Foucault’s error: The power of not knowing

Abstract

Power and knowledge are intimately tied in Foucault’s concept of power-knowledge (le savoir-pouvoir). Yet people also try to gain and maintain power by engaging in deliberate ignorance. Defined as the conscious choice not to seek or use information, deliberate ignorance frequently occurs in social hierarchies, where individuals are implicitly or explicitly ranked by power or status along valued social dimensions (e.g. knowledge, skills, or expertise). In this article, we theorise links between power and ignorance by answering the questions of why, when, and with what implications people deliberately ignore information in hierarchies. We conclude that Foucault overlooked the power of not knowing, and that power, knowledge, and ignorance form a trinity in which power in some cases resides in superior knowledge, and in other cases in ignorance.