Comme politologue, c'est la question du pouvoir qui m'a amene a
m'interesser a Foucault. Je suis donc heureux que cet aspect fasse
surface dans le forum. Foucault n'a jamais presente sa matiere de facon
systematique, et son etude du pouvoir n'a jamais ete veritablement
achevee puisque, comme il l'ecrivait:
"[Le but de mon travail ces vingt dernieres annes] n'a pas ete d'analyser
les phenomenes de pouvoir ni de jeter les bases d'une telle analyse. J'ai
cherche plutot a produire une histoire des differents modes de
subjectivation de l'etre humain dans notre culture [...]" (Dits et Ecrits
#306)
Pour ces raisons, il est difficile de vouloir presenter LA bonne
interpretation de l'analytique du pouvoir, qui reste largement inachevee
(voir Merquior: 1986). Il y a une joute interpretative entre ceux qui
opposent dispositifs foucaldiens de pouvoir et theorie marxiste (Gordon:
1980), et ceux qui n'y voient qu'un ajout utile a Marx (Smart: 1983). A
moins que Foucault n'ait fonde une theorie politique totalement autonome,
comme le pretend Sheridan?
Dans ce debat, je ne peut m'inserer qu'avec modestie, en discutant les
trois propositions de Joe sur les similitudes entre Marx et Foucault.
1.Lorsque Foucault parle de l'aspect "economique" de la discipline, ce
n'est pas pour les assimiler a des infrastructures marxistes liees aux
rapport de production. Le pouvoir disciplinaire est peut-etre: "l'un des
instruments fondamentaux de la mise en place du capitalisme industriel"
(D&E #194, p.186) et permet de reconduire la domination de classe, mais il a
une logique propre, irreductible. Dans une question rhetorique il demande
d'ailleurs:
"[...] Si le pouvoir est bien en lui-meme mise en jeu et deploiement d'un
rapport de forces, plutot que de l'analyser en terme de cession, contrat,
alienation [analyse liberale], au lieu de l'analyser en terme fonctionels
de reconduction de rapports de production, ne faut-il pas l'analyser
d'abord et avant tout en termes de combat, d'affrontement ou de guerre?"
(D&E #193, p.171)
Le pouvoir disciplinaire n'est donc pas economique au sens marxiste, mais
economique dans le sens d'econome, d'efficicacite a peu de frais.
2. Je suis d'accord sur le deuxieme point de Joe: le corps n'est pas
seulement assujetti, il fait aussi l'objet d'une extraction (signes ou
plus-value) qui renforce le pouvoir. Signalons toutefois que
l'assujettissement ne doit pas etre confondu avec la repression: il
comporte des aspects createurs, positifs, pluisqu'il favorise l'apparition
du sujet, de l'individualite, et qu'il menage des espace de liberte et de
resistance.
3. Je ne crois pas que l'on puisse assimiler les technologies de pouvoir
a des forces de production, ppour les raisons cites au §1.
Puisse ce debat continuer!
Au plaisir!
Alexandre BRASSARD DESJARDINS
Universite Laval
Departement de science politique
Quebec, CANADA
On Tue, 2 Apr 1996, Joe Cronin wrote:
> On Useful and Docile Bodies...
>
> I too am interested in teh same question you are, but I
> happen to read Foucault's anlytic of power relations in D&P
> as being consistent with Marx's own claims about the body as
> the site of the investments of power/knowledges. Though I
> won't go into gret detail as yet, there are three claims
> that Foucault makes in D&P which coincide with a Marxian
> analysis (I"m not going to say much about Western Marxism,
> but Barry Smart, Mark Poster, Abdul janmohamed and others
> have linked Foucault with figures such as Lukacs and
> Gramsci, and of course the link with Althusser runs
> throughout Focuault's work).
> The first claim is that what characterizes modern discursive
> practices found in the disciplines is an "economistic
> rationality". Bentham's reforms are targeted not at humane
> reforms, but at a new economy of hte power to punish. This
> rationality is fairly pervasive; one can speak of teh
> economy of rights, the economy of technologies - especially
> human technologies and "semio-techniques," ansd so on. The
> economistic rationality is a feature of modern society. If
> we throw out the base-superstructure reading of Marx, and
> there's lots of reason to do so in a number of his texts,
> principally in The German Ideology and the Grundrisse, we
> can find support fro the calim that what characterizes
> modern societies is that all socail relations are
> "economistic" - that is to say, that an economic rationality
> lies at the heart of theri functioning.
> The second claim, which you hit upon in your analysis, is
> that the body is not only a subjugated body, but it is
> productive. What the body produces are a number of
> sign-effects, which are taken up, "colonized," appropriated,
> and distributed to other discplines. One can thus speak of
> a politcal economy of the sign. Marx, from the Economic and
> Philsophical Manuscripts onward, is a materialist, as is
> well known, but he is also an eliminativist in the same way
> Focuault is. The body is the site of power realtions in any
> society (i.e. The King's body and the representative form of
> power relations, and the disciplinary subject are both
> productive of signs). Modern soceities, according to Marx,
> are not only organized around the systematic extraction of
> surplus value from labour, but th very body of the labourer
> is "marked trained and tortured" in the process of
> production. The "surplus effects" of Foucault's
> disciplined, or dociloe bodies are systematically extracted
> from those bodies. And just as Marx held that the more
> value a labourer produces, the greater the power which
> subjugates him is (i.e. the apitalist accumlates surplus
> value, and in turn reinvests it into a greater alien power -
> capital, machinery, etc. - all of which is expropriated from
> labour), so in Foucault's case, the more sign-effects the
> body produces, the greater the power/knowledge mechanism
> which extracts those effects.
> The third relation is that in Foucault's case, teh
> 'micro-physics of power' operate through the "politcal
> technologies of the body." throughout Focuautl's later work
> - I suppose you could say from D&P onward, though the first
> indications are founs in Madness & Civ., he is interested in
> technologies of the body; techniques of confinement, the
> confessional as a technique, the examination, quaranting
> patients, the techniques of the pastoral (in the later
> volumes of HS), etc.
> As "forces of production," these technologies have
> accumlated, though tey are found inside newer and different
> systems. They can be viewed, in modern disciplinary
> societies, as forms of capital. They are used to produce
> and distribute sign-effects, which are taken up and
> colonized or appropriated by newer, and often more general
> strategies.
> So, I agree entirely with what you have to say about
> Foucault and docility/usefulness, etc. But I disagree with
> your reading of Marx. it is true that a purely repressive
> conception of power is found in Freudo-Marxism, but that
> whole enterprise from Reich to Marcuse is a"one-dimensional"
> Marxism. Rusch and Kirchheimer (form what I gather), see
> the disciplines as a necessary supplement ot industrial
> organization. Marx, however, is not an essentialist - the
> base-superstructure model is an oversimplification of his
> views - whcih are actually much more complicated. Some
> Western Marxists, such as Lukacs and Gramsci, read Marx as
> inckluding economic relations inside a more complex social
> totality. In Althusser's case, this totality is
> "decentred." I think it's here that Foucault's work begins.
>
> One last note: please include more commentary on the
> relation between Foucault and Rusch and Kirchheimer if you
> have anything on that.
>
> Joe Cronin
>
>