Dianna Taylor
Michel Foucault was not a systematic thinker. He referred to himself as an “experimenter” as opposed to a “theorist” (1991a: 27);1 eschewed the labelling of his work in terms of existing categories;2 and asserted that “thinking differently” and self-transformation, rather than “validating what is already known”, lay at the core of his philosophical work (1990b: 910). “I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am,” Foucault states in a 1982 interview:
The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end.
(1988: 9)
In addition to being unsystematic, Foucault’s work also challenges fundamental aspects of the Western philosophical tradition. As he sees it, philosophers have exerted much intellectual time and effort and devoted many pages to creating a dualistic and overly simplified worldview that valorizes aspects of human existence that provide us with a false sense of our own ability to gain certainty about the world, and to thereby become masters of it and ourselves. This worldview imbues us with a false and misguided sense of security that, nonetheless, because it is preferable to the threat that uncertainty appears to pose, ensures the reproduction and eventual systematizing of the same faulty thinking.
A principal objective of Foucault’s work is to illustrate the historical and contingent nature of what philosophy has traditionally viewed as absolute and universal. In fact, Foucault contends that the very ideas of absolute and universal knowledge and moral values are themselves historical phenomena. Foucault therefore does “not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action” (1984a: 46). Instead, he conducts an “ontology of the present”, a type of philosophical analysis that, on the one hand, seeks to identify the conditions out of which our current forms of knowledge and morality emerged and which continue to legitimize those forms, while also, and on the other hand, endeavours to “separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, and thinking what we are, do, and think” (ibid.). In other words, Foucault investigates how persons in the West have come to be where they currently are, shows that in so far as their current condition is the product of historical development it is not a necessary condition, and enquires into how they might be different. Foucault is specifically concerned with promoting change that counters domination and oppression and fosters what he refers to as “the work of freedom” (ibid.).
Some scholars consider Foucault’s unsystematic, non-traditional philosophical approach to be a weakness. They contend that the critical aspects of his work undermine or even prohibit Foucault from being able to promote positive social change through his philosophy. Charles Taylor submits that while the critical aspects of Foucault’s work might possess the potential to open onto new and emancipatory modes of thought and existence, the way in which Foucault conceives of the nature and function of modern power undercuts that potential. “There is no truth which can be espoused, defended, rescued against systems of power,” Taylor writes, “[a]nd there is no escape from power into freedom” (1986: 70). Similarly, Nancy Fraser argues that Foucault might be able to identify and critique problematic aspects of contemporary society, but he cannot provide us with reasons why we ought to reject these aspects. That is, because Foucault’s critique encompasses traditional moral systems, he denies himself recourse to concepts such as “freedom” and “justice”, and therefore lacks the ability to generate positive alternatives (Fraser 1994). Jürgen Habermas suggests that Foucault ultimately recognized that the critical and positive aspects of his work were fundamentally contradictory and therefore returned to a more traditional philosophical approach in his later work. “Perhaps”, Habermas writes, “the force of this contradiction caught up with Foucault, drawing him again into the circle of the philosophical discourse of modernity which he thought he could explode” (1986: 108).
Unlike Foucault’s critics, the contributors to this volume see Foucault’s unconventional philosophical approach as a strength. They reject the view that the critical aspect of his philosophy eclipses its positive and emancipatory potential. Each of the three sections of the book illustrates how Foucault reconceptualizes a key philosophical concept – power, freedom and subjectivity – and provides examples of how that reconceptualization facilitates new ways of thinking and acting that are able to counter oppression and domination.
The essays in Part I of this book show that the view of Foucault’s work as merely negative stems from a fundamental misreading of his conceptualization of power. Foucault argues that with the rise of the modern era, the exercise of power in the West takes new forms. In his book Discipline and Punish, he shows that sovereign power, which is held or possessed and then wielded repressively by one individual over another or others, became ineffective in the face of increasingly complex social, political and economic relations that developed in the latter part of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries. For example, violent public executions (such as that of Damiens the regicide, which Foucault graphically describes in his book’s opening pages) were no longer having the desired effect of displaying the king’s power and thereby discouraging criminal acts and ensuring social and political order. Instead, these events were invoking the peoples’ rage against the king’s authority, thereby promoting social and political unrest.
Throughout his work, Foucault analyses the new, “productive” forms of power that emerge as a result of the waning of sovereign power.3 As Ellen Feder notes in Chapter 4, power is productive in the sense that it consists of “both positive and negative, unstable valuations that can be reversed through history”. As the chapters on disciplinary power and biopower show, Foucault conceives of modern power as an interactive network of shifting and changing relations among and between individuals, groups, institutions and structures; it consists of social, political, economic and, as many of the contributors to this volume show, even personal relationships (including our relationships to ourselves). “I hardly ever use the word ‘power’,” Foucault states, “and if I do sometimes, it is always a short cut to the expression I always use: the relationships of power” (1994: 11). Given its productive, ubiquitous, dynamic and relational character, the pernicious effects of modern power are more difficult to identify, and therefore to counter, than the sovereign’s power to take his subjects’ lives in overtly violent and public ways.
Like most people in the modern West, Foucault’s critics “[remain] attached to a certain image of power-law, of power-sovereignty” (1990a: 90). They therefore see Foucault’s contention that “power is everywhere” negating freedom and subjectivity (ibid.: 93). Yet this would be the case only if we continue to commit the error of Foucault’s critics and insist on conceiving of power only in its sovereign, “repressive” form. “It is this [sovereign notion of power] that we must break free of,” Foucault writes, “if we wish to analyze power within the concrete and historical framework of its operation” (ibid.: 90). Analysing the reality of the workings of modern power is crucial. Foucault argues that as long as we continue to adhere to a very limited and increasingly outdated understanding of power we cannot begin to navigate modern power relations effectively. Uncritical acceptance of anything that is presented as natural, necessary, or ineluctable is problematic from a Foucauldian perspective. Such uncritical acceptance allows power relations to devolve into static states of domination, where only a very limited range of thought and behaviour is deemed valid or acceptable, with the result that many more modes of existence are considered invalid, immoral, or deviant and thereby deserving of social sanction, legal punishment, or eradication.
Taking Foucault’s analysis of the workings of modern power seriously does not destroy possibilities for freedom and subjectivity. But it does mean that these important concepts need to be reconceptual-ized. If, as the contributors to this volume believe, Charles Taylor and Nancy Fraser are incorrect in their respective assertions that Foucault’s conceptualization of power destroys possibilities for freedom, then what does freedom in fact look like from a Foucauldian perspective? First of all, if power is not something tangible that one possesses and uses in a repressive manner against others (i.e. the king deploying his power against his subjects), then freedom does not stand in an opposi-tional relationship to power. As the chapters in Part II show, Foucault does not conceive of power and freedom as opposed; rather, they are mutually constitutive. “Power is exercised only over free subjects,” Foucault asserts, “and only insofar as they are free” (1982a: 221). Freedom for Foucault is not a state we occupy, but rather a practice that we undertake. Specifically, it is the practice of navigating power relations in ways that keep them open and dynamic and which, in doing so, allow for the development of new, alternative modes of thought and existence. The practice of freedom functions to “[disconnect] the growth of capabilities … from the intensification of power relations” (1984a: 48).
During an interview, Foucault explains the relationship between power and freedom, and how engaging in the practice of freedom keeps power relations dynamic:
What does it mean to exercise power? It does not mean picking up this tape recorder and throwing it on the ground. I have the capacity to do so … [b]ut I would not be exercising power if I did that. However, if I take this tape recorder and throw it on the ground – in order to make you mad or so that you can’t repeat what I’ve said, or to put pressure on you so that you’ll behave in such and such a way, or to intimidate you – Good, what I’ve done, by shaping your behavior through certain means, that is power … [I]f … that is to say, I’m not forcing you at all and I’m leaving you completely free – that’s when I begin to exercise power. It’s clear that power should not be defined as a constraining act of violence that represses individuals, forcing them to do something or preventing them from doing some other thing. But it takes place when there is a relation between two free subjects, and this relation is unbalanced, so that one can act upon the other, and the other is acted upon, or allows himself to be acted upon.
(1980g)
If Foucault throws the tape recorder to the ground to shape the behaviour of the interviewer, the interviewer can respond in any number of ways: he can appease Foucault in order to finish the interview (without the use of tape recorder); he can refuse to conduct the interview on Foucault’s terms and simply terminate it; he can simply appear to complete the interview on Foucault’s terms, and then write whatever he originally intended to (or even include some uncomplimentary remarks about Foucault). The point here is that although the relationship is not equal, the interviewer is free in so far as he can respond to and in turn attempt to influence Foucault’s actions. The interviewer does not exist in a state of domination where no response to Foucault’s actions is possible.
As mentioned previously, “effective” navigation of power relations involves critically analysing our present conditions in order to identify norms and practices that reinforce the status quo to the point where prevailing modes of thought and existence come to be seen as given, as what must be. It also entails thinking and acting in ways that do not simply reinscribe prevailing, narrowly defined terms of what it is possible and acceptable to think and do. If, as Foucault argues, power relations are continually shifting and changing, then we must continue to analyse our present critically: practices that facilitate our navigation of power relations in one context or at a certain point in time may not be effective in other situations or contexts. While the interviewer may be able to appease Foucault by agreeing to Foucault’s terms, this action might not be effective in a different interview situation. Some other interviewee might, for example, lose respect for an interviewer who immediately gives in to her demands and decide to terminate the interview herself. It is no accident, then, that Foucault characterizes freedom as “ongoing work”.
Just as Foucault posits a relationship between power and freedom, so does he also conceive of a relationship between power and subjectivity. In a late text, Foucault emphasizes that although he is best known as an analyst of power, subjectivity has in fact been his primary concern. “My objective”, he writes, “… has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made into subjects” (1982a: 208). What does Foucault mean when he says that human beings are “made into” subjects? As the chapters in Part III illustrate, part of what he means is that the idea of “the subject” is itself a historical construction. Foucault explicitly states that “the subject” is a “form” as opposed to a “substance” (1994: 10). Within the context of the Western philosophical tradition, “a subject” takes the form of an active agent, an individual “rational being”, to use Immanuel Kant’s terminology, that thinks about and acts upon the world (which takes the form of an “object”) and is a bearer of political rights and moral responsibilities. This understanding of what it means to be a subject (and, therefore, the specifics of the distinction between and opposition of subject and object) is perhaps most explicit within Enlightenment thinking, but its roots may be traced as far back as the work of Plato. Foucault devoted several of his Collège de France courses to analysing the different forms that subjectivity acquired in ancient, Hellenistic and early Christian contexts (see Foucault 1999a; 2005a). In doing so, he illustrates and provides support for his argument that subjectivity is a social, cultural and historical form rather than a pre-given “substance” that is outside of and therefore distinct from sociocultural norms and values.
By illustrating the sociohistorical character of a concept that is taken within the tradition of Western philosophy to be objective and neutral, Foucault helps us to see the extent to which the idea of being a subject is implicated in power relations. Remember that, for Foucault, power is productive: certain power relations give rise to or produce the definition of subjectivity presented in the previous paragraph, relations which that definition effectively masks. Thus, while all rational beings are purported to be subjects, the reality of the situation is that the Enlightenment understanding of subjectivity excluded a wide group of people, including, for example, women and the people of lands that had been colonized by white European men.4 Foucault further illustrates the degree to which subjectivity is implicated in relations of power when he analyses the production of different categories of subjects, as well as the processes by which we as individuals construct ourselves in, through and in opposition to those categories. Focusing on the modern era, Foucault illustrates how the emergence of the human sciences (psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology, psychiatry) during the eighteenth century both solidified the Enlightenment understanding of subjectivity and gave birth to a plethora of new subject categories: human beings have now become both the subjects and objects of their own knowledge. In Volume I of The History of Sexuality, for example, Foucault shows how the fields of psychology and psychiatry categorized a whole range of human behaviours as sexually deviant, thereby producing a multitude of new modes of subjectivity that allow for (if not demand) social intervention into the population intended to distinguish “normal” from “abnormal” behaviour, encouraging the former and inhibiting (or even eradicating) the latter.
But, as noted above, Foucault also makes clear that subjectivity is not simply imposed externally. We take up and occupy the subject positions that our sociohistorical context makes available to us: subjects are not only made, we make ourselves. And, as contributors to this volume show, in so far as we make ourselves, we can unmake ourselves, or make ourselves differently: we can use the norms and values of our society in new ways, work on creating totally new forms of subjectivity, or even dispense with “the subject” as a mode of existence. “Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are,” Foucault writes, “but to refuse what we are. We have to imagine and build up what we could be to get rid of this kind of political ‘double bind,’ which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures” (1982a: 216). By showing that subjectivity itself is a sociohistorical phenomenon, as well as by illustrating oppressive effects of prevailing notions of subjectivity, Foucault makes clear that experimenting with being other than what we currently are is not only possible but also an integral part of navigating power relations in a way that both constitutes and in turn promotes the practice of freedom.
Armed with an accurate understanding of Foucault’s conceptualization of power and, therefore, of the ways in which freedom and subjectivity are not opposed to but rather interconnected with and implicated in power relations, Foucault’s emphasis on experimenting and thinking differently begins to make sense, and the positive ethical and political potential of his work begins to take shape as well. Foucault’s analyses of power, freedom and subjectivity make clear that not being able to rely uncritically upon existing norms and values in order to gain access to absolute truths about ourselves and the world in which we live, or to provide us with a moral code we can uncritically follow, does not leave us either in a state of epistemological and moral nihilism, or trapped within a perpetual state of domination. Rather, as Foucault readily admits, taking his work seriously places us in an oppositional position relative to prevailing modes of thought and existence and thereby deprives us of “access to any complete and definitive knowledge” of both the world in which we live and the “limits” of our ability to know and act within that world (Foucault 1984a: 47). We are, as he puts it, “always in the position of beginning again” (ibid.).
Perhaps part of what troubles Foucault’s critics about the position in which he leaves us is that it offers no guarantees and it requires much of us. No one tells us how to perform the work of freedom. While Foucault may offer us some “tools”, we must figure out the use to which we will put those tools. We must critically analyse our present, identify oppressive norms and practices and figure out how we may counter those norms and practices: simply telling us what to think and do would undermine the emancipatory aspects of Foucault’s work. Moreover, Foucault encourages us to reflect critically upon why it is that we desire someone else to tell us what to think and what to do, why we believe that we must have absolute and universal norms and standards that dictate our thoughts and actions, as well as upon the effects of that desire. What is perceived by his critics as Foucault’s inability to provide norms and standards by which to think and live thus needs to be seen instead as a refusal to do so. What would it mean for us to begin to think and act differently, to “seek out in our reflection those things that have never been thought or imagined” (Foucault 1980g)? “What is good”, Foucault tells us,
is something that comes through innovation. The good does not exist … in an atemporal sky, with people who would be like the Astrologers of the Good, whose job it is to determine what is the favorable nature of the stars. The good is defined by us, it is practiced, it is invented. And this is a collaborative work. (Ibid.)
1 Foucault states: “Each new work profoundly changes the terms of thinking which I had reached with the previous work. In this sense I consider myself more an experimenter than a theorist; I don’t develop deductive systems to apply uniformly in different fields of research. When I write, I do it above all to change myself and not to think the same thing as before” (1991a: 27).
2 “I have never been a Freudian, I have never been a Marxist, and I have never been a structuralist” (Foucault 1990c: 22).
3 Foucault makes clear that sovereign power does not disappear completely with the rise of modernity. See Foucault (1991b).
4 Many feminists and philosophers from a diversity of racial and ethnic backgrounds have argued that to the extent that the enlightenment notion of subjectivity continues to be adhered to it continues to produce oppressive effects.