>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.
Yup. Though I'd say impossible, at least not without the existence a philosopher-prophet class that can formulate ways out of impasses.
>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.
Yup. And the tragic mistake of social democracy and Leninism -- a mistake instituted as truth by the brutality of Stalin and Mao -- was to nullify this. Power became ideology and class, which could only be negotiated by professional revolutionaries. Of course, anarchism of the Chomsky variety is just the same, except that the revolutionaries were replaced by sharpened consciousness and perfect actions.