Knowledge-Power/Resistance: Beyond Bacon, Ambedkar and Foucault

Schools, Colleges, Universities, and Educational institutes, that is, "knowledge factories" apart from producing self-governing citizens, and skilled docile workers, function as minute social observatories that indirectly monitor their families. Michel Foucault delineates power in terms of Pastoral (church and salvation), Sovereign (visible and verifiable), Disciplinary (invisible and unverifiable), Bio-power (reproduction and individualization), Psychiatric (normal and abnormal), and Governmentality (sovereignty, discipline, and government). By applying Foucault's theory, the research investigated the relevance of the Francis Bacon's popular dictum, "Knowledge is Power" and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's final words, "Educate, Agitate, Organize" The insights of the research may benefit the seekers and disseminators of knowledge in understanding the subtle operative modes of the government-capitalist nexus and in advocating appropriate resistance against the pathologies of power.