Glen is correct: that is the note that I was referring to. What I take
to be suspect in the note and in the "Desire and Pleasure" essay is
Deleuze's (and Guattari's) suggestion that resistance takes the form of
an opposition to power and that, as a consequence, Foucault has failed
to reach a more 'fundamental' (for lack of a better term) level of lines
of flight that operate not by opposition but absolute
deterritorialization. The "Many Politics" essay is another place where
this distinction is set up -- molar segments vs. a microscopic or
molecular level of power and resistance vs. a more fundamental molecular
level of desiring lines of flight -- although Foucault is not mentioned
here.
Without going too deeply into the matter, I think it is just nonsense to
say that Foucault relates power and resistance in such a fashion,
despite, admittedly, some examples in his corpus where he seems to do
this. More important, I think, is the idea of resistance as "adversary,
target, support, or handle in power relations" and as "the odd term in
relations of power" (both quotes from the History of Sexuality, Volume
One). Resistance in these passages is essentially a discontinuity
immanent to power relations that structures these relations -- something
akin to the disjunctive synthesis that Deleuze sees as primary and that
he links, in different works, to bodies without organs, lines of flight,
etc. Hence it is useful to read the development of Foucault's ideas on
resistance off of his thesis of dispersion in the Archaeology. For
those of you unfamiliar with some of its technical meanings, dispersion
does not simply mean a scattering of elements in empty space (this is
the meaning Laclau and Mouffe attribute to Foucault), but a mixture of
heterogeneous substances -- i.e., in chemistry, a dispersion is a
mixture of liquid and gas (an aerosol) or two liquids or a solid
suspended in a liquid (mayonnaise, a mixture of egg whites and water, is
a dispersion). It's also particularly useful to read the middle section
of the Archaeology and compare it with Deleuze's Logic of Sense (both
were written around the same time). The former is, in many important
respects, a 30 page abridged version of the latter.
I take the whole desire vs. pleasure debate to be something different.
The conceptions of desire Foucault attacks (desire as the route to the
truth about yourself) are clearly not the same as Deleuze's concept.
When Deleuze raises issues with Foucault's use of pleasure, he seems to
miss the point (bodies and pleasures are elements of current discourses
that, potentially, can be pitted against desire and the connection
modern discourses make between desire and truth; bodies and pleasures
are hardly an appeal to something outside of discourse and power, even
if they can serve as a handle for resistance to certain formations of
power). In many respects Deleuze and Foucault are simply talking past
one another. But, again, as I say, at some point Deleuze stops reading
Foucault this way and the idea that resistance is simply in opposition
to power relations is not to be found in Deleuze's book on Foucault. I
think it has already disappeared by the time he gave the History of the
Present interview.
Nathan
Dr. Nathan Widder
Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
Royal Holloway, University of London
Department of Politics and International Relations
Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
United Kingdom
Web page:
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/politics-and-IR/About-Us/Widder/Index.html
Genealogies of Difference:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/widder.html
-----Original Message-----
From: foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Glen Fuller
Sent: 20 February 2007 18:39
To: Mailing-list
Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] foucault and deleuze
the footnote to which nathan I think might be referring is page 530-1
n39 of
_ATP_ and it is not as simple as opposing power and resistance to lines
of
flight. The pertinent section:
"Our only points of disagreement with Foucault are the following: (1) to
us
the assemblages seem fundamentally to be assemblages not of power but of
desire (desire is always assembled), and power seems to be a stratified
dimension of the assemblage; (2) the diagram and abstract machine have
lines
of flight that are primary, which
are not phenomena of resistance or counterattack in an assemblage, but
cutting edges of creation and deterritorialization."
As Alliez and others have noted 'desiring machines' in _AO_ become
'assemblages' in the terminology of _ATP_. In _AO_ D&G argue that
desiring
machines are defined by how they break down. The 'breaking down' of a
desiring machine I suspect becomes the 'line of flight' in assemblage
speak.
I am speculating here. This is the movement between assemblages or the
creation of new assemblages. To shift registers again, in Whitehead's
terminology an assemblage would be a 'society' (D&G's desire becomes
'prehensions'). Whitehead talks about how a 'society' is defined by how
it
incorporates contingency. The movement of a prehension between societies
(or
the concrescence of a new society) would be a line of flight, not the
contingencies (of desire or prehensions) which a society incorporates
from
its environment and which would involve stratifications of power
(territorializations).
Another way to think about this is in terms of the evental nature of
assemblages, and the event necessarily being of a level involving the
distributions of interest (or '4th person singular', beyond interest,
ala
the battlefield example of _TLoS_, etc). Each distribution of interest
requires a subject position and perspective. Assemblages of desire are
actualisations of prepersonal singularities, but as soon as perspective
is
introduced so then is interest distributed involving relations along
which
power can be realised.
Ciao,
glen.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan Widder" <n.e.widder@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Mailing-list'" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] foucault and deleuze
> You are right to be suspicious: Deleuze's reading here (repeated with
> Guattari in an endnote in A Thousand Plateaus) is quite wrongheaded
and,
> unsurprisingly, it disappears by the time he writes his book on
Foucault.
>
> I don't know the Foucault Live interview, but Foucault says something
> similar (along the lines of power presupposing freedom) in "The Ethic
of
> Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom." You may be interested in
a
> piece I've written in the European Journal of Political Theory (Dec.,
> 2004)
> entitled "Foucault and Power Revisited," which reads the ideas of
power
> and
> resistance off the thesis of dispersion in the Archaeology.
>
> (By the way, Laclau and Mouffe's reading of dispersion in Hegemony and
> Socialist Strategy is also, I think, rather suspect).
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Nathan
>
> Dr. Nathan Widder
> Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
> Royal Holloway, University of London
> Department of Politics and International Relations
> Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
> United Kingdom
> Web page:
> http://www.rhul.ac.uk/politics-and-IR/About-Us/Widder/Index.html
> Genealogies of Difference:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/widder.html
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Sean Saraka
> Sent: 19 February 2007 21:07
> To: 'Mailing-list'
> Subject: [Foucault-L] foucault and deleuze
>
>
> Does anybody out there feel like commenting on the differences between
> Deleuze and Foucault? In particular, I'm interested in the claim
(made by
> Deleuze himself in "Desire and Pleasure"?) that whereas for Foucault
it is
> power that engenders resistance, for Deleuze and Deleuze-Guattari,
lines
> of
> flight are primary.
>
> I've seen this claim repeated in a number of places, primarily in
> Deleuzian
> literature, and I've come across a number of passages in Foucault
recently
> that make it seem a bit tenuous. First of all, my students keep
reciting
> a
> passage from the interview "Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity"
(in
> Foucault Live) back at me, where Foucault says, "[I]f there was no
> resistance, there would be no power relations." Secondly, I just read
the
> second chapter of Archaeology of Knowledge in conjunction with a
rereading
> of Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, where Foucault
> defines the consistency of a discourse in terms of a regularity of
> dispersion.
>
> Both of these points (perhaps the first more than the second) seem to
> suggest to me that the difference between Foucault and Deleuze on this
> issue
> may not be so clear as all that. Any thoughts?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sean
>
> -----
> Sean Saraka, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Political Science
> Mount Allison University
> 144 Main Street
> Sackville, NB E4L 1A7
>
> Phone (506)364-2206
> Fax (506)364-26
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
>
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.441 / Virus Database: 268.18.2/692 - Release Date:
2/18/2007
> 4:35 PM
>
_______________________________________________
Foucault-L mailing list
to be suspect in the note and in the "Desire and Pleasure" essay is
Deleuze's (and Guattari's) suggestion that resistance takes the form of
an opposition to power and that, as a consequence, Foucault has failed
to reach a more 'fundamental' (for lack of a better term) level of lines
of flight that operate not by opposition but absolute
deterritorialization. The "Many Politics" essay is another place where
this distinction is set up -- molar segments vs. a microscopic or
molecular level of power and resistance vs. a more fundamental molecular
level of desiring lines of flight -- although Foucault is not mentioned
here.
Without going too deeply into the matter, I think it is just nonsense to
say that Foucault relates power and resistance in such a fashion,
despite, admittedly, some examples in his corpus where he seems to do
this. More important, I think, is the idea of resistance as "adversary,
target, support, or handle in power relations" and as "the odd term in
relations of power" (both quotes from the History of Sexuality, Volume
One). Resistance in these passages is essentially a discontinuity
immanent to power relations that structures these relations -- something
akin to the disjunctive synthesis that Deleuze sees as primary and that
he links, in different works, to bodies without organs, lines of flight,
etc. Hence it is useful to read the development of Foucault's ideas on
resistance off of his thesis of dispersion in the Archaeology. For
those of you unfamiliar with some of its technical meanings, dispersion
does not simply mean a scattering of elements in empty space (this is
the meaning Laclau and Mouffe attribute to Foucault), but a mixture of
heterogeneous substances -- i.e., in chemistry, a dispersion is a
mixture of liquid and gas (an aerosol) or two liquids or a solid
suspended in a liquid (mayonnaise, a mixture of egg whites and water, is
a dispersion). It's also particularly useful to read the middle section
of the Archaeology and compare it with Deleuze's Logic of Sense (both
were written around the same time). The former is, in many important
respects, a 30 page abridged version of the latter.
I take the whole desire vs. pleasure debate to be something different.
The conceptions of desire Foucault attacks (desire as the route to the
truth about yourself) are clearly not the same as Deleuze's concept.
When Deleuze raises issues with Foucault's use of pleasure, he seems to
miss the point (bodies and pleasures are elements of current discourses
that, potentially, can be pitted against desire and the connection
modern discourses make between desire and truth; bodies and pleasures
are hardly an appeal to something outside of discourse and power, even
if they can serve as a handle for resistance to certain formations of
power). In many respects Deleuze and Foucault are simply talking past
one another. But, again, as I say, at some point Deleuze stops reading
Foucault this way and the idea that resistance is simply in opposition
to power relations is not to be found in Deleuze's book on Foucault. I
think it has already disappeared by the time he gave the History of the
Present interview.
Nathan
Dr. Nathan Widder
Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
Royal Holloway, University of London
Department of Politics and International Relations
Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
United Kingdom
Web page:
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/politics-and-IR/About-Us/Widder/Index.html
Genealogies of Difference:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/widder.html
-----Original Message-----
From: foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Glen Fuller
Sent: 20 February 2007 18:39
To: Mailing-list
Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] foucault and deleuze
the footnote to which nathan I think might be referring is page 530-1
n39 of
_ATP_ and it is not as simple as opposing power and resistance to lines
of
flight. The pertinent section:
"Our only points of disagreement with Foucault are the following: (1) to
us
the assemblages seem fundamentally to be assemblages not of power but of
desire (desire is always assembled), and power seems to be a stratified
dimension of the assemblage; (2) the diagram and abstract machine have
lines
of flight that are primary, which
are not phenomena of resistance or counterattack in an assemblage, but
cutting edges of creation and deterritorialization."
As Alliez and others have noted 'desiring machines' in _AO_ become
'assemblages' in the terminology of _ATP_. In _AO_ D&G argue that
desiring
machines are defined by how they break down. The 'breaking down' of a
desiring machine I suspect becomes the 'line of flight' in assemblage
speak.
I am speculating here. This is the movement between assemblages or the
creation of new assemblages. To shift registers again, in Whitehead's
terminology an assemblage would be a 'society' (D&G's desire becomes
'prehensions'). Whitehead talks about how a 'society' is defined by how
it
incorporates contingency. The movement of a prehension between societies
(or
the concrescence of a new society) would be a line of flight, not the
contingencies (of desire or prehensions) which a society incorporates
from
its environment and which would involve stratifications of power
(territorializations).
Another way to think about this is in terms of the evental nature of
assemblages, and the event necessarily being of a level involving the
distributions of interest (or '4th person singular', beyond interest,
ala
the battlefield example of _TLoS_, etc). Each distribution of interest
requires a subject position and perspective. Assemblages of desire are
actualisations of prepersonal singularities, but as soon as perspective
is
introduced so then is interest distributed involving relations along
which
power can be realised.
Ciao,
glen.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan Widder" <n.e.widder@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Mailing-list'" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] foucault and deleuze
> You are right to be suspicious: Deleuze's reading here (repeated with
> Guattari in an endnote in A Thousand Plateaus) is quite wrongheaded
and,
> unsurprisingly, it disappears by the time he writes his book on
Foucault.
>
> I don't know the Foucault Live interview, but Foucault says something
> similar (along the lines of power presupposing freedom) in "The Ethic
of
> Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom." You may be interested in
a
> piece I've written in the European Journal of Political Theory (Dec.,
> 2004)
> entitled "Foucault and Power Revisited," which reads the ideas of
power
> and
> resistance off the thesis of dispersion in the Archaeology.
>
> (By the way, Laclau and Mouffe's reading of dispersion in Hegemony and
> Socialist Strategy is also, I think, rather suspect).
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Nathan
>
> Dr. Nathan Widder
> Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
> Royal Holloway, University of London
> Department of Politics and International Relations
> Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
> United Kingdom
> Web page:
> http://www.rhul.ac.uk/politics-and-IR/About-Us/Widder/Index.html
> Genealogies of Difference:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/widder.html
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Sean Saraka
> Sent: 19 February 2007 21:07
> To: 'Mailing-list'
> Subject: [Foucault-L] foucault and deleuze
>
>
> Does anybody out there feel like commenting on the differences between
> Deleuze and Foucault? In particular, I'm interested in the claim
(made by
> Deleuze himself in "Desire and Pleasure"?) that whereas for Foucault
it is
> power that engenders resistance, for Deleuze and Deleuze-Guattari,
lines
> of
> flight are primary.
>
> I've seen this claim repeated in a number of places, primarily in
> Deleuzian
> literature, and I've come across a number of passages in Foucault
recently
> that make it seem a bit tenuous. First of all, my students keep
reciting
> a
> passage from the interview "Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity"
(in
> Foucault Live) back at me, where Foucault says, "[I]f there was no
> resistance, there would be no power relations." Secondly, I just read
the
> second chapter of Archaeology of Knowledge in conjunction with a
rereading
> of Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, where Foucault
> defines the consistency of a discourse in terms of a regularity of
> dispersion.
>
> Both of these points (perhaps the first more than the second) seem to
> suggest to me that the difference between Foucault and Deleuze on this
> issue
> may not be so clear as all that. Any thoughts?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sean
>
> -----
> Sean Saraka, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Political Science
> Mount Allison University
> 144 Main Street
> Sackville, NB E4L 1A7
>
> Phone (506)364-2206
> Fax (506)364-26
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
>
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.441 / Virus Database: 268.18.2/692 - Release Date:
2/18/2007
> 4:35 PM
>
_______________________________________________
Foucault-L mailing list