Foucault Kyrokos

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Economy and Society

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Foucault and the three-headed king: state, ideology and theory as targets of critique
Kyrokos Doxiadis Published online: 28 Jul 2006.
To cite this article: Kyrokos Doxiadis (1997) Foucault and the three-headed king: state, ideology and theory as targets of critique, Economy and Society, 26:4, 518-545, DOI: 10.1080/03085149700000027 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085149700000027
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Foucault and the threeheaded king: state, ideology and theory as targets of critique
Kyrkos Doxiadis
Abstract
Downloaded by [UNAM Ciudad Universitaria] at 06:03 08 October 2013
The paper presents an examination of the significance of Foucault's well-known dictum: 'In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king.' The author attempts to approach three interrelated issues in relation to the French thinker's uork: his disassociation from the problematic of the repressive state, his disapproval of the use of the term ideology and his systematic avoidance of formulating coherent theoretical statements. The author argues that the true theoretical and political importance of these issues is revealed bj- connecting them to Foucault's approach to the question of sovereignty and legitimation, and by considering his uork as a continuation of Kantian critique. Keywords: Foucault; ideology; legitimation; sovereignty; finitude; Kantian critique. 'In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king' (Foucault 1979a: 88-9). Perhaps the single most provocative statement in contemporary political thought, this remark of Foucault is central to understanding his work. Interpreted in one way, it is the hidden motto behind most Anglophone Foucaultinspired social analyses of recent years: the emphasis o n 'the social' and 'governmentality' that has preoccupied British Foucauldian sociology for the past decade and a half, based on Foucault's own writings on governmentality,l when examined at a more profound level, can be shown to be directly related to the metaphoric meaning of this statement. T h e statement is embedded right at the centre of Foucault's most 'theoretical' book dealing with power - although not always recognized as such - namely, the first volume of The Hzitory o f S e x u a l i t y (first published in 1976). It is also present in what is perhaps Foucault's most famous and influential interview
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(June 1976) regarding his conception of po\\er, i.e. "liuth and power' (Foucault 1980: 109-33).' 'I'hus repeated, the phrase insists on his fundamental injunction: 'Let us stop viewing power as a repress]\-e soxreign!' Like many metaphors, it can be interpreted in different \va!-s. A fuller meaning emerges b ~ looking at what entities Foucault himself ~vouldinclude under the (metaphorical) label of 'repressive sovereign'. A large list, indeed: the law, right, legislative and executil-e power (parhamentar!. or not); ultimately, that is, the (modern) state itself as a central authority (see especiall!. Foucault 1979a: 81-91). Radical in its implications, now seemingly familiar, this is where the problems start. We may begin with an article published by Jacques Donzelot in the left-wing in 1979, a year after its British theoretical journal Ideolog.)l crllrl (~'~t~zsi~to~~snrss publication in France, under the title: 'The poverty of political culture'.' In the same issue there was an estcnsive presentation (Hodges and Hussain 1979) of l l ~ ~ s , had been published in France in Donzelot's hook, I,rr po1ii.e t l r s ~ f i r r ~ ~ tn-hich 1977, and which was to be translated into English soon after (in 1980). 'l'hc article \%-as programmatic in character, at least as far as the reception and spread of Foucauldianism in Britain is concerned. From its next issue, which contained ~ Consi.iousness Foucault's main text on 'governmentality' (1979b), I ~ / r o l o g )rtnd changed its name to I S C . 4 Neither ideologj- nor consciousness were an!- longer accepted terms. "The povert!- of political culture' offered a scnsibl! radical, if not v-hollj-original, critique of social-democratic politics. .It the same time, it can be seen as ! attempting a Ei)ucauldian intervention in the realm of professional politics. B showing that social democrat!- and the n-hole reformist politics of the \\-elfilre state was by no means in radical opposition to right-wing and liberal parties, h!demonstrating through careful argumentation that, in terms of strateg!; it actuall!- belonged together with thcm within the political-institutional complex \vhich supports and perpetuates present-da! \li.stern societ!; llonzelot attempted to shift the attention of left-n-ing political thought to the problematization of precisely that entitq- which had hitherto been largel!- taken for granted: 111e .soc.rirl. Under that label, as Gilles Lleleuze had alread!- stressed in his 'Afterword' to Ilonzelot's book,' one should not understand the subject matter of sociolog!; but, rather more spccificall!, that sector of modern socictjwhich is located on the lel cl of everyda! practices and n-hich is characterized bq the inter\-ention of certain technologies and strategies which are employed for the regulation of human lil-es. Donzelot's main argument rested on \\hat he described as the 'socialization of the political'. T h e points arc b ! no\\ totall! familiar: that present-daq- politics of both right-wing and socialist parties, i.e. thc area of polic!- making, is no\\ directed at managing social arrangements, welfare issues no\\- being the main thrust of political argument on the right as much as on the left. T h e state corrcspondingly no longer appears to be the bastion of poner held h ! - the ruling class as an instrument for the perpetuation of its rule, since the state itself has hccome thoroughl~'socialized'. ( T h e French term for the 'tvclLlre state' itrrt soiictl - sa!-s this vcr!- well.) In perpetuating thc classic conception,
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the traditional communist conception of left-wing politics as the attempt to seize state power violently - an idea whose chief proponent in Western Europe at the time Donzelot wrote his article was left-wing terrorism, the main target of Donzelot's critique on this point - merely has the effect of enhancing the existing order by juxtaposing itself to it as an infinitely worse alternative. Donzelot did not offer any facile blueprint for a new radical politics. His closing statement, however, seemed quite subversive: If the word revolution has a meaning other than that which it has been given by the theoreticians of the coup d'Etat or of the earthly paradise, it is probably that of the refusal, in one form or other, of a blackmail which condemns those who are never responsible for the society in which they live to either join its ranks or to destroy themselves in pursuit of its destruction. (Donzelot 1979: 85-6) Apparently, Donzelot's implicit suggestion was that, in opposition to the 'socialization of politics', a new left-wing politics should rest on the aim to 'politicize the social'. Neither the state nor the existing parties being the exclusive, or even the main, levers and/or targets of resistance and opposition, the very field of the social, i.e. the field of micro-social relations and of regulatory interventions in everyday practices, would presumably have to be seen as theJeld par excellence where modern power was exercised. A new politics of resistance would thus in turn rest on the seminal Foucauldian concept of bio-power, as this had been formulated extensively in his programmatic epilogue to the first volume of The Historj~ o f Sexuality (1979a: 133-59), two years before Donzelot published his article. Yet, while Donzelot in that article certainly seems keen to utilize the related Foucauldian notions of 'technologies' and 'strategies', 'bio-power' is not mentioned, nor even 'power' in general. In fact, he urges us to abandon it, in favour of these other notions: [Tlhe trouble with [the term power], one can clearly see, is to contain welded into it the idea of an instrument and an agent. [After abandoning this term,] [w]e would have then not a power and those who undergo it, but, as Foucault shows, technologies, that is to say always local and multiple, intertwining, coherent or contradictory forms of activating and managing a population, and strategies, that is to say, formulae of government, 'theory-programmes', to use the term employed by Pasquale Pasquino. (Donzelot 1979: 77) This is astonishing. Not so much because of Donzelot's audacity in using Foucault's name for support in the very sentences where he incites us to abandon 'power'. (Foucault, of course, never and in any sense 'shows' that it is after abandoning 'power' that we will be able to use the concepts of technologies and strategies!) It is not merely a matter of someone grossly distorting Foucault. We would then have merely a minor problem. What is most excruciatingly puzzling is that Donzelot otherwise remains Foucauldian through and through. And of course it is no accident that Donzelot had been one of Foucault's closest
collaborators in his work on prisons. Donzelot is thoroughl!- enmeshed in the Foucauldian problematic of the 1970s, as both his book on the famil!- and his conceptions of politics as expressed in that article clearl!general views r e ~ a r d i n g show How then could this contradiction be explained away? Might it be that, even though Foucault himself never did abandon the concept of power, it would ultimatel!- be more 'genuine1~Foucauldian' in spite c!fFouc.au/t actually to do so?
Let us return to the king's head which has >-etto be cut off in political thought, and its familiar significance as disconnecting the conception of power from notions of repression and right. Might Donzelot's bold appeal to abandon the in this attempt? Does concept of pobfer itself signify Foucault's ultimate~firil~~re Donzelot finall>- see 'power' -rather than 'right', 'law'. and 'repression', or, simply, 'the state' - as the true referent behind the symbol of the liing's anachronistic head? T h a t is just what I shall argue -although not in an!- simple or straightforward sense. For llonzelot's conclusion arises from examining possible alternative and diametricall!. opposed rearlings (or 'versions') of Wucault's notion of power. O n the one hand, there is Marxism, which reads Foucault as an enrichment of hlarxism itself and its main principle of the dialectic betrvecn forces and relations of production. O n the other hand, there is Andrt Glucksmann, who, criticizing Marxism precisely for that attempt at incorporation, instead sees pornrr i t s e r (Marxism itself being one of \\-hose manifestations) as the central force of historical development. Yet, what both these versions of power have in common, according to Donzelot, is a 'structural or dialectical logic', which and irredz~cihlrnrrrtrria1it)l' provided 'in the descripreduces out the 'nz~r~imum tion of social arrangements (rrgencrmen~s)' (Donzelot 1979: 77). Abandoning 'power' altogether will avoid this reductionism and the ilirrlec.tical or structurrrl logic of po\ver that leads to the reductionism. Foucault, how\-er, seemed to think that 'power' could be differentiated from the Hegelian dialectic and structuralism. In 'Truth and power', he says: T h e history which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of pow-er, not relations of meaning. Histor)- has no 'meaning', though this is not to sa!- that it is absurd or incoherent. O n the contrarq; it is intelligible and should be susceptible of analysis down to the smallest detail - but this in accordance with the intelligibilitj- of struggles, of strategies and tactics. Neither the dialectic, as logic of contradictions, nor semiotics, as the structure of communication, can account for the intrinsic intelligibi1it~of conflicts. 'Dialectic' is a na!. of evading the always open and ! - reducing it to a Hegelian skeleton, and 'semihazardous realit!. of conflict h ology' is a \\ ay of a\-oiding its violent, bloody and lethal character b ! - reducing it to the calm Platonic form of language and dialogue. (Foucault 1980: 114-15)
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How are we to take seriously Donzelot's implicit claim that he remains a Foucauldian if at the same time he insists on abandoning 'power' on the grounds that it necessarily leads to a dialectical or structural reductionism, when in fact one of Foucault's most famous claims regarding power is exactly the opposite? Paradoxically, the answer lies in that Donzelot remains Foucauldian precisely to the extent that he takes Foucault literally. Literally not in a superficial sense, of course. He takes literally Foucault's claim that all dialectic necessarily leads to a Hegelian skeleton and all structural analysis necessarily leads to the form of Platonic dialogue. And he deduces from that, being faithful to Foucault on this particular point by betraying him otherwise, that if we are to avoid at all costs the inevitable reductionism of both the dialectic and structural analysis we must get rid of the concept of power as well. Why? Because - and Donzelot unwittingly (perhaps) acknowledges this precisely the wa.y that Foucuult himself had conceptualized the notion o f power was profoundly dialectical (though not Hegelian) and profoundly structural (though not structuralist). Let me put my cards on the table. I do not pretend to hold any hidden truths about the deeper meaning of Foucault's work. I am merely trying to suggest an alternative way of reading this work. What is offered here is an attempt at an intervention in the 'regime of truth' (see Foucault 1980: 125-33) of currently dominant interpretations of Foucault. Foucault himself was no mean 'tactician' as to putting his own position within the regime of truth in which he belonged: namely, post-war French thought. Elements in his own statements thus may be seen as there more for tactical reasons than as valid in their own terms. This is not to say that they are necessarily false, or that Foucault was consciously lying with them. (This would be against the very notion of 'regime of truth'.) I am merely proposing that one should take this into account when analysing their true significance within the more general framework of Foucault's discourse and of the regime in - and against - which it was uttered. Foucault could have simply said: 'I am not a Hegelian, nor am I a structuralist in the sense that Saussure or Levi-Strauss is; and furthermore, I am not even a Marxist, insofar as being a Marxist implies also being a Hegelian of some sort or other.' Perhaps in an ideal (non-existent) intellectual community, in which every participant can be heard and taken seriously quite simply on the sole grounds of her/his own words - which are to be judged, but fairly, and exclusively in terms of their own internal consistency and their truth value. But not in Foucault's time - and I am here referring to the whole two and a half decades which was the time-span of the publication of all his main works, from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. He could not have been taken seriously: (a) if he had even once utilized the term 'dialectic' positively while claiming not to be a Hegelian, (b) if he had claimed that what he was doing was some sort of structural analysis while at the same time disowning the structuralism of the semiologists and Levi-Strauss, or (c) if he had openly rejected Marxism in the above sense - which was then the only sense possible (even Louis Althusser had in no
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way completely disengaged himself from Hegelianism)" while still considering himself belonging to the left. Perhaps it would not even have been possible for Foucault to take himself seriously if he consciously believed any of the above statements regarding his work. But this is beside the point, and it would be fatally misleading to engage here in the quasi-biographical issue of what Foucault was conscious of and what he was not. This also goes for his choice of discursive tactics. T h e only possible way of analysing these is by their effects - i.e. by the play of utterances which these provoke and in which they are involved. An analysis of these effects will show that Foucault was capable of contributing immensely to contemporary social and political thought only at the cost of deliberately - though not necessarily consciously - creating the grounds for an equally immense confusion as to the actual direction of this contribution. This can be seen in the coexistence of three basic interrelated antinomies which run through a large part of Foucault's discourse, especially that dealing with 'power': (a) His constant emphasis on analysing power in modern society, while at the same time systematically avoiding the problem of the (modern) state as a repressive institution. (b) His profound and systematic concern with the interrelationships between power, knowledge, truth and subjectivity, while not only avoiding but also explicitly disavowing the concept of ideology. (c) T h e fact that philosophers and theorists throughout the domain of the human and social sciences, in France, the United States and elsewhere, have never ceased talking and writing about him, even though his books can hardly be viewed as coherent theoretical statements.
Foucault has been regarded by many social scientists who have been concerned with his work as a quasi-(post-)structuralist philosopher specializing in the history of ideas, who at some point, with Discipline and Punish (1979c, French edition 1975), decided to do work in social history, or a 'history of the social'.' In these accounts, this shift is not considered as anything bizarre in itself. T h e sociological milieu most receptive towards Foucault in Britain had already been theoretically prepared for a possible positive significance of this shift. I am referring to the Althusserian notion of the 'epistemological break' occurring in Marx's own work: Althusser (see especially 1971: 69-101) includes virtually all of Marx's 'properly philosophical' works in his 'pre-historical-materialist', i.e. 'pre-scientific' period, also claiming that a truly Marxist philosophy has yet to be formulated (1976: 174-5). For the Althusserians, even though Marx was a philosopher, the only directly worthwhile part of his work was his social-scientific, i.e. political-economic and political-historical, writings. Indeed, so much so that in the 'directions' provided by Althusser himself on how to approach Marx's work all the writings preceding the 'break' are excluded; chronologically speak(Althusser 1971: 97),8 which ing, the list begins with The Poverty of Philosoph~~
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title, in this case, acquires a symbolic significance: it signifies Marx's break not only with his 'ideological' (i.e. 'non-scientific') past but also with his philosophical concerns. How was Althusser's own immense influence on British left-wing sociology during the 1970s to be reconciled with the fact that he never stopped claiming that he himself was a (Marxist) philosopher and that his own work was directly philosophical (see, e.g., 1976: 163-207)? The answer I think lies in the fact that during that period British left-wing sociology was profoundly theoretical in its orientation, both thematically and structurally. The distinction between Marxist philosophy as 'dialectical materialism' and Marxist social theory as 'the theory of historical materialism' made by Althusser, in both his 'theoreticist' (1969: 251, 255) and his 'self-critical' period (1976: 119-25, 142-SO), was so academic as to be meaningless in practice. What mattered was Athusserian theory, whether it was to be labelled 'philosophical' or 'scientific'. f Ironically, when E.P. Thompson's anti-Althusserian book The Poverty o Theory appeared in 1978,yit was as if the very title had been strategically chosen to effect anew, as it were, the Marxian-Althusserian 'break' in left-wing intellectual activity, but with a crucial difference. This time around, it was theory in general that was the sinful past to be broken with. In this context, what had been considered as Foucault's own 'break' in his work now seemed to be a convenient alternative to Althusserianism, much more likely to survive under the vehement attacks of Thompson and his ilk. Together with the whole of Althusser, Foucault's pre-1972 worksI0 were almost completely discarded when the antitheoretical turn occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Foucault's more recent works, by contrast, were seen as the refreshing injection which exAlthusserian sociology needed in order to steer away from sterile theoreticism and towards fruitful empirical research. l Foucault's pre-1972 writings can hardly be considered 'theoreticist', even though they are far from 'empirically' oriented in the usual social-scientific sense. On the one hand, this work had emerged out of that extremely important tradition of French twentieth-century philosophy, which was not so much 'theoretical' as concerned rather with the history of science and philosophy, and whose chief representatives were Koyre, Bachelard, Cavaillts, Canguilhem and Hyppolite. On the other hand, also within the framework of contemporary French philosophy, it had an arch-enemy, and a very powerful one, too: phenome n 0 1 o ~ j lThis . ~ ~ latter - negative - connection was explicitly stated by Foucault in his 1970 preface to the English edition of The Order o f Thzngs (1974a: xiv)'" and it is, as I shall argue, inherently present in what I believe is the central philosophical contribution of his 1960s writings. The true significance of the Foucauldian 'break' of the earl! 1970s is thus something rather more complex than a mere shift from 'theory' to 'empirical research' or from 'pure philosophy' or 'pure history of ideas' to a conception of power and to social history. Of course, nobody ever explicitly gave such a simplistic interpretation of the Foucauldian shift. On a more profound level, though, what was happening
during the early 1980s around Foucault's name and work was in fact a rearrangement of discursive practices along quite traditional and well-tested lines. We had before us once spin the conventional division of labour between philosophy and social science, philosophy being exclusi\-el\- concerned with purely theoretical matters and social science, though not esclusi\el!. empirical (an e.z.clusiz.el)~ empirical discipline has yet to be formulated), definitely giving empirical research pride of place as the basis of its concerns. With ver!- few exceptions, no -4nglophone Foucauldian has ever dared to suggest, at least when referring to Foucault's post-1972 period, that Foucault \\-as a philosopher without a1 the same linze being also a social scientist, or vice versa.'+ It seems, how\-er, that this traand social science \+-asmainljditional division of labour between phi1osoph~exemplified in the different approaches to Foucault themselves. While social scientists now viewed Foucault's post-1972 writings as rejuvenating empirical n-ork, there were some theorists who approached Ei~ucault in an entirely opposite, but in a certain sense complementar!; direction. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow's most influential hllchel Fouc.ault: Bellonrl Strurt~~rrilism lrt~ri'Hermenez~tzcs (1982) included two unpublished theorand s Rabinow 1982: 208-26) etical texts by Foucault on power ( D r e y f ~ ~ inevitabl!. taken as an endorsement of the book b ! - Foucault himself. iVhat took place with Dreyfus and Rabinow's influential book, hotvel-er, v-as a systematicp/~et~omenologic~il, a ally theoretical reading of Foucault's work that was t~~tir.el)l reading that turned Foucault himself into some sort of a phenomenologist. Their line of argument suggests the following schematization: with regard to the philosophical achievements of his work, Foucault, up to and including The .-lrchnt,ology ~!fKnon~lerlgt, (l969), went further than Husserl but not as far as Heidegger, and, during his later period, went further than Heidegger but no further than XIerleau-Ponty T h e book's back CO\-erdeclares: 'Ei)ucault himself has judged this interpretation as accurate.' However, the onl!- real evidence for this is E;oucaultls acknon ledgement that the book revealed the significance of HeidegR~er\ impact on his thought, which not many others had noticed (RIartin, Gutman and Eiutton 1988: 12-13). -4s to Husserl and Merleau-Pont!, the evidence remains ocern~helmiiy that, especially in his 1960s work, the! ncre, together with Sartre, the main targets of his critique.'" 1as 'against' certain authors, but that Hovel-er, it is not so much that l.'oucault 1 hc, in perhaps the most important book of his 1960s M-ritings, managed to destroy completel!- one of the fundamental presuppositions on which phenomcnolog!- is based. I am referring to T/zt O T ~ C ~!/'Tlliyq T and to the central theme of that book, nhich v-as the description of the dramatic shift that occurred around the end of the eighteenth ccnturj- across the whole of Western and Central European thought and kno15-ledge, \I-ith the exception of the exact sciences: the shift from the 'metaphysics of representation and of the infinite', and as (classical) representation, to the 'analytic of finitude and from kno\~-ledge human existence', and to the ne\\ empirical sciences (Ricardian economics, biolog!; and comparatiw and historical linguistics) and the sciences of 'man'
''
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(Foucault 1974a: esp. 303-43). On the strictly philosophical level, what this actually involved was a consideration of Kantian critical philosophy as effecting a break in Western thought of at least equal importance to that effected by Cartesianism towards the middle of the seventeenth century (which for Foucault had marked the beginning of the classical - as opposed to the properly 'modern' period) (Foucault 1974a: esp. 46-77). Foucault's diagnosis of a radical discontinuity between Cartesianism and Kantianism17 completely overturns phenomenology's own reading of Western philosophy, which precisely rests on the continuity existing between these two currents.ls Foucault's vehement (and notorious) 'anti-humanism' during the 1960s thus had two interrelated aspects. One was a directly political critique (evident in the interviews of that period, though not in The Order of Things itself), which attacks humanism as the main normalizing discourse of our times.19 Foucault did not 'wake up' politically after May '68, as it is sometimes suggested.20T h e importance of Foucault's 'break' occurring in the early 1970s, especially as far as its political dimension is concerned, is quite overestimated. He had always been practically interested in power in modern societies, especially as this manifests itself in normalizing practices. There was however an equally important theoretical 'underside', so to speak, to this negative preoccupation with humanism, and this was expressed as a constant aim to demolish the philosophical foundation of humanism, i.e. (philosophical) anthropology. And it is evident that, to Foucault's mind, its main contemporary exponents were the phenomenologi~ts.~~ Foucault's main contention in The Order of Things, that before the end of the eighteenth century 'man' did not exist, strikes a decisive blow against any philosophy that rests on the investigation of 'man'. However, apart from phenomenology being (together with Sartrean existentialism), according to Foucault, the main contemporary philosophical current actually to do so, what is even more important is the more general - and at first glance rather 'technical' - basis of Foucault's critique: the establishment of a radical discontinuity between Cartesian and Kantian rationalism. As if by way of an implicit answer to Dreyfus and Rabinow's book, Foucault, in an interview with them which was published as an appendix in its second edition (1983), has this to say regarding what he probably considers as the most essential difference between Descartes and Kant (and I quote at length): we must not forget that Descartes wrote 'meditations' - and meditations are a practice of the self. But the extraordinary thing in Descartes's texts is that he succeeded in substituting a subject as founder of practices of knowledge, for a subject constituted through practices of the self. This is very important. Even if it is true that Greek philosophy founded rationality, it always held that a subject could not have access to the truth if he did not first operate upon himself a certain work which would make him susceptible to knowing the truth - a work of purification, conversion of the soul by contemplation of the soul itself. . . . In Western culture up to the
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sixteenth centur!; asceticism and access to truth are aln-ays more or less obscurely linked. Descartes, I think, broke with this when he said, 'To acccde to truth, it suffices that I be an,)! subject which can see what is evident'. Evidence is substituted for ascesis at the point where the relationship to the self intersects the relationship to others and the world. T h e relationship to the self no longer needs to be ascetic to get into relation to the truth. It suffices that the relationship to the self reveals to me the oh\-ious truth of what I see for me to apprchend that truth definitivelq-. Thus, I can be immoral and knon- the truth. I believe that this is an idea which, more or less explicitl!, was rejected by all previous culture. Before Descartes, one could not be impure, immoral, and know the truth. With Descartes, direct c d c n c c is enough. -4fter Descartes, we have a nonascetic subject of kno\vledge. This change makes possible the institutionalization of modern science. I am obviously schematizing a \-er!- long histor); which is, ho~vel-er, fundamental. After Descartes, we have a subject of knowledge which poses for Kant the problem of knowing the relationship between the subject of ethics and that of knowledge. There was much debate in the Enlightenment as to whether these t'lr-o subjects were completelj- different or not. Kant's solution was to find a universal subject, which, to the extent that it was unkersal, could be the subjcct of knowledge, but which demanded, nonetheless, an ethical attitude - preciselj- the relationship to the self which Kant proposes in The Critique r?f'Pnlc~ti~~irl Reuson. Q . You mean that once I>escartes had cut scientific rationality loose from ethics, Kant reintroduced ethics as an applied form of procedural rationality? M.F Right. Kant s a p , 'I must recognize m! self as universal subject, that ! - actions as a universal subject by conis, I must constitute m!-self in each of m forming to universal rules'. T h e old questions \\-ere reinterpreted: How can I constitute myself as a subject of ethics? Recognize myself as such? .;\re ascetic exercises needed? O r simply this Kantian relationship to the universal which makes m e ethical by conformity to practical reason? T h u s Kant introduces one more wa!- in our tradition whereby the self is not merely given but is constituted in relationship to itself as subject [end of interview]. (Foucault 1986: 371-2) Non; as we k n o y for Foucault, this Cartesian ' c r n y subject v-hich can see what is an innocent personification of scientific value-free objecevident' is not mere1~tivit!: Not only in those three pages in his 1961 .2lndness L I I Z L / Cirilizirtion (1976a: 56-9), where he refers briefl!- to the importance of 1)cscartes' .?/lei/ita~ions regarding the exclusion of madness (and the internment of the mad) during the classical period," but also in his much more extensive and polemical 1972 repljtoJacques Derrida's critique,2i Foucault is quite clear as to the political meaning of this Cartesian 'break'. T h e Cartesian subjcct of knowledge is free of ethics not n~erelj because he is tr!ing to be 'objectne', out because, prccisel~b ! becoming the subject of knonledge and reason, he automaticall! becomes a soverezgn
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subject of ethics; i.e., quite simply, he becomes the legislator.24 For anyone who knows Foucault's work, the 'institutionalization of modern science' he is referring to here, which became possible with Cartesian rationalism, rather than being a manifestation of the moral and political autonomy that scientific knowledge enjoys in modern societies, is, on the contrary, intricately involved with the whole re-organization of power relations in European societies from the seventeenth century onwards. And it is so from a dominant position: Cartesian rationalism involves the priority of reason and knowledge over ethics, not their mere independence from it. And, to my mind, Foucault's notion of 'governmentality' works precisely in the direction of showing, in a more concrete manner, how this priority of reason over ethics was manifested in the actual strategies and technologies of power which started being deployed during the seventeenth century.25 'The fact that Kant, on the other hand, reconnected the subject of knowledge to that of ethics by placing reason and morality on an equal footing is an indication that Kantian critique presents a radical challenge to Cartesianism. And it is here that the Kantian 'break' with Cartesianism, as first described in The Order o f Things, acquires its full meaning. According to Foucault's earlier analysis (and I suppose most Kant scholars would agree on this), the Kantian subject of knowledge is a finite subject (see Foucault 1974a: esp. 243-4). Foucault is now implying that finitude also applies to the Kantian subject of ethics (and on this many Kant scholars might disagree). A subject that has continuously to constitute itself through its actions cannot be truly sovereign. The ided'ea of the moral law may be infinite, the constituted subject of ethics itself is not. 'Universal' here means 'universally equal': the only way that the Kantian subject can function as a universal legislator is by practically binding itself as to its own actions according to universal principles; in turn, this finitude is also that which provides it with its liberty: since it is responsible solely for its own actions, it is also their only judge; the universal principles according to which it acts are universal only to the extent that it judges them to be so.26 In a 1978 text in which Foucault defined 'critique' in general as 'the art of how not to be governed like that' (1990: 38), he defined the meaning of Kantian critique in relation to the Enlightenment as follows: Critique [in Kant's view] means, in short, that it is less in what we dare try, with more or with less courage, than in the idea that we form of our knowledge [connaissance] and its limits, that our liberty is at stake, and that, consequently, instead of allowing ourselves to be told by someone else 'obey', it is at that very moment, when one has formed a right idea of one's own knowledge, that one will be able to discover the principle of autonomj and no longer or rather that the obey will bc based on autonoml have to listen to the obe)~; itself. (Foucault 1990: 41) Consequently a radical re-viewing is required of what, in the light of the more 'socio-political' and 'empirical' works of Foucault's later period, might be
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considered an empty and sterile philosophical notion, i.e. the 'analytic of finitude'. That \.er!- term, ~ h i c h in The Onltr of' Tizii~gsFoucault had insisted on using to mark modern thought in its most profound specificit!; we now see clearly re-emerging, plusi.se1)~ ~111, rtnze he.fi~r.mz~l~~ter/ the no/Wn of' koi.ernmentu/ity' iind 111 rr~rliral oppositio~ 10 it, by means of forming the very basis of political and moral autonom!-." Foucault's continued insistence on the importance of the split between C:artesianism and Kantianism non- acquires a more directly political significance, given Foucault's more explicit preoccupation with power and ethics.
There is, certainlq, a basic difference of approach between The Ovt/er i!f'Things and Foucault's 1970s and l(j80s work, but this consists in the fact that Foucault in that book dealt strictl? with the internal relations of discourse.zxWhat interexisted on the level of the internal ested him there is to she\\- that discontinuit~ 1~11es of thc formation of discourse; that what made the appearance of 'man' as a discursiw e n t i t ~ possible at the end of the eighteenth centur! had not been present beforehand, within classical discourse. Read too literally, this might give the impression that Foucault is implq-ing that, with the emergence of 'man' and of classical thought disappeared once and for the anal!-tic of finitude, the ~vhole all from the face of the earth. E\-en if this is largelq- true for classical emnplrii.al knomlerlge (though not entirely so; natural history is still being taught at primarjschools; perhaps there is also some significance in the fact that contemporary economics is divided into 'neo-classical' and 'neo-Ricardian'), to suggest that it also holds for classical philosoplz)~n.ould be something so daft that Foucault himself M-ouldnot even think of doing so. Hot$-otherwise could he expose phenomenology's presumed continuit?. between Descartes and Kant, without recognizing the strong Cartesian streak within phenomenologq-?"' Elsewhere, in his fiamous 1970 text on lkleuze, Foucault explicitlq- criticizes Hegel for ultimatclq- being closer to Leibniz than to an!- properly modern philosophy,30and, in his polemical 1972 repl!- to Derrida, he openly accuses Derrida of being the 'most decisil-e representati~e' of the classical (i.e. Cartesian) philosophical SJ-stem- even if 'in its final splendour' (1991, 11: 267). ! - no means ceases to be concerned with the In his post-1972 writings, he b study of discourse, but is now directly concerned with discourse as embodied in power relations and social practices, i.e. n-ith ho\\- subjects are constituted within social practice. Here he does not et-en haw to make explicit that the disciplinary techniques and power strategies of the classical period 01-erlap with those of modernit?; because he has already shown that the latter emerged out of the former, which to a large estcnt continue to esist. 'There is no real discontinuity there."' Punish and the first volume of However, it is true that in both Dzscipline i ~ n d 7'he Histoql c!f'Se.ruu/i<)jone does get a strong impression of discontinuity reg-arding the exercise of power. It is my view, though, that the overestimation of this discontinuit!; for which Foucault himself is mainly responsible, has led to a fundamental misconception in relation to his approach to the problem of power.
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In Discipline and Punish, Foucault contrasts modernity's 'gentle way in 104-31) to abhorrent scenes of public torture and execupunishment' (1979~: 3-6). Also, in the last part of the first tion of the pre-modern period (1979~: volume of The History of Sexuality (1979a: 133-59), he juxtaposes modern power's positive approach towards human life to the right of death the absolute monarch had over his subjects - a right, according to Foucault, which derived from that of the feudal lord. T h e contrast, i.e. the discontinuity, in both cases however is misleading, because it is between two unrelated terms. T h e comparisons should rather be between pre-modern and modern forms of torture and execution, and between the absolute monarch's and a modern government's implementation of the death sentence and declaration of war. In such comparisons, even if the difference may (though not always) be no less striking, it would be much more difficult to establish a real discontinuity. And this would be due to the fact that both sides of the comparisons rest on the same discursive principle, which is the principle of the legitimation o f repression in terms o f absolute sovereignty. In a similar way to that in which one has to accept that there are important remainders of classical thought within modernity, Foucault would thus f legitalso have to accept that there are important remainders of classicalforms o imation within modernity. f SexuThe problem is that, in the last part of the first volume of The History o ality, Foucault seems to be implying that, with the exception of Nazism, in all other extreme forms of repression, modernity is providing its own principles of legitimation: he considers the death sentence an act of 'disallowing' someone to live, rather than of taking life, and wars, he maintains, are carried out in the name of populations and not of sovereigns (1979a: 136-8). In terms of morality, though, what this would in turn imply is that modernity's principles of legitimation, insofar as they may serve to justify killing, maiming and torture, even if all in the name of a 'good' (i.e. modern) cause, are basically not very different from pre-modern legitimation principles. This, in my view, exposes a profound structural similarity between classical and modern forms of legitimation, or, what amounts to the same thing, a continuing existence of classical legitimation within modernity (which will be further explained below). However, Foucault, not only in that text (end of The History o f Sexuality, Volume l) but elsewhere too, seems to be avoiding altogether the discussion of modern power in terms of legitimation. Indeed, avoidance of the use of 'legitimation' as an analytical and critical concept seems to lie at the bottom of his systematic disapproval of the use of the concept of ideology. The two main explicit reasons for the latter, which are given by Foucault in the famous interview on 'Truth and power', are important but insufficient: 'ideology' being secondary in relation to something else, like the economy, for example, and being also in opposition to truth or science.32It is evident that Foucault is thereby trying to distance himself from both orthodox Marxism in general and Althusserianism in particular. But 'ideology' is not necessarily linked with either economism or scientism (in Karl Mannheim, for example, it is not - cf. Mannheim 1936). Ideology as the term which most directly points
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to the issue of legitimation is thus probably the more general cause for Foucault's distaste. Particularly revealing as to this connection is the text of his lecture on 'Critique and Enlightenment', where it seems that he is trying to disassociate himself from the 'ideology critique' approach of the Frankfurt School precisely by disowning the problematic of 'legitimation' (1990: 42-9).33 In accordance with this reading of Foucault, the significance of the dictum: 'In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king', would be rephrased as follows: 'Let us get rid not only of the notion of power as a repressive sovereign, but also of the theory which suggests that the state, and all other forms of power, even though repressive, get legitimated by means of ideology. In short, let us stop viewing power in terms of legitimation.' Now getting rid of the whole problem of legitimation as irrelevant to the exercise of power in modern societies might well be taken to mean that the concept of 'power' itself is useless. Perhaps, after all, it is no accident that Foucault's explicit disassociation from the problematic of 'legitimation' and Donzelot's incitement to abandon 'power' took place the same year (1978). 'Power', indeed, is indissociable from 'legitimation', especially zn modern societies. Why? For the simple reason that the very existence of power in a society which claims to be based on universal equality needs to be legitimated: no matter whether it is repressive or not, power always implies some form of inequalitjl. Not allowing oneself to be bothered with the question of legitimation, and therefore of power, can thus mean only one thing: that one does not take seriously modern society's egalitarian claims, so one forgets about them, and one just goes on doing one's business as a (Foucauldian) social scientist, which is, in Donzelot's words, to discover the 'minimum and irreducible materiality' through 'the description of social arrangements (agencements)' (1959: 7 7 ) . To what end? For the mere fun of it, perhaps. Given what we have (and what we have not) already said so far regarding both the practical and the theoretical involvements of all Foucault's work, this makes one rather suspicious. One is inclined instead not to take seriously Foucault's claim that he is not interested in legitimation. And there is a very good, solid reason for this, too: the fact that in those aety pages (in the first volume of The Historj~o f Sexualitjl) in which he describes his 'non-juridico-discursive' notion o f power, with the king j . head which needs cutting 08 etc., Foucault himself has perhaps the biggest ecer legitimation story to tell: Why is this juridical notion of power, involving as it does the neglect of everything that makes for its productive effectiveness, its strategic resourcefulness, its positivity, so readily accepted? In a societj such as ours, where the devices of power are so numerous, its rituals so visible, and its instruments ultimatelj so reliable, in this society that has been more imaginative, probably, than any other in creating devious and supple mechanisms of power, what explains this tendency not to recognize the latter except in the negative and emaciated form of prohibition? W h j are the deployments of power reduced simplj to the procedure of the lam of interdiction?
Let me offer a general and tactical reason that seems self-evident: power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms. Would power be accepted if it were entirely cynical? For it, secrecy is not in the nature of an abuse; it is indispensable to its operation. Not only because power imposes secrecy on those whom it dominates, but because it is perhaps just as indispensable to the latter: would they accept it if they did not see it as a mere limit placed on their desire, leaving a measure of freedom - however slight -intact? Power as a pure limit set on freedom is, at least in our society, the general form of its acceptability. (Foucault 1979a: 86) He then goes on to explain how power, dating from feudalism, never ceased to be identified with some sort of juridical authority: from the absolute monarch of the Middle Ages and the classical age, who was identajied mzth rather than posed against the law, to the rule o f l a m of classical liberalism and to the 'fundamental lawfulness' of socialist egalitarianism (1979a: 8 6 4 , in order to reach his famous conclusion:
At bottom, despite the differences in epochs and objectives, the representation of power has remained under the spell of monarchy. In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king. (Foucault 1979a: 88-9) To notice that here Foucault uses the term 'representutiotz of power' adds the finishing touch. What we have here is an (almost) complete the or)^ o f the (modern) ideolugj~ofpower. It is totally obvious that here Foucault is not merely trying to point out a purely theoretical 'mistake' in the conception of power, whose correction has lagged for two centuries. What he is asking and answering is horn people accept, p m c t i c u l l ~ ~ the , exercise of power in modern societies. If he were slightly more consistent in his terminology, his dictum should read: 'In (both practical and theoretical) political thought and in political analysis, that is, in our ideology and in political philosophy and science, we still have not cut off the head f socereigntjl for the legitimation of the king; that is, we still rely on the existence o of power.'
When I said Foucault offers us an 'almost complete' theory of the modern ideology of power, I was not referring only to a lack of terminological consistency. Rather, on an apparently more substantial level, what is lacking here is a clearer exposition of how the legitimation process itself works. Reading Foucault, one might get the impression that he is interested only in one part of this process, i.e. in how (pre-modern) sovereignty legitimates modern power: We tolerate power because we think that power is exercised only by and through the law, and therefore we accept all other forms of it. It is obvious that Foucault here is not implying the existence of a simple deception which identifies all power with practices
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directly linked with the law or with parliamentarq- institutions and which convincingll- leaves all other power practices outside. Theorist of ideology he may be, vulgar theorist he is not. Foucault is clearly suggesting that even everydajrelations of power which have no direct connection with the law or with politics in the conventional sense and which, nevertheless, might normally be questionable b>- those who undergo them - for cxample, the relationship betwecn emploq-er and employee, husband and wife, parents and children, teacher and pupils, doctor and patient, or, for that matter, the ver!. manifest relationships of power which are involved in administrative, or even military, practices and which are not always expressed in legal terms - are tolerated, to the extent that they are, because the),, rrlso, are identified with the l a n One thinks one obe?-san otherwise undesirable power insofar as one is being la\vful. A4ndwhen the!- are not tolerated, it is again an o ~ e r l yrepressive law that one is thinking of re\olting against. Foucault illustrates this process concretely n-hen he exposes (the ideology of) the 'repressive hypothesis' regarding sexuality, in that same book (19792: esp. 1 5 1 9 ) . A question however arises as to what happens preciselj- in all those cases where the exercise of power is tolerated (as law) and where it is none thc less clearly visible and quite strongl!- felt: I am referring to the examples given in the abo\-e paragraph. How is the sovereign authorit); which lays down the lam-, itselflegitimated? Caution: Foucault himself has stated that we are talking about a pvrnzodern, monarchic type of authority here. f I o n is this to be tolerated, in thc first place? T h e answer Foucault gives in a rather elliptical manner (in Tlzr Nistoqt of Sesualit,)~,Volz~?ne l ) :'Power as a pure limit set on freedom is, at least in our society, the general form of its acceptability' (1979a: 86). Non; this 'pure limit set on freedom', why should it be acceptable? Foucault seems to be implq-ing that it is the price we are willing to pay in order to be able to enjoy our frecdom. This, of course, tirst brings to mind the classical social contract theory whereby the fbrce of lam- is considered as necessary if one is to avoid individual liberty being violated bj- the arbitrariness of those who do not \villinglj- obey the law. But, as I have already said, we are now investigating the area of relations and practices which (ire not directlj- connected with the lam; strictly speaking. In such cases, this 'trade-off' between limits and freedom needs further exploration, since it involves something rather more complex and active than a clearly defined boundary which shall not be transgressed either on the part of sol-ereigntj-or on the part of what is experienced as freedom. Foucault himself, with the closing W-ordsof his final text (1984) on Kant's 'What is Enlightenment?', published eight years after the first volume of The Histor) (,J'Se.z.ualit.)~, defines this very exploration, in concrete political terms, as the task of critical thought itself: '[The critical] task requires work on our limits, that is, a patient labor giving form to our impatience for libertq-' (Foucault 1986: 50). Now- this statement, which might at first glance be taken to constitute a rather conservative incitement to intellectual work in place of revolutionary fervour, could instead be considered as a more illuminating rephrasing of the king's head metaphor, and one that will make good the absence of a clearer
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exposition of how legitimation works; not only how (pre-modern) sovereignty legitimates modern power but - something which is rather more crucial precisely in modern society - how (pre-modern) sovereignty is itselflegitimated. We now have Foucault's answer: sovereignty is legitimated by the uncritical impatience for liberty which has characterized modernity since its very dawn. What is this impatience for liberty? It consists first of all in a refusal to accept that there can be a truly modern power, power being in essence anti-libertarian and anti-egalitarian, and therefore anti-modern. As an ironic consequence, the very task of liberation itself has always led to an acceptance ofsovereignty, on both the collective and the individual level, and in all sectors of social practice: acceptance of the sovereignty of the democratic nation-state or Rechtsstaat as the only possible defence against absolutism or imperialism; acceptance of the sovereignty of the capitalist work ethic as the only way out of economic inequality or underdevelopment; of the sovereignty of parliament as the only way of safeguarding individual rights; of the sovereignty of science as the only way out of ignorance; of the sovereignty of mass communication and mass culture as the only way out of isolation; of the sovereignty of the workers' Party as the only way out of capitalism; of the sovereignty of men's way of life as the only way for women's emancipation; of the sovereignty of sexuality as the only way for personal liberation; of the sovereignty of normality as the only way for attaining equal rights - for, in this sense, modern discipline and modern bio-power also depend on the acceptance of sovereignty. It is either this, or one simply rejects all power as sovereignty and therefore as repression. This is perhaps the most insidious trap of the modern ideology of power - a trap which Foucault has been trying to expose precisely by the formulation of his own conception of power. Modernity has always used the universal incitement to liberty and equality as an alibi for legitimating sovereignty, i.e. for legitimating an absolute type of uncritically accepted power; that is, an ultimately pre-modern type of power. In doing this, it also manages to legitimate its basic antinomy, which is contained in the very notion of 'modern power' - precisely by relegating the source of all power to (pre-modern) sovereignty. T h e only way out of this ideological vicious circle, that had traditionally been proposed by the Marxist left, was the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic which rests on the hypostatization of the very antinomy of power as the moving force of history; that is, as an 'actual' contradiction which carries within itself the seed of its (historical) resolution. T h e identification of power with repression is thus the general schema which gives form to the idea of power as an illegitimate sovereignty which must of (both rational and ethical) necessity be overthrown by revolution, if modernity is to fulfil its promise. By contrast, Foucault intervenes precisely in this ideological vicious circle of y denying the very presuppositions on which it is based: sovereignty is modernity b not the only way that power can be legitimated, 'modern power' is not an antinomy. Power can be both legitimate and modern, insofar as one is able to adopt a critical attitude towards it. And it is precisely on this point that the 'work on our limits' Foucault is proposing acquires its full political significance.
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Critique as a ' l i m i t attitude' is not a matter of 'rejecting' power: 'We have to move beyond the outside - inside alternative; we have to be at the frontiers' (Foucault 1986: 45). Critique, for Foucault, is not 'the Kantian question ... of knowing what limits kno~i4edgehas to renounce trangressing', but rather consists in the follor\-ing question: in m-hat is given to us as universal, necessar!; obligator!; what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints?The point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression. (Foucault 1986: 45)
One finds the same theme, more elaborated this time, in the conclusion to Foucault's earlier text on Kant (1983 - 'Kant on Enlightenment and revolution'), where Foucault separates what he considers to be the two great philosophical traditions that Kant's critical philosoph!. has given rise to: Kant seems to me to have founded the two great critical traditions between which modern philosophy has been divided. i4'e can saJ-that in his great work of critique Kant laid down and founded that critical tradition of philosophy which defines the conditions under which a true knowledge is possible; and one can say that a whole area of modern philosophy since the nineteenth century has been presented and developed on that basis as an analytic of truth. But there also exists in modern and contemporary philosophy another kind of questioning, another mode of critical interrogation: this is the one whose beginning can be seen precisely in the question of Aujkluvung or in Kant's text on the Revolution; this other critical tradition asks: what is our present? What is the contemporary field of possible experience? Here it is not a question of an analytic of truth, but of what one might call an ontology of the present, an ontology of ourselves, and it seems to me that the philosophical choice which today confronts us is the following: one can opt for a critical philosophy which is framed as an analytical philosophy of truth in general, or one can opt for a critical thought which has the form of an ontology of ourselves, an ontology of the present; it is this latter form of philosophy which, from Hegel to the - Nietzsche and hlax Weber, has founded a form Frankfurt School by w a ~of of reflection within which I have tried to work. (Foucault 1993: 17-18) Now this second critical tradition in which Foucault includes himself is so vast and varied that it gives us no clue whatsoever as to its internal coherence, at least as far as its participants are concerned. (A word of caution though is in order: this tradition, also, starts with Kant, not with Hegel.) As to the first tradition, it is even more enigmatic in this respect, since Foucault mentions no names. One assumes he is referring to what could be characterized as 'mainstream' modern
philosophy, which would mainly include phenomenology in continental Europe and analytical philosophy in the Anglo-Saxon world. A rather hasty and overly schematic conclusion would thus suppose that Foucault here is simply distinguishing 'pure' and 'socio-politically oriented' philosophy. Yet is this consistent with what Foucault pinpoints as the source of this division, namely, Kant himself? Is Foucault seriously suggesting that what he presents as the separation between 'the two great critical traditions' derives from a division between the whole of Kant's 'great work of critique' on the one hand, and those two short texts on the Enlightenment (1991) and on the Revolution (1992: 150-61) on the other? I do not think so. I am inclined instead to refer to a rather more equitable division, which is to be found in Kant's main critical work itself; more specifically, in Kant's most important critical work, namely, in the Critique of Pure Reason (1934). The basic division there (and it is this division which is also present in the other two Critiques (1956, 1952)) is actually so apparent that it cannot be missed; in fact, it is a literaldivision. In the main part of the book, i.e. in 'Transcendental logic', one has: 'Transcendental logic - first division: transcendental analytic' (1934: 70-208) and 'Transcendental logic - second division: transcendental dialectic' (1934: 208-405). It is well-known that the first modern dialectician was Kant, not Hegel. It is only after Hegel that the dialectic came to be identified with Hegelianism. In Kant, the dialectic has nothing to do with hypostatized antinomies. The 'cosmological antinomies' are merely one of the three forms of the 'unavoidable illusions' of reason, which it is the task of the transcendental dialectic to expose - the other two being the 'psychological paralogism', i.e. the unavoidable tendency of reason to turn the hypothetical thinking subject into a substance, and the 'theological ideal' of God as the necessary primal cause of everything. If the Kantian transcendental analytic of truth served, according to Foucault's analyses both in The Order c$ Things and in his latest writings on Kant, as a philosophical determination of the limits of knowledge, and therefore as a first analytic of finitude, Kant's transcendental dialectic could be considered as being, in turn, a dialectic of finitude; its aim is to expose the illusions of rational psychology, cosmology and theology (in Foucauldian terms, of classical - i.e. preKantian - thought) by means of what is actually a critique o f the thought o f the injnite; all such illusions arising, according to Kant, from reason's tendency towards absolute unity and totality. The transcendental dialectic as critique has as its aim the exposure of transcendental illusion; the latter can be exposed but, in contrast to mere logical illusion, which arises out of error or sophistry, it cannot be done away with. It is unavoidable insofar as it forms part of the 'natural dialectic of human reason': although we must say of the transcendental conceptions of reason, the.y are nn(y zdeas, we must not, on this account, look upon them as superfluous and nugatory. For, although no object can be determined by them, they can be of great utility, unobserved and at the basis of the edifice of the understanding, as the canon for its extended and self-consistent exercise - a canon which,
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indeed, does not enable it to cognize more in an object than it v-ould cognize by the help of its own conceptions, but which guides it more securely in its cognition. Not to mention that they perhaps render possible a transition from our conceptions of nature and the non-ego to the practical conceptions, and thus produce for even ethical ideas keeping, so to speak, and connection with the speculative cognitions of reason lund den moralischen Ideen selbst auf solche Art Haltung und Zusammenhang mit den spekulativen Erkenntnissen der Vernunft \ erschaffen l\onnen]. (Kant 1934: 227; 1974: 332) In other words, what \ve have in Kant's 'Transcendental dialectic', together with a critique of the thought of the infinite, is a full-blown first version of modern irleology c.ritiq~re. T h e Frankfurt School did not get as far, given their Hegelianism which is apparent in the antinomial wa!- the! have conceived their dialectic of Enlightenmcnt/m~-thology and liberation/domination (Adorno and being the least Hegelian of all conHorkheimer 1986; Marcuse 1991). A41thusser, temporary (official) Marxist philosophers, probably got closer, emphasizing instead both the non-antinomial dialectical illusions (though he does not name them as such), i.e. the constitutive human subject and the absolute primal being (what .4lthusser calls 'absolute Subject') (1971: 121-73). Althusser is also Kantian in that his functionalism leads him merely to substitutc for Kant's ni~turrrl necessitj- of transcendental ideas the social necessity of the misrecognition of the reproduction of relations of production. Howex-er, in juxtaposing ideology to science, he treats ideolog!. pre-criticall!; i.e. as mere logical illusion - even though not simpl\- as sophistrj- or error, but as maintained rather by social necessity Foucault is pcrhaps the most important and the most genuine contemporary exponent of the Kantian dialectic, insofar as his whole work consists in the exposure of precisel!. the equivalent of what Kant calls 'unavoidable illusions of reason'. Foucault's persistence in avoiding the term 'ideolog!-' and the correlative notion of 'legitimation' (and hence his insistence on using instead terms like 'power-knowledge' and 'rkgime of truth') has to do with the fact that, throughout the whole critical tradition in which he includes himself, the problematic of 'ideology' had been identified either with some sort of Hegelion-dialectical schema ('false' consciousness, Enlightenment as m!-thology etc. (cf. Lukics 1971; also Adorno and Horkheimer 1986; hlarcuse 1991)), or v-ith a pre-critical conception of ideology as mere logical illusion - something opposed to reason or science:'+ I;i)ucault insists on showing that reason and (scientific) knowledge themselves are cmplo!.cd in producing practical, i.e. porl-er, effects c n n c ~ ~ ~ r e n ~ l ~ ~ rr~itiz and iiz no opposition l o truth <!/icts. On the other hand, while Ijoucault ma!- stubbornly disown the use of the term 'illusion', with illusion he is very definitely concerned. Not however with logical nor with Hegelian-dialectical illusion, but rather with an illusion produced by the (modern) 'rkgime of truth' itself." It is the fundamental illusion which is ! - the ncccssit!- to obej- power men though it is often undesirable presupposed b
538
Kyrkos Doxiadis
to do so, and which is manifest, as we have seen in explaining Foucault's dictum with the king's head metaphor, in the general identification of power with sovereignty. But this is an illusion which can be exposed only through concrete analyses the sort that Foucault himself has been doing throughout his work. It is impossible to determine beforehand and in general terms the process whereby this illusion takes place. It is in this sense - and in this sense only - that Foucault's work is anti-theoretical. Foucault is against 'theory' insofar as it also serves to legitimate sovereignty, by placing the subject of knowledge itself in a sovereign position outside and above, as it were, the perilous world of social practice; insofar, that is, as it rests on a (Cartesian) subject of knowledge which is supposedly independent from ethics and politics. His conception of 'empirical research', though, is precisely the opposite to that of empiricism. Foucault is not interested in the detached yet reverent observation of the evidence of (social) facts (which is merely Cartesianism resigned from its philosophical aspirations), but, on the contrary, in practical critique as a direct involvement of theory in socialpractice - which of course has nothing to do with the Hegelian-Marxist theory/practice 'dialectic'. To a certain degree, Foucault's anti-theoreticism is Kantian. Like Kant, Foucault is concerned with the exposure of the ideas which serve as 'regulative principles' of the employment of both reason and action." But, unlike him, he is not concerned with showing how these ideas, necessary as they may be, none the less give rise to illusions which are exposed if examined under the rules of the transcendental analytic, i.e. from the viewpoint of the transcendentaljnitude of knowledge. Rather, Foucault seeks to question them precisely in terms of their practical necessity as regulative ideas, i.e. from the viewpoint of the socialfinitude of dzscnurse; that is, of discourse embodied in social practice and producing power Foucault's concept of power is thoroughly effects by this very emb~diment.~' structural, insofar as it refers to thefinite structures of discourse; i.e. to discourse as historical events38 - very unlike the infinite structures of language and of social relations as language with which Saussure and Levi-Strauss are ~ o n c e r n e d . ~ ~ Foucault's approach to power is structural insofar as it is concerned with discourse - and till his very last writings he never stops claiming that his whole ~but it is not structuralist insofar methodology rests on the study of d i s c o ~ r s e 'as he continually gives prevalence to social practice over discourse. Rather than projecting social relations on the infinite expanse of linguistic or mythical 'permutation groups' (see Levi-Strauss 1972: 228), he on the contrary conceives of discourse as contained within and limited by social practice.'' According to the Foucauldian problematic, an,y hypostatization of the infinite, either on metaphysical (or linguistic) grounds or by means of an appeal to 'natural (i.e. functional) necessity', should be exposed as an illusion which may potentially serve to legitimate sovereignty. And antinomies are of secondary importance, precisely because their significance exhausts itself on the level of discourse. The excessive importance attributed to antinomies can itself operate, as we have seen with the antinomy 'modern power', further to sustain the legitimating illusions.
Foucrrult rlnrI the three-hrarlerl king
539
It is also in this sense that the embodiment of discourse referred to here is in no majt Hrgrlirin. It is a litrrillembodiment, insofar as social practice and the exercise of pow7er,precisely in accordance with Foucault's approach, are conceived in terms of ucting ("nite) human hodirs; and the finite structures of discourse, whose finitude is ensured precisely by this embodiment, have nothing to do with the Hegelian 'actual Idea', which 'becomes explicit as infinite actual mind' by means of the \er!- process of its finite actualization (Hegel 1967: 162).42 It is as if Foucault goes one decisi\-e step further than Kant in his dialectic of finitude, by calling Kant's bluff, as it were: 'Let us see horn neccssar!. are these regulative ideas that you have exposed in !-our dialectic as incapable of withstanding critical analysis, i.e. analysis from the viewpoint of finitude.' These regulative ideas that bother Foucault are prettl- much the same as in Kant: they both amount to the sovereign subject, whether as hypostatized subject of knowledge or as primal cause of all things. It is no accident, howe\-er, that it is precisely these two sorts of ideas, i.e. the ps!-chological and theological ones, that Kant treats in a privileged fashion, at the expense of the cosmological ideas:
there is nothing to hinder us from rriltnitting these ideas to possess an objective and hyperbolic [h?.postatisch] existence, except the cosmological ideas, which lead reason into an antinomy: the PS!-chological and theological ideas are not antinomial. Thej- contain no contradiction; and how then can anj- one dispute their objective reality, since he who denies it knows as little about their possibility as U-ewho affirm? (Kant 1934: 389; 1974: 585) It is here perhaps that is revealed the most important divergence between Foucault and Kant. In drawing a di\-iding line between cosmological ideas, U-hoseobjective existence, unavoidable illusions of reason as they may also be, we cannot 'admit' because they are contradictor!; and psychological and theological ones, for which there is not any reason not to admit them, Kant is implying that there are ultimately two sorts of transcendental illusions: the unavoidable but unacceptable ones (cosmological ideas) and the unavoidable and acceptable, even as illusions (psychological and theological ideas).+qfHegel (see esp. 1975: 76-9) tried to show that the former should not be unacceptable either, thereby transforming the dialectic of finitude into a dialectic of the infinite, Foucault went in precisely the opposite direction, by radically questioning the acceptability of the latter. For Kant, the finite human being cannot avoid the illusion of the infinite (i.e. sovereign) subject precisely because it is finite. This theme is something that remained constant in critical thought right up to and including the Lacanian mirror stage theor):" It is also the basis for the legitimation of power through sovereignt!. and of so\-ereignty itself, to which I referred above: one is finite, one is limited, therefore one inevitabl!. undergoes power relations, therefore one also depends on sovereignty to legitimate the latter. T h e Foucauldian inter\-ention consists in accepting that power is indeed possible on the condition that human beings are finite, but in showing also that it is
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precisely for this reason that one should not accept the notion of an 'infinite
subject' of power. T h e human beings who exercise power are just as finite as those who undergo it. There is no acceptable practical - i.e. ideological - or theoretical - whether in terms of a (Cartesian) metaphysics of the infinite or in accordance with a (Hegelian) dialectic of the infinite - legitimation of sovereignty. After Foucault, critical social theory may have to reconsider the (Weberian) 'legitimate domination' thesis, and Marxism may have to reappraise the (Gramscian) concept of 'hegemony'. Politically speaking, in the age of the (seemingly inevitable) resurgence of nationalism, we may finally have to realize - and Foucault would certainly agree on this - that killing in the name of the people or of population may be just as bad as killing in the name of a king. 'In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of Hobbes.'
University o f Athens
Notes
1 Foucault (1994,111: 635-57,719-23, 818-25; 1981). See also Burchell, Gordon and Miller (1991). 2 The exact phrasing in this text is as follows: 'We need to cut off the King's head: in political theory that has still to be done' (Foucault 1980: 121). 3 The article had originally been published in French as a review of PatrickVirelet and Pierre Rosanvallon's Pour une nouvelle culture politzque and Andre Glucksmann's Les Muitrespenseurs; cf. Donzelot (1979: 71, 86). 4 This text was a lecture given at the College de France in 1978. 5 In the English translation, Deleuze's text is published as a Foreword; Donzelot (1980: ix-xvii). 6 Cf., for example, his 'Elements of self-criticism': 'whatever you do, you cannot find in Spinoza what Hegel gave to Marx: contradiction' (Althusser 1976: 141). 7 The two terms have been juxtaposed (for example, by some of the participants in the Foucault Conference held in March 1980 at the Polytechnic of Central London), but not convincingly; given the sense in which the 'social' has often been utilized, a 'history of the social' could well be taken to signify a sort of specialized branch of social history. Althusser had tended to situate the 8 On this, cf. also Althusser (1976: 111). Initiall~ Marxian 'break' one year earlier, in The German Ideology (1846); cf. Althusser (1969). Even so, it is revealing that in doing this he had paid special notice to the fact that, in that work, 'Marx always uses philosophy to mean ideology pure and simple' (Althusser 1969: 162; cf. also Althusser 1971: 151). 9 See also Paul Hirst's critique (1985: 57-90). 10 I choose 1972 as a convenient date for the Foucauldian 'break', with reference to the subtitle and contents of Colin Gordon's most influential collection of Foucault's texts published in 1980; see note 2, above. 11 A characteristic example of this kind of reaction to Foucault is Stuart Hall's otherwise rather hostile reference in a 1980 article: 'Foucault's work - currently enjoying another of those uncritical periods of discipleship through which British intellectuals reproduce today their dependency on yesterday's French ideas - has had an exceedingly positive effect: above all because . . . Foucault has made possible a welcome return to the concrete analysis of particular ideological and discursive formations, and the sites of their elaboration' (Hall 1980: 71).
Foui.ault and the three-hearled kzng
541
12 For a link between the positive and the negative framework, i.e. between French history of science and phenomenology, see Foucault (1994, IV: 53, 436; 1990: 44). 13 And elsewhere - see belokv, note 16. 14 A recent exception can be found in Thomas Osbornc's admirablj audacious aphorism: 'there may be limits to Foucault's uses, and yet . . . such limits are at the source of Foucault's great strengths . . . [O]bviously enough . . . Foucault was not a sociologist. . . . Sociologists might concentrate on becoming i ~ h a tthey are, in the meantime leaving Foucault to wander off on his own' (Osborne 1994: 498-9). Other readings of Foucault have been much more careful, especially in this respect, cf., for example, Cousins and Hussain (1984). 15 See esp. Drcyfus and Kabinow (1982: 4 k 5 2 , 97-8, 111-12, 165-7, 206); Foucault (1974b). 16 Most revealing in this respect are Foucault's interviews and responses to critiques in (1966). See Foucault the period folloaing the first publication of The Order o f Thzng.~ (1994,I: 498-731). See also Eribon (1991: 156-7) and 1,ebrun (1992). M)r an example of Foucault's own retrospectike affirmation of this fact, see a 1981 intervien, in Foucault (1994,Ii': 666-7). 17 This discontinuity has never since been seriousl!- challenged by anyone (Ilreyfus and Rabinow merely pia!- down its importance in Foucault's work). 18 This is evident, in different ways of course, in both Husserl's CurtesWn ,Vfeditutrons: .4n Intro(iuction to Phmotnenolog~~ (1977), a most influential text especially in France, and Merleau-Pontj-'S Phetzomenokogy of Perception (1962), the founding text of post-war French phenomenology. Foucault explicitly rcfcrs to this in The Order cf Thzngs; cf. Foucault (1974a: 325). On the other hand, the above-mentioned impact of Heidegger on Foucault's thought is clearly evident in that Heidegger had already demonstrated the importance of 'finitude' in Kantian philosophy. See Heidegger (1990). 19 T h e whole ofvolume I of Dits et dcrits is illuminating in this respect. A characteristic example, in a 1966 intervien: 'Our task is to free ourselves definitively from humanism, and it is in this sense that our work is political, insofar as all the regimes in both East and West sell their nasty merchandise under the banner of humanism' (Foucault 1994, I: 516). 20 A recent example of a similar approach to Wucault's politics can be found in Simons d (1995: 8-12), where it is suggested that '[ulp to the . . . publication [of The Order c Thzngs] in 1966, Foucault was associated politically with anti-communism', and that 'Foucault's radical initiation occurred in 'lunis (1966-8), where, while holding a teaching post, he illicitly aided students opposed to the regime, coming into contact with political prisoners.' 21 See the references mentioned in note 16. 22 In the English edition (Foucault 1971), which is a translation of an abridged French edition, these pages have not been included. 23 Foucault (1994,II: 245-68); Derrida (1978: 31-63). 24 T h e sovereign character of the Cartesian subject is especially stressed in Foucault's reply to Derrida, when he underlines the arbitrary character of the difference between the cogito and madness: 'The proof [that my meditation is distinct from madness] is carried out instantly. O r rather, if one looks more closely, one clearly sees that it has not taken place, in the way that it has with the dream. In fact, there is no question whatever of trying to take myself for a madman who takes himself for a king; nor is there any question whatever of asking myself if I am not a king (or even an army officer from 'I'ouraine [Descartes had actually been one - KD]) who takes himself for a philosopher secluded for meditation. T h e difference with madness does not have to be proved: it is stated [constatee]' (Foucault 1994, 11: 252). T h e passage that Foucault refers to is in the first Meditation (Descartes 1968: 96). 25 See the references in note 1, above, and esp. Foucault (1981: 242-6). 26 Cf. also Foucault (1974a: 343, n. 2): 'The Kantian moment . . . is the discovery that
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the subject, in so far as he is reasonable, applies to himself his own law, which is the universal law.' See esp. Kant (1993). 27 It is true that, in his main writings on governmentality (see above, note 1; also Foucault 1979b), one gets the impression that Foucault does not really oppose governmentality to autonomy, and it could be argued that these two notions are positively interdependent. In those writings, however, he is not so much concerned with the meaning of Kantian critique, and it is this that interests me here. 28 Which is not the case, anyway, with two of Foucault's other most important, and earlier, 1960s works; neither with Madness and Civilization (1976a; see also note 22) nor with The Birth o f the Clinic (1976b). 29 See references in note 18. This is even more evidently the case with Emmanuel Levinas, someone also closely connected to French phenomenology, even though perhaps not its most characteristic representative. See, for example, Levinas (1987). See also Derrida's paper on Levinas (Derrida 1978: 79-153). 30 Foucault (1977: 184-5): it was indeed toward dialectics that the philosophy of representation was headed. And yet, how is it that we fail to recognize Hegel as the philosopher of the greatest differences and Leibniz as the thinker of the smallest differences? In actuality, dialectics does not liberate differences; it guarantees, on the contrary, that they can always be recaptured. The dialectical sovereignty of similarity consists in permitting differences to exist, but always under the rule of the negative, as an instance of non-being. They may appear as the successful subversion of the Other, but contradiction secretly assists in the salvation of identities. 133-228; 1979a) and the references in note 1. 31 Cf. Foucault (1979~: 32 Foucault (1980: 118). The third reason he gives at that particular interview, i.e. that 'the concept of ideology refers . . . necessarily, to something of the order of a subject', should not be taken too seriously anyway, given that Foucault himself, in that same interview (1980: 117), and at many instances throughout his work elsewhere, has stressed that the constitution of the subject is one of his central concerns. See esp. Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982: 208-9). 33 On the close link between 'ideology' and 'legitimation', see also Cousins and Hussain (1984: esp. 242-3). 34 It is revealing that perhaps the single instance in his work where Foucault employed a Hegelian schema of ideology (again, however, avoiding the word 'ideology') was his reference to the young Marx's characterization of religion as 'the spirit of a world without spirit', in his support of the Iranian 'revolution' of 1978-9 -by far his worst ever political blunder. See Foucault (1988: 218); Marx (1975: 244). 35 In fact, someone also concerned with illusion is Nietzsche, to whom Foucault constantly refers as a source of inspiration, especially when he wants to disengage himself from the concept of ideology (see esp. Foucault 1980: 133). Does not the famous Nietzschean thesis that truth is the most profound lie mean, simply, that truth is the mostprofound illusion? Cf., for example, Nietzsche (1968: 247-9, 290). Generally speaking, why on earth should preoccupation with truth preclude the possibility of being also preoccupied with illusion? 36 A similar connection between Kant and Foucault in this respect has been made by Colin Gordon (1979: 41). 37 Cf. Foucault's 1984 essay 'What is Enlightenment?': 'this criticism [the one E is proposing] is not transcendental, and its goal is not that of making a metaphysics possible: it is genealogical in its design and archaeological in its method. Archaeological - and not transcendental -in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events' (Foucault 1986: 46). 38 See previous note.
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39 It is my contention that Saussure, in his fundamental postulate that 'in language there are on11 differences mithoul posztrne terms' (Saussure 1974: 120), and all consequent approaches to culture and social relations based on structural linguistics see esp. LeviStrauss (1972) -have adopted a conception of structure which rests entirely on the infinite. Levi-Strauss in particular, in an exceptionally revealing passage, has substituted for the Kantian transcendental subject, which is based on the finitude of experience and knowledge, the 'objectified thought' of humankind, which is revealed to the ethnologist after the study of 'countless representational systems'. See Levi-Strauss (1983: 10-11). T h e critical significance of Saussure's other basic thesis, that 'language is a/orm and not rr substance'(Saussure 1974: 122), is thereby reduced to the strictly abstract sphere of linguistic structures. Structuralism beyond linguistics has led to a nen sort of hypostatization of the infinite. 40 See, for example, note 37, above. T h e fact that Foucault tends to use the term 'system' instead of 'structure' is of no real importance: so does Saussure. 41 Particularly revealing as to his difference from Levi-Strauss and structuralism precisely in this sense is an earlier (1973) passage by Foucault himself (1994,II: 635-6). 42 Also, it is clear that this 'embodiment' has nothing to do with Merleau-Ponty, since in Merleau-Ponty the structures which are embodied are ahisturzcul- as even Dreyfus and Rabinow admit, in the very pages of their persistence in drawing parallels b e t ~ e e n Foucault's analysis of power and Merleau-Pontj-'S phenomenology-; see note 15. 43 In the Crttique of Practical Reason, the favourable treatment of the ideas of God and the immortality of the soul is even more evident, right at the outset:
-
T h e ideas of God and immortality are . . . not conditions of the moral law; but only conditions of the necessary object of a will which is determined by this law, this will being merely the practical use of our pure reason. Hence we cannot sal- that we know or understand either the reality or even the possibility of these ideas. Nevertheless, they are the conditions of applying the morally- determined will to the object which is given to it a priori (the highest good). Consequently, the possibility of these conditions can and must be assumed in this practical context without our knowing or understanding them in a theoretical sense. To serve their practical function, it suffices that they do not contain any internal impossibilit!- (contradiction). Here we have a ground of assent which, in comparison to the speculative reason, is only subjective, but which is just as valid objectively to a practical but equally pure reason. (Kant 1956: 4) Cf. also the 'Dialectic' of this Crittque (Kant 1956: 111-53). On this, see esp. Beiser (1992: 55): Nowhere did Kant more deeply betray the radical spirit of his philosophy than in the 'Dialektik' of the second Krztik. Here Kant reintroduced the ideas of God, Providence, and immortalit!- as constitutive principles, flatly contrary to the 'Dialektik' of the first Kritik. . . . In all these respects. . . . Kant was only lapsing back into the very fallacy he so relentlessly exposed in the 'Dialektik' of the first Kritik: hypostasis. 44 T h e mtrror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation - and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented bodq-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic - and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development. (Lacan 1977: 4). Cf. also Lacan's both cynical and exasperated remark to thevincennes students who interrupted his lecture: 'What you, as revolutionaries, aspire to is a Master. You will have one' (Lacan 1990: 127).
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This article was downloaded by: [UNAM Ciudad Universitaria] On: 08 October 2013, At: 06:03 Publisher: Routledge

Economy and Society

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Econonzy andSoczrty Vblume 26 Number 4 Corrmber 1997: 518-74.7 0Routledge 1997

Fo~ri,rizrltrrlrd the tlzrre-lzrodrrl kill8

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Foucault and the three-headed king

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F o ~ i c ~ l iirnd l t the three-hended kzng

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F o u ~ a ~ lrrnd l t the three-hetrrled $tug

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Foucuult and the three-headed kzng

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Fourazllt (init tile three-healled krng

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Fo~1~ntllt and the three-heuiled k ~ n g

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Fo~rciiult rrnil the t/rr-et-heailer! king

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Foucrrult rlnrI the three-hrarlerl king

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Foui.ault and the three-hearled kzng

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fiuruult a n d the three-headed kzng

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Foucault unrl the three-headed kzng

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