Journal Entry 2

A01

In Truth and Power, Foucault mentions how the truth is produced and transmitted under the control of political and economic apparatuses. I agree to this topic because the “truth” is sometimes altered to appeal to the public. In a way, it’s to keep society and the public calm by masking the truth. An example of this is the “discovery” of America where textbooks would claim how Columbus and the Native Americans generally got along. In reality, many Native Americans were slaughtered and shipped as slaves as their land was being stolen. This “truth” created by these political and economic apparatuses is to paint out an unrealistic image of America’s history. What we generally learn in US history courses generally don’t contain enough information about immigrants or people of color. Even when they do mention these groups, Asian Americans are often neglected and their powerful movements throughout history are often misinterpreted or deemed insignificant.

People used to get most of their information through newspapers, textbooks, television, and radio - all of which can easily be monitored or changed by the political and economic apparatuses to appeal and brainwash the public. In From the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci noted that “when one's conception of the world is not critical and coherent but disjointed and episodic, one belongs simultaneously to a multiplicity of mass human groups”. Presently, social media new outlets of information are made easily accessible now through the internet like facebook and youtube, the “truth” is becoming harder to mask. For example, there are so many conspiracy theory videos on youtube that contain a large audience because it makes us question how the “truth” that we are all made to see as common sense might not actually be reality.