On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, Doug Henwood wrote:

> a Foucaultian on the Spoons
> Foucault list said:
> 
> > The most important effect of
> >(neo-)liberalism for Foucault was the link it offers between the
> >subject and the state, the private and the public, it constitues at
> >the same time the ground for the state and an implicit critique for
> >its actions. In short, he wanted to show the power effects of this
> >very particular kind of freedom, which exposes itself as natural.
> 
> Anyone here know anything about all this?

I think the point is fairly simple.  It comes from Foucault's conception 
that "power is everywhere."  The liberal statist conception placed power 
in a few spheres: The power to publish articles, the power to vote, etc.  
Foucault's point was that power is reflected in all spheres of life (the 
way we talk, the way we fuck) and that the liberal discourse uses its 
claims of "neutrality" to narrowly define power and then play with power 
in the spheres that it explicitly refuses to acknowledge (e.g., household 
relations, sexuality) and at the same time ban those spheres from 
discussions of power relations.

Foucault would say that the response to this discourse is "resistance," 
which first involves finding the contradictions in the discourse and then 
exposing them.  Although he wrote next to nothing about agency, my 
reading is that he saw this as an ongoing and permanent process without 
any ideal state that could be created.  I don't think that necessarily makes 
him anti-statist, it just means that he would refuse to admit any kind 
of "naturalness" or "neutrality" to the state, or the idea (which is 
contained in liberalism) that a certain correct set of guidelines can 
make a state power-neutral.

I think Foucault is roughly right about this, even if his description is 
farily incomplete.  One could, for example, add a materialist analysis and 
begin to discuss all of the ways that class power shows up in 
non-discursive spheres.  Foucault, however, doesn't do this, and there is 
even some indication in his first volume of The History of Sexuality that 
he sees his analysis in opposition to materialism.

I've never read Miller's biography, only Halperin's meta-biography of 
it.  Halperin does make a good case that it is, indeed, trashy.  Of 
course I've had bad experiences critiquing books I've never read.


Cheers,
Tavis



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