Abstract

Foucault's model ofthe disciplines undermines the sociological model of professions. Professionalism is the quintessentially modern way of exercising power. Bourgeois liberalism is sustained by a dark and unseen underside -the mechanisms of control or discipline operated by the disciplines. The total and totally vulnerable visibility of an individual under examination implements power relations and makes possible the extraction and constitution of knowledge. Hence the scientific method of induction appears to be a chance offshoot or byproduct of the project of domination. It has been thought that a prior knowledge base legitimated a profession; in fact, political-cum-"disciplinary" considerations were anterior to demonstrably superior knowledge