> 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.)
As Marx analyzes it, capitalism generates subjects with the developed capabilities required to create a social arrangement from which the all barriers to the full actualization of "freedom" have been eliminated. As is made evident by the passage from the German Ideology I quoted, this sublates Hegel's identification of "human nature" with "freedom" in the following sense and way:
"That man is free by Nature is quite correct in one sense; viz., that he is so according to the Idea of Humanity; but we imply thereby that he is such only in virtue of his destiny - that he has an undeveloped power to become such; for the "Nature" of an object is exactly synonymous with its "Idea". ... Freedom as the ideal of that which is original and natural, does not exist as original and natural. Rather must it be first sought out and won; and that by an incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers. ... To the Ideal of Freedom, Law and Morality are indispensably requisite; and they are in and for themselves, universal existences, objects and aims; which are discovered only by the activity of thought, separating itself from the merely sensuous, and developing itself, in opposition thereto; and which must on the other hand, be introduced into and incorporated with the originally sensuous will, and that contrarily to its natural inclination." http://marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/history4.htm#043
In what sense is Foucault extending this?
Ted