Power, Resistance, and the Foucauldian Technologies

Abstract

introduction of his book Foucault Beyond Foucault, Jeffrey Nealon writes of widespread critical consensus concerning historical development and trajectory of Foucault's work. Critics, he writes, seem have agreed that Foucault's mid-career work constituted dead-end, totalizing cage, an omnipresent panopticon with no possibility for any subjective or collective resistance.1 Broadly, consensus holds that two books of middle period, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality: The Will Knowledge, fail by virtue of fact that they are successful, too totalizing and demoralizing and hence show power be irresistible.2 Hoping then answer question of resistance, Foucault develops themes of his late turning questions of ethical resistance, subjectivity, and of making oneself into work of art.3 Central this narrative is idea that there is in Foucault's oeuvre thematic/conceptual reversal, a turn which occurs between 'middle' and 'late' work, move from anti-humanism subject-centred humanistic approach, a renewed appreciation of Enlightenment subject, ethical arts of self, and resistance normalized totalization through individual action.4 Nealon's documenting of this critical consensus is extensive and persuasive; this essay will rely on this overview without repeating it. Key this narrative is idea of resistance. It establishes fact of 180-degree turn. And it is idea that has increasingly attracted attention of commentators and has led late Foucault's heightened importance in contemporary critical theory: In mid-1980s, Foucault's name was virtually synonymous with power . . . today [Foucault is] primarily referenced as thinker of subjectivity.5 Nealon is correct in marking hegemony of late Foucault;6 it is with this uptake of Foucault that this essay will engage, that is, with question of Foucauldian resistance and its relationship project of artistic self-creation. By placing so heavy an emphasis on turn, critical consensus certainly overlooks very substantial continuities that exist in oeuvre and overlooks much of rich historical and conceptual detail it contains. This is source of persistent irritation specialists well versed in nuances of Foucault's oeuvre, but in itself this irritation has had little impact on consensus's focus on broad thematic structures or on manner in which Foucault continues be deployed in contemporary critical theory. And in any event there is marked shift in Foucault's oeuvre, shift which is source of persistent exegetical question of periodization.7 Nealon concludes men that dominant narrative, at least in its broad outline, is hard dispute;8 he notes that wrongness of consensus readings are not the major problem with them (of course they are demonstrably 'right' as well).9 And accordingly, Nealon responds dominant reading of Foucault in three main ways, none of which attempt directly invalidate consensus itself. First, he returns oeuvre retrieve continuities between periods and nuance idea that Foucault abandoned middle period's interest in power. He does this by relying on idea of intensification.10 This is idea that Foucault's charting of emergent modes of power is an analysis of increasing intensity, economic visibility, or saturation: discipline's power over body is more intense (because more ubiquitous) than sovereignty's power; biopower is more intense again; and this in turn commits Foucault, in late to examining ever-moremicrological sites of power's deployment and functionality.11 The technologies of self, practices by which self cares for itself, are included as being Foucault's analysis of power at its most intense. Second, Nealon moves beyond dominant reading's heavy emphasis on late work by showing continued relevance of Foucault's work on power. …