Comrades:
I've recently finished a short essay on Foucault and the production
paradigm. Comparing Discipline and Punish with Ruche and Kircheimer's
"PUnishement and Social Stucture" (1931?), I've focused on the discipline
of the body, not just in penal and institutional arrangements, but in
productive relations, as the cite of the coercive normalization of of
bodies and subjects.
I want to ask: Is Foucault's history of the modernization of the west
really so different from a Marxist or Western Marxist history of the
evolution of productive relations?
The answer is YES, and the reason is in the difference between the
exploitation of the body and the discipline (exercise) of the body. If
anyone wishes to comment on this, here are some paragraphs.
Useful and Docile Bodies
Disciplinary power acts upon bodies in ways that are both coercive and
productive: it restricts bodily movement, it distributes bodies according
to strict spatial and temporal arrangements and subjects them to continuous
and rigorous examination. At the same time it induces individuals to take
upon themselves the task of their own functional integration into such
disciplinary schemes. Thus the disciplinary subject reproduces the
coercive practice upon himself. He "...inscribes in himself the power
relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the
principle of his own subjection". (202-203) Throughout this process,
productive relations become an important site for such subjectivizing
effects. The utility of the body and its functional integration into
productive schemes is important in establishing the body within a network
of normatively regulated patterns. (211). Foucault writes:
... the body is also directly involved in a political field; power
relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train
it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit
signs. This political investment of the body is bound up, in accordance
with complex reciprocal relations, with its economic use; it is largely as
a force of production that the body is invested with relations of power and
domination; but on the other hand, its constitution as labor power is
possible only if it is caught up in a system of subjection (in which need
is also a political instrument meticulously prepared, calculated and used);
the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a
subjected body. (25-26)
Foucault's use of a Marxian rhetoric of productive processes at times
makes it appear as if modern forms of control conceal an underlying
relation of exploitation. The inscription of usefulness onto the body and
the appropriation of that usefulness through economic exploitation are
somewhat linked, though clearly separable into distinct moments. In short,
on the level of formal juridical power and wage labor, the utility of the
body is exploited, while on the level of disciplinary control, it is
regulated and exercised. Economic exploitation has in mind the goal of
accumulation: exercise is ongoing, endless, and therapeutic. Therefore,
Foucault asks us to consider the history of economic development in
conjunction with the history of these other forms and techniques of
regulation which, in the school, the hospital the military and the prison
exercise and regulate the body. Foucault writes: "At the emergence of
large-scale industry, one finds, beneath the division of the production
process, the individualizing fragmentation of labor power..." (145), and
elsewhere "...behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the
meticulous, concrete training of useful forces". As production
co-ordinates activity it regulates and exercises the bodies of workers.
This difference is fundamental to understanding the part played by
productive relations in Foucault's theory of power, and on a more general
level his relationship to Western Marxism. (217)
I've recently finished a short essay on Foucault and the production
paradigm. Comparing Discipline and Punish with Ruche and Kircheimer's
"PUnishement and Social Stucture" (1931?), I've focused on the discipline
of the body, not just in penal and institutional arrangements, but in
productive relations, as the cite of the coercive normalization of of
bodies and subjects.
I want to ask: Is Foucault's history of the modernization of the west
really so different from a Marxist or Western Marxist history of the
evolution of productive relations?
The answer is YES, and the reason is in the difference between the
exploitation of the body and the discipline (exercise) of the body. If
anyone wishes to comment on this, here are some paragraphs.
Useful and Docile Bodies
Disciplinary power acts upon bodies in ways that are both coercive and
productive: it restricts bodily movement, it distributes bodies according
to strict spatial and temporal arrangements and subjects them to continuous
and rigorous examination. At the same time it induces individuals to take
upon themselves the task of their own functional integration into such
disciplinary schemes. Thus the disciplinary subject reproduces the
coercive practice upon himself. He "...inscribes in himself the power
relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the
principle of his own subjection". (202-203) Throughout this process,
productive relations become an important site for such subjectivizing
effects. The utility of the body and its functional integration into
productive schemes is important in establishing the body within a network
of normatively regulated patterns. (211). Foucault writes:
... the body is also directly involved in a political field; power
relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train
it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit
signs. This political investment of the body is bound up, in accordance
with complex reciprocal relations, with its economic use; it is largely as
a force of production that the body is invested with relations of power and
domination; but on the other hand, its constitution as labor power is
possible only if it is caught up in a system of subjection (in which need
is also a political instrument meticulously prepared, calculated and used);
the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a
subjected body. (25-26)
Foucault's use of a Marxian rhetoric of productive processes at times
makes it appear as if modern forms of control conceal an underlying
relation of exploitation. The inscription of usefulness onto the body and
the appropriation of that usefulness through economic exploitation are
somewhat linked, though clearly separable into distinct moments. In short,
on the level of formal juridical power and wage labor, the utility of the
body is exploited, while on the level of disciplinary control, it is
regulated and exercised. Economic exploitation has in mind the goal of
accumulation: exercise is ongoing, endless, and therapeutic. Therefore,
Foucault asks us to consider the history of economic development in
conjunction with the history of these other forms and techniques of
regulation which, in the school, the hospital the military and the prison
exercise and regulate the body. Foucault writes: "At the emergence of
large-scale industry, one finds, beneath the division of the production
process, the individualizing fragmentation of labor power..." (145), and
elsewhere "...behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the
meticulous, concrete training of useful forces". As production
co-ordinates activity it regulates and exercises the bodies of workers.
This difference is fundamental to understanding the part played by
productive relations in Foucault's theory of power, and on a more general
level his relationship to Western Marxism. (217)