#Post-Truth – Trump, Truth and Treachery in the Post Post-Modern

There was an interesting article in The Conversation yesterday: The surprising origins of post truth – and how it was spawned by the liberal left. It’s interesting to me because it could be described as coming under the general rubric of cultural studies, not least for the reference to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, a key text in cultural theory. I won’t go into the article in depth - which starts by stating that post-truth is the international word of the year - as you can read it yourself. What I would like to do is include some extra cultural theory to support/expand on what the author, Andrew Calcutt, says and draw a few concepts together that are related to truth - reality, language and evil – and list them next to their respective theorists.

Michel Foucault: Truth, Discourse and Language
For Foucault statements, appearing as speech acts, are not about truth versus falsity, rather they designate a field of discourse that “emerges in its materiality, appears with a status, enters various networks and various fields of use, is subjected to transferences and modifications, is integrated into operations and strategies in which its identity is maintained or effaced” (2005, 118). Statements exist within a designated field, thus utilising relevant forces which dictate the validity of a given utterance. Foucault explains how the statement is partly concealed in its very deployment. ‘Truth’ is not a function of the words and sentences themselves, but the whole network of factors which form that specific utterance in the propagation of a specific statement. The statement exists through a form of appropriation and it is legitimised through the utilisation of the forces that exist, in an event-like state, around it. For Foucault “a true discourse engenders or ‘manufactures’ something that does not yet exist, that is, ‘fictions’ it” (1980, 193). In regard to the Trump presidency, we can see the power of statement and how it operates within a discourse of power, like all statements do. However, what is key to what I have written here in regards to Foucault is this manufacturing of something new, which also relates to my last post on the subject of Trump: #PresidentTrump – A Simulated Hold-Up. So, how does the concept of truth sit with another postmodern theorist, Baudrillard…

Jean Baudrillard: Evil, Language and the Sign
In The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact, Baudrillard says “It is impossible to destroy the system by a contradiction-based logic or by reversing the balance of forces – in short, by a direct, dialectical revolution affecting the economic or political infrastructure. Everything that produces contradiction or a balance of forces or energy in general merely feeds back into the system and drives it on” (2005, 4) and I believe we witnessed this process unfolding in the US presidential election. But what of truth? The people were witness to lies in the Trump election (and BRexit). These lies did not seem to matter as much as some of us expected they might – especially in the academic community (although we will always have a respective theory to why these things happen, depending on our own specialism). Well, it’s all tied up in semiology for Baudrillard. Baudrillard asks the question: “What becomes of the arbitrary nature of the sign when the referent ceases to be the referent?” (2005, 68). He goes on to explain: “The sign, ceasing to be a sign, becomes once again a thing among things. That is to say, a thing of total necessity or absolute contingency…For the sign is a scene, the scene of representation, of seduction, of language: in language signs seduce once another beyond meaning [and] the disappearance of this scene clears the way for a principle of obscenity, a pornographic materialization of everything” (2005, 68-69). In regards to good and evil, Baudrillard explains that the disintegration of the sign reduces these terms to “happiness and misfortune” (2005, 139). In the media many have said that it was the misfortune felt by the, mostly, white working class in the US that led to Trump’s win. This leads me on to the next set of terms, not by a cultural theorist, interestingly, but in a book that the article reminded me of: The People of the Lie.

M. Scott Peck: Stress, Evil and the Cult Leader
In his book about human evil, the psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck explains that this is what happens to individuals in times of stress: “The problem is that the role of the follower is the role of the child. The individual adult as individual is master of his own ship, director of his destiny. But when he assumes the role of follower he hands over to the leader his power: his authority over himself as decision-maker. He becomes psychologically dependent on the leader as a child is dependent on its parents. In this way there is profound tendency for the average individual to emotionally regress as soon as he becomes a group member” (from ‘Group Dynamics: Dependency and Narcissism’ in The People of the Lie) (1998, 223). The grandiose narcissist Trump is the cult leader par excellence. His self-appointed place as saviour of the vulnerable/misunderstood/side-lined makes him a ‘perfect’ leader in a #post-truth world!

Bibliography:
Baudrillard, Jean. The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005.
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Press, 1980.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London and NewYork: Routledge, 2005.

The Parkinson Temple: How does ideology influence our aesthetic experience? (part 2)

Please click here for part one of the blog

Walter Benjamin explains how: “Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception […].” (2004, p. 526). It is the perception of the temple that is the guiding force in terms of the aesthetic experience for the Greek peoples. The internal model they have of it, in regards to the concepts that define its intent, is what feeds into the feelings they have upon observing it. The same applies to those viewing the Parkinson Building. Louis Althusser explains that ideology is part of all human activity and “is identical with the ‘lived’ experience of human existence itself [...]” (1971a, p.223). Thus it is impossible to say where ideology ends and aesthetics begins: “The aesthetics of consumption and the aesthetics of creation are merely one and the same.” (Althusser 1971b, p.230). This leads us onto the self-reflexivity of this ideological aesthetic relationship.

Heidegger says: “The temple, in its standing there, first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves.” (2000, p.89). He explains that “the work” sets up the world and gives meaning to this opening (2000, p.90). The temple had been created by the people for their gods, but in that very act of creation, in that singularity that not only denoted a new moment in history but also saw representation as symbolising knowledge, man had forgotten that he was the creator of the temple. In a bizarre kind of cultural amnesia the temple as representation was forgotten and instead formed the ground upon which man based his life, it became “the naming power of the word” (Heidegger 2000, p. 91). The temple became the primary position from which all other positions were related: “In the beginning there was the word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1: 1– 3).

In the same way that the temple represented logos for the Greeks the Parkinson Building represents a particular ideology and a specific truth. The lives of the students and staff are organised around the university. The clock tower on the Parkinson Building, a constant reminder of where you are and where you should be, reflects the period of modernity in which it was designed: a period where time became standardised and processes rationalised. The building represents order and form and the students make meaning from this in the same way that the Greeks made meaning from their lived experiences: “It clears and illuminates […] that on which and in which man bases his dwelling.” (Heidegger 2000, p.89). Althusser explains how these subtle yet complex relationships between men and their objects inform this lived experience:

The structure which controls the concrete existence of men, i.e. which informs the lived ideology of the relations between men and objects and between objects and men, this structure, as a structure, can never be depicted by its presence, in person, positively, in relief, but only by traces and effects […](1971b, p.237).

Ideological “traces and effects” are subtly sutured into our very lives and become naturalised to the extent that we may need to step out of ourselves for a moment to notice them. They permeate the world around us and exist in the very objects that feature in our daily lives. And, the reason they are unnoticeable “presupposes that ideology itself” (Althusser 1971a, p.225).

It is through this naturalising process of ideology that the Greeks collectively ‘forgot’ they were the creators of their temple and thus relocated their power there. Heidegger says that with the “temple-work” the material (matter) does not disappear but causes it to appear as if for the very first time in the opening of the world (2000, p.91). This concretisation of ideology in the temple is “produced anew each instant” (Neitzsche 1956, p.33). The temple in its “setting forth” (Heidegger 2000, p.91) out of the material of its manufacture emerges from a ground position. The Greek people, and the students of the university, simply need to glance at the symbol of their prospective temple to actualise their ideology and complete the circle of praxis. This can be compared to the Buddhist ‘wheel of life’ whereby the world evolves and involves in every moment, brought into existence in each instance because of our material attachment to it. The material world is recreated in every moment at that point of recognition (misrecognition):

Thus the world was made to appear, at every instant, as a successful solution of God’s own tensions, as an ever new vision projected by the grand sufferer for whom illusion is the only possible mode of redemption. (Neitzsche 1956, pp.9-10).

However, an absolutist reading of the ideology of the object would be challenged within the poststructuralist framework. In the postmodern world where "The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely." (Derrida 2004, p.34) all meaning can be considered subjective.

Heidegger explains how this emerging of the world continues providing “god has not fled from the temple” (2000, p.89). Therefore in this lack of awareness of praxis, this cultural amnesia whereby the Greek peoples forget they are the originators of the temple, the temple thus creates them. The power imbued in it makes it appear as something ‘out there’. The Greeks followed the rules and dictums of the temple and in that practice the original event was forgotten. So, in effect this aesthetic experience is narcissistic, man is taking pleasure in himself. This is what Althusser describes as “the mirror-reflection of the subjectivity of consumption” (1971b, p.231) and what Nietzsche refers to when he says that the Greeks saw themselves in the images of the gods, what he calls the “esthetic mirror” (1956, p.32). The process of the “opening of the world” (Heidegger 2000, p.91) and the “setting forth” (ibid.) of the temple-work is reciprocal. As Theodor Lipps says: “aesthetic pleasure is self-pleasure” (cited in Rieser 1957, p.243). Man marvels at the objects of his own creation and, in this self-forgetting, misinterprets the image in front of him, himself, as the face of God.

Bibliography:

Althusser, Louis. 1971a. ‘A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre’, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by Ben Brewster (London, New York: Monthly Review Press) pp. 221-228.

Althusser, Louis. 1971b. ‘Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract’, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by Ben Brewster (London, New York: Monthly Review Press) pp. 29-242.

Bayer, Patricia. 1992. Art Deco Architecture: Design, Decoration and Detail from the Twenties and Thirties (London: Thames and Hudson).

Benjamin, Walter. 2004. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Art in Theory – 1900-2000, ed. by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing) pp. 520-527.

Derrida, Jacques. 2004. Writing and Difference, trans. by Alan Bass (London: Routledge).

Foucault, Michel. 2005. The Order of Things (Abingdon, New York: Routledge).

Gosden, P. H. J. H. and Taylor, A. J. 1975. Studies in the History of a University 1874-1974 (Leeds: Arnold and Son).

Hegel, G. W. F. 2000. Extracts from ‘Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (Abingdon: Routledge) pp. 35-52.

Heidegger, Martin. 2000. ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (Abingdon: Routledge) pp. 80-101.

Nietzsche, Firiedrich. 1956. The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans. by Francis Golffing (New York: Doubleday Anchor).

Rieser, Max, ‘The Aesthetic Theory of Social Realism’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 16, 2 (1957) pp. 237-248.

Scully, Vincent Joseph. 1979. The Earth, the Temple and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture (New Haven, London: Yale University Press).

The Parkinson Temple: How does ideology influence our aesthetic experience? (part 1)

The Parkinson Building at Leeds University is considered to be the symbol of the university: it is also part of the graphical representation of the university logo, it therefore denominates the ‘brand’. What I propose to do is demonstrate how Martin Heidegger’s “temple-work” (2000, p.91) could be theoretically applied to the Parkinson Building. I believe that this approach is more productive in demonstrating the ideology behind the architecture than using the model that Heidegger applies to art.

To the Greeks their temples were not places of worship but rather the material symbol of their gods. The temples themselves were built on holy sites that represented the force of nature symbolised in that particular god or group of gods (Scully 1979, p.7):

With the coming of the temple, housing its image within it, itself developed as a sculptural embodiment of the god’s presence and character, the meaning becomes double, both of the deity as in nature and the god as imagined by men. (ibid.).

Temples were built to please the deities and became the earthly representation of the gods in manifest form, thus becoming a focal point for the citizens and highlighting its centrality to their lives.

In his essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ Heidegger makes it clear that the temple reveals little in terms of its content. It is what it represents that is important because “god is present in the temple.”: it is this understanding and the power invested in the object by the people that designates its authority. (2000, p.89) According to Heidegger the temple’s centre of power forms the nexus for the connections and relationships which guide the lives of the people and frame their future (ibid.). Friedrich Nietzsche also discusses how the creative drive behind a work of art, in the sense of its “completion and consummation of existence, and as a guarantee of further existence”, is the very same drive as the will that gave rise to the notion behind the realm of the gods (1956, p.30). He explains how this reciprocal process imbues the gods with a power that offers itself back to the people, it thus becomes a “transfiguring mirror” (ibid.). It is this self-reflexivity I would like to concentrate on here, and how the ideology behind it informs the aesthetics for the individual.

The temple serves many functions: it constitutes the law, society and culture; it is the central point of socio-cultural connections; and it is also the originator of truth and knowledge, because it “makes visible the invisible” (Heidegger 2000, p.89). The temple could be compared to the theological ‘ground of being’ in that it is the whence from which everything emanates and that in which everything returns. As Heidegger explains, the early morning light lands on the temple marking the beginning of the day to the people; the form and order of their world is thus defined and the citizens go about their day within this pre-given framework (ibid.). Later the sunset signals the closing down of the world, and the people return home having made meaning and sense out of their day: “the naming power of the word.” (Heidegger 2000, p.91). Tomorrow brings a new dawn and the process begins again. Michel Foucault explains how in this period of history “The universe was folded in upon itself: the earth echoing the sky, faces seeing themselves reflected in the stars” (2005, p.19). In ancient history the world was smaller, social relationships were well-defined and prescribed boundaries were clearly delimited.



At this point I would like to jump ahead about three thousand years and introduce the Parkinson Building at the University of Leeds. The Parkinson Building was funded by a £200,000 donation from the local industrialist Frank Parkinson who was educated at the university (Gosden and Taylor 1975, p.166). The Parkinson Building superseded the Brotherton Library as the new frontage to the university. Funding was short when it came to completing the entrance to the Brotherton Library and when Parkinson’s welcome bequest arrived a much grander façade was planned (ibid.). Thus, the exterior of the Brotherton Library became subsumed in the Parkinson Building and now exists in a kind of enclave - today it can only be seen through the windows at the rear of Parkinson Court and via other surrounding buildings. The students of postmodernity can peer back though history from the position of the current symbol of the ‘temple of knowledge’ and view its past incarnation, the Brotherton Library: yesterday’s version of truth. This confirms Győrgy Lukacs point that a work of art as well as showing a new order of things, replacing an older one, will at the same time have an ideological effect (cited in Rieser 1957, p.239).

The Parkinson Building was designed in the 1930s. The architecture highlights many Art Deco qualities, for instance horizontal lines and Neoclassical elements, but is not as highly decorated as some buildings from the same period. It could be considered to be one of the “stone-sheathed giants” (Bayer 1992, p.7) that were erected in urban areas at this time. The University of Leeds sits on a hill and upon approaching it from the south the imposing Parkinson Building fills your vista. The symmetrical building has a centralised entrance with steps leading to a number of doors. A substantial phallus-like clock tower, reminiscent of many office or industrial buildings of that period, crowns the building. The Parkinson Building was not completed till 1951 due to a suspension in building during the war period.



In an attempt to concentrate on the ideological aspects of the aesthetic response, I do not plan to dwell further on the architectural elements of the Parkinson Building and have offered them here to contextualise the building itself. To further my hypothesis I would like to include a pertinent quote by Parkinson himself on some ideological expectations he had of the building’s design:

I have in mind that in addition to the provision of Chambers more befitting the dignity of the Council and the Senate they should include an Entrance and Entrance Hall which would leave an indelible impression on the mind of the student which he would remember in after years with affection. (Gosden and Taylor 1975, p.166)

It is clear from this request, and from the planned grand entrance for the Brotherton Library, that the Parkinson Building is designed to be impressive and make a statement about the university. This demonstrates an ideology inherent in the architecture itself; an ideology that becomes part of the very fabric of the building. As G. W. F. Hegel states, architecture can build meaning into its very form and material (2000, p.47). Heidegger explains that in this process the material is “set forth” and in its “consecrating praising erection” the temple is then “setting up a world” (2000, p.91), as we can see reflected in Parkinson’s comments above. When it comes to cultural objects we could say that the glue of matter and creation is form, and that very form is ideology itself.

Part 2 of blog

Bibliography:

Althusser, Louis. 1971a. ‘A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre’, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by Ben Brewster (London, New York: Monthly Review Press) pp. 221-228.

Althusser, Louis. 1971b. ‘Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract’, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by Ben Brewster (London, New York: Monthly Review Press) pp. 29-242.

Bayer, Patricia. 1992. Art Deco Architecture: Design, Decoration and Detail from the Twenties and Thirties (London: Thames and Hudson).

Benjamin, Walter. 2004. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Art in Theory – 1900-2000, ed. by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing) pp. 520-527.

Derrida, Jacques. 2004. Writing and Difference, trans. by Alan Bass (London: Routledge).

Foucault, Michel. 2005. The Order of Things (Abingdon, New York: Routledge).

Gosden, P. H. J. H. and Taylor, A. J. 1975. Studies in the History of a University 1874-1974 (Leeds: Arnold and Son).

Hegel, G. W. F. 2000. Extracts from ‘Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (Abingdon: Routledge) pp. 35-52.

Heidegger, Martin. 2000. ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (Abingdon: Routledge) pp. 80-101.

Nietzsche, Firiedrich. 1956. The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans. by Francis Golffing (New York: Doubleday Anchor).

Rieser, Max, ‘The Aesthetic Theory of Social Realism’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 16, 2 (1957) pp. 237-248.

Scully, Vincent Joseph. 1979. The Earth, the Temple and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture (New Haven, London: Yale University Press).

The Power of Representation

In The Burden of Representation (1988) John Tagg looks at photography in relation to its representation of history. Much of his text is concerned with how institutions enable certain photographic images to gain status when representing particular aspects of history. Tagg dovetails the theories of Foucault and Althusser when analysing power structures and ideological apparatuses in regard to the implications of representations of history. While Tagg reproaches Althusser for his circular analysis of power in its movement around the ISAs - the ISAs were unable to produce power themselves and were only able to act upon it (1988: 25) - this criticism also becomes a way of enabling Foucault's model of power to orient Althusser's theory of ideology:

The discourses, practices and institutional structures of the Ideological State Apparatuses could secure nothing in themselves but only function as the reflex of an already inscribed power and repetitively re-enact or re-present what was already ordained at the level of the relations of production, into which a complex diversity of irreducible social relations were now collapsed. (ibid).

In the chapter 'The Currency of the Photograph' Tagg, in his own words, “set[s] out to bring a semiotic analysis of photographic codes into conjunction with an Althusserian account of 'Ideological State apparatuses' and to hold them in place by a Foucauldian emphasis on the power effects of discursive practices.” (1988: 22). This has also been my attempt when discussing the actions and practices within the institution and the inscriptions of power on the body, prescribed through an ideology which promotes ideas of excellence. The institution can only re-present and re-inscribe power that is already available to it; but, I maintain, this is done through an ideological structure that promulgates certain ideas (ideologies) that become realised through concrete practices in the form of actions carried out by the body (the subject).

Tagg states that cultural practices belong to “a field of power effects in which they are articulated with economic and political practices, representations and relations, without presupposing any unified outcome.” (1988: 30). He explains that it is “systems of representation” that actually operate on identities; constructing them, rather than expressing them (ibid.). The problem for anyone attempting to scrutinise the contemporary university's representation of itself, in regards to the effects it produces, cannot be critiqued outside of a historical analysis. As Tagg says: “There are no laws of equivalence, then, between the conditions and effects of signification, only specific sets of relations to be pursued.” (ibid.).

Tagg's critique of how photography is used by the state hinges not around the “power of the camera” in its capacity as a technology used for surveillance but “the power of the apparatuses of the local state which deploy it and guarantee the authority of the images it constructs to stand as evidence or register as truth.” (1988: 64). In the age of virtual technology where the university's website becomes a portal to the educational institution, everything that is represented there, or indeed is accessed there, becomes, potentially, a guarantee of this authority. The university owns the copyright of the images of itself that appear on the homepage of the website, they cannot even be used by students in their own work. While my focus is not on photographic images, but rather cartography, many of the criticisms that Tagg directs at photographic representations of history also apply to representation in general, especially in relation to power. Tagg, in his discussion on Foucault, states that power “is what displays itself most and hides itself best” (1988: 67). This has become apparent in regards to the cemetery at the University of Leeds: it exists in actual geographical space, but is not very apparent in cartographic representations of the university campus1. The map entitled Where is the cemetery? (above) demonstrates this problem: the cemetery, St Georges Field, exists and does not exist at the same time. I maintain that St Georges Field, in its (non) representation by the university, is highlighted perfectly when Tagg states in his criticism of Althusser: “What he does not show is that it is in the representational practices of these apparatuses themselves that the ideological level is constituted [...]” (1988: 69). What is not represented (and what is) is both a cause and effect of ideology.

I believe these representations (for example, something as 'innocent' as a map of the university campus) become what Tagg describes as “discourses which themselves function as formidable tools of control and power, producing a new realm of objects both as their targets and as instrumentalities.” (1988: 70). Power produces the lived experience, what we consider to be 'reality'. This orients power in everyday gestures, actions and practices, at the same time naturalising it. The structure of the university in relation to power, with its project of excellence orientated in ideological concrete practices, becomes a self-sustaining operation. Tagg explains this circularity in relation to Foucault's model of power:

A regime of truth is that circular relation which truth has to the systems of power that produce and sustain it, and to the effects of power which it induces and which redirect it. Such a regime has been not only an effect, but a condition of the formation and development of capitalist societies; to contest it, however, it is not enough to gesture at some 'truth' somehow emancipated from every system of power. Truth itself is already power, bound to the political, economic and institutional regime which produces it. (1988: 94).

Therefore, the ideology manifest in the concrete practices of the university utilise power in order to produce truth. But while these 'truths' appear in representations of the university, it is important that one does not get caught up in these representations and forget what appears behind them and holds them in place. We need to study the material of the university in order to be able to question its origins and reveal these regimes of truth. While meaning is made within the specific formation of the particular institution, this does not mean that the dominant mode of power cannot be challenged. This is acknowledged by Bill Readings when he explains that the Renaissance city streets offer the inhabitant a chance to reappropriate its “angularities and winding passages” (1999: 129); so too Tagg explains that institutions offer “multiple points of entry and spaces for contestation” (1988: 30).

Notes:

1 At a presentation of my thesis to a group of academics at the University of Leeds, one said to me that he had been at the university ten years before he knew of the cemetery's existence.

References

Readings, Bill. 1999. The University in Ruins (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press).

Tagg, John. 1988. The Burden of Representation (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

The Process of Power/Knowledge in the Institution

In Discipline and Punish (1975) Michel Foucault discusses how mechanisms and processes within institutions become normalised as part of an exercise of power. Foucault explains that the classical age brought with it a different approach to education. The body was required to become “docile” through its management by “disciplinary power” (1991: 156). The operations required to be carried out by the student were controlled down to the finest detail and Foucault provides information on how this training was carried out: students were given strict instruction on how to sit and write (1991: 152). Foucault makes it clear that this form of direction was not about teaching or instructing the student in a specific gesture; it actually imposed “the best relation between a gesture and the overall position of the body, which is the condition of efficiency and speed.” (ibid.). Not only was it required that the individual (the body) was controlled to the minutest degree, but also that, with the required training, eventually these gestures would become 'natural' (1991: 156). It is essentially for the perpetuation of any ideology that the subject assumes their position (both within the apparatus and in his/her body): the student in the school makes the appropriate gesture which has not only become organic for them but also concretises them in the material process of the institution. They act as they are instructed: they carry out actions (Althusser) in the form of these gestures (Foucault) which are materially inculcated in the body-politic.

For Foucault this body-politic is: “a set of material elements and techniques that serve as weapons, relays, communications routes and supports for the power and knowledge relations that invest human bodies and subjugate them by turning them into objects of knowledge.” (1991: 28). While it may initially seem that describing the contemporary student (or member of staff) as subjugated is a gross exaggeration of a state that the modern body could possibly be forced into in a democratic world; on closer examination it becomes apparent that power is applied in a much more subtle way in postmodernity. The seeds of the application of the power/knowledge process, that still operates in the institution today, are apparent in Foucault's exploration of education in Discipline and Punish. Before discussing how I believe Foucault's model of power dovetails with excellence in the posthistoric university, I shall briefly explain how, for Foucault, power works in relation to knowledge.

Foucault explains that thinking of power and knowledge as separate from each other, that they exist in detached domains, is a mistake; in fact “power produces knowledge” (1991: 27). Foucault says “there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does no presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.” (ibid.). Knowledge of something – for example, a field of theory or, indeed, knowledge of individuals – produces power; but also being in a position of power enables knowledge to be gleaned. Foucault explains that this reciprocal power/knowledge process involves the knowing subject, the known object and also the modes used in the procurement of that knowledge (1991: 27-28). In relation to micro-politics, this works in regards to knowledge of the individual, in particular the body, as is apparent in instructing students on how to sit and write. It is this that Foucault describes as “political anatomy” (1991: 28). However, he makes it clear that this is a procedure that does not decontextualise the subject, or the body; it is the analysis of a process, the body-politic, which means the individual cannot be removed from this activity and examined on their own in relation to power (ibid.).

Previously I discussed how the term 'excellence' fits in with the actions of the subject who is part of the university: excellence requires processes of qualification that materially situate the subject who is partaking in that process in the institution, and therefore in the ISA. Foucault explains how an obsession with procedures and rules becomes an economic process:
The meticulousness of the regulations, the fussiness of the inspections, the supervision of the smallest fragment of life and the body will soon provide, in the context of the school [...] an economic or technical rationality for this mystical calculus of the infinitesimal and the infinite. (1991: 140).

In the University of Excellence these are the qualifying gestures that measure the system's efficiency. However, describing them as simply 'gestures' implies that they are innocuous. By employing Althusser's ideological model we have seen how the individuals in the university become subjected through their actions. However, by applying Foucault's power/knowledge theory we can see how this process operates on the body itself. So, in a sense, this could be described as doubly material. If we hold that Althusser's subjection of the individual is material (actions take place within concrete apparatuses); and that, for Foucault, knowledge of the individual brings with it a process that propels them into a relationship of power through the control of the body (the material body as it functions within that particular domain of power), then excellence does not only invest the subject in the ideology of the specific ideological apparatus, it also physically represses them at the same time. While repression seems like an extremely strong term to use to describe what occurs within the university, when examining Foucault further it becomes apparent that this repression (subjugation) is actually quite subtle.

Interestingly, Foucault also uses religion to examine power in relation to what is required of the disciplined individual, as does Althusser when he talks about how by carrying out the actions required by God you are showing that you believe (for example, kneeling to pray). Foucault says that details are essential to theology, God expresses his wishes through these details: “For the disciplined man, as for the true believer, no detail is unimportant, but not so much for the meaning that it conceals within itself as for the hold it provides for the power that wishes to seize it.” (ibid.). The detailed procedures that are part of the practice of religion - instilled in the actions carried out by the individual - provide access to power which becomes utilised elsewhere. In the university this works in a number of ways. One example to consider would be the feedback students are constantly required to 'volunteer' on the various service sectors in the university, for example: teaching, accommodation, catering or the library. It may not initially seem that power is being relinquished in these moments: a tick box form may not appear to have any other function than that of an attempt to improves services. Could a feedback process that asks for your individual experience of your BA be considered differently: a qualitative form, taking part in a meeting or an interview. All the information collected is saved and used within, and outside, the institution. This is knowledge about the student, detailed information that, in fact, most members of the university are constantly providing, without question. This information becomes the data on which the university operates: plans are formed form it, ranking takes place based on it.

For Foucault ranking is part of the theme of classification which he situates in an epoch centred around the 18th and 19th centuries (the classical age). However, this ranking does not fix individuals, in the more obvious sense, in physical space; rather it propels them into this power/knowledge process (1991: 143). Foucault explains how disciplines of power work in relation to ranking: “Discipline is an art of rank, a technique for the transformation of arrangements. It individualizes bodies by a location that does not give them a fixed position, but distributes them and circulates them in a network of relations.” (1991: 146). The student at the university is constantly being assessed, and therefore ranked, through examinations, essays or feedback from lecturers or tutors: “The examination that places individuals in a field of surveillance also situates them in a network of writing; it engages them in a whole mass of documents that capture and fix them.” (1991: 189).

The data produced from these assessments is considered in the light of excellence; ultimately appearing in ranking tables which enable the university to sell themselves in the national and international marketplace. But, simultaneously, the effect on the individual – this process of evaluation does not just apply to students, but also staff – is one that puts them into circulation in relation to power: “[...] the table has the function of treating multiplicity itself, distributing it and deriving from it as many effects as possible.” (Foucault 1991: 149). In a sense, the data produced and circulated becomes a form of currency: the university exchanges its ranking tables for new students (fees). In a Marxian sense the students and staff sell themselves (their bodies) to the university in the form of their labour – the student may appear to be the customer but they also bring in fees from elsewhere, by attending the university (and completing their course) they bring in funding. In becoming “the target for new mechanisms of power” (Foucault 1991: 155) the knowledge produced by the interrogation of the student/staff creates another level of product, one that is utilised when it is put back into play. When the data collected from individuals appears in the ranking tables, it provides an financial return.

References
Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. by Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin Books).