Dialectics Subjectivity and Foucaults Ethos of Modernity

8/3/2019 Dialectics Subjectivity and Foucaults Ethos of Modernity

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/dialectics-subjectivity-and-foucaults-ethos-of-modernity 1/19

Dialectics, Subjectivity and Foucault's Ethos of Modernity

Patrick McHugh

Subjective reflection, even if critically alerted toitself,has something sentimental and anachronistic about

It something of a lament over the course of the world,a lament to be rejected not for its good faith, butbecause the lamenting subject threatens to becomearrested in its cond ition and so to fu lfil l in its turn the\a\N of the viôrld's course . . Nevertheless, m an in-dividualistic society, the general not only realizes itselfthrough the interplay of particulars, but society isessentially the substance of the individual

Theodor Adornofvlmima fvloralia



generalities or universalities, this debate among academicians concernthe question of how an intellectual should act Foucault's work raisthis question with some urgency, at least for those who considethemselves oppositional intellectuals, because it disrupts the traditionethics derived from the Enlightenment that requires the objective prduction of knowledge or rational principles according to which thetellec tual, and rational society at large, should act According Foucault's cntica l analyses, the traditional ethics of intellectual activIS little more than a deception jus tifying service to thestatus quo, anthus leads to a re-examination of the methods, purposes and effectsof that activity.

The debate in response to Foucault produces two opposed pos

tions Some, who see themselves as elucidators and defenders ofFoucault's own position, seek to articulate a new role for the oppositional intellectual characterized by a Nietzschean affirmation negation In order to oppose established interests of power, the newintellectual would analyze contemporary social and institutional orgazation to uncover the dynamics of power that establish and sustain thaorganization, and to show what interests it serves and what interestIt oppresses According to this ethical position , the intellectual shoudo no more, for anything more would serve established interests. In p

ticular, the new intellectual should refuse to produce any knowledgreflect on any possibility, or project any vision that suggestsa concretalternative to the established order For such intellec tual practice perfectly traditional and would only reproduce the structure of powand oppression within a new organization which, consequently, eveif it served different power interests, would not be different atall.'Otherwho are also sympathetic to Foucault's analysis of social and institutional organization, suspect the intellectual who remains entirely cnticto be almost as entirely ineffective. In this view, the affirmation of ne

tion remains an easily ignored academic exercise, not productivbecause it leaves the important political business of determining sociaand ins titutiona l organizationm the power of established interests Mshort, the debate on Foucault brings forth an ethical d ilemm a over throle of the intellectual. Should one strive fora purely critical discoursdivested of all power save that of the negative, and thus risk politicirrelevance and impotence'' Or should one strive for concrete andspecified changes in social and institutiona l organization, and thus nsthe perpetuation of established relations of power by participating i

the practices that sustain them*?Foucault's contribution to the ethics of intellectual discoursIS i l d h i h li i d b hi dil



tion of the role of the intellectual emerges from the more neglectedphilosophical dimension of these analyses Here Foucault attacks thegrounds from which the traditional intellectual derives an ethicsFoucault's analysis of the Enlightenment is two-pronged a critique ofknowledge and a critique of the subject On one side, he analyzesknowledge not as a question of truth but a question of power, so thattruth IS a kind of battleground where the victor determines knowledgein a way that serves its own interes ts On the other side, Foucault con-ceives the Enlightenment subject, which was supposed to be rational,transcendental, and autonomous, as a construction specific to ahistoncal context of powerand knowledge, and thus as a constructionthat serves the interests of power established within the context Inthis critique,then, both the objectivity of knowledge and the autonomyof the subject collapse, and consequently the ethics based on thesephilosophical precepts collapses as well

In this essay, I will pursue this two-pronged critique through ananalysis of Foucault's relation to the two mam currents of Enlighten-ment thought the dialectical tradition that begins with Hegel, is in-herited and transformed by Marxism, and concerns the production ofknowledge, and the tradition of critical philosophy that begins with Kant,continues through Freud and Heidegger to French poststruc turalism ,and concerns the analysis of the subject and its conditions I will arguethat Foucault's two-pronged critique of the Enlightenment reveals acrucial difference between the dialectical pursuit of knowledge and theanalysis of subjectivity,and, furthermore, that this difference forms thephilosophical substrate of the contemporary intellectual's ethical dilem-ma In other words, I propose a fuller philosophical investigation ofFoucault's critique of Enlightenment in order to provide a fresh and il-luminating perspective on Foucault's intellectualethos

II

Foucault aligns himself with the contemporary analytic of sub-jectivity which, like Kant's critical philosophy, asserts itself against theolaims and methods of metaphysics The original Copernican turn in-sisted that knowledge of objects is no more than a metaphysical illu-sion, and that all that can be known with certainty is the subject andthe way it relates to objec ts Thus Kant's critica l philosophy analyzesthe representational subject, which cannot know but only represent ob-jects through its own reason, and knows only its own representationsThe contemporary transform ation w ithin the Kantian project consistsin positing language rather than reason as the logos of subjectivity Theimportant thing for Foucault is that this uncovers the subject of repre-



subject, then, which was guaranteed by this unifying subjective reabecomes understood as a construction of a particular historical perFoucault's project is to analyze the ways in which this conceptioformed specific h istorical social and institutiona l practices Whileaimed to establish the transcendental limits to subjectivity, Foucaims to show the ways in which any lim it to subjectivity is historconstituted.

The limitation to this analysis of the subject, which Foucrecognizes even if some of his contemporaries do not, is the samlimitation, now disp laced, that Hegel articulated as an attack on KWith the focus restricted entirely to the subject, its operations andtrinsic conditions , Hegel suspected an intellectua l solipsism thathe name of keeping thought withm its proper bounds, empties any content. In the context of dialectics, this obsession with subjtivity IS a withdrawal from that which had always been the purpothought: to think ob jects , to contem plate the material w orld, to unstand the concrete historical foundations of human existence Howeinadequate, ideological or even impossible the task, and whateverrisk of error or abuse, thought must m its dia lectical imperative foon the dynamic of subject and object, the concept and the thing tconcept exists to understand Pagan religions, monotheism, tEnlightenm ent, and the history of modern science, all constitute hunattempts to cognize the natural, histo rical, concrete conditionshuman existence. To shy away from th is dialectical task in ordertotemplate the proprieties and possibilities of subjectivity alone is,cording to Hegel, "an assumption whereby what calls itself fear oror reveals itself rather as fear of the truth"'

Though Hegel's cognitive confidence— particularly sincesource is its presumed access to Absolute Truth—can m the contemporary context easily be revealed as so much castration anxiety, h

susp icion about the inadequacy of a thought that restricts itself to itnonetheless remains m force It survives mainly within Marxism, whas Itself had to survive a con tinu ing series of attacks , most of thevalid, on its intellectual hubris, its autocratic stupidity, its dogmanaivet6, or some other condemnation of its attem pt to cognize concrereality Through itall, through all its transformations, dialectical thounonetheless retains its imperative. Especially in the arena of social acultura l critique , and above ail in its injunction first uttered by Marxsimply to understand but to transform the material world, the diaie

tical imperative survives all warnings about the void or abyss beyolanguage For otherwise, in the dialectica l analysis, the task of chaning the world would degenerate into theh bris of an idealism convinc



Illuminating context First of all, it emphasizes Foucault's relation toperhaps the most influential post-war philosopher in France andFoucault's teacher, Louis Althusser, whose major work is a revision ofthe Mapcist dialec tic Throughout this revision, Althusser aims torein-vigorate dialec tical thought by making the knowledge it produces evermore histoncal, material and scientific; yetm so doing he embarks upona philosophical direction that articulates the limits and limitations ofthe dialectic. Assuch, Althusser initiates an analysis that Foucault andothers extend to a break altogether from dialectics Secondly, under-standing Foucault's project as a break from Althusserian dialecticshighlights its relation to the work of Gilles Deleuze, for which Foucaultarticulates great sympathy and enthusiasm if not complete concurrenceIn rejecting d ialec tics , Foucault joins Deleuzem an analysis of subjec-tivity But where Foucault focuses on the historical constitution of aconcrete existing subject, Deleuze explores the conditions of possibilityfor a future subject Moreover, because Deleuze pursues that explora-tion to new and exciting lengths, he extends thought to new speculativelengths, and thus brings forth the question of where possibility endsand wishful think ing begins In short, in pursuit of the transcendentalconditions of subjective possibility, Deleuze largely by-passes the ques-tion of the concrete histoncal possibility of a new subject, which isto say, the concrete trans formation of an actually ex isting subject andthe practices that constitu te it In all this, he passes into zones whereFoucault never ventures To be sure, Foucault aligns himself withDeleuze and the re-mvestigation of subjectivity— Foucault himself hasIdentified this project retro-spectively as the "general theme" of hisresearch.' Yet Foucault's concrete analyses of subjectivity reflect thefundamental concerns, indeed the guiding imperative of Marxism- tohistoricize. In short, Foucault's revision of the Kantian analytic of sub-jectivity, while presenting itself as a rejection of Marxism, nonethelessconforms to the guiding analytical imperative of Marxism

Foucault's ambivalent rejection of dialectics in favor of theanalytics of subjectivity, as it is developed in this essay through ananalysis of Foucault's relation to Althusser and Deleuze, brings fortha crucial dis tinc tion between the two traditions The distinction isethical, consisting in the conception of the transformative purpose ofphilosophy. The philosophy of the subject seeks transformation accord-ing to a discourse on the subject, its limits and possibilities, what itcan and cannot be or do; dialectics locates change in a discourse bya subject, its capacity to know and to respond to changes in objectivehistoncal cond itions. Confronting the limits of both the dialectical andcntical projects, indeed recasting the analysis of subjectivity as precise-ly this dual confrontation, Foucault asserts, in the face of the limita-



Like many reacting against Althusser's dominance of the

tellectual scene m Paris in the sixties, especially follow ing the evof May 1968, Foucault's project retains distinct Althusserian rnances First, Foucault appropriates Althusser's structural reversaanthropocentric humanism, and analyzes culture and society not asproduct of sovereign human subjects, but rather conceives the subjas the product of impersonal social and cultural processes. SecondFoucault appropriates and extends Althusser's distrust of the totaling impulse in dialectical thought, and thus analyzes social and cultprocesses by conceiving an autonomy for specific historical conte

or "conjun ctures" In these two fundamentally important aspects,thFoucault's project bears the influence of Althusser's structural Maism But the difference between the two projects is crucial, particuly for the question of intellectual practice

Althusser's focus on impersonal processes rather than individactions and his critique of dialectical totality both reflect his reviof the Marxist dialectic in the effort to make knowledge ever mhistorical and m aterialist. In this , he fo llows in the trad ition establiby Marx and Engels in The G erman Ideology and revised by LukaAdorno and the Frankfort School, which, like a theoretical watchdkeeps thought unerringly focused on material history by creating strictions and guidelines fo rtho ug ht In Althusser's revision, whiccalls the "Theory of theore tical practice," he criticizes Hegel's diatical movement of the Idea through the material object as the sedevelopment of a simple subjective mterionty that requires the objonly as the substrate for its own movement of self-development Wsuch "labor of the un iversal" provides continuity to the dialecticalcess and hence a unity to knowledge, that knowledge remains abstraand incomplete because the dialectical transformation is guided nby the concrete specificity of the object but by the abstract identof the simple, universal Ide a 'The matenalist dialectic reverses this pcess, "stands it on its head," by bringing the abstract Idea into a cfrontation with the material reality of a specific historical "conjuncto produce "concrete knowledge." Material reality, moreover, is alwcomplex, involving many factors m an intricate and variable netwof interrelations Rather than ignore this complexity wth the simple uof the universal Idea, theory must take it into account. Unity,thennever an "expressive" unity as Hegel would have it, as if the expresion of the Idea could re-arrange and unify into a Simple the comple



a labor whose aim and achievement is precisely torefuse the universal the abstractions and temptationsof "philosophy" (ideology), and to bring it back to itscondition by force, to the conditions of a scien tifical-ly specified universality If the universal has to be thisspecificity, we have no nght to invoke a universal whichIS not the universal of this specificity'

Thus conceived, the "Theory of theoretical practice" containscertain conditions for the actual practice of histoncal materialism Thisconstitutes the "epistemological break" from the Marxist tradition of"economism," or the tendency to conceive the materialist reversal ofHegel's dialectic as a shift from the movement of the concept to themovement of the economic contradiction in material conditions be-tween the means of production and the dis tribution of products ForAlthusser, understanding history in terms of this essential economiccontradiction remains a Hegelian enterprise, since it amounts to nothingmore than applying the concept of contradiction to all political andhistorical contexts as if this were a simple and immutable conceptuniversally expressed in material reality Economism ignores and sup-presses the complexity and specificity of historical reality by "super-ceding" It with the abstract notion of a simple contradiction. In theepistemological break from economism, Althusser asserts the "over-determination of contradiction,"' so that history can be understood inthe specificity of its historical conditions If Marxist theory understandsthese conditions m terms of a contradiction m the conditions ofeconomic practice, it must not conceive that contradiction as deter-mined by the law of a simple contradiction, but must rather be con-ceived as overdetermmed by the com plexity and specificity of concretereality

Althusser's analytical focus on the impersonal processes ofhistory clearly marks Foucault's project of analyzing the social andhistoncal constitution of subjectivity, which has indeed sometimes beencalled "s truc tu ra l" Moreover, like Derrida in his critique of the "centerelsewhere"' and Lyotard in his defin ition of the posimodern as an agethat "has lost the belief in meta-discourses,"'" Foucault joins thepoststructural turn away from the totalizing impulse in philosophy andtoward an affirmation and an analysis of a "de-centered" multiplicityHe opposes, then, m his own terms, social and cultural analyses which,like Hobbes's Leviathan, presume a unified structure that permeatesand constitutes all of a society or the entirety of a culture. Rather, heargues for the necessity and importance of "loca l" and "spec ific" con-texts, multiple and unique, that may overlapm some areas or share com-



from a dialec tical problematic to a problematic that focuses on the suject and Its co ns titution . Althusser delineates a "correc ted" version historical matenalism, and thus insists on a Marxist discourse that produces an ever purer ("scientific") knowledge of the material object con trast, Foucault focuses on the materiality of discursive knowledgItself, and analyzes knowledge not on the epistemological scale of truthbut on the genealogical scale of power. In other words, there is "ponderous, awesome materiality" to discourse,'^ an "incorporeamaterialism" where discourse is an event that "takes effect, becomeseffect, always on the level of materiality"'^ Instead of the dialecticfocus on the material object, Foucault analyzes the power of discourseto shape the world Discourse produces knowledge, and regardless ofwhether this knowledge is "true" or "false" to some material realitIt establishes privileges and priorities, makes distinctions and exclusions, organizes institutional practices, informs the machinations othe State, all on the order of material reality. Or alternately, and foFoucault just as much evidence of the materiality of discourse, thpower of discourse is repressed, regulated, controlled, forced to operatewithin certain channels whereby its material effect is restricted oelided The incorporeal materiality of discourse bears two concretpossibilities: as an exercise of power it can dominate and control historical context by establishing its field of knowledge as the termof concrete cultural, social, and political practices; oras an event sub-ject to the repression of its power, it can be dominated and controlledIts knowledge regulated within the determinations of the establisheknowledge These two possibilities indicate, as Foucault says, a context of tensions, of struggles and conflicts, of strategies, tactics andtechniques, all operating within a historically specific field of powand knowledge. Foucault's h istoncal analyses of these fields focus, consequently, on the various ways a specific field of knowledge get

established over other possibilities to become a "regime of truth" ia "general politics of truth""Foucault's focus on the materiality of discourse extends

Althusser's notion of "theoretical practice," which is for Althusseranassertion of the validity and material consequences of theoretical laborand Its product The difference or "break" is in the conception of threlation of discourse to m atenal effect. For Marxism, this s tructural aproach replaces the humanist and existential emphasis on individualchoice and commitment in favor of an emphasis on the structuraproblematic For Althusser, theoretical labor produces knowledge, whicprovides an epistemological foundation and as such a foundation for



for the enlightened Marxist intellectual, which,indeed, Althusser cites,"without theory, no revolutionary action"'* For Foucault, on the con-trary, theoretical practice is itself a matenal event, subject to social andinstitutiona l constraints but also capable of social and ins titutional ef-fect Discourse is not only a genuine practical labor, but more impor-tantly the product of theoretical labor, is no longer understood episte-mologically m terms of truth, but historically in terms of its concreteeffects In short, Foucault focuses not dialectically on the material ob-ject but critically on the materiality of the subject Like Kant, he replacesthe question of the object with the question of the subject, though here,this critical turn takes place not in the context of transcendentcategories but in the context of h istorical analysis Where Kant turnedthe metaphysical question from the transcendental object or Idea tothe transcendental subject, Foucault turns the historical question fromthe material object to the materiality of the subject

This Kantian turn presents a whole series of questions aboutthe purposes and methods of philosophical inquiry, particularly whenthe issue is not s imply to understand but to transform material realityFor Foucault, no longer is this an issue of distinguishing knowledgefrom illusion, even when this is a continuous process in the way ofAlthusser's revision of the materialist dialectic The question of a bet-ter, more concrete and scientific knowledge is beside the point Thequestion is one of power, of the privilege and exclusions establishedby a field of knowledge Thus Foucault brings into question Marxismalong with all other "enlightened" or "enlightening" discourses In-sisting as Althusser does upon concrete knowledge as more "t ru e" or"valid"IS simply another arbitrary exercise of power, implying a set ofexclusions governing the concrete organization of historical realityFoucault disallows the Enlightenment assumption thata true and scien-tific knowledge of society leads to a better organization of society, andinstead conceives th is knowledge and this organization to be the sameas any other exercise of power In short, Foucault disrupts the ethics

of the traditiona l intellectual by disallowing the jus tification of poweron epistemological grounds. Althusser's Marxist faith in the dialecticallyproduced distinction between truth and illusion, therefore, has nospecial privilege over any other discourse, and to pursue this faith inthe pursuit of a better world like a scientist producing the epistemo-logical foundation forthe engineers of society implies—as the post-1968generation in France sometimes concluded—Stalinism'^

I V

The Enlightenment altemative to an intellectual practice justified



establishes a relation between the transcendental and the historicala relation characterized as adherence to law; and since adherence tolaw IS made possible only by reason, practical action finds its justific

tion in the rational processes of the transcendental subject. In thiKantian critical tradition, Gilles Deleuze's writings analyze atranscendental subject, and derive from that analysis a general directivfor practical action Yet Deleuze's analysis is directly opposed to KantHe focuses not on a subject founded on reason but, following Freudon a subject constituted in the context of conflicting unconscioulibidm al impulses Moreover, Deleuze's directive for practical actiemerges out of this transcendental analysis and affirms subjectivepossibilities heretofore proscribed by the Kantian and Freudia

analyses, possibilities founded on a Foucauldian sensitivity to thissues surrounding discourse and power. Foucault responds toDeleuze's work with enthusiasm and a sense of solidarity, as if the twprojects were in some way complementary.'^ Yet he also qualifies thaenthusiasm by suggesting that Deleuze's major work, written in conjunction with Felix Guattari, be understood as an ethics, that AntiOedipus be read as an "Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life'""'In thiway, he foregrounds the fact that Deleuze does not explicate realitytranscendental or material, but rather explores discursive possibilitieguided by a motivation for social and cultura l change In so doinFoucault points toward his own understanding of Kant and of thmodern intellectual ethos.

The "transcendental unconscious" is the central theoreticaframework or problematic ofAnti-Oedipus,and occupies the sameanalytical position as Kant's transcendental structures of subjectivitBut there is a crucial difference Kant's project analyzes the transcendental conditions of a subject supposed to be founded on its syntheticreason, which makes possible the understanding of the one, constantlimited,enduring form- "th e proper problem of pure reason is containein the question How are a priori synthe tic judgements possible''"^" Icon trast, Deleuze and Guattari articulate the processes not of reasonbut of desire, in which it is possible to expenence the movement towar"a sum that never succeeds in bringing its parts into a whole puremultip licity, that is to say, an affirmation that is never reducible tow hole "" For Kant, such an experience would be discounted as anirrational if not impossible aberration. In this,Anti-Oedipus follow

Freudian psychoanalysis; yet it also challenges Freud's charactenza-tion of this experience as patholog ical. In short,Anti-Oedipusrevisesthe analysis of subjectivity to articulate the conditions of possibili



"There is only one kind of production, the production of thereal" {A-0,p 32) In the world of nature and the world created by men and women,the same processes are at work, productive processes like photo-synthesis, pollination , copulation, cognition, internal com bustion, pro-cesses which are all no more than various m achinations of desire Fur-thermore, Anti-Oedipusconceives desire in the first instance m a wayexactly contrary to Kant, whose transcendental analysis presupposesa subject that unifies The processes of desirmg-production operaterather according to relationships of difference The subject does notunify experience but experiences these relations of difference, thisdecentered and nomadic movement of desire. But this desire, whichDeleuze and Guattari call "schizophrenic" desire, is always coupled toanother "paranoiac" desire, which attempts to arrest and codify theflows of desinng-production Thus the schizophrenic "flows" are alwayssubject to repression by paranoiac "codes" In a metaphor borrowedfrom wildlife biology that emphasizes the universality of desirmg-production, Deleuze and Guattari describe this tension as a "deter-ritorializm g" movement m relation to a "territorializing " movement Asthe terms suggest, deterritorialization can only operate in relation toterritorializations "The movement of deterritorialization can never begrasped in itself, one can only grasp its indices in relation to ter-ntorialization"(A-0, p 316) Thus, m an analysis similar to Foucault'sanalysis of power relations but much more speculative, Anti-Oedipus

posits the reality of the subject and its world as the product of the in-terplay of a paranoiac desire to dominate and control by establishingcodes of order and law, and a schizophrenic desire for liberation fromestablished codes

In Deleuze's short but very suggestive essay, "Philosophie etMinority ,"" he outlines a parallel tension w ithin philosophical practicebetween two forms of discourse The "majority" discourse is the at-tempt to establish an ideal standard of truth, value and identity, accord-ing to which law can be formed and order established, a discoursewhose effect is to create domination and oppression For Deleuze, thisIS generally the strategy of traditional philosophical d is c ou rs e -including that of Kant and Hegel, Marx and Freud—which seeksknowledge of the one, the ideal, the eternal and universal truth ThisIS also, clearly, the philosophical foundation forthe practice of the tradi-tional intellectual. "Mino rity " discourse responds to the majorityfromthe position of the minority. "The problem is never to acquire the ma-jonty, even in instituting a new standard." In this way it is similar tothose contemporary intellectuals who appropriate Nietzsche's affirma-tion of negation m order not to support the practices of dominationand oppression of the status quo For Deleuze, however, following his

di f i h i di ffi i b



value and identity. Thus the ideal is always in a state of transformatioalways either "bec om ing " itself or "be co m ing " something other thIt IS

It comes as no surpnse that, for Deleuze, minonty discourse constitutes a guide if not a categorical imperative for intellectual practi"This would be the task of philosophy, in opposition to its abstract maclaim Philosophy w ould be traversed by all these becomings, it woube m touch with th e m " In the same way, following the analysis of possibility withina transcendental unconscious, Anti-Oedipusaffirmthe revolutionary potential of schizophrenic desire

It should therefore be said that one can never go far

enough in the direction of deterntorialization- youhaven't seen anything yet—an irreversible process .[t]he com pletion of the process is not a promised andpre-existing land, but a world created in the processof Its tendency, its com ing undone, its deterritorializa-tion {A-0,p 322)

As such Anti-Oedipusconstitutes perhaps the most extreme exampleof a poststructural discourse exhorting political change by pointintoward the possibilities that arise in the dissolution of establishediscourses, possibilities that reach the point in Deleuze and Guattan'sanalysis of society where "the desiring-production of affects impose[eIts rule on institutions whose elements are no longer anything budrives" {A-0, p 63)

In the brash presumption of its analysis of a "transcendentaunconsciou s" that enables these possib ilities, and in the extremity oIts exhortations to pursue them, Anti-Oedipusbrings forth questionabout the h istorical efficacy of these sub jective possib ilities. In shoIS AnthOedipus just a discursive dream '' Is this discourse on desire nmore than wishfu l thinking? If not, m what way does its explorationsubjective possibility effect historical reality'' The problem is undestanding the relation to material conditions of a discourse that doenot pretend to produce knowledge of matenal co n d it io n s" If thetranscendental unconscious has no more claim to truth than Kant'stranscendental processes of reason, if it constitutes simply an exploration of an alternative mode of analyzing the subject, how is it relate

to material conditions? Moreover, if there is no evaluative standard otruth, according to what criteria is this analysis and this affirmatiopreferable?



something of extreme seriousness the tracking downof all vaneties of fascism, from the enormous ones thatsurround us to the petty ones that constitute the tyran-nical bitterness of our everyday lives "

In place then of scientifically specified objectives and the categoricalimperative,Anti-Oedipusoffers, according to Foucault, an affirmationagainst domination, repression, exploitation, an affirmation for thepossibilities of a non-fascist life In referring to a "non-fascist life,"moreover, Foucault emphasizes the histoncal occasion of Anti-OedipusAfter all, it is the foremost document, almost the manifesto of Frenchpolitical thought fo llowing the events of May 1968 in Pans More general-ly, It IS a late twentieth-century philosophical text, emerging out of aEurope which for more than three decades had been contemplating thephenomenon of fascism and how it could have attracted so much in-tellectual as well as popular support Foucault suggests that Anti-Oedipus be read not as a treatise on truth but as a response to ahistorical context rethinking the relation between truth and freedomIn short, with his tongue-m-cheek assertion that it should be understoodas an ethical treatise, he suggests that it be understood m terms ofthe ethos of modernity

In his posthumously published essay, "What is Enl igh tenm en t"Foucault traces the ethos of modernity, and thus the genealogy of hisown philosophical project, back to Kant's own remarks on the Enlighten-ment in "Was ist Aufklarung"?" But surprisingly—and significantly—the genealogical connection he makes is not their common concernwith the subject, but a continuity m their relation to history The tellingthing for Foucault is that "Was ist A ufk larung ''" "is a reflection by Kanton the contemporary status of his own enterprise" ("WIE," p 38) Theconcern with the subject, the cons titution of "m an" as an object of in-quiry, which IS how Foucault characterized the significance of theEnlightenment m The Order of Things, is here understood as a conse-quence of a particular relation to history, to contemporary reality andone's role m it. It results from a reflection on "toda y" "as a motive fora particular philosophical ta sk " ("WIE," p 38) Kant's analysis of therational subject and the categorical imperative it makes possible, then,like Anti-Oedipusand its affirmation of deterntorialization, finds itsjustification for Foucault not in the knowledge it produces or themetaphysics it implies, but m its historical occasion . The critical taskof articulating the proper transcendental limits to subjective reason is



between h is own and the d ialectica l focus on material history andtransformation In the context of this d istinction, dialectics obetranscendental imperative, since its concern with material historyabsolute, eternal and immutable "Always historicize," Jameson saasserting th is slogan as "th e one absolute and we may even say tranhistorical imperative of all dialectical t h o u g h t" " In contrast, Fouclaims only a histoncal justification for his concern with matenal hisMotivating Foucault's histoncal analyses is the ethos of modernity a relation of knowledge but a "philosopical attitude," it is

a mode of relating to contemporary reality,a voluntarychoice made by certain people; in the end, a way of

thinking and fee ling, a way, too, of acting and behav-ing that at one and the same time marks a relation ofbelonging and presents itself as a task A bit, no doubt,like what the Greeks called an ethos ("WIE," p 39)

Through comparative analyses of Kant, Baudelaire, and himsFoucault goes on to characterize this ethos as a " limit-a ttitude ,"analysis and reflection upon limits. The limit here, in each case, is tof the subject and its discourse, yet the attitude toward the limit do

not remain the same Submerged in Foucault's analysis of this ethIS the ques tion of freedom, and the attitude toward the limit changaccording to his torica l changes in the problem of freedom For Kthe issue was to escape a condition of immaturity, which he definas an unthinking obedience to authority He sought a "way out oliberation from immatunty accomplished through the freeand legitimuse of a transcendental reason" Thus the Enlightenment is "the mment when humanity is going to put its own reason to use, without sjec ting Itself to any authority." It therefore becomes necessary to def

"the conditions under which the use of reason is legitimate" ("WIp 38), and hence to establish the lim its of the rational subject beyowhich IS not only a transgression of reason but also a threat to freedFor Baudelaire, m the following century, this harmonious relationtween freedom and reason turns into a conflict, one that finally leato a new philosophical task. The focus on "today" brings forth historical lim its of the subject, lim its established by reason as the pper limits to a mature human subjec t. But instead of liberating "min this process, reason is confronted w ith the h istorical reality that ma

freedom has thereby been res tricted This contem plation of the sujec t, this relation to self, finally com pels man " to face the task of pd i h i lf" ("WIE " 42) F B d l i hi



For his part, Foucault dismisses both discourses of liberation,the rational reflection on a transcendental essence and the creativereflection on a historical contingency, and instead reflects upon howboth of these discourses have led not to liberation but to the need for

liberation. The difference from Kant here is clear, since Kant seekstranscendental limits beyond which the subject must not transgress,while Foucault contemplates these limits as themselves the produc-tion of a contingent or historica l discourse Thus he turns the reflec-tion on limits into "a practical critique that takes the form of a possi-ble transgression" ("WIE," p 45) The distinction from Baudelaire is lessobvious but equally tellin g Baudelaire's analysis of the subject isthoroughly historica l, and he conceives liberation as the transgressionof the historical limits of subjectivity, but he remains consistent withKant m that he seeks to establish new limits to subjectivity, a new iden-tity, even if it is not a rationally produced, transcendental and necessarylimit but a creative, historical and contingent limit Foucault, m fact,points to Baudelaire's "doctrine of elegance" as "a discipline moredespotic than the most terrible religions ("WIE," p 41) Foucault con-ceives the problem of limits only as that which can be transgressedUnlike Kant and Baudelaire who, responding to their own time, estab-lished new lim its, Foucault only identifies contemporary limits m aproject whose transformative purpose is still liberation, but conceivedsolely in terms of transgression. As such, he pursues a discourse thatdoes not link liberation to truth, or seek to establish a new liberatedorder At the same time, however, m a statement that recalls his qualifica-tion of Anti-Oedipus, he cautions "no t to settle for an empty dream offreedom," but rather to put the experiments of subjec tivity "to the testof reality" ("WIE," p 46) He intends his analysis of limits not as adiscourse whose truth leads to liberty, but a discourse whose effectsare liberating

Foucault's project, then, cannot be understood or appreciatedaccording to the problematic of cons tituting a proper social organiza-tion or a proper subjectivity, norcan it be appropriated by any discourseaddressing that problematic. He does not attempt to solve social prob-lems nor does h is discourse imply or lead to any so lution of any prob-lem As he says, "I have never tried to analyze anything whatsoever fromthe point of view of politics, but always to ask politics what it had tosay about the problems it con fron ted ."" Foucault clearly uses the term"politics" here to designate the various discourses that seek to deter-mine laws and policies to deal with various social phenomena that areperceived in Enlightenment fashion as problems to be solved. The ques-tions Foucault poses to politics through the problematic of power andknowledge concern, m contrast, the ways m which any solution to a



or law, but knowledge of how the reignmg lim it or law inhib its freedwith the purpose of making possible a transgression of that limit

In the context of the contemporary intellectual's ethical dile

ma, then, Foucault's project is indeed closer to a Nietzschean affirmtion of negation. Yet Foucault retains more political savvy and clothan his North American defenders According to theethos of modenity, Foucault's critical analyses do not constitute a transcendentnegation but a histoncal one, which means, according to the terms Foucault's historical analyses, a specific negation asserted within specific context of power relations among com peting discoursesnegation to have its effect withm that context upon those discourseThus Foucault raises questions and poses problems to politics wit

the expectation, indeed the demand, that "polit ics must answer thesquestions"^' That he limits his own discourse to the task of raising qutions does not mean that critics and thinkers will not or should ncontemplate solutions, or at least pursue less repressive limits to subjectiv ity and less repressive laws of social organization For exampFoucault's position on group solidarity or consensual politics is nan outright opposition, as he carefully says, "The farthest I would IS to say that perhaps one must not be for consensuality, but one musbe against nonconsensuality.""

From the perspective of Foucault's relation to his histoncal cotext, both sides of the debate on the ethics of the intellectual appeainsufficiently historical Those who m the name of opposition pticipate in the practices of the traditional intellectual w ithout confring the h istorica l context of power relations that those practices haalways masked and supported, do indeed perpetuate practices of povifethat can only serve the status quo Yet the rejection and condemnatioof any and all attempts to achieve concrete alternatives to sociaorganization constitutes a refusal of any productive historica l relatibetween intellectual activity and politics The culpable complacenof the former is matched by the latter's promotion of a plaintive bbenign " no" to the s tatus of the categorical imperative. Governing bosides is a vestigial Enlightenment desire for the purity and simplicof a solution, one blithely pursuing its possibility, the other celebratiIts impossibility, but both thereby effectively avoiding the concrhistorical dilemma they confront. For Foucault, effective intellectdiscourse w ould not avoid the dilemm a but confront it and engage It as the historical context of the contemporary intellectual

Boston Universi



2 See especially Edward Said, T h e World, the Text a n d t h e Critic(Cambridge, MAHarvard Univ Press, 1983) andJim Merod, T h e Political Responsibility of th e Critic(Ithaca Corneli Univ Press, 1987) See aiso Noam Chomsi<y interview withFoucauit on Dutch television, pubiished as "iHuman Nature Justice versusPower," in Reflexive Water T h e Basic Concerns of Mankind, ed Fons Eiders (ixndon Souvenir, 1974), pp 178-202

3 Michel Foucault, "What is En lightenmenf," trans Catherine Porter, inTheFoucault Reader, e d Paui Rabinow (NewYori< Pantheon, 1984), pp 32-50 (hereaftercited as "WIE")

A G W F Hegel, T h e Phenomenology of Mind, trans J B Bailie (1910, rpt NewYori< Harper & Row, 1967), p 133

5 Michel Foucault, "Subiect and Power," afterword to Hubert L Dreyfus and PauiRabinow, MichelFoucault Beyond Structuralism a n d Hermeneutics, second edi-tion (Chicago Chicago Univ Press, 1983), pp 208-26

6 L O U I SAlthusser, "On the Materialist Diaiectic,"m F o r Marx, trans Ben Brewster(1969, rpt London NLB, 1977), p 189

7 Althusser, "On the Materialist Dialectic," p 183

8 L O U I SAithusser, "Contradiction and Overdetermination,"m F o r Marx, pp 89-127

9 Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Piay in the Discourse of the HumanSciences," in T h e Structuralist Controversy, eds Richard Maci sey and EugenioDonato (Baltimore Johns Hopl<ins Univ Press,1976), pp 247-64 This essay, par-ticularly in the context of its delivery at the conferenceo n structuralism at JohnsHopkins in1966,dramatizes and articulates this poststructurai turn most clearly

10 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans Bennington andMassumi (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p 6

11 In "Two Lectures," Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings1972-1977, ed Colin Gordon, trans Gordon et ai (New York Pantheon, 1980),Foucauit writes

we shouid try to grasp subjection in its materiai instance as aconstitution of subjects This would be the exact opposite ofHobbes's project in Leviathan, and of that, i beiieve, of ail jurists forwhom the probiem is the distillation of a single wiil—or rather, theconstitution of a unitary, singular body animated by the spirit ofsovereignty—from the particular w ills ofa multiplicity of individualsThink of the scheme of Leviathan insofar as he is a fabricated man.Leviathan is no other than the amalgamation of a certain number ofseparate individualities, who find themselves reunited by the complexof elements that go to compose the State, but at the heart of the State,or rather, at its head, there exists something which constitutes it assuch, and this is sovereignty, which Hobbes says is precisely the spiritof Leviathan Well, rather than worry about the problem of the centralspirit, i believe that we must attempt to study the myriad of bodieswhich are constitu ted as peripheral subjects as a result of the effectsof power (pp 97-98)



15 Althusser, "On the Materialist Dialectic," p 168

16 See, for example, Jacques Rancidre, "Sur la thârie de I'ldôlogle Politiqued'Althusser," L'homme et la sociiti, 27 (1973), 31-62

17 Immanuel Kant, Foundations lor the Metaphysics ol Morals, trans Lewis BeckV^hite (Indianapolis Bobbs-Mernll, 1969), p 44

18 See the "conversation" between Foucauit and Deleuze, "Intellectuals and Power,"in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice Selected Essays and Interviews, etiDonald Bouchard, trans Bouchard and Simon (Ithaca Cornell Univ Press, 1977),pp 205-17

19 Michel Foucauit, preface to Gilles Deleuze and F6lix Guattan, AntiOedipusCapitalism and Schizophrenia, trans Hurley etal (New York Viking, 1977), p xiv

20 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans Norman Kemp Smith (1929,rpt New York St Martin's, 1965), p 55

21 Gilies Deieuze and F6lix Guattari, Anti-Oedlpus Capitalism and Schizophrenia,trans Huriey et ai (New York Viking, 1977), p 42 (hereafter ci ted as A-0)

22 Gilies Deieuze, "Philosophie et Minority," Critique Revue g6n6rale des publicstions frangaises et 6trang6res, 34 (Feb 1978), pp 154-55 The translations aremy own

23 See Giiles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophie, trans Hugh Tomlinson (New Yort<Columbia Univ Press, 1983)

24 Peter Dews raises the diaiectical question about the materiai object in adismissive commentary on Deieuze and other "phiiosophers of desire" in"Adorno, Poststructuraiism, and the Critique of Identity," New Left Review,(May/June 1986), 28-44 See also Kariis Racevskis for a discussion of the sameissues in reiation to Foucault and Baudrtiiard, in Michel Foucault and the Subvsion of Intellect (ithaca Corneii Univ Press, 1980)

25 Foucault, preface to Anti-Oedipus, p xiv

26 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious Narrative as a Socially SymbolAct (Ithaca Cornell Univ Press, 1981), p 9

27 Michei Foucault, "Polemics, Probiems and Probiematizations An interview," inThe Foucault Reader, p 384

28 Michei Foucauit, "Pol itics and Ethics An interview," in The Foucault Readp 379

29 Foucauit, "Poiemics, Probiems and Probiematizations," p 384



Documents

Dialectics Subjectivity and Foucaults Ethos of Modernity