Foucault's new functionalism

Abstract

Each of Foucault's major theoretical expositions of the concept of power his critique of Rusche and Kirchheimer at the beginning of Discipline and Punish, his discussion of the "apparatus [dispositif]" of sexuality in The History of Sexuality, volume 1, and his response to questions posed by Dreyfus and Rabinow in the late essay "How is Power Exercised?" reiterates various methodological precautions.1 Power, Foucault argues, is not a property, a possession, a commodity one can exchange for something else, a resource, or an institution. Further, power is not a function of law, morality, repression, or the economic base. Commentators have energetically exposed the culprits of these methodological errors, writers and schools of thought whose names Foucault rarely mentions Durkheim, Weber, classical Marxism, phenomenology, depth hermeneutics, Lukhcs, Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, Althusser, and Habermas.2 Foucault's theory of power is closely linked to concrete empirical studies, which in turn contribute to the refinement of his theoretical tools. Such is not the case, however, with Foucault's concept of resistance, which he articulated solely in theoretical terms. Foucault has asserted in essays and interviews that every power relation is accompanied by points of resistance, such that as he puts it in Volume 1 of the History of Sexuality "resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power (HS, 95)." But in spite of his repeated theoretical claim that resistance is the "irreducible opposite (HS, 96)" of power, this former concept received little attention in Foucault's historical studies. Why did Foucault insist on the centrality of resistance to all power relations but devote his studies of modernity almost exclusively to an analysis of modern forms of power, without ever examining corresponding forms of resistance?