***** Judith Butler, _Bodies that Matter_, p. 34
This "subjection," or _assujettissement_, is not only a subordination but a securing and maintaining, a putting into place of a subject, a subjectivation. The "soul brings [the prisoner] to existence"; and not fully unlike Aristotle, the soul described by Foucault as an instrument of power, forms and frames the body, stamps it, and in stamping it, brings it into being. Here "being" belongs in quotation marks, for ontological weight is not presumed, but always conferred. For Foucault, this conferral can take place only within and by an operation of power. This operation produces the subjects that it subjects; that is, it subjects them in and through the compulsory power relations effective as their formative principle. But power is that which forms, maintains, sustains, and regulates bodies at once, so that, strictly speaking, power is not a subject who acts on bodies as its distinct objects. The grammar which compels us to speak that way enforces a metaphysics of external relations, whereby power acts on bodies but is not understood to form them. This is a view of power as an external relation that Foucault himself calls into question.
Power operates for Foucault in the _constitution_ of the very materiality of the subject, in the principle which simultaneously forms and regulates the "subject" of subjectivation. Foucault refers not only to the materiality of the body of the prisoner but to the materiality of the body of the prison. The materiality of the prison, he writes, is established to the extent that...it is a vector and instrument of power. Hence, the prison is _materialized_ to the extent that it is _invested with power_, or, to be grammatically accurate, there is no prison prior to its materialization. Its materialization is coextensive with its investiture with power relations, and materiality is the effect and gauge of this investment. The prison comes to be only within the field of power relations, but more specifically, only to the extent that it is invested or saturated with such relations, that such a saturation is itself formative of its very being. Here the body is not an independent materiality that is invested by power relations external to it, but it is that for which materialization and investiture are coextensive. *****
Butler's denial of "the ontological reality of the past," to use Carrol's phrase, echoes a theological understanding of the world:
***** John, chapter 1
"1": In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. "2": The same was in the beginning with God. "3": All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. "4": In him was life; and the life was the light of men. *****
***** Genesis 1
"1": In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. "2": And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. "3": And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. "4": And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. "5": And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. "6": And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. "7": And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. "8": And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. "9": And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. "10": And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. "11": And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. "12": And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. "13": And the evening and the morning were the third day. "14": And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: "15": And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. "16": And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. "17": And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, "18": And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. "19": And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. "20": And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. "21": And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. "22": And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. "23": And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. "24": And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. "25": And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. "26": And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. "27": So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. *****
In Butler's writing, the concept of power has the same function as that of God in the Bible. Nothing existed before the Word of God. It is interesting that her stated desire to avoid "metaphysics" (while rejecting Marxism) leads her straight to metaphysics.
Yoshie