The French sociologist Michel Foucault was fascinated by knowledge and power. To him, the two went hand in hand – defining knowledge, and getting people to accept your definition, was the route to power.
This can best be seen in a religion, where a particular creed becomes the accepted way of a society. From here, it follows that the priests of the particular religion will rule that society.
NORMAL AND ABNORMAL
The way they do it is subtle, with Foucault theorising on the definitions of normal and abnormal. To guarantee subservience an image of normality is erected. Anything that fails to live up to the image is thus abnormal. And the system works in all societies through all times, from the witch being abnormal in Medieval Christendom, to the environmentalist being abnormal compared to the consuming capitalist today.
In particular, Foucault highlighted the way the normal/abnormal divide worked to separate in the fields of sanity, sexuality and crime. Hence, delusions, homosexuality and theft have always been seen as abnormal to a coordinated society, to name just a few areas of supposed deviance.
If we look at theft, this can be seen as obvious, whereas homophobia was bigotry, and delusions can best be seen as an illness. But as Foucault realised, this divide was often a fiction.
POWER IN SOCIETY
If we take delusion, some people have ideas which, if they fail in life, are delusions, but if successful, they become prophets. Similarly, we could identify many areas of theft that are accepted as normal – a big business driving a person out of their home by coercion to build a new development, for example.
We can see here how the divide of normal and abnormal is not as clear cut as we think. And if we rationalise the idea, we can see how the divide can actually give intellectual acceptability to theft.
In the late 17th century, the English philosopher John Locke devised the philosophy of liberal democracy, his ideas formulating into the modern political world. Locke argued we had ‘inalienable rights’, such as freedom of religion, speech, the freedom to own property and the freedom to kick out governments who didn’t rule fairly.
OWNERSHIP AND NORMALITY
In the world as devised by Locke, the ethic was geared to ownership. Hence, this became normal, and the non-owning of property, abnormal. Now, the peasants of the time were maybe not as bright as to understand philosophy, but philosophy was simply an intellectual statement of the times.
And it would not be impossible to argue that the poor saw the riches involved in owning property and wanted some for themselves. Hence, following Locke, Britain entered its great crimewave, which was to last over 70 years
We are again said to be in a crimewave. And it is interesting that it has again come in line with a societal emphasis towards owning property. Theft is, of course, always wrong, but it is a peculiarity of our society that philosophy doesn’t condemn it.
© Anthony North, May 2007
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