Foucault’s subject
Before turning to a preliminary analysis of Foucault’s various views on ‘the subject,’ it is worth noting the ongoing debate that gives context to this discussion. Foucault clearly takes different positions with regard to ‘the subject’ throughout his work. These differences are sometimes read as indicating a substantial theoretical shift. While I do not wish to wade into the depths of this debate, nor into the broader context of the history of the philosophy of the subject, there are several points of particular relevance to the arguments presented here.244
On one hand, claims to a fundamental shift rely upon a particular comparative reading of the ethical subject of Foucault’s later work over and against the work on
244 For contextual discussions about ‘the Subject’ in Foucault’s work, and in the French context
more broadly, see, for example: Michel Henry, “The Critique of the Subject,” in Topoi 7 (1988): 147-153; Neve Gordon, “Foucault’s Subject: An Ontological Reading,” in Polity 31, no. 3 (Spring, 1999): 395-414; and Nina Power, “Philosophy’s Subjects,” in Parrhesia 3 (2007): 55-72.
power.245 This reads the ‘active’ and self-constituting subjects of ethics as
conceptually opposed to the regimented self-policing subjects of power.246 Although
these descriptions are not incorrect as such, they are caricatures that misrepresent the nuances of Foucault’s account.247 The potential for disciplinary subjects to act and
resist is refused, while the capacity for self-constitution of ethical subjects over- emphasized. The consequences of this interpretation have especial implications for the political potential of Foucault’s work, partly because the possibility of resistance is taken to be the condition of any real political significance. In addition, the over- emphasis on the aesthetic aspects of self-constitution are thought to be devoid of any real political relevance, not to mention their purportedly egoistic underpinnings. Rather, as Colwell argues, “We need to see that the subject is neither entirely active nor passive in either the early or the later works. The subject is constituted/constitutes itself within a system of constraints, whether they be described as disciplinary or aesthetic.”248 As I argue further throughout the thesis, the key to understanding the
political possibilities of an ethic of power lie within a more synthesised account, whereby the ethical aspects of the subject are seen as providing critical and theoretical depth to Foucault’s earlier thought. Such an approach even opens up new avenues of addressing perceived problems in the earlier work. One of the aims of this chapter is
245 Peter Dews, for example, asserts that the late appearance of such a subject constitutes an
“abrupt theoretical shift.” (“The Return of the Subject in the Late Foucault,” in Discourse: The Glasgow Journal of Philosophy, no. 4 [Autumn/Winter 1988], 38). Eric Paras argues along similar lines, also reading Foucault’s late work as representing a ‘turn’ to subjectivity and therefore a rather radical break with earlier thought. In characterizing subjects as reflexive, active and self-constituting, he posits the ‘subject’ as something concrete, reified (Foucault 2.0, 13). He goes as far as to claim that in Foucault’s late works there is the presence of what Paras calls a ‘prediscursive subject,’ which he describes as “a subjective nucleus that precedes any practices that might be said to construct it” (Ibid., 14).
246 Peter Dews, “Power and Subjectivity in Foucault,” in New Left Review I, no. 144 (March-
April, 1984), 77.
247 This has significant implications. Particularly, there is the question of how other themes in
Foucault’s work are to be read in light of this apparent shift in subjectivity. Of most importance to the arguments presented here is the view that the movement from the self-disciplining subject and docile body of Discipline and Punish to the self-constituting subject of volumes two and three of The History of Sexuality indicates a corollary decline in the role and
importance of ‘power.’ Rudi Visker makes exactly this point, arguing that corresponding to the ‘turn’ to subjectivity is the disappearance of the concept of power. He suggests that while techniques of subjectivization may be associated with techniques of power, they are essentially distinct. Under this reading power would seem to be no longer of concern to Foucault in his late works, or, if it is, it is only insofar as power resurfaces through the idea of government and practices of the self, which are essentially different from techniques of power anyway. (See Rudi Visker, Michel Foucault: Genealogy as Critique, trans. Chris Turner [London: Verso, 1995] 87-88.) I take the opposite view.
248 C. Colwell, “The Retreat of the Subject in the Late Foucault,” in Philosophy Today 38, no. 1
precisely to offer an account of the subject that arises within a network of power relations, yet which has relatively undefined and unrestricted capacity for ethical self- development and responsiveness.
On the other hand, there is one school of thought that interprets this shift as a ‘return’ to the subject, which seems to imply that Foucault is returning to a position that he had previously rejected. This would posit Foucault’s late work as representing a significant movement away from his earlier philosophical concerns.249 Yet Foucault
does not re-adopt the same ideas that he had previously questioned. The subject to which he objected so strongly in The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things is not re-instituted late in his career. As Thomas McCarthy points out, Foucault ‘turns’ to a conception of subjects as social and embodied, following his previous rejection of the rational and autonomous Cartesian subject individuated from the world.250 While he again takes up the theme of subjectivity in relation to ancient
ethics, it does not refer to the subject as the centre and condition of knowledge. The underlying philosophical commitments are consistent. In the discussion presented here I take the view that while there is certainly conceptual development and changes in approach and style in Foucault’s thinking about the subject, this does not in itself represent a fundamental philosophical shift. While he rejects certain theories of the subject in his archaeo-genealogical analyses, this rejection is not inconsistent with the account of subjectivity that he adopts later. As he notes in one late interview, “I don’t think there is actually a sovereign, founding subject, a universal form of subject that one could find everywhere. I am very sceptical and very hostile toward this conception of the subject.”251 Indeed, he even emphasizes the importance of the genealogy of the
modern self and subject – epitomized in his studies of ancient ethics and practices of the self – precisely because it enables the circumvention of the traditional philosophy of the subject.252
This appears then as a strategic move: a way of enabling a different approach to the way that we in the present are constituted and constitute ourselves in relation to
249 See for example: Peter Dews, “The Return of the Subject,” “Power and Subjectivity in
Foucault,” and Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory (London, Verso, 1987); Thomas McCarthy, “The Critique of Impure Reason: Foucault and the Frankfurt School,” in Political Theory 18, no. 3 (August, 1990): 437-469; Paras,
Foucault 2.0; and Visker, Michel Foucault.
250 McCarthy, “The Critique of Impure Reason,” 438.
251 Foucault, “An Aesthetics of Existence,” in Foucault Live, 452.
truth and to power. Thus Foucault clarifies his position: “I had to reject a certain a priori theory of the subject in order to make this analysis of the relationships which can exist between the constitution of the subject or different forms of the subject and games of truth, practices of power and so forth.”253 Foucault does not place the subject
as the condition of experience, but as the result of experience.254 This is what Foucault
means by subjectivization [assujettissement]: “the process through which results the
constitution of a subject, or more exactly, of a subjectivity which is obviously only one of the given possibilities of organising a consciousness of self.”255 The subject that
features in the late work is neither founding nor sovereign. While he does reject an a priori theory of the subject, Foucault is careful to contextualize this move as part of a deliberate strategy in approaching the problem of the relationship between the subject and truth. Rather than establishing a theory of the subject in order to arrive at an approach to the problem of how knowledge is possible, Foucault is interested in how the subject is constituted, by others and by herself, through practices that bear a particular relation to truth.256 These late comments and qualifications are prefigured by
Foucault’s attitude toward both the subject and corollary conception of ‘Man’ in The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge, as noted in Chapter Two. Foucault thinks that ‘Man’ was really an invention of the Classical épistémè, and as such is passing away, as he stated notoriously in the closing pages of The Order of Things.257 But this strategic approach must also be understood within the context of
Foucault’s suspicion of humanism, as I discuss below.
253 Foucault, “The Ethic of Care,” 10.
254 Foucault, “The Return of Morality,” in Foucault Live, 472. 255 Ibid.
256 See Foucault, “The Ethic of Care,” 10.
257 Foucault, The Order of Things,421-422. Foucault writes: “one can be certain that man is a
recent invention. […] As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And perhaps one nearing its end.” Hannah Arendt’s comments about the problems with trying to define ‘Man’ are useful in this context. For Arendt, the attempt to define ‘Man’ is caught up in a more general problem of description: “The moment we want to say who
somebody is, our very vocabulary leads us astray into saying what he is; we get entangled in a description of qualities he necessarily shares with others like him; we begin to describe a type or a ‘character’ in the old meaning of the word, with the result that his specific uniqueness escapes us” (The Human Condition, 181). For Arendt, the attempt to describe who someone is belies the unique distinction which can only be disclosed through the subject’s speech and action. Attempting to describe what ‘Man’ is, according to Arendt, shares a similar result: “This frustration has the closest affinity with the well-known philosophic impossibility to arrive at a definition of man, all definitions being determinations or interpretations of what man is, of qualities, therefore, which he could possibly share with other living beings, whereas his specific difference would be found in a determination of what kind of a ‘who’ he is” (Ibid.). Within the context of Arendt’s philosophy, the very attempt to make such a definition ignores
Political subjects: what is ‘man’?
It would be a mistake to derive from Foucault’s ‘problematization’ of the concept and use of ‘human nature’ a general apathy toward the concrete, shared experiences of human beings. It is through the experience of power, as we see below, that Foucault conceives human commonality and solidarity. He merely calls into question the legitimacy of certain notions of human nature and the ways that they have been employed. ‘Man’ is the result of a certain mechanism of disciplinary power, deployed in order to cement the very operation of this mechanism. In Foucault’s words: “The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself.”258 As Cordner puts it: “The
normalizing forces of disciplinary power shape the conviction that there is a shared human essence, and then operate to confine people in accordance with it.”259
Similarly, Foucault describes the emergence of the ‘man’ of modern humanism as arising out of the hold that disciplinary power has upon the body.260
Indeed, Foucault thinks that the very idea that human beings have a universal nature cannot help but be a reflection of the social, historical and cultural situation from which this idea emerges. He argues that “at least since the seventeenth century, what is called ‘humanism’ has always been obliged to lean on certain conceptions of man borrowed from religion, science, or politics. Humanism serves to color and to justify the conceptions of man to which it is, after all, obliged to take recourse.”261 For
Foucault, the problem lies less in the actual ideas about what this human nature might be than in the characterisation of these historically and culturally specific ideas as necessary and universal. Failing to realise the contingency of these ideas, in Foucault’s view, limits our potential to imagine and understand ourselves in different ways, let alone to experiment with the possibility of living and being differently.
Similarly, Foucault rejects humanism as a basis or framework through which to conduct political and philosophical analyses. In “What is Enlightenment?” Foucault
the uniqueness of human beings. The inability to define man in this way undermines any concrete, fixed conception upon which we might conduct human affairs and politics, or upon which we might base ethics. Thus this impossibility impacts politics in the space of
appearance: that is, the inability to define human beings in this way undermines the stability of political or human affairs. It gives way to a constant movement and change.
258 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 30.
259 Christopher Cordner, “Foucault and Ethical Universality,” in Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary
Journal of Philosophy 47, no. 6 (December, 2004), 580.
argues that “we must not conclude that everything which has ever been linked with humanism is to be rejected, but that the humanistic thematic is in itself too supple, too diverse, too inconsistent to serve as an axis for reflection.”262 It is partly because
humanism does not acknowledge the contingency of its own concepts that Foucault thinks it fails on political grounds. The assumption of its own truth and universality precludes the kind of geneo-critical method that Foucault wants to employ. He adopts instead “the principle of a critique and a permanent creation of ourselves in our autonomy.”263 In doing so, Foucault also posits the critical and transformative aspects
of the Enlightenment project in tension with humanism, rather than as its counterpart.264
Yet Foucault’s characterisation of the political possibilities of humanism may be too severe, indicating perhaps a lack of political and philosophical pragmatism on Foucault’s part. Noam Chomsky, whom Foucault debated on Dutch television in 1971, argues that some conception of human nature, even if incomplete, is essential to understanding the nature of power and oppression and envisaging a future just society.265 Chomsky points out that the political and moral imperative to act in a
response to a situation one feels to be wrong sometimes outweighs the importance of such intellectual and philosophical questions.266 Indeed, Chomsky’s response gives
rise to the question of whether Foucault gives enough credit to humanism, particularly in terms of its potential to be self-critical. Chomsky observes:
Our concept of human nature is certainly limited; it’s partially socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet at the same time it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals we’re trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the
261 Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” 314. 262 Ibid.
263 Ibid.
264 Ibid., 313-314.
265 Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature,
foreword by John Rajchman (New York: The New Press, 2006), 41-42.
266 Chomsky suggests: “I think that in the intellectual domain of political action, that is the
domain of trying to construct a vision of a just and free society on the basis of some notion of human nature, we face the very same problem that we face in immediate political action, namely, that of being impelled to do something, because the problems are so great, and yet knowing that what we do is on the basis of a very partial understanding of the social realities, and the human realities in this case.” (Ibid., 44)
possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong possibility, and in fact overwhelming probability, that at least in some respects we’re very far off the mark.267
In contrast to this self-characterization of the political stakes of the humanist thematic, Foucault’s own concerns seem to fall too far on the side of the merely theoretical, placing philosophical stakes before social and political realities.
Yet Foucault maintains that the critical and political potential of ‘human nature’ is undermined by the fact that it cannot help but be a product of a particular socio- historical situation. He queries:
If you say that a certain human nature exists, that this human nature has not been given in actual society the rights and the possibilities which allow it to realize itself […], doesn’t one risk defining this human nature―which is at the same time ideal and real, and has been hidden and repressed until now―in terms borrowed from our society, from our civilization, from our culture?268
In this way Foucault ties the attempt to define the nature of human beings with the more general idea that power acts as an exclusory, repressive force. This is of course in line with his general criticisms of liberalism. Elsewhere Foucault describes the notion of human nature as an ‘epistemological indicator,’ marking certain types of discourse in relation to certain fields of knowledge (such as theology, biology or history).269 In this way it is part of the archive—a remnant of a certain set of discursive
conditions. While this is certainly useful in thinking about humanist ideals as remnants of liberal discourses, it also offers an alternative approach to the question of why Foucault finds humanism – or more accurately, humanism’s recourse to human nature – so problematic.
This is not to say that Foucault’s critique of liberal political theory is irrelevant; his critique of the various expressions of liberalism and the forms of freedom they
267 Ibid., 45. 268 Ibid., 43. 269 Ibid., 7.
entail certainly sets the theoretical scene for his general attitude toward humanism.270
But it is perhaps more fruitful to take the idea of an epistemological indicator as an alternative point of departure. The problem is that overemphasising this connection