[lbo-talk] a poe moe and da poe moes

[Miles Jackson]

shag wrote:
> i was going to go to an art festival but r decided to fix the car, which 
> meant it was out of commission. so, r and r consisted of napping and 
> re-reading Halley's _Split Decisions_. I thought this one sentence 
> captured one of the reasons why people have found the poe moes compelling:
> 
> "The postmodern emphasis on subject formation rather than brute 
> domination as the really trenchant application of power to persons 
> called into question the subordination paradigm."

Yes.  For me, that's Foucault's most important political point: power 
relations create subjects.  As long as we cling to the pernicious myth 
that power is always and simply the domination of pre-existing 
autonomous agents, effective political action will be difficult.

A few weeks ago, CB asked about similarities between Foucault and Marx; 
I think this is one of them.  From the Marxist perspective, the 
proletariat and the bourgeoisie are products of capitalist social 
relations, not vice versa.  For both Marx and Foucault, power is 
productive; it is not simply subordination of already existing subjects.

Miles