The philosophy of Foucault

The Philoso phy of Foucau lt Continental European Philosophy This series provides accessible and stimulating introduc...

Author: Todd May

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The Philoso phy of Foucau lt

Continental European Philosophy

This series provides accessible and stimulating introductions to the ideas of continental thinkers who have shaped the fundamentals of European phi losoph ical thought. Powerfu l and radica l, the ideas of these ph ilosophers have often been contested, but they remain key to understanding current phi losoph ical t hinking as well as t he current d irection of d iscip lines such as pol itical science, literary theory, comparative literature, art history, and cultural studies. Each book seeks to combine clariry w ith depth, introducing fresh insights and w ider perspectives whi le also providing a comprehensive survey of each thinker's phi losophical ideas.

Published titles

The Philosophy of Foucault

The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty

Todd May

Eric Matthews

The Philosophy of Gada mer

The Philosophy of Nietzsche

Jean Grond in

Rex Welshon

The Philosophy of Habermas

The Philosophy of Schopenhauer

Andrew Edgar

Dale Jacquette

The Philosophy of Kierkegaard George Pattison

Forthcoming titles include

The Philosophy of Derrida

The Philosophy of Kant

Mark Dooley and Liam Kavanagh

Jim O'Shea

The Philosophy of Hegel

The Philosophy of Rousseau

Allen Speight

Patrick Ri ley, Sr and Patrick Riley, Jr

The Philosophy of Husser/

The Philosophy of Sartre

Burt Hopkins

Anthony Hatzimoysis

The Philosophy of Foucault Todd May

ACUMEN

© Todd May, 2006 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. First published in 2006 by Acumen Acumen Publishing Limited 15a Lewins Yard East Street Chesham Bucks HP5 lHQ www.acumenpublish ing.co.uk ISBN-10: 1-84465-056-1 (hardcover) ISBl'-13 : 978-1-84465-056-9 ISBl'-13 : 1-84465-057 -X (paperback) ISBN-13 : 978-1-84465-057-6

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset in Classical Garamond by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong. Primed and bound by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge.

For Kathleen, David, Rachel and joel

Contents

Abbreviations Acknowledgements 1

IX

.

XI

1

Introduction: who are we?

2 Archaeological histories of w ho we are

24

3 Genealogical histories of who we are

61

4 \Vho we are and who we might be

96

5 Coda: Foucault's own straying afie ld

126

6 Are we still w ho Foucau lt says we are?

132

Notes Further reading References Index

160 164 165 169

VI I

Abbreviations

AKDL The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language (1972).

ALCF Abnom1al: Lectures at the College de France, 1974-1975 (2003).

BC The Birth ofthe Clinic (1973). CS The Care ofthe Self (1986). CT/IH "Critical Theory/Intellectual H istory" (an interview with Gerard Raulet) (1988). DP Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977). EC "The Eth ics of the Concern of t he Self as a Pract ice of Freedom" (1997). Gov. "Governmentaliry" (1991). HFAC Histoire de Ia folie /'age classique (1972). HS The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction (1978).

a

HSLCF The Hermeneutics ofthe Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981- 1982 (2005). IP "Intellectuals and Power" (1977). MBPF "i'vly Body, Th is Paper, Th is Fire" (1999).

MC Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1965). NB Naissance de Ia biopolitique: Cours au College de France 1978-1979 (2004). NGH "Nietzsche, Genea logy, History" (1977). OGE "On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of a Work in Progress" (1984).

OT The Order ofThings: An Archaeology ofthe Human Sciences (1971). PC "Practici ng Criti cism" (1988). QM "Questions of Method" (1991).

IX

ABBR EVIATIONS

SP "The Subject and Power" (1982).

STP Securite, territoire, population: Cours au College de France 1977-1978 (2004). TP

"Trmh and Power" (1980).

UP The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 ofThe History of Sexuality WE

(1985). "What is Enlighrenmem?" (1997).

X

Acknowledgements

I wou ld like to thank Acumen, and especially Steven Gerrard, El izabeth Teague, Kate \'i(l illiams, Sue Hadden and three anonymous reviewers for t heir generous help in improving the manuscript and seeing it through .

.

XI

C HAPTER ONE

Introduction: who are we?

Why study a philosopher, a phi losop hically orient ed historian, a t hinker? Why grapple w ith a body of thought that is difficult, oft en elusive? Why forsake the pleasures of sport, the company of fri ends, a nove l or a videogame for the slow, patient activity of coming to understand a set of texts that, far from inviting one in, seem often designed to keep one at bay? These are nor id le questions. One might be told, in response to them, that t he rigours of thought are good for the mind, that grappling with difficu lt concepts is bracing, or strengthen ing, or a sign of good character. These are, it seems rome, bad answers. Nor t hat a person. shou ld nor have a good mind or a good character. But w hy study ph ilosophy in order to ach ieve t hese? Would mathematics, or physics, or the law nor do just as well? There is nothing less rigorous about these disciplines than there is about ph ilosop hy. They offer challenges to the mind, and in addition training in someth ing t hat might come in handy down the road. If one is to study a philosop hical figure, if one is, to paraphrase James Joyce, to forge one's own sou l in the smithy of the ir mind, there must be a better reaso n on offer than simply being told that conceptual difficu lty is good for you. There must be something about rh.e t hinker's being philosophical, or, in the case of Michel Foucau lt, at least philosophically oriented, that is itself compell ing. T hat reason need nor be practical, in the trad itional sense of the term. It need nor lead ro a job, or a social position, or recognition by a broader public. Ideology asid e, there is no reason to believe that these are all that people seek. T he reason one might study a ph ilosopher can be less goal-oriented, or more subtle. Bur, given the alternative ways of spending one's rime, the reason ought to be a good one. The ph ilosopher Gilles Deleuze te lls us that: a ph ilosoph ical t heory is an elaborately developed questi on, and nothing else; by itself and in itself, it is nor t he reso lution ro a

1

THE PHilOSOPHY O f FOUCAULT

problem, bm the elaboration, to the very end, of the necessary implicati ons of a formu lated quest ion . 1r shows us w hat things are, or what t hings shou ld be, on the assumption rhal t he question is good and rigorous. 1 Deleuze suggests that a ph iloso phical theory is nor to be defined by the answer it gives bur by the question it asks. T he poi.nr of reading philosophy, ro him, is nor one of seeking solurions bur of elaborating the impl ications of a question . We must be clear here. Deleuze is nor argu ing that philosophy is about questions rather than abom answers. Or at least he is nor arguing it in any simple way. H e is nor saying on ly t hat it is the questions that marrer rather than the answers. There is someth ing em pry, after all, in being rold that if one asks the right question, t hen what comes after does nor marrer. \Vhar wou ld t he poinr o f asking a question be, if the response did nor somehow marrer? When he talks abour rhe elaboration of rhe necessary implications of a formu lated question, he is talking nor only abour questions, bur also abour responses. T hose responses, those elaborations, however, need nor be as straigh tforward as answers ro traditiona l questions. T hey need nor be as narrow as answers to questions such as "Where do you live?" or "What is the GNP of Sierra Leone?" They can be difficu lt, o.r shifting, or open-ended. If they are robe worthwhile, however, they need to respond to a quest ion thar is good and rigorous. And that is where the riches of philosophy lie. T he poinr of reading phi losophers is to follow their elaboration of the implications of a good and rigorous question . If the question is worthwhile, if it is a matter of what Deleuze elsewhere calls " the lnreresting, Remarkable, or lmporranr"', then there is a reason to engage in studying it. If we are to ask ourselves whether a ph ilosoph ical work or a body of phi losophical thought is worth pausing over, then we must, sooner or later, know the question that is being elaborated. For Foucau lt there is, rhroughom the body of l\is work, a single quest ion that receives elaboration. It is the question "Who are we?" This is not the only question he elaborates. Yet it is the one he asks most doggedly, the one that is never far from the surface of any of his wor ks. In his hands, the question of w ho we are becomes a rigorous one, elaborated, if not to the very end, then very far along the way. The question of who we are, or at least that of who each among us is, will be foreign to no one. Who has not, at least once or twice, asked t his question? And, when asked seriously, rigorously, its answer - or its response - is not obvious. There are, of course, many insriturions in our society t hat seem to provide easy answers. Our churches t el l us: you are a ch ild of God. Our pol iticians tell us: you are an American (or an Australian, or an Indian,

2

INTRODUCTION : WHO ARE WE?

or ... ). Our televisions tell us: you are a consumer. We are told who we are, and as a resu lt we rarely ask. Bm if we do nor aslk often, we do ask somerimes, at momems when the obvious answers seem ro fa ll away in the wake of a tragedy, or when boredom overcomes us and the easy answers lose their grip, or, more rarely, when a ph ilosopher purs rhe question ro us in a ne\v way. There are many ways ro ask the question of who I am or of who we are. Foucault mrns rhe question, reformulares ir, asks it in a new way. To understand how he does so, ro grasp the particu lar rigour he brings ro the quest ion, we must comrasr ir w ith other, more trad itional ways of asking and elaboraring. We cou ld do worse than ro starr with Rene Descartes. Although he is concerned more with the question of what we could know than of who we are, his legacy is perhaps greater in regard ro rhe second question. The response he gives ro the question of who we are is srlill w ith us; it srill defines rhe framework wirhin wh ich most of us ask rhe question. The legacy of Descartes- one of rhe legacies Foucau lr will seek t o undermine - remains our inheritance. H ow, then, does he answer rhe question of who we are? For Descarres, rhe cemral quesrion is one of whar we cou ld know. And the problem is rhar he wams robe able ro give our knowledge a more solid foundarion than merely a reliance on fairh. He himself probably pms rhe issue besr, ar rhe beginning of his Meditations, in an iron ic passage rhar at once challenges and denies rhar he is challenging rhe church amhoriries. lr is absolurely rrue, borh rhar we musr believe rhar rhere is a God because ir is so raughr in rhe Holy Scripmres, and, on rhe orher hand, rhar we musr believe rhe Holy Scripmres because rhey come from God . ... Nevertheless, we could hardly offer rhis argumem ro rhose wirhour fairh, for rhey mighr suppose rhar we were commining rhe fallacy rhar logicians call circular reasoning. 3

Suppose, indeed. Descartes learns from rhe church's censure of Galileo ro be circumspect in his deviarions from church orthodoxy. The foundarion he offers is well known. lr occurs in rwo sreps: firsr, a proof of rhe exisrence of God and, secondly, a proof rhar God cannot be a deceiver. lr is in rhe first srep rhar he begins ro answer rhe question of who we are. The firsr move in rhe firsr step is ro doubr everyrhing rhar he can nor be absolurely cerrain of. Whar remains after such doubr? On ly rhe exisrence of a doubrer, of a subsrance rhar rhinks, perceives, imagines, ere. Thar, as ir wi ll mrn om, is one of rhe rwo subsrances rhar comprise a human being. The orher substance is physical marrer. (There is a rhird subsrance in rhe universe as well, rhar of rhe divine.) Bm ir is menral subsrance rhar is rhe

3


key. T hat is what allows him ro construct his proof of God and what seems most imporranr abour who we are. T he other substance - physical matterdoes nor make its appearance unri l rhe sixth and last of his meditat ions. There the existence of physica l matter in general, and Descartes's own body in particular, is a conclusion he arrives a r on the basis of earlier proofs: namely, if God exists and is nor a deceiver, t hen so much of what I experience as corporeal matter must be corre lated with my actual ly having a body. "I also recognize in myself some other facu lties, such as rhe power of changing location, of assum ing various postures, and other sim ilar ones; which cannot be conceived w ithour some su bstance in wh ich they inhere ,4

So w ho are we? We are beings made up of two substances, a mental substance and a physical substance. T hese substances are inrimately related. Indeed, Descartes thinks they actually meet ar a particu lar po inr, rhe pineal gland. 5 Bur rhe fact t hat rhey meet does nor mean that rhey are t he same kind of substance. He writes of rhe body's characteristics rhar: if ir is true that they exist, [they) must inhere in some corporeal or ex tended substance, and not in an inrelligenr substance, since t heir clear and distinct concept does actua lly involve some sort of extension, bur no sort of intelligence w harsoever.6 O f these two substances, it is rhe mind that is tlhe most important in several respects. Fi rst, rhe body cannot be conceived w ithout it. Second, ir is rhe seat of our highest capacities, those of t hinking, judging and free choice. Final ly, iris rhe mind, rhe menral substance, rhar gives rhe body rhe particular animation ir has. lr is nor rhat rhe body wou ld not have any ani marion without rhe mind. Descartes argues rhar rhe bodly cou ld, ar least in principle, operate on its own. "[T]he human body", he tells us: may be considered as a machine, so bui lt and composed of bones, nerves, muscles, veins, blood, and skin rhar even if there were no mind in ir, it would not cease ro move in all rhe ways rhat ir does ar present when it is nor moved under the direction of t he will, nor consequenrly wi rh rhe aid of the mind, bur only by rhe condition of its organs. 7 But ro do rhe particular things rhar a particu lar body does in t he way t hat ir does them requires a mind to be attached ro ir. Th is way of thinking of ourselves remains with us. 1r has been passed down ro us through our Judeo-Chrisrian legacy, wh ich in many ways both influenced and then followed Descartes. T he main stream of this t rad ition

4


holds the body to be a subst ance characterized by fau lt or sin or weakness and the mind robe a substance capable, if ir so chooses, of departing from that corporeal inheritance. Think of such phrases as "mind over matter", or "you can do anything you pur your mind ro" or " it's all in your mind". These cliches, and so many like them, reveal a particular cultural inheritance comm itted ro rwo ideas. First, there is an important separation between mind and body, a separation that Descartes characterizes by say ing rhar they are different substances. Secondly, in this separation, the mental is privi leged with respect to the physical. Many current scientists wou ld dispute Descartes's claim that there is a mental substance distinct from the physical one. They believe that what is called mental substance is nothing more than the working of the brain, or more broadly of the body. (Foucau lt's writings, by the way, are nor contrary to such a viewpoint.) However, the weight of tradition lies heavily on most of us, and it remains difficult to think of ourselves otherwise than as beings rhar are defined as a particular combination of mind and body. Even when we seek to escape this inheritance, it finds it way back through our speech and into our conception of ourselves. Foucau lt is cogn izant of this, and uses ir, as we shall see in derai l later, ro invert our Judeo-Chrisrian legacy when he declares in his book on the prisons that "the soul is the prison of the body" (DP: 30). If we set Descartes aside for a moment to turn to a more nearly contemporary t hinker, we shall see, beyond surface differences, important sim ilarities rhar run through the philosophical tradition. At first ir may be hard ro imagine a thinker more different from Descartes than Sigmund Freud. W'hereas Descartes privi leges consciousness, Freud privileges the unconscious. Where Descartes sees a large measure of free will, Freud sees a long and often unsuccessful struggle to attain any freedom. Where Descartes allows reason to rid us of the burden of false conceptions, Freud sees us as being burdened by a history whose legacy one can never entire ly escape. So who are we, in Freud's view? This is a difficult question to answer, and nor on ly because his writings can be elusive. F~eud seems to present us with rwo distinct topographies of the mind: one that dominates his earl ier writings and another that appears later on. The first one, in which the dist inction between the conscious and the unconscious dominates, wi ll be our focus. The second one, with irs tripartite division into id, ego and superego, can be interpreted in ligh t of the earl ier one, and we shall leave it aside. To think of human beings as having an unconscious, and furthermore to think of who they are as being largely a matter of what happens in that unconscious and how it expresses itself, is a revolutionary idea at t he rime of Freud's wri tings in the early twentieth century. He thinks of the idea as the third great blow to humanity's view of itself as a privileged being in the

5


universe, after Copern icus's d iscovery that the earth revolves around the sun and Darwin 's discovery of the evolution of species. [H)uman megalomania will have suffered its third and most wounding blow from the psychological research of the present time wh ich seeks to prove to the ego that it is not even the master of its own house, bur must content itself with scanty information of w hat is going on unconsciously in its mind! To say that we are largely a maner of our unconscious is to remove us from what the philosoph ical tradition has taught us to consider as our special relation ro reason and self-awareness, a special re lation that is central to Descartes, among others. For Freud, w ho each of us is concerns how we I ive the historical confl icts that characterize our early life. Although the particular character of those conflicts is unique ro each of us, there is a general pattern t hat all of them follow. First, those confl icts are cenrred around oral issues, then anal ones. Next, and most important, t hey concern the Oedipal complex (or, for girls, the Elect ra complex). Taking t he boys' developmenr as exem plary - wh ich is Freud's approach- t he boy falls in love w ith his mother. He would like to be rid of his father, who, after all, is the competition for his love. However, he fears the consequences of his father's wrath; as Freud has it, castration is the imagined consequence. Therefore t he boy must suppress his feelings for his mother. This suppression creates an unconscious, wh ich in turn swallows much of the boy's pre-Oedipal history and sets the stage for the resolution of later conflicts. As Freud conceives the unconscious, it is not merely a container for conflicts or a safe haven for unacceptable feelings or thoughts. The unconscious does not merely receive; it also expresses. Just as it incorporates situations in later life, repressing the elements of those situations that remind us of earlier d ifficulties, so it emerges in indi rect ways in our behaviour. For Freud, jo kes, symptoms and slips of the tongue are ways the unconscious can express itself in our behaviour without those expressions being recognized for what t hey are. One way to describe w ho we are, then, is as a certain type of engagement with the world, an engagemenr that operates largely on an unconscious economy of repression and expression. This economy is one that, w ith the help of a psychoanalyst, we can come to understand, at least to a certain extent. We need t he aid of an analyst because the unconscious has no motivation to reveal itself; moreover, the project of self-understanding is, in Freud's view, a never-ending one. Therefore, each of us can, t hrough a long and often painful process and with the assistance of another, come to some

6


recogn ition of who we are, and perhaps can do something to overcome those aspects of ourselves that we would rather be rid of. Bur this abi lity is limited and is gained at a high price. The other way to describe who we are is as a set of more or less successfully resolved confl icts. This way of describing us is not in conflict with the fi rst. Rather, it focuses on a different aspect of Freud's view, on the history rather than the topography. If we are, on the one hand, largely an unconscious relation wi th the world, it is because we are, on the other, a determined set of conflicts that each of us faces. Those conflicts, again, are at once universal and individual. They are universal in that they unfold according to a pattern t hat holds for all human beings. They are individual in that t hat pattern is inflected in particu lar ways d epend ing on a person's particular history. The conrrast between Freud's focus on the unconscious and Descartes's primacy of the conscious mind could nor be sharper. Although the possibility of the unconscious does not occur to Descartes, it wou ld be safe to say that, if it d id, he would reject it. It runs against the entire grain of his ph ilosophy, with its focus on conscious rationality. tvloreover, one might well say that the idea of an unconscious vio lates the claim that God is not a deceiver, since the point of the unconscious is to engage in a systematic deception of consciousness. If, for instance, the little boy recogn izes that he is suppressing his hatred and fear of his father, and later comes to understand that some of his actions express that hatred and that fear, the unconscious would nor be performing irs function. Although these differences are crucial, there are important simi lari ties between the approaches of Descartes and Freud. Two of them are fundamental for understanding Foucau lt's approach to ·rhe question of who we are: their individualized approach and, although it may seem to be the opposite, their universal character. \Vhen Descartes and Freud ask who we are, they approach the question by ask ing who each of us is in his or her nature. The "we" of who we are is not a collective we. It is an individual I. For Descartes, the answer to the question of who we are is, in irs most important elements, the same as the answer to the question of who each of us is. Each of us is a mind-substance and a body-substance engaged with each other, in wh ich the mind - the conscious, rational mind - is the dominanr aspect. That we could be who we are as a result of a collective experience is irrelevant for him. This is not to say that he denies that people have a co llective experience. It is rather to say that, in undertaking to answer the question of who we are, he does not consider it. It is neglected rather than rejected. With Freud the situation is more complicated. On the one hand, he does allow for collective experience. In fact, his book Moses and Monotheism

7


speculates that one of the seeds of t he Oedipal complex may be a result of the murder of Moses by the Jewish people. This would lend a historical and co llective aspect to his deve lopmental narrative. In additi on, he allows that the particu larity of a person's confl icts may be a result of his or her particular history. This seems to open the door to a collective determination of who someone is, an experience that one shares with others. On the other hand, he gives a fai rly fine-grained interpretation of human development, one that privileges the unfolding of the ind ividual within a developmental pattern that depends on what each individual undergoes. Who we are is a matter of w ho each of us is in the particu lar way each of us resolves a predetermined set of confl icts. And here we can see the intersection of the ind ividualized approach and the universal one. For Freud, as for Descartes, the universal and the individual go hand in hand. It is because they both have a universal approach to who each of us is t hat Freud and Descartes are focused on the ind ividual rather than t he collective. How can this be? To th e extent that one believes that who we are has a universal character, that it is t he same across rimes and places, one w ill also believe that the particularities of a person 's or a society's history are irrelevant in determining who one is. It is to believe that what is essential about us is immune to the contingencies of a changing history. To pur the point another way, it is to believe that w hat is essential about us is someth ing that each of us contains, regardless of our or our culture's or sociery's particu lar experiences or histor ies. And rhus what ma kes us who we are is something that is at once t imelessly uni versal and radically ind ividual. Much of t he history of philosophy will confirm this strange conn ivance between the universal and the individual in the approach to who we are. For a final example, one that might seem to fly in the face of what I have just said, we can look towards a more recent thinker: Jean-Pau l Sarrre. Sarrre's career overlaps with Foucau lt's. In fact, he inhabits the intellectual generation that precedes Foucault's, the generation of the existential ists. For Sartre, especially in his earlier, more purely existential writings, t he answer to the question of who we are can be summed up in a single word : freedom. Sarrre rejects any outside determ ination of who we are. We are simply what we choose robe. If thinkers like Freud and Descartes see us as having an essence it is our fare to live our, Sarrre can be seen as diametrically opposed ro them. "Atheist existential ism, wh ich I represent . .. stares that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in ·w hom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that this being is man. "9 Rather than possessing an essential nature that is inescapably ours (Descartes) or a specific developmental scheme that will define us (Freud), we are instead nothing other than w hat we make of

8


ourselves. We are the projects we choose to engage in. "What we mean is that a man is nothing else than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the ensemble of the relationships which make up these undertakings." 10 Sartre's claim that one is nothing other than one's undertakings is inseparable from his claim that one is one's freedom. They are two sides of the same coin . For someone to be a free being, radically free in the sense Sartre would have it, is for them to be able to undertake any number of projects. It is for them ro choose how ro array the future that fans our in front of them. \Vhen Sartre defines human beings so lely as the sum of their undertakings, what he is rejecting - and the earlier quote defining atheist existentialism hints at this- is the possibi lity t hat we are derermin.ed by something outside us, most likely God. It is the Judea-Christian belief that a person's being is created in God 's image that he rakes aim at. For Sartre, we are nor created in God's image. We are nor created in any imag·e. \XIharever there is of image to be had in us is a product of our own creation. Sartre's answer to t he question of who we are seems to reject the approach embraced by both Descartes and Freud_ For both of them, it is an essential nature that defines us. For Sartre, by contrast, it is precisely the lack of an essential nature that defines us. (One might argue here that Sartre is closer to Descartes than I am indicating here. After al l, might Sarrre's freedom and Descartes's ability to reason nor be more intimately linked t han I have indicated? Indeed they might. I will leave that issue aside here, since it does nor affect the claim I am about ro make.) The deep connection remains intact, however. Just as Descartes and Freud approach the question of who we are by means of the individual and t he universal, so does Sartre. For Sartre, what is important about each of us- we can use t he term essential here, if we do nor confuse it w ith the essential ism that existentialism rejects - is our freedom. Each of us is defined by our freedom. And the reason for this is precisely that freedom is the crucial universal trait of human beings. It is what makes us what we are, or perhaps more appropriate, what we are not, since for Sartre, who was fond of par.adoxes, "human reality must nor be necessari ly what it is bur must be able robe what it is nor". " Someone fami liar with the entire trajectory of Sartre's work might well object here that, in focusing on the writings from the 1940s and early 1950s, I have neglected his later, more Marxist-in spired work. It is in the later work where a collective determination is assimilated t o the existentialism of Sartre's earl ier career. I want ro turn to Marx himself in a moment. This is an important issue, and deserves to be paused over more than I wi ll here. I can only gesture at a response. Sartre does nor replace his existentialism with Marxism . To claim that he does would be, I believe, to deny the originality of his work. Instead, he

9

THE PHILOSOPHY O f FOUCAULT

grafts Marxism on ro exisrenrial ism, showing how rhe ind ividualism of his ea rlier work is acrually compatible wirh rhe col lect ive approach of Marx. In char way, he remains com mined to rhe conn ivance between rhe ind ividual and rhe universa l char is characteristic of borh Descartes and Freud. On rhe ocher side of things, however, rhere is a collectivist character to his Iacer work char does bring him more nearly in al liance wirh Foucau lt. T he rwo thinkers never converge, since Sartre always seeks universal categories, whether in his exisremialisr phase or in his Iacer Marxist one. Bm, seen from rhe perspective of Sarrre's Iacer writings, rhey share more chan rhey do if one focuses solely on Sartre's early career. In looking ar Descartes, Freud and Sarrre (ar leasr Sarrre's exisremial isr period), we have seen char rhese thinkers- and, in as much as rhey are represemarive, t he history of philosophy generally - approach rhe question of who we are by crying ro isolate rhe imporram universal aspect or aspects of human being and claiming char each of us instantiates char aspect or chose aspects. The approach is ar once universal and individual. Is rhere anything wrong w irh chis? T here is. It is nor char such views capture nothing of who we are. There is something to be said for rational self-consciousness as an imporram elemem of human being, even if one rejects rhe idea char humans comprise rwo differem substances. There is an importam rrmh capntred in rhe idea char we are always engaged wirh rhe world in a confl icted way, even if one abandons rhe idea char char confl ict can be traced to an Oedipal core. It seems righr ro say char freedom or something like ir is a characteristic wirhom which a full concepcion of human being wou ld be lacking, even if rhe radical freedom Sarrre posits goes beyond w hat one can accept. Bm there is someth ing missing as we ll. T he accoums offered ro us by Descartes, Freud, Sartre and others focus on purported general defining characteristics of human existence. Bm we are nor generalities. We are nor merely individual instances of a larger human character. We are specific human beings who have specific oriemarions an d w ho deal w ith specific types of concerns in specific, if distinct, ways. \Virh these more general accoums, it feels as though we were shown a particular aspect of the human body and to ld char that is w ho we are. It is as though Descartes showed us, say, the skeleton, and said, "That's you." To which Freud responds, "No; ir's nor rhe skeleton, it's rhe circulatory system." Sarrre, in his turn, says, "In fact, it's the brain." T hese answers are unsatisfying, and nor simply because each of them only captures an aspect of our corporeal srrucrure. The problem is nor simply one of a limited perspective, as though if we added up all rhe aspects of these and other thinkers together we wou ld then have a fu ll accoum of w ho we are. All we would have then is an emire human body. Bm I am nor simply my body. I am also rhe way it moves, rhe way ir thinks and desires. I am irs rhythms. I am t he way it navigates

10


through the world. In order to caprure these aspects of who I am, I cannot simply talk abom general aspects of human being. And, conversely, neither can I just talk abom who I am as an individual. ~ have to talk abom the world in which my navigating occurs, a world that has a specific character and that has unfolded its specific character in a specific way. As it will rurn om, it is often the stamp of this world that, in imporram ways, makes me who I am, makes us who we are. At first, we might say that we have to consider history. Why history? History, as Foucault thinks of it, is not just a maner of discrete evems or movemems t hat happened ro precede us. Thinking of history in that way loses its connection with us, with the way it has helped make us who we are. Alternatively, we cannot think of history as that thing we need to understand to ensure that we are not condemned to repeat ir. In some sense, that wou ld be the opposite of Foucault's view of history. To t hink of history as something repeatable is ro emerrain the possibility that it has ci rcular movemems. Cerra in evems that happened before us are capable, in some form, of remrning. But that can't be right. Cou ld it possibly be that, in the early rwemy-first cemury, something that happened in the Renaissance could happen again? Or, if we tone down the idea, that something like what happened in the Renaissance could happen again? Surely, similar causes have similar effects. Bm in srudying history, we are as much at a loss ro isolate causes and effects as we are in anything else. What are the causes of the French Revolmion, the New Deal, or global ization? The idea that we repeat history, even in kind, is at best an elusive one. In any case, there is another, perhaps bener, way to approach our history. Perhaps we should think of our history as the temporal movemem that has deposited us on these particular shores. On this view, history is a pan of us. It is not disconnected from us in the way the approach to history as a series of d iscrete events would have it. However, if history is a pan of us, if it helps determ ine who we are, this is not simply in virrue of its strucrure. It is not because hisrory is circular or because it takes some other shape that we are a product of it. It is because this particu lar history, with t hese part icular evems, led us ro this place and not some other. The history that has brought us here could have been differem. It d id not have t o rake the paths it rook. If it had, we ourselves wou ld be differem from who we are. Bm it rook these paths, which means both that we are this rather than that and, in a lesson that will be equally impon am, we are this rather than that as a maner of contingency, not necessity. \Y/e did not have robe this rather than that, which means, among other t hings, that we do not have to cominue ro be this. Already we can begin ro appreciate the distance that separates Foucau lt from the tradition that includes Descartes, Freud and Sartre. For Foucaul t,

11


who we are concerns not only what human beings are at their core. It is, more importantly, a matter of who we are now, of what we have been made to be by the history that has formed us. If we can recount that history, or, since history itself is comp lex, those hist ories, then we can address more adequately the question of who we are. We can start to think of ourselves as something more than generalities. \'i/e can situate ourselves and see who we are in terms of that situation. Foucault is not the first to think of who we are as a matter of history. However, he thinks of it in a new way. In order to understand his view, we can approach it, again, by contrast. Here the contrast wou ld be with Karl Marx. For thinkers of Foucault's generation, the generation o f the 1960s and 1970s, Marx occup ies a central place in all political and ph ilosophica l discussion. It is hard to imagine or to remember now, almost twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, how dominant lvl arxism was on the European pol itical landscape. Bur dominant it was. In France, for instance, there was a Marxist parry, the Parti Commun iste Fran\f'lis (PCF), that ran cand idates for office, that had a strong grip on the trade union movement, and that was the touchstone for progressive thought and action. Although in the uprisings in France in May and June of 1968, the PCF began to lose credibility by siding with t he government in the suppression of the smdent and worker revolts, for many years before then the progressive who spoke ourside the parameters defined by Marxist thought was very much an anomaly. Marx thinks of who we are as a matter of hist ory. This does not mean that he denies t hat there is a human essence. He does have, at least in his early writings, a commitment to the idea that humans are a species-being. Man is a species-being, not on ly because he practically and theoretically makes the species - both his own and those of other things -his object, bur also - and this is simply another way of saying the same thing- because he looks upon himself as the present, living species, because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being." For the early Marx, this species-being, t his being who is in its essence free, productive and self-consti tuting, is alienated from itself under capital ism and requ ires a commun ist revo lution to be achieved. Bur the fact that we have this species-being, even in an alienated form, does not mean that history is on ly secondary for Marx. In Marx's view, who we are at a given moment is largely a matter of where we stand in the unfo ld ing of our hist ory. Human history can be seen as the unfolding of our productive relationship with nature and with one another. For Marx, human beings are part of nature, bur a part of nature that, in surviving and reproducing itself, also refash ions nature. It has been

12


sa id that Marx reduces everyth ing to economics. This may be true, but Marx 's view of econom ics is far broader than our own. Econom ics, for him, is nothing less than the social interaction with the natural world t hrough which we produce and reproduce ourselves. We make ourselves and one another through the production of our lives together, and t his pro· ducti on occurs as a matter of our working and reworking the material world we find ourselves in, that is, nature. As it happens, for most of human history this making and remaking occurs under cond itions of scarcity. There is not enough for everyone to create for themselves an adequate life. People must compete for the scarce resources that are available. The resu lt is that there are some who have more and others who have less. There are, as Marx puts it, classes. Those who have more can, and do, dominate those who have less; in turn, those who have less struggle against that domination. "The history of all hitherto existing society", he declares at the outset of The Communist Manifesto, " is t he history of class struggles." 13 This relationship of struggle is not constant. The character of classes, as well as those who make them up, changes. They change wi th changing econom ic cond itions. The productive condi tions of a particular society wi ll change until the class relationsh ips that comprise those conditions no longer fit them. \Vhen that happens there will be a revo lution of some sort and a new set of class relationships wi ll emerge. This wi ll continue unti l scarcity has been overcome. For Marx, the possibility of overcoming scar· city is produced by capitalism because of its enormous productive capacity. However, the inequ ities of capita lism wi ll allow scarcity to rema in unti l the last revolution, the communist revo lution, has ended all class relationships. In t his view of t hings, who we are at a particular moment is a matter of our place in history. More specifically, it is a matter of our place in a par· ticular class in history. We do not have to see Marx comm itting himself to t he idea that the entirety of who each of us is is reducible to our class posi· t ion. We need not see Marx, although some of h is interpreters do, as a determ inist who argues that everyth ing about a person is reducible to the class they occupy. Marx once argued that "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances d irectly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."" People may not be reducible to their histories, but they cannot escape those histories either. If we are, in part at least, a product of our history, then is there anyth ing in particular about how our history unfolds that makes us who we are? Or is our history contingent? Does it un fold w ithout any necessary pattern or order? In Marx's eyes, there is a pattern, and it is a necessary one. Recall t hat, for him, class relations change when they can no longer be sustained as

13


the econom ic conditions of a society evolve. For instance, late in the feudal world a nascent bourgeoisie arises, a class that is c haracterized nor by ownersh ip of the land bur by ownership of small facro.ries and large workshops. This rising bourgeoisie is excluded from positions of power and influence, which are retained by the landed aristocracy. The tension between these two classes is also, and for the same reasons, a tension between t he structure of a society as it currently is (wi th the aristocracy in a dom inant position), and the relationships between a group with an increasing share of economic resources (the emerging bourgeoisie) and a group that is, relative ro this group, losing theirs (t he old aristocracy). As Marx someti mes summarizes the point, there is a confl ict between the mode of production and the relations of production. When this conflict becomes roo much for a given mode of production to bear, then a revolution occurs that creates a new one. In this case, feudalism gives way t o cap ital ism. Th is is how history unfolds. The movement accords with what Marx 's predecessor, Georg H egel, calls the dialectic. In Hegel's view, history (and nor just history: ideas, nature and much else) unfolds d ialectically. T here is a given si tuation. T hat situati on is nor a stable one. It is characterized by internal tensions. Eventua lly, those tensions overwhelm the situation and create another situation, one that is very different and perhaps even opposed at many points to the first situation. However, the second situarion, like the first, is unstable; it has irs own internal tensions. As the second situation unfo lds, those tensions, as they did in the first situation, become sharper. Once again, they overwhelm the situation and a new situation is created. This movement, from internally unstable situati on t o rising tension to revolution to new situation, is how history progresses. For Hegel, as for Marx, history w ill evenmally yield a stable situation where all the important interna l tensions are resolved. T hat will be the end of history, at least as an evolving dialectic. There are sign ificant differences between Hegel's view of the dialectic of history and Marx's. First, for Hegel the d ialectic is as much conceptual as, or even more so than, ir is material. Marx, for h is parr, sees t he dialectic arising on the basis of human beings' material productive relations with the natural world . Secondly, Hegel believes rhar t he final stage of history arrives in the course of his lifetime, t hat he is witnessing the last stage of the dialectic. For Marx, the last stage of history needs another revolution, the communist revolution. He sees Hegel's thought stopping one stage short of completion. For both thinkers, however, t here is a structure to the way history unfolds, the way it makes us who we are. This is w here Foucault parts company with tvlarx. In Foucault's view, ro rake history as unfolding in accordance with a necessary pattern or structure is not to rake history seriously enough. It is to subm it history t o

14


a principle outside t he specific movement of irs events, a principle that dictates the nature or the direction of that movement. H istory becomes subject to a transcendent principle outside it or an immanent principle that determ ines it. It is as t hough history does nor exist on irs own terms, bur is rather an example or an expression of something ahisrorical. Such a view of history is essentialist, in the way that Sartre sees previous views of human being as essential ist. For Sartre, the Genesis story of erearion, in wh ich man is created in God's image, is essential ist. In t his story man is simply an expression of an essence that he does nor create. Man exempl ifies a nature that precedes him. Sartre holds that human beings create t heir own natures. We do nor express or exemp lify pre-given ones. In much t he same way a Marxist view of history is essential ist. It rakes history as a matter of expressing the movement of the dialectic. History does nor possess irs own integrity; irs existence is preceded by an essence. \Yie might say that, in this particu lar sense, history is existential in Foucault's eyes. Th is does not mean that history creates itsel f in the way t hat Sartre thinks human beings create themselves. T hat wou ld anthropomorphize history. It is nor that history creates itself; it is that it is nor created by some transcendent, overarching or underlying princip le. It does nor necessarily progress or regress. It does nor necessarily move in a circle. It does nor necessari ly repeat anything. It may progress, or regress, or circle, or repeat. Bur if it does, then this is because of particular local conditions t hat have arisen, nor because it lies in t he character of history itself to do so. H istory ex ists on irs own terms and must be smdied on irs own terms. T hat is w hat it means to say that Foucau lt rakes history more seriously t han others, like Marx, who have introduced history into t heir account of who we are.

Foucau lt addresses the question of w ho we are by appeal ing to history. H e hopes to be able to give a richer, more robust answer to that question by abandoning both the universaVindividual approach of Descartes, Freud and San:re, and the ahisrorically determ ined historical approach embraced by Marx. He jettisons the first because it neglects the role that our collective history plays in creating w ho we are. He rejects the second because it submits that collective history to a determi ning principle, and thus circl es back to the universal ism of the first approach. Inst ead, Foucau lt sees us largely as products of a contingent history. Our history has made who we are today, nor because it had ro, bur just because it did, because at certain junctures it rook one path as opposed to another. Perhaps it rook that path because of the in fluence of local events, or perhaps because of some mistaken or overdeterm ined view of things that peop le had, or maybe because of chance. Bur for whatever reason, it did. And rhus we find ourselves here as opposed to t here.

15

THE PHilOSOPHY OF FOUCAULT

We are nor barred from ever gerring rhere as opposed to here. Or berrer, if we are so barred, ir is nor because rhe narure of rhings prevenrs ir bur because local condi tions cannor be rurned in rh ar d irection. There is no deep reason rhar keeps us here insread of rhere. T har, as I have said, will rurn our robe a crucial po inr. \Yie can already see rhar rhe world bequeathed ro us by our hisrory, and we ourselves, are much more malleable rhan prev ious thinkers have led us ro believe. We musr ask whar ir means ro say rhar we are a producr, or largely a producr, of a conringenr history. This means more rhan ir mighr seem on rhe surface. To embrace rhis view of ourselves is nor simply ro invoke eirher hisrory or conringency. Nor is ir only ro declare an inrersecrion benveen rhe nvo. In Foucau lt's hands, ro say rhar we are a producr of a conringenr hisrory is ro comm ir ro a view of ourselves rhar has a number of characteristics. Togerher, rhey add up ro borh a radically new approach ro rhe question of who we are and an imporranr opening on ro rhe question of who we m igilr be. We can iso lare five fearures of rhis view. Firsr, who we are is largely a collective marrer, or, ro pur ir anorher way, rhe question of w ho each of us is individually is deeply bound ro rhe question of wl1o we are. Secondly, rhar co llective dererminarion of w ho we are is nor something rhar we can simply shake off; in being historical, who we are is embedded in a hisroricall egacy rhar is nor simply a marrer of choice. T hirdly, rbar dererminarion is complex. Iris nor a single historical rheme rhar makes us w ho we are ar a given momenr, bur insread an inrerplay of rhemes rhar weave rogerher, splir aparr, reform and transform. To see who we are, t hen, we musr nor look ar ourselves wirh a bird's-eye view. We musr look ar our particular historically given practices. Fourrh ly, rhose practices are ried up nor only wirh how we acr bur also w irh how we go abour knowing rhings (or arrempring ro know rhem or thinking we know rhem) and especially how we go abour knowing ourselves. Fifthly, although we have already seen this, rhis historically given complex of pracrices through which we know and, indeed, are is conringenr and therefore changeable. We did nor conrrol how we became who we are, and who we are is nor simp ly something we can walk away from; nevertheless, we do nor have ro be who we are. \YIe can be otherwise. And ro be otherwise, as ir w ill rurn our, is nor simply something I can be. Usually, ir is somet hing rhar we can be: nor all of us, to be sure, bur certain ly more rhan one. Before Turn ing to rhe specific histories in w hich Foucault rraces rhe lineage of w ho we are, ir would be worrh lingering over rhese five characteristics. They frame rhe histories he gives. T hey keep alive rhe idea as we survey rhose histories rhar rhere is more going on rhan a mere recirarion of facrs. The firsr characrerisric is rhar who we are is largely a collective marrer. We

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cannot think of ourselves simply as individuals, divorced from the historically given context in which we find ourselves. There are a number of theories that seem to want to consider us as atoms, as ind ividuals separable from our specific context. For instance, the individual ism of traditional liberal political t heory seems to see us rhus. Indeed, liberal po litical theory has been attacked by a movement called communitarianism for allegedly neglecting our embedded ness in specific contexts. Although Foucault is no communitarian- he rends t o view those specific contexts with a more jaundiced eye than do commun itarians - he ratifies the idea that who we are is not separable from them. W/e need not turn to political theory, however, to see the individualism Foucault rejects. It is all around us. It lies in the notion, dear to many Americans, that one can be whoever one likes as long as one is willing to work at it. To be sure, this notion has irs virtues. For instance, it offers optimism in the face of obstacles. However, it is, strictly speaking, mistaken on two counts. First, it assumes that each of us is an iso lated individual, that our past and our future are not collective but individual matters. Secondly, and related, it assumes that the conditions in which each of us finds ourselves are not deeply a part of who we are, that each of us can shrug off our historically given social in heri tance and assume another. This is certainly wrong. I, for instance, wi ll always be someone who grew up in New York during the Vietnam War period. My peregrinati ons, no matter how far they lead me geograph ically or emotionally or chronologically from that rime and place, wi ll always be informed by the legacy of being raised in that city during that period. Who I am will always be, at least in parr, a matter of that past. This is the second characteristic of Fouc.~ulr's histories. It is tied to the first one, that who I am is a lso inseparable from who other people are. After all, I was not the only person who grew up in New York at t hat rime. There were others. Some of them I have remained in contact with, and others I have met later in life. The recognition is always immediate. There are things that we share, an outloo k that we can, if not embrace, t hen certainly relate to, one that is foreign to many others I have met. Who I am, then, is a collective matter, not simply an individual one. And irs tie to who I am runs deep. For Fouc.~ulr, this collective matter is common not only to a very specific rime and place. It involves much wider themes, larger cu ltural orientations that, for him, operate across Europe, and sometimes the \'(/estern world, as well as across a number of practices. These themes are also of longer standing, often centuries in duration. The idea remains, however, t hat who each one of us is cannot be separated from a common his tory that has created the landscape we in habit. Commonality, inseparabiliry: two themes fram ing the histories of who we are that Foucau lt recounts.

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Bur, someone will say, you are not solely a person who grew up in New York during the Vietnam War. You are more than that; your historical determination is more complicated. It comprises mu ltiple sources that arise from vastly different arenas of experience. You spent years working in the field of psychology (at least until you starred readi ng Foucault's histories of psychology); you are engaged in child rearing; you teach at a university; you are a serious runner; you have organ ized on behalf of various progressive causes. Surely the collective histories of these d ifferent practices are also determinative for who you are. You are not simply the resu lt of being an ado lescent in New York during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is true. It makes the histories of each of us com plex. It also ma kes the histories of our particular contexts complex. There are norms of child rearing, of university teaching, of running, of progressive organizing. T hese norms, and t he practices in w hich they are embedded, sometimes overlap and sometimes confl ict. They are neither entirely liso lared from one another nor reducible to a single theme that binds them. In order to study the emergence of each of them, we have to look close to the ground. A general history of our rimes wi ll not do. Worse still, a history that focused on what the leaders of t he time - those anointed by the med ia, the electoral political structure, or by themselves - would be entirely irrelevant. \Ve must look where peop le live, at the practices that they engage in or that, one way or another, come to engage them. Over the course of his life Foucault says many things about his method, often from different angles, and oft en sh ifting, depending on his current interests. One of the most important and enduring, however, is this: In this piece of research [Discipline and Punish], as in my earlier work, the targec of analysis wasn't "institut ions", ''theories," or "ideology," but practices . .. It is a question of analyzing a "regime of practices" - practices being understood here as places w here what is said and what is done, ru les imposed and reasons given, the planned and the taken for granted meet and interconnect. (QM: 75) Practices are what people live. T hey determ ine w ho we are not by imposing a set of constraints from above, but t hrough historical ly given norms through w hich we t hink and act. T hese historical ly given norms are, once again, neither divorceable from nor reducible to what people often consider t heir larger historical context. The insistence of psychology in so many business and educationa l practices, embedded in t he larger concern with normality that is an ongoing theme of Foucault's research, cannot be separated from the emergence and dom ination of capita lism. Bur neither is

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it reducible to capitalism in the way that many Marxists would have it, as a superstructure that is simply erected upon the econom ic base. It is a practice or a group of practices that interact with other practices, both economic and non-economic, and that share or borrow or cross-fertilize or rein force important themes, all in complex ways. The convergence, conflict and reinforcement of practices can create effects that are unintended by those who participate in them. For instance, as we wil l see in detail below, those who are members of monasteries in the early eighteenth century and before do not intend their rigid daily schedules to be part of t he larger social development of what Foucau lt calls discipline, a term he uses to cover t he minute observati on and regimentat ion of daily life under the banner of normaliry. Monks of the t ime, in their isolation, do not foresee that their practices will intersect with those of the Prussian mi litary or the prison reformers in order to foster the rise of normality as a crucial form of the operation of power i n our world. However, since practices intersect with one another in various ways, even the relative isolation of monks cannot prevent the incorporarion of their regimented life into other practices whose convergence gives way to disciplinary control. Foucault puts the point this way: "People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don 't know is what what they do does."" If practices are engaged with one another in this way, then one can begin to understand the contingency of history, particularly in regard to its determination of who we are. The complexiry of interacting practices does not lend itself to a single overarch ing theme. To see what is at play in our historical inheritance cannot be a matter of finding the key to unlock the mysteries of its workings; it must be a matter of looking at the unfold ing, the evolution and the interaction of particu lar practices. In discovering who we are, there is no privileged place to look, as some Marxists would like to look at the economy. There is no privileged theme to discover, as some t heorists wou ld like to discover progress or d ialectics or circular recurrence. There are only the particularities of what has come before, structured by the various practices in wh ich we are all engaged. This is not to deny that the contingency of history may give rise to important t hemes, themes that run across large swaths of a specific historical context. Foucault often seeks to understand such themes as discipl ine, normalization, bio-politics, or, in his earl ier work, resemblance, classificat ion, and death seen as a natural development of lite. What it denies is that t hese themes structure the unfo ld ing of history from above, within, or outside it. These themes emerge from the unfolding of practices. Once in place, they may, for a time, react back on those practices to give them fu rt her strucntre. But it is not because t he themes have an independence from

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our practices that they do so; it is precisely because they are inseparable from them. One of the aspects, and for Foucau lt one of the most important aspects, of this inseparability of themes from practices concerns knowledge. Although there are many shifts in Foucau lt's approach to history over the course of his career - changing from what has been called archaeology to genealogy to ethics, discovering the importance o f power, turning from the ex ternal consrimrion of who we are to our own self-consrimrion - the preoccupation w ith knowledge remains a constant with him. For Foucau lt, knowledge is something that always happens in our practices. One does nor know someth ing from a standpoint outside the practices that make one up. There is, as the phi losopher Thomas Nagell puts it, no "view from nowhere" . Our knowledge is situated in our practices. This simaring has several implications. First, our knowledge changes as our practices change. In the unfolding of our contingent history, we will know things in different ways depending on the stare and structure of our practices at a particular rime. To pur the po int another way, we will know differently at d ifferent periods. This does nor mean that nothing we know is ever true, or that knowledge is mere ly a shifting opinion. If Foucault's perspective is right, then one cannot claim that nothing we ever know is true or that knowledge is merely a shift ing opinion. Both of those views would presume that we can somehow exit our practices, and w ith them our knowledge, to obtain a view above or outside them: in short, a view from nowhere. Bur that is precisely what Foucault's perspective precludes. A second implication of the embeddedness of our knowledge in our practices is that what goes on in those practices wi ll affect how we go abou t the project of knowing. Our knowing is nor on ly inseparable from our practices generally; it is inseparable from the norms and doings and sayings those practices consist in. This idea becomes important in Foucault's genealogical works, where the theme of power emerges as a central concern of his thought. If knowledge occurs w ithin our p~acrices, and power arises within those same practices, then there must be an inti mate connection between knowledge and power. In contrast to those who wou ld like to see knowledge as something that happens apart from the impurity of power relat ionships, knowledge and power are entwined. "Perhaps", Foucault wntes:

we shou ld abandon a whole tradition that allows us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where power relations are suspended . .. These "power-knowledge" relations are to be analysed, t herefore, nor on the basis of a subject of knowledge wl1o is or is nor free in

20


relation ro rhe power sysrem, bur, on rhe conrrary, rhe subject who knows, rhe objects to be known and rhe modalities of knowledge musr be regarded as so many effects of rhese fundamenral implications of power-knowledge and their historica l transformations. (DP: 27-8) Foucault's ofr-ci red concept "power-knowledge" does nor reduce knowledge to power, as some have argued. Nor does ir see our purported knowledge as simply masking relations of power. Instead, ir rakes power and knowledge ro be embedded in practices whose history and effects Foucault rakes ir as his rask to understand. If who we are is a marrer of our practices rarher rhan of some human essence rhar determ ines us, rhen who we are is much more fluid and changeable rhan we are often taughr. This is not to deny rhar rhe historical grip of our practices is a tighr one. On the conrrary, iris precisely the facr thar our historical grip holds us so tighrly rhat makes ir seem to us rhar we can nor live otherwise rhan rhe way we do now, rhar we can nor be something orher rhan whar we are. However, if hisrory is conringen r, rhen irs grip is not inescapable. How things are is not how t hey musr be. By understand ing our history we can intervene upon ir. "My optimism", Foucau lt says: cons ists .. . in saying rhar so many things can be changed, fragile as they are, bound up more wi rh circumstances rhan wi rh necessities, more arbitrary rhan se lf-evidenr, more a marrer of complex, bur temporary, historical circumstances than with inevitable anthropological consrrainrs . .. You know, ro say rhat we are much more recent rhan we think ... [is) ro place at rhe disposal of the work rhar we can do on ourselves rhe grearesr possible share of whar is presenred to us as inaccessible. (PC: 156) Circumstances rarher rhan necessities; temporary consrrainrs rarher rhan anthropological ones; arbitrary rarher rhan self-evidenr; fragile: thar is rhe character of the historical trajectory thar has broughr us here. lr has made us w ho we are nor because ir cou ld nor make us anyth ing else. We can become otherwise. To do so, however, requires us to understand who we have been made to be, and, more imporranr, to recogn ize the historically conringenr character of rhar making. Otherwise, who we mighr be, as opposed ro who we are, will seem t o us robe "inaccessible". lr is only a small srep to see thar robe otherwise tlhan who we are can only rarely be an individual rask. One does nor acr, one does not creare oneself, in a vacuum. If who I have been made ro be is in separable from who we have been made to be, and if who we are is bound to rhe practices we

21


engage in and that engage us, it is difficult to imagine how being otherwise can be accompl ished w ithout others. One does nor create new practices on one's own. One does nor alter the practices one participates in without it having effects on others. One does nor understand one's own complex history without recourse to the work of those who have also attempted to understand t heirs. If who we are is a collective project, then so is the project of being otherwise than who we are. What is certain is t hat the project of being orhenvise is nor " inaccessible". We do nor have to be who we are currently constituted to be. And in that sense, we might refine the question that frames Foucault's work. Rather than asking, " \Vho are we?", we might see Foucault asking t he question, "Who are we tiOll!?" Although much of his historical work describes a trajectory that precedes us, he often ends his books by drawing lessons for the character of our current ways of being. It is nor that the question of who we are is t he wrong one; it is rather that the question of who we are, asked righ tly, is the same as the question of w ho we are now. If we turn away from timeless or inescapable answers to the questi on of w ho we are, then, unless we rake as our task a mere historical curiosity about who we once were, the po int of our doing history, the goal of our research, is to understand who we are now.

In an essay on the philosopher Immanuel Kant, Foucault makes this clear. Responding roan essay of Kant's entitled "What is Enlightenment?", Foucau lt writes that w hat modernity offers us, and what much of the critical project of modernity has been, is a reflection on who we have been made to be and how we might escape the consrra;nts of that making: The critical ontology of ourselves must be considered nor, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumu lating; it must be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a ph ilosoph ical life in w hich the critique of what we are is at one and the same rime the historical analysis of the lim its imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them. (WE: 319) Kant's text is a reflection on the Enlightenmen t written by someone who is livi ng through it. It is an attempt to grasp, to understand the present as it is happen ing. T hat, in Foucault 's view, is a striking fearure of the modern era and a legacy of the En ligh tenment: it promotes a critical relation to one's present. Foucaul t writes: [T)he thread wh ich may connect us w ith the Enlightenment is nor fai thfulness to doctrinal elements bur, rather, t he permanent

22


reactivation of an artimde - rhat is, of a philosophical ethos rhar cou ld be described as a permanent critique of our historical era. (Ibid.: 312) Foucault rakes himself, like Kant, robe inscribed in rhar ethos. Foucau lt is not anti-modern: nor is he postmodern. He is, at least in his own eyes, precisely modern. He seeks to understand the presenr and who we have been made to be in that present, nor to satisfy a passing curiosity burro open up the possibility for new ways of being. Foucau lt never does tell us, aside from offering a few suggestive phrases, what these new ways of being shou ld consist in. That is our task, rhe task of each of us alone and many of us together. His rask consists in asking about our present, asking who we have come to be in rhe present. Bur the task is not an idle one. Rather, "this task requires work on our limits, that is, a patient labor giving form ro our impatience for liberty" (ibid.: 3 19). It is directed ar once towards our present and towards our future. Ir is ar once a historical analysis and an invi tation to change. It is at once the project of a single individual, alone in a dusty archive, immersed in faded documents, and of those who engage in conversation with rhe works rhar emerge from that immersion, and, yer again, of those who, having read him or heard of his work or anticipated his words w ith their own lives, would converge on a project of self-understanding and self-transformation that can use rhe material of who we are in order ro create new possibilities for who we might be. Near the end of his life, Foucault puts the point this way: As for what motivated me, ir is quite simple; I wou ld hope that in the eyes of some it might be sufficient in itself. ft was curiosity- rhe on ly kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not t he curiosity that seeks ro assimilat e what it is proper for one to know, bur that wh ich enables one to get free of oneself. (UP: 8) \Vith Foucau lt, we must ask who we are, who we a.re now. We must follow the thread of this question in his texts and rhe responses, always partial, that he gives. Bur this path will, in the end, prove useless unless there is rhe passion for who we might be. Foucau lt does nor provide rhar. He can reveal the contingency of who we have been told that we are, bur he cannot inflame rhe des ire to be otherwise. That must come, if indeed it does come, from those whose own lives are at stake.

23

CHA PTER TWO

Archaeological histories of who we are

H ow might we embark on a historical approach, or a set of historica l approaches, to address the question of who we are? Because of the complex ity of our historical inheritance there are many avenues of entry. No single one among of them is preferred or exhaustive. There is no Archimedean point. Foucau lt himself, at different rimes in his life, offers d ifferent interpretations of his own approach. Usually, t hose interpretations de pend on what is motivating him at the time; he rends to see his previous writings in ligh t o f current interests. There is, however, a traditional classification of his published writings into th ree periods: archaeology, genealogy and ethics. The first period encompasses the time from his first major publication, Histoire de Ia folie a/'age classique (partially translated into Engl ish as lvfadness and Civilization) through his last methodological work on archaeology, The Archaeology of Knowledge. The other major works o f that period are The Birth ofthe Clinic and The Order ofThings. The second period is characterized by rwo major works, Discipline and Punish and t he first volume of The History of Sexuality. The final period encompasses his last two published volumes of the history of sexual ity, The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self. If we are to give dares to t hese periods, we might say t hat the archaeo logical period runs from 1961 unril1968 or 1969, the genealogical period unti l 1978 or so, and t he ethical period until his death in 1984. How usefu l is this periodizari on? Although it is the standard one, many have argued that the divisions in Foucau lt's approach are far less decisive than it wou ld seem to suggest. If Foucault sees co.ntinuiry in his own work, even if that continuity differs in character depending on the d ifferent stages of his career, should we nor also see his writings .as forming a more or less continuous who le? Or, if we rake Foucault seriously in those moments where he seems to say that each o f his texts is a singular experiment, should we nor jettison periodizarion from the other end? Should we nor argue against periodizarion precisely because there is nothing li ke a continuous

24

ARCHAEOLOGICAL HISTORIES OF WHO WE ARE

who le characterizing his works, nor even an important continuity between any one and irs successor? There are reasons ro embrace any of these readings of his corpus. \Y/e wi ll, at least roughly, fol low periodization here, although along the way I wi ll point our reasons t o be leery of it. There wi ll be reasons t o see the cont inuity, and reasons to see the singu larity, of each work. \Y/e c.~nnor treat all of his works here without betraying the riches that each brings; we wi ll focus on those most often discussed. And even so, betraya l will be inevitable. Throughout our readings, however, there will be a single theme that returns, one that characterizes the entire trajectory of Foucault's publicat ions. What all these periods have in common is that they are framed by a historical concern with the emergence of who we are.

The history of madness The history of madness (in Histoire de Ia folie) is h is first major work. It is the firsr work where he speaks in his own voice, the voice that will be recognized over the course of the rest of his career. Before the book on madness, and in keeping w ith the intellectual tenor of the time in Europe, Foucau lt writes under the convergent influences of phenomeno logy and Marxism . In an interview he speaks of this ea rly period: we shou ld nor forget that throughout the period from 1945 ro 1955 in France, the entire French university - the young French university, as opposed to what had been the trad itional university - was very much preoccupied with the task of building something wh ich was nor Freudian-Marxist bur Husserlian-Marxist: the phenomenology-Marxism relation. That is what was at stake in the debates and efforts of a whole series of people. [Maurice) Merleau-Ponry and Sarrre, in moving from phenomenology ro (CT/IH: 21) Marxism, were definitely operating on that axis.

Histoire de Ia folie breaks decisively with the early project. Phenomenology rakes a person's subjective experience to be the crucial object of investigation. It seeks to understand the structure of a person 's experience, to unfo ld that which, although experienced, needs to be reflected upon in a r igorously descriptive way if it is to become accessible to the understanding. Foucault's book on madness rejects phenomeno logy. It sh ifts the ground from the project of unpacking and derail ing an experience that has nor yet

25


been fully clarified to a historical investigation of the different structures for treating madness. It is those structures that frame t he subjective experience. Rather than asking, as the phenomeno logists d id, " What is it like to experience such-and-such?", Foucault asks instead, "What are the shift ing historical frameworks within wh ich such-and-such - in this case madnessis experienced ?" The investigat ion no longer concerns w hat the ind ividual undergoes; it concerns the historical conditions of their undergoing it. If we use terms loosely, we might say that the axis o.f investigation has shifted from inside the individual to outside. In order to grasp these shifting historical frameworks, we cannot rake madness as an objective given. It is not that there is t his disease or this structure or this way of being called madness that has been experienced d ifferen tly in different historical periods. Why should we assume that beneath the frameworks within wh ich madness is t reated, there is some constant that informs them all? This wou ld assume roo much. Alternative ly, we need not assume the opposite, that there is nothing that any of these frameworks is looking at, that they are all preoccupied w ith an illusion. Rather, we should make no assumptions about t he object of study and treatment called "madness". \Yie shou ld look at t he historical frameworks for w hat t hey are, and, more important, for what t hey reveal to us about ourselves, rather t han for what they may or may not reveal about t he object of their investigati on. In order to do this, Foucau lt suggests that we return to the point at wh ich madness becomes distingu ished from reason. "We must try to return, in history, to t hat zero po int in the course of madness at wh ich madness is an undifferentiated experience, a not yet divided experience of division itself" (MC: ix).' T he experience of madness emerges from a historical contex t in which madness first appears as such, as an experience distinct from reason. Foucau lt begins his investigation just before that context in order to trace irs development. In t he Middle Ages, he writes, madness does not have a distinct character, or at least it does not have the character we have come to ascribe to it, as the O ther of reason. Instances of what we woul.d call madness are woven more seamless ly into the fabric of medieval experience. As t he Middle Ages come to a close, however, the figure of madness begins to appear. Soon the mad wi ll rake the place, both figuratively and literally, of the medieval leper. The houses of leprosy w ill be cleared. They will, at least in parr, be replaced by the madhouses. As lepers were once rl1e object of practices and rituals of exclusion, hidden at the edges of medieval life in lazar houses, now the mad will occupy t heir place. It will be t he same gesture, in any case: exclusion and confinement. In what gu ise do the mad begin to make their appearance - t hat is, their appearance as mad? Foucault answers t his question by appeal to the

26

ARCHAEO LOGICAL HISTORIES OF WHO WE ARE

arresting image of the Ship of Fools. Ships of Fools were said to be ships that towns filled with their mad, sending them off on uncerta in journeys, but at least ridding the towns of their presence. Why, however, would their presence constintte a threat? In t he late medievan and early Renaissance period, madness comes to be associated with mysterious nether regions. It is associated with animality, with darkness, and ultimately wi th death. The dawn of madness on the horizon of the Renaissance is first perceptible in the decay of Gothic symbo lism; as i f that world, whose network of spiritual meanings was so close-kn.it, had begun to unravel, showing faces whose meaning was no longer clear except in (MC: 18) t he forms o f madness. In t he disintegration of the medieval perspective, madness appears as the indeci pherable symbol of hidden truths. It is the dark underside of existence that can neither be escaped nor understood. As such, it is an object of both fascination and repulsion. In Foucault's eyes, it is no accident that two of the major authors of the time, Cervantes and Shakespeare, often give madness pride of place in their works. For Cervantes, the figure of Don Quixote constitutes a madness that is at once fool ish and wise, but in any case possessed of an unsenling power. In Shakespeare's plays, one need on ly refer to the madness of H am let or the twisted truths of King Lear's fool to recognize the i mportance he accorded the mad experience. The Ship o f Fools encapsulates this combination of fascination of repu lsion. On the one hand, the ships are objects of painting, o f discussion, and of public policy. On the other, their purpose is to depart, to leave, and to let human kind alone. Do these ships actua lly exist? Foucault says they did. Other historians are sceptical. Later, after recounting Foucault's own history of madness, we wi ll need to return to the question of the historical status of his account. Is his account accurate, and what effect might particular inaccuracies have upon it? For the moment these questions can be placed to the side. What is clear is that the ambiguous status enjoyed by madness during the late medieval and early Renaissance period decl ines, and by the seventeenth century madness is no longer the figure of darkness or of death. There is a historical break. Madness becomes more pedesnian. It is not a stalking ani mal within each of us, nor is it a sign of impending d isintegration; it becomes mere folly. (During the Renaissance, madness was, at times, also conceived as fo lly, but not as mere folly.) Madness is here, at the heart o f things and o f men, an iron ic sign that misplaces the true guideposts between the real and the

27


ch imerical, barely retaining the memory of the great tragic t hreats - a life more disturbed than disturbing, an absurd agitation in society, rhe mobility of reason. (MC: 37) One can glimpse this change in the rrearmenr o f madness in Descartes's Meditations. Recall rhe movemenr of doubt rhar is Descartes's method of philosophical reflection . In order ro arrive at what must necessarily be t rue, what cannot be suspect, and whar therefore can serve as the foundation of t he rest of our knowledge, one must doubt everything that cannot be held certain. The senses are doubted. Mathematical knowledge is doubted. Descartes even raises the possibility of an Evi l Genius rhar systematically deceives him and clouds his thought. What is nor enrerrained, w hat cannot reasonably be enrerrained, is t he possibility rhar one is mad. When doubting rhe senses, Descartes raises rhe possibi lity rhar one is mad, on ly ro dismiss ir and then approach the issue from another direction: rhar one is asleep. As for madness, he writes: how cou ld I deny rhar these hands and this body are mine, un less I am ro compare myself with certain lunati cs whose brain is so troubled and befogged by the black vapors of the bile rhar they conrinual ly affirm rhar they are kings whi le they are paupers .. . or rhar their body is glass? Bur this is ridicu lous; such men are fools, and I would be no less insane than they if I foll owed their example.' The problem rhar madness raises may be a true p roblem. One can reasonably doubt the evidence of the senses, including the ev idence one has of the character of one's own body. After all, in dreams we experience at rimes the disintegration of our body's character and capacities. If the problem of doubt can be susta ined by sleep, however, it cannot by way of madness. Madness is outside the pale, because it is outside the province of truth. As Foucau lt writes: In t he economy of doubt, there is a fundamenral disequ ilibrium between madness [folie) on t he one hand and dream or error on rhe other. Their situation is d ifferenr in their re lationship ro rrurh and ro w hat is being sought; dreams or illusions are surmounred in the structure itse lf of truth; bur madness is excluded by the subject w ho doubts. (HFAC: 57) Dreams and il lusions can place our beliefs in doubt because t hey still inhabit rhe realm of rhe true and rhe false. \Ve can rhi.nk about them, consider them, hold them before the light of rrurh and the shadow of fa lsity. In a

28


word, they are subject to reason. Madness is nor. Jr is beyond, or perhaps beneath, "the structure of truth". "If man can always be fooled, thought, as exercise of the sovereignty of a subject that is obl iged to perceive the truth, cannot be insane" (HFAC: 58). Whence this change in attitude towards madness? H ow did madness lose irs fascinati on? How did it fall from its initial status as symbol of our darker regions to a subject unworthy of the project of thought? Foucault does not say. During this period of his thought, he focuses, more emphatically than he does later, on the discontinuities between historical periods. As he explains later in his methodological study The Archaeology of Knowledge: the great problem presented by such historical analyses is not how contin uities are established ... the problem is no longer one of tradition, of tracing a line, but one of division, of limits; it is no longer one of lasting foundations, but one of transformations that serve as new foundations, the rebuilding of foundations. (AKDL: 5) We shall return to this idea later, but it is worth recognizi ng one of the motivations for his emphasis on discontinuity. It is to prevent us from thinking that we can hold our history, and indeed ourselves, clearly before us. If thought has ruptures, if it has breaks, then it is not on a continuous path of progress toward the Truth. \Yie can no longer think that one day we wi ll know ourselves, that nothing w ill escape our intellectual gaze. The progressive view of history, that view of history that cells us we are on a path that leads inevitably closer to the truth of t hings, is a temptation that must be fought. Introducing discontinuities into history is one way to do ir, because it stymies the attempt to see each histor ical period as a further development or refinement of the previous one. There is, for Foucault, always an Other or O thers to our thought. Or, to pur the point another way, though t can always be otherwise than it is. There is always more to think than our current categories would lead us to believe. This should nor be surprising for a writer whose first major work approaches madness as the Other of reason. Returning t hen ro Descartes's dismissal of madness, Foucau lt sees in it not a singu lar event, and nor, as we just saw, a cause of a new way of treating madness. Descartes is nor the initiator of a new approach ro madness. His dismissal of madness is itself a reflection of a larger shift in the relation between reason and madness. It is emblematic rather than initiating. There is at this time, however, another, greater emblem of the change in reason's relation to madness. Foucau lt marks the date of this change as 1656, fifteen years after the publication of Descartes's Meditations. That year sees the decree that establ ishes in Paris the Hopiral General. The Hopiral General is

29

THE PHILOSOPHY Of FOUCAULT

hardly the on ly large insrimrion of confinement in France. lr certainly is nor the first. In addition ro o lder established hospitals, there are the abandoned lazar houses t hat w ill soon be housing the mad. What makes this particular institution unique is something else: " the H opital General is nor a medical establishment. It is rather a sort of sem ijudicial structure, an administrative entity wh ich, along with the already constituted powers, and ou tside of the courts, decides, judges and executes" (MC: 40). W ithin a few months of the establishment of this sem ij udicial srrucmre, Foucault says, nearly one per cent of the population of Paris finds itself confined ro one hospital or another. Is one per cent ofrhe population mad? Does the decree of 1656 allow the pol ice authoriti es to diagnose Descartes's fools on every street corner in Paris and elsewhere (since, as Foucault makes clear, the Grear Confinement is nor limited ro Paris, or even ro France)? No. lr is not a question simply of round ing up the mad. Rather, there is a more general sensibility in wh ich madness finds itself caught up. Between labor and idleness 111 the classical world ran a line of demarcation t hat replaced t he exclusion of leprosy. T he asylum was substituted for t he lazar house, in the geograp hy of haunted places as in the landscape of the moral universe. The old rites of excommunication were revived, bur in the world of production and commerce. (Ibid.: 57) It is work as an economic and moral matter that structures the rise of the Great Confinement. Those w ho can work are morally worthy; those who cannot are to be excluded. We must be careful here nor ro see a false h istorical continu ity rhar Foucau lt seems robe suggesting. It may appear rhar t here is a historical constant, a role of exclusion or "excommunication" that must be played by somebody. Earlier, iris leprosy that plays rhar ro le; later, it is madness and the refusal or inability to work. This seems to me to be a misreading of Foucault's intent. T he rhetoric is indeed suggestive, bur I rake it as linle more than that. There is an earlier exclusion and a later one. They share similar r intals and even some overlapping sites. But that is all. There is no universal or absolute need for exclusion that is p layed our now upon one parr of the population and later upon another. Rather, there are various inclusions and exclusions that occur in given socia l and historical contexts. Foucault is fo llowing a particu lar one, recognizi ng at the same rime that ir is not t he on ly one. In any case, reason's view of madness during t he period of t he Grear Confinement occurs through the lens of work : "madness was perceived

30


through a condemnation of idleness and in a social. immanence guarameed by the community of labor" (ibid.: 58). Madness is parr of a larger phenomenon that Foucau lt labels unreason. The person of reason is engaged in work. He (more likely than "she" in this historical period) is parr of the community of labouring beings that rakes his sense of himself from that engagemem. To labour is nor simp ly an econom ic maner. It is also, and more deep ly, a moral one. As Foucau lt notes, the cheap labour provided by the houses of confinemem does not yield much econom ic value. In fact, by competing with work omside those houses, it may do more econom ic damage than good. Bm prosperity is nor the issue here. One works nor in order to comribme a certain amoum to the greater social wealth ; one works because it is the righ t thing to do. People of reason labour. To refuse to labour is to be a creamre of unreason. And to be a cream re of unreason is to invite exclusion from the commun ity, at once moral and geographical, of those who recognize and engage in t he work that is a person's calling. Madness, then, is swept up in the larger phenomenon of unreason. It does, however, occupy a d istinctive place: that of animality. The mad person is one who has descended or regressed imo an an imal stare. That is why, Foucault says, although in most cases unreason, the refusal to work, is hidden during this period, madness is allowed robe displayed. Madness is an object lesson. 1£ shows how far human beings can descend imo unreason from the state of madness. If reason is distinct b oth from unreason and from an imal ity, then the madman exh ibits the link between the lan er rwo clearly, and in doing so shows, by comrasr, what ir is to be fully human. The view of madness as animal ity is in keep in.g with Descartes's own theoretical exclusion of madness. If, for Descartes, madness is the inability to engage in reason, for t he emirery of w hat Foucault terms "the classical period" (rough ly, the midd le-to-late sevemeenth to the end of the eigh reemh cemury), madness is treated as a particular form of general unreason, a descem imo bestiality that cannot share in what makes us who we are. \Ve are far removed here from the madness of t he earlly Renaissance. There is nothing mystical or threatening abom the mad, nothing to give one pause over the fragility of one's ex istence or the powers that threaten it. "The an imal in man no longer has any value as the sign of a Beyond; it has become his madness, wirhom relation to anything bm itse lf: his madness in the state of namre" (ibid.: 74). We must be careful here nor to imerprer the fall imo the state of namre in terms of a framework closer to our own. We are used to seeing in t he an imal the absence of free w ill. To descend imo nature is to be caught up in determ inism. \Ve are, the story goes, an imals ourselves, bm anima ls that, however one accounts for it, possess a free will that allows us to recognize and to extricate ourselves from the immediacy of our circumstances. We

31


are nor like a wasp or a squirrel that is bound to its instincts, reduced to irs "hard-wiring". \Vhen we think of the descent into animality, that is how we are tempted to rhink of it. This would be a mistake. "It is nor on t his horizon of nature that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries recognized madness, bur against a background of Unreason; madness did nor d isclose a mechan ism, bur revealed a liberty raging in t he monstrous forms of animalit>•" (ibid.: 83). Madness, in the classical period, does nor harbour a determ inism; instead it harbours a licentious freedom, a freedom that cannot be harnessed to the requirements of reason. It is this reason, in turn, that is the recogn ition of the constraining requ irements of a civil ized society, and above all the requ irement of \VOrk.

Treatments of madness, t hen, although they may seem to our eyes to be crude forms of medical intervention, shou ld not be interpreted in this way. Madness is nor yet mental illness; it is nor yet to be submi tted to t he medical model. "[A]t this extreme point, madness was less than ever linked to the domain of correction. Unchained animality could be mastered only by discipline and brutalizing" (ibid.: 75). Madness is, u ltimately, a moral matter and must be treated as such. Madness wi ll be treated, and Foucau lt details a number of the treatments that madness receives, from immersion in water to the administration of bitters and to travel. However, that treatment rema ins caught in the ethical web that the classical period weaves around its view of the mad. "Being both error and sin, madness is simultaneously impurity and sol itude; it is withdrawn from the world, and from truth; bur it is by rhat very fact imprisoned in evi l" (ibid.: 17 5). In t he second half of t he eighteenth century, th ings change aga in . A new orientation toward madness arises, one that sets the stage for our more contemporary view. \Ve are not yet at the inauguration of the contemporary view; that w ill have to await the interventions of Samuel Tu ke and Philippe Pinel. However, a couple of t he t hemes that will soon receive their full articulation in t he work of these two emerge before their appearance on the stage of madness. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the unity of unreason begins to unravel. Poverty comes ro be distingu ished from madness nor only in the latter's character as pure .l ibertine animality, bur in the association of madness now w ith indolence rather t han impoverishment. During the latter half of t he eight eenth century, it is the rich rather than the poor who are at risk of madness. How does the link berween poverty and unreason come undone? Here Foucault offers a causal explanation rather than, as usual, simply demarcating a break. In the economic change from mercanti lism to industrial ism there arises a need for unskilled labour. Mercanti lism rel ies on trade and small-scale production. Industrialism requires a large labour pool.

32


Therefore, confin ing those who are able to perform unskil led labour in the name of unreason begins ro run coumer to rhe emerging econom ic imperatives. "In rhe mercamile economy, rhe Pauper, being neither producer nor consumer, had no place: idle, vagabond, unemployed, he belonged on ly to confinemem ... With rhe nascem industry which needs manpower, he once again plays a parr in rhe body of rhe narion" (ibid.: 230). We musr be carefu l in approach ing chis sh ift of concern abour madness from poor ro rich, since ir remains a sh ifr on more or less rhe same ground. Madness is sriII tied ro rhe absence of work. Bur rhe absence of work is no longer ried ro impoverishment; ir finds new moorings among rhe idle rich . The release from work brings wirh ir an unbournd leisure, one that can loosen a person's ties to the world of reason and work. For Foucault, this new view of madness can be located particu larly in three themes: the association of madness with excess wealth, the bond posited between madness and an immodest religious fervour, and a concern that arises around too much read ing and specu lation. These are preoccupations of the rich. It is those who do not have to labour char have an excess of wealth; ir is they who are ready ro embrace new religious fads; and ir is they who have rhe rime for reading and speculation. All of these occur ar rhe expense of a labour that keeps one's feet on rhe ground: chat prevems one from drifting off imo the ethereal realm where madness lies ready ro weave irs spell. This shift is accompanied by a general withdrawal from rhe project of confinemem. The poor, being creatures of unreason, could be confined in large numbers w irhour harm to society. Now they musr be reintegrated. They are not to be replaced by rhe rich, even rhough rhey have become objects of the fear of madness. As we noted before, Foucau lt does nor believe rhar rhere must always be an exiled or confined group. Confinemem is nor a historical constant rhat is foisted upon differem groups ar differem rimes. With rhe rise of the industrial economy, rhe fracturing of rhe uniry of unreason, and, in France ar least, the humanist pretensions of rhe French Revolution, confinemem irself begins t o lose irs grip as a cure for social ills. lr is in rhe wake of chis loss of confinement's grip rhar Tuke and Pinel's project at rhe end of rhe eighteenth cemury of rhe " liberation" of rhe mad is able ro take place. Before turning to their work, it is worth pausing a momem over rheir historical repurarion. Tuke and Pinel are canonized in rhe history of psycho logy and psychiatry for breaking rhe chains - often lireral ones - of confinement rhat, umil their time, are the lor of rhe rhose deemed mad. It is they who recogn ize the brural iry of confinemem and heroically step in to end ir and to create newer, more humane methods of treating madness. Modern psychotherapy often traces irs lineage back to these figures who, it is claimed, are the first to imervene on beha lf of rhose

33


who are mentally ill rather than against them. The establishment of Tuke's Quaker Retreat in England and Pinel's order to remove the chains of those confined at the hospital at Bicerre together form the moment at which modern psych iatry is born. They mark the moment of t he birth of the hospi tal as asylum, as a space o f cure, in contrast to the previous age of hospitals as places marked solely by their role as institutions of confinement. There are three questions one might pose ro this account. First, does the work of these two figures, by their own efforts, destroy the idea that confinement is the proper way to treat madness? As we have seen, it does nor. Confinement comes into disrepute before r:he end of the eighteenth century. T heir work, although contributing ro irs dem ise, does nor by itself create it. The historical break has already taken place before Pinel arrives at the door of Bicetre in 1793. Second ly, what are we to make of the brutality exh ibited toward the mad? From our perspective, the confinement of the mad is undoubtedly barbarous. We should bear in mind, however, rhar this barbarity is nor intended to be so. It is not anger or a desire for vengeance or mere cruelty that motivates the confinement of the mad in the seventeenth and eighteenth cenntries. It is the entire organization of t he re lation between reason and madness. Given the view of madness as a type of unreason rooted in a libertine an imal ity, confinement makes a certain kind of sense. The fact that it does so does nor exonerate it. It is nor that confin.ement is or has ever been a good thing just because people once felt they had reason to confine, any more than US slavery wou ld be justified by the fac t t hat Europeans believed Africans to be inferior. T he point rather is t he historical one that what Tuke and Pinel intervene upon is nor an intended brutality but the remnants of a way of looking at madness. If the brutality of t he class ical period toward t he mad is unrecogn ized as such, this can lead one to ask whether there is an unrecognized brutal ity in the treatment of the mad in our age. This is t he third question, the most important and most unsettling one. We look upon the treatment of madness in t he classical period and see an unremitting crue lty in their confinement. That we do so is, as we just saw, half right.. Bur why do we miss the other half? Because we believe ourselves to be en ligh tened - both morally and scientifically - about madness in ways that our predecessors are nor. However, do nor t hose in the classical period see themselves as enl ightened? Their thought is nor inco herent, and, g;ven the framework that Foucau lt depicts, their theories about and actions towards what they rake to be madness are neither arbitrary nor baseless. Is it possible that we, because we see hist ory as progressive, and in particullar as progressing towards where we now stand, are blind to our own barbarities towards w hat was once called madness and is now called mental il lness?

34


It is chis d ismrbing possibility char Foucault pursues in his chaprer on Tuke and Pinel. Whar he discovers is something orher rhan rhe srory rhat has been handed down ro us abour rhe heroism of rheir actions. Tuke and Pinel do nor liberate madness from irs chains; rarher, rhey change rhe composition of rhose chains. From rhen on, ir is nor iron rhar would bind rhose declared mad. Their bonds wi ll be less obvious bur more pervasive. Instead of rhe physical bonds of confinemem, henceforth rhere wi ll be rhe moral bonds of shame and gu ilr. Consider rhis passage, quored in Madness and CivilizAtion, regarding one of rhe firsr of rhe mad whose chains Pinel removes. Pinel orders rhar, in regard ro rhis man, who bel ieved he was C hrisr: everyone ... nor add ress a word ro rhis poor madman. T his prohibition, which was rigorously observed, produced upon rhis selfinroxicared creature an effecr much more perceptible rhan irons and rhe dungeon; he felr hum iliated in an abandon and an isolation so new ro him amid his freedom. Finally, afrer long hesirarions, rhey saw him come of his own accord ro join rhe sociery of rhe orher pariems; henceforth, he remrned ro more sens ible and rrue ideas. (Cired in MC: 260) The effecr of si lence, of complete social isolation, is "more perceptible rhan irons and rhe dungeon". This is Pinel's liberation of rhe mad. Nor rhe freedom from bondage, bur instead rhe subm ission ro a more secure bondage. Foucault describes rhe shifr characterized by Tuke and Pinel's methods, one rhar focuses on mora l rarher rhan physica l consrraim. In addition ro silence, rhese methods include infamilizarion, religious incu lcat ion, verbal confronration, and an endless judgemem on rhe madman's behaviour. Finally, in a move rhar remains wirh us inracr afrer rwo hundred years, t here is rhe elevation of t he srarus of rhe docror, whar Foucault calls " rhe apotheosis of rhe medical personage" (ibid.: 269). This elevation ar once creates a nearly unshakeable rrusr in rhe docror and, in rhe same gesrure, lends an aura of rhe sacred ro rhe docror/ pariem relationship. I can recall rhe power of this apotheosis from my own experience. \Vhen I was younger I worked in a memal hospita l. Although rhe nursing sraff spem many more hours ralking w irh and listen in g ro rhe pariems, w hen doctors came to imerview a pariem, rhey never asked any of rhe sraff for rheir impressions, and rhe imerview irself, even if on ly a few minures, was cons idered rhe final word in pariem assessmem. lr was never questioned publicly, and rarely even earned much grumbling among rhe nursing sraff. Even roday, rhere are few people w ho visir psychiatrists who do nor feel rhar rhey are in rhe hands of someone wirh almosr shaman istic power.

35


The new approach to madness t hat the work ofT uke and Pinel embodies does nor heal the rift rhar arises in the late Renaissance between the mad and the sane. There is no more commerce between t hose who are isolated as mad and those w ho sir in judgemenT on them than there is when unreason is segregated and confined. "The science of menral disease, as ir wou ld develop in the asy lum, wou ld always be only of the order of observat ion and classification. It wou ld nor be a dialogue" (ibid.: 250). This is nor ro claim that physical bondage is better than the moral rrearmenrs that remain in force today. (Although here one might as k what the role of the recenr dominance of pharmacological approaches to madness might play : does this represenr another historical break in the perspective on and rrearmenr of madness?) It is, rather, ro stake our three positions. First, it is a misnomer to speak of the liberation of the mad. A shift in consrrainrs is misdescribed by the term liberation. Secondly, this sh ift does .n or heal the rifr between what is called madness and what is called san ity. The rifr in the conversation between madness and reason rhar Foucau lt describes emerging through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is a legacy that we have nor yet escaped. As Foucault says, "The language of psychiatry, w hich is a monologue of reason abo11t madness, has been established on ly on the basis of such a silence" (ibid.: x- xi). Finally, all t his can be understood only if we abandon the view of history as a movement of progress. History is nor of its nature progressive; it does nor necessari ly move from the more primitive co t he more enl ightened, from the barbaric to the civi lized. H istory has neither telos - a goal - nor a structured movemenr. We can see this clearly if we abandon our commitment ro historical conrinuiry and allow oursel.ves ro see breaks instead, moments in wh ich one way of looking is replaced by another, not as an improvement on or a refinement of the earlier way, bur simp ly as a new framework or perspective. What do we make of Foucault's history of madness? It is an early work, one about which Foucault periodically expresses reservations. However, one can ask abour the character of its larger project. What does this history seek ro do? What is irs point ? For the phi losop her Jacques Derrida, Histoire de Ia folie is a grand attempt t hat is, by t he nature of its project, a necessary fa ilure. In Derrida's view, "Foucault has attempted - and this is the greatest merit, bur also the unfeasibiliry of the book- ro write a history of madness itself. "3 Foucau lt tries in this book to heal the rift that rhe classical age has created. H e seeks ro pur madness back in d ialogue with reason, ro restore the voice of madness that reason 's monologue has suppressed. This, Derrida argues, is a project rhar cannot succeed. One cannot spea k in the name of madness wirhour speaking as t he mad do. Otherwise, one

36

ARCHAEO LOGICAL HISTORIES OF WHO WE ARE

speaks for them in the language of reason. One continues the monologue rather than establ ishing a dialogue. [l)s nor an archaeology, even of silence, a logic, rhar is, an organized language, a project, an order, a sentence, a syntax, a work? ... Nothing with in this language, and no one among those who speak ir, can escape the historical gui lt- if there is one, and if ir is historical in a classical sense - wh ich Foucau lt apparen tly wants to pur on trial. Bur such a trial may be impossible, for by the simpl e fact of their articulation the proceedings and the verd ict unceasingly reiterate the crime.• The charge levelled against Foucault here is one that has come to be c.~lled a performarive contradiction. Foucau lt betrays in act what he claims ro want in theory. In Derrida's eyes, this is the inescapable fare of Foucault 's project. One c.~nnor construct an archaeology rhar seeks ro restore the voice of madness. An archaeology must be arricu lared in a systematic fashion. It must be a project of reason. Therefore, it c.~nnor bring us any nearer ro the mystic.~( bur irrational sense of mad speech rhar madness has in the early Renaissance, and even less so to the rime in which madness is nor d ifferentiated as a particular experience. Is this in fact what Foucault is after in his discussion of madness? Derrida relies on a quote from the preface to the book, one that follows the citation above that "the language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the !basis of such a silence". The rexr continues, "I have nor tried to write the history of that language, bur rather the archaeology of rhar silence" (MC: xi). This seems to Derrida ro impl y rhar what is at issue is a discussion, nor from the standpoint of reason, bur from rhar of t hose w ho have been named mad by reason and t hen silenced. However, we need nor interpret rhe passage this way. As Derrida points our, the project such an interpretation calls for wou ld be an impossible one. Moreover, it does nor seem to be in keeping w ith the rest of the boo k, wh ich is indeed a history of how the mad have been categorized as such, discussed, and treated. Perhaps it would be better to turn t hings around . Rather than interpreting the book in ligh t of this suggestive bur nor entirely clear passage, it would be best to interpret this passage on the basis o f the book that follows it. In order to do that, we should pause over the passage's term "archaeology". Foucau lt's methodological reflection The Archaeology of Knowledge appears in 1969, eight years after the first edition of Histoire de Ia folie. As

37


Foucault notes in t he latter book, t he methodology he attempts to construct there is not meant to be a faithful reflection of what goes on in the earlier boo ks. T he books he refers to are Histoire de Ia Folie, the book on medicine The Birth of the Clinic, and the book we shall discuss shortly, The Order of Things. (In French, ririe of the last book isLes Mots et les chases, which in English means Words and Things.) The Archaeology of Knowledge does nor simply reconstruct a common methodology employed in the earl ier works. This, in any case, would be fruitless, since their approaches, although broadly simi lar, differ somewhat from book to book. Instead, Foucault seeks to articulate a methodology that t hose books are, to a greater or lesser ex tent, attempts to ach ieve. Nevertheless, much o f the broad framework he offers there does capture what is going on in the earlier works. In the conclusion to The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault sums up his ea rlier projects this way : The posiriviries I have tried to establ ish must nor be understood as a set of determ inations imposed from the outside on the thought of individuals, or inhabiting them from the inside, in advance as it were; they constitute rather the set of conditions in accordance with w hich a practice is exercised, in accordance wi th wh ich that practice gives rise to partially or totally new stat ements, and in accordance with wh ich it can be modified. (AKDL: 208- 9) \Vhar Foucault has in mind here is a very precise approach to history, one that resists the idea of continuities and the idea rlu t t he historical structure of knowledge in a given practice or group of practices during a given period can be changed by the conscious efforts of individuals to change it (for examp le, Tuke and Pinel). For Foucau lt, there are certain regu larities t hat govern what can and cannot legitimately be sa id in particular practices at particular rimes. It is nor that it is impossible to say certain things. The I imitation is nor a physical or a legal one. It is, rather, episrem ic; rhar is, it has to do w ith knowledge. If certain unacceptable things are said, or if things are said that might be acceptable if uttered by the right authorities bur nor by this particular person, they will simply nor be recognized. It would be li ke a spectator's getting up in a courtroom to declare an accused person either innocent or gui lty. Such a gesntre wou ld nor be recognized. (ln fact, the person wou ld probably be t hough t mad.) These regularities function as rules of a sort. Bur they are nor conscious ru les dictating w hat can be said. They are nor recognized as limitations by the speakers who are bound by them. In addition, these regu larities do nor channel speech into particular claims; they allow for t he possibility of

38


debate and contradiction. Instead they are unconscious strucrurings of discourse, setting the character and boundaries of how debate and discussion can happen. A couple of years later, in the English preface to The Order of Things, Foucau lt famously refers to these strucrurings as " the pos itive unconscious of knowledge" (OT: xi) . T hese strucrnrings are not principles dictated by t he outside, transcending the practice itse lf and t hen imposed on it. Bur neither are they a set of boundaries and conditions agreed upon by the participants. T hey are t he framework, the perspective, by means of wh ich (1) the participants in d iscussion recognize one another in their proper role as participants and (2) the statements of t hose participants are recogn ized as contributions to a particular discussion, or as establish ing certain points, or as making certain claims, or as performing certain acts. Foucau lt introduces the term archive, and says chat "the archive defines a particu lar level: that of a practice that causes a mu ltiplicity of statements to emerge as so many regu lar events, as so many things to be dealt with and manipulated" (AKDL: 130).5 On that basis he defines an archaeo logy. "Archaeology describes discourses as practices specified in the element of t he arch ive" (ibid.: 131). Here we can see the elusive idea Foucau lt is trying to capture. In cont rast to a view of history as continuous or progressive, archaeo logy takes history to involve particular scructurings of what can and cannot legi timately be said, as well as how and by whom they can legitimately be said dur ing certain periods (or at least in certain groups of practices during t hose periods, a point to w hich we shall return). Those st rucrurings can and do change. W hen they change, this is not because of an improvement in knowledge or through the efforts of an individual, although those things can contribute to a change. Foucau lt, as we saw earlier, does not say much abou t why they change. Bur, because knowledge is structured in this way, however the change happens, it constitutes a break or a r ift with the previous strucruri ng. If we interpret Foucault's archaeology of si lence in this way, then Histoire de Ia folie does not appear to be w hat Derrida says it seeks to be. There is no such t hing as an archaeology of si lence, if by that we mean a historical account of w hat is suppressed, of what is not allowed to express itself. T he book on madness is not a book about madness. It is a book about reason, about reason 's monologue on madness. \'!Uhat Histoire de Ia folie seeks is not to give vo ice to those who have been labelled mad; as Derrida points our, no archaeology can do thar. Rather, it articulates t he various ways in wh ich, once madness is established as such, the discourse on madness is structured. The account of these structurings happens in three successive stages: the Renaissance, the classica l period , and the early modern period. The focus, however, is on the classical period. If we see things t his way, the history we have su mmarized makes more

39


sense and is more co herent. T he book is an archaeology of the historical srructurings, the arch ives, of reason in irs monologue upon madness. What, then, do we make of the phrase "the archaeo logy of that silence"? It is nor an archaeo logy of a silence itself, bur rather an archaeology of a silencing: of the forms it has taken, t he successive structures of the discussions it has el icited, the practices of experimentation and treatment to which it has given rise. To pur the po int another way, it is nor an archaeology of the mad; it is an archaeology of us, the ones w ho are caught up in reason .

Histoire de Ia folie is a discussion of who we are. It focuses on one of the most important aspects of our being, our reason. It discusses the way in which reason has established then maintained the esrablislunent of irs Other- t hat which lies outside it, that against wh ich it defines and defends itself. Moreover, it suggests that reason is to be thought of as something other than a timeless human quality. Far from being the essential core of who we are, as philosophers from at least Descartes up to t he present day have thought, reason is a mutating historical project. It rakes different forms at d ifferent rimes. In much of t he classical period, for instance, reason is aligned with a certain morality, a morality that was itself allied w ith labour. Reason, Foucault suggests, is bound to several conditions from which it has a lways distanced itself: history, everyday practices and its Other. Reason is neither timeless nor ethereal. It is, instead, temporal and grounded in our world. One might say of it what Foucault later says about truth during an interview: Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced on ly by virtue of multiple forms of constraint . . . Each society has irs "general pol itics" of truth: t hat is, the types of d iscourse wh ich it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances wh ich enable one to distinguish t rue and fa lse statements, the means by wh ich each is sanctioned. . . . (TP: 13 1) The lesson of Histoire de Ia folie does nor concern t hose who have been called mad, at least nor directly. It concerns those of us w ho have nor fallen under t hat label. It is, contrary ro Derrida's read ing, a coherent discussion of who we have been and of who we have become, and it is addressed to those who are capable of both understanding that discussion and recognizing t hemselves in it. T he book leaves us at the th reshold of our particular structuring of reason. It offers witness to irs historical birth, and allows us to see the origin from wh ich it came. Bur is it accurate? Are the facts that Foucau lt brings forward in the book

40


acmal facts? Do the facts point in t he direction Foucau lt suggests? There has been some historical assessment of Foucaul t's works, al though those who read Foucault philosophically and those w ho read him historically are, unformnarely, rarely in dialogue with each other. My own orientation is ph ilosophica l, so I can offer little in the way of historical judgement of his work. H owever, this is an area that should not be ignored. Some historians have found his work compelling.6 Others have criticized it from a viewpoint that seems foreign to his projects, offering claims of fact that seem to oppose his perspective bur do nor, or claims that are irre levant to his perspective. Sti ll others have quibbled with some of his claims bur found his overall perspective intrigu ing. In order at least to get a sense of the historica l debate about Foucau lt's work, we can focus on an article that is particu larly critical of Foucau lt's history. It illustrates both w hat kinds of critique might be relevant and what might be less so. An article by the historian H. C. Midelforr7 takes issue with a number of historical claims Foucau lt offers. Among his historical criticisms we can isolate four of t hem for discussion. First, Midelforr claims that, contrary to Foucault's assumption, there is no record of such a thing as a Ship of Fools. "There are references to deportat ion and exi le of mad persons to be sure .. . Occasionally the mad were indeed sent away on boats. Bur nowhere can one find reference to real boats loaded wi th mad pilgrims searching for their lost reason ."' Secondly, "the grand renfermement [Great Confinement] was aimed not at madness or even at deviance, bur at poverty". 9 Moreover, this confinement is motivated nor by a new srrucmre of reason bur by an ecclesiastical tradition of long standing that banished the poor. T hirdly, for the mad at least, the period of confinement does not end with the emergence of a new view of t he relation of reason to madness. In fact, it is only recently that the use of large institutions for the insane has come under criticism. "\Virh regard to madness, t herefore, we are witnessing the end of the age of confinement on ly now, as drug therapy and communi ty mental health centers increase in popularity at the expense of in-patient hospitals."'" Finally, Foucau lt's history is insensitive to differences across Europe. He privileges the French experience at the expense of other countries t hat have treated the mad very differently from France. Related to this, Foucault neglects the internal history of France. There is roo much diversity in any g iven period to reduce it all to a particular structuring, especially one of reason. The first criticism is an example of an irrelevant fact. Foucau lt does indeed claim that there were Ships of Fools, sent away by towns in search of t heir reason. However, nothing hangs on the fact that there were not. There were works of art depicting Ships of Fools, and those considered

41


mad were indeed sent away, as Midelforr says, and often on boars. W har Foucau lt is interested in is rhe rise of a certain fascination w irh madness. The existence of beliefs and arr abou t S hips of Fools, regardless of rhe real existence of such ships, has no bearing on rhe emergence of rhis fascination. The second criticism, rhar ir is poverry rarher than madness rhar motivates rhe Grear Confinement, is one rhar Foucault largely agrees wi rh . He points our, as we saw, rhe link between reason, moral ity and work. Moreover, he rraces rhe decline in confinement ro a d ifferent view of poverry. Midelforr might insist here rhar, be rhar as ir may, ir is ecclesiastical tradition rarher rhan a change in rhe character of reason rhar morivares rhe confinement. Bur rhar raises rhe question of w hy ir happens ar rhis particular moment rarher rhan earlier. If there is no change in rhe way people see things, why do rhe aurhoriries sudden ly starr confining large numbers of their fel low citizens? Although Foucault does nor offer a causal history of events rhar led ro rhe Grear Confinement, he does offer a view of how people saw things such rhar confinement begins ro make sense ar rhar rime when ir would nor have earlier. Ascribing confinement ro a long-standing ecclesiastica l tradition does nor explain rhis. The rhird criticism is an important, although perhaps nor critical, one. Ir raises rhe question of rhe relation of physical confi.nemenr ro rhe moral constraints exempl ified in rhe work of Tu ke and Pinel. Foucau lt d ifferentiates, we have seen, between confinement as a general marrer and rhe rise of rhe asylum. However, ir may well be rhar rhere is a more comp lex relationsh ip between physical and mora l confinemenr rhan Foucau lt adm irs. This wou ld nor derracr from his general claims abour reason and madness, bur wou ld require a more nuanced view of rhe relation of physical and men tal bonds rhan rhe one he has offered. The mosr urgent issue is rhe fina l one. First, Foucau lt ofren privi leges France in his histories. T his raises rhe question of how far one can generalize his conclusions beyond rhe French archive. Midelfort refers to rhe work of psychiatrist and historian Klaus Doerner enrirled (in rhe English rranslarion) Madmen and the Bourgeoisie: A Social History of Insanity and Psychiatry as a positive alternative ro Foucaulr's history of madness. In rhar work, Doerner divides his history into rhree parts, dealing wirh England, France and rhen Germany. He finds both simi lari ties and differences among t hese countries, bur discusses each on rhe basis of irs own experience. Oddly, although M idelfort sees Doerner's ·w ork as an alternative to Foucault's, Doerner himself does nor see ir rhar way. H e rakes issue w irh some of Foucau lt's interpretations (largely becau se, as he acknowledges, his approach is more straightforwardly dialectica l rhan Foucaulr's), bur he

42


accepts many of Foucault's claims w ithout reservation. Moreover, he refers to Foucau lt's book as "the first important approach to a scientifi c sociology of psych iarry". 11 Doerner's praise notwithstanding, the question of the relevance of Foucault's privileging of France for the experience of other countries is an important one. It is a question that concerns more t han hist orical accuracy. If, as Foucault believes, we are largely products o f a contingent history, t hen we can look nowhere else than at t he particu larities of that history in order to understand who we have become. Foucault knows this. And to understand ourselves arigh t, we must understand how far a historical portrait drawn from a particular place can be generaliz,ed. We cannot appeal to some universal essence that lies within ourselves or our history in order to give an account of w ho we are in general, and especially of who we are now. There is nowhere else to turn bur to w hat has happened. (Of cou rse, how we understand what has happened, our mode o f approach to ourselves and our history, is also crucial.) Although this book is philosophical in orientation, the question of general izabiliry, as well as that of historical accuracy, shou ld always be w ith us. We shall return to both in t he discussion of t he book on t he prisons. In addition to the question of how far Foucau lt's histories can be generalized across Europe, there is also the quest ion of interna l diversiry. Foucault's early histories, those grouped in what is called his archaeo logical period, have been read as positing themes that characterize an entire period. In contrast to the later genealogical works, wh ich focus more se lfconsciously on particular areas of experience, his archaeologies are often understood as claiming that the themes he discusses, rhe strucrurings he cites, app ly nor on ly to the specific areas under srudy bur across an entire culture as well as across an entire continent. Nor all of his interpreters embrace this view, 12 bur it is a common one, and Foucault admits later that it is a view that could easi ly be ascribed to his work. It is nor difficult to see how such a view could arise in regard to the book on madness. There he discusses reason as though it were a monolithic t hing, covering a large swath of w ho we are. 'When reason changes, we change. Foucault does not say t his. He does not say that who we are is a matter of reason. Nor does he say that reason is always the same across a particular culture at a particu lar rime. However, in the way t hat he focuses on reason, in the way he situates his discussion relative to thinkers like Descartes, in the way he creates a division between reason and irs Other - madness - he creates the impression that what holds for reason in the particulars in w hich he discusses it holds for other aspects of w ho we were and are.

43

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOUCAULT

Words and things If Histoire de Ia folie leaves rhis impression, The Order ofThings reinforces ir. In rhar book, Foucault introduces rhe concept of rhe episteme, a concept rhar founds rhe book's approach. He defines his project rhis way: what I am anempring ro bring ro light is rhe epistemological field, rhe episteme in which knowledge, envisaged a parr from all cri teria hav ing reference to irs rational value or ro irs objective forms, grounds irs posiriviry and thereby manifests a history wh ich is nor rhar of irs growing perfection, bm rather rhar of irs conditions of possibility; in this account, what should appear are those configurations w ithin rhe space of knowledge which have given rise to rhe diverse forms of empirical science . .. on the archaeological level, we see rhar rhe system of posiriviries was transformed in a wholesale fashion ar rhe end of rhe eighteenth and beginning of rhe nineteenth cenmry. (OT: xxi i) This view of an episteme is, we see ar once, in keeping wirh rhe general methodological approach Foucault describes in The Archaeology of Knowledge, published three years later. Although rhe larrer book does nor use rhe rerm episteme, rhe rerm archive plays a sim ilar role. In any case, ar issue is looking ar rhe "posiriviries" of our knowledge nor by means of an account of rhe progress of knowledge, bur rather by means of rhe srrucmrings rhar, in a given historical period, form irs "conditions of possibility". The issue is nor so much what is said, or bener rhe rrmh of or evidence for what is said, bur rather how what is said arises from what can be said, or at least legirimarely said, ar a particular rime and place. Foucault sees rhis project as related to rhe book on madness, bur also different in important ways: The history of madness wou ld be the history of rhe Orher- of rhat which, for a given cu lmre, is ar once interior and foreign, therefore to be excluded (so as to exorcize rhe inrerior danger) bm by being shm away (in order ro reduce irs otherness); whereas rhe history of rhe order imposed on things would be rhe his tory of rhe Same- of rhar which, for a given cu lmre, is bot h dispersed and related, therefore to be distinguished by kinds and to be collected rogerher inro idenriries. (OT: xxiv) There are ar least three things worth drawing attention to in this passage. First, rhe history of rhe Other he speaks of, rhe archaeology of a silence, is

44


referred to, contrary to Derrida's interpretation, from the side of reason . It is how reason sees its Other, not how the Other is in itself, that the book on madness addresses. Secondly, and this is the main point of the passage, whereas the book on madness defines reason by means of the foil it creates for itself, the current book seeks to define something not by what it opposes but by what it is or by how it works. That is why Foucau lt uses, in this book and the methodological one, the term "posi tivity". The structurings he discusses are not limits. They do not stop knowledge or claims of knowledge from occurring. They are posi tive srructurings; they create the space in which knowledge happens. Thirdly, the passage speaks in a very general way about culture. By invoking the concept of the episteme, Foucault seems to indicate - and this passage reinforces it- that he is addressing an epistemological structuring t hat operates across all forms of knowledge in a cu lture, or at least all empirical sciences. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, he admits that this would be a reasonable interpretation of the text, writing that "in The Order of Things, the absence of methodological signposts may have given the impression that my analyses were being conducred in terms of cu ltural totality" (AKDL: 16). It is an interpretation that, when the English translation appears in 1970, Foucaul t is at pains to distance himself from. He writes in the preface to the English translati on that the book "was to be not an analysis of C lassicism in general, nor a search for a Weltanschauung [world-view], but a strictly 'regional ' study" (OT: x). On the one hand, in the original text it is difficu lt to see the various epistemes he discusses as something other than arch ival layers that stretch across the map of knowledge during particular periods. On the other, however, aside from his general methodological claims he focuses his discussion on three specific areas of knowledge: those that have more recently come to be cal led economics, biology and linguistics. He finds similar srrucrurings of knowledge running across these fields, and, moreover, sim ilar changes in srrucrurings during d ifferent rime periods. As with the book on madness, the discussion unfolds in three stages. Foucault begins a little later, with Renaissance t hough t, then spends the central parr of the book on the classical period, and finally ntrns towards more recent developments. His treatment of the Renaissance does not distinguish the three fields that are to become his concern, with t he except ion of an account of language that he appends to rhe end of the discussion of the general episteme. (This also can contribu re to the idea that the srructurings he discusses later are relevant for other fields of knowledge aside from the three he focuses on.) Renaissance knowledge, he finds, can be summed up in the idea of resemblance. There are re lations of resemblance among different elements and aspects of the universe. The project of

45

THE PHilOSOPHY Of FOUCAULT

knowledge is to d iscover those relati ons. Th is project can not be carried our through the use of em pirical methods of discovery, since resemblances are an invisible aspect of the cosmos that is woven into it rather than something one can discover through observation or experimentation. To discover resemblances, one needs to interpret the cosmos rather than to perceive it. To get a grasp of how resemblance structures knowledge, one can appeal to the example o f the microcosm and macrocosm. The idea of microcosmic and macrocosmic resemblances stretches at least as far back as Plato. In the Republic, Plato offers what is one of the mosr lasting examples of their relation in the history of ph ilosoph y. Socrates is seeking to discover w hat justice in the sou l is. The chal lenge he confronts is t hat it might be difficult to see justice at the level of t he sou l; it might be elusive or undetectable. He offers his interlocutors the possibility of looking at something larger than the soul, in order to be able to see justice more dearly. [S]ince we aren't cl ever people, we shou ld adopt the method of investigation t hat we'd use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to read small letters from a distance and then noticed t hat the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface. u The larger object Socrates suggests is that of a ciry, and so they design a just city in order to allow justice to appear more perspicuously. The just ciry, as it turns our, is a harmony of t hree elements: the merchants, w ho work to make money; the guardians, who protect the city; and the rulers, drawn from among the guardians, who rule the city. This harmony is reflected in the soul. The merchants are like the sou l's desires, seek ing satisfaction. They form the appetitive parr of the soul. The rulers are like the sou l's reason, guiding the soul along irs proper paths. That is the sou l's rational parr. And the guard ians are rbe soul's spiri t. The spirit is that which, if it is nor corrupted by the a ppetites, aligns itself wi th the sou l's reason in order to keep one noble or honourable. In this exam ple there are several salient aspecls. First, the discovery o f justice as a harmony of parts o f the soul does nor arise t hrough empirical research bur rather through an exercise of analogy. It is nor observed; it is instead recogn ized through a reflective enqu iry. Second ly, the analogy works from t he larger to the smaller and back again, as though the cosmos is constructed so that cities and sou ls reflect each other. There are invisible bonds of resemblance t hat suffuse the cosmos; the project of knowledge is to understand them. Finally, although the brief summary here does nor show this, the work of interpretation that this analogy requires does nor rely on anyth ing obv ious that either the city or sou l presents to Socrates or his fellow knowledge seekers. T hat it was t he three classes of the ciry

46


t hat were the relevant factor in d iscovering justice is a maner of patient t heoretical construction and subtle reasoning. It does not presem itself as immediate or obvious. Further, finding their analogy in the sou l requ ires more reflection and interpretation. T he project of drawing om resemblances, then, is not a simple matter of seeing them. It requires patiem imellecmal work. The patience of this work becomes particu larly evidem when one realizes that resemblances can occur in a variety of ways. Foucau lt isolates four of them: convenientia, aemulatio, analogy and sympathy. Convenientia occurs through proximity: the soul is proximate ro the body, and so each is built ro resemble the other. Aemulatio, Foucau lt says, is convenietia bm withom spatial proximity; it is resemblance at a d istance. Analogy allows for resemblances that occur by thematic likenesses between more disparate objects. Sympathy is a free-floating resemblance that suffuses the cosmos. These forms of resemblance form the framework w ithin w hich the Renaissance's epistem ic project takes place. In t his framework, language functions as a participam rather than as an external elemem. The operati on of language, like other things, is woven into the fabric of resemblances that constitute the universe. It is a namral part of t he cosmos. "The relati on of languages to t he world is one of analogy rather than sign ification; or rather, their value as signs and their dupl icating function are superimposed; they speak the heaven and the earth of wh ich they are the image" (OT: 37). The langu age that articu lates the world is also of the order of the world; they are inseparable in the Renaissance episteme. And when they do become separated, when the working of language is no longer of a piece with the cosmos, t he Renaissance episteme has given way to the classical one. If Renaissance knowledge can be summed up in the idea of resemblance, then the classica l period receives its summation in the word order. Order is a matter, not of analogy, bm of representation. If we are to understand classical order, we must approach it by way of language as a representing medium. Representation begins when the re lation between the sign and what it signifies is no longer a namral one. " In the sevemeenth and eighteemh cenntries, the peculiar existence and anciem solidity of language as a thing inscribed in the fabric of the world were dissolved in the functioning of representation; all language had value on ly as discourse" (ibid.: 43). There are objects on the one side and the signs that represent t hem on the other. Their imernal bond is sundered. In saying this, however, one must be careful. It is not t hat language has w ithdrawn from its place in the universe to become someth ing else, something other. Rather, it is that the relation between signs and their signification has lost its status as a namral one. For instance,

47


Foucault says, a sign can become an object for another sign; a lingu istic sign can become the object of a representation. T he issue, t hen, is between signs and what they signify, nor between language and the rest of the world. We might say that the change is a matter of lingu istic operation rather than ontological status. What is the relation between signifier and whar it signifies in the classical period? The sign effaces itse lf before t he object it signifies, and in turn the object reveals itself without remainder in the sign: [T) he signifying element has no content, no function, and no determination other than what it represents: it is entirely ordered upon and transparent to it. Bur this content is indicated only in a representation that posits itself as such, and that which it signifies resides, without residuum and wi thout opacity, w ith in the representation of the sign. (Ibid.: 64) The relation between sign ifier and signified is ex hausted in the relati on of representation. T here is no longer, as there was in t he Renaissance, a silent web of resemblance that would constitute the aerher in which signs and their objects are immersed. And there is nor yer, as there will be later, a human consciousness that must be taken into account because of irs effect on t he operation of language. T here is no t hird thing: the relation is a binary one. It migh t seem here that representation does nor break the relationsh ip between words and t hings. There seems to be an internal bond. After all, if signs efface themselves before their objects, is that nor because of some deep tie berween sign and obj ect? Does nor representation without remainder imply that there is a bond between signifier and sign ified? Foucault is nor argu ing t hat there is no relation between a sign and irs object. We are nor yet in more recent views of language that see language as a social phenomenon imposed on nature from without. What no longer ex ists in t he classical period is a web of resemblances in wh ich language firs. The internal bond that is lost is the aether of resemblance, the cosmic play of convenientia, aemulatio, analogy and sympathy rhar binds all of existence together. It is that bond that is broken wi th t he emergence of cl assical representation. If t he primitive source of knowledge is that of representations, then the project of knowledge becomes that of ordering those representations. We shou ld think of the term order nor as an overarch i.ng Order in w hich everything has irs place, bur rather as a project of ordering that is at the heart of classical knowledge. Our signs are no longer texts. w ith hidden meanings to be deciphered; they are now representations that must be put in a proper

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order so rhar understanding can occur. One starts w ith the simple ones, and t hen bui lds more and more complex systems of representati ons. Thus the idea of the table, the table that gives t he proper order to things, becomes central ro the classical episteme: The sciences carry within themselves t he project, however remote it may be, of an exhaustive ordering of the world; they are always directed, roo, toward the discovery of simple elements and their progressive combination; and at their center they form a table on wh ich knowledge is d isplayed in a system contemporary w ith itself.

(Ibid.: 74) We must be clear here. W hat Foucau lt is descrubing is nor the position taken by various sciences - especially those concerning livings beings, money and value, and grammar. Order is nor what these sciences claim. Nor is he characterizing what they see themselves as engaged in . Order is nor the project itself; it is the framework, the structuring of the project. \Virhin this structuring, many debates rake place. T he structure of order allows for opposition and cont radiction. What it does nor allow for are claims and positions that cannot be fitted within the context of order. It requ ires an ordering of representations into their proper tables. To see the project of order at work, consider the emergence of natural history. Foucau lt points out that natural history is nor the same thing as biology. T he latter is concerned with the concept of life, t he former with t he concept of living beings. Living beings need nor be brought under the sway of a single concept unless there is already a commitment to t hat concept underlying t he episrem ic project. Natural history does not have that concept. W hat ir has is a project of ordering. Ordering, in contrast ro the episteme of the Renaissance, starts with observation . We observe a plenitude of living beings in the world. There is no necessary hierarchy of order, no Order rhar is presented ro us. The project of ordering lies in utilizing observation so as to ach ieve order. Language will be t he lynchpin, since representation allows objects to be given to us as they are: [N]atural history has as a condition of irs possibiliry the common affinity of things and language wi th representation; but it exists as a task only in so far as things and language happen ro be separate. It must t herefore reduce this distance between them so as to br ing language as close as possible to the observing gaze, and t he t hings observed as close as possible to words. Natural history is nothing more than nomination of the visible. (Ibid. : 132)

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For narural history, t he visible is the privileged means of access to the observable. It is the visible that can reduce the distance between things and their terms, more than t he other senses. However, this reduction is only the first step. Nomination, if it stays at the level of simp le naming, is nor enough. There is representati on, bur nor yet order. The nomination of natural history must create order among the d iversity of narure and the names that represent it. Nomination must create a srrucrure. It does so by means of: four variables only: the form of t he elements, t he quantity of those elements, the manner in which they are distributed in space in relation to each other, and the relative magnitude of each element . . . For example, when one srudi es t he reproductive organs of a plant, it is sufficient, bur ind ispensable, to enumerate the stamens and pisti l (or to record their absence, accord ing to the case), to define the form they assume, ac-cord ing to what geometrical figure they are distributed in the flower (circle, hexagon, triangle), and w hat their size is in relation ro o ther organs. (Ibid.: 134) First, then, one st arts w ith simple representations, in this case the elements; then one observes and records how those elements are combined in terms of quantity, spatial relation and relative magn itude. And our of these combinations one bui lds rabies. T hose rabies show t he place of each living being relative to its neighbours. One creates a taxonomy. In this sense, one botanizes living beings. As Foucault tells us, "The book becomes the herbarium of living structures" (ibid.: 135). How are t hese rabies created? This is the subject of much debate w ithin natural history during the classical period. One approach wou ld be to select what seem to be the central elements, and arrange the taxonomy around them. This, of course, can be accomplished in numerous ways, depending on the elements one selects at t he outset. Another approach would be to starr with an exhaustive description of a particular living being, and then move to the next one, listing on ly the differences between it and the first one, and so on. Here one does nor begin w irh a relatively arbitrary choice of privileged elements, bur w ith an arbitrarily chosen living being. T hese approaches are exclusive: one cannot use both at the same rime. However, they are both projects framed by the ordering characteristic of the classical

episteme. In the course of bui lding a taxonomy, language itself undergoes reflection . As things are brought into a systematic relation with one another, so are the terms t hat represent them. And because of this, there is a close

50


relationsh ip between narural history and language, perhaps closer in a sense than between narura l history and irs successor field , bio logy: \'i/e must therefore nor connect narural history, as ir was manifested during the C lassical period, with a philosophy of life, albeit an obscure and still faltering one. In reality, ir is interwoven with a theory of words .. . ir decomposes the language o f everyday life, bur in order ro recompose ir and discover what has made ir possible .. . ir cri ticizes ir, bur in order ro reveal irs foundation. (Ibid.: 161) Near rhe beginn ing of rhe nineteenth cenrury, rlhe classical episteme undergoes an upheaval. lr is one rhar wi ll induce episremic changes, changes in rhe srrucrure of rhe archive rhar frames rhe investigations of narural history, t he theories of money and value, and genera l grammar, and perhaps the entirery of Western knowledge (depending on how generally one reads rhe claims Foucau lt advances). Narural history will become biology, t he theories of money and value will become economics, and general grammar wi ll become linguistics. The change rhar occurs might be characterized as rhe addition of a new depth or dimension to the world of knowledge. To see this new dimension, we can rurn ro rhe emergence of biology. Biology, unlike narural history, is concerned with life. lr is nor an investigation simply of living beings rhar are robe ordered, bur of rhe organic nature rhar underlies them. This new investigation "was to be based on a principle alien to rhe domain of rhe visible - an internal principle nor reducible to rhe reciprocal interaction of represemarions. This porinciple (which corresponds to labor in rhe economic sphere) is organic structure" (ibid. : 227). Li fe in biology, labour in econom ics, hidden grammatical structure in linguistics: t hese are the new concepts around which the project of knowledge is to be undertaken. lr is nor simply rhar new concepts, however important, have been added to rhe lexicon of rhe classical episteme. These concepts do more than just broaden an episrem ic srrucrure that is already in polace. Instead, they form rhe pivot around wh ich rhe entire srrucrure changes. Once rhe depth of an underlying reality is brought into the framework of knowledge, the goal of ordering and rhe assumption of representation are lost. Ordering is lost because ir is in thrall to the visible. One orders the visible, one brings what can be seen and what can be said of what is seen closer together. H owever, the depth introduced by the nineteenth century is nor of the order of rhe visible, bur rather that of an underlying srrucrure or narure. To investigate that is nor merely ro add a dimension to ordering; rather, iris to abandon it.

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Representation is lost because of the assumption that words and t hings (recall the French ririe of the book, Les Mots et les chases) no longer march up as cleanly as the classical age thought t hey did. Now there are elusive depths and dimensions that undergird the visiblle and irs representati on. One can no longer count on the effacing of t he sign before the object or the abil iry of the sign to render the object w ithout remainder. In fact, it is precisely the remainder t hat is of interest. This slackening of the bonds of representation corresponds to rwo spaces of depth, one on the side of the sign or the observer, t he other on the side of the object. For both human beings and the worlld they confront, t here is more to be understood than presen ted itself in t he classical period. This "more" is nor that of the Renaissance, with irs resemblances folded into the cosmos. It is instead the more of an elusive depth t hat always lies beyond one's abil iry to grasp it conceptual ly. Those who have studied Kant w ill recogn ize this dual depth Foucault characterizes. It is t he depth of the noumenon, both on the side of the object to be known and the subject who acts. In fact, Foucault comments that the emp irical studies of biology, economics and linguistics are the other side of t he same epistem ic framework rhar harbours transcendental philosophy. For the former: the cond itions of possibiliry of experience are being sought in the conditions of possibiliry of the object and irs existence, whereas in transcendental reflection the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience are identified w ith the conditi ons of possibiliry of experience itself. The new posi tivity of the sciences of life, language, and economics is in correspondence with the founding of a transcendental phi losophy. (Ibid.: 244) Although, as Foucault notes, the character of t ranscendental philosophy will change radica lly in t he new episteme from t hat of Kantian phi losophy, the introduction of depth can be gl impsed in the example of his philosophy. This new episteme, wh ich Foucau lt thinks we are near t he end of {at least arrhe rime of publication, 1966), is characterized by a particu lar insrabil iry. T he instabi lity can be grasped in t he preceding quote. There is an oscillation in t his episteme between the emp irical and t he transcendental, each forming, although insufficiently, the epistemic ground of the other. Because of t he hidden depth on both sides of r he equation, neither the empirical sciences nor transcendental ph ilosophy can complete their tasks of grounding their knowledge. The empirical sciences cannot do this because the depth they seek is nor reducible to empirical methods ; they

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must appeal to transcendental phi losophy. Alternatively, transcendental ph ilosophy is a se(f.reflecrion on a self that always, ultimately, eludes the reflection. There is more depth than can be grasped by reflectors themselves; rhus there is a constant appeal outside transcendental philosophy ro the empirical sciences. This oscillation appears in four gu ises. The first Foucault calls "the analyric of finitude". The person engaged in reflection or investigation is finite in character and in knowledge. As such, finitude becomes both the object of investigation in the arising human sciences of b iology, economics and linguistics, and the limitation on knowledge of the investigation itself, since it is a human being who is doing the investigating. The second guise is the "empirico-transcendental doublet", in which human being, man as Foucault calls it, is at once the ground and object of investigation. The t hird guise is "the cogito and the unthought", in wh ich thin kers keep seeking t he unthought grounding of their own thought, which in turns recedes further toward the horizon as they pursue it. Finally, there is " rhe retreat and return of origin ". It is an endless search for an origin that must be there because it is founding, but cannot be grasped precisely because it is founding: it founds the search that is seeking it. 14 The underlying commonal ity among these four g uises is a kind of depth that performs t hree roles at once. First, it is constitutive of our approach to the question of who we are. Secondly, it is the object of investigation. Since representation can no longer be taken for granted, one must delve into the depths of man in order to d iscover the origins or seek t he ground of knowledge. Finally, it is that which always escapes the attempt to grasp it. It is a depth that in the same gesture both constitutes who we are and eludes our understanding it. What centres this episteme, then, is the idea Foucault calls man. Man is nor the human biological entity. Nor is he the creature with reason, nor even Aristotle's featherless biped. Man is the privileged moment of the current episteme. Man is at once the source and object of investigation, the being in depth that creates the paradoxes inherent in the modern framework of knowledge. Man is what seeks to know himself, bur in order to do so must treat himself as at once the knower and the known, and must constantly oscillate between the two. Man is at once the subject and the object of knowledge. This is, of course, an impossible task, an endless one t hat can never be completed. For as close as one gets to being known, one must always recogn ize that it is oneself- as knower - that is engaged in the knowing, and therefore that there is still something left over to be known: t he parr t hat is doing the knowing. It is like trying t o see one's own eyes. Kant refers to Home as the ph ilosopher who awakens him from his dogmatic slumber. Foucault borrows t hat image, saying that, in the

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modern episteme, we are in the midst of an "anthropological sleep", a rype of dogmatic slumber t hat dreams on ly of man, or better, t hat dreams itself as man dreaming of man. That sleep is characterized by t he emergence of the human sciences, the sciences of man and by man. For Foucau lt, then, "man is a recent invention" (OT: 386). This does nor mean, as some have misunderstood it, that human beings are a recent invention, or that we have on ly recently come to recognize human beings as something special with in nature, or t hat we shall soon give way to another type of creature. What is recent is man as t he privi leged source and object of investigation: Man had been a figure occurring between two modes of language; or rather, he was constituted only when language, hav ing been situated within representation and, as it were, dissolved in ir, freed itself from that situation at t he cost of irs own fragmentation: man composed his own figure in the interstices of rhar fragmented (Ibid.) language. Man, the being of depth that arises when representation no longer captures the relation of words and things, is a historical ent ity. And, like all historical entities, man will pass and something new will arise. Not human beings: man, in the very particular sense that it has arisen in the current episteme. Foucaul t concludes The Order o(Things w ith the oracu lar bur ultimately historical claim that if the current episteme begins ro lose irs grip on us, then "man would be erased, li ke a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea" (ibid.: 397). We should nor rake this pronouncement as a prediction of some kind of onto logical fall of human beings, or their dissolution into some other world. Rather, we should rake it as offering the possibility that, just as knowledge was once arranged in such a way t hat man as the privileged figure of depth does nor occur, so it can be arranged that way again. In the three epistemes Foucau lt investigates, t he posi tion of man as at once subject and object of knowledge arises in only on.e. There is no reason nor ro believe that this episteme, like previous ones, will pass, and w ith irs passing will also pass man. The Ordero(Things, like Histoire de Ia folie, is a book about w ho we are, about who we rake ourselves to be. And in that sense it is at the same rime a boo k about w ho we are nor. \Vhat the book accompl ishes is to rake a view of w ho we are, the view given through the recent ly arising human sciences (and specifically biology, linguistics and economics) and to show that that view is historically situated. The human sciences do nor tell us who we are; or better, they do not tell us who we are in a way that is absolute and unsurpassable. Rather, they are investigations into w ho we are that are

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situated within a certain way of approaching us, a .certain episterne, and irs specific orientation. T his does nor mean that we are not what the human sciences tell us we are. To claim that wou ld require a bird's-eye view of who we are. Bur if Foucault is right about the existence of epistemes, there is no bird's-eye view from wh ich to pass such a judgement. Rather, his claim is that we do nor have to rake ourselves as being w hat t he human sciences tell us we are. There are other ways for us to see ourselves; indeed, there have already been other ways. The Order ofThings, then, is a book about w ho we are in a very specific sense. It is a book about t he historical character of who we rake ourselves to be. Although, like Histoire de Ia folie, this book concerns the question of who we are, it approaches irs subject marrer differently from the earl ier book. As Foucault notes, rather than seeing us from the viewpoint of our exclusion of t he Other, it seeks to articu late the structure of the Same. It tries to describe the historically situated frameworks in which we have appeared to ourselves as living, speaking, exchanging beings. There is another difference as well. Although the book on madness is concerned nor on ly w ith t he discourse on madness, bur also wi th the knowledge of madness, The Order of Things focuses exclusively on knowledge. Histoire de Ia folie spends much of irs rime on theories o f madness and of particular types of madness. Bur it also discusses the treatment of the mad: the practices through w hich the mad were engaged, manipulated, confined and observed. The Order of Things is solely concerned with knowledge in irs t heoretical aspect. Nevertheless, both are concerned with t he question of who we are, and especially w ith that questi on as it arises in our historically situated knowledge of ourselves. Earlier, we isolated five elements that are characteristic of Foucau lt's approach to the question of who we are. Foucau lt sees our determination as collective, as one that we cannot just shake off, as complex, as invo lving both acting and knowing, and as historically contingent. We can see three of these elements clearly in play in both of the books we have recounted. That Histoire de Ia folie and The Order of Things see our determination as co llective, historically contingent, and one we cannot just shake off is straightforward. The collective character of our determ ination arises from Foucault's account being historical rather t han individual. He focuses on t he way we see things- or have seen them - and the way we act. In contrast, for instance, to Sarrre's early work, he does nor account for who we are by looking at the individual, bur rather at the framework of our collective viewpoints. The archaeological method displays t he historical contingency of our being w ho we are. Foucault's refusal to account for how epistemes change reflects, as we saw, a )eeriness about progressive views of history. By allow-

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ing historical breaks or disconrinuiries inro his narratives, he rejects the idea rhar each episteme is a necessary improvemenr on the previous one. Bur in such a rejection, there is also a commirmenr ro historical contingency. Since later frameworks do nor necessarily stem from earlier ones, rhe order of historical frameworks is nor pre-given. There is no particu lar reason why represenrarion had ro follow resemblance, or why the mad had ro be liberated from physical bondage in order ro suffer moral bondage in rhe lateeighteenth cenrury. Foucau lt does nor deny rhac earlier events can cause later ones. However, he does nor seek to account for that causal icy, wh ich implies rhar he does nor see a parrern rhar governs historical change. Historical change, is, then, conringenr. That we can nor just shake off the historical frameworks in which we find ourselves is nor someth ing Foucault argues for explicitly. Rather, ir follows from his approach . He is at pains, for instance, ro show rhar Tuke and Pinel do nor initiate a new epoch in the rrearmenr of th e mad, bur instead reflect larger changes rhar borh precede and accompany their work. Foucau lt does nor argue rhar nothing can be done ro change h istorical frameworks; in facr, they do change. Bur he does nor see rhose changes as being wrought simply by ind ividual ini tiati ve. One migh t wanr to argue here that, since he does nor account for historical breaks, he must rlhink rhar nobody has any ability ro conrribure ro historical change. We are all simply prisoners of our own epistemes. That would be raking Foucau lt's reticence ro account for change roo far. Foucault is agnostic abour our relati on ro historical change, nor atheistic. To say rhar we cannot simply shake off our h isro~ical heritage is nor ro say that we can have no effect on it. Can we, as individuals or in a co llective manner, create historical change? Foucault does nor tell us his views on this. His reluctance ro discuss how people affect rhe historical trajectories he recounts has led many people ro think that he is a fatal ist. This charge has followed nor only his archaeo logical works, bur his later genealogical ones as well. In the larrer case, the accusation is more stinging because, as we shall see, the genealogical works are more pol itically charged. T heir stakes concern who we are as a product of relations of power, and specifically relarions of power and knowledge. W hen power is ar stake, the claim that we can do nothing about it seems more despairing, or even cynical. However, rhere seems robe no reason nor ro rake Foucault's histories ro be anything other than what he often says they are: rools t o be used to understand our situation. H e does nor give us ontological accounts of who we are, and he is nor seeking to answer questions about free will and determ inism. The freedom he accords us comes nor from w ithin rhe deep structure of human beings, bur from wi thin rhe fragi le and conringent nature of our history. Therefore, he does nor see himself as owi ng us a general account of

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the ways people can or cannot affect their historical siruarion, bm instead an accoum of the situation itself. There are rwo qual ities we have nor discussed yet: the fact that who we are is a maHer of both acting and knowing, and the complexity of who we are. As ro the first, it appears most clearly in the book on madness. The Order of Things is a more theoretically focused work. Foucault does nor discuss there the use of the human sciences in non-theoretical simarions, although he recognizes rhar there is an imeracrion between theory and practice. In the Archaeology of Knowledge, for instance, he writes rhar: the determination of the theoretical choices rhar were acmally made is also dependem on another amhoriry. This aurhoriry is characterized first by t he function rhar the discourse under smdy must carry om in a field of non-discursive practices. Thus, General Grammar played a role in pedagogic practice. . . . (AKDL: 67-8) Even in that work, however, he privileges the discurs ive level, as ev idenced by the terms "archive", ''discursive formarion" and "statenlent" that govern t he methodological structure he erects. W hen he moves to his later genealogica l works, Foucault will articu late a deeper imeracrion between the discourse of t he human sciences and their practice and appl ication. At this stage of his investigation, Foucau lt is more imeresred at the discursive level than at the level of practice, although pract ice does appear in the book on madness wi th regard t o the rrearmem of the mad, and it appears as well in The Birth of the Clinic, which describes the r ise of clinical medicine and the views of life and death that arise in irs wake. The issue of complexity is itself a complex one. h depends, in parr, on one's view of the srams of archaeo logy. \Y/e have seen that Foucault is unclear at this stage in his writings abom the range of appl ication of his analyses. Is the relation of reason ro madness in Histoire de Ia folie a marrer all of reason? Does the reason rhar rakes pacricu lar forms in relation to irs Other characterize the enrire srrucrure of reason in a given period? If there is no such thing as an ah istorical Reason, is there such a thing as a historically simated Reason? We might ask the same questions abom epistemes, about the extenr of their reach in particular historical periods. Sometimes Foucault characterizes them as structures rhar lie beneath emire cu lm raJ formations. At other rimes he denies this. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, for instance, he writes rhar: "The relations I have described are valid in order to define a particular configuration: they are nor signs to describe the face of a cu lmre in irs totality" (ibid.: 159). When we turn to Foucault's genealogical works, we shall see a more clearly demarcated set

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of limitations on his ana lyses. At the archaeological stage, ir is unclear whether the archaeological layers he uncovers are meanr to characterize a smaller or larger parr of the terrain he is investigating. In viewing the last rwo characteristics of Foucau lt's work, we have seen rwo sets of questions arise. The first concerns the relations between the discursive and the non-discursive. Although Foucault claims at rimes to be investigating both, the archaeo logical works place their accenr on what is said at the expense of what is done. Is there a separable relation berween the rwo, or is it rather that in order to understand one requires at the same rime an investigation of the other? To understand what is said or what can be said does there nor have to be an investigation of the doings in wh ich those sayings are caught up, wh ich frame them and confer their legitimacy or illegitimacy? Alrernarively, does the relation between the rwo nor also flow in t he other direction, w here certain say ings create or prevent or transmute the doings they come inro conracr w ith? Perhaps it would be best ro drop the distinction between the rwo altogether and to invest igate the practices in wh ich both arise simultaneously. The other set of questions concerns the status of the archives Foucault describes, their specificity and their general ity. Archaeology, wh ich works across a particu lar chronological stratum, seems ro imply a commonal ity among d iscourses in a given historical period, both within a culture and across cu ltures. Is Foucau lt committed to this? Should we fo llow t he lead of the works themselves, wh ich seem more expansive in this regard? Or shou ld we instead rarify some of the commenrs he makes abour the works, often afterwards, wh ich po int to a more lim ited scope? Foucau lt himself seems to struggle w ith this problem. There is a third set of questions as well, one t hat relates to the status of the works themselves. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucaul t tells us, consistenT w ith t he approach of his wri tings, that "it is nor possible for us to describe our own archive, since it is from w ithin these ru les t hat we speak, since it is that which gives us what we can say" (AKDL: 130). This staremenr raises rwo questions, one having ro do with the sratemenr itself, and the other w ith irs implication for his histories. As far as the statement itself goes, there is a problem of what is known philosophically as reflexivity. If it is nor possible for us to describe our own archive, how does he know that we speak within irs rules? To know that wou ld seem to imply that we can step outside our own archive, at leasiT far enough to recognize rhar it has a particu lar set of ru les. Bur that is precisely what Foucau lt says cannot be done. To say t hat one cannot describe one's own arch ive is a bit like saying "I always lie." There is something self-defeating abour ir, since it assumes a srandpo inr that the sraremenr itself denies. It seems that the best Foucault can do in this area is plead ignorance abour the archival

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nature of his own discourse. His arrempt to simate us historically within an archive is self-refuting. The implication for his histories is this. If we are speaking from within our own archive, and if its ru les and norms are as ungrounded and as changeable as, say, that of t he classical or the modern episteme, what does t hat mean for the status of his historical narratives? Shou ld we take them as accurate depictions of t he frameworks of knowledge that operate in the periods he describes? Or should we instead, and perhaps more consisten tly, see them simply as descriptions that come from a particu lar archive, no worse and no berrer than competing descripti ons that cou ld be offered from the perspective of different archives? Foucault concludes The Archaeology of Knowledge w ith a wrirren selfinterv iew. It is an honest piece of self-reflection during which he asks himself, "\XIhat then is the t itle of you r discourse? Where does it come from and from w here does it derive its right to speak? How cou ld it be legitimated?" He responds thus: "[ adm it that this quest ion embarrasses me more than your earl ier objections . . . my discourse, far from determin ing the locus in which it speaks, is avoiding the ground on wh ich it could find support" (ibid.: 205). The question of the status o f Foucault's archaeological writings is one that he never resolves." It rema ins, alongside the issue of the relation of the d iscursive and the non-discursive and the question of the general scope of the archaeologies, among the challenges facing Foucault's archaeological project. He does not adequately answer them, because he moves on to another project, or at least modifies the project enough to give it another name. Genealogy rep laces archaeology. Shou ld we reproach him for this? Does he owe us an account of the success or failure of archaeology to address these questions? He does not think so. When he confronts himself, at the outset of The Archaeology of Know· ledge, with the charge that he keeps changing the charact er of what he is doing, he responds to himself by saying, "Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our pol ice to see that our papers are in order" (ibid.: 17). This is, I believe, t he right response. Not because one should never answer for anyth ing one wri tes. Bur because one need not answer for everything one writes, every aspect of one's perspective. Sometimes it is enough just to move on. Many philosophers spend the early part of their careers staking our a small piece of philosophical territory, and t he rest of their professional lives patro lling that territory rather than investigating what else might be our there. It is, for all bur very few phi losophers - those who can mine a particular problem more deeply with each investigation, always finding a hidden seam with new riches - a sad and futile exercise. Foucault does not do this. He moves on. His archaeologies are a rype of invest igation, his

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genealogies anorher. If Foucaulr does nor offer us rhe model of phi losoph ical consistency, if he changes direction several rimes over rhe course of his career, and if he loses (or gains) readers in rhe process, perhaps we shou ld nor faulr him for rhis. Perhaps we should see his works as he sees rhem: invesrigarions, enquiries inro w ho we are and how we gor robe rhar way. And if we find a particu lar enquiry ro be unhelpfu l - because ir is unenlighrening, misraken, unclear, or for some orher reason - we roo can jusr move on, find something more helpfu l, more exciring, more challenging. The srakes, afrer all, concern who we are and w ho we mighr be. To misrake rhese sra kes for something less wou ld b-e ro lose rhe rhread, nor only of Foucault's larger enrerprise, bur of our own.

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CHAPTER THREE

Genealogical histories of who we are

In May and June of 1968, events in Paris and elsewhere - events that have both d iscursive and non-discursive aspects - alter the character of French life. They also alter the character of French thought. To recount these events in anything like the complexity they deserve is beyond the scope of t his boo k. Moreover, any approach to the "events of May" or " May '68" invites controversy. No period in French history s ince the Second World \Var has generated as much discussion as these two months in the late 1960s. Are the events revo lutionary, or are they just the indulgence of middle-class students? H ave they had a long-lasting impact on French culture or po litics, or are their effects loca lized to a time and place? Do they contribute to the rise of an independent French approach to the world, or simply stall its economic development ? Are the events primarily a cu ltural phenomenon, or do they rise (or descend) to the level of politics? One cannot interpret t he events without becoming, implicitl y or exp licitl y, com mined on these and other quest ions. 1 Let us be brief. In May 1968 students at the university at Namerre go on stri ke to protest their administrati on's temporary closing of the university in the wake of demands for "anti-imperialist" study. T hese strikes are soon followed by workers' strikes, and intersection of t hese st rikes brings together, at least temporari ly, rwo sections of the French popu lation that are traditionally separate from each other. In Paris, barricades are built in t he st reets, and it looks for a br ief period as though President de Gaulle's government might fall . It wou ld be t he first revolution in modern Western Europe, succeeding where the revolts of 1848 and 1871 fai l. T he French Communist Parry rakes a stand against t he students and workers, largely because it is caught unawares by the events and does nor find itself in the vanguard, where it considers irs rightful place to be. By mid- to late June, civic order is restored. The character of many French citizens' sense of themselves, however, is transformed, as is the landscape of French intellectual life.

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Up until the events of May, the French political scene could be nearly divided into the communists on the left and the lilberals on the right. There are, of course, gradations in between, bur the primary battleground concerns these rwo ideologies. One is either with Sarrre the communist or Raymond Aron the liberal. The events do nor change the libera l side. If anything, t hey reinforce the liberal view of t he irresponsibiliry of rad icalism. On t he left, however, everyth ing changes. The political bankruptcy of the French Communist Parry, which had aligned itself w ith the rightist de Gaulle, is there for al l to see. No longer would commun ism in France be the hope of the left. Or, more accurately, no longer would the communism of the French Commun ist Parry, or any other party claiming to speak for the masses, be the left's hope. The Parry betrays the workers. It does nor lead them in the moment of transformation. It does nor even follow; it resists from t he righ t, in the name of its own leadership. T he left will have to look elsewhere for its models. This change does nor involve a sh ift from one set of allegiances to another. There is, at this rime, no other systematic competing set of ideas to embrace. Parry commun ism does nor have an alternative. And yet this, as it turns our, is the good news. The intellectual culture in France in the decade or so after May '68, particularly in irs po litical thought, is among the most fru itful in recent history. There is an exp losion of po litical, or politically relevant, thought from a number of angles that comes to occupy the place vacated by the French Communist Parry. Nor only Foucau lt, but also G illes Deleuze, Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, Luce lrigaray, Jacques Derrida, Ju lia Krisreva, Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere and others provide po litical reflection (or politically charged phi losophical reflection) that points in new directions and offers new ways to conceive our relations m the world and to one another. T imes of crisis, when the old order comes unglued and the new one has not yet coalesced, can act as a spur ro creativiry. Think of the Renaissance, for instance. The post-May period in French intellectual culmre is one of those times. Foucaul t is not in Paris during the events of May. He is teach ing instead at the Universiry of Tunis in Tunisia. However, soon after the events of May he returns to France to head the ph ilosophy department at Vincennes, a gathering (some wou ld call it a ghetto) of t he French intellectual left. After the publication of The Archaeology of Knowledge, he does not publish a book for seven years. H is shorter writings and activity, though, take on an increasingly pol itical tinge. This tinge is in evidence in the inaugural address of his appointment to France's most prestigious insti tution of higher learning, the College de France. T here he discusses t he "will t o truth" as a power imposed to limit discourse and prevent creative t hought, and he announces his future research programme. It comprises two aspects.

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GENEALOGICAl HISTORIES OF WHO WE ARE

The first is a critical one that isolates "the forms of exclusion, lim itation and appropriation" of discourse (AKDL: 231). The second is a genealogical one that shows "how series of discourse are formed, t hrough, in spi re of, or with the aid of these systems of constraint: whar were the specific norms for each, and what were their conditions of appearance, growth, and variat ion" (ibid.: 232). The second project is the one that Foucault eventually embraces. And in embracing it, he sh ifts his focus from the more pure ly discursive to incorporate the non-discursive as wel l. He describes the rise and the effects, especially political effects, of various practices and their intersection . And, as he mentions in his inaugural address, he gives this historical description t he name genealogy. What is genealogy? Most of us are probably most fam iliar with the term in its appl ication t o familial lineage. To trace a family genealogy is t o trace one's ancest ors, t o fo llow backwards (or forwards) the marriage and kinsh ip lines that yield oneself, one's siblings, one's c hi ldren . There is something of this going on in Foucau lt's genealogies. The idea of asking who one is by way of tracing how one has arrived at this point is certain ly in accordance with his method. In addi tion, as we shall see, just as the roots of a fami ly genealogy become more dispersed the further back (or the further forward) one goes, Foucault's genealogies do not found themselves at a particular privi leged starring point. TI1ere is no pristine moment of origin, no point of creation. Everything begins dispersed, without centre or unity. However, there are important differences as well. First, instead of t racing the evolution of marriages Foucau lt traces the evolution of practices. Secondly, and fo llowing directly from this, the question of who one is becomes, as it is in the archaeo logical works, a collective question rather t han an ind ividual one. The product of a Foucau ldian genealogy is not an I; it is a we. Thirdly, in as much as fami lial genealogies seek to give a single answer to the question of who one is (and, of course, they need not do so), Foucault breaks with that approach. Un like a fam ily genealogy, of which t here can only be one, genealogies of practices are many and various. \Ve are involved in many different practices, and although particu lar ones may be more importantly determ inative for who we a re, no single one or no single group has a privi leged position, one that :guides the others or to wh ich the others can be reduced. Fourthly, Foucault's genealogies are tied to the politics of truth. It is not simply practices th at Foucault is interested in: it is the politics and epistemology of those practices, and especially the bond between their politics and their epistemology. The term genealogy is one that Foucault borrows from N ierzsche. Nietzsche uses it to describe the emergence of what he thinks of as force

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relat ions in regard to particular institutions or practices. These forces are, broadly speaking, active and reactive ones. Active forces are at once creative and dest ructive; if they are destructive, though, it is as a by-product of their creativity. Active forces seek to express themselves, whether by artistic or martial or at hletic or other means. Reactive forces, by contrast, do not seek to express themselves. They are, as their name impl ies, forces that react to active ones. Essentially, reactive forces are those t hat are unable to express themselves, as active forces do, so their form of expression is parasitical upon that of active ones. T hat form of expression is largely negative; they seek to undermine the expression of active forces. For Nietzsche, then, reactive forces are in a close alignment with resentment, with a hatred for the expression characteristic of acti ''e forces. The question for Nietzsche is, given a particu lar institution or practice, what is currently dominating it, active or reactive forces? This is w here genealogy comes in . Genealogy is the tracing of the history of an institution or a practice by asking wh ich forces have taken hold of it, active or reactive ones. One cannot project back from one's current position the meaning or origin of an institution or practice. History is, in Nietzsche's eyes, the struggle for dominance among and between active and reactive forces. He points out, in On the Genealogy of Morals: that everyth ing wh ich happens in the organic world is part of a process of overpowering, mastering, and that, in turn, all overpowering and mastering is a reinterpretatlion, a manipulation, in the course of which the previous "meaning" and "aim " 1nust necessarily be obscured or complet ely effaced.' This approach has several elements that find their way into Foucault's own genealogies. First, genealogy does not search for an origin, a wellspring from which the practices one is investigating can be understood in their essence. For some who seek to understand particular practices, the key is to dig beneath all the hist orical transformations in order to discover the original character of the practice. Martin Heidegger, for instance, holds that in order to understand t he quest ion of Being we need to go back to its original asking, before it was buried under the W•eight of the metaphysical tradition. Genealogy rejects this approach. Of course, all practices begin somehow. H owever, their beginning does not give us any privi leged insight into their essential character. The reason for t his, and this is the second element Foucault adopts, is that there is no essential character that practices contain. For Nietzsche, as for Foucault, what counts is not essence but historical legacy. To discover the character of a practice is to trace the roles it plays, the intersections w ith

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other practices it maintains, the meanings ascribed to it and that emerge from ir, over the course of irs evolution. Foucaul t departs from Nietzsche in Nietzsche's attempt ro interpret this evolution in terms of active and react ive forces. For Foucault there are no forces that form a framework for interpretation. However, t he difference here amounts to less than it might seem. In Foucault's genealogical writings, as in N ietzsche's, there is a st rong normative flavour. Foucault at rimes characterizes his works as description rather t han recommendation, bur this is a bit disingenuous. As we shall see, Foucault is clearly critical of the penal project of rehabilitation, as he is of the interpretative projects t hat have come to surround our sexual ity. Nietzsche uses value-laden terms - active and react ive - in his genealogical stud ies. They form the normative framework of his approach. If Foucau lt does nor have an overt normative framework, he certainly knows what he doesn't li ke, what he finds, in the term he sometimes uses, intolerable.' This is t he third element he borrows from Nietzsche. Those fam iliar wi th N ietzsche's and Foucau lt's writings might wish to object here that, although their genealogies are both normatively laden, t here is a very different set of norms to which each is attached. After all, Nietzsche's view is aristocratic. H e has no use, as he repeated ly insists, for anything democratic. For him, it is the strong and the creative that are worthy; he is nor concerned w ith the oppressed. Foucault, on the other hand, never ceases to speak alongside (although never in the name of) the oppressed. \Vherher it is the mad, prisoners, homosexuals, or outcasts, he embraces those who find themselves in positions of weakness rather than strength. There is something to this objection. Nietzsche, indeed, is no democrat. H owever, it would be easy to make roo much of this difference, for two reasons. First, Nietzsche's active forces are t hemselves in danger of becom ing outcasts. The mass of humanity- for wh ich, to be sure, he d isplays no sympathy - always seek to destroy or at least to margina lize active forces. This is why he says "the strongest and most fortunate are weak when opposed by organ ized herd instincts, by the tim id ity o f the weak, by the vast majority .. . Strange though it may sound, one always has to defend the strong against the weak."' Secondly, there is an important similarity between the objects of Nietzsche's and of Foucault's criticism. They both target the mind less conformism that characterizes contemporary society. For Nietzsche, that conformism is a product of the dominance of reactive forces; for Foucault, it has more to do with historically grounded realities such as the emergence of capitalism and the evoluiion of church doctrine. H owever, both share a revulsion against conformiry that characterizes the world each of them lives in.

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The debt that Foucault owes ro N ierzsche in adopting the genealogical approach becomes clear in an essay he publishes in 1971, a year after his inaugural lecture at the College de France and four years before the appearance of his first full-length genealogy, Discipline and Punish. T he essay, entitled "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History", is at once a rendering of Nietzsche's genealogical method and an announcement of his own. It begins with the lines, "Genealogy is gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary. It operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over and recopied many rimes" (NGH: 139). These words are perhaps a better characterization of Foucault's more derai led approach than Nietzsche's method of painting with broad brush stro kes, bur it does emphasize the historical character of both projects. The similarity deepens as t he essay unfolds. After a critique of histories that rely on the concept of origins and grand beginn ings, Foucau lt notes that N ierzsche's genealogical method is engaged in a twofold task : Herkzmft and Entstehung, or in rhe English translation descent and emergence. Together they constitute a historical approach that abandons t he ideas of history as having particular aims or goals, as being a unified goal wi th a decipherable meaning, and as having an essential origin that has made us who we are or, alternatively, from wh ich we have strayed. Descent approaches history by means of seeking the separate, dispersed events that have come together in a contingent way to form a particular practice. Rather than look ing for the golden threads that bind history together, descent seeks the coming-ro-be of a practice in events that are often small, ignored, close to the ground, and disparate from one another. Emergence, on t he other hand, describes the "hazardous play of dominations" (ibid.: 148) that forms the history of a given practice or group of practices. Emergence, in Nietzsche's view, is a matter of the domination of active and reactive forces. Rather t han seeking the meaning o f a practice in the goals it sets itself or t he ro le it sees itself as fu lfi lling, Nietzsche asks whether a practice is oriented towards creation and expression or instead toward resentment and small-mindedness. Bur emergence can be seen, and Foucau lt will see it this way, as a matter of w hat effects, deleterious or helpful, the uses to which practices are pur give rise at different rimes and places. Together, descent and emergence offer a view of hist ory that traces the emergence and dissolution of practices and of the uniti es those practices temporarily form with other practices. It is a hist ory w ithout origin, goal, or meaning. It is a history in w hich disparate practices come together and then disperse in unpredictable ways; and it is a history in which t his coming together and dispersing produce a number of unforeseen effects that can resu lt in a variety of dom inations. T his does nor imply, however, that recounting this history is po intl ess. After all, human beings are without

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origin, goal, or meaning. Genealogy, then, is a project of tell ing us about who we are. Ir tells us w ithout reference to the framing assumptions of much of the history of philosophy. And in doing so, it tells us two other things as wel l. It allows us to see how aspects of ourselves that we thought were natura l or inescapable turn our instead robe hist orical, and in fact hist orically contingent. We did nor have to become who we are, and in rurn we can become somethi ng other t han what we are. It also allows us to see some of the effects of being w ho we are now, effects t hat perhaps we wou ld rather nor be parry to. There is no single story of who we are that Foucau lt has to tell. His genealogies do nor seek to cover the broad sweep of our historical legacy. More clearly and more consciously than in his archaeo logical works, Foucault rakes his genealogies ro trace aspects of who we have come robe, of w ho we are now. If our history is a matter of t he unfolding of temporary un ities from dispersed origins, then who we are is a matter nor of any part icular unity bur of a variety of overlapping and intersecting un ities of pract ices. Although at rimes Foucault uses images that suggest he is describing an entire cultural formation, a close reading of his genealogical works shows that those images are rhetorical more than substantive. In each case, Foucault describes an important parr of who we are and how we came to be that way. In no case does he rake himself as accounting for all of ir. The writer John Berger observes, "Never again will a single story be told as t hough it were t he on ly one. "5 It is an observation that Foucault's writings embody. There are rwo major works of Foucau lt's rha·r fall clearly under the category of genealogy: the book on the punishmen t enti tled Discipline and Punish and the first volume of The History of Se:>.1rality. Of these, only the first is a fu ll-fledged historical study. The latter is both methodological and programmatic. It offers a clear delineation of the method that was used in t he prison book and is to be used in a larger srudy o f sexual ity, and it offers a brief historical framework for the genea logical study of sexual ity. The latter project, for reasons we shall discuss more fully below, is never comp leted. Instead, Foucault turns from his proposed study of sexual ity to t he larger project of self-making, and at the same rime widens the historical scope of his study. He starts with the Greeks rather than, as is his wont, the Renaissance or early post-Renaissance.

A history of the prisons

Discipline and Punish displays an important similarity ro Foucault's book on madness. In both, as wi ll also be the case with rlhe book on sexuality, he

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performs what we might cal l an inversion of a received view. In Histoire de Ia folie the inversion rakes place with regard to t he work ofTuke and Pinel. On t he received view, both are thought to be liberators of the mad, unchaining them and releasing them from their barbarous cond itions. Foucau lt argues t hat, although t his may be true, there is an opposite movement as well, a rechaining of the mad. Released from t heir physical bonds, the mad w ill now be bound by moral bonds that are as sure as, if nor more sure than, the physical bondage to wh ich t hey were previously subject. We must be carefu l here nor to misunderstand the inversion Foucault performs. He does not argue, although the view has been ascribed ro him, that things were better in earl ier periods and )\ave now become worse. N ierzsche's work often suggests this type of historical decline or regression. It is nor Foucau lt's position. The inversion he performs is nor a simple one, in w hich we are to ld t hat things have become berrer when in fact they have become worse. To deny the assumption of a progressive history does nor require rhar one embrace the assumption of a regressive history. The inversion Foucault's studies perform seeks to show that w hat has been called a progressive history moment is accompan ied by a movement that is also deleterious. Th is does nor reverse the assumption of historical progress; ir complicates ir. What is the story of historical progress that Fou cault reverses in his book on punishment and the prisons? It is a story we are all fami liar with, even if we have no background in penal study. It is a story of penal progress from vengeance to rehabilitation. In the early history of punishment, punishment rakes the form of ret ribution. The offender is treated as something beneath or beyond human concern. H av ing comm itted a crime, the offender is subject to any form of pun ishment the social body deems appropriate to mere our. Torture, physical and psycho logical abuse, public humiliation: these are all among the range of punishments available to a society that wants on ly to get back at crimina ls for the wrongs they have committed. It is probably worth noting that this sentiment, which was once thought obsolete, can be seen on full display in the Un ited Stares before the imp lementation of a death penalry. It is inscribed on the placards and etched in the faces of those who stand outside the prisons anticipating the execution. T here are fewer reminders of how little distance we have travelled from the rime of public tormre more powerful than those gatherings. In any case, so the story goes, we have (death penalty celebrations notwithstanding) become more civi lized. Rehabilitation has replaced torture and public punishment as the pre ferred response ro crime. Rather than simply punishing criminals for what they have done, we now seek to change them, make them into something t hat can navigate society in a different

68

GENEALOGICAL HISTORIES OF WHO WE ARE

way. Crime, on rhis view, is nor simp ly an acr rhar requires vengeance; ir is a behaviour rhar requires inrervenrion. The criminal is nor simply ro be punished for commi rring an acr. Once rhe criminaO is in rhe custody of rhe srare, rhe proper approach is ro work on rhe criminal so as ro promote a differenr sryle of engaging with the world, a differenr "behavioural repertoire". Wherher by instilling proper work habits, or offering insigh t inro the causes of rhe aberranr behaviour, or breaking individuals down bootcamp style and rebu ilding rhem, or reinforcing good habirs while seeking to extingu ish bad ones, or by some combination of these, criminals are not simply to be harmed. They are robe improved. In this way, the rreatmenr of crim inals has become more humane. It is no longer a ceremony of degradation or abuse. Rather, ir is a policy of improvemenr. Criminals no longer fall ourside the realm of human concern. \X7hile punishmenT of some form is in order, rhe crim inal is at the same rime to be treated as someone who was once and wil l again be a member of society. Penal inrervenrion musr be constructed wirh rhar recognition in mind. This is rhe progressive story of penal history. The first few pages of Discipline and Punish do lirde ro undermine thar srory. Foucau lt recounts rhe public rorrure of an artempred regicide named Damiens that rakes place in 1757. The spectacle is gruesome. Ir involves burning and peeling skin from rhe offender, drawing and quartering, slicing limbs, all in an order rhar would seek to cause rhe maximum amount of pain. This account is immediately followed by one rhar cou ld not provide a greater contrast. Ir is a prison schedule from eighty years later. Ir describes in a detached fashion rhe mundane rourine robe followed by rhe inmates of a prison for yourhfu l offenders, offering a rigorous, minurely derailed accounr of whar is robe expected of rhem ar each hour of rhe day. It is easy to see here rhe received view of penal history ar work: rhe contrast between rhe public rorrure and humi liation (during rhe procedure Damiens often called our for God's pity) of rhe procedure applied to rhe regicide and rhe regimenrarion of rhe penal practice rhar fol lows ir. The first is an exercise in vengeance, rhe second an exercise in rehabilitat ion. Foucault's placing of these rwo approaches side by side shows rhar he recognizes that there is somerhing to rhe received view. Bur ir is also misleading. Thar is where rhe genealogical history begins. Foucault's history does nor, as his recitation of the case of Damiens exempl ifies, rake issue wirh rhe early parr of rhe received view. Criminals are tortured and degraded before rhe reforms of rhe lare-eighreenrh and earlynineteenth centuries. In facr, rorrure occurs ar rwo points in rhe crim inal procedure, one secretly and rhe other publicly. The first point is dur ing inrerrogarion. In order ro obtain confessions, pain is infl icted on rhesuspeer's body. This may ring false ro modern ears, where a person is presumed

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innocent until proved gui lty. (Recall, though, rhar former President Ronald Reagan's Anorney General, Edwin Meese, once defended rhe denial of righ ts ro suspects by saying rhar if rhey weren't guilty, rhey wouldn't be suspeers.) However, during rhe classical period, gu ilt occurs by degrees. "Tlms a sem i-proof did nor leave rhe suspect innocem umi l such rime as ir was completed; ir made him semi-gu ilty; slight evid ence of a serious crime marked someone as sl ightl y criminal" (DP: 42). A suspect, rhen, is always deserving of rorrure. It is during punishmem rhar rhe crim inal's bod y is subject ro pain, and becomes public. In France rhe procedure is called supplice, wh ich translates imo Engl ish as torture. However, we should nor rhink of supplice as a simple barbarity performed upon rhe body of rhe criminal. Supplice is nor chaoric or arbitrary. lr is a measured and calculated response ro crim inality, one rhar has rhree elemems: rhe infliction of a measured amoum of pain; rhe regulation of rhar pain; and rhe rirualisric character of rhe application of techniques producing pain. Supp/ice is a righrly choreographed public rima) of agony, and ir finds irs sear in rhe narure of criminality itself. Criminal ity is often rhoughr of, among other ways, as an offence against rhe social body. This is as rrue of earlier periods as iris now. However, rhe character of rhe social body in, for instance, pre-Revolm ion France is differenr. lr is nor rhe people bur rhe sovereign, rhe king, who is considered the bearer of rhe elemems of the social body. Whereas in democratic regimes, ar least in principle, rhe people are t hought to be t he constiruems of rhe social body, in earlier monarchies rhe king plays t har role. lr is nor as t hough there are no people, bur rather rhe character of the peop le is rhoughr ro be distilled in rhe body of rhe sovereign. The French - c'est moi. Thus an arrack on rhe social body is an arrack on rhe king, and in a very li tera l way. Crim inality is an arrack on the social body, on the body of rhe king. It is a personal arrack: an injury anempred against rhe regal body. In order ro re-establish t he sovereignty of rhe regal body, rhe social body, rhar has been arracked, one must restore rhe balance of power. (Here we shall use t he term power in a traditional sense. lr is a rerm, as we shall see, rhat Foucau lt complicates larer in rh is work.) Or bener, one musr resrore rhe proper imbalance of power. If rhe criminal can ger away w irh an arrack, this proves rhe weakness, rhe vulnerability of rhe social body. T he punishmenr of a crime, then, musr involve an assertion of rhe power of t he sovereign. Crim inals musr be made ro feel rhar power ar the same sire ar which rhey sought ro arrack ir in rhe sovereign. They musr be made to feel it in t heir body. Hence rhe elaborate torrures whose goal is ro maximize pain and ro assert the unassailable power of the sovereign in a way rhar is unmistakable borh ro crim inals and ro rhe peop le al ike. As rhe criminal is raughr a lesson in power, rhe people are both resrored to rhe security rheir sovereign can

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offer them and warned against vio lating that sovereignty themselves. "The public execution", Foucault says, "has a juridico-pol irical function. It is a ceremonial by wh ich a momentari ly injured sovereign is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at irs most spectacular" (DP: 48). One can see then w hy punishment cannot be a blind rage. H owever agon izing it may be for the criminal, it remains an expression of the sovereign, and rhus must bear the stamp of both his power and his bearing. In order to do so it must be controlled. To stri ke without control is a display of weakness, not strength . There are at least two potential difficulties w ith this particular exercise of t he power to punish. The first is that the grand display of this asymmetry of power can backfire. Alongside the public awe at the power of the king, and alongside the fear that that power invokes, it can also happen - and it did happen - that the public comes to identify w ith the object of punishment, and rhus becomes resentfu l of the sovereign. T his is particularly true w hen t he criminal displays dignity under torture or when the punishment seems to go roo far into the realm of the spectacular or when the criminal derides t he authorities for their own abuses. In cases like these, the public comes at rimes to identify with the criminal, and this leads to resistance against these exercises of sovereignty. In add ition, all criminal ity represents a rebell ion against the current social order, a rebellion that would find sympathy in a large portion of a public who suffers under great d isparities in wealth and comfort that are parr of the structure of that order. T he cure for all t his, it would seem, would be to soften punishment, to make it less an expression of power and more an expression of justice. And indeed there is a reform movement that seeks to soften punishment. Bur nor only soften it. A number of changes are raking place during the second half of the eighteenth century: [T)he sh ift from a crim inality of blood to a criminal ity of fraud forms parr of a whole complex mechanism, embracing the development of production, the increase of wealth, a higher juridical and moral value placed on property relations, stricter methods of surveillance, a righter partitioning of the population, more efficient techniques of locating and obtaining informati on. (DP: 77) Because of these changes, and in particu lar because of the change of property relations to w hich many of these relate, anoth er concern comes to the surface as wel l. Up to this point punishment is as sporadic as it is gruesome. To be sure, t he consequences of gening caught are dire. However, many people do not get caught; and this is the second difficulty with supplice. The arrangement

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works tolerably wel l as long as the institution of private property is in irs infancy. Bur as it matures, w ith it grows t he necessity of a more universal form of punishment. Al l property must be protected, and since property is dispersed among many individuals, protection from criminality must be afforded to all of them: The true objective of the reform movement, even it irs most general formulations, was nor so much ro establish a new right ro punish based on more equitable principles, as to set up a new 'economy' of the power to punish .. . so that it shou ld be distributed in homogeneous circu its capable of operating everywhere, in a continuous (Ibid.: 80) way, down to t he finest grain of t he social body. The question becomes, how is this to happen? How can one construct a penal structure that w ill protect against all the perry crimes that had once been tacitly rolerared, while at rhe same rime generating universal respect so t hat it does nor suffer t he same problems as supplice? To this, the penal reformers have an answer. One must design punishments that are cal ibrated to crimes so as to ensure deterrence. If the loss to be incurred outweighs the gain of the crime, and if one is certain that by committing that crime one will also incur t hat loss, the crime is less likely robe comm irred.6 "To find the suitable punishment for a crime is to find the disadvantage whose idea is such that it robs for ever the idea of a crime of any attraction" (ibid.: 104). In addition, the populace is less likely to become upset with the authorities. Since the response is nor ro perform an outrage upon the body bur to deter crime, t hen there is no spectacle to which the public is called to react. A sober system of measured punishmen ts is w hat is needed to eliminate crime - particularly crim e against property ro ensure public order, and ro be capable of universal applicati on. Why is it then t hat, rather than adopting this system of punishments, each designed ro deter the crime it responds ro, only one type of punishment emerges for everyone during the early nineteenth century? Why is it that there emerges a single answer for all crimes, an answer that remains with us today? W hy imprisonment? The subtitle of Discipline and Punish is La Naissance de Ia prison: the birth of the prison. It is at this point that Foucault's genealogical method begins ro emerge. Up to this point, it is easy ro t hin k t hat the story Foucault is telling is a linear one, that it traces a singu lar th read t hrough its chronological weave. This would nor be genealogy as Foucault describes it in his essay on N ietzsche. It wou ld involve a unity of origin rather than a d ispersion that comes together into a temporary unity. And because of this it

72


would invite a reading that sees history as either p.rogressive or regressive. Either punishment is better and more humane than it used to be or it is worse.

This is nor how Foucau lt approaches the birth o f the prison. To be sure, there is a certa in continuity between earl ier and later forms of punishment. They are both, after a ll, ways of dealing with criminal ity. And, moreover, both involve the app lication of particu lar techniques to the body. H owever, the later form of punishment, which Foucau lt calls discipline, is nor merely a development from an insular history of punishment. If it were, then one wou ld expect that the advice of the reformers of the late eigh teenth century wou ld have been taken . It is not. In fact, the emergence of the prison is in direct contradiction to the ideas of the reformers. Rather than marching punishment to crime, it affords a single punishment for all cnmes. To account for this emergence Foucau lt looks beyond the prison to other, more far-flung practices: The "invention" of this new po litical anatomy must not be seen as a sudden discovery. It is rather a multiplicity of often minor processes, of different origin and scattered location, which overlap, repeat, or imitate one another, su pport one another, distinguish themselves from one another according to their domain of application, converge and gradually produce the blueprint of a general (Ibid. : 138) method. Among these minor processes are the regimented rime schedules characteristic of the monastery and the precisely calibrated movements that are taught to the so ld iers of the Prussian army. These and other practices gradually converge on the issue of punishment, and over the course of the late eigh teenth and early nineteenth centuries yield the "blueprint of a general method" of discipline. Discipline, as Foucaul t uses the term, is more specific than simply the control of the behaviour of others. It may be defined as the project for the body's optimization, for turning the body into a well regulated machine by means of breaking down irs movements into their smallest elements and then building them back into a maximally efficient who le. This project does not simply concern individuals, however. It also concerns their relations. Discip line must ensure that space is properly partitioned so that individuals can relate to one another in maximally efficient ways. It must ensure the proper rime coordination among activities as weJ:I as within them. It is a process that is applied both to bodies and to the interaction between them.

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The ability to accomplish this requ ires an enclosed area in wh ich the movements of individuals and the partitioned space of their relations can be mon itored and intervened upon. That is w hat a prison is. If discipl ine sounds like training for factory work, it should. It is also, however, how schools are run : break down what is to be learned into manageable segmen ts, and then have students master each segment before moving on. It is how businesses are run, how hospitals are run, often how athletics is taught, and how we run our lives. As Foucau lt asks, "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schoo ls, barracks, hospitals, wh ich all resemble prisons?" (DP: 228). Foucaul t isolates three central aspects of disciplinary training: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement, and examination. Hierarchical observation involves a certain "economy of the gaze". There are observers and observed. The observer is to monitor t he observed from a hierarchical distance so that the observer sees but is nor seen and the observed is seen bur does nor see (or at least does nor see the observer). In t his way, the observer can see what the observed is doing, w hat they are nor doing, and how well or poorly they are doing it. For their part, the observed, since they are continuously mon itored, become subject to the gaze of the observer. They must always be "on". They can never let up. They must be as efficient as possible. Normal izing judgement is a binary operation that works by means of both conformity and individualization. Conform ity is to the norm itself, the standard that each must strive to meet; individual ity is the requirement of a set of interventions on particu lar individuals in order to get them to ach ieve the norm. These interventi ons are trained upon minute elements of a person's behav iour. They come to bear at very specific points in the behavioural unfolding of an activity, seeking to maximize it through rewards, pun ishments, or other types of motivation. Th ink of a child who cannot use her fork in the proper manner. "H ere", the parent says, "first hold it like this. Good, very good. Now bring it down to your food. No, nor like that, that's wrong; like this. Yes, better ... ". The emergence of normalization is a revolution nor on ly in penal reform but also in the conception and character of who we are. Foucault describes normalizing judgement as directly opposed ro earlier approaches to punishment, which operate " nor by hierarchizing, but quire simply by bringing into play the binary opposi tion of t he permitted and t he forbidden; nor by homogenizing, bur by operating the division, acquired once and for all, of condemnation" (ibid.: 183). In earl ier forms of punishment, one does nor worry about w here one stands in relation to the norm or the normal. The reason for this is that there is no norm or normal. There are acts that are forbidden, and others - the rest- that are permitted. For the former t here

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are dire consequences, if one is caught. For the latter there is no need for intervention. There may be t raditions govern ing behaviour, bur there are no norms of t he kind discipline develops. Contrast that with our more normalized society. Who among us does nor wonder w hether their behaviour is normal? W ho among us is nor constrained by the concern that t hey may be weird, or off, or nor li ke everyone else? Who is nor driven in parr by the motivation to avoid the need for counsel ling or therapy or some other intervention w hose goal is to pur one back on the right track? Who does not feel the shadow of normality over t heir shou lder? In o lder forms of punishment, the binary division between t he permitted and the forbidden leaves one side of that division alone. In a society in t hrall t o normalization, no behaviour is immune to scrutiny. As my therapist friends say, everyone is a little sick, so everyone can benefit from some therapy. When the)' say it, t hey mean ir. as an advertisement for t heir profession; bur it reveals a deeper truth, one Foucault finds in the emergence of discipli ne: The power of the Norm appears throughout the disciplines. Is this t he new law of modern society? Let us say rather that, since the eighteenth century, it has joined other powers - the Law, the Word (Parole) and the Text, Tradition - imposing new del imitations upon them . (Ibid. : 184) We might recal l here t he analysis, in Histoire de Ia folie, of the emergence of the moral character of t herapy in the practices ofT uke and Pinel. The bonds placed by these figures are no longer physical ones; they are moral and psycho logical. Concurrent w ith the rise of normalization, there is also t he rise of psychology as both a science of the normal and a practice of turning the abnormal into the normal. Psychology, as a study o f and intervention into human behaviour, has irs roots and irs orientation provided by the twin po les of conform ity and individualization characteristic of the normalizing judgement of discipl ine. H ere we see at work one of t he concepts for which Foucault has become famous and, at rimes, notorious: power- knowledge. It is probably the most oft en misunderstood concept in his corpus. The concept of powerknowledge denies that one can hold knowledge to be divorced from power, t hat one c.~n partition off all the relations of power in wh ich peop le are involved in order to ach ieve a knowledge purged of politic.~) impurities, a neutral ground, so to speak. "Perhaps", he says, "we should abandon a who le tradition that allows us to imagine t hat knowledge can exist only where the power relations are suspended and t hat knowledge can develop on ly outside irs injunctions, irs demands, and irs interests" (ibid.: 27).

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This does nor mean, however, rhar all kn owledge is reducible ro power relations or rhar knowledge is simply a mask for power. T hat would nor be power-knowledge: ir would just be power. Instead, we should think of knowledge as something that is embedded in, inseparable from, power relations, bur sti ll a form of knowledge. In fact, as we shall see in detai l when we discuss power in the context of the first volume of Foucault's history of sexual ity, t he emergence of knowledge and its object can occur at the same rime. Psychological knowledge, for exam ple, is parr of a larger whole discipline -that does nor simply understand bur at the same rime creates 'llvho

'""e are.

To pur the point another way, power does nor only stop things from happen ing. It is not merely a negative or repressive operation. It also creates things. If t his is the case, then psychological knowledge is not simply a mask for power. lr actually is knowledge, bur it is knowledge of something it has also participated in creating: These "power-knowledge relations" are ro be analysed, t herefore, not on the basis of a subject of knowledge who is or is not free in relation to the power system, bur, on the cont rary, the subject who knows, the obj ects to be known and the modalities of knowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamenta l implications of power-knowledge and their historical transformations.

(Ibid.: 27- 8) In add ition to hierarch ical observation and norma lizing judgement, discipline involves a third element: exam ination . We have all been subject to it, whether in school, during job training, or in a hospital. The exam ination forms an element of the feedback loop of discipline. lr marks our w here each of us stands relative to the standard, the Norm, to which we are being compared. If hierarchical observation see ks to maximize efficiency by overseeing activity, the examination prov ides t he feedback necessary ro recognize the degree to wh ich that efficiency has been internalized, the degree to which ir has become parr o f us, or, in t he terms we have been using, has become a parr of who we are now. Foucaul t sums up rhe elements of discipl ine and their operation in rhe arresting image of Jeremy Bentham's Panopricon. Bentham, rhe founder of modern uti litarian moral theory, offers in 1791 a design for a prison (one that is never built) rhar he ca lls rhe Panopricon. Essentially, the Panopricon is constructed like a ring around a central core. T he ring holds the prisoners, rhe cenrral core the guards. The prison is constructed so that t he guards can look out and see inside all the prison cells. The prisoners, however, cannot see into rhe central core. Therefore, although one cannot watch all

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t he prisoners at once, no prisoner can see who is being observed and who is nor. One must act as though one is always being observed, since at any particular momem one might be. Bur there is more. In the Panopricon, since one cannot see the guards, and since one must assume t hat one is being watched all the rime, there do nor actually have to be any guards in t he cemra l core. The prisoners, in essence, guard themse lves. They act as though they are under surveillance even if there is nobody there to observe them. And t hat, Foucault concludes, is our cond ition . Given the suffusion of discipline across broad swaths of our society, we are in a condition of whar he calls "panopricism". Even if there is no one watching us, even if we are not being monitored, we act as though we are. We wonder why we are normal, as we mentioned a moment ago, because we are our own prison guards. In a society filled with psycho-services, from therap ists to social workers £O personnel counsellors, t here is no need for everyone to be watched. As these services proliferate, most of us will begin to watch ourselves. We saw above that there are some cominu iries between penal d iscip line and earlier forms of punishmem , in particular that both had to do with penal iry and that both are focused on the body. We can see now that the later forms of each are, although cominuous in one sense, in another sense far removed from their earlier versions. Penal iry is no longer a project of punishment. It is nor even, strictly speaking, a project of deterrence. It is a project of normalizati on, of what penal theorists call re habilitation. Rather than vengeance there is care. Rather than torture there is d iscip line. Those who currently impugn the prisons for being too soft on prisoners are right in a sense. The project of imprisonmem is no longer one of extracting a price for an injury against the social body. H owever, those cri tics miss the larger disciplinary whole imo wh ich this "softer" r~earmem firs. The role of the body has changed as we ll. It has changed from being a sire of pain to being a sire of normalization. It is the place where our psychological stare, our normalization, is created. When Foucault calls his study of t he prisons "an elemem in a genealogy of the modern 'sou l'" (DP: 29), we can see why. The modern soul is the psychological soul, one whose moral componems are embedded in a logic of rhe normal and the abnormal. We are held in thrall t o this modern soul, not simply because it is imposed on us bur because, at t his particular rime in our history, it is who we are. Or better, since there is nothing that so lely is who we are, it is, as Foucault says, "an elemem" of who we are: a cemrally imporram one. And because we are held in thrall t o it, and because it is one of the crucial sources of our conformity, it is no surprise when Foucau lt, inverting t he old Christian formula, declares that "the soul is the pr;son of the body" (ibid.: 30).

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O f course, as many wi ll point our, the prison as a project of rehabilitation is a failure. Recidivism rates are high, many prisoners consider the therapeutic aspects of prison a joke, and, as we have come to understand, many projects of psychological therapy have at best uneven success in changing attitudes or behaviour. The prison as a sire of discipline has nor created the kind of environment in w hich discipl ine can rake hold. And yet the prison remains the major response to criminal ity. How does Foucault explain this? He does nor deny the failure of the prison. What he seeks to understand instead is irs continuance in the face of irs failure. There must, he believes, be some function t hat prisons continue to serve if demonstrated fai lure is nor enough to dismantle them. In fact t here are two, one having to do w ith prisoners themselves and the other w ith the society at large. Regarding prisoners, the prison becomes parr of an entire sysrem where cerrain criminals who cannor be rehabi litated can at least be monitored. Prisons, parole officers, police, informants: all these become reliays in a larger system of survei llance where criminal ity can be overseen, at rimes even uti lized, when it can nor be el iminated. T he dream of the early prison reformers, or later of the practitioners of discipline, is indeed a d ream. There will always be criminality, particularly in societies w here goods are as unevenly distributed as they are in Western societies. Therefore, where one can impose discipline successfully, one does. \Vhere one cannot, one uses the same resources to construct a system of survei llance rhat can at least mon itor what it cannot change. The effects of t he prison on the society at large are perhaps more important. It is nor simply the prison itself, bur the larger "carceral archipelago» (DP: 298), composed of social workers, psychologists, psychiat rists, personnel counsellors, judges, the legal system, fami ly doctors, and others of which it is a necessary parr. T he carceral archipelago generates important effects on the texture of our society. Near the end of Discipline and Punish, Foucau lt isolates six of those effects. The carceral archipelago blurs the line between the legal and the illegal, allowing for conrinuous d isciplinary intervention. It can recruit the delinquents it creates in order to monitor crime. It makes the idea of punishment itself seem natural or inevitable, particularl y since it is done without violence but instead by means of softer d isciplinary procedures. It permits a new form of law, one that is no longer beholden to the binary opposition of the permirred and the forbidden. It allows the proliferation of procedures of examinati on and normalization throughout society. Finally, it reinforces the importance of the prison itself, regardless of its failure, as the ultimate and oft en most th reatening si te of disciplinary intervention. In short, the carceral archipelago, of wh ich the prison is a central element, sustains the discipl inary character of society

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even when it cannot accomp lish the disciplinary project of rehabilitating crim inals. Discipline and Punish is Foucault's most sustained genealogical discussion of who we are now. We can see in it all the e lements of a genealogy: the dispersed character of origins, the effects of what N ietzsche would undoubtedly call reactivity, the historical conringency of the unfolding of practices, the lowly character of the practices themselves that wind up converging to create (part of) who we are. We shall shortly turn to the view of power that underlies this work, a view that receives substantial elaboration in Foucault's next book, the first volume of his history of sexuality. Before that, however, it would be worth pausing again to ask after the accuracy of Foucault's history of discipline. It is a question that Foucault himse lf recognizes as legitimate, since, in that next volume, he ra ises it himself. Discussing his view of power as creative rather than simp ly prohibitive, he asks, "Beyond these few phosphorescences [the suggestive historical changes he has just d iscussed in regard to sexuality), are we not sure to find once more the somber law that always says no? The answer w;ll have to come our of a historical inquiry" (HS: 72). Perhaps the most sustained alternative to Foucault's history of the prisons is Pierer Spierenberg's The Spectacle of Suffering. 7 Spierenberg sees his own work as a contrast to Discipline and Punish, and writes that his project is one that "attempts to construct a 'counter-paradigm' to Foucau lt's".' Along the way, Spierenberg makes a number of criticisms of Foucau lt's work, many of wh ich seem to be based on a misreading of Foucault's boo k. For instance, he writes that "Foucault speaks of the 'political danger' immanent in executions, which he considers the real cause of their eventual disappearance"/ Spierenberg concedes that there is resist ance to executions at rimes, bur notes that there is no evidence that rh is alone leads to the end of public executions. As we have seen, however, Foucault 's genealogical method resists the very idea of a "real cause". Causality is comp lex and dispersed, and Foucau lt indicates that the decline of public executions has as much to do with economic and po litical changes as it does with any resistance to the practice itsel f. Spierenberg's main thesis, however, is that Foucau lt is mistaken to think that there is a sudden historical break in the )are-eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries that leads to the demise of torture and the emergence of discipl ine. Using arch ival research nor only from France, bur also from other places in Europe, 10 particularly England and the Netherlands, Spierenberg seeks to show that the emergence of the prison is a slower process occurring over a longer period of rime than Foucault ascribes to it, and that older practices continue to exist alongside the newer disciplinary practices of the prison. "The fact that the completion of the privatization

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of repression rook abour rwo-rh irds of rhe ninereenrh cenrury in most \Vesrern European counrries adds up ro a cri tique of FoucaulT's views."" Does ir ? First, one must concede rhar Foucaul t's research is often cenrered on France. Spierenberg's work, like Klaus Doerner's on madness, draws from a wider range of counrries. Second ly, in as much as Foucau lt ascribes a radical break, Spierenberg's work wou ld serve as a corrective. lr is nor clear, however, rhar rhe ascribed break is as radical as Spierenberg makes ir our ro be. In his archaeo logical period, Foucau lt talks in terms of decisive historical disconrinuiries. The siruarion is more complicated in rhe genealogical works. Those involve emergences rhar appear mo.re nuanced . That there is, sooner or later, a new historical siruarion is certainly one of Foucault's claims. Spierenberg does nor deny this. However, when Spierenberg calls Foucau lt a "srrucruralisr", as he does in rhe rexr, he seems robe rhinking more of rhe approach of some of Foucault's archaeological works rhan his genealogical ones. For instance, when Spierenberg wrires rhar "From his srrucruralisr perspective he is describing a sysrem and ir is irrelevanT ro him which particular poinr in rime one picks ro invesrigare rhar sysrem" ," rhar irrelevance would app ly more TO an archaeologica l view of archives rhan ir wou ld TO a genealogical view of the inrerweaving of historically exr.e nded and modified practices. In an archaeological view there is, w irhin a given archive, a srabiliry of discursive rules rhar remains unril a historical break. In a genealogical view, however, rhe practices rhar converge and diverge do nor necessarily do so in accordance w irh any larger cui rural (or subculrural) rhemes. Who we are is nor this ar one rime and that ar another. The themes rhar comprise us are fluid and historically staggered. In thar sense, Spierenberg, by according as much historical weight ro what happens ourside of France as w irhin ir, helps reinforce t he fluid character of hisrory in a way that Foucault does nor emphasize in Discipline and Pzmish. Thar would make ir a conrribution ro a genealogical hisrory rather rhan an undermining of ir. The exrenr to which Sp ierenberg's analys is is historically better than Foucault's is beyond my expertise ro say. However, as I menrioned earl ier, Foucau lt's work, borh genealogical and archaeological, lies ar the inrersecrion of both ph ilosophy and history. We should see his works, then, as engaging and open ro borh d isciplines. From rhe ph ilosoph ical perspective, there are severa l novel conrriburions of Discipline and Punish. Ir questions a progressive view of hisrory wirhour embracing a regressive one. lr inverrs rhe rrad i.rional C hristian-inspired view rhar rhe body is rhe prison of rhe sou l. It subjects aspecrs of ourselves rhar we mighr have thoughr TO be immurable ro a conringenr hisTOry. lr places knowledge in rhe conrexr of polirics. These changes are nor isola red

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from one another. For instance, if there are aspects of who we are that are matters of historical change rather than being immutable, and if that historical change is contingent, then our history cannot be one of necessary progress or regress. Or again, if knowledge is a matter of politics, then the Christian heritage of the privileging of the soul over the body can come into question, not only epistemologically but also politically. Underlying all of these contributions is another one. Utilized in the book on the prisons, and explained in the first volume of his history of sexual ity, is a new view of the operation of power. It is not that all of these other changes are reducible to this new view of power. Rather, it is that they all appeal to it; moreover, it gives each of them a force they would lack without it. At a first go, we might say that for Foucau lt, power acts as much as or more through what it creates than through what it represses. There is a traditional view of power that informs almost all po litical t hough t. It can be seen particularly in the liberal tradition of political ph ilosop hy. The view is rhar power works primari ly if nor solely by stopp ing certain things from happening. Here is a rough sketch. In the social contraer, ind ividuals give up certain of their freedoms to the stare. In t his way, t he stare becomes extraordinarily powerful. lr can intervene in peop le's lives in order ro prevenr them from do ing all sorts of things. There must, then, be checks placed upon the state. Those checks prevent rhe stare from overstepp ing its legitimate bounds. The checks can be internal to t he state, for instance a separation of powers of the kind the US Constirution provides; they can also be external, for instance in limiting the powers of the state to dominate public discussion, as in freedom of the press; finally, they can be a combination of the rwo. However these checks work, they must allow individuals to be able to conduct their lives with the protection and support of, but nor rhe undue interference by, the state. This brief, adm ittedly inadequate, sketch of liberal political phi losophy is meant ro illuminate rwo related themes rhar characterize rhar phi losophy: the centrality of the stare and the negative view of power, rhar is, the view of power as repressive. These themes lean upon each other. If we look ar power from the standpoinr of the state, we are likely ro see something large, imposing, and repressive. Power is what stares have that can inrerfere with the ability of individuals to carry out their lives. Think of the mi litary, the police, prisons. From the other side, if we look ar rhe state from the standpoint of a repressive or negative power, we are likely to see someth ing monolithic that needs to be curbed so that it does not become tyrannical. But suppose we approach power in a different fashion. Suppose we turn away from the state and look closer t o the ground a;r our everyday practices. Suppose we rake a genealogical turn and ask, "Where and how does a part icular form of power arise?" instead of the liberal question of "Who has

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power?" In rhar case, power can appear very differently from the way ir does in liberal theory. This is nor TO say rhar Foucau lt denies rhar there is such a thing as repressive power or rhar rhe stare possesses ir. This is a common misreading of his work. Rather, ir is ro say that ofren rhe more effective forms of power come from below rather than above, from our practices rather than from rhe stare. lr is also TO say rhar this often more effective power operates by creating objects rather than by repressing t hem_ lr should be emphasized here rhar rhe emergence of this form of power is itself a historical marrer. Ir relies on more advanced techno logies of communication, more dom inanr population cenrres such as cities, rhe rise of medical and related health sciences, and greater econom ic inregration: [I] f ir is true rhar rhe juridical system [rhe binary system of rhe permined and the forbidden w ith irs repressive view of power] was useful for represenring, albeit in a nonexhaustive way, a power rhar was cen tered primarily around deduction [prelevement] and death, ir is utterly incongruous with t he new methods of power whose operation is nor ensured by r ight but by technique, not by law but by normalization, nor by punishmenT but by conrrol, methods rhar are employed on all levels and in forms that go beyond the stare and its apparatus. (HS: 89) u If creative forms of power are at one rime marginal, they are now cenrral in the practices in which we engage and through which we become w ho we are, w ho we are now_ If we are ro deepen our understanding, we mus·r ask two questions: w hat does Foucault mean by power, and how does ir work? T he first quest ion is one rhar Foucaul t mostly avoids. He does nor, he tells us, wanr to give us a theory of power, but rather to describe its operation in particular historical situations. Nevertheless, using the term as cenrrally as he does, he must have someth ing in mind. And in an essay enritled " The Subject and Power", he does offer a renrative defini tion of power: In effect, what defines a relationship of power is rhar ir is a mode of action wh ich does nor act directly and immediately on others_ Instead ir acts upon their actions: an action upon an action, on exist ing actions or on rhose wh ich may arise in rhe presenr or rhe (SP: 220) future. Foucaul t conrrasrs power and violence. Violence forces a body ro do something; it compels without t he possibility of .resistance_ Power, on the other hand, works by what we migh t call influence inst ead of violence. Ir

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works nor by rescrainr bm by inducing something t o happen . This is w hy Foucault says, "Power is exercised on ly over free subjects, and only insofar as t hey are free" (ibid.: 221). Power works by taking an open field of possible actions and constructing certain pathways of actions that are more likely co be taken. Normalization, for instance, does nor work by violence upon rhe body bm rather by observ ing and exam ining a body and lead ing ic co become more efficiem. There is a kinship between chis definition of power and rhe hiscorical comingency to which Foucault is committed. If power works by influencing or by inducing a free body rather chan by force, then its ho ld is more fragile chan we might otherwise chink. Although normalization lies deeply embedded in our concepcion of w ho we are, ic does so only by means of irs influence and by irs inherence in so many of our practices. T here are ocher ways we can be, ways that can be explored through the construction of new practices. \Vho we are now is historically comingem. If chis is Foucault's view of what power is, how does ic work? \Y/hac can we say abom t he ways power relations in fluence or induce our behaviour? In the first volume of his history of sexualicy, Foucault offers what might be cal led his five theses on power: power is nor a possession; power is nor exterior co ocher relati ons; power comes from below; power relati ons are " imemional and nonsubjeccive"; power always comes with resistance (HS: 94 - 5). lr is worth pausing over each of t hese t heses. To chink of power as a possession is to think in accordance with t he t radit ional view of power. lr is co see k co understand and regulate t he enricy, usually the scare, that has rhe most of it. Bm power can work w ichom belonging co anybody. Actions can const rain other actions without anybody's possessing rhe power of char conscraim. Tuke and Pinel, for instance, possess no power over the mad. T heir imervemions are merely expressions of discursive and practical regularities. But chose imervemions, actions upon actions, help co create and sustain a new type of bondage of the mad. In the terms we have been using, their imervemions help make the mad w ho they were to become. Or again, chose who work in the medical field or who reach or who engage in psychotherapy do nor have the power of d iscip line over chose they monitor or supervise. Rather, they are in a relation with chose ochers char is itself one of discipline. Normal izacion is nor something t hey impose, but instead something in which they participate. To say that power is nor exterior co ocher relations is to generalize rhe lesson of power- knowledge. Knowledge is nor in a relation of exterioriry co power. Neither is health, psychotherapy, penal icy, or, as we shall shordy see, sex. \Ve muse be carefu l here, though. As we saw with knowledge, co say char ocher relations are nor immune co power is nor the same thing as saying char they are all reducible co power, char they are "rea lly about"

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power. Power is interwoven into these and other practices in complex ways. If one is t o understand the operation of power within them, it requires a patient historical analysis of t he way power arises within and across practices, nor a sweeping general ization about everything being simply a marrer of power. Th is is, in parr, because power comes from below. Power, in the sense Foucault approaches ir, is nor a possession of r:he stare, a marrer of the economy, or the expression of some overarching historical theme. It lies in the dispersion of everyday practices that are the aerher of our lives. In my rais ing of my children, in t he postal worker's interact ion wi th customers, in the warden 's observation of prisoners, in the holidaymaker's choice of hotels, there is power. Ir is nor a power that one possesses over another (there may be that, roo, bur that is nor what Foucault is gerring at) ; rather, it is a power that lies in t he practices itself, creating who we are through our participation in them. W!e would, of course, refuse to say that all of these practices are nothing bur power at work. To say that would be at best silly, probably meaningless. There is more going on in what we do every day than merely power. And t hat would be Foucault's point. Power is everywhere, to be sure, bur this does nor mean that power is everyt hing. The po int that power comes from below, from w hat Foucaul t sometimes calls the "capillaries", reinforces t hat point. Foucault's phrase that power relations are " intentional and nonsubjecrive" has often been misunderstood. It sounds as t hough there is a certain goal that power has in mind, even if that goal is nor the motivation of particular ind ividuals. Foucault's cho ice of words may reinforce this view. " [T]here is no power that is exercised wi thout a series of aims and objectives. Bur t his does nor mean t hat it results from the choice or decision of an ind ividual subject" (HS: 95). We need nor, however, read any anthropomorph izing of power here. Power relations themselves do not want or aim at or see k to ach ieve anything. We might berrer understand the idea if we use the term oriented. Power relations are oriented in certain directions. They have regu larities that conduce to some kinds of behaviour and nor others. Discipline involves a set of power relations that are oriented. Historically, a dispersion of practices - or at least elements of those practices - come together to induce individuals to become normalized and, inseparably, to think of themselves in terms of normalization. This orientation is nor the aim or goa l of anything. It is the product of various intersections and borrowings in a particu lar historical context and with a recogn izable set of consequences. It is the task of a genealogy ro trace t hose intersections and borrowings and to describe their consequences. T he orientati on of intersections, borrowings and consequences is what Foucau lt refers to w ith the term intentional.

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The idea that "Where there is power, there is resistance" (ibid.) is an elusive one. It can be taken in at least rwo d ifferent ways. The first way would be to claim that, in principle, power requ ires resistance. There can be no power without resistance. I am uncomfortable with this claim." If power is a set of actions upon actions that create objects in the way Foucau lt describes, it does nor seem necessary ro think of resistance as an inevitable parr of power relations. Since force is nor involved, could there nor be relations of power that are without resistance? There is reason to think otherwise. However, we might understand this fifth thesis in a weaker sense. It is nor rhar power relations require resistance and cannot exist without ir, bur rather that there always seems t o be resistance where there are relations of power. In other words, power does nor imply resistance, bur often comes coupled with ir. This seems a muclh more defensible claim. justifying ir is a matter of turning ro the historical record. And indeed Foucault shows in Discipline and Punish rhar various power arrangements have been mer w ith resistance, even if those resisri ng do nor know exacrly what it is they are opposing. For instance, near the end of the book Foucault describes the criticism of penal discipline in workers' newspapers of the nineteenth century, showing how they have an intu ition of the stakes of discipline without a nuanced grasp of irs operation. These fives theses amount to a view of a type of power that does nor merely suppress or repress bur rhar actively creates . W ithout anyone's controlling ir, power arises in everyday practices, orienting our behaviour and our knowledge in particular, historically contingent ways. \Y/e rarely understand these ways fu lly, bur often rry ro resist them. And, by our participating in these practices, we ourselves become embedded in relations of power, even when we resist them. \Y/e become what those relations orient us to become, and we pave the way for others to become it as well. To pur the point another way, power helps create who we are, or at least who we are now. Recall here Foucault's earlier statement that we often know what we do and why we are doing it; what we do nor know is what our doing it does. What our doing it does is reinforce power relations rhar elude our cogni tive grasp, nor because we are d istant from them bur for the opposite reason that they are so much a parr of who we a.re. It is the project of a genealogy ro display those relations before us in their proximity, their complexity, and their historical contingency.

A history of sexuality The first volume of Foucaul t's history of sexuality sketches another genealogical project, this one tied ro sex rather than discipline. Although t he next

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(and lasr rwo published) volumes of rhe history of sexuality rake on a d ifferem approach from rhe one outlined in rhe first volume, rhe historical sketch Foucau lt offers there has been as influential as his boo k on rhe prisons, in parr because ir invites a radical reorientation of how we rhink abour sex. The History of Sexuality, Volume I, is published in 1976, a year after rhe boo k on rhe prisons. lr announces and sketches a project on sexuality rhar appears less radical now rhan ir does ar thar rime, in parr because we no longer live at a moment we would be rempred ro call one of "sexual liberation". In rhe rhirry years si nce rhe publication of rhis book, much of whar seems novel rhen is now a matter of course. If anything, our sexual practices are a subject o f arrack from rhe right rather rhan, as ir appears rhen, a provocation by rhe left. At rhe begi nning of rhe book on sexuality, Foucau lt describes our (rhen-) current view of sex under rhe rerm rhe repressive hypothesis. The repressive hypothesis is a story abour our sexuality. lr is a srory of sexual awaken ing. Once we were sexual ly repressed. This sexual repression, wh ich has long been wirh us, perhaps achieves irs zenith in rhe Victorian period, bur has been sustained rhroughour much of rhe rwenrierh century. Wirh rhe various movements for liberation in rhe 1960s (and here recall rhe evenrs o f May '68), rhe recogniti on of rhe need for sexual liberation arises. Sexual repression, after all, is nor only bad in itself; ir also conrribures to other ills, includ ing rhe repression of women's sexualit y, discrim ination against homosexuality, a general cul rural conformism, and rhe suppress ion of other desires. Now, in rhe period of rhe late 1960s and early 1970s, we have liberated our sexuality and wi rh rhar liberation have opened the door ro or her liberations from rhe constraints of bourgeois society. There is more rhan a little in fluence of psychoanalytic rhoughr in rhe repressive hy pothesis. The rheme o f sexual repression, rhe idea rhar such repression is linked to other social phenomena - in particular rhe susraining of bourgeois society - and rhe focus on desire are all legacies of psychoanalysis. In rhe United Stares and Britain, where psychoanalysis has always been less influential rhan during rhese years in France, rhe possibility o f a psychoanalytic background to rhe repressive hypothesis may seem to be strained. H owever, ir does find irs way inro Anglophone countries through such works as Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization . In France, rhe rise of psychoanalytic rhough r under rhe in fluence of Jacques Lacan makes ir, during rhis period, almost de rigueur for leftists ro appropriate psychoanalytic elements inro progressive theory. Perhaps rhe mosr lasting of rhese works is Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, a book rhar rejects psychoanalysis bur w hich, on rhe other hand, appropriates and reworks a Lacanian concept o f desire.

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There are many questions one might put to the repressive hypothesis. Have we really liberated ourselves from sexual repression? If so, has this indeed led us to other forms of liberation? Hasn't sexua l liberati on simply been appropriated by cap ital ism to open up new products and new types of marketing? Foucault, however, follows a different path. H e asks a question t hat casts doubt on t he founding assumptions of these other questions. Has t here ever been, he wonders, such a thing as sexual repression? If there hasn't, then not only cou ld we not have liberated ourselves from it; we cannot wonder what effects this liberation might or might not have had. It wou ld seem odd t o say that there has never been anyth ing like sexual repression. Does the Victorian period not exhibit much greater discretion about sexual issues than we do? Hasn't the open discussion of sex long been a taboo subject? To say that there never was sexual repression, however, is not the same thing as saying that there was never any discretion in regard to sexual matters: It is quite possible that there was an expurgation - and a very rigorous one - of the au thorized vocabulary. It may be true that a whole r hetoric of allusion and metaphor was codified ... At the level of discourses and their domains, however, practically the opposite phenomenon occurred. There was a steady proliferation of discourses concerned with sex. (HS: 17-18) Discourse on sex in periods previous to our own is discreet, to be sure, but it is also pervasive. How does this concern with sex arise? In accord ance with genealogical practice, Foucault finds its roots not in a single cause but in the convergence of disparate concerns. One of them has to do wit h the Catholic confessional. In the face o f the Reformation, the confessional undergoes a change. Where previously one confesses forbidden acts, now one must confess not on ly the acts t hat one commits but also one's desires. It is not simply what one does that is the object of confessional; it is what one thinks and wants, especially with regard t o sex: According to the new past oral, sex must not be named imprudently, but its aspects, its correlations, and its effects must be pursued down to their slenderest ramifications: a shadow in a daydream, an image too slowly d ispelled, a badly exorcised comp licity between the body's mechanics and the mind's comp lacency: every(Ibid.: 19) thing had to be told. If we recall the project o f norma lization from Discipline and Punish, we can see here the change from a binary logic of the pennitted and the forbidden to a wider logic of the normal and the abnormal.

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In addition to changes in the confessional, there is an econom ic focus on sex. The beginnings of an industrial economy raise questions about how popu lations are to be sustained and utilized: One of the great innovations in the techniques o f power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of "popu lation" as an economic and po litical problem: population as wealth, popu lation as manpower or labor capacity, popu lation balanced between irs own growth and the resources it commanded. (Ibid.: 25) \Vhere there is concern with popu lation, there w ill also be concern w ith sex: how it happens, what it leads to, and how it should be regulated. There are other sources as well, in biology, in medicine, in psychology, in pedagogy. In schools, for instance, whi le sex is nor spoken of, the architecture of dormitories disp lays a greater concern w ith the partitions dividing boys and girls. What these various sources converge on is sex. Sex as the centrepiece, sex as the object, sex as the secret, and ultimately sex as the truth. In d irect contrast ro the repressive hypothesis, sex is nor something hidden that has just come to ligh t. "What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, bur rhar they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, whi le exploi ting it as the secret" (ibid.: 35). In this sense, the sexual liberation of the period in which Foucau lt writes is not a break from the past; it is simply a continuation of t he concern w ith sex that has characrer;zed the West for several hundred years. Moreover, psychoanalysis, wh ich frames the repressive hypothesis, is far from being an abandonment of rel igion in favour of something more progressive or better grounded epistemologically. It is, instead, a form of the confessional carried on by other means. Sex is our truth; in our sexual desire we discover the secret of who we are and the key to proper social regu lation. Over the course of the past several cenmries, sex has become one of the key pivots about which the answer to the question of who we are revo lves. And because power is inseparable from knowledge, the investigati on of sex is a political as well as an episremic one. T hat investigation is nor only a maner of discovery. It is also a matter of actions upon actions that create what is investigated. Both in the empirical and theoretical research into sex as welll as the individual confession of one's desires - to the priest, to the psychoanalyst, to the counsellor or social worker - one is being studied and created. Practices that centre on sex are creating a sexual being, or better, d ifferent types of beings that are defining themselves by t heir relation to sex. Foucault suggests four "figures" that arise from t he concern w ith sex. They are elements of the creation, as he puts ir, of sexuality (as a hist orical

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phenomenon) our of sex. These figures are the hysterical woman, the masmrbaring ch ild, the perverse adult, and the Malthusian couple. The hysterical woman has her roots in earl ier views of sex. The idea of hysteria comes from the movement of the womb around the woman's body. (The Greek term hysterikos means womb.) T his theme is appropriated over the course of t he nineteenth century to link women and their nervous conditions to sexuality. Sex is the truth of the hysterical woman, who is to be found in almost all women. The masturbating child is the product of the d iscovery of the sexual character of ch ildhood . T he chi ld, once though t to be pre-sexual, is now t hought (and feared) to be saturated with sexuality from an early age. The question arises of what to do with this newly d iscovered sexual character of children. In one of the recently published series of necrures from Foucau lt's tenu re at the Co llege de France, Abnormal, Foucault documents measures used to channel ch ildhood sexuality, measures that find their root in a profusion of texts from the middle of the eighteenth century on the dangers of childhood masmrbarion. In essence, at least for bourgeois fami lies, there emerges a fear of outside caretakers as potential sexual abusers, provoking masturbation in ch ildren. T his leads to a privileging of the nuclear fam ily as t he necessary condition for healthy ch ildhood sexuality, and consequently to the responsibility of the parents for a child's sexual upbringing. "The child's sexuality is the trick by which the close-knit, affective, substantial, and cellu lar fam ily was constituted and from whose shelter the child was extracted" (ALCF: 257). 15 The perverse adult is exemp lified, of course, by the homosexual. Homosexuals are defined - and t o this day remain defined - by their sexuality. It is t he key to who they are. T his does nor mean that homosexuality itself is a matter of sex: that is an obvious truth . It means that homosexuals themselves, as people, are defined by their sexuality. W ho they are can be discovered through an investigation of their sexual desires. As Foucault sums it up: t he sexual instinct was isolated as a separate biological and psych ical instinct; a clinical analysis was made of all the forms of anomalies by wh ich it could be afflicted; it was assigned a role of normalization or parhologization wi th respect to all behavior; and finally, a corrective technology was sought for these anomal ies. (HS: 105) The perverse adult is the person defined by a warp ing of sexual desire. That warping fu lfi ls two roles. First, it warrants intervention by various psychological and social agencies. Secondly, since this wa~ping is a possibility that can befall all sexual desire, it stands as a possibi lity for each of us. We must

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al l be protected, nor only against perverse adu lts themselves, bur also against rhe perverse adul t rhar lies in wait w irhin each of us. One can see here rhe soi l wirhin w hich Freudian psychoanalysis will rake roar. Finally, rhere is rhe Malthusian couple. This is rhe couple rhar is ideal relative ro the social and econom ic needs of society. It is a product of population analysis and psychosexual research. We might say, in rhe terms intra· duced in Discipline and Punish, rhar the Ma lrhusuan couple is the norm (as in "normal") against wh ich all existing fam ilies are compared. And, since nobody (or almost nobody) ach ieves perfect normality, the Malthusian couple becomes the justification for intervention into people's sexual lives. We all exist both in the shadow of and at a d isra.nce from rhe ideal of the Malthusian coup le, which in turn provides both an ideal for us ro achieve and the excuse for outside institutions ro monitor and control our sexual lives, or, otherwise pur, ro rake parr in the consrit urion of and intervention into w ho we are. In rhe final chapter of the first volume of his history of sexua liry, Fou· cau lr suggests rhar t he sexual ity rhar emerges over the course of rhe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is parr of a larger configuration rhat he rerms bio-politics. Bio-polirics is a politics of living rhar concerns itself w irh how to promote and intervene in human life. It replaces the earl ier concern with simply allowing one to live with an active intervention into the character and srare of one's living. "One might say that the ancient righ t ro take life or let live was replaced by a power ro foster life or disallow ir ro the point of death" (HS: 138). We must be clear here rhar the power rhar replaces that ancient right does nor belong solely or even primari ly ro the stare. It arises as a more diffuse mechanism of power relations rhar come from d ispersed sources and converge in a fluid and shift ing unity. The fostering or disallowing of life is a decision that is rarely made in the name of or by means of a central government. It emerges in schoo ls, hospitals, social agencies, cl inics, doctors' offices, health manuals, and a myriad of other places whose decisions may resonate with one another bur do nor arise from a central core. With the concept of bio-polirics, Foucault returns ro and integrates his ea rlier treatment of discipl ine. H e suggests rhar discipline may be one of the rwin poles of the consrirurion of bio-po lirics: starring in rhe seventeenth century, this power over life evolved in rwo basic forms . . . One of these poles .. . was ensured by the pro· cedures of power that characterized the disciplines: an anatamopolitics of the human bod)'. The second, somewhat larer, focused on rhe species body, the body imbued with the mechanisms of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes .. . T heir

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supervision was effected through an enrire series of inrervenrions and regulatory controls: a bio-politics of the population. (HS: 139) Discip line and population: the individual body and t he co llective group. T hese are the po les of bio-po lirics. What do the body and popu lation have in common? Sexual iry. Sexualiry, then, can be read back inro some of the concerns developed in t he earlier book on the prisons. T his does nor mean rhar t he earlier book is mistaken, rhar t he issue is really sex, nor discipl ine. The suggestion rather is t hat the concern w ith sex brings a new dimension to the discipl inary interventions described in the earlier text. \Y/e can see the ove rlap between the two: t he focus on normality and normalization, the concern with a person's interioriry (the soul in one case, desire in t he other), the connection with psychological and psych iatric practice. During this period of his writing, Foucault oft en says that his concern is with what he calls, in a play on words, subjectification or s~tbjectivation: the creation of particular kinds of subjectivity t hrough t he subjection to various practices of powerknowledge. What the books on discipl ine and sex accomplish is to describe, from two different bur convergenr angles, t he emergence of modern subjecriviry. In t hat sense, t hese books reflect t he ge nealogical method itself. Just as each describes dispersed sources of the un ities of who we are, they are themselves dispersed sources in that history·. Taken together, they account for two of the most important dispersions that form t he hist orically contingenr sources for w ho we are now. Before turn ing to Foucault's last works and t he concerns they ra ise, it remains for us to ask how the genealogical works we have d iscussed here fit with the five aspects of Foucault's writings cited in the first chapter, and how they compare on these counrs wi th the archaeological writings. The first aspect is that of our collective constitution. One can see that aspect at work in the genealogical writings, perhaps even more clearly than in the archaeo logical ones. Although both sets of works operate at the level of social practices rather than the individuals' creation of themselves, the genealogical works show how this collective constitution arises on an everyday level. Because the genea logical works are less abstracted from our daily lives, they show how a we (or a group olf differenr bur overlapping wes) arises, not by imposition from instinttions or forces above us, bur from below, where we live. Earlier, we saw that the archaeological works, although recognizing relations between t he d iscursive and non-discursive elements of an arch ive, seem to privilege t he former. T his privi lege disappears in the genealogical works, in part because the distinction between the discursive and non-discursive itself disappears. Since Foucault is concerned less with the

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archival shape of theoretical d iscourses, and more with how particular discourses of knowledge arise within concrete social practices, the issue shifts. It is no longer a matter of the relation of the discursive to the nondiscursive_ It is one of how practices create forms of knowledge. \Vhen one discusses a practice, one need not draw sharp d istinctions between the discursive and the non-discursive elements, because at the level of a practice they are entwined. \Vhat we think we know and what we do are in constant interaction, and in fact bleed into each other_ By focusing on practices rather t han on bodies of knowledge, one can recognize this more clearly. We can see this, for example, with the emergence of the four figures of sexual ity or of the self-mon itoring citizen of the disciplinary archipelago_ In both cases, t he way one knows and the way one is and behaves are entw ined. Our knowledge creates w ho we are, and who we are in our relarionshi ps of power helps to create our knowledge_ This, of course, is another of the five characteristics of Foucault's works, the close relationship of acting and knowing. Genealogy's focus on practices, as well as the introduction of power-knowledge, creates a type of analysis that renders the discursive and the non-discursive inseparable. At t he same rime, because these practices are social, they form the collective character of who v.re are.

This collective and pol itically charged character of who we are is at once historically contingent and something we cannot just shake off. The historical contingency is as strong here as it is in the archaeological works, but for a different reason. In t he earl ier writings, the fragility of our history is displayed in the brea ks and discontinuities it contains. Different arch ives are governed by different rules and norms, and there are often shifts from one arch ive to another. T his shifting of archi ves blunts the force of any claim that history follows necessary movement or has a single underlying theme. In the genealogical works it is nor so much the discontinuities that matter- although they are t here - but rather the sh ifting and chang.ing character of the practices themselves as well as their complex interplay with one another. 16 T here is no necessary reason that sex shou ld become so important to who we are now, any more than breathing or eat ing. The intersection of a changed Cathol ic confessional and the rise of popu lation stud ies, for example, cannot be ascribed to an underlying movement of history that they bot h reflect. T he Reformation does not have to ralke place in the way and at the rime it does, and even if it had to, Catholicism does nor need to respond to it by focusing the confessional on sexual desires rather than forbidden acts. At the same rime, the rise of early capitalism does nor require the emergence and importance of population studies. Capitalism cou ld be studied and supported through other types of ep istemo logical approaches. Further, t he cross-fertilization of the modified confessional and population

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stud ies does nor have to centre itself on a historically constituted sexual ity. Even if both refer rosex, they do so in d ifferent ways. There is no historical inevitability to their com ing together to form a unury. \Y/e can see this historical contingency more clearly through the derailed approach of genealogy than through a more broad-brushsrroke painting of history and historical change. Recall Foucau lt's depiction of genealogy: grey, meticu lous and patien tly documentary. From a great distance or height, our history may seem to have a necessary shape or pattern. However, when one begins to look at the comp lexity of our actual practices, when one approaches our lives at ground level, the contingency of those practices' emergence and interaction becomes more visible. At the same rime, and on the other hand, the uniti es that emerge through the contingent threads of our history, fragile as they are, are nor simply to be shaken off. \Y/e have seen that in the archaeological histories the fact that action rakes place in an arch ive means that actions are framed by their historical circumstances. Tuke and Pinel cannot just do and say anything they like; what they do and say is both constrained by and rakes on irs meaning through the circumstances in which it is done and said. The genealogical works are no different in this regard. However, by introducing the concept of power, Foucault's genealogies are more expl icit about the constra ining nature of our practices. Actions that affect other act ions are inescapably actions that we cannot simply shake off. One need not embrace a conspiracy theory of history to recognize that who we are is subject to force or elements or relationships that, to a greater or lesser extent, are our of our control. This does nor imply, as some of Foucau lt's critics have maintained, that we are helpless before our historical constitution, that we are nothing more than the machinations of power re lationsh ips. \Y/e have already seen that the claim that power is everywhere does nor imply that it is everything. One of the difficulties in understanding Foucault's work is that of thinking of contingency and constraint roger her. This is nor a d ifficulty that belongs to some abstract or elusive facer of Foucault's work. It is just something we are nor used to. Our intellecruallegacy largely provid!es us with rwo options: either we are free or we are determined. Or, if we are more nuanced about it, we have our areas of freedom and our areas of .d etermination. The former is an open space, untouched by the causal relationships of the world. The latter is completely subject to those causal relationsh ips. Foucault's histories do nor subscribe to this view. There is no parr of us that is immune to the vicissirudes of our history. And yet, those vicissirudes are nor made of iron . They are fragi le, contingent, changeable. Foucau lt, as we have seen, does nor give us a solution to the philosophical problem of free will and determinism. Moreover, his approach implies a different orientation to the issue of constraint. There is, then, no reason to sadd le him

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with a view he does nor hold in the name of a theoretical approach that is nor his. There remains t he characteristic of complexily. Genealogy leaves the ambiguity of archaeology's relation to complexity behind. Foucault's archaeological studies trace the rules and norms o f particu lar archives. This leaves open the question of how general t he arcl\ ive is. Does it range over an entire cu ltural formation, or is ir more limited ? If ir is the former, then historical formations are less complex than if there are d ifferent arch ives governing d ifferent areas of a society or a cu lture. Is ordered representation, or reason 's treatment of madness as folly, a deep characteristic of the classical age? Do these aspects of the classical age describe t hat age in irs entirety? Or are they aspects or parts or areas of the ep istemo logical structure of the later seventeenth and eigh teenth centuries? Migh t there be other knowledges, outside those of the theories of value, living beings and language, t hat are nor oriented around ordered representation? Might the particular type of reason that engages with madness be only one way in which reason operates? T hese are questions that are ultimately unresolved in Foucault's archaeological works. Nor so wi th genealogy. Although there are ri mes when Foucault may seem ro suggest a reduction of cu ltural comp lexity ro single themes (some, for instance, have read his concept of the carceral arch ipelago to ind icate rhar the essence of modernity is carceral), a carefu l read ing shows that each boo k treats an aspect of how we have come to be w ho we are now, nor the entirety of it. Are we disciplinary beings? Yes. Are we sexual beings? Yes. Is there a relation between these rwo? Yes. Are they reducible to each other or to a third unity that encompasses them both? No. Foucault's genealogical works, even more insistently than his archaeologies, resist the temptation of much of trad itional philosophy, of the ph ilosop hy that runs from Descartes t hrough ro Freud and Sarrre, to discover t he essential core of who we are and to see the rest of who we are as expressions of t hat core. There are certainly more important aspects of who we are now, and sexual ity and discipline are among them. Nor every aspect of who we have come robe is an equa lly significant contributor ro rhar being. W/e must nor rake the lesson of this, however, to be that there are one or rwo aspects of who we are now that are t he essential ones. The complexity of Foucault's approach lies in carving a path between posing an essential ahisrorical core of who we are and counting all aspects of our legacy as equally worthy of discussion. T here is another question that remains, one we have posed t o the archaeological writings. The archaeologies are haunted by a question of reflexivity, a question having t o do w ith their epistemological status. \VIe can summarize the question this way: if all knowledge takes place in an archive,

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GENEALOG ICAL HISTORIES OF WHO WE ARE

does this nor also app ly ro Foucault's archaeologies, and if so, does that nor somehow undermine their claims? H owever we answer t his question with regard to archaeology, it is nor a question genealogy must confront. The reason for this has to do with genealogy's re lation to complex ity. If t here are many different and irreducible practices in w hich we are (or could be) engaged, we can count genealogy itself as one of them. Genealogy has irs own norms and power relations, ro be sure, bur this does nor necessarily undermine the historical claims it makes. Foucau lt underlines this point when, in an interview in 1983, he responds to a question about his treatment of reason by saying: I think that the blackmail which has very ofren been at work in every critique of reason or every critical inqu iry into the history of rationality (either you accept rationality or you fall prey to the irrat ional) operates as though a rational critique of rationality were impossible, or as though rational hist ory of all of rhe ramifications and all the bifurcations, a contingent history of reason, were (CT/ IH: 27} 17 impossible. Recall how genealogy operates in the critique of psycho logy that arises in the book on the prisons. Foucau lt does nor criticize psycho logical knowledge for being fa lse. In fact, parr of irs t ruth lies in the fact that it contributes to creating w hat it studies. The problem with psychological knowledge lies in irs effects, nor irs truth: in the political char acter of what it creates rather t han in the episrem ic character of irs claims. With genealogy, then, if we were to ask genealogical questions about its claims, if we were to do a genealogy of genealogy (or a genealogy of a parricullar genealogy) we would trace the emergence and descent of that genealogy, asking where it comes from and w hat the endorsement of it leads to. There is no bar ro doing this, as long as one is w illing to perform the spade work. T hat is, one cannot just say that genealogy has effects of power that are unacceptable or intolerable. One must show it: one must investigate the history itself. Recall Foucau lt's caveat with his own history of sexual ity: he does nor yet know whether, "beyond these few phosophorescences", he will discover that the repressive hypothesis is indeed correct. It w ill require historical research to determ ine. T he same holds for genealogy. Genealogy, then, does nor face t he problem of reflexivity t hat haunts archaeo logy because it does nor reduce knowledge to a particu lar archive and because it does nor claim that t he objects of its critique are false. It is open to critique itself; bur that critique must be s:hown, nor just claimed. A critique of a Foucauldian genealogy, if it is to be compelling, must itse lf be grey, metiwlous and patiently documentary.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Who we are and who we might be

The Archaeology of Knowledge is published in 1969. Between 1961 and 1969 Foucault publishes six books. He does nor publish another one until the first genealogy appears in 1975, followed by the first volume of the history of sexuality a year later. By then there are new themes, such as power, and a new methodo logy, that of genea logy. The first volume on sex promises several more to follow: [T]he domain we must analyze in the different studies that will follow the present volume is that deployment of sexual ity: irs formation on the basis of the Christian notion of the flesh, and irs development through the four great strategies that were deployed in the nineteenth century: the sexual ization of ch ildren, the hysrerizarion of women, the specification o f the perverted, and the regulation of populations. (HS: 113 - 14) In 1984, the second and third volumes are published. They appear just before Foucault's death. And in them there are new themes, a new chronology, and a new approach, an approach that Foucaul t sometimes labels

ethics.

Ethics We already know that Foucault is resistant to pa1iroll ing the same intellectual territory. He has to ld us in The Archaeology of Knowledge that it is nor for him to keep his papers in order, bur for bureaucrats and the police. He says much the same thing in his preface to the second volume of the history of sexuality, The Use of Pleasure, when he tells us that what motivated him

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WHO WE ARE AND WHO WE MIGH T BE

is a curiosity that al lows him to "stray afield" of himself. We shall ask more about the character of this straying later. For now, it is enough that we nor demand of him that he keep to the original schedu le of announced works. In the meantime, between the publication of the first volume of the history of sexuality and the latter two volumes, the evidence of a change in orientat ion appears in his annual lecture series at t he Col lege de France. Instead of beginning t he investigation in the period of the Renaissance or post-Renaissance, a period that has always been Foucault's starring point, Foucault turns his attention to ancient Greece and R ome. The 1979- 80 lectures series, "On the Government of the Living", discusses the theme of governmentality (a prom inent theme of the next chapter of this book) as he finds it in early C hrisrian iry. Bur the real break appears the next year in a series of lectures entitled "Subjectivity and Truth" . It is in those lectures, wh ich are t he basis for the third volume of the history of sexual iry, that he develops the theme that will occupy the eth ical period of his thought: the care of the self. The care of the self involves several changes to the project on sexual iry. First, irs concern is nor simply with sex. This should nor be surprising, given t he thesis of the first vo lume that sexuality as the placement of sexual desire at the centre of who one is has evolved over recent centuries. Sexualiry is nor an eternal phenomenon. By returning to ancient Greece and Rome, Foucault shows us a period in which sex is conceived d ifferently from the way it is now. It is more integrated into other aspects of living. Instead of ho ld ing the secret to who we are, sex is a parr of one's living. !For the ancients, it is an aspect that is to be taken up into the larger project of taking care of oneself. This first change is related t o a second one. In Foucault's previous works, he traces aspects of the history of how we have come to be who we are now. H e starts with historical periods before our own in order to show, in the archaeo logical works, the ruptures that have taken place and, in the genealogical works, the contingent emergence of our own situation from a very different one. We might say that t he history he recounts allows him to do two things, one that we have focused on and another that we have nor. \'i/e have focused on the contingency of historical emergence. We have nor focused on the related idea that people can conceive the world very differently from the way we do now. That history did nor have to rake the path it has shou ld, by now, be a fami liar Foucau ldian id ea. In tracing that path, we have also seen that the st ops along rhe way, whether they are archives or earlier arrangements of practices, invo lve very different approaches to t hings like madness and punishment than our own . W hy might this matter? Of course, one might say, people saw things differently in earlier periods. What is the lesson o f that? The lesson emerges when we combine that idea wi th the recognition that t he way people see

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things, and indeed the way people are, is historically contingent. If we do nor have to see things the way we once did, if we d o nor have to be who we once were, t hen we do nor have to be who we are now. Bringing into focus different ways of being allows us nor only ro see the contingency of our own historically given ways of being; it allows us to feel ir. Being brought into the presence of another way of living, getting a sense of irs themes, irs parameters, irs concerns, allows us to understand more viscerally that there are, indeed, other ways to live than our own. T his does nor mean we have to embrace those other ways. Bur they can help loos-en the grip of naturalness that the present has upon us. The loosening of this grip is in evidence in the latter rwo volumes on sexual ity. If their goal is to permit our straying afield of ourselves, then seeing how we could have lived otherwise is a tool in this permission. We shou ld distinguish this tool from another one th at is sometimes mistaken for Foucau lt's intention. Foucau lt does not offer ·us the latter two volumes of the history of sexual ity in order to provide models for our own living. lr is sometimes t hough t that t he sympathy with which he writes, particularly of Greek sexual ity, implies that he wants us to return to it. I suspect that this view arises largely because of t he intersection of Foucaul t's homosexual ity with the Greeks' tolerance for it. In an exchange in an interview from 1983, Foucault makes it clear that the Greeks do nor provide a model for him . "Q. Do you think that the Greeks offer an attractive and plausible alternative? M.F. No! I am not looking for an al ternative; yon can't find t he so lution of a problem in the solution at another moment by other people" (OGE: 343). If Foucault's later studies focus on a different view of t he role of sex from our own, and if t hey seek to loosen the grip our own views have on us by immersing us in another view, then this implies a third change, a shift in orientation in Foucault's thought. Up until now, we have said that t he question that occupies Foucau lt is that of w ho we are now. In presenting us w ith ways of seeing and living very different from our own, however, he changes the question. T he ancient Greeks and Romans are not who we are now. Moreover, while our history has evolved from their legacy (although nor in a continuous thread), what Foucau lt emp hasizes in his later stud ies, in contrast to the genealogical works, is not t heir legacy to us but t heir difference (rom us. It is not how the specific practices of the Greeks and Romans converge with other practices in order to form who we are that matters here. Rather, it is how d istant they are from our practices rhar is ar issue. This re location of focus has an impact on the question of who we are. Ar first glance, we mighr say rhar ir shifts rhe concern from who we are now ro who we once were. Bur rhar is not enough. As Foucault rells us, he is nor interested simply in knowing who we were. H is research is never simply an academic exercise. The stakes here concern freedom; rhey concern st raying

98

WHO WE ARE AND WHO WE MIGH T BE

afield of ourselves. "The object was to learn to what extem the effort to t hink one's own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so enable it to think differently" (UP: 9). So the shift is not the simple one from who we are to who we were. It is bener schematized in this way: it is from w ho we are now to who we might be. \Y/e must be carefu l here, t hough. Who we might be is not provided directly by t he model of t he anciems. Although there will be themes in the anciem· approach to living that Foucault endorses, particu larly concerning the idea of the care of t he self as an aesthetics of existence, the anciems do not provide us with a concrete alternative. Rather, smdying them loosens the grip our presem has upon us. It allows us not only to conce ive bur imaginatively to inhabit a differem way of living. It opens t he door to our asking the questcon of who we might be. Alongside these three changes there are a number of cominuities with the earlier works. One of them is of particu lar momem. Foucault's attemion remains focused on practices, on the strucmred forms of da ily living. If he writes abou t philosophers like Plato and Seneca, it is with a d ifferent orientat ion from the one the history of ph ilosophy has passed down to us. He is not interested in the anciems as theorists; he is imerested in t hem as practit ioners of what might be cal led true living. To live r ightly, to live according to proper trmhs, is the task of anciem philosophers., rather than one of simply discovering the truth. In this, Foucault fol lows his comemporary, the ph ilosopher of amiqu iry Pierre H adot, to whom we will remrn. Bm he also remains faithful to his earl ier genealogical orientation of looking on the ground, at the practices that make up a life, rather t han ascending to a more purely theoretica l plane. If, looking backwards from our perspective, we see philosophy as a matter of discovering trmhs rather than orieming ourselves towards t he proper care of the self, this is because we have lost the anciem approach to ph ilosop hy, and with it the understanding of what anciem phi losop hers were doing. In his lecture series of 1981- 82, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault says, t he more serious reason why t his precept of the care of the self has been forgotten, the reason why the place occupied by this precept in anciem culture for nigh on one thousand years has been obliterated, is what I will call ... t he " Cartesian momem." . . . It came into play in two ways : by philosoph ically requalifying the gnothi seauton (know yourself) and by d iscred iting the epime/eia heautou (care of the self) . (HSLCF: 14) Although the care of t he self dropped our of phi losophical d iscourse, knowing oneself, wh ich had been oriem ed towa~ds the care of the self,

99


became a matter of determ ining the conditions of a person's access to truth. Instead of mainraining itself as w hat Foucau lt sometimes ca lls a spiritual project, philosophical practice gradually transformed itself inro an epistemo logical one. What is the care of the self? What is irs character and what makes ir a philosoph ical matter? Foucau lt's most sustained

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