Power, Subjectification and Resistance in Foucault

Author(s): Kevin Jon Heller

Source: SubStance , 1996, Vol. 25, No. 1, Issue 79 (1996), pp. 78-110
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Power, Subjectification
and Resistance in Foucault

Kevin Jon Heller

Power relations are both intentional and non-subjective.

---Michel Foucault (HS I, 94-95)
We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as the
constitution of subjects.
-Michel Foucault (TL, 97)
As soon as there is a power relation, there is the possibility of resis-
tance.

-Michel Foucault ("The End of the Monarchy of Sex," 153)

FOUCAULT'S CONCEPTS OF POWER, subjectification, and resistance have

received a great deal of attention in the years since his death. That atten-
tion, of course, is not surprising: the three inextricably-linked concepts are
not only integral to Foucault's theoretical project, they are also perhaps the
most difficult concepts to transcode into more familiar forms of theoretical
discourse. What is surprising, however, is the nearly complete absence of
serious debate from Foucault scholarship. Given the varied political and
theoretical projects of those scholars who have written specifically on
power, subjectification, and resistance-including Jurgen Habermas, Char-
les Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Anthony Giddens, Nicos Poulantzas, and Peter
Dews--exegetical conflict should be the norm, not the exception. Never-
theless, even the most cursory examination of the relevant literature
demonstrates the existence of a widespread---and almost never ques-
tioned--consensus concerning the "correct" interpretation of Foucault.
Schematically, that interpretation can be summarized as follows:'

1. Subjects do not consciously exercise power; they are merely power's

passive objects.

2. Because subjects are created by power-relations they do not consciously

control, the creation of subjectivity is a homogeneous process in which
subjects are little more than "individual copies that are mechanically
punched out" (Habermas, 293). As a result, "subversive subjectivity" (Bal-
bus, 152)---subjectivity that is opposed to the interests of power--cannot
exist.

78 SubStance #79,1996

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 Foucault 79

3. Because po
power" cour
tance is ulti

4. Because al
liberated pow
therefore, is

It is my p
interviews f
lenge this h
pretation
relations ar
insists on th
in which po
Foucault's i
phasis on th
from positin
ject-position
that resistan
turally gua
and the het
Foucault's c
guish betw
domination.

I. Power and Intentionality

Many scholars have attempted to make sense of Foucault's cryptic and

seemingly-paradoxical statement that "power relations are both intentional
and non-subjective." Those attempts have, however, been misleadingly
one-sided, focused only on the ways in which power-relations are, for
Foucault, non-subjective; Foucault's insistence on the intentionality of
power-relations simply drops out of sight. Consider, for example, Gary
Wickham's comment on the strategies subjects "use" to transform power-
relations:

Foucault argues that strategies do not have subjects, being formed instead
around subject-less objectives. So the direct subjects of power are not in-
dividuals--individuals can only be said to be "implicated" in power. (154-
55)

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 80 Kevin Jon Heller

Wickham's comment is
"[a]lthough power is desc
it is not the product of in
During, however, is th
Foucault, simply "cannot
(132).
The question raised by such comments is this: if subjects do not con-
sciously or intentionally exercise power, who or what does? Who or what
gives coherence to the history that unfolds "behind the backs of men," to
borrow Marx's phrase-history in which subjects are merely "implicated"?
Anthony Giddens's answer -implicit in Wickham, Smart, and During--is
that, for Foucault, power itself is the real subject of history:

[For Foucault] the transmutation of power emanates from the dark and
mysterious backdrop of "history without a subject." ... Foucault's
genealogical method, in my opinion, continues the confusion ... between
history without a transcendental subject and history without knowledge-
able human subjects . . . "Punishment," "discipline," and especially
"power" itself are characteristically treated by him as though they were
agents--indeed the real agents of history. (Giddens, 1982, 222)

This interpretation of Foucault's concept of power, however, does not

withstand analysis. Foucault does not say that power-relations are non-
subjectively intentional, nor does he indicate that the intentionality of
power-relations is in any way illusory, epiphenomenal, or secondary to
their non-subjectivity--"power relations are both intentional and non-sub-
jective." Indeed, the rarely-quoted sentences immediately following that
notorious statement explicitly affirm the intentionality of power:

If in fact [power relations] are intelligible, this is not because they are the
effect of another instance that "explains" them, but because they are im-
bued, through and through, with calculation: there is no power that is
exercised without a series of aims or objectives. (HS, 94-95)

It is difficult to see how this statement can be interpreted to defend the

idea that Foucault views power (written as "Power" by Giddens and
others) as the constitutive subject of history, particularly in light of his
insistence, in "The Question of Power," that "if mine were an ontological
conception of power, there would be, on the one side, Power with a capital
P, a kind of lunar occurrence, extra-terrestrial," and that he believes "an
analysis of this kind to be completely false [because] there is no Power, but
power relationships" (QP, 187). Individuals are, for Foucault, both the
subjects and the objects of power--as he says, individuals "are always in the
position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising..,. power. They are

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 Foucault 81

not only its

its articulati
It is also dif
of power w
bio-power th
both geneal
usually int
consciously
political ne
cipline and
underlying
but as the
processes:

the "invention" of this new political 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,
support one another, distinguish themselves from one another according to
their domain of application, converge and gradually produce the blueprint
of a general method .... [O]n almost every occasion [, however,] they were
adopted in response to particular needs. (DP, 138, my italics)

Foucault provides numerous examples of these "particular needs." To

begin with, there is his account of how capitalists created a "new regime of
surveillance"--based in large part on the hierarchical policing of labor and
the increased use of docks for temporal supervision--over the course of
the 18th century, in response to their realization that "as the machinery of
production became larger and more complex, as the number of workers
and the division of labor increased, supervision became ever more neces-
sary and more difficult" (DP, 174). The creation of this new regime,
Foucault insists, was not an anonymous, unintentional process; on the
contrary, "employers saw that it was indissociable from the system of
factory production, private property, and profit," and responded accord-
ingly (DP, 174-75).
Second, similar needs made it imperative in the 18th century for police
and legal officials to develop more effective means of control over the
populations they governed. For those officials, the problem was one of
adjusting the repressive apparatuses of the State to deal with a transforma-
tion of criminality away from crime involving persons (a "criminality of
blood") toward crime involving property (a "criminality of fraud"). That
transformation was not only intolerable to commercial interests--"the way
in which wealth tended to be invested, on a much larger scale than ever

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 82 Kevin Jon Heller

before, in commodities a
intolerance of illegality"
tacle of the scaffold upon
founded. A "new economy
tionally created, an econo
too concentrated at certa
authorities," and was "dis
operating everywhere, in a
social body" (DP, 80). Laws
in size and strength; the
publication of broadsheets,
of the working class (of w
result, the danger crime po
of production, though ne
reduced.

Third, the need to "provide a hold" over the "whole mobile, swarming
mass" of men that passed through military and naval hospitals in the 18th
century led to the intentional transformation of those institutions. In such
institutions,

the rule of functional sites ... gradually ... code[d] a space that architecture
generally left at the disposal of several different uses. Particular places were
defined to correspond not only to the need to supervise, to break dangerous
communications, but also to create a useful space. (DP, 143-44).

Fourth, and finally, the 18th century's "political, economic, and tech-
nological incitement to talk about sex"-so brilliantly analyzed by
Foucault in The History of Sexuality-led to the intentional transformation
of pedagogical institutions. Although Foucault recognizes that "one can
have the impression that sex was hardly spoken of at all in [pedagogical]
institutions," in fact, he argues, the opposite was true:

one only has to glance over the architectural layout, the rules of discipline,
and their whole internal organization: the question of sex was a constant
preoccupation. The builders considered it explicitly. The organizers took it
permanently into account. All who held a measure of authority were placed
in a state of perpetual alert. The space for classes, the shape of the tables, the
planning of the recreation lessons, the distribution of the dormitories (with
or without partitions, with or without curtains), the rules for monitoring
bedtime and sleep periods-all this referred, in the most prolix manner, to
the sexuality of children. (HS, 27-28)

None of these 18th-century transformations--in factories and

workshops, in the legal and police apparatuses, in military and naval

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 Foucault 83

hospitals, i
seriously th
the intenti
dividuals an
backs of t
educators w
jects of thos
for Foucaul

Power. A F

This discus
power has,
Foucault's m
transformat
the actions
he says,

the exercise of power ... is a way in which certain actions modify others..
. a total structure of actions brought to bear on possible actions. The exercise
of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order
the possible outcome. (SP, 788-89)

It is in the following sense, then, to quote Foucault's notorious phrase,

that "power is everywhere" (HS, 93): because power "is nothing other
than a certain modification ... of a series of clashes which constitute the
social body" (QP, 188), power is, for Foucault, coterminous with social change.
The ability of individuals to create change--no matter how insignificant-
is power. This is a critical point, because most Foucault scholars have been
unable to free themselves from the conceptual paradigms of conventional
social theory (mainstream or Marxist), which has always equated power
with "repression" and has thus always viewed the exercise of power,
regardless of its purpose, as inherently repressive. No idea is more foreign
to Foucault's thought; for him, power is not a particular form or type of
change, it is, in a strictly value-neutral way, the medium of change. Power is
what makes change possible, whether that change limits human freedom
or promotes it. Power can indeed be used, in Foucault's opinion, for pur-
poses of repression (torture is, after all, a power-relation), and often is, but
power is not repression itself. Power

traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge,

produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network

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84 Kevin Jon Heller

which runs through the w

instance whose function is

Power, in short, is a facilit

Exercising Power

This definition of powe

not explain where power
the source of an individ
dividuals? And what does
The latter question is pa
of the word "exercise" is
to speak of power as "exer
pluralist, and functionali
evitably reify power and
subjective the exercise o
power "is not an institu
strength we are endowed

is never localized here or

propriated as a commodit
exercised through a net-lik

This final sentence prov

of where power comes fro
net-like organization of
Foucault tells us that th
exercise of power consists

the system of differentiatio

others: differentiations dete
privilege; economic differe
shifts in the process of pr
ferences in know-how and

Similarly, in "The Ques

that "power is nothing o
clashes that constitute th

power, then, is something li

definition of tactics, of im
clashes. (QP, 188)

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Foucault 85

Foucault's t
ferentiation
SP, 786)--is
for Foucault,

non-unifying
... the cause o
do we mean
integrated, an
or mutual p
machine and
often reserve

Deleuze's us
ly importan
exists, for F
power: the ex
power, yet is
mechanisms.
the power-di
other hand,
exercise of
mechanisms
power-diag
relationship
at the same t

The Power-

Once we re
the existence
damental way
and non-sub
tional, the m
herently non
individuals f
structured an
reducible to
being contro

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 86 Kevin Jon Heller

one doesn't have here a pow

who can exercise it alone an
is a machine in which every

Indeed, the power-relatio

complex that one cannot e
pletely determining") powe

neitherthe caste which gov

apparatus, nor those who m
direct the entire network of
function). (HS, 95)

The fact that all individ

power-relations that is bey
ever, as Nancy Hartsock h
be seen as a single individ
dominating others" (169),
relations of power ultima
(165). Although no indivi
formation's entire power-
positions within that dia
control more of a diagram
quite explicit on this poin
the penultimate quote ab
cupy the same position. C
fect of supremacy to b
situation of the "domina
acquired or preserved ... b
(DP, 26). Indeed, we have a
"dominant class" (broadly
ther its political and econ
in the factory, its transf
regulation of pedagogy,
Foucault's work.

Foucault's theory of power cannot, therefore, be considered-as a

number of scholars have argued-a variant of the pluralist theory of powe
espoused by Robert Dahl and others. Power may indeed be everywhere,
but that does not mean power is equally distributed-it means only that
absolute power (economic, political, cultural, etc.) is a structural and thus
practical impossibility. Nor, however, can Foucault's theory be considered
a version of Parsonian functionalism, as Fred Dallmayr,' Anthony Gid-

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Foucault 87

dens1o and t
Power, for
for Parsons
provides "th
attainment
made, or m
promote coll
Punish thro
power can ju
for factiona
Foucault, ne
simply the a

Tactics, Stra

The fact th
supra-indiv
insists that
tant, for Fo
tive: namel
intention an
they do; they
don't know is
ly non-subjec
action.

This form
Foucault s th
in the earlie
important tr
opinion, int
certain cons
must now be
ly produced
produced--t
This is the r
concepts of "
tional action
and groups;
cially regula

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88 Kevin Jon Heller

different individual and

power, because both creat
non-subjective power.
Differentiating tactics
only a taxonomy of pow
particular, that distinctio
tions that function primar
tion of the institution is
operation, and 2) institutio
which the real social funct
at all, by the individuals
amined the first categor
paratuses, hospitals, and
Foucault says about the se
tions. In such institutions,

the rationality of power is

plicit at the restricted level
power), tactics which, beco
propagating one another, bu
tion elsewhere, end by form
ly clear, the aims deciphera
there to have invented them
them. (HS, 99-100)

Foucault's most explicit

stitution is, of course, the
the modem prison prese
rationality of the moder
stitution such as it has b
origin in the 18th-centu
prison's real social functi
one of "the best means, o
punish infractions in a s
words, is characterized by
its creators and workers
and the strategy that it
against and continually fru
The question Foucault
then--for him as well as
vive? Why does the priso
the fact that it is at odds w

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 Foucault 89

Foucault's a
unintended
pears: as long
"first progra
effectuated
strategy is

simply not formulated, in contrast to the program. The institution's first

program, its initial finality, is on the contrary displayed and used as jus-
tification, while the strategic configurations are not often clear in the very
eyes of those who occupy a place and play a role there. (WCP, 284)

In other words, despite the fact that prison workers do not recognize the
actual strategic function of the modern prison, as long as their acceptance
of its tactical goal of rehabilitation motivates them to show up to work
every day, the unintended consequences of their actions--regularized and
stabilized within the prison by virtue of their very invisibility--will con-
tinue to ensure that the prison carries out its strategic function of punishing
instead of rehabilitating.'4

Unintentional Strategies

This explanation, however, is only half of the story, because it remains

on a level internal to the prison. When we consider the role of the modem
prison within its larger social context, a different question arises: how can
a social institution survive that operates according to a strategy that its
creators never intended and, presumably, runs counter to a social
formation's (publicly-articulated) political goals? Why haven't other
powerful social groups reformed the prison to restore the efficacy of its
"first program," rehabilitation?
Foucault's answer is this: the moden prison survives because other
social groups--capitalists, state officials, the police--benefit from the dis-
junction between the prison's strategy and its workers' and creators' tac-
tics, groups that have the power to ensure that the prison continues to
function as an institution of punishment instead of rehabilitation. Consider
the following passages, from "What Calls for Punishment" and Discipline
and Punish, respectively:

Obviously the effects [of the prison] rarely coincide with the ends; thus the
objective of the corrective prison, of the means of rehabilitating the in-
dividual, has not been attained. ... But when the effect does not coincide
with the end ... beginning from these [new] usages ... but in spite of

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 90 Kevin Jon Heller

everything intentional to a
behaviors, different from
their objective, and in whic
. .. This play can perfectly s
solidified, despite all the c
strategies of different group
(WCP, 283-85)

Is not the supposed failure [of the prison] part of the functioning of the
prison? ... If the prison-institution has survived for so long, with such
immobility, if the principle of penal detention has never seriously been
questioned, it is no doubt because this carceral system was deeply rooted
and carried out certain very precise functions. (DP, 271)

The most important non-subjective function of the prison was, of

course, the production of delinquency. No one "intended" delinquency to
be the result of 18th-century prison reform; nevertheless, delinquency
proved to be an integral part of the State and capitalist class's concerted
effort to channel the energies of the popular classes into "socially produc-
tive" uses. As Foucault points out, delinquency "constitutes a means of
perpetual surveillance of the population: an apparatus that makes it pos-
sible to supervise, through the delinquents themselves, the whole social
field. Delinquency functions as a political observatory" (DP, 281). It should
come as little surprise, therefore, that "after a century and a half of
'failures,' the prison still exists, producing the same results, and [that] there
is the greatest reluctance to dispense with it" (DP, 277).
The process whereby the tactics of specific social groups combine to
ensure the institutional reproduction of the prison's strategy of punish-
ment (as with all strategies) should not, however, be seen as an intentional
process. Capitalists and state officials do not have to consciously recognize
that the prison-system is punishing instead of rehabilitating; they need
only recognize that their own needs are more easily met with a delinquen-
cy-producing prison-system in operation than without one. As long as that
is the case, capitalists and state officials will see no need to interfere with
the operations of the prison-system-and will thus automatically enjoy the
economic and political benefits it unintentionally provides. And, of course,
the prison-system is itself strengthened in the process: the congruity of
interests between the prison-system, the capitalist class, and the State en-
sures that any attempt to reform the former will be opposed-this time
intentionally--by the latter.

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Foucault 91

II. The Proc

I have argu
power is qual
through pow
jective diagr
actions. A th
struction of
Cartesian eg
of power, in
pre-existing
their existen

It is always ag
reflect on wh
more the way
already-begun
where man i
worked for t
unique, recen
organic form
been spoken
words that ar

Foucault's i
bounded by
structed-a p
within the s
tion-is part
tivity is esse
able to discu
the kinds of
imply, the
subject's choi
ing outside
insofar as th
ly-determine
trol. Their in

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92 Kevin Jon Heller

Decentered Subjectivity

Despite Foucault's insiste

tivity, we must still resis
namely, that when he pr
material instance as the co
ing is that we must rejec
however defined, becau
depends upon the Cartes
process(es) of subjectifica
questioned, assumes two
scholarship. There is, first
the idea that, for Foucaul
decentering, inherently
category we find E.P. Tho
[is] a subject-less structur
ideologies" (51). And, se
interpretation of Foucaul
mas, Isaac Balbus, and J.
the idea that Foucault's co
not argue that the decente
individual autonomy, but
mation discursively const
patible with its conditi
possibility of autonomou
the following passages:

From [Foucault's] perspectiv

as exemplars, as standardiz
individual copies that are m

[For Foucault], subversive

framework of a discourse f
relative terms. (Balbus, 152)

[For Foucault], power/kno

to the identifying of means
forms of individuality or p
of the dominant ensemble o

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Foucault 93

Subjects an

E.P. Thomp
because it im
structed out
see later, Fo
positions--a
a partisan an
tions to non-
idea that su
subtends Fo
Foucault, sub
The weak in
First of all,
"constituted
nothing abo
decentered s
tion. Consid
formation of
are the prod
interests an
between the
tion, but th
socially cons
construct dif
The real qu
power-relat
positions--an
ever exist wi
for Foucaul
forms of in
of the domin
that the wea
Merquior's
discussions o
hegemonic
genealogical
sage from Th
individual d
and contradi

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94 Kevin Jon Heller

The original in man is that

something other than himsel
contents and forms older than
by binding him to multiple, int
scatters him through time an
things. (OT, 331; my italics)

Foucault's insistence that

ges even more dearly in t
Power," in which he ar
formation's multiple subje
his understanding of subjec

we should try to discover ho

ly, really, and materially co
forces, energies, materials, d
opposite of Hobbes's project i
for whom the problem is
particular wills of a multipl
about the problem of the ce
study the myriad of bodies
result of the effects of power

Both of these passages i

speak of "discourse" in gen
--discourses that produce
positions. Discourse is not
Subject that bludgeons it
subjects in its wake; nor
products, of some disco
mechanically punched out
are "subjected" to discour
them, the inevitable mult
tification invariably prod
and counter-hegemonic) s

Proletariat vs. Bourgeoisi

If the weak interpretati

subjectification, it is even
To see this, it is importa
necessarily commits Fouca
does not and cannot exist

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 Foucault 95

nothing mo
presupposes
ject-position
If the weak
find exampl
this claim is
gles of the p
Punish to th
apparatus in
synonomou
"painstaking
their confli
which allow
make use of
Consider, fi
meaning of
for much o
proletariat a
ly. For the b

the court im
parties presen
as honesty a
submit to th
in relations to

The operativ
geoisie atte
"weapons wh
The proletar
ruse; it posse
bourgeois ju

In France an
judicial syste
[an] instrume
18th century
ceived, by the
6, 20)

The importance of the differences between proletarian and bourgeois

justice should not be underestimated, because, as Foucault reminds us,
those differences gave rise to a number of important discursive and
material struggles between the two classes. On the discursive level, for

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 96 Kevin Jon Heller

example, the proletariat

meaning of criminality,
crime": published account
finding of guilt. While the
intended their broadshee
classes, Foucault points out
cal":

The condemned man found

extent of his widely advert
gle with which one all too ea
were received so avidly, if
lower classes, it was because
also precedents. (DP, 67-68)

The ability of broadshe

was, then, continually lim
justice in which criminali
of individual psychopath
within the symbolic econ
capable of being integrated
anti-crime, the other ant
"two-sided discourses."

Similarly two-sided was the discourse of delinquency that circulated

within Europe in the mid-19th century. The bourgeois tactic underlying the
dissemination of this discourse, known as the fait divers, resembled the
tactic underlying the earlier broadsheet: "to impose a highly specific grid
on the perception of delinquents: to present them as close by, everywhere
present and everywhere to be feared" (DP, 286). The fait divers, however,
was no more successful than the broadsheet, and failed for the same
reason-it was reinflected by the popular classes through the discursive
categories of popular justice:

it certainly cannot be said that [the fait divers] triumphed or that it brought
about a total break between the delinquents and the lower classes.... The
workers' newspapers often proposed a political analysis of criminality that
contradicted term by term the description familiar to the philanthropists
(poverty laziness drunkenness vice theft crime). They assigned the source of
delinquency not to the individual criminal ...but to society. (DP, 287)

If the bourgeoisie was unable to discursively control the lower classes'

idea of justice through broadsheets or fait divers, it was even less able to
prevent material opposition to the workings of the bourgeois legal ap-
paratus. "The terror of the public execution," for example, far from deter-

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Foucault 97

ring crime,
geois forms
solidarity o
petty offen
the pursuit o
so on. Nor w
most explicit
geoisie and
anti-bourgeo
far more thr

Through the
recognize the
ests: people w
task it was t
rights; agains
tions; against
and longer w
more strict.
bourgeoisie t
legality deve
gles in which
and the class

Taking thes
weakness of
can be only
discourse fo
power/know
positions wh
of power re
19th-centur
mechanically
during thos
hegemonic b
structed cou
the two sub
We can con
discussion of
how subject
In Foucault'
homosexualit
there was a

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 98 Kevin Jon Heller

tion of "the species and

and 'psychic hermaphr
controls into the area o
course, however, like i
made possible a counter
"perversity," having be
Foucault notes, the existe

also made possible the fo

began to speak on its ow
"naturality" be acknowle
same categories by which

III. The Inevitability of

As we have seen, most

Foucault's concepts of
surprised, therefore, to f
stand Foucault's concept
tance are particularly co
The first interpretation
the idea, discussed above
Foucault, "the possibilit
not the exclusive 'proper
If this is true--and I have
indeed impossible. In su
resist power, there is no
Peter Dews, "having no
loses all explanatory con
ciple" (91). Effective resis
tence of hegemonic and
social formation.

The second interpretation of resistance is based on the assertion that

even if hegemonic and counter-hegemonic subject-positions can coexist, for
Foucault, within a social formation, the hegemonic positions are neverthe-
less always able to eliminate effective counter-hegemonic resistance. This
interpretation takes many forms, but the bottom line--the futility of resis-
tance to power--is always the same. The following passages from Nicos
Poulantzas and Frank Lentricchia are representative:

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Foucault 99

Power and
equivalent pol
the "power"
essentialized

Because he le
form, Fouca
direction, cou

The first in
seen, Foucau
produces su
semble of p
opinion, stru
case, as Dew
which it co
ubiquitous,
minate oppos
produces sub
ests, the po
the power e
never be a so
At the hear
power is, for
the case: as
different na
social chang
power at he
disposal to m
Y's exercise
the perspect
resisting Y,
Foucault, on
Why, then
power, does
already inti
ments, he ch
over others,
less power th
by the "perv
tances" for
they are pow

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 100 Kevin Jon Heller

Foucault recognizes, of cou

of forms of "resistance"
always be contested; he k
"objective" than any othe
avoid any particular class
subjectivity, we cannot av
Foucault insists on the cor
foreground the fact that no
(understood in the traditi
as no subject-position is ev
hegemonic." Such distincti
of classification that is itsel

Power and Freedom

Unlike the first interpretation of Foucault's concept of resistance, the

second interpretation does not impute to Foucault the idea that hegemo
and counter-hegemonic subject-positions can never coexist within a soc
formation. It does argue, though, that Foucault's theory of power inevitab-
ly privileges the former over the latter, effectively vitiating counte
hegemonic resistance-hence Poulantzas and Lentricchia's comments tha
for Foucault, power is "essentialized and absolutized" and "courts
monolithic determinism," and Wickham's comment that Foucault's co
cept of resistance "is essentialist... in that it is formed against and rela
to a unified and seemingly determining power" (164).
Foucault, however, explicitly disavows all of these positions: "whe
one defines the exercise of power as a mode of action upon the actions
others," he writes,

one includes an important element: freedom. Power is exercised only over

free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individual
or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which
several ways of behaving ... may be realized .... Without the possibility of
recalcitrance, power would be equivalent to a physical determination. (SP,
790)

In a way, however, Foucault's claim begs the question. Although he

insists that relations of physical determination do not count as power-rela-
tions, Poulantzas, Lentricchia, and Wickham would still want to ask
Foucault why such relations cannot eventually become the normal form of
human interaction--a good question in light of Foucault's general pes-

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Foucault 101

simism conc
Foucault know
"a field of p
realized"? How
as there is a p
In order to a
power-relati
groups. As F
relations to b
execution as
however, is w
powerless. It
the nonsubjec
no group, no
can ever cont
formation's p
groups which
important eco
tions in a soci
no hegemon
counter-hege
some mechan
No group, th
There is, ho
resistance can
power that a
reversible. Co

The strategica
tifies do not
describes, org
criminality an
their instrum
liable to re-app
realignments f
why no one g
thematic elem
security of a
round" in both

The best exa

opinion, disc
perversity, d

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 102 Kevin Jon Heller

necessary tactical uses or eff

the institutions they attemp
tactics that their "creators"

it is in discourse that power

this very reason, we must c
segments whose tactical func
precise, we must not imagi
cepted discourse and exclud
course and the dominated on
that can come into play in v
reutilizations of identical for
cludes. (HS, 100)22

Discourse, though, is not

Gordon points out, all pow
tain determinate political c
ly. The tableau-vivant ma
supervise, but it also allow
nate discourses of popular
ments in the science of
government soldiers, but bo
groups struggling against
asceticism and standards of
tive factory-workers, but
that produces more effectiv
In short, resistance is no
devoid of empirical utility.
form of power, resistance n
produce both hegemonic a
cause no individual or grou
a social formation's mecha
of power are potentially c
For all of these reasons, "a
possibility of resistance."

IV. Domination and Liberation

We have seen that both interpretations of Foucault's concept of subje

tification agree on one point--that the process of subjectification is
Foucault, inherently antithetical to the existence of liberated power-
tions. While I have examined the weaknesses of those interpretatio

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Foucault 103

have only dem

tion of libera
such relations
tion contradi
there is no U
are, for Fouca
example, asse
into the very
whatever for
agrees; in his
drive and eve
is the most e
Utopian schem
non-repressiv
We can begin
Taylor, Wolin
that all power
cal: "the state
liberty,"' he w
impute to me
everything an
unable to dis
domination f
view, he prov
include domin

Power is not a
relationships. T
game, where th
passion, of sex

And second,

Let us take som

the pedagogic i
one who, in a g
what he must
skills to him. T
practices ... the
arbitrary and u

Power is not
actions of oth

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104 Kevin Jon Heller

increase the freedom of othe

tion?

This raises the question, o

ference between "freedo
liberated power-relation from
ference, for Foucault, is the l

When an individual or social g

power, to render them impas
ibility of movement ... we are
tion. (EOC, 3)

A relation of domination ex
distribution of transformati
to freeze that relation-tho
the desires of the other: "i
one's whims, one's appetite
opposite situation, one in w
tive capacity (equal access
maintains the fluidity and v
whims, appetites, and desi
limitation. Freedom is, in sh
freedom . . . understood a
transformation" (Raulet, 20
For Foucault, then, there
liberated and dominative p
Nancy Fraser's claim that
permits him no condemnatio
(286): any "feature" of mod
possibility instead of pro
freedom that animates Fou
all projects of global transf
domination they intend to el
holds out no hope for local
that he believes freedom-t
says in "The Ethic of Care fo
Habermas's idealistic (in
theory of communicative act

the problem is not one of try

of perfectly transparent com
law, the techniques of mana

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 Foucault 105

practice of self
a minimum of

Conclusion

Over the course of the past decade an extremely pessimistic interpret

tion of Foucault's work has become increasingly common. Power is rep
sion; agency is a myth; subjectification is enslavement; resistance to po
is futile; freedom is impossible-these are the rallying cries of today
Foucault scholars. I have attempted here to show why that interpretation
far from definitive. In my opinion, that interpretation not only rests on
highly selective reading of Foucault's texts, it also--and more import
ly--extinguishes everything that is most useful in Foucault: his analys
the contingency of domination; his dedication to the proliferation
human freedom; his insistence on the productivity of power; his hatred o
repression, homogenization, and limitation in every form. Scholars are
course, free to appropriate Foucault's work as they choose; the interpr
tion I have offered in this essay is no less implicated in the hermene
circle than any other. Nevertheless, were Foucault alive today, I imag
his first comment would be: "all I know is that I am not a Foucauldian."
Duke University

I want to extend my appreciation to those who criticized earlier drafts of this

essay, particularly Claus Offe, Fredric Jameson, V.Y. Mudimbe, John K. Murnighan,
Eleanor Kaufman, Daniel W. Smith, and William Egginton.

ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR FOUCAULT'S WORKS

DP Discipline and Punish

EOC "The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom"

EP "The Eye of Power"

HS The History of Sexuality
OPJ "On Popular Justice"
OT The Order of Things
QP "The Question of Power"
SP "The Subject and Power"
TL "Two Lectures on Power"
TP "Truth and Power"
WCP "What Calls for Punishment?"

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 106 Kevin Jon Heller

WORKS CITED

Balbus, Isaac. "Disciplining Women." In After Foucault. Ed. Jonathon Ara

Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1988).
Baudrillard, Jean. Forget Foucault. New York: Semiotext(e), 1987.
Cousins, Mark, and Athar Hussein. Michel Foucault. New York: St. Martin'
1984.

Dallmayr, Fred. Polis and Praxis. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984.

Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Dews, Peter. "Power and Subjectivity in Foucault." New Left Review, No. 144
During, Simon. Foucault and Literature. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Press, 1979.

. "'The End of the Monarchy of Sex." In his Foucault Live. New Y

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. 'The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom." The Final
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. "Two Lectures on Power." In his Power/Knowledge. Ed. Colin Gordo

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Fraser, Nancy. "Foucault on Modem Power: Empirical Insights and Normative C

fusions." Praxis International, 1, No. 3 (October, 1981).

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Giddens, Anth

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Pantheon, 1980

Habermas, Ju
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p. 32.
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nism. Ed. Linda Nicholson. New York: Routledge, 1990.
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Jessop, Bob. "Poulantzas and Foucault on Power and Strategy." In his State Theory:
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1986.

Lentricchia, Frank. Ariel and The Police: Michel Foucault, William James, Wallace Stevens.
Madison: UW Press, 1988.

Marx, Karl. Capital. Volume I. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing, 1961.

Merquior, J.G. Foucault. Berkeley: UC Press, 1987.
Parsons, Talcott. Structure and Process in Modern Societies. New York: The Free Press,
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Poulantzas, Nicos. State, Power, and Socialism. London: New Left Books, 1978.
Raulet, Gerard. "Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel
Foucault." Telos, No. 55 (Spring, 1983).
Said, Edward. "Foucault and the Imagination of Power." In Foucault: A Critical
Reader. Ed. David Couzens Hoy. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Sheridan, Alan. Foucault: The Will to Truth. London: Tavistock, 1980.

Smart, Barry. Foucault, Marxism, and Critique. London: Routledge, 1983.

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Contingencies of Value. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988.
Taylor, Charles. "Foucault on Freedom and Truth." In Foucault: A Critical Reader. Ed.
David Couzens Hoy. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Thompson, E.P. The Poverty of Theory. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978.
Voloshinov, V.N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
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Wickham, Gary. 'Tower and Power Analysis: Beyond Foucault?" In Towards a Criti-
que of Foucault. Ed. Mike Gane. New York: Routledge, 1986.
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 108 Kevin Jon Heller

NOTES

1. The interpretation is, of course, an ideal-type; not all four points occur
work of each author. Nevertheless, I think the general interpretation is implic
of them. I shall point out below the few places in which basic disagreements em
2. This decision raises the question of periodicization: are there many Fouc
or only one? My position is similar to that taken by Edward Said (149-55). Th
cepts of power, subjectification and resistance developed most concretely in D
HS are also at work in Madness and Civilization and The Birth of the Clinic. F
himself says, "When I think back now, I ask myself what else it was that I was t
about, in Madness and Civilization or The Birth of the Clinic, but power?" (TP,
there are many Foucaults, it is because his interests varied so widely. I do no
any of his books or interviews represent a significant break with the theoretic
tion presented in this essay.
3. See also this comment by Alan Sheridan: "The intelligibility of power re
is not to be found [for Foucault] in terms of causality, of events at one level caus
explaining events at another, but rather in a series of aims or objectives. How
these are not attributable to an individual subject, not even to a ruling caste, b
in an apparently autonomous way from the local situations in which they
(184).
4. See also the following note from "The Subject and Power": "if we speak of the
structures or mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain
persons exercise power over others" (SP, 786).
5. The term is borrowed from Anthony Giddens (1986, 88).
6. In his Forget Foucault, Baudrillard argues that Foucault's conception of power
is equivalent to Deleuze's conception of desire: "in Foucault power takes the place of
desire ... he has established a systematic notion of power along the same operational
lines as desire, just as Deleuze established a notion of desire along the lines of future
forms of power" (17-19). Baudrillard is, I think, despite Foucault's protestations to the
contrary, correct in making this comparison: Foucauldian power and Deleuzean
desire both denote the indeterminate ability of a subject to transform the social world
"outside" him or her--indeterminate in the sense that such transformative capacity
has no determinate form in itself, but must be given form by an individual or collec-
tivity: exercised, for Foucault; coded, for Deleuze.
7. It is worth noting the similarity of this understanding of the relationship
between structure and agency to the notion of duality of structure articulated by
Anthony Giddens: both emphasize the idea that although mechanisms of power
(resources, in Giddens's terminology) are structural properties of social systems, not
individual possessions, those mechanisms are materially efficacious only insofar as
they are exercised (a term used by both) by specific individuals. See, for example,
Giddens's essay, "Agency, Structure," 49-95.
8. Ironically, this criticism of Foucault, though equally wrong, is the antithesis of
the criticism I explore in more detail later: namely, that the side of power in power-
relations is so all-determining that resistance to power is useless.
9. "Foucault's disciplinary power is readily compatible (I believe) with the
functionalist theory of power, and especially with Parsons's view of systemic integra-
tion" (86).

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 Foucault 109

10. "There are

ty of collectivit
by Parsons and
11. See also th
Parsons, as for
which is posses
12. Michel Fo
Rabinow. My it
Foucault's opini
the level of tin
don't know wh
13. For an anal
tially similar t
14. We see her
concept of ideo
dividuals think,
does ideology b
certain forms o
capitalism's "la
their material
means of subsis
just.
15. Similar comments are made by Peter Dews, who writes that Foucault's
"peremptory equation of subjectification and subjection erases the distinction between
the enforcement of compliance with a determinate system of norms, and the forma-
tion of a reflexive consciousness which may subsequently be directed in a critical
manner against the existing system of norms" 95), and by Gary Wickham, who argues
that "in suggesting that subjects are produced in subjugation, produced as subjects of
the essence of power, Foucault is promoting one of the major misconceptions of power
which he urges people to avoid--negative power: seeing power only in terms of a
sovereign figure who or which always prohibits or says no" (150).
16. If by "ideology" we understand, of course, a discourse or set of discourses
through which a particular subject is constructed. See below.
17. As I use the term here, "global strategy" does not refer to a strategy that
encompasses and determines a social formation's entire power-diagram; as we have
seen, the possibility of such a strategy is ruled out, for Foucault, by the nature of the
power-diagram. Instead, I am using it in the sense identified by Jessop, for whom a
global strategy is "a strategy which attempts to subtend and articulate a number of
smaller sites of power relations within its orbit." As he rightly points out, "[i]n this
context, the notion of global must be understood relatively, that is, a strategy is only
global in relation to its own smaller sites. A global strategy may itself constitute a
'smaller' site for an even more ambitious strategy" (243-44). I would add, however, in
response to Jessop, that this is exactly the understanding of a global strategy that
Foucault himself offers.
18. A similar and equally erroneous comment is made by J.G. Merquior: "I
submit that the concept of power lacks any explanatory force or theoretical sig-
nificance. Nothing can be explained in terms of power because on any understanding,
one thing ... must be attributed to the unconditional capacity to dominate another"
(129).

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 110 Kevin Jon Heller

19. As I have attempted to

"power" at all; we must always
"power" was present would be
to pursue the same tactical go
not in the disciplinary Lebensw
20. This is, I think, one of t
Foucault's work. Value, for F
axiology, following Barbara Her
of certain norms, standards,
ments emerge, in Foucault's op
tive; there is, for him, no m
adjudicate between competing
herently tactical, designed to ex
It is this tactical element of
Foucault scholars, who continu
"practice X is always and ev
everywhere resistance"; "the
actions of workers are always
practice Y is objectively right"
pletely unintelligible; no practic
21. This can be seen clearly, t
surveillance in the factory. Su
hands of capitalists, and prov
Nevertheless, surveillance was
certain mechanisms of power
downs, quality decreases, indu
22. Compare Voloshinov: "Cla
with the community which is th
cal communication. Thus vario
As a result, differently orient
comes an arena of the class str
Janus. Any current curse word
inevitably sound to many ot
striking.
23. See also Habermas, for whom the most interesting aspect of Foucault's work
is its "peculiar filtering out of all the aspects under which the eroticization and inter-
nalization of subjective nature also meant a gain in freedom and expressive pos-
sibilities" (292).

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