On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, John Ransom, quoting Michel Foucault, wrote:
> from _DP_, pp. 29-30
>
> If the surplus power possessed by the king gives rise to the duplication
> of his body, has not the surplus power exercised on the subjected body of
> the condemned man given rise to another type of duplication?
As Foucault explains just before this passage, Kantorowitz's excellent
work on the "King's Bodies" showed that kinds were conceived to be
possessed of two bodies, the one he walks around in and the one that
exceeds, succeeds, and overcomes him in the name of the realm.
A similar doubling is taking place among the condemned.
So is he saying that the condemned man and the king mirror each other?
That something like the same processes produced the two kinds of
doublings?
> That of a
> 'non-corporal', a 'soul', as Mably called it. The history of this
> 'micro-physics' of the punitive power would then be a genealogy . . . of
> the modern 'soul'. Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated
> remnants of an ideology, one would see it as the present correlative of a
> certain technology of power over the body. It would be wrong to say that
> the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it
> exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within
> the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished
> -- and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and
> corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school, the colonized, over
> those who are stuck at a machine and supervised for the rest of their
> lives.
A number of things have always struck me about the above passage. There
doesn't seem to be much of a tongue in Foucault's cheek when he claims it
would be wrong to argue that the soul is an illusion or merely ideological
effect. For whom is the soul an illusion? Feuerbach? Hegel? Marx?
> This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul
> represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to
> punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision
> and constraint.
A soul, then, with its feet planted firmly in the world where its being is
produced out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint.
But what is this soul? What similarities does it have, if any, to our
usual conception of it? What function does it play in our economy?
> This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance;
I wonder if anyone else is struck by Foucault's insistence on the
*reality* of the soul.
> it is the
> element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power
> and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which
> the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and
> knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this
> reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of
> analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness,
> etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the
> moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not
> that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or
> technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of
> the theologians.
So it's not that silly theologians ran around talking about the soul who
were then replaced by sober sociologists who talk about the "real man."
Rather, the soul is still there.
> The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is
> already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than
> himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is
> itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The
> soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the
> prison of the body.
>
Anyone have any insights on what, precisely, this real soul that acts as
the prison of the body looks like?
Is F claiming that the soul is created by disciplines? Techniques of
punishment and correction? What kind of non-theological but real soul is
this?
--John
> from _DP_, pp. 29-30
>
> If the surplus power possessed by the king gives rise to the duplication
> of his body, has not the surplus power exercised on the subjected body of
> the condemned man given rise to another type of duplication?
As Foucault explains just before this passage, Kantorowitz's excellent
work on the "King's Bodies" showed that kinds were conceived to be
possessed of two bodies, the one he walks around in and the one that
exceeds, succeeds, and overcomes him in the name of the realm.
A similar doubling is taking place among the condemned.
So is he saying that the condemned man and the king mirror each other?
That something like the same processes produced the two kinds of
doublings?
> That of a
> 'non-corporal', a 'soul', as Mably called it. The history of this
> 'micro-physics' of the punitive power would then be a genealogy . . . of
> the modern 'soul'. Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated
> remnants of an ideology, one would see it as the present correlative of a
> certain technology of power over the body. It would be wrong to say that
> the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it
> exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within
> the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished
> -- and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and
> corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school, the colonized, over
> those who are stuck at a machine and supervised for the rest of their
> lives.
A number of things have always struck me about the above passage. There
doesn't seem to be much of a tongue in Foucault's cheek when he claims it
would be wrong to argue that the soul is an illusion or merely ideological
effect. For whom is the soul an illusion? Feuerbach? Hegel? Marx?
> This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul
> represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to
> punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision
> and constraint.
A soul, then, with its feet planted firmly in the world where its being is
produced out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint.
But what is this soul? What similarities does it have, if any, to our
usual conception of it? What function does it play in our economy?
> This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance;
I wonder if anyone else is struck by Foucault's insistence on the
*reality* of the soul.
> it is the
> element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power
> and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which
> the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and
> knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this
> reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of
> analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness,
> etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the
> moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not
> that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or
> technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of
> the theologians.
So it's not that silly theologians ran around talking about the soul who
were then replaced by sober sociologists who talk about the "real man."
Rather, the soul is still there.
> The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is
> already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than
> himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is
> itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The
> soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the
> prison of the body.
>
Anyone have any insights on what, precisely, this real soul that acts as
the prison of the body looks like?
Is F claiming that the soul is created by disciplines? Techniques of
punishment and correction? What kind of non-theological but real soul is
this?
--John