Outside the Wire Foucault’s Ethics and the Canadian Military Harry Joseph Bondy Dr. Social Science (Dr. disc.pol) Outside the Wire: Foucault’s Ethics and the Canadian Military April 29, 2011 Harry Joseph Bondy Dr. Social Science (Dr. disc.pol) Bondy 2 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 3 Table of Contents List of Figures .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 1 – Introduction: Foucault’s Contradiction and Military Ethics ............................................ 9 1.1 Terminology ..................................................................................................................................... 12 1.2 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 17 1.3 The Current State of Research ........................................................................................................ 19 1.3.1 Foucault and Ethics ................................................................................................................. 19 1.3.2 The Military and Ethics ............................................................................................................ 23 Postmodernism and Military Social Science ................................................................................. 23 The Inter-University Seminar on the Armed Forces and Society .................................................. 26 Royal Military College of Science, UK .......................................................................................... 29 Chapter 2 – Moral Development and Military Expeditions: Ethical Substance and Discourse ........ 30 2.1 Foucault, Kant, Epictetus, and Epicurus ....................................................................................... 30 2.2 Modern Statism and Bureaucracy .................................................................................................. 33 2.3 Statism and the Canadian Military ................................................................................................. 36 2.4 Summary and Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 39 2.5 Selected Texts on Statism and Bureaucracy ................................................................................... 39 Chapter 3 – Obligations, Myths, Monuments, and Management: Mode of Subjection as Moral Codes and Knowledge ................................................................................................................................ 52 3.1 Foucault and Moral Codes .............................................................................................................. 52 3.2 Military Moral Codes ....................................................................................................................... 55 3.2.1 Professionalism ........................................................................................................................ 56 3.2.2 Warrior’s Honour ..................................................................................................................... 59 3.2.3 Leadership and Social Contractarianism ................................................................................ 61 Bondy 4 3.3 Knowledge ........................................................................................................................................ 65 3.3.1 Teaching Military State Narratives .......................................................................................... 67 3.3.2 Memorializing Military State Narratives ................................................................................. 72 3.3.3 Branding Military State Narratives ......................................................................................... 77 3.4 Summary and Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 82 3.5 Selected Texts on Military Moral Codes and Knowledge ............................................................... 84 Chapter 4 - How It Works and What It Does: Self-Forming Activity and Actual Behaviour through Power-Knowledge ..................................................................................................................................... 104 4.1 Foucault, Kant, Epictetus, and Epicurus ..................................................................................... 105 4.2 The Military ................................................................................................................................... 108 4.2.1 The Executive Category ......................................................................................................... 108 Civil-Military Executive Bureaucracy ......................................................................................... 109 Military Executive Officer Personality Type ............................................................................... 112 Executive Officers and the Selection System ................................................................................ 115 Attempts at Reform ....................................................................................................................... 120 Executive Culture and Institutional Adaptability ......................................................................... 124 4.2.2 The Rank and File .................................................................................................................. 126 The Military Heterotopia ............................................................................................................. 127 Complaint System ........................................................................................................................ 130 Secondary Conscientious Objection ............................................................................................ 138 Ethics Training ............................................................................................................................ 139 4.2.3 Actual Behaviour on Expedition ............................................................................................ 151 Somalia ........................................................................................................................................ 151 Former Republic of Yugoslavia ................................................................................................... 152 Afghanistan .................................................................................................................................. 154 Bondy 5 4.3 Summary and Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 159 4.4 Selected Texts on Military Bureaucracy and Culture .................................................................. 162 Chapter 5 - Does It Exist? Free Will: Between Behaviour and Ethics ................................................ 198 5.1 Foucault, Kant, Epictetus, and Epicurus ..................................................................................... 198 5.2 Modern Science ............................................................................................................................. 203 5.3 Summary and Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 208 5.4 Selected Texts on Free Will ........................................................................................................... 208 Chapter 6 - What is Their Goal? Telos as Ethics and Ethos ............................................................... 212 6.1 Foucault ......................................................................................................................................... 212 6.2 Kant, Epictetus, and Epicurus......................................................................................................