Power-Knowledge Relations and Modern Social Sciences

In the realm of humanities and modern social sciences, the relationship between power and knowledge in an ontological perspective is among the most important issues that has been attracted attention particularly from the second half of the twentieth century onwards. Although the beginning of this debate returns back to nineteen century and the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche about genealogy in Germany, but in twentieth century Michel Foucault continuing and developing the way of Nietzsche in Genealogy, emphasized on an ontological position that power produces Knowledge and there is a mutual relationship between power and knowledge. The result of such an ontological position epistemologically is that knowledge or so called “science” especially in humanities and social sciences not only do not have any reference to objective world and not represent the truth, but on the contrary represent the will of power and human benefits. On this basis, it can be said that knowledge in humanities and modern social sciences emanated from the power relations and the role of power relations in constructing and distributing the modern scientific values against the traditional ones could be analyzed trough the genealogy of the modern discourses in social sciences. The discourses of the modern social sciences in respect to their socio-historical context of western societies, have taken Eurocentric nature and as a result with the constitution of East Studies as a theoretical approach to encounter with non-European nations and societies, construct an identity dichotomy between “we” and “they”. In modern Eurocentric discourse of social sciences, “we” as a rational subject contradicts with “they” as an irrational, superstitious and backward agent that should be controlled in different ways. The rise of post-modern thought in western societies itself represents that it’s going to born a self-critical consciousness about the historical engagement of modern social sciences with the power and interest of Europeans against other nations. This article studies this process with resort to method of discourse analysis provided by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and as a result shows that how modern social sciences have been constructed in a power-knowledge relation in the context of a Eurocentric discourse and denotes it’s particular articulation.