Ross,
I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Surely, for Foucault, power is an effect of individuation, not
vice-versa. i don't mean to make this a causal relationship, but it isn't a functional one, either, which I think your
post makes it out to be, as does the later response in this thread, referring to the functionalism of globalisation.
Your post makes a strategic, intentional formulation of power, as something deployed *in order to* oppress. This
would only 'blow away' a functionalist Marxist conception of class struggle, though, to replace it with another
variety of functionalism: if power precedes practices such as individuation, then it must lie somewhere 'beyond'
-perhaps in 'the system'. But wherever its located, if not in actual practices (including discursive formations), the
practices must be functional *for* power relations.
In Marxism, power is explored critically in the sense in which I think you mean it in the work of Lukacs, where the
bourgeois ideology of individualism operates to pit members of the proletariat against each other individually and
as fractions while at the same time ideologically disarming it as a collective. However, this isn't an intentional
strategy of the bourgeoisie, who also believe this ideology as an absolute truth. All they want everyone else to do
is to conform to it, to this rational picture of the world as it is real for them. Because of their class condition, the
bourgeoisie cannot break outof their ideological worldview, but the proletariat, at least in theory, could develop a
very different picture of society, though they would have to go through a profound 'ideological crisis' to reach a
consciousness that would realise its latent power as a class for itself. For Lukacs, the *practice* of collective
struggle cannot be divorced from this proces of becoming conscious, and the whole scenario of collective
practices depends upon the realisation of *real* as opposed to apparent interests. Your posting suggests that you,
too, hold to such latent, real interests, which could be realised but for 'power'.
For Lukacs power inhered in the social totality, which hadn't been reduced to the economic dimension by *Marx*,
but by bourgeouis reification, in which the relationships between men came to appear as relations between things,
and the totality became 'rationally' divided up into seperate, functional spheres. That seems pretty different to me
to the version of Marxism that you imply.
Where Foucault would differ, I think, is that he'd argue that *all* categorisations constitute power, which severely
problematises the humanist prospect of a liberation from domination. Since there would always be categories,
distinctions, constructions of difference and their discursive deployment, so there would always be power, and its
difficult to see how there could be power without domination, though it wouldn't be 'functional'.
In this , Foucault is like Lukacs old tutor, Max Weber - but not the one that functionalists read!
MikeD.
I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Surely, for Foucault, power is an effect of individuation, not
vice-versa. i don't mean to make this a causal relationship, but it isn't a functional one, either, which I think your
post makes it out to be, as does the later response in this thread, referring to the functionalism of globalisation.
Your post makes a strategic, intentional formulation of power, as something deployed *in order to* oppress. This
would only 'blow away' a functionalist Marxist conception of class struggle, though, to replace it with another
variety of functionalism: if power precedes practices such as individuation, then it must lie somewhere 'beyond'
-perhaps in 'the system'. But wherever its located, if not in actual practices (including discursive formations), the
practices must be functional *for* power relations.
In Marxism, power is explored critically in the sense in which I think you mean it in the work of Lukacs, where the
bourgeois ideology of individualism operates to pit members of the proletariat against each other individually and
as fractions while at the same time ideologically disarming it as a collective. However, this isn't an intentional
strategy of the bourgeoisie, who also believe this ideology as an absolute truth. All they want everyone else to do
is to conform to it, to this rational picture of the world as it is real for them. Because of their class condition, the
bourgeoisie cannot break outof their ideological worldview, but the proletariat, at least in theory, could develop a
very different picture of society, though they would have to go through a profound 'ideological crisis' to reach a
consciousness that would realise its latent power as a class for itself. For Lukacs, the *practice* of collective
struggle cannot be divorced from this proces of becoming conscious, and the whole scenario of collective
practices depends upon the realisation of *real* as opposed to apparent interests. Your posting suggests that you,
too, hold to such latent, real interests, which could be realised but for 'power'.
For Lukacs power inhered in the social totality, which hadn't been reduced to the economic dimension by *Marx*,
but by bourgeouis reification, in which the relationships between men came to appear as relations between things,
and the totality became 'rationally' divided up into seperate, functional spheres. That seems pretty different to me
to the version of Marxism that you imply.
Where Foucault would differ, I think, is that he'd argue that *all* categorisations constitute power, which severely
problematises the humanist prospect of a liberation from domination. Since there would always be categories,
distinctions, constructions of difference and their discursive deployment, so there would always be power, and its
difficult to see how there could be power without domination, though it wouldn't be 'functional'.
In this , Foucault is like Lukacs old tutor, Max Weber - but not the one that functionalists read!
MikeD.