Outside the Wire: Foucault's Ethics and the Canadian Military

Abstract

Foucault believed an ethical person developed through "self forming activity" and the exercise of free will. Foucault's theories on ethics and power-knowledge, however, can be viewed as a contradiction. The problem, say his critics, is that self-forming activity should not be possible in an environment dominated by power-knowledge. Foucault did not address this apparent contradiction in the few years he had remaining. He did briefly comment that they were compatible and had always been throughout his work; he had just not been aware of it. The dissertation also discusses the matter of free will necessary for ethical "self forming activity".Again, Foucault was largely silent on that issue but it is possible to deduce his standpoint. To argue these points, it is necessary to answer the common criticisms that Foucault was caught in a discourse that inhibited objectivity, that his personal ethics coloured his theory, and that he provided nothing new to Western philosophy. In an attempt to resolve these issues, the author combines Foucault's theories on ethics and power-knowledge by pairing them for practical application. The model is applied to the Canadian Forces, which has a well-developed ethics program and obvious power-knowledge network. The synthesis of Foucault's theories, however, reveals a contradicting ethic of statism and a parallel power-knowledge system of bureaucracy and dysfunctional, executive officer personality type. Bondy Table of ContentsList of Figures .