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© Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 33(2) 2008 367

© Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 33(2) 2008 367 The Concept of Truth Regime 1 Lorna Weir Abstract. “Truth regime” is a much used but little theorized concept, with the Foucauldian literature presupposing that truth in modernity is uniformly scientif- ic/quasi-scientific and enhances power. I argue that the forms of truth character- istic of our present are wider than Foucault recognized, their relations to power more various, and their historicity more complex. The truth regime of advanced modernity is characterized by multiple, irreducible truth formulae that co-exist and sometimes vie for dominance. A truth formula stabilizes a network of ele- ments: a relation between representation and presentation (words and things), truth and non-truth, and the place of the subject in discourse. Our contemporary truth regime comprises radically heterogeneous truthful knowledges — science, governance, religion/politics, and common culture — that have distinct histories and relations to power. Résumé. L’expression « régime de la vérité » est un concept très utilisé mais à l’égard duquel peu de théories ont été émises, les traits de Foucault supposant que la vérité à l’époque moderne est uniformément scientifique ou quasi scienti- fique et qu’elle donne plus de pouvoir. Je suis d’accord que les formes de vérités qui sont caractéristiques de notre époque sont plus larges que celles reconnues par Foucault, leurs relations au pouvoir plus nombreuses et leur historicité plus complexe. Le régime de la vérité de la modernité avancée se caractérise par de multiples et irréductibles formules de vérités qui coexistent et parfois rivalisent. Une formule de vérité stabilise un réseau d’éléments : une relation entre repré- sentation et présentation (mots et choses), la vérité et la non vérité et la place du sujet dans le discours. Notre régime de vérité contemporain est composé de con- naissances vraies radicalement hétérogènes — science, gouvernance, religion/ politique et la culture commune — qui ont des histoires et des relations distinctes à l’égard du pouvoir. 1. I am indebted to my colleague Brian Singer for his careful comments which greatly benefited this article. Eric Mykhalovskiy and Frank Pearce were gen- erous in giving the manuscript close readings. The CJS reviewers requested some needed corrections. Pam Shime suggested the example of “Intelligent Design.” I thank you all for your collegial help. 368 © Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 33(2) 2008 T ruth regime is a much-used but little theorized concept. A pithy phrase that Foucault (2000b) introduced in a single interview during 1976, “truth regime” appears to have been subsequently abandoned by him, only to be repeated by many others without further conceptualization. A more robust conceptualization of truth regime is needed to acknow- ledge that the truth practices of contemporary societies are more hetero- geneous than Foucault’s overemphasis on scientific and quasi-scientific truth in modernity. Contemporary forms of truth are wider than Foucault recognized, their relations to power more various, and their historicity more complex. Following the trajectory of Foucault’s last work on the multiplicity of co-existing truth games in ancient Greece and Rome, I suggest that truth in modernity is not singular but multiple in its types, which I term “truth formulae.” Truth formulae stabilize a relation across a set of ele- ments: between representation and presentation — words and things as Foucault put it in The Order of Things (1989b [1966]), truth and non- truth, and the place of the subject — both the enunciatory (s/he who may speak truth) and the enunciated (the subject within the text). Power is not an intrinsic criterion of truth formulae; rather, truth formulae acquire effects of power through their attachment to specific dispositifs (power apparatuses such as discipline and sexuality) in a truth regime. Truth formulae in contemporary societies have variable relations with power rather than the single function of assisting power. I take “truth regime” as a “general politics of truth” in the sense Fou- cault (2000b:131; 1994a:158) first proposed: “Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth — that is, the types of discourse it accepts and makes function as true.” Foucault sketched several cri- teria of truth regimes: techniques that separate true and false statements; how true and false are sanctioned; the status given those who speak that which is recognized as truth. The concept of truth formula introduces an- other level of abstraction into the concept of truth regime: how things are made to appear, how they come to be represented, and how the relation between things and words is formulated. Truth has many possible non- truthful others, not solely falsehood, and truth’s subject is not simply s/ he who speaks, but the subject in the text. The techniques, sanctioning, and status of the truth-producing subject suppose a prior solution to these epistemological questions, and these have taken many historical forms. The truth regime of contemporary societies is composed of multiple truth formulae, not simply scientific and quasi-scientific truth. The con- temporary truth regime contains discourses formed at differing historical moments. Instead of superseding each other historically, discourses with irreducible truth formulae co-exist in our present. In our contemporary The Concept of Truth Regime 369 truth regime, discourses of truth may enter into stable relations, or may engage in contests for domination. Social scientists have returned to the question of values and ethics after a long lapse in which they were doubly discredited. Critical social scientists, influenced by Marxism, regarded theorizing values and ethics as purist ideology. This was partly a resistance to structural functional- ism, which explained the production of social order by homogenous, co- herent values and norms; social actors were said to orient action to the re- production of values. Garfinkel and Goffman cut their sociological teeth rejecting this conceptualization of social action (Heritage 1984:75–103), but it was not until several decades later that post-Marxist critical sociol- ogies gave ethics and normative social action substantive consideration rather than ideological critique. Current social scientific work on values ranges across topics such as cosmopolitanism (Calhoun 2007), bureau- cratic organization and ethics (Bauman 1989), truth in the European Enlightenment (Osborne 1998), the normative bases for postsovereign politics (e.g., Fraser 2005), and a general theory of values (Joas 2000). My analysis of truth regimes and truth formulae in advanced modernity contributes to this contemporary research trajectory, which indeed has a long history in the social sciences. My analysis of irreducible con- flict among truth formulae is reminiscent of Weber’s value spheres in modernity, such as science and politics. Weber argued that value spheres have their own autonomous and irreconcilable principles of ordering their own values; the value spheres rest on no foundational values that might provide a coherent organization of morality in modernity. Here, however, the focus is on the single value of truth and relations among its diverse forms rather than relations across differing value spheres. Unlike Weber’s concept of value spheres, this investigation does not provide a general theory of values in modernity. I begin with a short outline of Foucault’s problematic of truth, turn- ing in the following section to the concept of truth formula and its heuris- tic use in distinguishing differing types of truth: veridical, governmental, symbolic, and mundane. I illustrate the significance of these distinctions among truth formulae with a contemporary empirical example, examin- ing the struggle between natural scientists and the Christian right in the United States over the concept of “intelligent design.” The argument is that “intelligent design” may be conceptualized as a contest between two distinct truth formulae — veridical and symbolic. The analysis of “intel- ligent design” displays our contemporary truth regime as characterized by conflict among truth types with fundamental epistemic differences and historicities. 370 © Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 33(2) 2008 Foucault’s Problematic of Truth The problematic of truth crosscuts Foucault’s work from Birth of the Clinic (1973 [1963]) to his final writings. From his early “archaeologic- al” work on truthful statements in theoretical knowledge, to his middle period “genealogical” writings on truth and power, to his last publica- tions on truth-telling and the subject, truth is a key theme. He did not ask what truth is or should be, that is, his question was neither metaphysical nor normative. Rather, following Nietzsche, he approached truth as an historical question to be analyzed in terms of its practices and effects. Foucault’s problematic of truth was constructed in dialogue with the 20th century French school of the historical epistemology of science, which he used to refute the existentialism and phenomenology of the 1950s.2 From its beginnings in the work of Gaston Bachelard during the 1920s, historical epistemology maintained that scientific knowledges are normatively oriented to the production of truth. Georges Canguilhem (1988:11) clarified Bachelard’s position: “By truthful Bachelard does not mean that scientific laws simply tell a truth permanently inscribed in objects or intellect. Truth is simply what science speaks. . . . A science is a discourse governed by critical correction,” that is, scientific knowledge is “veridical.”3 Historical epistemologists conceptualize scientific truth as provisional, with science characterized by internal rupture as it over- uploads/Philosophie/ 608-article-text-7554-1-10-20080712.pdf