Folks have responded to these two points, but I am kinda curious if you believe in this binary construction of the subject that you seem to be setting up here between an 'authentic' real self and a 'false' constructed by power self?
> In the end, it seems to me that Foucault's implicit utopia is (like the
> right-wing libertarian's implicit utopia) the guy alone on a desert
> island. Free of power at last! Or maybe in Foucault's case, ten million
> people, deaf, dumb and blind, groping each other in some vast bathhouse:
> No culture, no norms, no discourse -- hence, no power. Liberation! This
> is what Perry Anderson means when he says Foucault confuses power with
> culture.
This is where things go from being kinda weird to really weird. There is something about Foucault that seems to give permission to folks to spout of the weirdest stuff, generally without any evidence. Interestingly enough, generally around his homosexuality. I'd like you to try to back this phantasm with some sort of evidence. To be perfectly honest, it reads as being a bit homophobic.
The notion that Foucault desires a world without power has no connection to his work whatsoever. Foucault argues precisely the opposite, that the fantasy that there will be a society 'liberated' from power is precisely that, a fantasy. It is possible to produce other forms of power relations, but this never escapes something called power. In effect, to use Virno's term, Foucault recognizes the 'openness' of the subject in relations of power.
I'd like to see what Anderson actually said, but if you are accurately reproducing his thought then this is (unusually for Anderson, a fairly astute reader) pretty bone-headed. I would link Foucault's work with the concepts developed by Antonio Gramsci and hegemony. Capitalism doesn't primarily operate through coersion, but through the production of consent, through institutions, through popular media, etc. (Obviously, their conceptualizations are not absolutely the same, but at the same time, Foucault is obviously in touch with this mode of thinking and is a historical materialist (although perhaps not a Marxist)
> I'm not saying Foucault is a waste of time or that his insights aren't
> really important. Intellectual life is much better off because of him.
> But there are problems.
>
> Let's say you have a guy who grows up in a patriotic factory town
> somewhere in the heartland. One day, a union organizer comes to town
> spouting radical ideas. The guy listens, and right away decides that all
> this stuff about class and capitalism is obviously commie
> un-Americanism, just like management says. The normal Foucaultian
> analysis is to say: Here is a subject formed by power. He didn't react
> as he did because of the coercion of the police. Or because he didn't
> own the means of production. Or because the media is controlled by
> capitalists. Talking about that stuff is just futilely trying to cut off
> the head of the king again. The real problem is subject formation. Power
> is bad.
Um... how do you come to this through reading Foucault?
> But now let's say you have the opposite situation. A guy grows up in a
> fiercely militant union town. (We'll set this in the UK thirty years ago
> to retain plausibility.) All his life he's been brought up to hate
> scabs. One day there's a strike and the boss comes to him and says: Hey,
> you have to wake up and realize that those union guys have been feeding
> you with lies. It's not us who's oppressing you, it's them. They're
> keeping you from doing the best you can for you and your family, etc.
> etc. etc. But the guy right away decides that this is just more
> management double-talk, just like the union guys warned him about, and
> he walks away. The Foucault-reading Thatcherite would look at this and
> say: Power! Subject-formation! And wouldn't the Thatcherite be right by
> Foucault's lights?
Obviously this involves the creation of subjectivity (at the level of the collective and singularly) and through social networks, power (both in the sense of power as capacity and power in the sense of domination. The workers have the capacity to act and have translated that capacity into the forcible shutting down of the plant. I don't think Marx would have any problem with analysis as well. The idea that there is something wrong with that has nothing to do with Foucault's analysis, though.
> And if so, doesn't that mean that wresting cultural hegemony from the
> ruling class is just replacing one Tsar with another? Or, alternatively,
> are there good and bad kinds of power? Is it good when "we" form
> subjects but it's bad when "they" do it? Is "power" the enemy? Or is it
> the boss, just like all those deluded Marxists used to think?
There is an eloquent moment where Foucault comments on this vaguely thought out set of questions. He is being asked about the panopticon and resistance. I don't remember how they get to it, but the question of resistance and insurrection comes up. Foucault says that taking over the structure is a good thing, but if prisoners simply take the position of the guards, nothing has changed, the tower has to be destroyed, but this certainly can only occur through the takeover of the tower.
Foucault would never deny the possibility of transformation, but he would no doubt remind us that the modes of resistance are always intertwined with the modes of power that they are resisting.
No doubt we will return to this question again. :)
robert wood
PS If Jerry is reading, I thought I would pass on my appreciation for his
kind comments in the last pomo brushfire. I enjoyed disagreeing with you.
>