A question regarding Michel Foucault and Truth....?

Question

I you could I would like some concrete examples of this statement :

"Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint."

"Truth isn't outside power or lacking in power...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 forms of power...it is produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic apparatuses (university, army, writing, media)..."

My second question, that is if I understand this correctly would be then if the statment above is truth. Since it seems to say that truth is always relative?

Please correct me if I am wrong.

sorry, English is not my mother tongue.

Answer 1

1. Yes but he's saying more thant that.  

2.The way that truth(s) are produced, differ from society to society,and over periods of time

3. We can chart how truth/power discourses -ways of speaking and thinking and acting and applying constraints on others and on ourselves, emerge.

3. for example  Religion was a major discursive site constraining us by its concept of good/evil

4. then medical discourses developed in hospitals especially training hospitals, asylums and even prisons

5. these new medicalised judgments  became disseminated throughout society affecting every aspect of our lives - school, work, family, through the new discourse no longer of good/evil but of 'normal/pathological'

6.This new discursive way of judging everyone as either normal or pathological became so powerful because we also  judge ourselves in this way.  We became more concerned about being pathological  - than being evil and we look to different sorts of experts to help us avoid pathology

--- for example if mothers want advice they go to clinics, doctors or childcare specialists not to religious leaders anymore.

6.So the truth about 'mothering' is now in the power of a different set of people because the discourse has changed.

7. Discourses then are always an inextricable mixture of truth and power

8. We can ask then - who today are producing the new discourses - how are we being controlled and controlling  of ourselves.

9.for example: insurance companies divide us into good and bad risks - and we can't have loans to buy houses/cars unless we internalise these  insurance discourses

10 we judge ourselves if we don't wear seat belts in the car or secure  our houses against theft or fire - because the insurers will exact penalites on the basis of the 'careless''/'careful' categories

11. Foucault pulled the analysis of the way that 'power and meaning' operate away from the study of ideology - the power of capital  or of political elites  - to the more capillary forms of power at the everyday level:  visits to clinics/buying insurance policies/being obsessive about our weight/worrying about whether our kids are making friends at school

12. Our 'truths' about how to live come from the discursive sites where the experts to whom we go for advice about these pathologies act as  our powerful  modern 'truth' tellers.