On Thu, 7 Dec 2006, bitch wrote:
>> OK, a quick internet search turned up this totally
>> typical quote,
>>
>> "There are no relations of power without resistance."
>> Michel Foucault, in Colin Gordeon (ed.).
>> Power/Knowledge - Selected Interviews and Other
>> Wiritings 1972-1977, Brighton: Harvester Press (1980),
>> p. 142
>
>
> what would this have to do with human nature? and what does it have to do
> with the vid. you didn't have to hunt down quotes, though I muchly appreciate
> it. what about the vid. where does he say there's a human nature? (the first
> is a rhetorical question. Iknow what it has to do with it. The internet makes
> me blonder than I appear. Failure to heed such warning could cause accidents
> and crambe repetita!)
I'll jump in; I think I know what J. is assuming here. "Resistance is the result of free-willed individuals rebelling against the existing social order; thus Foucault is making an implicit claim about human nature". Apologies if this is a misconstrual, but this brings up one of my favorite aspects of Foucault's work: Resistance is an inevitable product of power relations, not human nature per se. It is not that humans "want to be free"; it is that every formation of power inevitably generates interstices that create resistance. For instance, the creation of "homosexuality" as a type of medical disorder in the 1800s made possible self-identity and political action that undermine existing heterosexist social relations. (To me, this is just an extension of Marx's argument that the rise of capitalism generates the basis of its own downfall.)
Miles