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
