Reply to Zylan

Abstract

5Y TVONNE ZYLAN CLAIMS to identify some weaknesses in my and Linda Gordon's (1994) essay on dependency and to trace them to our genealogical method. Her comment raises both theoretical issues and issues of historical interpretation, while proposing a relation between them. In what follows, I shall focus on the theoretical issues. I hope to show that our approach is conceptually sound, productive of insight, and politically useful. Two of Zylan's theoretical claims are of particular interest: first, that our approach obscures agency and, second, that we do not adequately specify how discourses relate to institutions. The first of these claims I consider mistaken and confused. The second, in contrast, raises serious issues, but these are not satisfactorily resolved by the approach Zylan recommends. In both cases, I shall suggest, she fails to give due weight to the discursively mediated character of social life. Let me begin with the question of agency. According to Zylan, our analysis is pervaded by genealogy's skepticism about prediscursive subjects, interests, and purposive We are said to display a Foucauldian cynicism about the power of individual actors and to underplay deployments and conscious deliberate articulations of keywords, as well as the strategic choices of actors. Such complaints are found in many discussions of genealogy, poststructuralism, and Foucault. But they are nevertheless misplaced. To analyze cultural complexes of meaning, such as those surrounding the term dependency in the United States, is not to deny that individuals act consciously, deliberately, and strategically, nor that they sometimes deploy such terms instrumentally to promote their own interests and goals. It is, rather, to make available for political critique the network of meanings, assumptions, and images that constitute the background and the stuff of intentional action. Far from representing a threat to agency, then, an analysis such as ours helps explain how it is possible while extending the reach of critique. To understand why, recall that human actions, as opposed to mere behaviors, always occur under descriptions. The goals, intentions, and