> I appreciate the response, but it seems to miss my question. I certainly
> agree that such a view/charges of cryptonormativity largely miss the point
> and misconstrue Foucault. My question is the one that seems not to be
> asked:
> Why is it that resistance is ever-present? How do we know that wherever
> there is power there is resistance?
>
To put it simply, because power is a micro- or constitutive relation
which connects forces by discontinuity or disjunction, and the consequence
of this relation of disjunction is that large scale formations of power do
not mesh smoothly either internally or with one another. The picture is
similar to Nietzsche's conception of the self, where he portrays a "noise
and struggle of our underworld of utility organs working with and against
one another" (Genealogy, II.1).
One of the consequences of this is that resistance for Foucault is
hardly reducible to the resistance of individuals or groups (i.e.,
"delinquents" or "deviants") to power relations which constitute them as
falling below some threshhold of normality, but is also to be found within
the workings of disciplinary institutions and powers themselves. Two
examples to be found in The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: (1) the exercise
of power to observe and investigate sexual deviance has the effect, by
virtue of the voyeurism and erotic 'hide and seek' games it encourages, of
proliferating rather than controlling sexual desire; (2) the various
institutions such as the family and psychiatric bodies cooperate to monitor
sexuality at home, but also come into conflict when psychiatrists seek to
institutionalize family members. The fact that resistance includes
non-subjective forms of this sort is presumably why Foucault never
unambiguously advocates some sort of resistance politics, even though he was
certainly very active in exposing and contesting various forms of power.
Also, of course, such a resistence politics is also always under threat of
reinstating the very sort of system it tries to oppose.
These are, to be honest, points that Foucault doesn't work out very
explicitly. Deleuze's book on Foucault may be worth a look. It has the
advantage that it doesn't contain the sort of reductive readings that
Deleuze and Guattari had earlier given of Foucaultian power relations.
Nathan
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