On Sun, 17 May 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Well that darkness makes all the difference, doesn't it? Why does an
> apparently decentralized decision making process contribute to an extremely
> hierarchal, centralized kind of power? Examining that kind of power might
> reveal just how particular individuals and social formations maintain power
> over time - the relations of the capillary structures that Foucaultians are
> so obsessed with with the larger vessels and central organ that also
> constitute the circulatory system.
I'm not sure what's to examine--isn't it obvious? Isn't it obvious how
the apparati of subjectivation produce the good worker-consumers who keep
capitalism afloat? Isn't it obvious how economistic micro-relationships
sustain economistic macro-relationships? What good would it do to *study*
the relationships between micro- and macro-relationships? (These
questions are not entirely rhetorical; maybe it would do some good.)
I don't think Foucault is oblivious to "the larger vessels and central
organ". Consider this, from the first volume of The History of Sexuality:
"Are there no great radical ruptures, massive binary divisions, then?
Occasionally, yes. But more often one is dealing with mobile and
transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in a society that
shift about, fracturing unities and effecting regroupings, furrowing
across individuals themselves, cutting them up and remolding them.... Just
as the network of power relations ends by forming a dense web that passes
through appartuses and institutions, without being exactly localized in
them, so too the swarm of points of resistance traverses social
stratifications and individual unities. And it is doubtless the strategic
codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution
possible, somewhat similar to the way in which the state relies on the
institutional integration of power relationships." (p. 96)
What is implied here is not that we ought to forget about the macro and
concentrate solely on the micro (or, in Deleuze & Guattari's lingo--and I
think their and Foucault's positions are very similar here-"W3Btvn-forget
the
"molar" in favour of the "molecular"), but that you can't really change
anything at the macro level if you don't change things at the micro level.
In several interviews, Foucault makes this point about the Russian
Revolution.
> Well that darkness makes all the difference, doesn't it? Why does an
> apparently decentralized decision making process contribute to an extremely
> hierarchal, centralized kind of power? Examining that kind of power might
> reveal just how particular individuals and social formations maintain power
> over time - the relations of the capillary structures that Foucaultians are
> so obsessed with with the larger vessels and central organ that also
> constitute the circulatory system.
I'm not sure what's to examine--isn't it obvious? Isn't it obvious how
the apparati of subjectivation produce the good worker-consumers who keep
capitalism afloat? Isn't it obvious how economistic micro-relationships
sustain economistic macro-relationships? What good would it do to *study*
the relationships between micro- and macro-relationships? (These
questions are not entirely rhetorical; maybe it would do some good.)
I don't think Foucault is oblivious to "the larger vessels and central
organ". Consider this, from the first volume of The History of Sexuality:
"Are there no great radical ruptures, massive binary divisions, then?
Occasionally, yes. But more often one is dealing with mobile and
transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in a society that
shift about, fracturing unities and effecting regroupings, furrowing
across individuals themselves, cutting them up and remolding them.... Just
as the network of power relations ends by forming a dense web that passes
through appartuses and institutions, without being exactly localized in
them, so too the swarm of points of resistance traverses social
stratifications and individual unities. And it is doubtless the strategic
codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution
possible, somewhat similar to the way in which the state relies on the
institutional integration of power relationships." (p. 96)
What is implied here is not that we ought to forget about the macro and
concentrate solely on the micro (or, in Deleuze & Guattari's lingo--and I
think their and Foucault's positions are very similar here-"W3Btvn-forget
the
"molar" in favour of the "molecular"), but that you can't really change
anything at the macro level if you don't change things at the micro level.
In several interviews, Foucault makes this point about the Russian
Revolution.