from cultural Writings (London: Wishart Publications, 2012), 7.
2
Asli Daldal Power and ideology in Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci: A comparative analysis, file://
E;/New%20 folder%20(2)8.pdf,(Acess on 19/1.19)
3
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Wishart Publications, 1980),167.
2
Ideology
In Gramsci ideology was historically an aspect of “sensationalism”. The origins of ideas could
only be sensations. But sensationalism could easily be associated with religious faith and
extreme beliefs in the “power of the Spirit”. Thus the science of ideas shifted its meaning to
system of ideas. For Gramsci ideology it must be analyses historically, in the terms of the
philosophy of practice, as a superstructure. 4
At this point Gramsci goes on to elaborate the Marxist conception of ideology while at the same
time analyzing it. He mainly criticizes the negative meaning assumed by the Marxists in terms of
the makings of ideology, that ideology is useless and it can have no formative effects on
important relations.5
State and the Power:
Life experiences played an important role in the making of Gramsci’s political philosophy. The
experience of fascism supported by much of the working-class is one of those important
experiences which pushed him to revise the Marxist-Leninist theory of State, adding some new
concepts such as the middle-class power in civil society. Gramsci defines the State as the entire
complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and
maintains it dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules. 6
The middle class did something that other dominant classes in previous historical stages did not
to expand and enlarge its circle of domination ideological. Gramsci raise man’s though to the a
newly projecting place in the philosophy of praxis. Control of awareness is as much more an
stadium of political struggle as the control of the forces of the production. 7
The new forms of delivering criminal justices policy, local community safely agendas are seen as
a challenge to the state and power precisely because they are seen as external to the state, A key
conceptual mistake is a narrow understanding of what the state is. As Gramsci noted, what is
normally represented as the “state”-The safeguarding of public order and of respect for the laws
or a policeman and the centrality of private forces in the historical development of the states. 8
According to Gramsci, the evolution of the civil society agrees with the royal expansion of
Europe. After 1870 internal and international mechanisms of State became more complex and
massive and the classical weapons of the oppressed classes became outdated. The element of
4
Antonio Gramsci, History, Philosophy and Culture in the Young Gramsci (New York: Telos Press, 1975), 352-53
5
Ibid,.372.
6
Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory (England: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 65.
7
Ibid,. 75.
8
Quention Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Selection from the prision Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London:
Lawrence and wishart,1999).
3
movement is now only incomplete with respect to the massive structures of the modern equalities
and relations of civil society.9
2. MICHEL FOUCAULT:
Michel Fault (1926-1984) was a French social theorist, philosopher, historian, and public intellectual who
was politically and intellectually active until his death. He is remember for his method of using historical
research to illuminate change in discourse over time, and the evolving relationship between discourse,
knowledge, institution , and power. Fault’s work inspired sociologist in subfield including psychology of
knowledge gender sexually and queer theory, critical theory deviance and crime , and sociology of
education. His most well known works include Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexually, and The
Archeology of knowledge.10
Ideology of State.
The state is not mainly something that owns power, but rather something which built a system of
relation between individual so that the political system works. Foucault says that the state is not
essential oppressive and it is not a solid and permanently fixed and established mechanism.
Instead, it is fragile and is liable to change. State is not a super human agent; it is a concept
which provides a sheme of intelligibility for a whole group of ready established institution and
realities. The state is a practice but not a thing. 11
Foucault describes here is what Gramsci would call “political society”. At the informal level,
Foucault seems to equate the State only with the political society and thus rejects the idea of
repressive power located in the State. When one carefully reads Foucault, it becomes obvious
that the State has some other kinds of power in the society to assure the corrective control of
individuals, establishing a network of control through the medicalization of the body and so
forth, that Foucault for some obscure reason, favors not to openly include in his treatment of
State.12
Power of Knowledge and ideology
In the power of knowledge, Fault’s describes knowledge as being a conjunction of power
relation and information seeking which term ‘power and knowledge’. He states, in an essay
entitle ‘Prison talks’, that ‘it is not possible for power to be exercise without knowledge, it is
impossible for knowledge not to engender power’. This is an important theoretical advance in
9
Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory (England: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 75.
10
https://www.thoughtco.com/michel-foucault-biography-3026478 accessed on 28 January 2020.
11
Michel Foucault, security, Terrtories, population (Paris:Gallimard Sequel,1978),294.
12
Michel Foucault, Subject and Power: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (USA: University of Chicago
Press, 1983), 93.
4
this discussion of knowledge , since it emphasizes the way that knowledge is not dispassionate
but rather an integral part of struggle over power , but it also draw attention to the way that, in
producing knowledge, one is also making a claim for power . For Fault, It is more accurate to use
his newly formed compound ‘power and knowledge’ to emphasize the way that these two
element depend on the other. Thus, where there are imbalances of power relation between group
of people or between institution and states, there will be a production of knowledge. Because of
the institutionalized imbalance in power relation between men and women. 13
One of the most important aspects of this as Foucault calls “pastoral” power is that it cannot be
exercised without knowing the inside of people’s minds, without exploring their souls, without
making them reveal their personal secrets. It is linked with a production of truth, the truth of the
individual himself.14
Ideology for Foucault is not in the realm of material realities. It is a concept. Foucault sees
ideology in a survival way, he knowingly uses the categories of the 18th century thinkers who
defined ideology as the science of ideas. It is drastically different from Althusser’s beginning of
ideology as having material roots within the social formations. Thus for Foucault an abstract idea
such as ideology cannot explain the real effects of power relations in the society. 15
In Foucault's analyses, it is always also a question of working on the basis of the opposition
between economies of thought. Thus, this game of opposition is constructed staring from a
historical periodization. But Foucault credits himself with this method of differentiation between
big epistemic 'blocs', that is analysis which sets out to measure the gaps that the historical inquiry
enables people to retrace.
Foucault’ thinking about power was dialectically related to his political practice. Far from
bearing no theoretical consequences, Foucault's rich political trajectory provided a strong
impetus for his reflections on power in their various permutations over the course of roughly a
decade and a half Foucault activities on behalf of the prisoner support movement facilitated his
emerging account of disciplinary power and the prison by providing him with key insights about
practices constitutive of disciplinary individuality in the early 1970s. Foucault's political
practices during this period also nourished his embrace o a bellicose understanding of poor a the
core of his account of disciplinary power. Foucault also articulated conceptual distinctions that
would permeate and inflect his political engagements. Foucault distinction between the people
and population in his analyses of bio politics and liberal government structured his engagement
with the Iranian revolution.
13
Sara Mills, Michel Fault (New YorkP: Routledge,2003), 69.
14
Michel Foucault, Subject and Power: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (USA: University of Chicago
Press, 1983), 211.
15
Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher.
5
Michel Foucault defines power as the name that one attributes to a complex strategically
situation in a particular society power is not an institution, and not a structure, neither is it a
certain strength we are endowed with.16
Conclusion.
In this paper I tried to analyses Foucault’s and Gramsci’s conceptions of power and ideology on
a relative viewpoint. The major points of this relative study can be both Gramsci and Foucault
make use of Machiavelli’s idea of relations of force. They therefore diffuse the power relations
to the complex devices of society. They try to tool a positive analysis of power. Power is not
only a negative conception, power produces. In the case of Gramsci power produces ideology
and for Foucault power produces devices of knowledge.
Bibliography:
Antonio Gramsci, History, Philosophy and Culture in the Young Gramsci .New York: Telos Press, 1975.
Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory. England: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Michel Foucault, Subject and Power: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. USA: University of Chicago Press,
1983.
Marcelo Hoffman, Foucault and power. New York: An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.
Mills, Michel Fault New York: Routledge, 2003.
Quention Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Selection from the prision Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci.London:
Lawrence and wishart,1999.
Asli Daldal Power and ideology in Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci: A comparative analysis, file://
E;/New%20 folder%20(2)8.pdf, Access on 19/1.19.
https://www.thoughtco.com/michel-foucault-biography-3026478 accessed on 28 January 2020.
16
Marcelo Hoffman, Foucault and power (New York: An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014),8-9.
6
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