The Series
1: Derrida and Textual Interpretation
2: Lyotard, Metanarratives, and The Christian Story
3: Foucault, Power and Knowledge, “The Golden Compass,” and Church Inc.

At the beginning of the academic school year in September I began a series of posts looking at the interplay of Christian spirituality and postmodernity using the book Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? , by James K. A. Smith. Specifically, we were looking at these “main” three postmodern thinks: Jacque Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, and Michael Foucault. Somewhere in the mix of Greek tests and Systematic Theology papers I forgot the last two installments. I want to finish examining these important cultural prophets over the next 2 weeks.

Today’s post is on Michael Foucault, the master institutional deconstructor. It’s a nice 2100 word essay so grab a cup of coffee AND a bagel! Since I also promised some thoughts on the recent The Golden Compass movie, I want to extent the conversation by considering this important artistic piece and examine both in relationship to the institution of the Church, or what I like to call Church, Inc. Because The Golden Compass is thoroughly Foucaultian and both critique powerful institutions, like Christianity, I hope examining both will help the Church understand Herself a bit more and become far more humble.

deconstruction, emerging church, foucault, philip pullman, postmodernism, postmodernity, the golden compass

“power is knowledge” -Michael Foucault

This maxim, in large ways, defines much of Foucault’s philosophical work in the area of institutional deconstruction. Set over against Francis Bacon’s slogan “knowledge is power,” Foucault reveals the inextricable link between knowledge and power; knowledge is not a neutrally determined entity, but rather is constructed and fostered within a network of power–social, political, economic, and…religious.

In his book , James K. A. Smith uses the example of the film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest to highlight how institutional systems use power to shape people into what they perceive (through reason and knowledge) as normative. As Smith says, this film recounts the struggle of the system in it’s attempt to repair the main protagonist, R. P. McMurphy, and his resistance to its power, ultimately inspiring other characters, like longtime resident Cheif, to resist its clutches, as well. In the end, though, the story ends with the triumph of the System of Power over the individual, cultminating in McMurphy’s forced lobotomy, which leaves him a near lifeless, obedient shell.

“Thus, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest leaves us just where we would expect from a work dating from the 1960’s: with a deep suspicion of institutions, institutional power, and the control they exert over us.” Michael Foucault leads the charge in developing a “deep hermeneutic of suspicion” that marks our postmodern culture’s relationship to institutions of power. His contribution, though, follows in the footsteps of another renegade figure that gives Christians as much heartburn: Fredrick Nietzsche, a pre-postmodern if there ever was one!

In my undergraduate studies I read almost all of Nietzsche and was utterly fascinated by his prophetic poetry and prose. His famous “God is dead” saying from his “Parable of the Madman” in The Gay Science was never originally meant as a prescriptive course of action, but rather a descriptive tool: he was describing the God-is-dead state of Western Europe and wondered why they were ordering their society and morals as if He still mattered/existed. From there, Nietzsche took Western civilization on a roller-coaster ride through the deconstruction and reconstruction of morality outside of God. Through his work On The Genealogy of Morals he described all moral and ethical imperatives as nothing more than “will to power” and begged his readers to rise above powerful institutions (especially the Church) to become the ultimate Moral Being: the ubermencsh (translated “over man”, though I don’t believe he thought anyone but himself could truly reach that state, but that’s for another post!)

And this brings us back to Foucault: Like Nietzsche the genealogist, Foucault traces the lineage of secret biases and powerful prejudices that lay submerged beneath truth claims, especially those ideas which Institutions of Power deem “moral” or normal. No claim to what is “true” is innocently and purely arrived at. What those institutions (State and Religious) deem normal and self-evident are covertly motivated by various interests of power, interests which Foucault seeks to unmask. Much of Foucault’s work is an archaeological effort to dig beneath the surface of what masquerades as objective truth to expose the mechanisms of power at work below the surface.

Thus, the disciplinary society molds individuals into what it wants them to be: passive, productive consumers who are obedient to the State. We are projects in need of reengineering and repair. As Smith says, “We are all like the residents of the mental ward, in the place of being supervised and controlled, watched over and dominated by structures of surveillance and discipline that have become suffused through society.” And those structures can be actual State institutions or other staples of an organized society.

And here the argument comes full circle: Foucault argues that the modern penitentiary system did not result in the disciplinary society, but resulted from it. In other words, the modern prison did not produce a society concerned with and obsessed over discipline and repair, rather the disciplinary mechanisms of society “colonized the legal institution;” the matrix of a disciplinary society already in place gave birth to the functional, efficient agent of reengineering.

Throughout the rest of his Discipline and Punishment, he devotes much text to unpackaging why the matrix of discipline and punishment exist in the first place: the repair of the delinquent. If the penitentiary system is intended for the delinquent, then society has decided what is normal. No longer is the target of reform a person or a criminal, rather they are an “abnormality” in need of reengineering. The creation of this abnormality is the heart of what Foucault sees at work in society as a whole: matrixes of power aimed at normalization. But even then what is “normal” is determined by various rational, societal institutions of power. As Foucault himself says, Discipline and Power serves “as a historical background to various studies of the power of normalization and the formation of knowledge in modern society.”

“Borne along by the omnipresence of the mechanisms of discipline, basing itself on all the carceral apparatuses, it has become on of the major functions of our society. The judges of normality are present everywhere. The problem lies rather in the steep rise in the use of these mechanisms of normalization and the wide-ranging powers which, through the proliferation of new disciplines, they bring with them.” (emphasis mine) DoP

It is precisely these powers of normalization that concern Foucault. As a classic, Enlightenment liberal (ideologically, not politically), Foucault places a premium on the autonomous, sovereign, rational agent. The “individual rational man” is to be uncontrolled and uncoerced, especially by institutions. The Enlightenment project at creating utopia through social contract, though, has betrayed itself by permitting Judges and Mechanisms of Normalization which impinge on the autonomous sovereign self. Thus, Foucault’s critique is decidedly anti-institutional and entirely concerned with the autonomous rational man.

Foucault’s critique has birthed the deep hermeneutic of suspicion of institutions that characterizes our postmodern culture. For our culture, any institution that tries to control belief and behavior is viewed as repressive and domineering. In fact, there is a deep sense that institutions are structures of domination. And one of the primary institutions that has felt the full weight of this anti-institutionalism is the Church. One such cultural piece that milks Foucault’s philosophy for all it’s worth is the recently released, and bemoaned, movie “The Golden Compass.”

One of the reasons I was excited to see “The Golden Compass” was because I knew it was a movie with an agenda: the series of books upon which the movie is based, was written by an atheist, Philip Pullman , who wanted to expose the deep harm done to society by institutional Christianity. And let me tell you, the movie was a pointed condemnation of what the author perceives as the most heinous of all mechanisms and institutions of normalcy: the Church. In the movie, an imperialesque organization called The Magisterium (which, apparently, is a technical ecclesiastical term in the Roman Catholic Church referring to the teaching authority of the church) is bent on snatching adolescent children’s daemons (which in the movie actually represents their soul) for the purpose of preventing them from experiencing/enjoying “dust” (which by all accounts represents “sin” and especially the sexual kind [which the book makes much more to do about]).

So in this cultural piece, the primary religious Institution of Power’s entire mission is to control humans (especially adolescents) and prevent them from experiencing what is deemed abnormal. And in the process the Institution of Power destroys their soul, leaving them lifeless and impotent. The Institution of Power judges what is normal (and thus abnormal), develops a mechanism of normalization (which is actually a sort of factory in the middle the arctic, surrounded by utter darkness), and executes that mechanism to radically transform people into their version of what is normal, and thus truthful.

Do you see what’s going on here? According to the perspective of this man (and by all accounts culture) the entire mission of the Church is to arbitrarily and rationally decide what is normal (and especially according to power-plays even within the entity of the Church itself), develop powerful mechanisms of normalization to wrestle the Human Will in subjection to those powerful notions of normalization, and intensionally employ those mechanisms, all the while raping people of the experience of autonomy and individual freedom.

And folks, to some extent both Pullman and Foucault are right: Church Inc., uses it’s power as a weapon, gavel, and hammer to further it’s powerful aims. Throughout history the Church has used it’s power to declare “God Wills It!” in relationship to the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Witch Trials, the abomination of Slavery, and even contemporary Anti-Gay Marriage Constitutional Amendment efforts. At many turns throughout Her life, Church Inc. flexes it’s institutional muscle to declare what is normal and abnormal for a society, usually with disastrous consequences.

This is what our postmodern culture sees when they picture the Church in the form of Christianity: A Warring Despot hell bent on using any powerful means necessary to bring all people and people-groups in subjection to their version of normalcy.

You think I’m crazy? Being way to hyperbolaic? Here’s my dare: Ask 10 random people on the street tomorrow what they think of Christianity and the words “judgmental,” “bigoted,” “hatful,” “hypocritcal,” and other similar words will be the only definers by a super-dooper majority.

I’m not trying to be mean here nor am I saying that this is what the Church is about. That’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to reveal how our postmodern culture views us, and folks their deep hermeneutic of suspicion against institutions leads them to reject the Church in the form of Christianity as one more powerful institution using mechanisms of normalization to transform people into their version of what is true.

What is the Church to do in the face of this reputation? How can we move beyond Church Inc. and truly be the Body of Christ to a lost, hopeless, dark, and hurting world?

We must return to the example Jesus gave us in the gospels: incarnational living. We must be Jesus to the world around us, rather than be Christians. We must point people to the God-with-us-God who enfleshed Himself as a human, rather than to the institution of Church, Inc.. We must show an alternative way of living by following the alternative Way of Jesus, rather than mirror all of the other institutions of Empire America.

People are skeptical and cynical about the Church, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Sure there are fantastic things that the Church is doing around the world and in individual communities, so I don’t want to simply beat-up and smear the Bride. But the fact of the matter is the system of the Church has left a sour taste in the mouths of our postmodern, post-Christian culture, and the only way to move beyond those impressions is to embed ourselves in our communities, become indigenous, and intentionally live out the way of Jesus among our various relationships. It’s the only way to reach and fight the skepticism of our postmodern, post-Christian world.

As I’ve said before: we are responsible for the Jesus we show and the Jesus people see, for the message we tell and the message they hear. Now this year, let’s show and tell well…