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Full Idea
'Truth' is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements.
Gist of Idea
'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable
Source
Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.132)
Book Ref
Foucault,Michel: 'Essential Works 1954-1984 3: Power', ed/tr. Faubion,J [Penguin 2002], p.132
A Reaction
Foucault is not absurdly relativist about this, but I don't think I agree, even in his terms. In a sexually prudish culture, blunt sexual truths are clearly true to everyone, but totally unacceptable. Society shudders when unacceptable truths are spoken.
| 15037 | Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault] |
| 15038 | Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history [Foucault] |
| 15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
| 15040 | Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics [Foucault] |
| 15041 | Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse [Foucault] |
| 15042 | Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault] |
| 15043 | Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault] |
| 15044 | 'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable [Foucault] |