London School of Economics and Political Science SO 433 Cultural Theory Dr.

. Don Slater Candidate Number: 55799 MSc Political Sociology Assessed Essay

January 18th, 2012

Is everyday life best understood as a site of creative agency or structural determination? Assessing de Certeaus reaction to Foucault

CONTENTS

1 Introduction ................................................................ ................................ ........................................... ................................ ........... 1 2 The StructureStructure - Agency Debate and Everyday Life ....................... 2
2.1 Structure and Agency in Social Theory 2.2 Theorizing the Everyday 2 3

3 Michel Foucault Power and Everyday Life .............................. 3 4 Michel De Certeau Resistance and Everyday Life .................... 6 5 Certeaus Reaction to Foucault - A Way out of the Postmodern Aporia? ................................................................ ................................ ................................................... ................................ ................... 8
5.1 The Relationship between Structure and Agency and the Possibility of Social Change 8 5.2 Transcendentalism and Anti-Theory 10 5.3 Everyday Life Structural Determinism or Creative Agency? 11

6 Conclusion ................................................................ ................................ ........................................... ................................ ........... 13 7 References ................................................................ ................................ ............................................ ................................ ............ 14

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

When Michel de Certeau published LInvention du Quotidien in 1980 (The Practice of Everyday Life [1984]), his emphasis on the habits of everyday resistance was understood as a direct critique of his influential French compatriots Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. His optimist endorsement of creative agency promised to be a way out of the post-structuralist aporia, symbolized by Foucaults pessimistic vision of the all-penetrating panopticon (Gardiner, 2000, p. 174; Ward, 1996, p. 519). Arguably among the most important scholars in cultural studies (Kendall & Wickham, 2001, p. 6), both Certeau and Foucault refrain from the muffled majesty of grand narratives (Connor, 1997, p. 28) by assigning specific weight to the everyday and to the importance of micro-perspectives for the understanding of the broader concerns of agency and structure, subjectivity and determination. However, whereas Foucault concentrates on the centrality of everyday life in terms of the analysis of power, Certeau reverses the perspective, arguing for the ordinary practices of the everyday as the central lieu of resistance. This shift in approaching the everyday inevitably leads to different implications concerning the relationship between agency and structure. This essay assesses Certeaus critique and redefinition of Foucault. By seeking an answer to the question whether Certeaus approach offers a way out of the Foucauldian death of the subject, the line of argument leads to the underlying question whether everyday life is best understood in terms of creative agency or structural determination. Building on a comparison of the two approaches, I argue that Certeaus account of resistance in everyday life relies on an implicit return to a pre-Foucauldian perspective, based on a) a constitutive dichotomy of structure and agency and b) a transcendentalist account of human nature. In that sense Certeau does not solve the Foucauldian challenge. However, Certeaus nuanced account of the daily practices of resistance might be useful on the background of Foucaults later turn to agency. From this later perspective the structure vs. agency debate is misplaced, presuming that agency is part of power structures. The question then is not whether there is agency in everyday life, but rather how everyday live came to be seen as a central site of human agency.

[1]

The Structure-Agency Debate and Everyday Life

After a short overview of the debate and the study of everyday life in social science, Foucaults and Certeaus interpretations of everyday life are introduced and their positions within the structure-agency controversy examined. Certeaus position is critically discussed from a Foucauldian perspective, before the argument is linked to the structure-agency debate and Foucaults later work.

2
2.1

THE STRUCTURE-AGENCY EVERYDAY LIFE

Structure and Agency in Social Theory

DEBATE

AND

According to Archer (1996, p. XI) the problem of structure and agency has rightly come to be seen as the basic issue in modern social theory and earlier Dawe (1979, p. 379) claimed that human agency is the problematic around which the entire history of sociological analysis could be written. Indeed, the question of individual choice leads to fundamental concerns about human nature, free will, autonomy, subjectivity, socialization, otherness and identity. Refraining from covering all of those, in the following, agency mainly refers to the individual possibility of resistance, defined as an action taken by an agent against a force, which arises outside that agent (Bennett, 1998, p. 170). Structure is seen as the ensemble of power relations that constitute the social order and the subjects existence. The structureagency debate in social science oscillates between structuralist, holistic approaches on one side and agency-orientated, individualistic approaches on the other. Whereas in orthodox Marxism individuals are seen as the passive bearers of class relations (Marx, 1867, p. 29) in the liberal tradition social relations are the consequences of individual action, understood as conscious, goal-oriented behaviour (Weber, 1978). Common to both perspectives is that they see structure and agency as fundamentally opposed (Jessop, 1996). More recently, Giddens (1979) argues for a dynamic interplay of structure and agency, claiming that structures shape human practices at the same time that they are shaped by human agency. For many of these approaches a central starting point to study the nature of structure and agency are the practices of everyday life as they link individual with its structural surroundings (Bennett, 2005, p. 8).

[2]

Michel Foucault Power and Everyday Life

2.2

Theorizing the Everyday

The claim that the everyday often provides the ground from which to develop further concepts and positions within the structure-agency debate implies that the term itself is difficult to define: In a basic sense, everyday life refers to the routine nature of human existence and to the common place and ordinary as opposed to the extraordinary, heroic life (Featherstone, 1992, p. 160; Sandywell, 2004, p. 163). On the structuralist edge, Lefebvre (1991) in accordance with the Frankfurt School conceives everyday life as the sphere of alienation and the ultimate stage of capitalist exploitation. On the liberal edge in contrast, everyday life is perceived as the private and de-politicized realm, incarnated by the family and the figure of the housewife (Brown, 1992). For cultural studies, everyday life is the site of dominant hegemonies and inequalities and simultaneously the most obstinate channel of the emergence of resistance (Gambacorta, 1989, p. 130). While Certeau is associated with the last perspective, Foucault is the central figure who linked the familiar routines and the taken-for-grantedness of everyday life to the analysis of power and determination.

MICHEL FOUCAULT EVERYDAY LIFE

POWER

AND

When approaching Foucaults perspective on power and the everyday it is crucial to emphasize his radical rejection of the liberal assumption of a private and de-politicized everyday. Quite the contrary, Foucault claims that it is in the daily habits and in the human body itself, where power is exercised. All relations of everyday life bear a certain stamp of power. Explaining the fundamental entanglement of power structures and everyday life he writes that
in thinking of the mechanisms of power, I am thinking rather of its capillary forms of existence, the point where power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies, and inserts itself into their very actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes, and everyday lives (Foucault, 1980, p. 39).

For Foucault the increasing organization of everything is the central issue of our time (Foucault, 1983, p. XXIV) and he further emphasizes the everydayness of power structures

[3]

Michel Foucault Power and Everyday Life

claiming that power is everywhere [] because it comes from everywhere (Foucault, 1990, p. 98). The spatial dimension leads to another novelty in the Foucauldian understanding of power that radically challenges the liberal definition that conceives power mainly in an agential view, as a possession (typically by the state) or capacity1. Foucaults analysis of power is based on the operation of power. Rather than a possession, power only exists when it is being exercised and rather than a privilege for dominant groups in society, power is exercised on many different dimensions. Foucault (1980, p. 98) states that power is something which circulates, [] something which only functions in term of a chain and that power only exists when it is put into action (Foucault, 1982, p. 788). The focus lies on the organization of power relations, the forms they take in discourses and in the techniques applied in everyday life. In Discipline and Punish (1991) he analyses techniques of disciplinary power in the prison and in peoples lives that generate micro-practices of surveillance and control, symbolized by the invention of the panopticon. The generation of docile bodies exemplifies the fundamental way in that power is linked to the understanding of daily human practices. In classical perceptions, power is conceived as negative and merely seen as the relationship between oppressors and oppressed. In Lefebvres Marxism, capitalist power is equated with the repression of the powerless and with the alienation of everyday life and also in liberalism power is seen as the force that restricts the subject from being free (Newman, 2005, p. 51). For Foucault, power is positive and creative. Asking if power was never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but say no, do you really believe that we should manage to obey it? (Foucault, 1986, p. 6), he answers by affirming that What makes power [] accepted is simply the fact that it doesnt only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse (Foucault, 1980, p. 118). Furthermore, power not only produces forms of behaviour, power constitutes subjects. While in classical terms power is regarded in opposition to the subject in its essential nature, Foucaults approach suggests that the subject, rather than being autonomous from power or somehow external to it, is fundamentally embedded in power relations. The man described for us, whom

Weber (1978, p. 53) defines power as the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a social action even against the resistance of others.
[4]

Michel Foucault Power and Everyday Life

we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself (Foucault, 1991, p. 94). . There is no essential subject to be liberated. Thus, the subject itself is an effect of the exercise of power or to put it in other words, the subject is constituted through subjection to power. In that sense Individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application (1980, p. 98). Summing up, in Foucault everyday life is the central place where multiple power structures penetrate the daily habits, practices and the subject itself. But how does the Foucauldian symbiosis of power and the individual in everyday life relate to the structureagency challenge? With Foucault it can be argued that the subject itself is a matter of relations of discourses and power determinants. The production of the subject is the power that makes agency seemingly impossible. Moreover, as discursive productions of power, subjects do not dispose of interiority from which resistance to their own conditions of determination might arise. Resistance cannot be placed outside power (Rothenberg, 2010, p. 26) and furthermore any form of resistance is part of the power relations itself as it is written in the exercise of power (Mills, 2003, p. 40). Even though in the Foucauldian perspective, power structures clearly overlie human agency, the determination of everyday life does not take the linear shape of earlier mentioned structuralist approaches. Unlike in Marx, power is not entrenched in a certain historical deterministic conduction of history; there are multiple, contradictory layers of power. Foucault emphasizes the structural instability of the subject and the way that it is constructed contingently through different discourses. The subject is not fixed or determined by a deeper underlying logic, but by a complex interplay of power relations. This undecidability plays a role in the later Foucault. As it is shown in section 5.3, in retrospective of his entire oeuvre, Foucault might not be as pessimistic as it seems at first. However, the earlier emphasis on discursive structures and power pioneered the postmodern rejection of the subject that culminates in Baudrillards nihilism (1994). Foucaults apparent anti-subjective perspective that is often exemplified by his claim that we have to get rid of the subject itself (Foucault, 1980, p. 117), has been targeted by different critics arguing that his deterministic pessimism does not allow for a coherent explanation of social change and agency (Fraser, 1981; Hall & Du Gay, 1996). Certeau, who is particularly concerned with the field of everyday life and resistance, is one of them:

[5]

Michel De Certeau Resistance and Everyday Life

MICHEL DE CERTEAU RESISTANCE AND EVERYDAY LIFE

Certeaus The Practice of Everyday Life, is an optimistic rejection of the post-modern fatalism. Similar to Foucault, Certeaus centres his analysis around the practices of everyday life, though reaching fundamentally different conclusions. Certeau is less interested in how power operates, but rather in how people operate in everyday life. Poster argues that Certeaus theory of cultural studies emerges from post-structuralist thinking and indeed Certeau rejects the totalizing categories and positions of closure (Poster, 1992, p. 95) typical for structuralism. Still as many others, Certeau does not shy away from agency. His perception of the subject, however, is not the liberal autonomous individual that only waits to be freed from an outside of domination. Certeau claims that each individual is a locus in which an incoherent [] plurality [] of relational determinations interact (1984, p. XI). In this context Certeau acknowledges Foucaults contribution to the understanding of power structures and he shares Lefebvres critique of rationalized modernity when he acknowledges a cancerous growth of the [state] apparatus (1984, p. 180). Despite this endorsement, Certeau claims that Foucaults analysis is incomplete and he implies that Foucault is himself too impressed by the all penetrating power of the panoptical discourse (Schaub, 2002, p. 3). He asserts that Foucault rejects the minor discourses which have not been successful and which have not turned into practices of social discipline.
What happened to all the other series of procedures that, in their unnoticed itineraries, failed to give rise either to a specific discursive configuration or to a technological systemization? There are many other procedures besides panoptical ones. These might well be looked on as an immense reserve containing the seeds or the traces of alternate developments (Certeau, 1986, p. 188).

In Certeaus view, Foucaults work itself could be one of these other procedures that resists the universality of dominant power structures. Referring to Foucault (and Bourdieu), Certeau in this context writes of the Docta ignorantia [] a cleverness that does not recognize itself as such (Certeau, 1984, p. 56). According to Certeau there is no evidence of the perfect coherence of dominant practices such as the panoptic configuration of life described by Foucault. And it is this indeterminacy that offers the chance of popular resistance to technocratic rationality. Power structures in everyday life might be oppressive, but ultimately they cannot domesticate the spontaneous and creative

[6]

Michel De Certeau Resistance and Everyday Life

energies of the people. In his emphasis on individual creativity, Certeau rejects Foucaults reference to the docile body. The field of consumption and leisure that in Marxist terms symbolizes the domain of passivity and capitalist domination per excellence (Slater, 2008), is turned into a central opportunity for creative resistance: In Certeau, consumption refers to a play of heterogeneity (Poster, 1992, p. 102) by which the weak make use of the strong. People elude the absoluteness of power structures through practices of appropriation in which their creativity is lived out by the individual use of objects not made by them. Consuming is not the passive, alienated activity as predicted in Lefebvres bureaucratic society of controlled consumption (2002, p. 64) or Adornos culture industry (2002). Even though individuals depend on external resources, they can make use of these for their own ends and their particular forms of resistance. Another examples of resistance in everyday life refers to labour practices and the possibilities of la perruque (the wig) which Certeau describes as the worker's own work disguised as work for his employer (1984, p. 25). In that sense, even the secretary's writing a love letter on company time can be understood as a form of resistance to the dominant (capitalist) logic. Certeau labels these practices of resistance as tactics, defined as the calculated action[s] determined by the absence of a proper locus (1984, p. 37). Tactics operate within their dichotomic other which he calls strategies. Strategies are the actions of the powerful which are designed to realize abstract models of order and panoptical control (1984, pp. 28 ff.). Summarizing the above, everyday life itself is the foundational logic of human creative agency and in contrast to Foucault (and again Lefebvre) everyday life is understood as an obstacle to perfected domination. Sheringham (2006, p. 387) concludes that everydayness is what we invent through the way we conduct our activities and the relationship of agency and everyday life can be subsumed in the sense of the title LInvention du Quotidien: We create our own everyday life. Paralleling Foucaults dogma that power is everywhere, Certeaus approach can be summarized as resistance is everywhere. Even though Certeau does not reject the constraints of power structures tous cours, he assigns a fundamental importance to the possibilities of agency in terms of resistance. Resistance refers to the possibility of individual accommodation and activated selfhood (Roberts, 2006, p. 89) in the power structures.

[7]

Certeaus Reaction to Foucault - A Way out of the Postmodern Aporia?

CERTEAUS REACTION TO FOUCAULT - A WAY OUT OF THE POSTMODERN APORIA?

The preceding sections pointed out central differences between Foucaults and Certeaus account of everyday life in the context of agency and determination. In the following, Certeaus reaction to the Foucauldian perspective is critically assessed in the context of a) the relationship between structure and agency and Certeaus understanding of resistance and b) Certeaus approach to subjectivity and human nature. Based on this assessment it is analysed whether his approach offers a way out of the Foucauldian pessimism.

5.1

The Relationship between Structure and Agency and the Possibility of Social Change

One of the fundamental questions associated with the structureagency debate is the reciprocal relationship between the two sides (Giddens, 1979). As it was shown, Certeau emphasizes the role of agency, but at the same time he mentions the existence of certain forms of determination. However, it seems that Certeau says little about the effect of these structures on the individual itself: It is not thanks to the existence of determination but despite of it that individual practices of everyday life develop their own particularities. Certeau almost exclusively deals with the practices of everyday resistance whereas structural impacts are hardly mentioned (Roberts, 2006, p. 87). Certeaus perspective lacks a coherent understanding of power or as Frow (1991, p. 58) puts it, the flow of power is [] all in the one direction and from a singular source. Even though structural conditions determine the possible field of action, unlike in Foucault, the structure itself remains outside the individual (Rothenberg, 2010, p. 77). In a way the simplification of power structures replicates the methodological error Certeau criticizes in Foucault. While he rejects the exclusiveness of power in Foucault, Certeau treats the daily practices as largely in isolation from constitutive power structures. Rather than a nuanced version of socially embedded forms of resistance, Certeau offers a poetics of the oppressed, an essentially aestheticizing strategy (Bennett, 1998, p. 173). His description is the tension between two opposing poles; on one side the individual and the will to resistance, on the other side the dominant power structure - the other - that the individual tries to escape. Resistance and agency are homogenized as every practice that is

[8]

Certeaus Reaction to Foucault - A Way out of the Postmodern Aporia?

directed against the dominant logic of the structure. Complicity or individual actions that consciously or unconsciously strengthen the power structures are left out (Bennett, 1998, p. 188). Agency and resistance are the constitutive counterpart of what Morris (1990, p. 36) calls a unifying myth of common otherness. This polar perspective on structure vs. agency is further exemplified by the dichotomous use of his main concepts such as tactics vs. strategies, identity vs. difference etcetera (Certeau, 1984, p. XIX). In that sense, Certeau goes back to the simplistic dichotomy of structure and agency that Foucault tried to overcome (see McNay, 1996, p. 68). In fact, his position seems not far from the liberal opposition between the repressive structure and a privatized everyday life. Not only that daily practices of resistance are in themselves disconnected from social determination, it seems that they do not generate sociability themselves either: Certeau (1984, pp. 91 ff.) describes the lonely rambler, the diffuse reader and the creative consumer, but all of these figures are loners in their every day practices of resistance. Certeau generates an image of nomadic resistance and in its individual encapsulation, the very nature of agency seems to retreat to the private. The former paragraphs revealed that structural power does not affect the individual in her own resistance, but also vice versa, the practices of resistance themselves are disconnected from any form of totalizing critique of the system (Roberts, 2006, p. 78). Certeaus form of resistance is not only nomadic, but also a-political. Resistance can only exist in relation to its other, which is determination, and in order to keep the creative agency that is so particular for the suppressed, the system must remain the same. Hence, political agency is impossible. Resistance does not imply the revolutionary impetus as in Lefebvre and, whereas in Foucault only total destruction could answer the panoptical horror, Certeaus account for resistance is foremost conservative in character (Kinser, 1992, p. 76). Through acting, remembering or recogniz[ing] the past in the present (Certeau, 1984, p. 4), the subject escapes from the rationalization of modernity (Highmore, 2000, p. 96). Resistance implies an accommodation in the power structures through the impossibility of total determination. The dominated escape [] without leaving (Certeau, 1984, p. XIII). The critique presented here becomes especially relevant with regards to the work of scholars

[9]

Certeaus Reaction to Foucault - A Way out of the Postmodern Aporia?

such as Fiske (2001) who rely on Certeaus approach. The emphasis on everyday practices runs the risk of turning into a perverse romanticism (Silverstone, 1989, p. 84) of subversion and a fetishization of individualized consumption (Bennett, 2005, p. 57). Rojeks criticism (1995, p. 106) that the overemphasis on consumption runs the risk in turning to the stereotypical argument of capitalist entrepreneurs that the market delivers genuine freedom, choice and selfdetermination for consumers in their leisure and consumption activities could at least in parts be returned to Certeau. In this section it was argued that Certeaus approach goes back to a pre-Foucauldian dichotomy of structure and agency and the further analysis revealed that his understanding of resistance tends to be individualistic and a-political in character. In the following the assessment focuses on Certeaus approach to subjectivity.

5.2

Transcendentalism and Anti-Theory

Whereas in Foucault, resistance itself is an inherent part of the power structures, Certeau argues that resistance is intrinsically opposed to domination. However, it remains dubious where this resistance comes from and in how far the individual recognizes her practices as subversive tactics. When assuming with Ortner (2005, p. 34) that subjectivity is the basis of agency and therefore resistance, it seems odd that Certeau does not generate a theoretical account of subjectivity. Rather, he lets the practice stand for itself. In contrast to the Foucauldian merge of power structures and subjectivity, it was shown above that Certeaus antidiscipline (1984, p. XV) presumes that the structure itself remains outside the individual. Subjectivity, agency and resistance seem to be rooted in a fundamental human nature. Rejecting the ultimate victory of Foucauldian determination, Certeau suggests that there is something essentially human that cannot be conquered. If resistance is fundamentally rooted in a universal human spirit, the argument can be developed further: Certeau suggests that the exercise of this resistance in the practices of everyday life is the realization of human nature. The meaningfulness of human existence comes from action itself and resistance to power becomes a process of self-realization and emancipation. The transcendental universality of a human spirit points to an underlying essentialism in Certeaus work and it seems that Certeaus resistance in everyday life can only be thought of before the background of a theological horizon (Ward, 1996, p. 520). Rather than

[10]

Certeaus Reaction to Foucault - A Way out of the Postmodern Aporia?

theory, Certeaus approach is better described as anti-theory (Geldorf, 2007, p. 116) or theology (Mitchell, 2007, p. 91). Mitchell consequently concludes that in Certeau the act of resistance must be seen as a sort of divine redemption. In this and the former section it was argued that even though Certeau is often associated with post-structuralist thought, his perspective on the structure-agency debate goes back to two central pre-Foucauldian positions. Certeaus work reveals a) a simplifying dichotomy between structure and agency, including an understanding of resistance that offers little space for social change and b), an essentialist understanding of human nature from which the possibility of agency is derived. The following section goes back to the Foucauldian perspective.

5.3

Everyday Life Structural Determinism or Creative Agency?

In the last section it was argued that Certeaus re-assessment of Foucault goes back to an essentially pre-Foucauldian position and that it does not consider social change. In that sense, Certeau does not overcome the post-modern pessimism associated with Foucaults seeming denial of agency. What does this imply for the underlying question whether everyday life is best understood in terms of agency or determination? Certeaus project appears like a flip-over of the line drawn from Nietzsche (1882 [2001]) (God is dead) to Foucault (The death of the subject): But do we need Certeaus theological horizon to reinvent man and if not, what does Certeaus approach offer? A look at the publication date of The Practice of Everyday Life hints to a new perspective: Certeau wrote his book in the late 1970s and published it in 1980. His critique of Foucault is therefore based on Foucaults earlier work and does not regard, what is now known as Foucaults Return of the Subject (Dews, 1989). Foucaults later focus on the Ethic of the care for the self (Foucault, 1987) enables a re-reading of his oeuvre that allows assigning a less marginal role of agency and rejecting the anti-subjective hypothesis that is at least implicitly present in Certeaus critique. Allen (2000) argues that there has never been a death of the subject in Foucault at all. Rather than a revision of his earlier emphasis on discourse and power, the later emphasis on the self can be seen as the logical step in Foucaults genealogy of the subject. Foucault himself claims that his objective [] has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects (Foucault, 1983, p. 208).

[11]

Certeaus Reaction to Foucault - A Way out of the Postmodern Aporia?

Rather than a rejection of the subject, Foucaults work is an account of the construction of the subject and contemporary subjectivity (Kelly, 2008, p. 78) in its specific historical and cultural contexts. Subjectivity is not impossible, but the product of specific relations of power. Rather than essentially human, this perspective suggest that we must come to see us as assembled selves (Rose, 1997) without an essential interiority, but with multiple constitutive linkages to the structures around us (see Lukes, 2005, p. 96). These practices make possible a way of setting up and developing relationships [] for self-reflection, self-knowledge, selfexamination, for the deciphering of the self by oneself, for the transformation one seeks to accomplish with oneself as object (Foucault, 1985, p. 29). Further developing this argument, agency and also resistance exist in the sense that they become a strategic instrument of power and a practice of self-government. There is agency, but becoming a choosing self becomes a strategy of governmentality (Rose, 1999; Simons, 1995, p. 82). Foucault does not deny agency and the possibility of resistance; he only claims that they do not emerge out of human nature but out of power structures. He rejects the transcendality of the (essentialized) subject and the oppositional nature of structure and agency that is reintroduced by Certeau. A Foucauldian approach provides insight into how theories like liberalism as a form of governmentality came to construct the subject as free (Rose, 1997) and in the same vein one could retrace Certeaus perception of the transcendental human essence to specific historical constellations of (theological) thought. In the last paragraphs it was shown that the Foucauldian perspective is not as pessimistic as Certeaus critique suggests. However, even though the subject is not dead, even in his later work the account of critical agency and everyday forms of resistance is not very elaborate (Allen, 2000, p. 127). When leaving aside Certeaus theological assumptions and when rather concentrating on his narrative of praxis, his nuanced view of the micro-practices of everyday life might serve as a useful contribution to Foucaults perspective of microphysics of power and subjectivity. Using the Foucauldian framework for an elaboration of the background conditions of possibility of subjectivity (Allen, 2000, p. 127), synchronizing Foucaults theory and Certeaus practice of resistance seems possible on the background of a more optimistic re-reading of Foucault. It remains doubtful, however, whether such an approach would provide a coherent perspective on the more general question of social change, given that neither Certeau nor Foucault has much to
[12]

Conclusion

offer in this regard.

CONCLUSION

In this essay I tried to provide a hint towards to the structureagency debate in social science by comparing Foucault and Certeaus understanding of everyday life and assessing Certeaus reaction to Foucault. In Foucault everyday life is the site of power structures penetrating the daily practices and the subject itself. The structural impact however is not the one-dimensional determination of Marxism, but a complex interplay of multiple power relations. Certeau gives a more optimistic account, arguing that everyday life is the intrinsic site of human agency. In Certeau, the impossibility of complete determination opens the space for creative forms of everyday resistance. I further argued that Certeau does not provide a way out of the Foucauldian pessimism in that he goes back to two pre-Foucauldian positions: a) A diametrical opposition of structure and agency and b) a transcendental account of human essence. Nevertheless, Certeaus detailed account of the daily practices of resistance could be useful in a more optimist re-reading of Foucault based on his later works. Is everyday life best understood in terms of creative agency or structural determination? From the perspective presented here, everyday life is neither the site of agency nor the site of determination. With the later Foucault I argue that agency is seen as the socially constructed capacity to act and resist. He shows that power and agency go together in the sense that the construction of agency in everyday life is part of the power structures. In a Foucauldian reading, however, the question is misplaced. Firstly, Foucault would reject the question on a meta-theoretical level, arguing that there is inherently no basis other than power for resolving conflict among theories (Calhoun, 1994, p. 187). Secondly, not one or the other, agency is a constitutive part of power structures. The question is not whether there is agency in everyday life, but rather how everyday life has come to be seen as a central site of agency.

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References

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