The Prison Notebooks and Truth and Power

Melissa Chow
13^th April, 2017
ASA 004 – A04 

                    The basis for both Antonio Gramsci’s essay, “The Prison Notebooks” and Michael Foucault’s “Truth and Power” is the relationship between the people, their actions and minds, and hegemony in society. Whether we like or know it, everyone in some way or another is a conformist. One example of this is the fact that people can act a certain way, but think another way. It’s shocking, or well, to me it is, but nowadays there seems to be many Americans who believe in racial prejudices and vocally make it known to those these prejudices apply to, but why does it only seem like there’s only been a resurgence in the past few years? It is only because these people have decided to act upon their beliefs that they have always had. In “The Prison Notebooks”, Gramsci says that it is the people’s minds that ultimately give them power that can truly overthrow the hierarchy, whether it is a certain ideology, or an actual power like the government. Because more people are discussing these prejudices, it becomes more accepted like the truth that Foucault brings up. Truth is not necessarily a scientific fact that is accepted by intellectuals, but it also involves the, “circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it…(43).” What truly gives truth power? It’s accepting and believing in it. This collective of individuals garner power from the acceptance of others, and this motivation continues to sustain this cycle of “truth”.