> from _DP_, pp. 29-30
>
> 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 . . .
> 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.
The basic Young Hegelian criticism of the soul, perhaps represented best
by Max Stirner, is that it represents a division between humans as they
actually live their lives and what they truly or essentially are. A
division is created between what we *do* and what we *are*; between
"being" and "essence." From a critical standpoint, what does one do about
this split? Feuerbach and Marx argued that we needed to reabsorb our
essence into our being. We should stop projecting our human powers out
onto non-existent, idealized realms like heaven, the soul, or the state.
Stirner was suspicious of this solution: whether realized or ideal, the
human "essence" (species-being, etc.) was still an abstraction that
tyranized over existing individuals.
Maybe F's point is that the soul has, as it were, descended from heaven to
become a tool of normalizing powers. Instead of the actual and fallen
individual being compared to a heavenly and perfect soul, the actual
individual is compared to norms of productivity, quickness, absorption of
lessons, responses to treatment, and so on. The result is still a split,
however, between a certain kind of "is" and a certain kind of "ought" --
just not the same kind of is/ought split Western thought is used to.
> This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance;
> 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.
> 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.
>
And should this body be freed from the prison of the soul? Or is the word
"prison" being used in a purely descriptive rather than critical sense?
--John