As a sociology student, I often struggle with a foundational question: If power dynamics dominate the intellectual sphere, how can we be certain that the knowledge we rely on is not subtly—or even overtly—crafted to serve specific power structures?
Thinkers like Foucault argue that knowledge and power are inseparable: knowledge is produced through power and serves to reinforce it. This raises a troubling paradox—does research serve truth, or does it serve those in power?
For example, consider the global movement to legalize and normalize LGBTQ+ identities. In many cases, legal and scientific narratives around sexuality have dramatically shifted within a few decades. But were these shifts purely the outcome of intellectual enlightenment and empirical advancement—or were they also strategically shaped by powerful institutions, international political agendas, or ideological movements?
This is not to delegitimize human rights—but to ask:
1. Can we ever be certain that the knowledge we internalize and act upon—whether in activism, education, or research—is free from manipulation by dominant systems?
2. How can we differentiate between emancipatory knowledge and that which only appears progressive but ultimately serves hegemonic powers?
And I think the tentative nature of knowledge itself enables power structures to reframe or redefine knowledge in ways that serve their interests, all while appearing progressive or objective. We are taught to think critically, to question everything—including knowledge itself. But if all knowledge is shaped by power, history, and politics, then nothing feels solid anymore. One idea replaces another; one truth cancels the previous. Today’s justice may be tomorrow’s regret. If knowledge is always tentative and shaped by power like this, what can we genuinely integrate into our own views?!
Thank you.
Lamia Binta Islam > "If power dynamics dominate the intellectual sphere, how can we be certain that the knowledge we rely on is not subtly—or even overtly—crafted to serve specific power structures?"
This is a very important question of modern times; when Monopoly Capitalism, as a Frankenstein Monster has taken over effective control of both man's existence and even his thought, all over the world; like never before so efficiently in the history of mankind! A Frankenstein Monster is the creation (an alienation) of man himself for his own need in time, but which in course of its developments, it goes out of man's control and comes back to haunt and control its creator!
As you, Foucault and past history suggest, the ruling ideas of an epoch are the ideas (mainly myths) of its ruling class, "subtly—or even overtly—crafted to serve specific power structures?".
As history shows, positive knowledge (in opposition to myths) about the World, Nature, Life, Society and Thought" can only come about through social/historical practice, technology and direct physical/material interaction of subjective men with fellow men and with objective and blind Nature. So, positive knowledge can only be a function of historical development and limited, but progressively and continuously enhanced in course of social development. But there can never be any ABSOLUTE TRUTH (final knowledge) - an omnipotent and omniscient God, trumpeted now even by the "science" (Big Bang Creation) of Monopoly Capitalism or any other classes of the past history!
The following two quotes from materialist dialectical thinker (whom I follow) may be helpful: “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the “this-sidedness” of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question”. Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”
"Mankind therefore finds itself faced with a contradiction; on the one hand, it has to gain an exhaustive knowledge of the world system in all in its interrelations; and on the other hand, because of the nature both of man and of the world system, this task can never be completely fulfilled. But this contradiction lies not only in the nature of the two factors – the world, and man – it is also the main lever of all intellectual advance, and finds its solution continuously, day by day, in the endless progressive evolution of humanity just as for example mathematical problems find their solution in an infinite series or continued fractionations. Each mental image of the world system is and remains in actual fact limited, objectively through the historical stage and subjectively through the physical and mental constitution of its maker". ( Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring)
Abdul Malek Thank you so much for your insightful and detailed response. I find it really helpful for my understanding. Thanks a lot!
Copy of a comment of some possible interest in this forum: [ Abdul Malek added an answer 5 hours ago
Ann Van Ryn > “As if 'Time' and the notion of 'progress', can in any way be applied to the understanding of True Knowledge ..”
This in general is true, specially about the ruling ideas of class societies of the past history and particularly on the notion of cosmology. God-created world is the age-old theory and even masquerading as “True Knowledge ..”, since Isaac Newton. And by the 20thcentury elevated to an “Absolute Truth” with the bonus “experimental/observational proofs” to boot; since Albert Einstein. But this cosmology, which is the preoccupation of modern theoretical physics is nothing but metaphysics and is absolutely false! A correct (beginning) of positive or true knowledge was (politically) thwarted since Copernicus, Kepler, Brahe and Leibniz’s dialectical approach and by now totally is obliterated. "KEPLER -NEWTON -LEIBNIZ -HEGEL Portentous and Conflicting Legacies in Theoretical Physics, Cosmology and in Ruling Ideas": Article KEPLER -NEWTON -LEIBNIZ -HEGEL Portentous and Conflicting Le...
For Hegel, “Truth in philosophy means that concepts and external reality corresponds”. The “external reality since the early Greek dialectics is that Matter (harbouring life and consciousness) is in eternal Motion. So, Truth (positive knowledge) is only possible through correct concept (theoretical mastery) of social/historical practice, technology etc., of matter in motion.
But for official theoretical physics (i.e., Metaphysics) since at least Newton, Matter and Motion are mysteries given by a “First Impulse” from God or does not exist according to Einstein, “Since the theory of general relativity (GR) implies the representation of physical reality by a continuous field, the concept of particles and material points cannot play a fundamental part and neither can the concept of motion. The particle can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or energy density is particularly high”. Einstein, A. On the General Theory of Relativity, in David Levy (Ed.). The Scientific American Book of the Cosmos, N.Y., 2000, pp. 13.
The following is what Frederick Engels (1820 – 1895) wrote in the “Introduction” of his book “Dialectics of Nature” about (pre-quantum) theoretical physics and this remains true till today: “High as the natural science of the first half of the eighteenth century stood above Greek antiquity in knowledge (information, A.M.) and even in the sifting of its material, it stood just as deeply below Greek antiquity in the theoretical mastery of this material, in the general outlook on nature. For the Greek philosophers the world was essentially something that had emerged from chaos, something that had developed, that had come into being. For the natural scientists of the period that we are dealing with it was something ossified, something immutable, and for most of them something that had been created at one stroke. Science was still deeply enmeshed in theology. Every where it sought and found the ultimate cause in an impulse from outside that was not to be explained from nature itself. Even if attraction, by Newton pompously baptised as “universal gravitation”, was conceived as an essential property of matter, whence comes the unexplained tangential force which first gives rise to the orbits of the planets?”
Please see: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_epistemology_responsible_for_hitting_a_brick_wall_in_discovering_new_physics_today
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