>How shall I understand the relationship betwenn those two saying. Are
>they contradictory or not..
I don't think they are contradictory; in tracing the body 'totally
imprinted by history' Foucault is not saying at the same time that that
same body cannot resist that imprinting, or that that imprinting does not
give birth to certain specific means of resistence, appropriate to its own
intervention. All he seems to be suggesting in the second citation is that
for him, genealogy should take the body, and not 'class', or perhaps even
'society', as its point of departure. The first citation is simply an
articulation of his theory of power, and its distinction from domination;
that power exists only where a certain space of freedom exists, and that
any intervention by power produces new possibilities, new openings for
resistence and counter-strategy. This does not say that such
counter-forces are inevitably articulated. They are immanent, and follow
the intervention by power. Genealogy is well suited to facilitating them,
however, as it focuses on the body, which is - for Foucault and others -
the point of application for power.
>they contradictory or not..
I don't think they are contradictory; in tracing the body 'totally
imprinted by history' Foucault is not saying at the same time that that
same body cannot resist that imprinting, or that that imprinting does not
give birth to certain specific means of resistence, appropriate to its own
intervention. All he seems to be suggesting in the second citation is that
for him, genealogy should take the body, and not 'class', or perhaps even
'society', as its point of departure. The first citation is simply an
articulation of his theory of power, and its distinction from domination;
that power exists only where a certain space of freedom exists, and that
any intervention by power produces new possibilities, new openings for
resistence and counter-strategy. This does not say that such
counter-forces are inevitably articulated. They are immanent, and follow
the intervention by power. Genealogy is well suited to facilitating them,
however, as it focuses on the body, which is - for Foucault and others -
the point of application for power.