Foucault Studies - 7 (2009)

Sverre Raffnsøe, Alan Rosenberg, Alain Beaulieu, Sam Binkley, Jens Erik Kristensen, Sven
Opitz, Chloe Taylor; with Morris Rabinowitz & Ditte Vilstrup Holm 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
Foucault Studies, No 7, pp. 1-6, September 2009
EDITORIAL
Sverre Raffnsøe, Alan Rosenberg, Alain Beaulieu, Sam Binkley, Jens Erik Kristensen,
Sven Opitz, Chloe Taylor; with Morris Rabinowitz & Ditte Vilstrup Holm
We are very pleased to introduce Foucault Studies 7, which is a non-themed issue

with five original articles, two review essays and twelve book reviews. Before
introducing the articles in the issue, we would like to give you an update of the
Editorial plans for the journal’s future.
The journal is steadily consolidating its position. This is manifested by a rising

number of submissions and visits to the journal’s homepage www.foucault-
studies.com, as well as the journal’s inclusion in Ebsco’s Humanities International
Complete worldwide database. It is also apparent from the endorsements we have
received from leading Foucault scholars Colin Gordon, James Bernauer, David
Konstan and Margaret Mclaren. See http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-
studies/about/editorialPolicies#custom0). The administrative stability as well as the
good teamwork of the Editorial Group and with our reviewers secures that
submissions can count on a quick turn-around of reviews, as a rule within 4-8 weeks.
The Editorial Team intends to maintain and develop this position, stability and
solidity in the future while continuing to develop the Journal in collaboration with
our readers. We encourage our readers to become involved with the journal, to offer
feedback and suggestions for improvement and to comment on articles and reviews
through “letters to the editors.” We also invite our readers to suggest suitable topics
for future themed issues along with suitable Guest Editors for such issues. In
addition suggestions for books the journal should review, including older
publications that have been passed over, are very welcome.
Whereas the current issue is a non-themed issue, we have decided that future issues
of Foucault Studies will be themed issues, and we have already planned for several
themed issues in the near future. Starting with the first issue in 2010 on Foucault and
Norbert Elias guest edited by Stefanie Ernst (University of Hamburg, Germany), we
will continue with a special issue on Foucault and Agamben guest edited by Jeffrey
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Raffnsøe, Rosenberg, Beaulieu, Binkley, Kristensen, Opitz, Taylor, Rabinowitz & Holm: Editorial
Bussolini (College of Staten Island, CYNY, USA) for which a CFP has already been
distributed and a special issue on Foucault and Pragmatism guest edited by Colin
Koopman (University of Oregon, USA).
In addition we have a number of special issues under preparation by experts in their

fields. This includes a special issue on Foucault and Accounting to be guest edited
by Peter Miller and Andrea Mennicken (both of London School of Economics, UK) a
special issue on Foucault and Race to be guest edited by Ladelle McWhorter
(University of Richmond, USA) and an issue on Foucault and Queer Theory by Jana
Sawicki (Williams College, USA).
Foucault Studies will however continue to publish articles outside the themed section
of the future issues, allowing for a diversity of good quality and diverse Foucault
studies to be published. We therefore continue to encourage Foucault scholars
within all areas of research to submit articles to Foucault Studies for publication.
On the occasion of the publication of this issue we would like to welcome Chloë
Taylor as a member of the Editorial Team of Foucault Studies. Chloë Taylor is an
Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada, and also author of one of
this issue’s original articles. Because of this contribution to the journal and other
published works, including her new book The Culture of Confession from Augustine to
Foucault. A Genealogy of the 'Confessing Animal' (Routledge, 2008), the journal invited
her to become Co-Editor and she kindly agreed. From this issue onwards, she will
take on the role of Co-Editor.
The current issue of Foucault Studies opens with Mark Kingston’s article “Subversive
Friendships: Foucault on Homosexuality and Social Experimentation.” Claiming that
Foucault’s contribution remains under-appreciated in widely diffused compre-
hensions of friendship in terms of similarity, shared values and social norms, the
author discusses Foucault’s concept of friendship in detail, showing its fit with
wider schemes in Foucault’s work. Foucault’s work on homosexuality and social
experimentation towards the end of his life describes a novel form of friendship.
Since homosexual relationships cannot be derived from existing norms, they are
inherently underdetermined and provide a space for new types of relationships,
based on practices of experimentation. These forms of friendship are founded
neither on similarity nor a shared body of norms, but involve a collaborative
creation of new subjectivities and relations as participants struggle to come to terms
with one another.
Foucault’s concept of friendship has political implications and entails social activism
in two distinct ways. First, it entails a project of localized resistance to social norma-
2
Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 1-6
lization. Second, experimental friendship challenges excessive normalization of

relationships on a societal scale. Foucault’s practical account of friendship stresses its
potential to create and sustain the social at both levels. His account of friendship in
gay culture towards the end of his life deserves more attention, it is argued, since it
parallels not only his interpretation of the Enlightenment as an opportunity to trans-
form society and create a new and better way of life, but also his notion of an aesthe-
tics of existence. However, Foucault’s concept of friendship represents a move from
a solitary aesthetics of existence toward a more collaborative aesthetics of existence.
Chloë Taylor’s article ”Pornographic Confessions? Sex Work and Scientia Sexualis in
Foucault and Linda Williams” discusses the way in which sex work, and porno-
graphy in particular, functions analogously to the sexual sciences in terms of the
normalizing form of power that Foucault describes in The History of Sexuality. The
article sets out with a critique of film scholar Linda Williams’ influential study of
pornography from 1989: Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible.’ In
this study, Williams drew on Foucault’s thinking in arguing for pornography as a
confessional science that participates in the will to know about sex, and she
understood Foucault’s situating of pornography within his discussion of the
perverse implantation to mean that pornography results in a positive proliferation of
fluid sexualities in individual lives.
Against William’s reading of both Foucault and pornography, Chloë Taylor argues
that if pornography and prostitution involve expertise, they are closer to the ars
erotica than to the sexual sciences. Furthermore, she suggests that the mechanism by
which pornography and prostitution participate in the perverse implantation is not
confession but consumption. By focusing on the consumers rather than on what
takes place on screen, she argues, we see the disciplinary function of pornography.
As a result of this, she finally argues, pornography may result in a proliferation of
sexualities at a society-wide level, whereas on an individual level it is constraining
rather than liberating and contributes to the fixing of frozen rather than fluid sexual
identities.
The third article is Dianna Taylor’s article ”Normativity and Normalization.” The
article takes a stand against the common view that Foucault’s work is not normative
and that the idea of normativity is absent from Foucault’s oeuvre. First, Taylor
explains how Foucault’s view of norm and normalisation develops primarily
through his Lectures at Collège de France from 1974 to 1978. Here, Foucault points
out how the norm works as a mode of appearance upon which different forms of
power, e.g. discipline and biopower, are founded and legitimized. The norm plays a
fundamental role in the emergence, circulation and legitimization of modern power
by establishing what is normal and thus naturalizing the exercise of power. The
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norm makes it possible to distinguish normal and abnormal individuals and

populations and serves as a point of orientation for a sanctioning intervention that
ensures or brings about conformity.
Foucault’s view of normativity and normalisation are then contrasted by Habermas’s

view of the norm. Whereas for Foucault the norm plays a key role in the workings of
modern power, according to Habermas the norm belongs to a different realm and
demarcates the limits of power, in so far as we are able to distinguish what is good and
valid from what is not by taking recourse to reason. However, Habermas’s
conceptualization of norms and normativity are not, as he posits, Taylor argues, the
necessary foundations for ethics and politics, but one approach among many. Accepting
his conception of norms and normativity as an inevitable framework therefore produces
normalizing effects and inhibits emancipatory thinking about ethics and politics. For
Foucault, values and principles are not to be considered as grounds founded on reason
but rather effects of a critical engagement with the present.
Anthony Alessandrini’s article on “The Humanism Effect: Fanon, Foucault, and

Ethics without Subjects” argues against a widespread tendency within postcolonial
studies to oppose the work of Foucault and Fanon, in particular by stressing
Foucault’s critique of humanism and Fanon’s proclamation of a new genuine
humanism. What links Foucault and Fanon is more important than their differences.
The most important of these links is their shared critique of the sovereign subject of
humanism. Such a critique provides a way of opposing what both consider a
dangerous nostalgic longing for a lost origin or an essential moment of emergence
towards which history is progressively headed. Instead of regarding the sovereign
and determining subject as a (hidden) homogeneous cause, both treat it and
humanism as an effect. For both, this critique equally paves the way for a shared
strategy of an ethics without subjects. In both cases an “effect of humanization” is of
prime importance, an effect that marks an impossible space of responsibility
between subjects that have not yet come into existence, and which requests an
investigation of a present which is more than the product of an original and
continuous past. This opens up a new ethical relationship between would-be
subjects that have not yet come into being. For postcolonial criticism it implies a
need to get rid of the nostalgia for a form of humanism that would allow for a re-
enfranchisement of individuals subjected to colonial violence in order to give those
who have suffered back their humanity. It even calls into question the very division
between investigator and investigated since both should be considered as subject to
colonialism and its aftermath.
Sophie Fuggle’s article “Excavating Government: Giorgio Agamben’s Archaeological

Dig” looks at Agamben’s engagement with certain Foucauldian concepts and
4
themes. While Agamben’s early critique of biopower and sovereignty in Homo Sacer
is well-known, a more thorough examination is needed of his nuanced engagement
with Foucault in his more recent publications, both in terms of his subject matter,
governmentality and economy, and his critical methodology, especially his
reaffirmation of the value of Foucault’s archaeological method. The article explores
Agamben’s reading of Foucault’s archaeological method through the novel concept
of the signature. Here, Agamben argues, reading and writing enter into a zone of
undecidability, where reading becomes writing and writing only fully comes to
terms with itself in reading. The article then considers how, according to Agamben
and Carl Schmitt, secularization should be considered the process by which religion
and the theological remain present in modern society by leaving their mark on the
political, while avoiding a direct correlation between political and theological
identities. In contradistinction to Schmitt, however, Agamben identifies economy,
and not the political, as the founding principle of modern forms of government.
Using his theory of signature and developing his term in relation and contrast to
Foucault, he traces the use of oikonomia back to first century Graeco-Roman society
and the notion of a commission in the messianic communities of early Christianity.
Agamben further elucidates his idea of economy and of a power that does not
dominate but rather manages and administers with reference to Foucault’s notion of
the dispositive (apparatus) and security. According to Agamben, the way to fight
against the apparatuses which govern us seems to be by profanation, by restoring
these practices to common use. Finally, the author considers the benefits and the
limitations of Agamben’s engagement with Foucault.
Following these articles, the issue includes two review essays. On the occasion of the
thirtieth anniversary of the English publication of Foucault’s 1979 Lectures at the
Collège de France with the title The Birth of Biopolitics, Issue 7 of Foucault Studies
includes a comprehensive review essay entitled “Liberal Biopolitics Reborn” by
Marius Gudmand-Høyer and Thomas Lopdrup Hjorth, both doctoral fellows at the
Copenhagen Business School. While presenting an outline of the development of the
lectures in which Foucault is occupied with the emergence of biopolitics and neo-
liberalism, the review essay discusses Foucault’s engagement with these
phenomena, as well as with political economy and the dispositives of security. While
situating “Foucault’s most comprehensive analysis of modern biopolitics” in his
1979-lectures “within the framework of what he in 1978 called the ’history of
governmentality,’” the authors also show how this historical encounter holds further
implications than are normally articulated by the well-known “governmentality
perspective.” The essay lays bare the way in which Foucault’s analyses are still
highly relevant in as much as contemporary neo-liberal biopolitics cannot be
reduced to an external opponent that can be criticized and distanced, as is often the
case in the existing literature. What Foucault in the 1979-lectures describes as an
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imminent future has since almost uncannily exerted itself as an indecipherable

experience that we today constantly have to relate to.
The second review essay discusses two consecutive English translations of an

interview of Foucault in 1978 by the Italian Marxist Duccio Trombadori: an English
translation of the Italian translation of the French/Italian interview published in 1991
as a book entitled Remarks on Marx: Conversations with Duccio Trombadori, and a
translation into English from the French version in Dits et écrits included in Power:
Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984 under the title “An Interview with
Michel Foucault,” appearing in 2000. There are many striking variations between the
two English translations purportedly of “the same” interview, with regard to the
overall contextualization and framing of the conversation, and with regard to the
positioning of Foucault and his interlocutor, but also with regard to the translation
of crucial passages. The comparison and the differences raise various issues not only
concerning how to edit and contextualize Foucault, but also concerning the quest for
a more “original” Foucault and for Foucault as an author.
In addition to these articles and review essays, this issue includes twelve reviews of
recent books variously dealing with the work of Michel Foucault.
Finally, we want to share a few comments with regards to this issue’s cover-photo.
Sadly, the graffitied wall on the cover image no longer exists, as it was torn down
this summer, though it stood for many years in front of the Humanities Faculty at
the University of Copenhagen. The graffiti originally read (translated from Danish)
“Foucault is gay” but this was edited over the years to read “Foucault was gay” and
with the addition – written below, and probably by a third party: “but his big thing
lives on.” The Danish word “Diller” translates literally as “willy”, i.e., grade-school
slang for “penis,” but it also suggests a pun on “dille,” which means fad or trend.
We have used “big thing” to capture the double entendre. To the Editorial Group
the graffiti is a reminder of the multiple ways in which Foucault’s work has “caught
on,” inspiring and prompting response in diverse contexts. They certainly set the
agenda for this Editorial Group (whether intended or not). This continuing effect is
also apparent from the many proposals we have received for cover art for Foucault
Studies. We hope to continue to inspire proposals from various artists and designers
for future journal covers.
The journal is sponsored by the Danish Social Science Research Council and the
Danish Research Council for the Humanities.
6
Mark Kingston 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
ARTICLE
Subversive Friendships: Foucault on Homosexuality and Social Experimentation

Mark Kingston, University of New South Wales
ABSTRACT: In some of his more obscure works, Michel Foucault characterises homosexual
culture as being connected with an interesting practice of friendship. Since homosexual
relationships cannot be derived from existing norms, they are inherently underdetermined,
and this means that homosexual culture provides a space for the creation of new types of
relationship. Inspired by this practice of social experimentation, Foucault puts forward a
concept of friendship based on the collaborative creation of new relationships in marginal
spaces. I argue that putting this concept of friendship into practice entails social activism in
two ways: first, the creation of new relationships in marginal spaces constitutes a form of
localised resistance to social normalisation, and second, because experimentation with
relationships presents a challenge to the excessive normalisation of relationships on a societal
scale. Friendship, for Foucault, is therefore a resource for both local resistance and large-scale
social change. I also argue that Foucault's work on gay culture deserves more scholarly
attention because it provides a supplement to his interpretation of the Enlightenment and
forges a link between friendship and the aesthetics of existence.
Keywords: Enlightenment, Foucault, friendship, homosexuality, politics.
Philosophical inquiry into friendship in recent years has often sought to comprehend and
respond to two closely related problems. The first is that friendship is largely understood as
dependent on shared values and similarity between friends. The familiar notions of a
”brotherhood of man” and political solidarity are derived from this understanding of
friendship. However, to think of friendship in such terms is to assume that our shared
background and common goals will naturally dictate the terms of our relationships. This
leaves little room for us to exercise creativity in the relationships we build with others. A
tradition that understands friendship as based on similarity thus deprives friendships of
creativity and spontaneity. The second problem is that our relationships are strongly
influenced by social norms, and often to a degree that is detrimental. A key example is
friendship between men: owing to the way masculinity is constructed in the contemporary
world, intimacy between men is seen as effeminate and is not readily accepted. Men who
engage in close relationships with one another are often seen as lacking proper masculine self-
sufficiency and as tending toward homosexuality. As Steve Garlick argues in his paper on
Foucault, masculinity and friendship, this has left male-to-male friendship in an impoverished
7
Kingston: Subversive Friendships
state, burdened by formalities that aim to establish safe forms of interaction that are free from
effeminate intimacy.1 So the problem with social norms as guides to friendship is that they
tend to produce excessively rigid relationships and perpetuate practices that ought to be
discarded. Recently, thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida have responded
to these problems by drawing together themes of friendship and difference, showing that
relationships are not exclusively founded on the shared social background of their
participants. Others, such as Sandra Lynch have responded by advocating a contemporary
friendship characterised by creativity and uncertainty.2 Michel Foucault has also addressed
this topic, developing a concept of friendship based on social experimentation alongside his
analysis of gay culture. However, in the context of recent debates on friendship, Foucault's
contribution remains under-appreciated.3 For this reason, I wish to discuss Foucault's concept
of friendship in detail and show how it fits into the wider scheme of his work.
Foucault's most valuable discussions of homosexuality and friendship come from the
late 1970s and early 1980s. A good selection can be found in the collection Ethics: Subjectivity
and Truth,4 edited by Paul Rabinow. In these essays and interviews, Foucault describes
homosexual culture as involved in a process of social experimentation that aims to create
novel relationships. Although, as I argued earlier, relationships between men are often highly
normalised, homosexual relationships take place in a ”marginal” space that exists beyond the
boundaries of conventional masculine culture, where the norms that would otherwise govern
relationships between men do not apply.5 Homosexual relationships therefore need to be
created rather than derived from an existing tradition. Of course, Foucault is not saying that
homosexual culture is somehow outside of power. Rather, it is disconnected from the most
totalising and normalising systems of power relations, and characterised instead by very
dynamic and unstable systems of power relations. Likewise, Foucault does not believe that
there are no social norms present in homosexual culture. Rather, the norms that apply to
homosexual relationships are fewer and constitute an inadequate guide to creating an actual
relationship. Homosexual culture is therefore, in Foucault’s terminology, a space of greater
freedom – where ”freedom” means freedom from normalising effects of power and,
consequently, the ability to create oneself.6 Homosexual people are thus given a relational
openness that allows for, and in fact necessitates, social experimentation.
In the following quote, from ”Friendship as a Way of Life,” Foucault illustrates this
1 Steve Garlick, “The Beauty of Friendship: Foucault, Masculinity and the Work of Art,” Philosophy and
Social Criticism 28, 5 (2002), 56.
2 Sandra Lynch, Philosophy and Friendship (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005).
3 David Webb, for example, argues that Foucault's notion of friendship has an advantage over
Derrida's in that it does not emphasise the ”aporetic” or impossible natur e of true friendship.
“On Friendship: Derrida, Foucault and the Practice of Becoming,” Research in Phenomenology 33
(2003), 119-140.
4 Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press,
1997).
5 Garlick, “The Beauty of Friendship.” Garlick also provides an account of Foucault’s notion of
friendship, focussing on its links with existential phenomenology.
6 For a more detailed discussion of Foucault’s concept of freedom see Paul Patton’s “Taylor and
Foucault on Power and Freedom,” Political Studies 37, 2 (1989).
8
idea by describing both the excitement and the difficulty involved in forging homosexual
relationships.
As far back as I remember, to want guys was to want relations with guys. That has
always been important for me. Not necessarily in the form of a couple but as a matter
of existence: how is it possible for men to be together? To live together, to share their
time, their meals, their room, their leisure, their grief, their knowledge, their
confidences? What is it to be “naked” among men, outside of institutional relations,
family, profession, and obligatory camaraderie?
Q. Can you say that desire and pleasure, and the relationships one can have, are
dependent on one's age?
M.F. Yes, very profoundly. Between a man and a younger woman, the marriage
institution makes it easier: she accepts it and makes it work. But two men of noticeably
different ages – what code would allow them to communicate? They face each other
without terms or convenient words, with nothing to assure them about the meaning of
the movement that carries them toward each other. They have to invent, from A to Z, a
relationship that is still formless.7
Heterosexual romantic life brings an enormous array of norms into play: protocols for dating,
guidelines for married life, norms that describe male and female roles, rules about how and
why to show affection, and so on. Even where a relationship is unusual, as in Foucault’s
example of age difference in a marriage relationship, these norms still provide guidance. A
homosexual couple, on the other hand, does not have such a wealth of norms to guide them,
and are therefore left with the task of inventing their own way of being together.
Homosexuality thus invites the creation of new forms of relationship.
Foucault fortifies his position with a critique of the idea of homosexuality as a fixed
identity. He argues that there is no genuine homosexual identity, style or way of living and,
accordingly, that people who embrace homosexuality are not realising an inner nature that has
been hidden by an oppressive heterosexual hegemony. Rather, they must face the task of
creating their own subjectivities – a task that is bound up with the creation of relationships
with others. Foucault thus reiterates his argument against the ”repressive hypothesis” in the
context of homosexuality:
[One] thing to distrust is the tendency to relate the question of homosexuality to the
problem of “Who am I?” and “What is the secret of my desire?” Perhaps it would be
better to ask oneself, “What relations, through homosexuality, can be established,
invented, multiplied, and modulated?” The problem is not to discover in oneself the
truth of one's sex, but, rather, to use one's sexuality henceforth to arrive at a
multiplicity of relationships. .... The development toward which homosexuality tends
is one of friendship.8
7 Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life,” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 136.
8 Ibid., 135-136.
9
Foucault thus conceives of homosexuality as a space for the construction of novel relationships
and subjectivities, as opposed to a fixed identity that one can adopt or discover within oneself.
This approach sets him apart from those who would engage in ”identity politics” and ground
solidarity among homosexual people in their common interests and identity. Its emphasis on
similarity between group members and a shared way of life means that identity politics entails
the creation of a rigid set of norms for homosexual relationships analogous to that which
structures heterosexual relationships. An identity politics thus promotes conformity. Foucault,
on the other hand, wants to put us on a path toward the creative and collaborative
construction of subjectivity. This is essentially what he means by ”friendship” – working
together with others to build new subjectivities and relationships rather than falling back on
social norms. It is a concept of friendship that privileges experimentation over traditional,
institutional or racial bonds. It also privileges heterogeneity over homogeneity, in that it
anticipates the creation of many different relationships based on the various preferences of
their participants.
Given that he uses homosexual relationships as his key examples of friendship,
Foucault’s discussion may seem to be blurring the line between friendship, sexual relations
and romantic love. However, this is not the case – he only wishes to avoid making the
distinction between friendship and romantic love (a distinction that comes packaged with a
great many social norms describing how these two relationships should work) and is still keen
to distinguish between friendship and sexual relations. He must do so in order to then draw a
distinction between the sexual and affective aspects of homosexuality. Foucault argues that
“homosexuality is not a form of desire but something desirable”9 and that the question is
“how can a relational system be reached through sexual practices?”10 He thus draws a strong
distinction between sexual acts and desires on the one hand, and emotional ties on the other.
There are two reasons why this distinction is necessary. First, Foucault associates sexual desire
with the concept of a fixed identity. In the case of homosexuality, he is wary of the tendency to
build a fixed identity around the desire for other men. That would be a problem because the
notion of homosexuality as a fixed identity conflicts with the practice of experimental
friendship that is the ”desirable” aspect of homosexual culture. Second, for Foucault, affection
can be subversive but sexual relations cannot. On their own, sexual relations are
unchallenging and can easily be assimilated into our “sanitized”11 society – the medical
profession, for example, assimilated homosexuality as a form of sexual abnormality. New
affective ties, on the other hand, are much more dangerous because they disrupt the social
order, creating new relationships and interfering with existing ones. Therefore, because taking
sexual desire as the essential part of homosexuality leads us to interpret homosexuality as a
fixed identity, and because sex does not in itself contribute to the subversion of normalisation,
Foucault must draw a distinction between homosexual desires and acts on the one hand, and
the affective relations that occur between people brought together by this desire on the other.
9 Ibid.,135-136.
10 Ibid., 137.
11 Ibid., 136. Cf., Marli Huijer, “The Aesthetics of Existence in the Work of Michel Foucault,” Philosophy
and Social Criticism 25, 2 (1999), 72.
10
We might therefore say that Foucault wants to take the ”sexuality” out of ”homosexuality,”
since he regards homosexuality as a social phenomenon that is essentially geared toward the
production of novel relationships and only incidentally involves sex between men.
Another interesting aspect of Foucault’s concept of friendship is that it entails two
distinct activist projects. First, it entails localised resistance to social normalisation. This
resistance happens when people disconnect themselves from the totalising and normalising
systems of power relations that generally govern our relationships and, instead, create
marginal spaces in which novel relationships can be constructed. In the contemporary world
there are many such spaces, and they are not necessarily connected with homosexuality. There
are women’s groups, where women can challenge the gender roles given to them by our
patriarchal society, there are communes and kibbutzes where people come together to pursue
a collectivistic lifestyle, and there are punk and goth subcultures with members whose values
differ distinctly from those held in mainstream society. Each of these spaces provides its
members with a chance to subvert social normalisation and create new subjectivities and
relationships in a collaborative environment. For Foucault, however, the key example of
localised resistance through friendship is the culture of homosexual sadomasochism (or S &
M). He argues that the relationships created through S & M are innovations on the traditional
sexual relationship that can accommodate new forms of pleasure.
I don't think that this movement of sexual practices has anything to do with the
disclosure or the uncovering of S & M tendencies deep within our unconscious, and so
on. I think that S & M is much more than that; it's the real creation of new possibilities
of pleasure, which people had no idea about previously. The idea that S & M is related
to a deep violence, that S & M practice is a way of liberating this violence, this
aggression, is stupid. We know very well what all those people are doing is not
aggressive; they are inventing new possibilities of pleasure with strange parts of their
body – through the eroticization of the body. I think it's a kind of creation, a creative
enterprise...12
Foucault thus regards S & M as an experiment in a new kind of relationship, and a key
example of the practice of friendship. There are, however, two potential difficulties with this
example. First, given the character of S & M, it might be objected that relationships of this
kind simply substitute one code of norms for another. S & M relationships are, after all, no less
structured than more conventional relationships. This is true, but we need to remember that
what Foucault condemns is not norms but normalisation. If we create the norms of our
relationships ourselves rather than relying on those prevalent in society, and we make sure
those norms are modifiable (which is hopefully the case in S & M relationships) then we can
avoid normalisation and keep our relational possibilities open. In other words, there is
nothing intrinsically wrong with austere codes of norms as long as they are flexible and
negotiable. The second difficulty is that Foucault has told us that sex is never genuinely
subversive, and that friendship is actually about new affective relationships and social
12 Michel Foucault, “Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Edited by
Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997), 165.
11
structures, yet his key example of friendship is a relationship that is fundamentally sexual. S &
M may therefore seem like a poor example of subversive friendship. However, there are two
things to note in Foucault’s defence. First, S & M may be based on sex acts, but nonetheless it
also creates new affective ties and forms of subjectivity, and therefore qualifies as friendship.
Second, gay S & M is not just a relationship between two sex partners – it is also a foundation
for community. For example, Foucault describes the S & M ghetto in San Francisco as a place
where sexual experimentation has formed a community with its own unique norms and social
structure.13 People have coalesced into an S & M scene, transforming a subversive sexual
practice into a subversive community; a counter-culture based on participation in a particular
kind of novel relationship. Foucault calls this ”ghettoization.”'14 In the case of gay S & M, this
ghettoization is especially useful. Living in a society where homophobia is prevalent, and
where discrimination and violence against homosexual people are widespread, the S & M
counter-culture provides a space where, for once, gay people can set the conditions for social
interaction. It is not just a space of refuge, but a space of greater freedom, in which people can
create new identities for themselves, find community, and enrich their lives in ways that
would not be possible anywhere else. This is another way in which gay S & M culture uses the
creation of novel relationships as a means of resistance against the excessive normalisation
encountered in the public realm.
However, Foucault’s concept of friendship does not simply entail disconnection from
society and the subversion of social norms in marginal spaces. It also entails a project of social
activism that aims to challenge the excessive normalisation of relationships across society as a
whole. The following quote, from an interview entitled ”The Social Triumph of the Sexual
Will,” captures some of the nature of this project, as well as the excitement and sense of
humour with which Foucault approaches it:
[MF:] We should fight against the impoverishment of the relational fabric. We should
secure recognition for relations of provisional coexistence, adoption....
GB: Of children.
MF: Or – why not? – of one adult by another. Why shouldn't I adopt a friend who's ten
years younger than I am? And even if he's ten years older? Rather than arguing that
rights are fundamental and natural to the individual, we should try to imagine and
create a new relational right that permits all possible types of relations to exist and not
be prevented, blocked, or annulled by impoverished relational institutions. 15
Foucault thus expands the project of experimental friendship into a general challenge to the
normalisation of relationships. If we take up this project, the narrow range of relationships
available to us can be abandoned in favour of the cooperative and spontaneous construction of
novel relationships. This will establish a more fluid way of being together that allows for
13 Ibid. 167. Cf., David M. Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 103-104.
14 Ibid.
15 Michel Foucault, “The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will,” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 158.
12
greater diversity and creativity. Gay culture stands at the forefront of this project, since it is by
necessity a privileged site for the creation of novel relationships. Interestingly, however,
Foucault positions the general challenge to the normalisation of relationships as a substitute
for the gay rights movement. The gay rights movement attempts to create a new scheme of
relationships that incorporates homosexuality as a legitimate choice [choice?] of lifestyle, but
for Foucault this project only confirms the validity of the systems of normalisation that govern
relationships. As an alternative, he suggests that we fight against the very idea of a rigid and
totalising code of norms for relationships in the name of freedom and experimentation. For
this reason we might suspect that Foucault would have been ambivalent about the idea of
legalising gay marriage. It seems that, given his understanding of homosexuality as a practice
of experimental friendship, Foucault might have regarded the movement to legalise gay
marriage as dangerous, because it threatens to ”contaminate” homosexual relationships with
the rigid norms typical of heterosexual relationships. This conjecture is supported by
Foucault’s argument that gay rights should be superseded by a ”relational right.” A relational
right, for Foucault, means “the right to gain recognition in an institutional sense for the
relations of one individual to another individual,” as opposed to traditional civil rights which
pertain only to the individual.16 If a right of this kind were upheld, people who engage in
unconventional relationships would be able to attain the same kind of recognition that
married couples attain. The dangers inherent in legalising gay marriage would be avoided, or
at least mitigated, by this approach. However, it is worth noting that it is a very unusual tack
for Foucault, who tends to avoid using the language of rights and investing in institutionalised
processes of social reform. It suggests that he has more sympathy for the traditional projects of
political philosophy than is generally thought , although to what extent remains an open
question, since he does not develop the argument further. What can be made of the notion of a
relational right, and what normative limits would need to be placed on such a right, also
remain open questions.
Foucault’s idea of a general challenge to the normalisation of relationships resonates
with the perceived threat of homosexuality to heterosexual culture. As we have seen, Foucault
is not simply trying to undermine the particular code of norms governing relationships
between men – he is disputing the normalisation of relationships in general. Homosexual
culture, with its potential for experimentation and creativity, is therefore a threat to the
stability of all relationships, and to the social order that these relationships support. We have
seen how this threat is received by conservative commentators, who claim that the family is
the ”fundamental unit of society” and continuously assert that marriage is necessarily a
relationship between a man and a woman. Their claims, supposedly supported by truths of
biology and religion, are used to defend the hegemony of a relational tradition that
marginalises and condemns homosexuality. Homophobia is therefore, at least in some cases,
not so much a reaction based on moral condemnation of homosexual sex acts as it is a
conservative attempt to secure the supposedly heterosexual foundations of society. For his
part, Foucault welcomes the disruption of the social order because it is only through such
disruption that we can rejuvenate the impoverished relational fabric of our society. He is also
16 Ibid., 162. Cf., 160.

13
quite confident that the general challenge to the normalisation of relationships does not
represent a true threat to the stability of society.17
Despite the urgency of this challenge to the excessive normalisation of relationships,
Foucault warns against the idea of a homosexual program or agenda. A misplaced emphasis
on solidarity and common goals, he suggests, can undermine the creativity that makes gay
culture so significant.
[T]he idea of a program of new proposals is dangerous. As soon as a program is

presented, it becomes a law, and there's a prohibition against inventing. There ought to
be an inventiveness to a special situation like ours and to these feelings, this need that
Americans call “coming out,” that is, showing oneself. The program must be wide
open. We have to dig deeply to show how things have been historically contingent, for
such and such reason intelligible but not necessary. We must make the intelligible
appear against a background of emptiness and deny its necessity. We must think that
what exists is far from filling all possible spaces. To make a truly unavoidable
challenge of the question: What can be played?18
According to Foucault, homosexuality must provide a space for innovation and

experimentation, allowing new forms of friendship to develop without the law-like influence
of a ”program of proposals.” However, because of this openness, homosexual culture finds
itself implicated in a social and political project but at the same time denied the option of
resorting to devices such as a fixed group identity or a fixed agenda that are used to create
cohesion and solidarity in other groups. In effect, the aim of challenging the relational fabric of
society sits uneasily with the need for a clear, consistent and effective approach to social
change, which would seem to require a unifying project. However, Foucault does not regard
this as a severe problem, and appears hopeful that homosexual culture can maintain an
awareness of its social and political relevance while not falling into the trap of building itself
an inflexible program or engaging in identity politics. Perhaps, because it is flexible, diverse
and locally organised, gay culture can mount a more successful and unexpected attempt at
social change than other, more conventional movements.
Finally, it is important to remember that, although the general challenge to the
normalisation of relationships begins with homosexual culture, anyone can participate. Even
heterosexual relationships, if a certain inventiveness is employed, can be subject to
experimentation. Indeed, much of the formality that comprises these relationships could, and
perhaps should, be deprived of the semblance of necessity it has attained and re-evaluated
with a sense of humour and creativity.19 In light of this general questioning of the norms that
structure our relationships, it might even be argued that it no longer makes sense to talk in
terms of homosexual and heterosexual relationships, if what we mean by that is that these
relationships both have their own intrinsic and immutable characteristics. Rather, we should
talk about a multitude of sui generis relationships that are just, as it happens, between a man
17 Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 261.
18 Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life,” 139-140.
19 Michel Foucault, “The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will,” 160.
14
and a woman, or between two women or two men, or between more than two people. This is
what David M. Halperin means when he says that “The future Foucault envisages for us is not
exclusively or categorically gay. But it is definitely queer.”20 Although the norms that
determine our relationships are the products of millennia of history and are supported by very
rigid systems of power relations, they ought to be challenged. Doing so will clear the space
needed for an experimental friendship in which anyone can participate, regardless of their
identifying themselves as gay, lesbian, straight or otherwise.
Foucault’s work on homosexuality and social experimentation thus describes a novel
form of friendship. This form of friendship is quite different from what we would call
friendship in common language – it is not founded on similarity between friends, nor does it
involve a fixed body of norms that determine how friends relate to one another. Instead, it
involves the collaborative creation of new subjectivities and relationships as participants
struggle to come to terms with one another. In this way it mirrors the efforts of many
contemporary philosophers who wish to challenge traditional notions of friendship.
Furthermore, like many contemporary contributions to the philosophy of friendship,
Foucault’s also has political implications, since it entails two distinct activist projects. First,
there is a project of localised resistance to social normalisation. Foucault conceptualises
friendship as taking place in marginal spaces that are disconnected from the intricate and
totalising systems of power relations that would otherwise normalise our relationships. In
these marginal spaces, new systems of power relations and subjectivities can be constructed in
a collaborative way, and these relations and subjectivities can remain negotiable and flexible.
Friendship thus subverts the most dangerous and normalising systems of power relations.
Second, there is a large-scale project in which we challenge the excessive normalisation of
relationships across society. Although the normalisation of relationships is one way in which
the social order is maintained and perpetuated, it can be excessive and place undue
restrictions on the kinds of relationships we have, as is demonstrated by the limitations of our
tradition of friendship between men. The experimental friendship described by Foucault
presents a much-needed challenge to this normalisation, and shows how we might go about
rejuvenating the relational fabric of our society. Together, these two activist projects make
Foucault’s a unique and highly practical account of the potential of friendship to create and
sustain social change.
If we look at this project closely, we can see that it parallels Foucault's interpretation of
the Enlightenment, as given in the essay ”What is Enlightenment?”21 For Foucault, the
Enlightenment is a phenomenon, a task and an obligation all at once. It is a historical
phenomenon that consists in a widespread rejection of illegitimate authority and an opportunity
to transform the public realm. It is also the task, to be undertaken at this specific point in
history, of preparing for the free use of public reason and thereby expediting humanity’s
transition from superstitious and dogmatic ”immaturity” to rational ”maturity.” Finally, it is
the obligation to take advantage of the phenomenon of Enlightenment by carrying out the task
of Enlightenment – that is, the obligation to bring humanity to a mature state by carrying out a
20 Halperin, Saint Foucault, 100.

21 Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 303-319.
15
reform of the public realm that promotes the free use of public reason. In much the same way,
the social experimentation that Foucault sees as linked with homosexual culture is a composite
of phenomenon, task and obligation. The phenomenon is the creation of new types of
relationship, beginning in spaces where their relationships are subject to less normalisation.
The task that comes out of this phenomenon is that of transforming the relational fabric of
society. The obligation is to carry out this task and thereby mitigate the dangers presented by
the excessive and harmful normalisation of relationships. The project of social experimentation
that Foucault describes in his work on homosexuality is therefore quite similar to the project
he outlines in the essay ”What is Enlightenment?” In both cases we are given an opportunity,
specific to this period in history, to transform society and create a new and better way of life.
In the classical, Kantian Enlightenment, this involves setting up the conditions for rational
public debate and thereby casting off despotism and religious dogma. With regards to
friendship, it means setting up the conditions for an experimental and creative approach to
relationships, and thereby freeing ourselves from the limits imposed by the impoverished
relational fabric of society.
However, this project is quite distinct in character from the two projects that appear as
complementary themes in Foucault’s discussion of the Enlightenment. First, there is what
Foucault calls the ”Enlightenment attitude’ – a process of social critique based on Kant’s
concept of the free use of public reason. Foucault’s project of social experimentation is similar
to the Enlightenment attitude in that it aims to transform society, but differs in that it is not
concerned with the ameliorating the systems of power, knowledge and ethics that comprise
society. Rather, it anticipates the creation of a number of marginal spaces that are only
minimally connected to large-scale social structures. In other words, it is not a project of large-
scale social critique, but one involving friendships and small communities. The other theme
that appears in Foucault’s discussion of the Enlightenment is that of an aesthetics of existence.
Foucault develops this theme through a discussion of Baudelaire’s dandyism. The social
experimentation that Foucault calls friendship is similar to the aesthetics of existence in that it
aims at the transformation of the self (indeed, Foucault suggests that his concept of friendship
is a type of aesthetics of existence, since it involves an “art of life”22) but, unlike the aesthetics
of existence described in works such as The History of Sexuality,23 it is not simply a matter of
self-transformation. Rather, it also involves the transformation of others through a negotiable
and collaborative process of relationship construction. Foucault’s concept of friendship is
therefore quite similar to his work on the ancient practice of parrhesia,24 in that it represents a
move from a solitary aesthetics of existence toward a more collaborative aesthetics of
22 Michel Foucault, “Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity,” 161.

23 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume Two: The Use of Pleasure. Translated by Robert
Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1992); The History of Sexuality, Volume Three: The Care of the Self,
translated by Robert Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1990).
24 Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981-1982, edited by
Frédéric Gros et al, translated by Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). A useful
commentary on this course is given by Thomas Flynn, “Foucault as Parrhesiast: His Last Course at
Collège de France (1984).” The Final Foucault, edited by James Bernauer and David Rasmussen
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).
16
existence.
There are therefore both important similarities to and important differences between
the project of social experimentation found in Foucault’s work on gay culture and his
interpretation of the Enlightenment. On the one hand, both are presented as composites of
phenomenon, task and obligation, and both anticipate processes of social change linked to
specific moments in history. On the other hand, however, the project of social experimentation
presented in Foucault’s work on homosexuality differs from the Kantian project of social
critique and the aesthetics of existence that are presented as the two complementary themes of
the Enlightenment. Rather than conforming to the traditional dichotomy between individual
self-transformation and societal transformation, Foucault’s concept of friendship as social
experimentation takes a middle path and focuses on small communities and friendships. This
approach to social change has only gained currency quite recently, but it nonetheless bears the
ethos of the Enlightenment – the notion that we have an opportunity, at this moment in
history, to transform ourselves and our society in a fundamental way. We should therefore
understand Foucault’s work on homosexual culture as presenting a third, historically distinct
aspect of the Enlightenment project, complete with a new model of social action that
represents twentieth-century theoretical developments.
In conclusion, Foucault’s work on homosexuality and friendship is certainly worth
more attention than it has been given. There are several reasons why. First, it gives us a new
concept of friendship, connected with two promising activist projects. This contribution is of
particular relevance to contemporary debates on friendship in continental philosophy, which
tend to focus on the relationship between friendship, difference and social norms. Second,
Foucault’s work on friendship supplements his interpretation of the Enlightenment by
describing a form of social action focussed on the creation of novel relationships between
friends and within small communities. This approach to social action is, for the most part, a
twentieth-century achievement, and provides a middle path between the Enlightenment
projects of large-scale social reform and an individualistic aesthetics of existence. Third, this
work brings the aesthetics of existence, which is often described by Foucault as a solitary task,
into a collaborative environment. Finally, on a biographical note, Foucault’s work on
homosexuality and friendship gives us an interesting insight into the connection between his
intellectual work and his social activism. In fact, the work itself is a way of participating in
social change by promoting homosexual culture and its challenge to the normalisation of
relationships. It is perhaps the high point of activism in Foucault’s writings.
17
Chloë Taylor 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
ARTICLE
Pornographic Confessions? Sex Work and Scientia Sexualis in Foucault and

Linda Williams
Chloë Taylor, University of Alberta
ABSTRACT: In the first volume of the History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault states in
passing that prostitution and pornography, like the sexual sciences of medicine and
psychiatry, are involved in the proliferation of sexualities and the perverse
implantation. Against an influential misinterpretation of this passage on the part of
film studies scholar Linda Williams, this paper takes up Foucault’s claim and
attempts to explain the mechanism through which the sex industry, and
pornography in particular, functions analogously to the sexual sciences in terms of
the normalizing form of power that Foucault describes. Whereas Williams sets the
question of prostitution aside, and argues that pornography must be a confessional
discourse for Foucault, this paper argues that consumption rather than confession is
the mechanism through which both prostitution and pornography deploy sexualities
within a disciplinary system of power.
Keywords: Foucault, Linda Williams, pornography, prostitution
In 1977, Michel Foucault was asked by a government commission how he would like
to see the laws concerning sexual crimes reformed in France. In his response he
made no mention of prostitution and stated briefly that he was opposed to all
legislation restricting sexually explicit materials. Prostitution and pornography
appear to have been easy cases for Foucault, while he went on to say that there were
only two kinds of sex acts that troubled him with respect to legislation – rape and
sex with minors – and it is these issues that he contemplated in some detail.1 Lest we
1 Foucault describes this phone call in ‚Confinement, Psychiatry, Prison,‛ where he goes
on to discuss rape with his interlocutors. Soon after, in ‚Sexual Morality and the Law,‛
he addresses the issue of sex with minors. See Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.), Michel
Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984 (New York
and London: Routledge: 1988) 178-210 and 271-285. For critical responses to Foucault’s
comments on rape and sex with children, see Linda Alcoff, ‚Dangerous Pleasures:
Foucault and the Politics of Pedophilia,‛ in Susan J. Hekman (ed.), Feminist Interpretations
18
Taylor: Pornographic Confessions
think that sex work was entirely unproblematic for Foucault, however, in The History
of Sexuality prostitution and pornography are mentioned along with the disciplinary
professions of medicine and psychiatry as having ‚tapped into both this analytic
multiplication of pleasure and this optimization of the power that controls it.‛2
Prostitution and pornography are suggested by Foucault to be involved in the
workings of disciplinary power as it constructs and controls sexuality, and in this
sense would be problematic indeed, even if it would make no more sense to resort to
legislation in the cases of pornography and prostitution than it would in the cases of
other disciplinary practices such as psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Since law
functions on a model of repressive, sovereign or juridical power, it is not very
effective, and may even be counter-productive, to resort to law in order to resist
what are in fact disciplinary phenomena.
This paper has two objectives, one negative and one positive. First, I wish to critique
Film Studies scholar Linda Williams’ highly influential study of pornography, Hard
Core: Power, Pleasure, and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible’, which draws on Foucault at length.
Williams’ 1989 work was groundbreaking in that it was the first study of porno-
graphy that declined to engage in the censorship debate. Rather than questioning
whether we should be for or against pornography, Williams approaches porno-
graphy like any other film genre, discussing it seriously in terms of influences and
techniques. Williams considers pornography to be a ‚body genre‛ of film much like
other low-brow genres such as melodrama and horror, which also work to elicit
physiological responses in the viewer. Importantly for the current paper, it is one of
Williams’ central theses in her book to take up Foucault’s association of
pornography with the disciplinary sciences of medicine and psychiatry in order to
argue that pornography is a confessional science and participates in the will to know
about sex. Moreover, Williams understands Foucault’s situating of pornography
within his discussion of the perverse implantation to mean that pornography results
in a positive proliferation of fluid sexualities within individual lives. Williams’ use
of Foucault has gone unquestioned in Film and Porn Studies and has been cited and
of Michel Foucault (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press,

1996), 99-135; Vikki Bell, Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault and the Law (London and
New York: Routledge, 1993); Ann J. Cahill, ‚Foucault, Rape, and the Construction of the
Feminine Body,‛ Hypatia, 15, vol., no. 1, (Winter 2000); Ann J. Cahill, Rethinking Rape
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001); Laura Hengehold, ‚An Immodest
Proposal: Foucault, Hysterization, and the ‘Second Rape,’‛ in Hypatia, (Summer 1994): 88-
107; Monique Plaza, ‚Our Damages and Their Compensation,‛ Feminist Issues, 1 (3),
([1978], 1981): 5-35; Chloë Taylor, ‚Foucault, Feminism and Sex Crimes,‛ in Hypatia, vol.
24, no. 4, (Fall 2009); Winifred Woodhull, ‚Sexuality, Power, and the Question of Rape,‛
in Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby (ed.), Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance,
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 167-176.
2 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1978), 48.
19
employed authoritatively by numerous other scholars; however, I shall contest both

Williams’ reading of Foucault and of pornography.
My second and more positive objective in this paper is to offer a new interpretation
of Foucault’s reference to pornography (and, to a lesser extent, prostitution – which
Williams sets aside) in The History of Sexuality. This interpretation is more consistent
than Williams’ not only with Foucault’s arguments in The History of Sexuality, but
more importantly, with the manner in which pornography and prostitution actually
function. First, I argue that in so far as pornography and prostitution involve
expertise, they are closer to the ars erotica than to the sexual sciences. Second, I argue
that the mechanism by which pornography and prostitution participate in the
perverse implantation is not confession but consumption. Consequently, contra
Williams, we must attend to the consumers rather than to what takes place on set or
on screen to see how pornography serves its disciplinary function. Finally, I argue
that although the perverse implantation deployed by pornography may result in a
proliferation of sexualities at a society-wide level, on an individual level it is
constraining rather than liberating, contributing – along with the sexual sciences of
medicine and psychiatry – to the fixing of each of us into frozen rather than fluid
sexual identities.
Scientia Sexualis or Ars Erotica?

Other than his references to specific literary works such as My Secret Life and the
writings of Sade, Foucault only considers pornography once in the History of
Sexuality, and what he says is all-too-brief and has been influentially misinterpreted
by Williams. In the chapter entitled ‚The Perverse Implantation,‛ Foucault writes:
And accompanying this encroachment of powers, scattered sexualities rigidified,

became stuck to an age, a place, a type of practice. A proliferation of sexualities
through the extension of power; an optimization of the power to which each of
these local sexualities gave a surface of intervention; this concatenation,
particularly since the nineteenth century, has been ensured and relayed by the
countless economic interests which, with the help of medicine, psychiatry,
prostitution, and pornography, have tapped into both this analytic multiplication of
pleasure and this optimization of the power that controls it. Pleasure and power
do not cancel or turn back against one another; they seek out, overlap, and
reinforce one another. They are linked together by complex mechanisms and
devices of excitation and incitement.3
This citation is interesting for at least two reasons. First, it helps to explain
Foucault’s opposition to any censorship of sexually explicit materials. Foucault’s
main objective in this reference to prostitution and pornography is not so much to
3 Ibid., 48 (my italics).
20
say anything about the sex industry per se, but to reject the strategy of repressing sex
in order to control it more generally, whether this repression occurs through
legislation or medicine. According to Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power as
productive, the workings of power and the very idea of repression are constitutive
rather than extinguishers of desire.4 As Foucault argues throughout the first volume
of the History of Sexuality, when we try to control desire by repressing it we in fact
produce it, and, as this passage makes clear, Foucault thinks that this is just as true
with respect to the sex industry as to the medical treatment of perversions.
Second, while in this passage and elsewhere Foucault does not elaborate on the
relation between the sex industry and the sexual sciences, it is curious that he would
string together the apparently incongruous bedmates of medicine and psychiatry
with prostitution and pornography. Each of these practices is suggested to be
working towards similar ends within a disciplinary system of power: Foucault
suggests that pornography and prostitution, like the sexual sciences, are involved in
a ‚proliferation of sexualities,‛ which proliferation, for Foucault, is in turn caught up
with ‚the perverse implantation,‛ as the chapter in which this citation occurs
explains. Unfortunately, whereas in the case of medicine and psychiatry Foucault
describes the precise mechanism through which this proliferation and implantation
of sexualities occurs – confession – he does not give us a similar account of the
manners in which prostitution and pornography deploy sexualities. In response to
this passage, Williams has deduced that pornography simply is a sexual science for
Foucault, and thus employs the same technology of deployment as the ‚other‛ sexual
sciences. Setting the issue of prostitution aside – and even replacing the word
‚prostitution‛ with ‚law‛ in her reference to this passage5 - Williams has argued that
pornography is a confessional practice. As I shall argue below, however, and as is
suggested by Williams’ own need to switch the word ‚prostitution‛ for the more
obviously confessional practice of ‚law‛ in her manipulation of Foucault’s phrase,
this is far from clear. In fact, to make sense of this citation, we need to understand
how both pornography and prostitution function to deploy sexualities in a manner
that is analogous (but not necessarily identical) to the workings of the sexual
sciences.
In the History of Sexuality and in related works from this time, Foucault argues for
the disentanglement of sex from truth and identity. He famously concludes this
work by proposing that ‚The rallying point for the counterattack against the
deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures.‛6
4 Ibid., 158.
5 Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the ‚Frenzy of the Visible‛ (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1989), 35.
6 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 157.
21
Rather than trying to find out what we already or truly are through introspections
into our sex(uality) and desires, we should work on what we might become, what
new pleasures and capacities of the body we might discover. In this initial volume,
Foucault explores the possibility of mastering the body and its pleasures in terms of
the Eastern ars erotica.7 A few years later, he would describe this discussion of the ars
erotica as ‚one of the numerous points where I was wrong in that book,‛ not because
what he said there was false, but because he ‚should have opposed our science of
sex to a contrasting practice in our own culture. The Greeks and Romans did not
have any ars erotica to be compared with the Chinese ars erotica *<+ They had a
techne tou biou [care of the self] in which the economy of pleasure played a very large
role.‛8 Foucault now contrasts the sexual sciences not to Eastern erotic arts, but to
Greek and Roman practices of self-care, and provides a schematic account of the
different approaches to sexuality in each of these cultures – the East, the ancient
West, and the Christian and modern West:
If by sexual behavior, we understand the three poles – acts, pleasure, and desire
– we have the Greek ‚formula‛ *<+ In this Greek formula what is underscored
is ‚act,‛ with pleasure and desire as subsidiary: acte – plaisir – (désir). *<+
The Chinese ‚formula‛ would be plaisir – désir – (acte). Acts are put aside
because you have to restrain acts in order to get the maximum duration and
intensity of pleasure.
The Christian ‚formula‛ puts an accent on desire and tries to eradicate it. Acts
have to become something neutral; you have to act only to produce children, or
to fulfill your conjugal duty. And pleasure is both practically and theoretically
excluded: (désir) – acte – (plaisir). Desire is practically excluded – you have to
eradicate your desire – but theoretically very important.
And I could say that the modern ‚formula‛ is desire, which is theoretically
underlined and practically accepted, since you have to liberate your own desire.
Acts are not very important, and pleasure – nobody knows what it is!9
The Eastern ars erotica, or the ‚Chinese ‘formula’,‛ assumes pleasure and the
techniques of mastering the pleasure-capacities of the body to be an area of
knowledge external to the self that a subject can acquire through corporeal practice
under the tutelage of a master. Ancient practices of self-care were concerned with an
7 Ibid., 57-71.
8 Michel Foucault, ‚On the Genealogy of Ethics,‛ in Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow,
Michel Foucault, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1993), 234-235.
9 Ibid., 242-243.
22
agent’s ability to control his sexual acts or indulgences in pleasure and took little
interest in desire. As Foucault writes:
For the Greeks, when a philosopher was in love with a boy, but did not touch
him, his behavior was valued. The problem was, does he touch the boy or not.
That’s the ethical substance: the act linked with pleasure and desire. For
Augustine it’s very clear that when he remembers his relationship to his young
friend when he was eighteen years old, what bothers him is what exactly was the
kind of desire he had for him. So, you see that the ethical substance has
changed.10
The shift that happened between the Ancient Greeks and Augustine, a shift in
emphasis from acts to desires, is still with us today. While desire remains the aspect
of sex which we stress, it has now become positive rather than negative: whereas
Augustine worried about the nature of his desire in order to better annihilate it, we
now seek to identify our desires in order to affirm and inhabit our authentic
sexualities, and we take desire, rather than acts or pleasures, to be the key to
unlocking the secrets of our souls.
Granted this unprecedented importance, Foucault suggests that desire has

succeeded in eclipsing sexual acts almost entirely. With the scientia sexualis there is
no need to act at all in order to have and to discover our sexualities, we just need to
think about our personal desires and the types of selves that these constitute. For
the scientia sexualis, sexual truth is already in the psyche, if we only introspect on our
feelings, fantasies, dreams, childhood traumas, repressions and inhibitions. Sexual
truth is psychologized, or is specific to each individual and need not be acted upon,
in contrast to the ars erotica, for which the truths of sexual pleasure are mysteries into
which one must be initiated, which must be practiced, and which have nothing to do
with the individual practitioner or her psychic states.
Both the scientia sexualis and the ars erotica have their ‚sexual experts.‛ For the
scientia sexualis, these are scientists who may or may not have much sexual
experience or much embodied knowledge of pleasure but who are medically-trained
decipherers of desire, interpreters of sexual confessions, taxonomers of perversions
or psychosexual types. The sexual experts of the ars erotica, on the other hand, are
trained in the mastery of non-individuated bodies and pleasures.11 Studying the ars
10 Ibid., 238.
11 Bodies may be individuated in the ars erotica into a few physiological types: for instance,
in the Kama Sutra, male bodies come in hare, bull, and horse types, and women come in
deer, mare, and elephant types, according to the size of their genitals. Bodies also come
with different degrees of passion – deemed small, middling, or extreme – and the Kama
Sutra urges lovers to find partners who correspond to themselves in genital size and force
23
erotica would consequently be a deindividualizing practice. Unlike patients and

practitioners of the scientia sexualis, an initiate of the ars erotica would not be
concerned with understanding her own individual sexuality, or the various
individual sexualities (perversions, etc.) of others, but in understanding the
pleasures of bodies per se. While corporeal pleasure is important to the ars erotica,
the Western obsession with sexual identity has no more place in these Eastern
practices than it did in the self-mastering techniques of the ancient Greeks.
In Hard Core, as noted, Williams identifies pornography with the scientia sexualis that
Foucault discusses in the History of Sexuality. Williams’ initial argument for the
pornography/sexual science identification involves showing that pornography and
two modern scientific developments – photography and psychoanalysis – came of
age together, and share a history that has not been disentangled since. As Williams
documents, the scientific inventions of photography were quickly employed to
produce pornography, while sexual scientists such as Charcot took quasi-
pornographic photographs with titles such as ‚Ècstase.‛ Science, psychiatry,
psychoanalysis, and pornography thus have an interactive history, and this history
is one of the grounds for Williams’ blurring of the notions of pornography and
sexual science. The use and making of pornographic images in the history of the
sciences of psychiatry and psychoanalysis is not enough to establish pornography as
a sexual science, however, or even to say that it is like a science. Charcot touched
many things, and early scientist-photographers worked in many genres, but not all
of these became science.
More significantly, Williams argues that photography and its immediate production
of pornography are situated in the particularly modern and Western ‚will to know‛
about sex, which volonté de savoir is also what motivates the sexual sciences.
Foucault’s argument is that we, as a society, want to know about sex, since we have
come to think that sex is the key to understanding who we are, the means to
realizing both our truth and our happiness. It is in this context that we participate in
the studies of the sexual sciences, undergo analysis and self-analysis, and consume
the books, magazines, and television shows that feature sexological knowledge. In
this context, pornography is interpreted by Williams – and by authors who cite
Williams’ study such as Chris Straayer, Julie Lavigne and Gertrud Koch – as catering
to this same will to know the truth about sex. Like sexual scientists in their
interrogations, Williams thinks that we consume pornography out of the desire to
hear ‚sex speak‛ or to witness sexual confessions.
of passion. These basic differences in scale are, however, quite different from, and far
less individualizing than, the psychosexual taxonomies of the sexual sciences.
24
While Williams shows that the sexual and photographic sciences produced
pornographic images, Koch shows a reverse movement, pointing to cases in which
pornographers made overtures to the sexual sciences. She points out that certain
pornographic films ‛declared their intention to offer practical advice for living, to be
purveyors of knowledge. Examples of these are the Oswald Kolle series, or Helga.
The classification of formal knowledge by category still attaches to an unending
series of ‘Film Reports,’ often presenting sexual behaviour according to various
occupations.‛12 Koch goes on to note that certain ‚early porn films displayed a
lexicographic tendency,‛ and quotes two descriptions from a 1956 essay by Curt
Moreck:
A special flavour is given to obscene films through the scrupulously realistic

presentation of every imaginable perversion. Although life itself very often
offers the connoisseur a view of simple vice, the chance to enjoy real perversity
as a spectator is much rarer; in this case, film tries to fill the void. There are some
films in this genre which seem to have been staged directly from Krafft-Ebing’s
Psychopathia Sexualis, as a manual of abnormal sexual operations for civilized
man.
All the vices of man flickered by on the screen. Every one of the hundred and
fifty ways from the old Treatise on the Hundred and Fifty Ways of Loving was
demonstrated, with occasional interruptions for lesbian, pederast, and
masturbation jokes. All that was harmless. Sadists and masochists waved their
instruments, sodomy was practiced, coprophagous acts were on display.13
Cases such as Moreck describes indicate that pornography might offer itself as the
sort of material which the sexual sciences study. Indeed, Krafft-Ebing used the
pornographic texts of Sade and Sacher-Masoch to identify the characteristics of
sadism and masochism. Some pornographic films could function like the texts of
Sade and Sacher-Masoch as other illustrations of perversions which the sexual
scientists might analyze. As Foucault notes, the anonymous author of My Secret Life
described the value of his writings as a quasi-scientific contribution to human
knowledge of sexuality.14 In instances such as these – voluntarily in the cases of My
Secret Life and the films that Moreck describes, and involuntarily in the cases of Sade
and Sacher-Masoch – pornography serves as material for the sexual scientists’
studies of perversion. In the case of My Secret Life, because it is the author himself
who offers his experiences to the scientists, and because the text is written in an
autobiographical mode, pornography works as the kind of confession which sexual
scientists elicit from their patients. In the other cases, the data is more dubious and
12 Gertrud Koch, ‚The Body’s Shadow Realm,‛ in Pamela Church Gibson (ed.), More Dirty
Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power (London: The British Film Institute, 2004), 155.
13 Cited in Koch, 155.
25
involuntarily provided, and Sacher-Masoch was appalled to find a sexual perversion

named after himself in the Psychopathia Sexualis on the basis of his literary works.
Although this shows that some pornographers have justified the existence of their
work by claiming to contribute to scientific knowledge, and a few have done so in an
autobiographical or confessional mode, it is surely the case that most pornography is
not autobiographical and is not offered up as quasi-scientific information about
human sexuality, but as fiction and fantasy. Significantly, while anti-pornography
feminists have regularly claimed that pornography reflects and reinscribes (a
misogynist) reality, the pornography industry and its defenders persistently argue
that their opponents are failing to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
Pornography, they argue, is not truth but fantasy, and the people who consume it
realize this. The value of pornography to society is defended as art and imagination,
and not as science, knowledge, or truth.
While Koch’s study, like Foucault’s discussion of My Secret Life, is interesting in that
it shows that some works of pornography have engaged with and even hoped to
contribute to or collaborate with the sexual sciences, this is not a feature of most
pornography, either in the nineteenth century or today. It is in fact highly
questionable whether pornography arises primarily out of a ‚will to know‛ about
sex at all. For one thing, mass-produced and circulated pornography pre-existed the
volonté de savoir that Foucault describes. While Williams begins her study of the
history of pornography with the invention of photography in the nineteenth century,
thus making it contemporary with Charcot, she might have begun with the
invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century instead. Like the invention of
the camera, the invention of the printing press quickly gave rise to the mass
production and circulation of pornographic works, such as Guilio Romano’s 1520
series, I modi, and this well before the age of the ‚will to know‛ about sex that
Foucault describes.15 It is thus quite possible for a society to make, distribute, and
consume pornography on a large scale with non-epistemological motivations and
prior to the existence of the sexual sciences, and this leads me to doubt that the
primary impulse behind the production and consumption of pornography is any
more part of a volonté de savoir today than it was in the 1520s.
Of course, pornography might function very differently today than it did in the
Renaissance, and yet even in this age of the will to know about sex, it is far from
clear that it is in the spirit of knowledge that pornography is either made or
consumed. Do people consume pornography to learn about sexual pleasure or to
15 Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1999)
26
have it? Is pornography primarily about satisfying curiosity or desire? Is porno-

graphy an epistemological endeavor or a masturbatory aid? Are these necessarily
inter-related? Epistemological pursuits may certainly be prurient, and Foucault
himself characterizes fin-de-siècle medicine as ‚a pornography of the morbid,‛16 but
does all sexual pleasure today seek the truth of sex? Williams seems to think that it
does, for she even includes peep shows under the umbrella of the ‚scientific will-to-
knowledge.‛17
I have no doubt that people look at pornography with some intellectual curiosity
and that it can play an educative role, for better or for worse, but I am not sure that
this educative role is the primary motivation or function of pornography, its
explanation or raison d’être. According to one poll, eight-six percent of respondants
think that pornography is educational, and Pamela Paul writes that young men in
particular may use pornography ‚to figure out what women want and expect from
sex. In fact, studies show that men learn from and emulate what they see in
pornography.‛18 I shall argue below that mainstream heterosexual pornography
does not so much educate men in women’s desires as construct a fantasy for men
according to which women’s desires and pleasures correspond to their own.
Something similar might be said about prostitution, which is also often used for
male sexual initiation and education, but which in fact probably teaches men very
little about women’s actual pleasures or desires. Here, however, I want to argue that
in so far as advocates say that pornography (or prostitution) is educational, they
mean that it teaches sexual skills or techniques, not truths about the psychosexualities
and desires of the individuals on-screen or employed. This, for Foucault, would
situate pornography (and prostitution) closer to the ars erotica than the scientia
sexualis. To recall, the sexual experts of the ars erotica are trained in practices that
bring about pleasure and have mastered an art of manipulating bodies, while the
sexual experts of the scientia sexualis are trained in diagnosing psychological
perversions and interpreting desires. If porn stars (and prostitutes) are ‚sexual
experts‛ of a sort, capable of contributing to the sexual education of consumers, it is
in the manner of the ars erotica and not of the sexual sciences.
Let it be granted, then, that pornography can serve a pedagogical function, as is so

frequently claimed. It is nevertheless not clear that this situates pornography on the
side of the sexual sciences, and moreover it is not clear that this is very often the
main purpose in consuming pornography, or that it is a consumer’s primary

17 Williams, 51.
18 Pamela Paul, Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our
Families (New York: Times Books, 2005), 18.
27
motivation or merely a side-effect. Since pornography tends to be repetitious, it also

seems unlikely that viewers continue to watch pornography for its educational
function. After a short time, one has likely learned what pornography has to teach,
but many go on watching pornography for other reasons, which reasons were
probably the main motivation in the first place.
Setting these questions aside, even if we were to accept Williams’ assumption that
pornography arises and is consumed out of a will to know about sex, it is important
to note that not everything that engages in this volonté de savoir becomes a sexual
science. Foucault himself observes that the desire to confess and to hear confessed
the truths of sex quickly expanded beyond the scientific realm, and finds expression
today in our intimate conversations with family members, friends, and lovers and in
‚‘scandalous’ literature.‛19 Indeed, the confessional impulse does not merely
characterize our speaking about sex, for Foucault, but modern subjectivity more
generally, or the wide-spread trend toward psychologization. For instance, Foucault
discuss the manners in which criminal law became psychiatrized and involves
confessional practices in the modern era, even in cases which have nothing to do
with sexuality.20 For Foucault, this does not transform law, ‚scandalous literature,‛
or pillow talk into science, although it indicates that they interact with the human
sciences in interesting and problematic ways.
“Confessional Frenzy”?
Williams, however, argues that pornography in general (and not only in a few
autobiographical instances) is a sexual science, and that it functions in our society as
the sort of confession which the sexual sciences elicit and which Foucault examined.
According to Williams, pornography is consumed as a confessional genre, and as a
confessional source of truthful information about female pleasure in particular. She
writes that pornography has ‚the goal of making visible the involuntary confession
of bodily pleasure.‛21 In this way ‚We begin to see *<+ how this sexual science gives
form to the ‘truths’ that are confessed.‛22 In particular, ‚Hard core desires assurance
that it is witnessing not the voluntary performance of feminine pleasure, but its
involuntary confession.‛23 Pornography, according to Williams, is not just

20 Michel Foucault, ‚Confinement, Psychiatry, Prison,‛ and ‚The Dangerous Individual,‛ in
Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.), Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and
Other Writings, 1977-1984 (New York and London: Routledge, 1988), 178-210 and 125-151.
21 Williams, 50.
22 Ibid., 48.
23 Ibid.,, 50.
28
confessional but a ‚confessional frenzy,‛24 and ‚proceeds by soliciting further

confessions of the hidden secrets of female pleasure.‛25
Although the last formulation, with its language of soliciting rather than staging
‚confessions‛ from porn stars, obscures the point, the more sophisticated version of
Williams’ argument is not that the porn stars are actually confessing, but that
pornography aims to produce the illusion of confession, and that pornographic films
are consumed as confessions. Referring to Diderot’s tale of the speaking sex, as
discussed by Foucault, Williams writes that ‚Motion pictures *pornography+ take
over from the magic of Mongogul’s silver ring to offer the illusion of a more truthful,
hard-core confession.‛26 Williams thus realizes that it is in fact male directors
catering to male viewers who have been doing most of the ‚speaking‛ in
pornography, so that if male viewers think that they are ‚hearing‛ confessions of
female pleasure ‚spoken‛ through close-ups of female genitals engaged in real sex,
this involves mostly male pornographers ventriloquizing their voices into the vulvas
of their female stars. However, Williams asserts that this is equally true of the
‚other‛ sexual sciences:
Freud’s theory of the fetish develops out of a particular way of seeing women as
‘lacking’ that cinema participates in as well. Neither institution actually reflects
the confessional truths they purport to record; rather, they produce these truths
in their new forms of power and pleasure.27
In other words, Freud and Charcot do not give us the unadulterated confessions of
their female patients any more than the pornographers do, and yet what they said,
like the images that the pornographers produce, is productive of truth. Doctors and
pornographers, according to Williams, both give us confessions of female pleasure
as seen through the lens of male interpretation and desire in manners that do not so
much reflect as construct the truth of female sexuality. In one example, Williams
describes staged photographs of a faked hysterical attack by the photographer
Muybridge as other ‚‘confessions’ of a female body.‛28 Even pornographic literature
written by male writers is interpreted by Williams as ‚confessions‛ of female
pleasure:
there is not much difference between literary confessions (written by men but
often focused on women) of female pleasure *<+ and the more direct and
graphic confession of pleasure by women’s bodies in hard core. Both are
24 Ibid., 122.
25 Ibid., 53.
26 Ibid., 32.
27 Ibid., 46.
28 Ibid., 47-48.
29
examples of men speaking about women’s sex to other men; both want to know
more about the pleasures of women *<+.29
Williams suggests that if Fanny Hill, written by John Cleland, is read as a confession
of female pleasure, then so can pornography be – but does anyone read Fanny Hill
this way?
In any case, porn stars, especially female porn stars, like the model who faked a
hysterical fit for Muybridge, or the ‚hysterics‛ who performed for Charcot, are thus
not really confessing, for Williams, but she claims that they are viewed as confessing,
especially during their ‚involuntary convulsions‛ or orgasms, authentic or
otherwise, and that their performances function as confessions in the production of
knowledge about sex. According to Williams, it is because we watch pornography
to see confessions that the orgasm must be as visible as possible, as evidenced by the
de rigueur ‚money shot‛ in the case of male porn stars. For Williams, it is a major
problem for the pornography industry that women do not (usually) produce
similarly visible ‚confessions,‛ when ‚involuntary confessions of pleasure‛ –
especially female pleasure – is what hard core is all about.
Many objections can be raised here. To begin with a relatively small one, it is not
clear why Williams consistently associates pornographic orgasms with
involuntariness. In the case of ‚money shots,‛ which Williams repeatedly calls
‚involuntary confessions of pleasure,‛ Williams herself tells us that male porn stars
are paid extra for these scenes, and thus certainly intend them. It is also not clear
that confessions in general should be characterized as ‚involuntary.‛ While Foucault
stresses that confessions are authenticated by the inhibitions that they overcome, this
does not make them involuntary but rather feats of voluntary effort. In a legal
context, an involuntary statement does not qualify as a confession at all. In
literature, texts written in the third person and texts in which the first person
narrator’s name does not correspond with the author’s name (for instance, Fanny
Hill does not correspond with John Cleland) are also not considered confessional.30
In The History of Sexuality, Foucault describes confession as ‚a ritual of discourse
where the subject who speaks corresponds with the subject of the statement,‛31
which cannot be said for any of the cases which Williams is calling ‚confession.‛
Our everyday as well as Foucault’s use of the term ‚confession‛ refers to a truthful
statement made by one person to another about herself, whether this statement
29 Ibid., 55-56.
30 Philippe Lejeune, ‚Le pacte autobiographique,‛ in Philippe Lejeune, Le pacte Autobio-
graphique (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 13-46.
30
refers to something she has done, felt, or had done to her. Not every statement we
make about ourselves is considered to be a confession, however: calling a statement
a confession implies that it speaks of something that is shameful, difficult to say, or
revelatory of who the speaker is. According to Foucault, confession is a discursive
act that individuates us, and it is one of the privileged forms of truth-telling and self-
constitution in our culture. In ‚Subjectivity and Truth‛ Foucault defines confession
as: ‚To declare aloud and intelligibly the truth of oneself.‛32 In The History of
Sexuality, confession is ‚a ritual which unfolds in a relation of power, since one
doesn’t confess without the presence, at least the virtual presence, of a partner who
is not simply an interlocutor but the agency that requires the confession, imposes it,
weighs it, and intervenes to judge, punish, pardon, console, reconcile.‛33 For
Foucault, confession is also ‚a ritual where truth is authenticated by the obstacles
and resistances that it has had to lift in order to be formulated,‛ or one that is always
told with difficulty and shame. Finally, it is a discursive act in which ‚articulation
alone, independently of its external consequences, produces, in the person who
articulates it, intrinsic modifications: it makes him innocent, it redeems him, purifies
him, promises him salvation.‛34 In a later essay, ‚Christianity and Confession,‛
Foucault furthermore makes clear that confession must be verbal and not merely
performative. To make this point, he recounts a story from Cassian in which a monk
who stole a loaf of bread each day experiences repentance during a sermon, and
therefore performatively reveals to those congregated the loaf of bread hidden under
his robes, and then confesses verbally to having stolen and eaten a loaf each day.
Only when he makes a verbal confession does ‚a light *seem+ to tear itself away
from his body and cross the room, spreading a disgusting smell of sulphur.‛35 Satan
and his temptations were not dislodged from the monk at the moment that he felt
contrition, nor at the moment that he displayed the stolen loaf to his fellows and
thus theatrically exposed his guilt. Only when he confessed his wrongdoing in
words was the Devil forced from his body. Foucault uses this story to argue that
confession is discursive rather than performative, unlike earlier, pre-confessional
forms of Christian penance.
To summarize Foucault’s understanding of this crucial Western practice of truth-

telling, confession is interpersonal, discursive, autobiographical, difficult or
shameful, and subject-forming. This said, can pornography be described as
32 Michel Foucault, ‚Subjectivity and Truth,‛ in The Politics of Truth. Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e), (1997), 173.
34 Ibid., 62.
35 Michel Foucault, ‚Christianity and Confession,‛ in The Politics of Truth. Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e), (1997), 222-223.
31
confessional according to Foucault’s analysis of confession? Contra Williams, I

would argue that it cannot for the following reasons. First, the relation between
actors and viewers in pornography is not an interpersonal one, and the acts involved
are theatrical performances rather than discursive acts. Moreover, although this
point requires more explanation, it does not seem to me that the actors are
overcoming inhibitions in order to confess/perform pleasures which are subject-
forming, constitutive of their identities, or individuating. Performing in a
pornographic film, like engaging in prostitution, may be taken as constitutive of
psychosexual subjectivity in the modern West in that it is assumed to damage the
sex worker’s authentic sexuality.36 In this case, however, her authentic sexuality is
not what gets performed in either the brothel or the set, but is what gets obscured in
this process. According to this negative view of pornography, what we see in a
pornographic film is not an expression of the porn star’s sexuality, but a possibly
permanent and damaging obscuration of it.
Another way that pornographic performances may be constitutive of sexual identity

in the eyes of viewers and for the stars themselves is insofar as such performances
constitute her according to the identity of ‚sex worker‛ or ‚whore,‛ regardless of the
nature of the particular sex acts in which she is engaged; in other words, performing
as a dominatrix in a pornographic film does not constitute the actress as a
dominatrix in her own eyes or those of her viewers, but it may constitute her as a sex
worker or a whore, with all the stigmatization that this entails in a society such as
ours. Men interviewed in Pornified note that they would not date or marry the
actresses who arouse them, precisely because of the type of woman that performing
in pornographic films makes them. Performing in pornographic films functions to
constitute actors as porn stars/whores for their viewers and probably for themselves,
whatever (possibly more positive) meaning this has for them, but it does not
constitute them as, say, lesbians if they engage in lesbian sex scenes, or
sadomasochists if they perform in s/m scenes, for the precise reason that they engage
in these acts as theatrical performances and they are consumed as such. Williams is not
arguing that the porn stars are seen as confessing to being porn stars, however, but
that they are seen as confessing to pleasure, to truths about female sexuality, or to
their own feminine pleasure in particular acts, which does not seem to be the case.
Most importantly, it seems to me that no one considers the majority of pornographic

films to be confessions for the very simple reason that they are fictional and not
autobiographies or documentaries. Pornography does not declare itself to be a
truth-telling genre, but fantasy catering to the desires of its viewers (not its actors),
36 This view is widespread, but see, for instance, Igor Primoratz, ‚What’s Wrong with
Prostitution?‛ in Alan Soble (ed.), The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings (Lanham,
Boulder, CO, New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002), 455.
32
whereas, as Philippe Lejeune has argued, confessional texts are to be understood as

quasi-legalistic and particularly authentic cases of truth-telling or self-revelation.37
Peter Brooks, in his study of confession, notes that ‚Western literature has made the
confessional mode a crucial kind of self-expression that is supposed to bear a special
stamp of sincerity and authenticity and to bear special witness to the truth of the
individual personality.‛38 We do not consider a pornographic sex scene to be
particularly sincere, or to be any more confessional than a Hollywood sex scene,
even though, unlike in Hollywood films, porn stars are having real sex, as
demonstrated by the all important ‚meat shots‛ and ‚money shots‛ that characterize
hard-core. Although the act or sex is real, it is not true: porn stars are not telling the
truth of their sex or their desire. We see acts and maybe pleasures in porn, but we do
not know (and, as I shall argue below, I do not think that we care) if we are seeing
desire. In this sense, again, pornography seems closer to the ars erotica than to the
scientia sexualis.
Throughout Hard Core, Williams fails to distinguish between reality and truth, or real
sex and the truth of an individual’s sexuality, and between acts and pleasure on the one
hand, and sexuality and desire on the other. For Foucault, however, these are crucial
distinctions, indicative of the epistemic transition to modernity, or the shift in
importance from act to actor, deed to desire.39 An individual may be considered a
pedophile even if he has never acted on his desires, but only demonstrated them
through certain fantasies, consuming certain literature or websites, just as a person
may consider herself to be bisexual even if she has only had heterosexual sex, on the
basis of her longings. We evidently think that the sexual acts we perform in reality
may have little to do with the truth of our sex. For this reason, as Foucault makes
clear in The History of Sexuality, sexual confessions (and even legal or criminal
confessions) may or may not be about what a person really does, but they are always
37 Lejeune, 13-46.
38 Peter Brooks, Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature (Chicago, IL:
Chicago University Press, 2000), 18.
39 Foucault stresses this shift towards psychologization in many contexts. As seen above,
he contrasts the Eastern interest in bodies and pleasures to the Western focus on
sexuality and desire. In later works, Foucault contrasted ancient Greek and Roman
practices of self-mastery focusing on acts to the modern fixation on desires. For Foucault,
it is a peculiarity of the modern West that truth does not lie in what we have done but in
what we feel. Foucault notes a similar manifestation of this shift in interest from deed to
desire, act to actor, with respect to law: while in the past judges were only concerned
with crimes – or with establishing what had happened, who did it, and what punishment
corresponded – today they are at least as concerned with criminals, or with the psyches,
motivations, intentions, childhood histories, regrets, and likelihood of recidivism.
Foucault makes this point frequently, for instance in ‚Confinement, Psychiatry, Prison,‛
‚The Dangerous Individual,‛ and Discipline and Punish, among other places.
33
and more importantly concerned with what he or she wants to do. This is why
confessions are importantly discursive rather than theatrical. While Williams thinks
that pornography is confessional precisely because it uses bright lights and close-up
camera shots, or is a ‚frenzy of the visible,‛ confessions are in fact about the
invisible, what cannot be seen and must therefore be said – or whispered. Contra
Williams, the invisibility of the female orgasm in fact poses no problem at all for a
confessional discourse, even if it poses a problem for pornography.
In the case of hard-core, we know that the actors are having real sex, and even that
the male actors are having real orgasms or some degree of real pleasure, even if they
need to take Viagra to achieve it. However, we have no idea how they feel about it,
what their intentions and motivations are, what histories led up to their being where
they are, or if either the male or the female actors are expressing the truth of their
desires. What Williams does not see in her repeated references to these so-called
‚involuntary confessions of pleasure‛ is that, confessionally-speaking, pleasure is
not nearly as important as desire, and meat shots and money shots do not tell us
about desire – or, in a point to which I shall return below, at least not about the
desires of the actors.
Significantly for Williams’ argument, I also do not think that most consumers of
pornography are concerned about the authenticity (or truthfulness) of the actor’s
pleasures and desires, and this again indicates that they do not consume porn as a
confessional genre or out of a ‚will to know‛ about the sex(uality) of those on-
screen. One indication of this is that although there is a widespread belief that many
actresses in pornographic films are sexually exploited and abused, this does not
seem to change the experience of viewers, indicating that they are not interested in
what the porn star’s true desires, pleasures, or psychic states are, as long as she
performs well and the sex is real.40
40 In At Home with Pornography: Women, Sex, and Everyday Life (New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 1998), Jane Juffer discusses the case of one porn film in which the porn stars
are supposedly performing their own desires. The marketing gimmick for this work is
that it is allegedly undirected, and so provides viewers with a rare opportunity to see
porn stars expressing their true sexualities and pursuing their actual fantasies. Juffer
writes:
In Venom, a popular selection produced by Vidco Home Video, ten porn

stars perform a vast number of sex acts in what is billed as an expression of
their authentic and outrageous sexualities. Says producer Henri Pachard
before the MTV-style video begins, ‘You’re going to see something
different – exhibitionists given the freedom to expose nasty sexual urges
that will amaze a viewer. This extremely personal approach causes the
performers to become very vulnerable< They’re not fucking for you.
34
My experience of watching porn with men who are frequent consumers has
indicated that they notice – and are not favorably impressed – when a porn actress
diverges from the standard porn script, for instance by looking directly into the
camera rather than at her partner(s) in the scene. Of course, the direct gaze of the
porn star may be experienced as a challenge to the voyeuristic pleasure of the
viewer, or as a reminder of the presence of a cameraman at whom she really looks,
but when my viewing companions have said ‚she isn’t supposed to look at the
camera‛ at moments such as these, or when they even more frequently comment on
whether the actress is doing a ‚good job‛ or a ‚bad job,‛ this has made me realize
that they do not want an authentic performance or a genuine encounter with the
actress, that they do not want windows into her soul or her sexuality, but a well-
performed adherence to a standard pornographic script. If the direct gaze is any
indication of what she is really thinking, they do not ‚will to know‛ this truth.
Finally, as seen above, Williams does not just argue that consumers watch porn out
of a ‚will to know‛ about pleasure (rather than, more obviously, to have pleasure),
but out of a will to know about female pleasure in particular. Williams convincingly
demonstrates that in contrast to the stag films that preceded it, mainstream hardcore
pornography makes some efforts to problematize and represent female pleasure.
Indeed, men interviewed in Pornified stress that they enjoy pornography because the
women are more enthusiastic and pleased by sex than women are in real life. As
Pamela Paul writes, ‚Of all the requirements for enjoyable pornography, men most
commonly cite the appearance of a woman’s reciprocal pleasure as key.‛ 41 As
‚Ethan‛ says, for instance: ‚Women in porn tend to act like sex is earth-shattering
They’re not fucking for me. They’re fucking for themselves.’ We’re thus
positioned before the video begins to view pornography as something
performers do for their own pleasures; they are at heart exhibitionists, not
victims, as governmental discourse would have it. Furthermore, you, the
viewer, are the invader on what is essentially a private act; says Pachard,
‘If you begin to feel that you’re invading their privacy, you are.’ Pachard
appeals to the illicit thrill of voyeurism and yet legitimates pornography as
a private, fully consensual act. (Juffer, 60)
We may be skeptical, as Juffer seems to be, about whether even this video shows the
authentic sexuality of the porn stars, or that many viewers accept this. Importantly,
however, it is presented by the producer himself as ‚something different,‛ indicating that
in other porn the actors are not expressing their true sexualities or pursuing their real
fantasies, or are not fucking for themselves but for the director and the viewer. By
presenting this particular video as confessional, there is an acknowledgement that
normally what porn actors are doing is not confessional, or is not a performance of their
own personal fantasies, but those of the intended viewers.
41 Paul, 45.
35
even though in reality, sex isn’t like that all the time. Unfortunately<‛42 This
citation shows that consumers of pornography do not think that pornography
represents reality, even if this fantasy may come to construct their desires and even
their expectations in ‚real life.‛ It also shows that many consumers of pornography
want to see female pleasure represented (even if they know it is faked), and the
pornography industry caters to this desire. Unlike sexual scientists such as Kinsey,
however, the mainstream heterosexual pornography industry that Williams is
discussing did not solicit confessions from women about their pleasures and then go
about trying to capture true or even real female pleasure based on this information.
It did not direct male porn stars to perform the acts that real women (or the female
porn stars themselves) say they like in lieu of the usual anal penetration, fellatio, and
money shots, for instance, which is what we might have expected had Williams’
thesis been true, or had pornography really been participating in the will to know
and to tell the truth about female pleasure. Instead, the acts represented in
mainstream heterosexual pornographic films did not change very much – there is
still a great deal of fellatio, in some numbers this is just about all there is, and very
often it occurs as the climactic scene, compared to far less frequent and shorter
(‚foreplay‛) scenes of cunnilingus (and this usually only in films marketed as
‚couples’ porn‛), while the ‚money shot‛ remains a near-constant. The male
orgasm and not the female orgasm is the conclusion to almost all pornographic
numbers (even in ‚couples’ porn‛), even if now the female stars seem to enjoy
receiving the product of the male orgasm as much as the male stars enjoy producing
it.
As Julie Lavigne has argued, this is equally true of amateur pornography, which,
today, we might have expected to be the confessional sub-category of porn if ever
there was one.43 In fact, as Lavigne points out, amateur pornography for the most
part emulates the professional mainstream. This suggests that amateur
pornographers with their home videos are not interested in revealing the truths of
their individual sexualities any more than their professional counterparts, but are
instead engaged in performing according to the standards, norms, and expectations
established by the professional pornography into which they are thoroughly
assimilated – as, perhaps, most of us now are. Pornographers, then, whether
professional or amateur, have gone on representing the same things as always, but
now they bother to insist that these acts give women pleasure too. If pornography
produced primarily for men is interested in representing female pleasure, it is not the
42 Ibid., 14.
43 Julie Lavigne, ‚Érotisme féministe en art ou métapornographie. Le sexe selon Carolee
Schneemann, Annie Sprinkle, et Natacha Merritt,‛ Symposium: Canadian Journal of
Continental Philosophy, 11 (2), (Fall 2007), 364.
36
truth or even the reality of female pleasure that it is after, but rather the fantasy
according to which female pleasure results from the same acts that give men
pleasure.
The paradigmatic example of this point is of course Deep Throat, in which a woman’s
clitoris is located at the bottom of her throat such that she can only attain orgasm by
fellating men. The film is ostensibly about a woman’s quest for sexual pleasure, and
yet, as a result of an anatomical peculiarity that no viewer takes as ‚scientific fact‛ or
as a ‚true confession‛ on the part of Linda Lovelace, that female pleasure
corresponds to male pleasure in being fellated. In films like Deep Throat this is a silly
and self-conscious fiction, while the ‚sexual scientist‛ in the film appears as a
buffoon, and yet Williams reads the film and the role of the sexual scientist within
the film to be an instance of pornography as sexual science in pursuit of truthful
knowledge of female pleasure via confession.44
Along these lines, Williams interprets the pornographic representation of rape, in

which the victim eventually ‚confesses‛ to pleasure ‚despite herself‛ (or appears to
enjoy the rape), as arising from the greater confessional value of an involuntary
admission of pleasure. However, as Williams herself writes, scenes such as these
‚vindicate *the male viewer’s+ desire to believe that what he enjoys, she enjoys,‛45
much like the plot of Deep Throat. The fantasy world of much pornography
produced for men is one in which women enjoy doing or having done to them what
gives men pleasure. Such a fantasy is surely soothing in an era when women are
demanding their own pleasure (which may not necessarily correspond with what
brings men pleasure), and are judging men on their performance with the option of
shopping around for better lovers should men fail to perform.46
As seen, Williams uses Foucault’s account of Diderot’s tale, ‚The Indiscreet Jewels,‛
to describe pornography; however, if mainstream hard-core pornography gets the
female genitals to speak, as Williams herself realizes, it is only to have them say
what men want to hear. Most mainstream pornography, unlike some sexual
scientists and unlike the prince in Diderot’s story, does not express a genuine
interest in what the female genitals would have to say. Proof that the pornography
industry as well as viewers are aware of the fact that pornography is catering to the
desires of viewers, rather than revealing the desires of actors, is that when the
pornography industry began to target a female audience (or heterosexual couples),
44 Williams, 112-113.
45 Ibid., 164-165.
46 See, for instance, Anne Koedt’s article, ‚The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm.‛ in The CWLU
Herstory Website Archive (1970), for a classic feminist challenge to phallic sexuality and
intercourse which is contemporary with Deep Throat (1972).
37
the films it made were somewhat different. If pornographers really believed that
women have the same desires and pleasures as men, the idea of making
heterosexual couples’ porn different from men’s porn would not have occurred.
Williams acknowledges that in most hard-core ‚confessions of pleasure‛ it is the

men who have done the talking and what we see is merely the ‚illusion‛ of a female
confession. But is it even that? On what understanding of ‚confession‛ does
Williams make these arguments? As seen, it is not Foucault’s understanding of
confession, although it is Foucault’s account of confession on which she is ostensibly
drawing, and it is not that of literary and legal theorists of confession either, and it is
not even our ‚everyday‛ understanding of the term. Contra Williams, mainstream
pornography is not The Vagina Monologues, and most men do not watch
pornography primarily to know about women’s truths or women’s pleasure or
men’s pleasure either, but to have their own pleasures. The medium of this pleasure
is understood by consumers to be fantasy rather than quasi-scientific non-fiction or
confessional autobiography, and their objective is orgasmic rather than
epistemological, self- rather than other-oriented.
The Perverse Implantation and the Proliferation of Sexualities

Until now I have argued that pornography is not confessional, by which I have
meant that the sexual performances that we see in pornographic films are almost
never marketed as or understood as revelations of the sexual truths of the actors, or
as sexual truths at all. Now, however, I want to argue that there is a quasi-
confessional aspect to pornographic practices, but that it does not occur on the side
of what is produced by the pornography industry or what we see on the screen, as
Williams argues, but on the side of the viewer. If anyone does anything like confess
in the realm of pornography, it is not the actors but the consumers. In fact, this is
what should have followed from Williams’ comparison of pornography to the sexual
sciences. After all, what the sexual sciences do is not to provide us with sexual
confessions but to elicit them from us. By her own logic, then, if pornography were
like the sexual sciences, it would not give us confessions but would extract them from
us. As seen above, confessions, for Foucault, are individuating and subject-forming,
and are more about desires than acts or pleasures. While I do not think that
pornographic films are individuating, revelatory, or constructive of the sexuality of
the actors, other than in so far as they constitute them as sex workers, and while I do
not think that they are consumed as revelations of the true desires of the actors
either, I will now suggest that they are revelatory and constitutive of the desires and
sexuality of those who consume them.
I have said above that the educative role of pornography, such as it is, is closer to
that of the ars erotica than the sexual sciences, because porn stars, as ‚sexual experts,‛
38
teach viewers (especially younger viewers) techniques in the mastery of bodies and
pleasures – even if, in fact, and due to the constraints of their profession rather than
to personal failings, they are often bad experts or provide a bad education, as I have
also argued. This is to be contrasted with the kind of knowledge provided by the
sexual sciences, which consists of individuating, confessional truths about the
confessant’s sexuality or desires. I now want to argue that there is a manner in
which pornography educates us about individuated sexualities and desires in a
manner comparable to the scientia sexualis after all; however, the sexualities or
desires in question are not on the screen, nor are they related to ‚female pleasure‛ in
general, as Williams argues. The desires and sexuality in question are those of the
consumer, whether male or female. The pornography that viewers choose to watch,
and the acts and actors that arouse them, reveal to viewers their desires and thus
contribute to the identification and constitution of their sexualities. I am suggesting
that something comparable to confession is found in pornography, but that it is
found in the experience of consumption. This consumption, like confession,
participates in the perverse implantation and the proliferation of sexualities.
Foucault argues in The History of Sexuality that far from there having been a
repression of sexuality and perversions in the modern West, there has been a
proliferation of sexualities and an implantation of perversions. Indeed, it is precisely
those practices and discourses that were aimed at repressing perverse sexualities –
those of the sexual sciences in particular – which led to this proliferation and
implantation. In order to control perverse sexualities, modern Western societies
believed that they had to first understand them, and thus set out to discover,
categorize, and study individual sexual perversions. Ironically, the consequence of
these activities was not a reduction of perversions but their explosive deployment.
Studying sexual perversions meant studying the people who engaged in perverse
acts and identifying these individuals according to their desires. In the process,
according to Foucault, sexual identities were not so much revealed as discursively
produced. This was an unanticipated but not entirely negative effect of the sexual
sciences. Only by being identified by their so-called perversion, and by taking on
this identity for themselves in the process, could sexual sub-cultures be established,
giving their own meanings to the sexual identities according to which they had been
categorized. Despite this result, Foucault is troubled that we are now each fixed to a
specific sexuality and that this sexuality is taken as our identity, supposedly
structuring everything that we do. For Foucault, discovering one’s sexuality is not
liberating: on the contrary, there is a lack of sexual freedom once a particular
sexuality is implanted as who we are.
Importantly, Foucault’s claim is not that sexualities or perversions proliferate within

an individual’s life, such that we as individuals now enjoy multiple and fluid
39
sexualities. On the contrary, Foucault’s argument is that while sexualities proliferate

at a society-wide level, each of us is tied down to a single sexuality. This means that
there are now more options with respect to the sexual identities that we take on, but
each of us tends to be reduced to just one of these options. Moreover, most
sexualities are understood as ‚abnormalities‛ situated in relation to and with respect
to their divergence from the norm: this norm is monogamous, heterosexual,
romantic, and vanilla. Some of these divergences, such as male heterosexual
promiscuity, may be more tolerated than others, such as pedophilia, however all are
situated with respect to a norm that they thereby affirm. For Foucault, by
identifying with any sexuality, whether the norm or any one of its variations, we
reinscribe that norm.47 This – and not straightforward homogenization – is how
normalization works.
I stress these last points because Williams has misunderstood what Foucault means
by the perverse implantation. For Williams, because the modern era is implanted
and proliferating with perversions and sexualities (partly through the deployment of
pornography), each of us inhabits multiple perversions or sexualities:
there can no longer be any such thing as fixed sexuality – male, female, or
otherwise – *<+ now there are proliferating sexualities. For, if the ‘implantation
of perversions’ is, as Foucault says, an instrument and an effect of power, then as
discourses of sexuality name, identify, and ultimately produce a bewildering
array of pleasures and perversions, the very multiplicity of these pleasures and
perversions inevitably works against the older idea of a single norm – an
economy of the one – against which all else is measured.48
As a result, according to Williams, modern sexual identity has become multiple and
fluid, undermining the notion that there is a single sexuality determined by a phallic
‚one‛ or norm. For Williams, the perverse implantation is to be understood as a
positive Irigaray-esque disestablishment of sexual normalization, and she urges that
we embrace ‚the liberatory potential contained in the very idea of an ‘implantation
of perversions.’‛49 The perverse implantation is positive for Williams, results in
fluid sexualities, and opposes normalization, whereas for Foucault it is largely
negative, results in fixed sexualities, and imposes a norm through the very
implantation of abnormalities. While Williams states that the perverse implantation
produces new pleasures and opposes the fixing of sexual identity, Foucault is clear
that it does the very opposite of this, stating, on the same page where he mentions
pornography and prostitution, that ‚the West has not been capable of inventing any
47 Ladelle McWhorter, Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization
(Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999).
48 Williams, 114-115.
49 Ibid., 118.
40
new pleasures, and it has doubtless not discovered any original vices. But it has
defined new rules for the game of powers and pleasures. The frozen countenance of
the perversions is a fixture of this game.‛50 What the perverse implantation does,
through the workings of the sex industry as well as the sexual sciences, is to ‚fix‛ or
‚freeze‛ the face of our sexualities, circumscribing the kinds of pleasure that each of
us can have by tying us down to specific sexual identities as taxonomized by the
sexual sciences.
But how do pornography and prostitution implant perversions and contribute to the
proliferation of sexualities? Not by being confessional, as Williams has claimed in the
case of pornography, while setting aside the question of prostitution. Rather, I am
claiming that the implantation, fixation, or freezing of sexual perversions and
identities occurs in pornography and prostitution through the subject-forming
practice of consumption. Consumers interviewed in Pornified indicate that porn
consumption exposed them to a range of sexualities and allowed them to figure out
what they were ‚into.‛ As one 20-year-old, male university student puts it: ‚I was
able to learn what ‘my type’ is by looking around online – thin women with C- or D-
sized breasts and long dark hair. Porn gave me a sense of what’s out there and
exposed me to the kind of stuff I enjoy in real life.‛51 In this way, pornography
educates viewers in the proliferation of sexualities from which they can choose, but
then they do choose (or ‚discover‛) their sexuality according to an analysis of their
desires, as demonstrated by their consumption of pornography. Pornography thus
allows viewers to realize a sexuality or taxonomical sexual type, providing them
with the opportunity to identify with one of many kinds of sexuality. Each man
interviewed in Pornified quickly states what his type of pornography is, and often
what his type of porn star is. Now he knows the sites that specialize in the things he
likes. Every time he types in what he wants to see in his search engine, he self-
consciously reaffirms and reinscribes his sexual type. It therefore seems that
pornography allows consumers to experiment with different kinds of pleasures that
might not otherwise have been available to them and thus allows for a proliferation
of sexualities; however, pornographic consumption also contributes to an identi-
fication with one kind of sexuality. Consumption, like confession, is thus productive
of ontologies, or is one of the many ways in which we identify who we are.
Other pornography-consumers say that they only ever consumed a particular type
of pornography because of the sexuality with which they already identified or
wished to identify by the time they had access to pornography. One man with
whom I spoke consumes pornography on a daily basis and told me that he has only
ever watched heterosexual mainstream pornography. He too states that he has a

51 Paul, 16.
41
‚type‛: heterosexual pornography featuring women with large, natural breasts.

From the start, he was wary of looking at any other kinds of pornography for fear of
being influenced by them. If anything ‚abnormal‛ comes onto the screen when he is
consuming pornography – such as a transsexual, or male homosexual activity – he
immediately closes the window and searches for something else, not so much
because the image turns him off but because he does not want to be turned on by it.
This consumer does not want to explore alternative sexualities or to identify with
anything other than ‚normal‛ and ‚straight,‛ and thus vigilantly avoids non-
‚normal‛ pornography sites. This man’s exclusive consumption of heterosexual
mainstream porn is informed by his identification with and desire for normalcy. At
the same time, his preference for straight porn probably does more than simply
reflect his sexual identity, but shores up and reinscribes it. The act of shutting the
window when anything ‚abnormal‛ comes on screen surely reaffirms his sense of
himself as ‚normal‛ and ‚straight‛ every time. Likewise, a person with ‚abnormal‛
desires who consumes non-mainstream pornography engages in an activity which
causes him to self-consciously identify with what he himself will understand as an
‚abnormal‛ sexuality.
Arguably, when sexual initiation and exploration occurs in a more reciprocal and
less consumerist context, or in the physical presence of other human beings whose
services one has not purchased, the individual is more likely to respond to the
desires and limitations placed on him by the other person(s) in the sexual relation.
There are thus limits to what he can experience, or on the kind of sexual
consumption he can identify with through his practice, but also, in a non-
consumerist sexual encounter, there are other people’s desires to respond to which
may go beyond what the individual thought to be his own desires, but in response
to which he may experience new pleasures. In contrast, pornography – like
prostitution – allows the consumer to stipulate, dictate or select exactly what he
wants every time, and this facilitates falling into a specific typology. As in the
prostitute-client encounter, there can always be surprises in what happens in a
pornographic film, but then one can quickly shut the window, stop or fast-forward
the DVD, and choose something else. The fact that the options are almost unlimited
with pornography – especially with internet pornography – and that this is a
consumerist rather than a reciprocal sexual activity, in which the object of sexual
desire is merely a means to one’s (orgasmic) ends, means both that the individual
has more options and that he can have exactly the option he wants every time and
nothing but that option if he so chooses. Although the sex industry opens up many
new possibilities, it may ultimately and paradoxically curtail the potential for
surprise, novelty, and sexual exploration, thus limiting rather than setting free.
According to Paul’s study and my own discussions with consumers of porn, men
who have consumed pornography over a period of years can no longer fantasize
42
without it, and nor can they be aroused without pornography or real-life sexual
performances which emulate pornography. Sociologist Michael Kimmel has found
that ‚male sexual fantasies have become increasingly shaped by the standards of
porn.‛52 I would argue that this is increasingly true of female sexual fantasies as
well, or at least of female sexual behavior as it strives to fulfill the new norms of
male desire. This indicates pornography’s power to shape our sexual imaginations
in ways that constrain rather than open up to new possibilities.
As Foucault has shown in the case of confession, we may engage in an activity, such
as the consumption of pornography, in the belief that we are liberating our sexuality,
when in fact we are limiting that sexuality, binding it to just one form of sex-desire.
In this sense, although in a very different manner, consuming pornography, like
hiring prostitutes, really is comparable to what the sexual sciences do according to
Foucault’s reading, or is part of the ‚perverse implantation.‛ In so far as
pornography may also be seen as an erotic art in its offering of technical sexual
expertise, it is perhaps an art which we do better to eschew in its current mainstream
forms, whether professional or amateur, since the education it provides is phallo-
centric, masculinist, and normalizing. Returning to Foucault’s statement, cited
above, that he should have contrasted the sexual sciences not with Eastern ars erotica
but with ancient Greek technologies of self-care, I would suggest that what we need
to do is to explore sexual technologies that function as cares of the self, or,
alternatively, as ars erotica which conjoin with techne tou biou rather than with the
scientia sexualis. Although this is a subject that I must develop further elsewhere, I
suspect that certain alternative pornographies already function in such a way. What
I have argued is thus not an absolute critique of all pornography or of all uses of
pornography, but rather only of mainstream porn and of the specific ways in which
it tends to be used not for the exploration of bodies and pleasures but for
‚discovering‛ and satisfying supposedly pre-given sex-desire.
Conclusions
This paper has argued that it is because the mechanism of consumption works in a
manner similar to confession – and not because pornography is a confessional
discourse or a sexual science as Williams has claimed – that Foucault listed
pornography and prostitution along with medicine and psychiatry in his discussion
of the perverse implantation in The History of Sexuality. Whereas Williams has to
replace the word ‚prostitution‛ with the word ‚law‛ in her reference to this passage
in order to support her view of pornography as confessional, my account of
consumption requires no such manipulation and can explain why Foucault includes
prostitution in his list of normalizing sexual practices. Similarly, whereas Williams
needs to strain the definition of confession in order to see pornography as a
52 Ibid., 27.
43
confessional practice, my focus on consumption more easily makes sense of how

both pornography and prostitution work. Understood as practices of consumption
rather than confession, pornography and prostitution, like psychiatry and medicine,
are part of the proliferation of sexualities and the perverse implantation: they are, in
their current mainstream forms and uses, normalizing rather than liberating sexual
practices. In the last part of this paper I have indicated how these processes of
normalization, proliferation, and implantation might take place in the cases of
pornography and prostitution. Finally, I have indicated that pornography need not
function in this normalizing way, and that non-mainstream or alternative forms and
uses of pornography may already function more positively as techne tou biou or as
non-normalizing ars erotica.
44
Dianna Taylor 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
ARTICLE
Normativity and Normalization

Dianna Taylor, John Carroll University
ABSTRACT: This article illustrates ways in which the concepts of the norm and
normativity are implicated in relations of power. Specifically, I argue that these
concepts have come to function in a normalizing manner. I outline Michel Fou-
cault’s thinking on the norm and normalization and then provide an overview of
Jürgen Habermas’s thinking on the norm and normativity in order to show that
Habermas’s conceptualizations of the norm and normativity are not, as he posits,
necessary foundations for ethics and politics, but in fact simply one philosophical
approach among many. Uncritically accepting a Habermasian framework therefore
produces normalizing effects and inhibits alternative and potentially emancipatory
thinking about ethics and politics. Having problematized the requirement of norma-
tive foundations as it is currently articulated, I conclude by examining the emanci-
patory potential of a particular aspect of Foucault’s work for the practice of philo-
sophy.
Keywords: Norm, Normativity, Normalization, Freedom.
I believe that one of the meanings of human existence – the source of human
freedom – is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or
immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and
inhuman law for us.1 ~ Michel Foucault
I recently presented a conference paper in which I argued that Foucault’s

conceptualizations of the norm and normalization are relevant for contemporary
feminism. I justified my claim in part by asserting that Foucault’s elucidation of the
power effects and contingency of particular social norms (such as sex and gender),
1 Michel Foucault, ‚Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual.‛ Interview wit h Michael
Bess (November 3, 1980), IMEC (Institut Mémoirs de l’Édition Contemporaine) Archive
folder number FCL2. A02-06.
45
Taylor: Normativity and Normalization
extends to the idea of the norm itself. For Foucault, the norm is a norm. But it is one
of those norms (e.g., sex and gender) that effectively presents itself not as a norm,
but as a given and therefore outside of power – benign and closed to critical analysis.
Just as he does with the idea of sex in Volume I of The History of Sexuality, Foucault
traces across several of his Collège de France courses the emergence of the idea of
the norm as a modern concept and illustrates its implication in modern relations of
power. In my paper, I argued that this tracing and illustrating is important because
it effectively supports Foucault’s contention that nothing, even (for Foucault,
especially) those concepts, categories, and principles that appear to be most
fundamental to making sense of the world, need simply be accepted, and that such
refusal creates possibilities for developing alternative modes of thought and
existence which increase persons’ capacities and expand their possibilities without
simultaneously increasing and expanding the proliferation of power within society.
Refusing to simply accept what is presented as natural, necessary, and normal – like
the ideas of sex and the norm itself – presents possibilities for engaging in and
expanding the practice of freedom.
During the question and answer period, a conference participant asserted
that Foucault’s work could possess only minimal relevance for feminism. ‚It’s not
normative,‛ the individual stated flatly, while several people sitting nearby nodded
their heads in agreement. Neither the questioner nor the tacit supporters elaborated;
indeed, the assumption appeared to be that no elaboration was needed: to contend
that Foucault’s work was lacking in normative content simply spoke for itself. The
burden was therefore on me, for if Foucault’s work was not in fact normative there
was no way it could possess relevance for feminist thought and practice.
In this essay, I present the long version of my response to persons such as the
conference participants described above. My focus here is not the relevance of
Foucault’s work for feminism, but rather the more fundamental claim that his work
is ‚not normative.‛ In making that assertion, it seemed to me at the time (and still
does) that the conference participants missed the point of my paper. From their
perspective, one may critically analyze things like what it means to say a practice is
normative, how particular norms or normative practices function, and whether a
particular norm is oppressive, but the necessity of the norm and normativity for any
discussion of ethics and politics, let alone for articulating emancipatory ethical and
political theory and practice, must be accepted; indeed, it is simply assumed. My
point, by contrast, was that assuming and uncritically accepting, as my questioner
did, the necessity of a concept not only for promoting freedom, but also and more
fundamentally for making sense at all, is itself normalizing and that, moreover, part
of the way normalizing norms work is by masking their own effects of power and
thus inhibiting the kind of critical analysis that would have allowed the questioner
to perceive the uncritical assumptions she was making.
46
A norm is normalizing if, as noted above, it links the increase of capacities

and expansion of possibilities to an increase in and expansion of the proliferation of
power within society. Simply put, normalizing norms encourage subjects to become
highly efficient at performing a narrowly defined range of practices. This is the case
with gender, where subjects are divided into two mutually exclusive groups, the
appropriate behaviors of which are predetermined and which these subjects are
encouraged to repeat over and over again. In time, the repeated behaviors become
embedded to the point where they are perceived not as a particular set of prevailing
norms, but instead simply as ‚normal,‛ inevitable, and therefore immune to critical
analysis. Normalizing norms thus hinder not only critical analysis itself but also, to
the extent that they become naturalized, the recognition that such engagement is
needed or possible at all. So, for example, while the specific character of acceptable
gender roles may change over time, the idea persists that women and men are
different in some fundamental ways that simply must be accepted. To the extent
that normalizing norms maintain or strengthen the link between increased capacities
and expanded possibilities and increased power and inhibit or even prevent the
cultivation and exercise of practices which elucidate and loosen this link, these
norms are counter to freedom.
The response my conference paper generated suggests to me that the
concepts of the norm and normativity have come to play a normalizing role within
philosophical discourse, particularly with respect to ethics and politics. While I
believe that a broad analysis of the normalizing effects of the norm and normativity
is called for, in this essay I limit myself to analyzing these normalizing effects
relative to the work of Foucault, for if Foucault’s insight into the normalizing effects
of the idea of the norm, let alone the broader ethico-political relevance of his work, is
to be taken seriously the characterization of his work as ‚not normative‛ must be
addressed. In order to address this issue, I contrast Foucault’s conceptualization of
the nature and function of the norm with that of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas’s
work is paradigmatic of the view that ethics and politics generally and emancipatory
ethics and politics more specifically can be meaningfully articulated only if they are
grounded in certain normative principles. Analyzing his work in relation to Fou-
cault’s therefore provides an effective means through which to illustrate how the
demand for normative criteria has come to function as a kind of normative criterion,
to illustrate the contingency of this norm, and to analyze its normalizing effects.
Exposing the demand for normative criteria as both contingent and normalizing, I
argue, facilitates measured analysis and therefore better understanding of work such
as Foucault’s which, under prevailing conceptions of the norm and normativity, is
seen as possessing limited ethical and political relevance or at worst as ethically and
politically harmful. Once the demand that Foucault’s work satisfy prevailing ideas
about the norm and normativity is lifted, his refusal to comply with, as well as his
criticism of, that demand no longer renders his work ethically and politically
47
irrelevant or dangerous; instead, its value in promoting practices of freedom can be

explored.
I want to be clear that while my argument reflects a Foucauldian perspective,
I do not mean to reject Habermas’s work or pit the work of Foucault against that of
Habermas; nor will I attempt to show that the work of these two thinkers is in fact
compatible.2 Indeed, I believe these kinds of strategies assume and therefore
perpetuate the very ways of thinking about the norm and normativity that I seek to
call into question. I do want to make a point about how the uncritical acceptance of
Habermasian notions of the norm and normativity necessarily posits Foucault’s
work as non-normative and therefore ethically and politically irrelevant or harmful.
Yet my broader aim is to show that it is only through critical interrogation of what
has been presupposed or uncritically accepted that the emancipatory potential of
any philosophy – whether work such as Habermas’s which asserts the necessity of
normative foundations for ethics and politics, or such as Foucault’s, which seeks to
elucidate the power effects of such assertions – can be effectively explored. My
question in this essay, and the direction in which I see Foucault’s work pointing, is
therefore not, ‚Is it normative?‛ but rather ‘What motivates the question, ‚Is it
normative?‛ and what are the effects of this question?’ Simply put, my question is
not ‚Is it normative?‛ but ‚Is it normalizing?‛
I proceed by outlining relevant aspects of Foucault’s thinking on the norm
and normalization across several of his Collège de France courses,3 and then
providing an overview of Habermas’s thinking on the norm and normativity. I next
2 A good deal of scholarly analysis has been generated that addresses the problem of the
norm and normativity in the work of Foucault and Habermas. The problem figures
centrally in two edited volumes, Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas
Debate, ed. Michael Kelly (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1994) and Foucault Contra Habermas, eds.
Samantha Ashenden and David Owen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), and is also
apparent in a number of the essays (including Habermas’s own) in Foucault: A Critical
Reader, ed. David Couzens Hoy (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1986). All of these volumes
contain essays that make valuable contributions to Foucault and Habermas scholarship,
and some of them (such as James Tulley’s contribution to the Ashenden/Owen volume,
which I cite later in this essay) move in the direction of my own analysis. But I think the
majority of the contributions ultimately accept prevailing notions of the norm and
normativity and, hence, end up covering the same ground concerning whether
Foucault’s work is normative or not.
3 Foucault addresses the problematic nature and function of norms in his published work,
Discipline and Punish and Volume I of The History of Sexuality being particularly important
in this regard insofar as these texts illustrate the workings of disciplinary power and
biopower, respectively. I have chosen to focus on the Collège de France courses because
within their context one can clearly see Foucault formulating his ideas as he works
though various problems. The courses thus provide valuable insight into the
development of Foucault’s thought across time which is not as apparent within the
context of his published works.
48
show that Habermas’s conceptualizations of the norm and normativity are not, as he
posits, necessary foundations for ethics and politics, but in fact simply one
philosophical approach among many. On the one hand, then, uncritically accepting
a Habermasian framework produces normalizing effects; on the other hand, ways of
thinking about, conceptualizing, and practicing ethics and politics that do not
require a particular understanding of ‚normative foundations‛ and which could in
fact possess emancipatory potential are possible. Having problematized the
requirement of normative foundations as it is currently articulated, I conclude by
examining the emancipatory potential of a particular aspect of Foucault’s work for
the practice of philosophy.
Foucault’s conceptualizations of the nature and function of the norm and
normalization can be traced through four of his Collège de France courses:
Psychiatric Power (1974); Abnormal (1975); Society Must be Defended (1976); and
Security, Territory, Population (1978). In these courses, Foucault associates the norm
with specifically modern forms of power. He argues that with the rise of modernity,
sovereign power found itself unable to effectively control all aspects of increasingly
complex societies, with the result that certain techniques of power which had up
until that point had been employed only within religious contexts were generalized
to society more broadly.4 Foucault sees the norm as being at the heart of these
techniques of modern power.
In his 1974 and 1975 courses, Foucault ties the norm to disciplinary power,
which targets individual bodies in order to train subjects that are simultaneously
efficient and obedient. In Psychiatric Power, Foucault argues that within a
disciplinary context, the norm functions ‚as the universal prescription for all‛
disciplinary subjects.5 The following year, in Abnormal, Foucault identifies the norm
as the ‚element‛ upon which ‚a certain exercise of power is founded and
legitimized.‛6 He also elaborates on precisely how the norm functions within a
disciplinary context, arguing that the norm ‚brings with it a principle of both
qualification and correction. The norm’s function is not to exclude and reject.
Rather, it is always linked to a positive technique of intervention and transfor-
mation, to a sort of normative project.‛7 Under disciplinary power, Foucault writes,
‚there is an originally prescriptive character of the norm,‛ in the sense that the norm
4 ‚Far too many things,‛ Foucault states, ‚were escaping the old mechanism of the power
of sovereignty, both at the top and at the bottom, both at the level of detail and at the
mass level.‛ See Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de
France 1975-76, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), 249.
5 Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France 1973-1974, trans.
Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave, 2006), 55.
6 Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974-1975, trans. Graham
Burchell (New York: Picador, 2003), 50.
7 Ibid.
49
determines what is normal.8 Subjects constitute themselves and are in turn

constituted through techniques of power that presuppose the norm, construed as an
ideal or ‚optimal model.‛9
As a result of his evolving conception of the nature and function of modern
power, Foucault modifies his conception of the norm in the 1976 course. Power does
not only target individual bodies, Foucault has come to realize in Society Must Be
Defended, it also targets populations by way of a second form of modern power
which he refers to as biopower. Generally speaking, biopower proliferates through
the actions of the State in such a way as to regulate populations at the biological
level in the name of promoting the health and protecting the life of society as a
whole. This protection and regulation intersects with the disciplining of individual
bodies within the context of modern societies, Foucault argues, and the norm is the
mechanism along which this intersection occurs. It circulates between the disci-
plinary and the regulatory; it is ‚something that can be applied to both a body one
wishes to discipline and a population one wishes to regularize.‛10 While the norm
still founds and legitimizes power, it does so specifically by linking disciplinary and
biopower and thus facilitating the flow of power through and across all facets of
modern societies.
Foucault returned to the Collège in 197811 having further modified his
conception of the norm. The norm can still be said to found and legitimize modern
power by providing a link between disciplinary power and biopower, but in
Security, Territory, Population he argues that it functions differently within
disciplinary and biopolitical contexts. With discipline, the norm establishes the
normal: individuals are brought and bring themselves into conformity with some
pre-existing standard. With biopower, the norm is established from several
‚normals,‛ as represented specifically by ‚curves of normality;‛ statistical analysis,
according to Foucault, constitutes a key technique for regulating and managing
populations. From these normals, the ‚most normal‛ or the ‚optimal normal‛ – i.e.,
the norm – for a particular population is established: within a biopolitical context
‚the norm is an interplay of differential normalities . . . the normal comes first, and
the norm is deduced from it.‛12 As Foucault describes it, different normal curves are
produced by studying a population, from those normal curves the norm gets
established as an optimal or ideal normal which is then brought back to bear on the
population in order to regulate that population – that is, to dictate how the
8 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-
1978, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 57.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 252-253.
11 The 1976 course ended in March of 1976; the 1978 course did not commence until January
of 1978.
12 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 63.
50
population ought to behave. Since populations are not fully engaged in relations of
power until this prescriptive function is implemented, the foundation and
legitimation of biopower still hinges on the norm in important ways.
The idea that the norm functions differently within disciplinary and
biopolitical contexts leads Foucault to in turn mark a distinction between the
techniques of power to which the norm gives rise in these respective contexts. Prior
to the 1978 course, Foucault has referred to all power techniques originating with the
norm as ‚normalization.‛ In the 1974 course, Foucault specifically describes the
function of disciplinary power in these terms. Within a disciplinary context, he
argues, ‚uninterrupted supervision, continual writing, and potential punishment
enframed [the] subjected body and extracted a psyche from it . . . [the] individual is a
subjected body held in a system of supervision and subjected to procedures of
normalization.‛13 In the 1975 course, Foucault again speaks of normalization as
consisting of techniques he associates with disciplinary power. He describes these
techniques as ‚simultaneously positive, technical, and political,‛ and argues that
they function in the service of bringing subjects into conformity with a pre-
determined norm.14
At the beginning of the 1976 course, Foucault invokes the idea of
normalization primarily in order to distinguish it (and therefore disciplinary power)
from juridical or sovereign power. ‚The discourse of disciplines,‛ he asserts, ‚is
about a rule: not a juridical rule derived from sovereignty, but a discourse about a
natural rule, or in other words a norm. Disciplines will define not a code of law but
a code of normalization.‛15 By the end of that course Foucault has ceased to use the
term ‚normalization‛ altogether and speaks only of ‚normalizing societies‛
(societies characterized by the linking together of disciplinary power and biopower).
Given that at this point Foucault was rethinking the norm’s role within
modern relations of power, it seems likely that he was beginning to rethink the
nature of normalization as well. Indeed, by 1978 Foucault has marked a distinction
between normalization, which he now attributes solely to biopower and describes as
the process of establishing the norm from different normal curves, and the
disciplinary process of bringing subjects into conformity with a pre-determined
norm which he now refers to as ‚normation.‛16 This distinction between norma-
lization and normation should not be seen as an indication that Foucault is no longer
concerned with disciplinary power and its ‚normizing‛ techniques. As the rest of
the 1978 course, as well as others of Foucault’s texts,17 makes clear, he continues to
13 Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 56-57.

14 Foucault, Abnormal, 50.
15 Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 38.
16 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 63.
17 See Michel Foucault, ‚Governmentality,‛ in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality,
51
view modern societies as being characterized by both disciplinary and biopower –

and although it is less prominent and not characteristically modern, by sovereign
power as well. Insofar as Foucault explicitly argues that when they emerge, new
forms of power do not entirely displace existing forms, the norm retains its function
of linking the discipline of bodies and the regulation of populations of linking
normation and normalization. Likewise, the norm retains its function of founding
and legitimizing modern power, despite the fact that in normalization the norm is
derived from the normal.
In sum: Foucault posits the norm as playing a fundamental role in the
emergence, legitimation, proliferation, and circulation of modern power. The norm
establishes what is normal. Techniques of normation and normalization in turn
function to ‚make normal.‛ On the one hand, they intervene within both individual
bodies and populations in order to bring them into conformity with particular social
norms. On the other hand, in doing so such techniques perpetuate the power
relations that the norm founds and legitimizes by reproducing norms within the
sociopolitical landscape to the point that they come to be seen not as produced at all
but simply as natural and necessary. Within a disciplinary context the norm gets
established by, for example, factory managers who determine that workers should
be able to produce a product in a certain amount of time. The workers’ bodies are
trained so that they become highly effective at performing the particular operation
that will facilitate the desired outcome. Within the context of biopower the norm
gets established by, for example, economists who deem a certain level of unemploy-
ment or poverty acceptable or even necessary within the overall population in order
for the economy to grow. These ‚normal‛ levels of unemployment or poverty are
cultivated within the population as a whole.18
It is important to bear in mind that not all individual social norms are
normizing/normalizing. From a Foucauldian perspective, social norms act as ‚nodal
points‛ within a broad power matrix. Power passes through and along norms, and
these points of intersection can either facilitate or inhibit the further circulation of
power. Norms that facilitate power’s circulation don’t pose a problem. Given that
he conceives of power in terms of relations, Foucault considers subjects to be free
when they are able to modify, negotiate, and/or reverse these relations – when in
eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1991).
18 Foucault shows that institutions – prisons, schools, factories, the military – play a key
role in the establishment and proliferation of norms and, hence, in the proliferation of
modern power. I am grateful to the editors of this journal for pointing out to me that
Foucault believed developing new, non-normalizing/normizing institutions was an
‚important and crucial issue,‛ at the same time that he admitted he had ‚no precise idea‛
of how such development would occur. See Michel Foucault, ‚Sex, Power and the
Politics of Identity,‛ in Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer
(New York: Semiotexte, 1989), 389.
52
other words, the circulation of power within society is at least relatively unimpeded.
It is therefore the sedimentation of power through the uncritical acceptance of
particular norms as natural and therefore necessary that is cause for concern.
Normalizing norms are those which facilitate such sedimentation by linking the
increase of capacities and expansion of possibilities to an intensification of existing
power relations. One way in which sedimentation occurs, taking the example given
above, is through certain conceptions of worker productivity or certain
understandings and levels of poverty and unemployment coming to be seen as
natural. Over time persons not only don’t think critically about these phenomena,
they don’t give them much thought at all; worker productivity, poverty, and
unemployment simply become part of the landscape – what has to be assumed in
order for discussions about the economy to be entered into. Such naturalization
effectively promotes acceptance and conformity with prevailing norms on both an
individual and societal level. Moreover, the norm provides the grounds not only for
distinguishing ‚normal‛ and ‚abnormal‛ individuals and populations, but also for
sanctioning intervention into both in order to ensure conformity or bring into
conformity, to keep or make normal, and also to effectively eliminate the threat
posed by resisting individuals and populations.
Habermas construes the nature and function of the norm very differently
than Foucault does. Whereas for Foucault the norm founds and plays a key role in
the functioning of modern power, for Habermas the norm demarcates the limits of
power; it distinguishes what is good and valid from what is not, where goodness
and validity are determined and legitimized not by relations of power but by reason.
The basics of the Habermasian perspective are outlined in his book, Moral
Consciousness and Communicative Action.
Norms, according to Habermas, possess ‚ought character.‛19 ‚Norm-related
speech acts,‛ he argues, make validity claims, in the sense that when one says ‚x is
good to do‛ or ‚one ought to do x,‛ one is making a claim that x is morally
justifiable; that is, one is saying that one has ‚good reasons‛ for doing x or that one
‚ought to do‛ x.20 To be legitimate, the validity claims that normative speech acts
make must be ‚general.‛ Habermas takes the position that general agreement or
consensus about what constitutes moral and immoral action has to be able, at least in
theory, to be reached in order for harms to be intelligible as ethical violations. In the
absence of some shared and communicable standard which harmful actions can be
said to violate, such actions are not merely idiosyncratic but in fact incoherent. The
normativity of norms is thus interconnected with their intelligibility, making claims
19 Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian

Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 44.
20 Ibid.
53
of ‚normative rightness‛ different from claims of ‚propositional truth‛ and there-

fore in need of a different kind of justification.21
On the one hand, the justification for norms needs to be relevant for lived
experience. Thus, while the ‚basic intuition‛ of Kant’s categorical imperative
functions as a guide for Habermas, he rejects the notion that a single individual
testing her or his maxims can sufficiently generate general validity.22 For Kant moral
deliberation is ‚monological,‛ whereas for Habermas it is collective in the sense that
it is grounded in and carried out by members of the lifeworld.23 Moreover, for
Habermas moral deliberation aims to restore a moral consensus that has been
disrupted and thus reflects a common as opposed to an individual will.24
On the other hand, to be valid the justification for norms cannot simply be
determined by the vicissitudes of human affairs. It is for this reason that Habermas
locates justification within the form – rather than in the content or outcome – of
rational argumentation. He refers to this form as ‚communicative action.‛ As
opposed to strategic action, where one actor attempts to manipulate or coerce
another in order to achieve personal satisfaction or gain, communicative action takes
the form of rational argumentation aimed at consensus; it is characterized by the
expectation that reasons can be provided for why certain norms should exist or not,
and the communicative process itself entails persons providing such reasons. As
Habermas puts it, ‚one actor seeks rationally to motivate another by relying on the
illocutionary binding/bonding effect of the offer [to make good on assertions by
giving reasons] contained in the speech act.‛25
The validity of norms is thus ‚guaranteed,‛ so to speak, by the fact that they
are the products of a process that is rational as well as collective. Habermas
expresses this idea in what he refers to as the principle of universality (U), which
states that for any valid norm, ‚*a]ll affected can accept the consequences and the
side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of
everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known
alternative possibilities for regulation).‛26 As conceived by Habermas, the principle
21 Habermas argues that what he refers to as ‚non-cognitivist approaches‛ are insufficient

for this purpose. On the one hand, such approaches contend that general agreement
cannot ‚ordinarily‛ be reached in ‚disputes about basic moral principles:‛ on the other
hand, they assume the failure of ‚all attempts to explain what it might mean for
normative propositions to be true.‛ In other words, because non-cognitivist approaches
are unable to account for how normative speech acts differ from claims to propositional
truth, such approaches cannot possibly provide the unique justification that normative
speech acts require. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 56.
22 Ibid., 64.
23 Ibid., 67.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., 58; Habermas’s emphasis.
26 Ibid., 65; Habermas’s emphasis.
54
of universality ‚makes agreement in moral argument possible in principle.‛27 This

governing principle of rational discourse gains its justification from what Habermas
refers to as ‚transcendental-pragmatic presuppositions.‛ These universal presuppo-
sitions are rules which are, Habermas argues, implicitly accepted by anyone who
participates in practical discourse and which are in turn generated by or internal to
that discourse itself; they are conditions for the possibility of rational argumentation
as such.
As James Tulley explains, there are two types of transcendental-pragmatic
presuppositions: conventional and post-conventional. Conventional presuppose-
tions ‚include logical-semantic rules of consistency . . . rules of mutual recognition
among participants . . . and rules of reciprocity.‛28 Post-conventional presuppose-
tions include the following rules: ‚every subject with the competence to speak and
act is allowed to take part in discourse (the principle of universal respect); everyone
is allowed to question and introduce any assertion whatever and express his or her
attitudes, desires, and needs (the principle of egalitarian reciprocity); and no speaker
may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising these rights (the
principles of non-coercion).‛29 It is as an expression of these transcendental-
pragmatic principles generally, but also, as Tulley points out, of the post-
conventional type more specifically, that the principle of universality can itself
function as a kind of regulatory ideal for moral deliberation. ‚Every person who
accepts the universal and necessary communicative presuppositions of argument-
tative speech and who knows what it means to justify a norm of action,‛ Habermas
writes, ‚implicitly presupposes as valid the principle of universalization, whether in
the form I gave it or in an equivalent form.‛30 The principle of universality thus
expresses the interconnection of intelligibility and normativity: intelligible moral
deliberation, insofar as it is in fact intelligible, must necessarily possess certain
normative foundations in the form of the transcendental-pragmatic presuppositions
and the principle of universality (U).31
The idea that not only the normative status but also the intelligibility of
norms depends upon their ‚general acceptance‛ (i.e., their shared and
communicable character) by participants in a common lifeworld attaches absolute
and universal character – a certain ‚ineluctability,‛ as Habermas puts it – to norms
27 Ibid., 56.
28 James Tulley, ‚To Think and Act Differently: Foucault’s Four Reciprocal Objections to
Habermas’ Theory,‛ in Foucault Contra Habermas, eds. Samantha Ashenden and David
Owen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 102.
29 Ibid.
30 Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 86.
31 The principle of discourse ethics (D), which states, ‚only those norms can claim to be
valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as
participants in practical discourse,‛ provides additional normative grounding. See
Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 93.
55
and normativity. ‚We cannot,‛ Habermas writes, ‚retract at will our commitment to
a lifeworld whose members we are.‛32 Citing Peter Strawson, Habermas
acknowledges that participants in the lifeworld do have recourse, ‘‚as a refuge, aid,
or out of simply curiosity,‛’ to a kind of third-person perspective which he refers to
as the ‚objectivating attitude of the nonparticipant observer.‛33 Nevertheless, again
invoking Strawson, Habermas argues that as human beings ‘‚we cannot, in the
normal case‛’ maintain this objectivating attitude ‘‛for long or altogether.‛’ 34
Subsequently, anyone who participates in practical discourse implicitly agrees to the
rules (i.e., the transcendental pragmatic principles) which govern that discourse and
thus, by extension, to (U). As noted previously, Habermas contends that attempts to
evade these rules render an actor incoherent or, more specifically and more
troubling, ‚schizophrenic and suicidal.‛35
It is the nature of this ineluctability that needs to be critically analyzed in
light of normalization. In Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile, Martin
Matuštík argues that the ineluctable character of Habermasian norms and
normativity ought not to be viewed as absolutist or foundational, but rather as a
kind of ‘‚groundless‛ performative holism.’36 ‚It is holism rather than
foundationalism,‛ Matuštík writes, ‚since we always begin . . . in a context of a
preinterpreted lifeworld. This holism is performative (without grounds secured
apart from speech or action), since we can never reach an absolutist point of view
inside or outside history.‛37 I have found Matuštík’s analysis of Habermas’s work
quite valuable, in large part because by situating that work within its sociopolitical
context Matuštík elucidates the origins and nature of Habermas’s philosophical
concerns. Doing so he shows that it is neither dismissal nor lack of understanding
but rather precisely those concerns themselves that cause Habermas to create and
respond more to caricatures of thinkers like Foucault than to the thinkers
themselves.38 Matuštík argues, rightly I think, that Habermas’s caricaturing of
thinkers such as Foucault stems from his own fears about the nature of modern
societies. As I see it, these are fears that defining the parameters of rational
discourse too broadly will allow for the emergence and proliferation of fascist
discourse. For Habermas, therefore, Foucault’s fear that defining such parameters
too narrowly (and accepting a particular understanding of rational discourse to be
32 Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 47.

33 Ibid., 46.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., 102.
36 Martin Beck Matuštík, Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile (New York:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 222.
37 Ibid., 223.
38 ‚Given his theoretical sophistication,‛ Matuštík writes, ‚an unnuanced polemic with the
complexity of postmodern thought remains the weakest part of Habermas’ debates.‛ See
Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile, 226.
56
constitutive of rational discourse as such) will constrain the emergence of liberatory

discourse (or at least pose a threat to the conditions under which such discourse
might emerge) is not merely unfounded but potentially oppressive.
Despite the value of Matuštík’s analysis in contextualizing and elucidating
Habermas’s work, it nonetheless seems to me that he gives Habermas an overly
generous reading on the point of ineluctability: it is difficult to see how asserting
that the very intelligibility of normative truth claims requires the acceptance of
certain principles is not absolutist. And even if it is not, such an assertion is
normalizing. It demands uncritical acceptance of the norm and normativity as
regulative ideals within ethical and political discourse, limits possible ways of
critically analyzing prevailing approaches to ethics and politics and prevailing
conceptualizations of ethical and political subjectivity and agency, and thereby links
the increase of capacities (new modes of ethical and political thought and action)
with the increase of power (some modes of thought and action are bracketed off
from critique while others are simply prohibited).
To illustrate this point more fully, let us take as an example the modern
concept mentioned at the outset of this essay: sex. Like the norm, sex is a
characteristically modern concept that is perceived as natural and therefore beyond
critical analysis. Moreover, like the norm, it is also construed as necessary not
merely for emancipation, but also functions as a means through which persons
become intelligible at all. While particular sexual norms generally possess
normalizing potential, Foucault sees the norm of ‚sex‛ itself as particularly
problematic in this regard because it is a key component in the creation,
proliferation, and establishment of sexual norms within society (‚the deployment of
sexuality‛); oppression may stem not only from particular constructions of sexuality
in terms of, for example, the ‚normal‛ and the ‚abnormal,‛ but also and perhaps
most importantly from the uncritical acceptance of the norm of sex as a ‚natural‛
and necessary foundation upon which individual sexualities and subjectivities are
based.39 The concept of sex, for Foucault, functions as a mode of legitimation for and
delimits the boundaries of sexuality – it renders us intelligible to ourselves and to
one another – and, as such, it is in particular need of critical interrogation: ‚it is
precisely the idea of sex in itself that we cannot accept without examination,‛ he
argues.40 Moreover, insofar as sex is seen as fundamental to who one is, generating
and obtaining knowledge about sexuality is synonymous with having access to
truth. The interconnection of sex and truth, in turn, encourages the acceptance and
internalization of sexual norms and thus masks their normalizing character: persons
perceive the proliferation of sexual identities and discourses as signifying freedom
from sexual repression when in fact it situates subjects squarely within in relations
39 See Foucault’s discussion of the deployment of sexuality in Volume I o f The History of

Sexuality (New York: Vintage, 1990).
40 Ibid., 154; Foucault’s emphasis.
57
of power. ‚We must not,‛ Foucault argues, ‚think that by saying yes to sex one says
no to power.‛41
I am suggesting that the demand for normative criteria functions as a mode
of legitimation for and thus delimits the boundaries of ethical and political
philosophical discourse. Just as ‚sex‛ simultaneously renders subjects intelligible as
sexual subjects and circumscribes the forms sexual subjectivity may take, so does
this demand simultaneously function as a condition for the possibility of ethics and
politics and circumscribe ethical and political forms and discourse. For Habermas,
ethical and political discourse accepts and therefore validates the principle of
universality and the transcendental-pragmatic presuppositions; likewise, ethical and
political subjects assume and act in accordance with both. What must be assumed
for the purposes of coherent, rational argumentation about ethical and political
norms cannot itself be open to such argumentation. Insofar as this is the case, (U)
and the transcendental-pragmatic presuppositions come to be seen as necessary and,
over time, natural and therefore inevitable. To question them, as I have done here,
thus appears to be not merely ethically and politically irrelevant or dangerous but
nonsensical. Naturalizing (U) and the presuppositions and characterizing
challenges to their necessity as incoherent (not to mention schizophrenic) effectively
inhibits different kinds of ethical and political thinking to the point that different
ways of thinking come to be seen as simply impossible. Persons become adept at
conceptualizing ethics and politics in ways that assume the necessity of certain
‚normative foundations,‛ but lack the ability not only to imagine what ethics and
politics might look like outside of such a framework, but also to see the framework
for what it is – a particular and limited product of prevailing modes of thought and
existence – and therefore to critically reflect upon and expand beyond it.
At this point it is important to reiterate that Foucault does not emphasize the
significance of ‚thinking differently,‛ as he puts it, for its own sake.42 As stated at
the outset of this essay, from a Foucauldian perspective refusing to uncritically
accept what is presented to us as natural and therefore necessary is tied to the
practice of freedom. Normalizing norms are potentially oppressive because, while
they do in fact increase persons’ capacities, such an increase is achieved at the
expense of other possible modes of thinking and acting. Limiting of possibilities, for
Foucault, both curtails the flow of power throughout society and hinders persons’
ability to negotiate current power relations. Insofar as Foucault sees freedom being
characterized not by an escape from power but rather by the ability to negotiate
power relations in ways that increase capacities and possible modes of thought and
existence, for him such curtailment has the potential to lead to states of domination
in which all aspects of persons’ lives are dictated to them.
41 Ibid., 157.
42 Michel Foucault, ‚Introduction,‛ in Volume II of The History of Sexuality: The Use of
Pleasure (New York: Vintage, 1990), 9.
58
From a Foucauldian perspective, therefore, Habermas’s insistence on the

necessity of normative foundations for intelligible and emancipatory ethical and
political discourse runs the risk of rearticulating the same kinds of harms he wants
to mitigate through this insistence. But for Foucault, this does not mean that
Habermas’s work must be rejected. And herein, as I see it, lies a really important
and fundamental difference between Foucault and Habermas. Foucault recognizes
his own perspective as a perspective; it is historically, socially, and politically bound,
and he leaves it up to his readers to determine for themselves the value of the tools
he offers for mediating against domination and promoting freedom – to subject
those tools to the ‚test of . . . contemporary reality.‛43 For Habermas, on the other
hand, such testing is possible only up to a point: there are certain ‚ineluctable‛
aspects of human existence that have to be accepted in order to make sense of the
world and insure some sort of conditions for the possibility of freedom. This
requirement of uncritical acceptance means, by extension, that there are certain
questions that cannot be asked, certain modes of thought and existence that are not
valid, and certain modes of critical engagement that cannot be allowed. Both
Foucault and Habermas are concerned with such conditions, but where Habermas
seeks to identify and preserve them, Foucault argues that they need to be constantly
critically analyzed and recreated. For Habermas, some certainty about the world –
even if only a tiny sliver – is possible. For Foucault, not only is certainty impossible,
our desire for it is shaped by modern modes of thought that are interconnected with
a drive for control and domination; as such, not only certainty but the desire for it
needs to be critically analyzed and resisted. In sum, with Foucault we do not get
certainty. With Habermas we do not get it, either; the problem is that we do get the
empty belief that we can have it, a belief that encourages us to search for certainty
rather than to find effective ways of resisting domination and promoting freedom
within a world without it. The annals of modern history – particularly the twentieth
and, thus far, the twenty-first centuries – illustrate the degree to which harm can
result from, as William Connolly puts it, the ‚systematic cruelty‛ that ‚flows
regularly from the thoughtlessness of aggressive conventionality.‛44 While
Habermas in no way engages in or promotes such thoughtlessness, I think he
maintains a kernel of a mode of thought that, under the right conditions, has the
potential to develop into it. Insofar as this is the case, I suggest, paraphrasing
Foucault, that ‚it is precisely the demand for uncritical acceptance – including of the
norm and normativity – in itself that we cannot accept without examination.‛
Habermas’s primary criticism of Foucault is that he engages in performative
contradictions which throw him back upon a kind of ‚crypto-normativity‛ that
43 Michel Foucault, ‚What is Enlightenment?‛ in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow
(New York: Pantheon, 1984), 46.
44 William E. Connolly, ‚Beyond Good and Evil: Michel Foucault’s Ethical Sensibility,‛
Political Theory (August 1994), 366.
59
involves relying upon the same concepts he critiques. From the perspective of
Habermas, Foucault cannot simultaneously invoke a norm (freedom, for example)
while simultaneously critiquing the very idea of the norm by illustrating its
implication in relations of power. As I have argued here, however, Habermas’s
perspective holds only if his own conceptualization of the norm and normativity are
accepted as the necessary framework through which any appeal to values such
freedom can take place. Foucault’s illustration of the implication of the norm in
relations of power does not irrevocably taint the idea of the norm, but it does mean
that all norms have the potential to be normalizing, and that persons have to be
vigilant in their critical analysis of prevailing modes of thought and existence. All
norms implicate us in relations of power, but whereas some are normalizing and
promote power at the expense of freedom, others mitigate power and promote
freedom. Norms that function in a normalizing manner under prevailing conditions
may not always be normalizing, and those which promote freedom within a
particular sociohistorical context may not always do so. Again, it is up to persons to
be engaged enough in the world to be able to ‚separate out, from the contingency
that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking
what are, do, or think . . . to grasp the points where change is possible and desirable,
and to determine the precise form this change should take.‛45 By way of conclusion,
I would like to examine three values, considered by Foucault to be useful tools in the
kind of separating, grasping, and determining described above, which I believe are
valuable for the practice of western philosophy.
For Foucault, values and principles are not grounds but rather effects of
critical engagement with the present. While values and principles might be
translated into strategies, these would really only be meaningful within the context
of the present from which they spring. The notion of ‚strategy‛ here needs to be
construed in terms of what Foucault refers to as ‚problematization,‛ the
‚development of a domain of acts, practices, and thoughts that pose problems for‛
prevailing – one could say normative – modes of existence.46 I’ve suggested that
Foucault’s refusal to comply with prevailing modes of thought and existence stems
from his recognition of the normalizing potential of norms, including the demand
for normative criteria itself; as such, it reflects a deep concern with promoting
freedom. And I think, moreover, that Foucault’s conceptualization of values and
principles as effects of critical engagement with the present goes a long way toward
explaining his articulation of ethics in terms of an ethos or ‚a way of life.‛ In a late
interview, an interlocutor asks Foucault if he is a ‚nihilist who reject*s+ morality.‛47
After responding with an emphatic, ‚No!,‛ Foucault proceeds to articulate what he
45 Foucault, ‚What is Enlightenment?,‛ 46.

46 See Michel Foucault, ‚Polemic, Politics, and Problematizations,‛ in The Foucault Reader,
ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 385.
47 Foucault, ‚Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual.‛
60
refers to as the three ‚moral values‛ which he practices and ‚within which *he
situates his] work.‛48 The first value is refusal – specifically, refusing ‚to accept as
self-evident the things that are proposed to us.‛49 As I have argued here, if persons
uncritically accept what is presented to them as natural and necessary they are
unlikely to recognize harmful (i.e., normalizing) effects stemming from prevailing
modes of thought and existence and, therefore, to be in a position to do anything
about such effects. So refusal is crucial in creating conditions under which making
change is possible. The second value Foucault identifies is curiosity: ‚the need to
analyze and to know, since we can accomplish nothing without reflection and
knowledge.‛50 Once refusal opens all aspects of existence to critical analysis, persons
need to undertake that analysis. Foucault makes clear that it is only through critical
engagement with our own historical actualities that we can identify harmful
practices, work to end or alter them, and endeavor to proceed along different lines.
Refusal and curiosity pave the way for the third value he identifies, innovation: ‚to
seek out in our reflection those things that have never been thought or imagined.‛51
These three values can be seen to inform and in turn be rearticulated through
what Foucault refers to as a ‚politics of ourselves.‛52 From a Foucauldian
perspective, practicing refusal, curiosity, and innovation can facilitate a loosening of
the interconnection between increasing persons’ capacities and possibilities and
intensifying power. While activities that are considered political in a traditional
sense – such as a protest, campaign, or voter registration drive – could certainly
entail refusal, curiosity, and innovation, the ‚politics‛ Foucault refers to is not
limited to this type of activity; persons can cultivate the kind of critical stance
reflected in the values of refusal, curiosity, and innovation in a variety of ways.53
Insofar as this is the case, I think that engaging in a politics of ourselves needs to be
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Michel Foucault, ‚Truth and Subjectivity.‛ This is the first of the two Howison Lectures
Foucault delivered at UC Berkeley on October 20 and 21 of 1980. The second lecture is
titled ‚Christianity and Confession.‛ I am using the version of ‚Truth and Subjectivity
that is housed in the IMEC Archive, folder number D2 (1). Slightly different versions of
these lectures were delivered at Dartmouth College in November 1980. The Dartmouth
lectures appear in Religion and Culture: Michel Foucault, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette (New York:
Routledge: 1999), 158-181.
53 Ladelle McWhorter provides an important analysis of the two primary practices Foucault
identifies as cultivating a critical attitude: sex and drugs. As McWhorter points out,
Foucault’s discussions of these two practices are usually dismissed as expressions of his
own predilections and have therefore not received serious philosophical consideration.
She also offers informative analyses of two practices of her own: gardening and line
dancing. See Ladelle McWhorter, Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual
Normalization (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999).
61
understood as cultivating what Foucault variously refers to as a way of life, an ethos,

and an attitude – a particular way of constituting and conducting ourselves as
subjects that both informs and is reflected in what we do.54 Moreover, given its three
key aspects this ethos or attitude needs to be understood more specifically as
‚critical‛ in a Foucauldian sense, where persons recognize limits but refuse to accept
them as absolute, natural, and necessary. As Judith Butler puts it, ‚critique will be
that perspective on established and ordering ways of knowing which is not
immediately assimilated into that ordering function.‛55
Philosophical activity may be a means by which to cultivate a critical attitude,
but only if it contains a ‚political dimension.‛56 That is to say, philosophy is critical
to the extent that it concerns itself with ‚what we are willing to accept in our worlds,
to refuse, and to change, both in ourselves and in our circumstances.‛57 Through the
practice of philosophy, persons can conduct historical analyses of how things have
to come to be the way that they are – can conduct what Foucault calls ‚ontologies of
the present‛ – and through such analyses identify how things might be different and
work toward making them so. Foucault makes this point in a different way in the
Introduction to Volume II of The History of Sexuality when he describes what he
believes to be the role of philosophy within contemporary society:
There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently
than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if
one is to go on looking and reflecting at all . . . [W]hat is philosophy today . . . in
what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it
might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already
known?58
Foucault is here describing a mode of philosophical engagement that does not seek
to substitute existing, positive ideas for harmful ones or to uncritically assert
prevailing concepts, standards, and principles that are no longer relevant for
contemporary reality. He is not interested in, in other words, ‚a critical philosophy
that seeks to determine the conditions and the limits of our possible knowledge of
the object.‛59 Instead, he engages in and in turn endeavors to foster ‚a critical
philosophy that seeks the conditions and the indefinite possibilities of transforming
54 See Michel Foucault, ‚Friendship as a Way of Life,‛ in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed.
Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997), 135-140.
55 Judith Butler, ‚What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue,‛ in The Political, ed.
David Ingram (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 215.
56 Foucault, ‚Truth and Subjectivity.‛
57 Ibid.
58 Foucault, ‚Introduction,‛ in Volume II of The History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure, 8-9.
59 Foucault, ‚Truth and Subjectivity.‛
62
the subject, of transforming ourselves‛60 and, therefore, of transforming the world in

which we live. This is a philosophy grounded in critical reflection on and engage-
ment with the present (with how the present has come to acquire its particular
character) which aims at promoting freedom or at the very least at (re)creating the
conditions for its possibility. Such critical reflection and engagement involves
identifying normalizing practices, analyzing their effects, and developing new, non-
normalizing modes of thought and existence. Possibilities for change lie neither in
despairing in the face of nor trying to gloss over the complexities of modern
societies, but rather precisely in acknowledging and engaging the depths of such
complexities which shape but do not determine the nature of such acknowledgment
and engagement.
60 Ibid.
63
Anthony C. Alessandrini 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
ARTICLE
The Humanism Effect: Fanon, Foucault, and Ethics without Subjects1

Anthony C. Alessandrini, Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York
ABSTRACT: This article addresses a tendency within postcolonial studies to place the
work of Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon in opposition. This has obscured the real, and
potentially very productive, similarities between them. The most important of these links
has to do with their shared critique of the sovereign subject of humanism: for Fanon and
Foucault, this critique of the traditional humanist subject provides a way of opposing what
they both see as the dangerous nostalgia for a lost moment of origin. Furthermore, Fanon
and Foucault both end in a moment of ethics, but it is an ethics without the sort of stable
subjects assumed by humanism. I offer a consideration of some of the links that can be
found in several texts by Fanon and Foucault. I then attempt to define the term I will be
using to describe their shared strategy of an ethics without subjects: the ‚humanism effect.‛
I conclude by trying to suggest some of the strategic possibilities of an ethics without
subjects in the postcolonial context.
Keywords: Ethics, humanism, posthumanism, postcolonial studies, Fanon, Foucault
The field of postcolonial studies has from its inception been the site of a debate about
humanism. Wherever one wants to mark a point of emergence for this field, one inevitably
encounters a problem, or rather a problematic: the end of humanism. There has been an
ongoing and by now longstanding argument as to whether the end of humanism presents
an opportunity for post-humanist theorizing, on the one hand; or, on the other hand,
whether the end of humanism marks an event to be mourned or even resisted. The two
figures that have time and again been made to represent these two positions, in an almost
allegorical mode, are Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon.
1 I wish to thank the two anonymous readers from Foucault Studies for their comments on this
article; their pointed and generous suggestions helped me to better articulate key aspects of my
argument. I also would like to thank the students in the graduate seminar ‚Fanon and Foucault:
Backgrounds to Postcolonial Theory‛ whom I taught at Kent State University, for reading and
thinking through a number of these texts and issues with me.
64
Alessandrini: The Humanism Effect
In what follows, I am not interested in simply setting up a binary between these two
positions on humanism in the interest of splitting the difference. I would want to
characterize this ongoing debate about the end of humanism not as a binary, but rather a
continuum, with critical positions being taken up all along the way. Furthermore, if
Foucault and Fanon have been made to stand at opposite sides of this continuum, this is
only because particular versions of their positions on humanism have been introduced into
this debate for particular strategic purposes. Foucault has been used to bolster a position
that would celebrate the end of humanism—which, from this position, is often equated with
the ‚death of the subject,‛ more specifically with the rejection of a normative white male
Western imperialist subject. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s formulation, first set out in an
essay that has proven to be a foundational text for postcolonial studies, sums up this anti-
humanist position nicely: ‚There is an affinity between the imperialist subject and the
subject of humanism.‛2 What should be noted, however, is that the invocation of Foucault
to support this position has generally been made in spite of his complex late writings on
ethics and the question of Enlightenment; I will return to this point shortly.
The figure of Fanon, by contrast, has been used to bolster the opposite position, one
that suggests that because colonialism is an inherently dehumanizing process, those who
have suffered must have access to a form of subjectivity offered by traditional humanism.
This is a position that equates being a ‚subject‛ with being fully ‚human.‛ Neil Lazarus has
been one of the most eloquent defenders of Fanon’s humanism in this context: ‚where
postmodernist theory has reacted to the perceived indefensibility of bourgeois humanism,‛
Lazarus argues, ‚a genuinely postcolonial strategy might be to move explicitly, as Fanon
already did in concluding The Wretched of the Earth, to proclaim a ‘new’ humanism,
predicated upon a formal repudiation of the degraded European form.‛3 But this
argument, in turn, has been made despite Fanon’s withering critique of humanism
(particularly the Western European variety) and his declared antipathy for those who hold
to a traditional humanist position. This is articulated most clearly in his challenge to his
readers, at the end of The Wretched of the Earth, to ‚leave this Europe which never stops
talking of man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the
world.‛4
In other words, placing Fanon and Foucault at the opposite ends of the
humanist/anti-humanist continuum leads to an oversimplification of their work. But my
true dissatisfaction does not stem from the belief that we need to get back to the
2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge,
1987), 202.
3 Neil Lazarus, ‚Disavowing Decolonization: Fanon, Nationalism, and the Question of Represen-
tation in Postcolonial Theory,‛ in Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives, edited by Anthony C.
Alessandrini (New York: Routledge, 1999), 189, emphasis in original.
4 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Richard Philcox (New York: Grove, 2004),
235.
65
‚real‛ Fanon and Foucault lying behind these simplified versions, since strategic
appropriations of their work are what we should be after in any case. That is, I am not
attempting to argue for a true reading of their work, although I do think we can produce
better readings of their texts. Instead, my dissatisfaction lies in the fact that in this particular
argument around humanism, Fanon and Foucault have been set up in opposition to each
other. The real problem is not with the ongoing argument, which is an important one, but
with this opposition itself. Working against the grain of this ongoing argument, I will
suggest that what links Fanon and Foucault is in fact more important than their admittedly
very real theoretical differences. Indeed, drawing attention to these links will in turn help
us to better understand what is at stake in the moments when they do in fact diverge.
The most important of these links has to do with their shared critique of the
sovereign subject of humanism. I will argue that for Fanon and Foucault, this critique of
the traditional humanist subject provides a way of opposing what they both see as the
dangerous nostalgia for a lost moment of origin. While these critiques of humanism take
quite different forms, I suggest that there is another link between them: Fanon and Foucault
both end in a moment of ethics. But it is an ethics without the sort of stable subjects
assumed by humanism. In what follows, I will offer a consideration of some of the links
that can be found in several texts by Fanon and Foucault. I will then attempt to define the
term I will be using to describe their shared strategy of an ethics without subjects—the term
‚humanism effect.‛ I will conclude by trying to suggest some of the strategic possibilities of
an ethics without subjects in the postcolonial context.
I. Early and Late Foucault: Refusing the Blackmail of the Enlightenment

I want to begin with a problem that confronts anyone attempting to deal with the work of
these two theorists, what we might call the problem of the early and late Fanon and the
early and late Foucault. To begin with Foucault: the reception of Foucault’s late writings, at
least in the American context, has been hugely influenced by Judith Butler’s analysis in
Gender Trouble, first published in 1990.5 While Butler’s argument, in this text as elsewhere,
is often an explicitly Foucaultian one, she also points to a significant contradiction in
Foucault’s late texts on sexuality, especially his introduction to the journals of the
nineteenth-century French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, which Foucault edited and
published in 1978. In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault insists upon a
definition of sexuality as a complex historical system of discourse saturated with power. As
Butler puts it, Foucault’s strategy is to ‚treat ‘sex’ as an effect rather than an origin.‛6 But in
his writings on Barbin, as well as in the later volumes of The History of Sexuality itself, Butler
locates a contradictory impulse, ‚an unacknowledged emancipatory ideal that proves
5 A slightly earlier version of some of Butler’s key arguments regarding Foucault’s work appear in
her article ‚Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions,‛ The Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989),
601-07.
6 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999),
123.
66
increasingly difficult to maintain, even within the strictures of his own critical apparatus.‛
She continues:
On the one hand, Foucault wants to argue that there is no ‚sex‛ in itself which is not
produced by complex interactions of discourse and power, and yet there does seem to be
a ‚multiplicity of pleasures‛ in itself which is not the effect of any specific
discourse/power exchange. In other words, Foucault invokes a trope of prediscursive
libidinal multiplicity that effectively presupposes a sexuality . . . waiting for
emancipation from the shackles of ‚sex.‛7
In this sense, Butler concludes, a romanticized version of sex in the form of a lost moment
of libidinal multiplicity does return as a moment of lost origin towards which the historian
of sexuality might strive. Butler’s unsparingly constructivist argument cannot countenance
this quasi-utopian nostalgia.
Now it is worth noting that Butler’s subsequent writings on Foucault have returned
to his work in a nuanced way that complicates this earlier (and already quite nuanced)
reading. A key text is her article ‚What Is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue,‛
published in 2002, which revisits Foucault’s late essay ‚What Is Critique?‛ as well as the
second volume of The History of Sexuality.8 Unlike her reading of Foucault in Gender Trouble,
Butler’s more recent work resists the impulse to find a contradictory form of nostalgia in
Foucault’s later writings, which may seem at first glance to suggest the existence of an
originary freedom. Instead, Butler suggests that we might read Foucault’s strategy in
‚What Is Critique?‛ and perhaps in his late writings in general, as one of continually
holding out and continually retracting this potential founding moment.9 As she notes,
when Foucault first delivered ‚What Is Critique?‛ as a lecture in 1978, in response to an
audience question, Foucault refused to ground what he referred to as ‚the will not to be
governed‛ in an originary moment of freedom, but at the same time, he insisted upon
holding out this originary moment that he simultaneously denied: ‚I did not say it,‛
7 Ibid., 123.
8 Judith Butler, ‚What Is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue,‛ in The Political, edited by David
Ingram (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 212-27. Some of the points Butler raises in this essay
are reiterated and refined in her later essay ‚Against Ethical Violence,‛ in Giving an Account of
Oneself: A Critique of Ethical Violence (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 41-82. For an
account of Foucault’s notion of critique that resonates with Butler’s reading, see Matthew Sharpe,
‚‘Critique’ as Technology of the Self,‛ Foucault Studies 2 (2005), 97-116.
9 Butler compares Foucault’s method here to that of Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals, where, in
place of locating the ‚origin‛ of morality, Nietzsche instead notes the varieties of fictional
accounts that have given birth to our conception of where morality ‚comes from.‛ See Butler,
‚What Is Critique?‛, 219. Compare also Foucault’s statement in the introduction to The Uses of
Pleasure that his project is ‚an analysis of the ‘games of truth,’ the games of truth and error
through which being is historically constituted as experience; that is, as something that can and
must be thought.‛(Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Uses of Pleasure,
translated by Robert Hurley [New York: Vintage, 1990], 6-7.)
67
Foucault declared, ‚but this does not mean that I absolutely exclude it.‛10 For Butler, this
unending movement back and forth, the continual process of looking towards an originary
moment in order to continually reject it, is no longer seen as a simple contradiction or
theoretical confusion; it is, instead, precisely Foucault’s answer to the question, ‚What is
critique?‛ This seemingly contradictory strategy, in other words, might be considered a
critique of the moment of origin in the fullest sense of the word ‚critique.‛11
But there have also been some rather more reductive readings—in some cases,
‚dismissals‛ would be the more accurate term—of Foucault that have been influenced by
Butler’s original analysis of Foucault’s work in Gender Trouble. Such dismissals essentially
accuse Foucault of a humanist nostalgia in his late writings on ethics. A passage from Cary
Wolfe’s book Critical Environments provides an exemplary instance:
In Foucault, however, this call for a posthumanist critique is more often than not
accompanied . . . by a dystopianism that imagines the end of the humanist subject as the
beginning of the total saturation of the social field by power, domination, and
oppression. And the later Foucault, as if compensating for his early dystopianism,
10 Butler, ‚What Is Critique?‛, 221; the quote itself is from Michel Foucault, ‚What Is Critique?‛ in
The Politics of Truth, edited by Sylvère Lotringer (Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e), 1997), 72.
11 This is, of course, hardly the final word on Butler’s reading of Foucault. For one thing, her
analysis in her essay of Foucault’s ‚speech acts‛ in the discussion following his presentation of
the lecture ‚What Is Critique?‛ reveals a very fundamental methodological difference in their
approaches, and indeed, it has been suggested by some critics that Butler is working with a
completely different understanding of ‚discourse‛ than Foucault. There has been a large body of
work that discusses Butler’s reading of Foucault; much, though not all, of this work attempts to
refute or refuse her reading. However, very few critics (with the recent and laudable exception of
John Carvalho) have examined Butler’s recent writings on Foucault and her evolving analysis of
his work, preferring instead to reify her earlier reading into her ‚position‛ on Foucault’s work. It
is the purpose of my essay to work against this form of critical reification, and my admiration for
Butler’s readings of Foucault stem not from my belief that they represent the ‚correct‛
interpretation of his work, but rather simply because they reflect some of the critical flexibility
that is one of the most important of Foucault’s legacies. For some sense of the critical background
on Butler’s readings of Foucault, see: John Carvalho, ‚Subtle Bodies and the Other Jouissance,‛
SubStance 118 (2009), 112-28; Samuel A. Chambers, ‚‘Sex’ and the Problem of the Body:
Reconstructing Judith Butler’s Theory of Sex/Gender,‛ Body and Society 13 (2007), 47-75; David
Dudrick, ‚Foucault, Butler, and the Body,‛ European Journal of Philosophy 13 (2005), 226-46; Jeremy
Moss, ‚Foucault and Left Conservatism,‛ Foucault Studies 1 (2004), 34-54; Catherine Mills,
‚Contesting the Political: Butler and Foucault on Power and Resistance,‛ The Journal of Political
Philosophy 11 (2003), 253-72; Alan D. Schift, ‚Foucault’s Reconfiguration of the Subject: From
Nietzsche to Butler, Laclau/Mouffe, and Beyond,‛ Philosophy Today 41 (1997), 153-60; David
Weberman, ‚Are Freedom and Anti-humanism Compatible? The Case of Foucault and Butler,‛
Constellations 7 (2000), 255-71; Deborah Youdell, ‚Subjectivation and Performative Politics—
Butler Thinking Althusser and Foucault,‛ British Journal of Sociology of Education 27 (2006), 511-28.
68
evinces a kind of nostalgia for the Enlightenment humanism powerfully critiqued in his
early and middle work.12
Wolfe’s concern in this book is with the question of posthumanist theory, not with doing an
exhaustive reading of Foucault, so my intention is not to set him up as a straw man.
Indeed, this quote is most noteworthy for the fact that it expresses a contemporary
theoretical position so widespread that it is beginning to assume the consistency of a
common sense assumption about Foucault’s work (especially for those anxious to find a
basis to disparage or dismiss his work).
In response, we can question both halves of this division into early and late Foucault
as set up by Wolfe (and others). For example, in terms of his supposed dystopianism,
Foucault himself worked to clarify what he means by a phrase like ‚the omnipresence of
power‛: not, or not simply, as ‚the total saturation of the social field by power, domination,
and oppression,‛ as Wolfe would have it, but rather, as Foucault puts it in the chapter on
‚Method‛ in the first volume of The History of Sexuality:
The omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything
under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at
every point, or rather in relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere; not
because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. . . . [power] is
the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society. 13
As for the nostalgia that Wolfe and others find in the later writings of Foucault, that is a
point to which I will return; but for the moment I will simply endorse Butler’s suggestion
that Foucault’s move, in his late texts, to a critical analysis of Enlightenment humanism is
not the same as a nostalgia for or endorsement of this humanism. Indeed, one of the
important conclusions of Foucault’s late essay ‚What Is Enlightenment?‛ is that as analysts
12 Cary Wolfe, Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the ‚Outside‛
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 122.
13 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, translated by Robert Hurley
(New York: Vintage, 1990), 93. For an analysis of the uses of the Foucauldian notion of power, see
Jeffrey Nealon, Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifications since 1984 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2007). It should be noted that in his lectures at the Collège de France,
Foucault explicitly refused to pose (never mind answer) the question ‚What is power?‛ since ‚the
question ‘What is power?’ is obviously a theoretical question that would provide an answer to
everything, which is just what I don’t want to do‛; instead, he insisted, ‚the issue is to determine
what are, in their mechanisms, effects, their relations, the various power apparatuses that operate
at various levels of society.‛ (Michel Foucault, ‚Society Must Be Defended‛: Lectures at the Collège de
France 1975-1976, edited by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, translated by David Macey
[New York: Picador, 2003], 13).
69
of modern society we must refuse the ‚blackmail‛ of the Enlightenment: that is, the
demand that one declare oneself once and for all ‚for‛ or ‚against‛ the Enlightenment.14
But my ultimate purpose is not simply to disagree with readings that, like Wolfe’s,
posit a difference between early and late Foucault. There is a difference, and sometimes
this difference takes the form of contradiction. There is, for example, a moment in ‚What Is
Enlightenment?‛ when Foucault argues that analysts of contemporary society ‚have three
axes whose specificity and whose interconnections have to be analyzed: the axis of
knowledge, the axis of power, the axis of ethics.‛15 The introduction of ethics into the
Foucaultian system of power/knowledge does indeed mark a difference. But here is my
larger question: what if we refuse the sort of chronological reading that would attempt to
demarcate an early or a late Foucault in the first place? One of the great insights of
Foucault’s writings on history resides in the challenge with which he presents us: to replace
the emphasis on a continuous version of history, one that becomes a story of inevitable
progress, with an emphasis on the discontinuity of historical events (as in ‚The Order of
Discourse,‛ where the call is to replace ‚consciousness‛ and ‚continuity‛ with ‚event‛ and
‚series.‛)16 I’m thinking in particular of the often-cited first chapter of Discipline and Punish,
where Foucault explicitly refuses a narrative that would attribute the transformations of the
penal system in France to a process of humanization. Instead, Foucault insists that these
changes simply mark different sets of strategies enacted by disciplinary institutions at
different historical moments. The goal of this text, as Foucault states explicitly, is to begin
an effort to write ‚the history of the present.‛17 This means producing an analysis of the
present that is cold-eyed enough to refuse the very choice that would limit one’s options
either to rejection or endorsement. It is along these lines that Foucault approvingly quotes
Baudelaire’s precept: ‚You have no right to despise the present.‛18
This is where Foucault’s critique of the nostalgia for lost origins connects to his
critique of the myth of emergence as the final term in an uninterrupted historical
development. As he argues in ‚Nietzsche, Genealogy, History‛: ‚As it is wrong to search
for descent in an uninterrupted continuity, we should avoid thinking of emergence as the
final term of a historical development; the eye was not always intended for contemplation,
14 Michel Foucault, ‚What Is Enlightenment?‛ translated by Catherine Porter, in The Foucault Reader,
edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Vintage, 1984), 42-43.
15 Ibid., 48.
16 Michel Foucault, ‚The Order of Discourse,‛ translated by Ian McLeod, in Untying the Text: A Post-
Structuralist Reader, edited by Robert Young (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 67-68.
17 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New
York: Vintage, 1995), 31. Teaching this chapter, especially in the undergraduate classroom,
provides one of the great pedagogical challenges to be found in Foucault’s work: that is, trying to
get students to interpret the progression from the gory execution of Damiens, described in the
opening pages, to the timetable for young prisoners drawn up by Léon Faucher, which follows
immediately afterwards, without resorting to an explanation along the lines of ‚we became more
humane.‛
18 Foucault, ‚What Is Enlightenment?‛ 40.
70
and punishment had other purposes than setting an example.‛19 In light of this double
critique of a unitary descent, on the one hand, and a single moment of emergence as the
final term, on the other hand, Discipline and Punish must be read as an attempt to produce a
form of genealogy in which the subject of the present is not seen (in either celebratory or
accusatory mode) as the inevitable inheritor of a single, progressive, continuous history.
Given Foucault’s emphasis on discontinuity in writing the history of the present, then, why
would we attempt to impose a continuity on his own body of work? What if we instead
attempted to read his early critique of the nostalgia for lost origins through an emphasis on
the nexes of power/knowledge and his late writings on ethics and Enlightenment together,
as part of an ongoing, overlapping project of critique?
II. Early and Late Fanon: The Impossibility of Ontology

I believe that Fanon’s work allows for the same move. A similar split in the perceptions of
Fanon’s early and late writing that we have traced in work on Foucault exists among those
critics who have addressed Fanon’s texts. Those who wish to see Fanon as a precursor of
poststructuralism, or who particularly value his insights into the psychic formations of
racism, tend to privilege Black Skin, White Masks, his first book (the work of Homi Bhabha,
Rey Chow, and Kobena Mercer has been most influential in this respect). On the other
hand, those who look to Fanon as the theorist of a new form of post-colonial humanism,
critics such as Lazarus, Lewis Gordon, Nigel Gibson, and Ato Sekyi-Otu, tend towards a
dialectical reading of Fanon and consequently see his last book, The Wretched of the Earth, as
the privileged site of analysis. I should make it clear that I am not refusing either set of
arguments; indeed, I want to keep the insights provided by both sets of theorists in play.20
Certainly it is true that the conclusion of The Wretched of the Earth contains a call for a
new humanism (though it is hardly an unambiguous call). But what happens if we read it
together with the opening lines of Black Skin, White Masks, those famously acerbic lines in
which Fanon addresses the question of why he wrote the book:
Why write this book? No one has asked me for it. Especially those to whom it is directed.
Well? Well, I reply quite calmly that there are too many idiots in this world. And having
said it, I have the burden of proving it.21
Fanon immediately follows this statement by taking note of the ‚dozens and hundreds of
pages‛ that ‚assail me and try to impose their wills on me.‛ The first of these voices, a
19 Michel Foucault, ‚Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,‛ translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry
Simon, in The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Vintage, 1984), 83.
20 For an overview of these theoretical debates, see Anthony C. Alessandrini, ‚Introduction: Fanon
Studies, Cultural Studies, Cultural Politics,‛ in Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives, edited by
Anthony C. Alessandrini (New York: Routledge, 1999), 1-17.
21 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove,
1967), 7.
71
voice to which we cannot help but attribute some small share of the ‚idiocy‛ Fanon has just
mentioned, states: ‚Toward a new humanism . . .‛22
It seems imperative to keep this initial moment in mind, even as Fanon, from his
deathbed, sets out his challenge to the readers of The Wretched of the Earth in the book’s last
sentence: ‚For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new
start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man.‛23 I want to call
attention to the part of this sentence that Richard Philcox, in his English translation, renders
as ‚we must make a new start‛ and that Constance Farrington, in her earlier translation,
translated as ‚we must turn over a new leaf.‛ It seems to me that ‚il faut faire peau neuve‛ is
better rendered as ‚we must grow a new skin‛24; such a rendering suggests the ways in
which the final sentence of Fanon’s body of work looks back to the title of his first book,
Peau Noire, Masques Blancs.
But making this connection entails more than simply taking note of the similarity of
Fanon’s language in these two texts. I want to propose that Fanon’s project, like Foucault’s,
was an attempt to write a history of the present, increasingly, in the course of his body of
work, from inside the Algerian Revolution. As with Foucault, the critique of the subject as
a critique of the nostalgia for lost origins is there, from the very beginning, in Fanon’s work.
This critique is most clearly enunciated in the chapter of Black Skin, White Masks that has
been translated into English as ‚The Fact of Blackness‛ (although a more literal translation
would be ‚The Lived Experience of the Black Man‛). Throughout the course of this
chapter, Fanon continually invokes and continually rejects the sense of having ‚come too
late,‛ of having the positions he attempts to take up in response to French racism always
already claimed by this racism in advance. His most direct critique of this nostalgia for a
lost past links this nostalgia quite directly to racism and anti-Semitism:
Since the time when someone first mourned the fact that he had arrived too late and
everything had been said, a nostalgia for the past has seemed to persist. . . . It is this
tradition to which the anti-Semites turn in order to ground the validity of their ‚point of
view.‛ It is tradition, it is that long historical past, it is that blood relation between Pascal
and Descartes, that is invoked when the Jew is told, ‚There is no possibility of your
finding a place in society.‛. . . The Jew and I: Since I was not satisfied to be racialized, by
a lucky turn of fate I was humanized. 25
Similarly, I would argue that Fanon’s work, like Foucault’s, also contains a critique of the
other end of this process, the tendency to posit an essential moment of emergence towards
which history is progressively headed. If one reads only the first chapter of The Wretched of
the Earth, the chapter entitled ‚On Violence,‛ it would be possible to conclude that Fanon is
embracing a Hegelian version of history in which the colonized, through a spontaneous
22 Ibid., 7, ellipsis in original.

23 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 239.
24 Frantz Fanon, Les damnès de la terre (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 376.
25 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 121-22.
72
violent uprising, will inevitably overturn colonialism and replace the colonizers. But the
rest of the book is a patient reconsideration of this suggestion.26 In fact, the chapter entitled
‚The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness,‛ which has proved particularly
prescient in its predictions about the emergent middle class that came to rule over the
newly independent nations of Africa, is written in a tense that suggests that, far from
leading towards a triumphant emergence, post-colonial history will end badly. The
language of the chapter insists, not that the new middle class may ruin everything, but that
they will ruin everything.27
The Fanon who engages in this critique of a narrative of a single moment of
triumphant emergence is perhaps best represented by a line that appears almost exactly in
the middle of The Wretched of the Earth, when those militants fighting against the colonial
power discover that even the division between colonizer and colonized, which they had
understood to be fundamental (Fanon actually uses the word ‚Manichean‛ in the ‚On
Violence‛ chapter to describe the split between colonizer and colonized)—even this
division cannot be trusted at a certain point, since, in Fanon’s words, ‚some blacks can be
whiter than the whites,‛ and, similarly, there are Europeans who have gone over to the
‚native‛ side. In this context, Fanon suggests, there can be no single, simple narrative of
emergence; he represents the bewilderment of this situation with one of his many moments
of irony: ‚and yet everything used to be so simple before: the bad people were on one side,
and the good on the other.‛28 Of course, Fanon’s point is that such a moment has never in
fact existed. The nostalgia for an illusory moment of origin evinced here is similar to, as
perhaps as harmful as, that expressed by the French racists and anti-Semites in Black Skin,
White Masks.
Here we arrive at the heart of the matter: my argument is that there is not an
essential subject of history in Fanon. This is bound to be a controversial suggestion, for it is
hard not to see the many moments when Fanon’s resistance to racism and colonialism does
take the form of asserting a more authentic form of identity that can emerge in the truly
post-colonial moment. In Black Skin, White Masks, it is the moment of racial identification
that freezes or ‚fixes‛ (to use Fanon’s term) identity that seems to prevent the full and
authentic process of recognition from taking place. This is the moment of shock provided
by Fanon at the opening of ‚The Fact of Blackness,‛ which begins with two spoken quotes
that Fanon suggests are interchangeable: ‚‘Dirty nigger!’ Or simply: ‘Look, a black man!’‛29
In this moment, Fanon tells us, ‚the glances of the other fixed me there, in the sense in
26 Ato Sekyi-Otu makes a similar point, albeit to a different effect. See Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 72-87.
27 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 97-144.
28 Ibid., 93-94.
29 It is easier to get a sense of this interchangeability in Fanon’s original text: ‚‘Sale nègre! Ou
simplement: ‘Tiens, un nègre!’‛ Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Éditions du Seuil,
1995), 88.
73
which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye.‛30 This same form of fixing, of division without
the possibility of recognition, can be found in Fanon’s description of colonialism in ‚On
Violence,‛ in the opposition between the native city and the settler’s city, which ‚follow*s+
the dictates of mutual exclusion: There is no conciliation possible, for one of them is
superfluous.‛31
It is tempting (and many do not even try to resist the temptation) to find in Fanon a
process that leads away from this artificial fixing, to a more authentic process of
recognition—we might label it a new humanism—that allows this frozen, truncated process
to start up again. But against this tendency, I will simply pose one phrase from Black Skin,
White Masks: ‚every ontology is made unattainable in a colonized and civilized society.‛ As
the context of the quote suggests, this has to do with the lack of reciprocal recognition
between the black man and the white man:
Ontology . . . does not permit us to understand the being of the black man. For not only
must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man. Some critics
will take it on themselves to remind us that this proposition has a converse. I say that
this is false. The black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man. 32
But allow me to suggest that there is a strand that runs through Fanon’s work that forces us
to read the statement, ‚every ontology is made unattainable in a colonized and civilized
society,‛ as meaning: for us, today, every ontology is unattainable. Let me, furthermore,
bring this quote together with a moment from the end of Foucault’s essay ‚What Is
Enlightenment?‛ in which he refers to the continuing challenge of Enlightenment as that of
producing ‚the critical ontology of ourselves.‛ The challenge of such a critical ontology lies
in differentiating it from ‚a theory, a doctrine, *or+ a permanent body of knowledge that is
accumulating‛; instead, according to Foucault, ‚it has to be conceived as an attitude, an
ethos.‛33 If Foucault and Fanon are linked by a shared project of writing a history of the
present, they also share this movement towards a critical ontology of ourselves, a critical
ontology that they both suspect to be impossible. I want to redescribe this impossible but
necessary striving as the attempt to found an ethics without subjects.
III. Destroying the Subaltern: Strategic Essentialism and its Afterlife

To explain better what I might mean by this, and to come at last to the phrase ‚the
humanism effect,‛ I want to turn to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s much-misunderstood
essay ‚Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,‛ and in particular her discussion
of the strategic use of a ‚subject effect‛ by the Subaltern Studies Group. I say
‚misunderstood‛ because of the particular afterlife that has been enjoyed by the phrase
30 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 109.

31 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 39.
32 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 109-10.
33 Foucault, ‚What Is Enlightenment?‛, 50.
74
‚strategic essentialism,‛ which is quite different from Spivak’s original usage. Again, I
don’t wish to defend a purer reading of Spivak’s essay for its own sake. Indeed, I believe
that the appropriation of this term, particularly in feminist theory (and largely through
Diana Fuss’s excellent book Essentially Speaking), has been extremely important.34 The
resulting use of the term should in no way be dismissed as a ‚misreading.‛ But one result
of this appropriation has been to allow a too-easy dismissal of strategic essentialism: in a
two-finger exercise, critics have been able to prove that it’s ‚really‛ still just essentialism
after all. A return to Spivak’s text allows us to come to the issue with a bit more nuance.
Spivak’s essay addresses the problem faced by the Subaltern Studies historians: how
to discover and represent the consciousness of those who have been left out of the official
narratives of the post-colonial nation, narratives produced by members of the elite
nationalist movement that first fought for independence and then took over the leadership
of the nation. How can the historian ‚investigate, discover, and establish a subaltern or
peasant consciousness‛ in this context?35 As Spivak suggests, this looks at first to be a
standard sort of positivistic project: just locate your archive. The problem is that this archive
does not exist; subaltern voices can only be found second-hand, in the official reports of the
colonizers or the narratives of the elite nationalist movement: ‚it is only the texts of counter-
insurgency or elite documentation that give us the news of the consciousness of the
subaltern.‛36
But this is simply the effect of a larger problem: subaltern studies cannot be empirical
because there is no subaltern. The desired archive, by its very nature, cannot exist. The
term ‚subaltern‛ is a negative one, defining all those who are not the ‚elite‛:
The definitive accessibility of subaltern consciousness is counterpointed also by situating

it in the place of a difference rather than an identity: ‚. . . The social groups and elements
included in this category [i.e. subaltern classes] represent the demographic difference
between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the ‘elite.’‛37
As Spivak takes pains to point out, the negative and differential nature of the term
‚subaltern‛ implies the need for other than positivistic methods: she notes ‚the specific
counterpointing here: between the ostensible language of quantification—demographic
difference—which is positivistic, and the discourse of a definitive difference— demographic
difference—which opens the door to deconstructive gestures.‛38 One is reminded at this
34 Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference (New York: Routledge, 1989).
35 Spivak, In Other Worlds, 202.
36 Ibid., 202.
37 Ibid., 204, ellipsis and emphasis in original. The quote within the quote is from Ranajit Guha,
‚On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,‛ in Selected Subaltern Studies, edited
by Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 44.
38 Spivak, In Other Worlds, 204. It should be noted that the term ‚subaltern,‛ although it is drawn
from the work of Antonio Gramsci, has been adapted in a very particular way by the Subaltern
Studies Group; for more on this point, see Guha, ‚On Some Aspects of the Historiography of
75
point of Fanon’s remarks about the impossibility of ontology in the colonial situation, and
the reasons for this impossibility. There is no reciprocity between the black man and the
white man, Fanon insists, since ‚the black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of
the white man.‛39 Ontology itself is thus called into question.40 Similarly, it is possible to
say that the subaltern has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the elite historian—or, put
more simply, the subaltern does not exist in the demographics of elite narratives of the
postcolonial nation. So the nature of positivism itself is similarly called into question
through the work of the Subaltern Studies historians.
At this point, I must cite a long quote from Spivak’s essay, since it will take us
quickly to the heart of the matter:
I am progressively inclined, then, to read the retrieval of the subaltern consciousness as

the charting of what in post-structuralist language would be called the subaltern subject-
effect. A subject-effect can be briefly plotted as follows: that which seems to operate as a
subject may be part of an immense discontinuous network (‚text‛ in the general sense)
of strands that may be termed politics, ideology, economics, history, sexuality, language,
and so on. . . . Different knottings and configurations of these strands, determined by
heterogeneous determinations . . . produce the effect of an operating subject. Yet
[humanism] symptomatically requires a continuous and homogenous cause for this
effect and thus posits a sovereign and determining subject. This latter is, then, the effect
of an effect, and its positing a metalepsis, or the substitution of an effect for a cause.
Reading the work of Subaltern Studies from within but against the grain, I would
suggest that elements in their text would warrant a reading of the project to retrieve the
subaltern consciousness as the attempt to undo a massive historiographic metalepsis and
Colonial India,‛ 43-44. R. Radhakrishnan provides an interesting gloss on the way Gramsci and
Foucault have been used by Subaltern Studies practitioners, and by postcolonial theorists more
generally; see ‚Toward an Effective Intellectual: Foucault or Gramsci?‛ in Diasporic Mediations
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 27-61.
40 This statement might seem like an overemphasis made in the service of critique, and it is true that
Fanon is not dismissing ontology itself, but rather arguing that particular historical situations
close down ontological possibilities. However, we also must recall Fanon’s claim that a situation
of ontological impossibility characterizes any ‚colonized and civilized society‛—that is, any
society that has participated in the process of colonization, as either colonizer or colonized. For
better or worse, in our current context, this amounts to a universal condition. This point can also
be found in Fanon’s introduction to Black Skin, White Masks, when he states: ‚I believe that the
fact of the juxtaposition of the white and black races [du fait de la mise en présence des races blanche
et noire+ has created a massive psychoexistential complex. I hope by analyzing it to destroy it.‛
(Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 12) There is a fine Fanonian irony in the word ‚juxtaposition‛;
until the horrific historical events that brought the white and black races into this particular
context—that is, the events of colonialism, slavery, and institutionalized racism—have been
addressed, the context described by Fanon as causing this ontological crisis must be considered
generalizable and, in effect, universal. This is not to say, however, that this situation might not be
transformed in the future, and indeed, this is the goal of Fanon’s text.
76
‚situate‛ the effects of the subject as subaltern. I would read it, then, as a strategic use of
positive essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest. 41
I want to pull out two important threads from this passage. The first has to do with the
specific strategy that Spivak sees as being operated by these historians. It is not simply a
now you see it, now you don’t form of essentialism—now I’m being essentialist, now I’m
not. In many ways, it is a much more radical move: the positing of an effect as a cause.
‚Subaltern‛ names the effect produced by certain processes; and yet these historians,
because they have no choice, will begin from this effect as though it provides a starting
point for their work. And, as a result, it does.
But the second point—and once again, we sense a pattern similar to that found in the
work of Fanon and Foucault, the critique of the moment of origin followed by the critique
of the single moment of emergence—is that the strategy does not have the aim of locating,
or for that matter producing, an authentic subaltern consciousness. And it certainly does
not take as its goal the preserving of the category ‚subaltern.‛ The existence of such a
category is what leads to the necessity of undertaking the project in the first place, and part
of the goal of the project is the elimination of this term, and what it represents. Subaltern
studies aims at the destruction of the category subaltern even as it is enabled by it. This is
the crux of Spivak’s equally misunderstood essay ‚Can the Subaltern Speak?‛: it is not that
we should wring our hands over our inability to hear the subaltern speak, but simply that
we must acknowledge this fact and see what we can do about abolishing this state of affairs.
‚If the subaltern can speak,‛ as Spivak puts it pithily in a interview dealing specifically with
this question, ‚then, thank goodness, she’s not a subaltern any more.‛42
What I am proposing to call ‚the humanism effect‛ has these same two qualities: the
strategy of intentionally substituting an effect for a cause, and of founding itself on a
moment of origin that it sets out to destroy. It is also the name I want to apply to the ethics
without subjects I have located in Fanon and Foucault. ‚Humanism‛ here does not mark
the name of a discourse that underwrites the ethical relationship between two already-
existing subjects. Rather, in the strategic ethics of Fanon and Foucault, something like an
effect of ‚humanization‛ is the key, an effect that marks the impossible space of
responsibility between subjects that have not yet come into existence. The critique of
origins and of a single, progressive moment of emergence in both theorists is what
underwrites this movement towards the humanism effect. This process thus provides a
way of opening up an investigation, not just of the present as more than simply the product
of an original and continuous past, but also of the future that has not yet (and may not)
come. This ethics without subjects, this strategic production of a humanism effect, is
41 Spivak, In Other Worlds, 204-05, emphasis in original.

42 Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, ‚Subaltern Talk: An Interview with the Editors,‛ in The
Spivak Reader, edited by Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean (New York: Routledge, 1996), 212.
77
another way of describing the ethos that leads Fanon and Foucault to their impossible but
necessary attempt to posit the ontology of ourselves.
But if it is true that this idea of the humanism effect may be a way of having our
poststructuralism and our ethics too (to borrow a phrase from Kate McInturff)43, why
bother to hold on to humanism at all? Why not simply jettison it altogether? I can only
respond by suggesting that if the production of the subaltern subject effect is part of the
process of responding to the degradations that have resulted from the process of
subalternization, then perhaps the production of the humanism effect can help postcolonial
studies respond to the dehumanization that has occurred in the name of humanism. To put
it another way: it is becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone within the field of
postcolonial studies willing to defend humanism in its most traditional form. But similarly,
I would imagine that few people concerned with postcolonial issues would be entirely
willing to give up on a discourse that underwrites so powerful a strategy as that which
allows us to speak of human rights.44 Of course, much of the most productive debate
around the discourse of human rights has had to do with questions about its basis: for
example, the ongoing discussion of women’s rights as human rights, or the suggestion that
the global redistribution of wealth be seen as an essential part of the establishment of
human rights. The question might be whether we need a form of humanism—in particular,
a form that forces us to posit an essential conception of what ‚man‛ is—to have human
rights. Perhaps not; perhaps what we need instead is a new concept of ethical relationships,
not between ‚men,‛ or even between people, but between would-be subjects that have not
yet come into existence. The ontology of ourselves might then represent, not a founding
moment, but rather a horizon, in Husserl’s sense.45
IV. Responsibility after Humanism

What are the ramifications of this ethics without subjects for a postcolonial criticism that
wants to come to terms with contemporary political and cultural situations? For one thing,
it implies a need to rid such criticism once and for all of the benevolent nostalgia for a form
of humanism that would allow for a re-enfranchisement of individuals subjected to colonial
violence, the desire to give those who have suffered back their ‚humanity.‛ This means
resisting the further desire (and here I quote David Scott) to ‚read Fanon as though we
43 Kate McInturff, ‚Dark Continents: Postcolonial Encounters with Psychoanalysis,‛ presentation at

Cornell University, July 2000.
44 For more on this point, see Bruce Robbins, ‚Race, Gender, Class, Postcolonialism: Towards a
New Humanistic Paradigm?‛ in A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, edited by Henry Schwarz
and Sangeeta Ray (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2000).
45 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, translated by Dorion
Cairns (Dordrecht, NL: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960). My thinking about Husserl in this context owes a
great debt to Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the
Human Sciences (New York: Routledge, 1995), and John E. Drabinski, Sensibility and Singularity:
The Problem of Phenomenology in Levinas (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001).
78
were about to join him in the trenches of the anti-colonial liberation struggle.‛46 We are at a
very different moment. For those of us inspired by Fanon’s critical method and political
commitments, this means responding to his call to ‚find something different‛ without
necessarily falling back upon strategies that were formulated in the heat of the struggle
forty years ago. It also means, as Stuart Hall has suggested, that we are required ‚to live
with a much more radically incomplete Fanon; a Fanon who is somehow much more
‘Other’ to us than we would like, who is bound to unsettle us from whichever direction we
read him.‛47 This is a Fanon, in other words, much closer to Foucault than he has been
made to seem.
Similarly, the strategy I have outlined entails refusing the supposed choice between
‚ethics‛ and ‚politics,‛ since the latter, in this reading, might just as easily be the mistaking
of a set of effects for a set of causes. This has particular consequences in the postcolonial
context. Derek Attridge’s analysis of the work of the South African writer J. M. Coetzee is
worth noting here. As Attridge argues in his reading of Coetzee’s novel Age of Iron, the
relationship between ethics and politics has often been posited as a distinction between the
general and the concrete, usually to the advantage of the latter. However, in Coetzee’s
work, something more complicated happens:
the ethical involves an always contextualized responsiveness and responsibility to the

other (as unique) and to the future (as unknowable), while the political is the realm of
generalizations, programs and predictions. It’s worth noting the reversal that this
implies in the way these terms are often used: here it is the ethical, not the political,
which is concerned with concrete acts and persons, and the political which deals in
general rules. My argument is that in the political arena we often think we are engaging
with the concrete when we are imposing generalities and that the generalities on which
philosophical ethics has usually rested are evasions of the genuinely ethical, which can
be thought through only in relation to the singular and the contingent. 48
As Coetzee himself puts it, his attempts at representing the realities of apartheid (and, more
recently, post-apartheid) South Africa involves a commitment to ‚irresponsibility, or better,
46 David Scott, Refashioning Futures: Criticism After Postcoloniality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999), 199. For a recent, and quite exciting, attempt to re-think Fanon’s
anticolonial politics in terms of our contemporary context, see John Edgar Wideman, Fanon: A
Novel (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008). For a re-thinking of our moment of reading Foucault
that resonates with Scott’s reading of Fanon, see Todd May, ‚Foucault Now?‛ Foucault Studies 3
(2005), 65-76.
47 Stuart Hall, ‚The After-life of Frantz Fanon,‛ in The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual
Representation, edited by Alan Read (Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1996), 35.
48 Derek Attridge, ‚Trusting the Other: Ethics and Politics in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron,‛ South
Atlantic Quarterly 93 (1994), 70-71.
79
of responsibility toward something that has not yet emerged.‛49 This is the very ethos I am
calling an ethics without subjects, the production of a humanism effect.
Most important, perhaps, espousing this strategy of an ethics without subjects
means getting beyond many of the pieties of postcolonial studies—and as Foucault notes,
genealogy is effective only when it is not pious.50 I have in mind in particular the notion
that too much interrogation of the investigating subject leads away from ‚politics‛ and ends
in some sort of paralysis, an accusation that has too often been leveled at ‚theoretical‛ work
dealing with colonialism and postcolonialism, regardless of the political commitments of its
practitioners. Indeed, my hope would be that this strategy of an ethics without subjects
would have the effect of calling into question the very division between investigator and
investigated, seeing them both as subject to colonialism and its aftermath.
Challenging piety is always a dangerous game, for it can too easily sound like an
attempt to drain passion from what some of us working in postcolonial studies still wish to
view as a struggle against injustices. In response, I can only cite Fanon’s introduction to
Black Skin, White Masks: ‚I do not trust fervor. . . . Fervor is the weapon of choice of the
impotent.‛51 As is so often the case, Fanon is trafficking in irony here, for there is certainly
fervor enough throughout his writings, never more so than when he is denouncing the
horrors that have been committed in the name of humanism. But perhaps Foucault gives us
the simplest, seemingly least passionate but perhaps most important argument against
traditional humanism (and one with which, I would suggest, Fanon would agree whole-
heartedly). Humanism, which Foucault defines as a ‚set of themes that have reappeared on
several occasions, over time, in European societies,‛ is a tautology: ‚Humanism serves to
color and to justify the conceptions of man to which it is, after all, obliged to take
recourse.‛52 These conceptions of man—scientific, religious, political—have always, as
Fanon constantly reminds us, entailed the dehumanization of certain categories of
individuals, with genocidal results. To put it simply, we can do better. And, if we want not
only to write the history of the present, but also to bring about a different kind of present
altogether, we must do better.
49 J. M. Coetzee, Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews, edited by David Atwell (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1992), 246; cited in Attridge, ‚Trusting the Other,‛ 82.
50 Foucault, ‚Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,‛ 81.
52 Foucault, ‚What Is Enlightenment?, 44.
80
Sophie Fuggle 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
ARTICLE
Excavating Government: Giorgio Agamben’s Archaeological Dig

Sophie Fuggle, King’s College, London
ABSTRACT: This paper looks at the development of certain Foucauldian concepts

and themes within the work of the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. Where
Agamben is well-known for his critique of biopower in Homo Sacer, his recent work a
more complex engagement with Foucault both in terms of his subject matter,
governmentality and economy (oikonomia), and his critical methodology, most
notably, his reaffirmation of the value of Foucault’s archaeological method.
Focusing on three of Agamben’s recent publications, Signatura Rerum: Sul Metodo, Il
regno e la gloria. Per una genealogia teologica dell'economia e del governo and What is an
Apparatus?, the article looks first at Agamben’s development of Foucault’s
archaeological method within his own concept of the signature. It then goes on to
consider Agamben’s identification of an economic theology in contradistinction to
Schmitt’s political theology and how Agamben’s discussion of collateral damage
might be related to Foucault’s notion of security as developed in Security, Territory,
Population. Finally, the article considers how Agamben links Foucault’s notion of
‘dispositif’ *apparatus+ to an economic theology of government, calling for the
development of counter-apparatuses in a similar way to Foucault’s call for
‘resistances.’ The article concludes by considering both the benefits and the
limitations of Agamben’s engagement with Foucault.
Keywords: Agamben, Foucault, governmentality, signature, archaeology
Introduction – Agamben and Foucault: Between a Rock and a Hard Place?

Agamben’s engagements with Foucault tend to be viewed through the somewhat
distorted lens of Homo Sacer, Agamben’s most famous work to date. Distorted, since
the conclusion one tends to draw is that the only possible relationship that can be
formulated between the two thinkers is an antagonistic one founded on conflicting
notions of the relationship between sovereign and biopower. Agamben appears to
be launching a direct attack on Foucault’s notions of biopower and the bio-political,
arguing that biopower is really only ever a disguised form of sovereign power and
81
Fuggle: Excavating Government
that the transition from one form of power to the other, which Foucault claimed
occurred during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, never really took place. 1
In his powerful evocation of bare life, the life that can be taken without
committing murder, Agamben rejects the idea that the right to life or, more precisely,
‘the right to make live’ has replaced the right to take life as the driving principle
behind modern political regimes. The undeniable force of this claim comes from
Agamben’s reference to Auschwitz as the most striking example of this right not
only to take life but to reduce life to bare life by shifting the boundaries of society
itself. The concentration camps formed a space at once outside of the law yet at the
same time within it. As such they constituted the definitive topographical
embodiment of the state of exception whereby the law is seen to achieve its ultimate
objective at the very moment when it is suspended.2 The state of exception forms
the means by which a state may, along with other non-legal acts, legitimately deny
certain members of its population the rights usually enjoyed by all its citizens,
rendering them as bare life and consequently sanctioning their death. Agamben
claims that it is through reference to this state of exception that societies deemed to
be based on a bio-political form of power actually reveal the sovereign structure of
power underlying their government.
According to Foucault the racist discourses driving the Nazi Regime were
founded on a perverted form of bio-power. Racism functions as a strategy that
enables a discourse of death to operate within an essentially bio-political society.3
Taking the biological and future welfare of the German people as its goal, Nazism
was able to reach ‛logical‛ conclusions about how such welfare could be efficiently
managed. Taking one set of lives as its aim, it becomes possible to exclude another
set that can be presented in terms of a threat.4 Agamben dismisses this reading of
the Holocaust, arguing that what is at stake is not the survival of a certain group but
the possibility of exercising the power to decide the fate of the lives of all who fall
within the jurisdiction of the Nazi regime. The concentration camp, where the
detainees are both excluded from society and included as part of its political
strategy, is not a warped version of biopower, it is the ultimate form of biopower.
The inevitable outcome of considering Agamben’s discussion of sovereign
power and bare life solely in terms of a refutation of Foucault’s position regarding
biopower seems to demand the choosing of sides. It appears that we are being
1 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power & Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
2 See also Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press, 2005).
3 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality - Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley
(New York, NY: Vintage, 1990), 149-50.
4 Michel Foucault, ‚Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France (1975-1976),
ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey (London: Allen Lane,
The Penguin Press, 2003), 255-260.
82
Foucault Studies, no. 7, pp. 81-98
offered two mutually exclusive possibilities. Our first option is to reject Agamben’s
claim that sovereign power prevails by identifying biopower with the situation in
Western societies today where death is so well managed that it has virtually
disappeared as a figure of the ‚real‛ even while people continue to die.
Alternatively, we can acknowledge, along with Agamben, the persistent operation of
the discourses of thanato- or necropolitics that continue to endorse the genocide
occurring throughout the world today.5 Thus presented, it becomes immediately
apparent that neither position is without its limitations.
However, the danger of such a reading is that it focuses almost exclusively on
the final chapter of The Will to Knowledge and assumes that Agamben is doing the
same. Yet it is equally possible to read Homo Sacer as a text which warns against
reductive readings that fail to take into account the important distinctions made by
Foucault concerning sovereign and bio power in the lectures he gave throughout the
seventies. Already in his 1973 lecture series, Psychiatric Power, Foucault identifies
elements of disciplinary (anatomo-political) power that came into existence within
the mechanisms of sovereign power, as well as provides a detailed account of how
the family unit, associated with the exercise of sovereign power in the figure of the
father, came to provide the model for the asylum, an essentially disciplinary
institution. This evocation of the family as an originary source of psychiatric power
is not a leftover or residue from the old discourses of sovereign power but
constitutes an increasingly essential element of disciplinary power.6 Similarly, in
Security, Territory, Population, a text we shall return to later, Foucault’s concept of
‛security‛ is introduced as a supplement to sovereign and disciplinary forms of
power, thus rendering impossible a straightforward binary opposition between the
latter two modes. According to Foucault, the three modes of power do not exist
independently of one another: ‛there is not a series of successive elements, the
appearance of the new causing the earlier ones to disappear. There is not the legal
age, the disciplinary age, and then the age of security.‛7 What is at stake here is
rather the development and refinement of the complex relationship between the
three modes:
In reality you have a series of complex edifices in which, of course, the techniques
themselves change and are perfected, or anyway becomes more complicated, but in
which what above all changes is the dominant characteristic, or more exactly, the
5 See Achille Mbembe’s ‛Necropolitics,‛ trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture, 15, 1 (2003),
11-40, for a useful supplement to Agamben’s discussion of thanato-politics.
6 Michel Foucault, Le Pouvoir psychiatrique: Cours au Collège de France 1973-1974 (Paris:
Seuil, 2003), 82.
7 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978,
trans. Graham Burchell (New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 8.
83
system of correlation between juridico-legal mechanisms, disciplinary mechanisms,

and mechanisms of security.8
The possibility that Agamben and Foucault might work better alongside one another
rather than in direct opposition is one endorsed not least by Agamben himself and
while Homo Sacer will essentially always be a critique of Foucault’s notion of
biopower, his more recent work seems to be moving beyond power along a similar,
although by no means identical, trajectory to the one taken by Foucault in his later
work. This engagement takes the form of two distinct, yet interrelated aspects.
Firstly, it involves a detailed articulation of his methodology which develops various
concepts either taken directly from Foucault, such as the dispositif [apparatus], or
developed with close reference to Foucault, most notably the signature, at the same
time as reinstating the value of Foucault’s archaeological method as an analytical
tool.9 The second feature involves the elaboration of key themes present in
Foucault’s later work. Taking the notion of governmentality as a starting point, and
more precisely the question ‛What is a government?‛ in Il Regno e la gloria Agamben
develops the concept of an economic-theology in contradistinction to Schmitt’s
political-theology suggesting that where the latter is taken up with sovereign power,
the former provides the basis for modern biopolitics and the extension of
government into all forms of social life.10 The aim of this article is to look at the ways
in which Agamben, in these recent texts, provides clarification of some of the
questions that preoccupied Foucault throughout his career. It will consider how
Agamben both develops and departs from Foucault’s own work on governmentality
and the critical insight Agamben brings to some of the unresolved tensions and
aporias in Foucault’s thought and method. At the same time as suggesting ways this
engagement might be developed further, we will also highlight some of the
difficulties and limitations of Agamben’s approach.
I. ‘What will have been’ – Reloading archaeology

Though Foucault, in The Archaeology of Knowledge, criticises both history founded on
a notion of continuity and one based on discontinuity he nevertheless tends to be
considered, rightly or wrongly, as focusing his own critical project more on
8 Ibid.
9 See Giorgio Agamben, Signatura Rerum: Sul Metodo (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008),
page references are to the French translation Signatura Rerum: sur la méthode, trans. Joël
Gayraud (Paris: Vrin, 2008). English translations are the author’s own. See also Giorgio
Agamben, What is an Apparatus? trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2009).
10 Giorgio Agamben, Il regno e la gloria. Per una genealogia teologica dell'economia e del governo
(Milano: Neri Pozza, 2007). Page references are to the French translation Le Règne et la
gloire: pour une généalogie théologique de l’économie et du gouvernement, trans. Joël Gayraud
and Martin Rueff (Paris : Seuil, 2008). English translations are the author’s own.
84
discontinuity. More precisely, such discontinuity is designated not in terms of fixed

periods, eras, styles and categories but rather evokes the ruptures and shifts which
occur whereby certain discourses and practices operating at a certain time within a
particular society come to assume new roles and embody different truth-values.
While the question as to how such shifts occurred does indeed occupy a large part of
Foucault’s critical enquiry, it only represents one side of the coin. The other side can
be explained with reference to the signature.
The starting point for Agamben’s ‛theory of signatures‛ is Foucault’s account
of the signature in The Order of Things. Foucault locates the signature within the
Renaissance episteme of resemblance and similitude, claiming that ‚*t+here are no
resemblances without signatures. The world of similarity can only be a world of
signs.‛11 According to the sixteenth-century astrologer and alchemist, Paracelsus,
every object bears a number of external signs or marks that, when deciphered, reveal
its hidden, interior nature or essence. ‛Sciences‛ such as astrology and physiog-
nomy are key examples of practices that emerged during the Renaissance and were
aimed at decoding such outer signs. A signature is therefore not a sign or mark per
se, but, rather, a form of reading signs and marks constituting, at the same time, a
process of writing. As Agamben points out ‛the signature is the site where the acts
of reading and writing inverse their relation and enter into a zone of undecidability.
Here, reading becomes writing and writing fully comes to terms with itself in
reading.‛12
In a move that both complicates and clarifies his understanding of signature,
Agamben shifts his focus from Foucault’s discussion of signs and signatures in The
Order of Things to the concept of the énoncé [statement] found in Archaeology of
Knowledge. Loosely defined, the énoncé is a phrase, proposition or statement or set of
statements that can be made within a given socio-historical context. However, it is
impossible to identify an énoncé as a sign or structure conforming to fixed
grammatical and syntactical rules. That which Foucault has referred to as the
‛fonction énonciative‛ *enunciatory function+ is concerned solely with the efficacy of a
phrase or statement. Does a particular phrase or statement perform the intended
function at a given moment? Moreover, the énoncé is not simply a linguistic exercise
since it has less to do with grammatical rules and more with discursive practices. It
is the social conditions that render a certain statement possible that are of interest
more than the linguistic tools employed to make such a statement.
According to Agamben, énoncés can be better understood if we situate them
in the interstice between semiology and hermeneutics, the place where signatures
come into play. Here Agamben draws upon the distinction made by Foucault in The
Order of Things:
11 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New
York, NY: Routledge, 1988), 29.
12 Agamben, Signatura rerum, 63.
85
Let us call the totality of the learning and skills that enable one to make the signs
speak and to discover their meaning, hermeneutics; let us call the totality of the
learning and skills that enable one to distinguish the location of the signs, to define
what constitutes them as signs, and to know how and by what laws they are
linked, semiology<13
In this sense, Foucault’s often problematic attempt to define the énoncé becomes
fundamental to Agamben’s understanding of signature since the énoncé
demonstrates the impossibility of the existence of ‛unmarked‛ signs, that is, signs
which signify or designate in ‚a pure, neutral manner once and for all.‛14
The sign signifies because it carries the signature but the latter necessarily
determines in advance its interpretation and conveys its use and efficacy according
to the rules, practices and precepts requiring recognition.15
Agamben makes it clear that a signature should not be conceived of in terms of a

concept. This is because it constitutes a movement rather than a static, fixed identity
or term. A signature represents the process whereby a doctrine, discourse or
practice is transferred or transposed from one sphere or domain to another through
a series of shifts, substitutions and displacements.16 An example of a signature
would be, according to Agamben, the notion of sovereignty which in its
displacement from the domain of the sacred to that of the profane identifies a
relationship or co-dependency existing between the two spheres.
In many ways, Agamben employs signature to refer to a similar process
occurring throughout history to that which Derrida identifies taking place in
language. Indeed, Agamben goes as far as to suggest that archaeology and
deconstruction are both sciences of the signature.17 However, where deconstruction
leads to the affirmation of difference conceived of in terms of a pure self-
referentiality and the endless deferral of meaning, the strategy employed by a
Foucauldian archaeology is completely different. It is not a question of celebrating
the signature as pure sign, but instead recognising its functioning within specific
conditions of possibility and the shifts and displacements which transpose its
function onto other contexts.
The signature evokes the play of substitution described by Derrida in
‛Structure, Sign and Play.‛18 It is this play that ensures that the meaning and
13 Foucault, The Order of Things, 33.

15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 46.
17 Ibid., 73, 90.
18 Jacques Derrida, ‛Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,‛ in
86
definition of a doctrine or discourse appears at once continuous and continuously

shifting. It is also this play that prevents access to an origin or starting point in
history where a doctrine comes into being. A doctrine or discourse does not simply
come into being. A doctrine is not born in an instant, fully formed. Yet we remain
obsessed with finding origins and sources. In clarifying his use of an archaeological
approach, Agamben makes it clear that what is at stake is very much the idea of
history as the way of explaining the present but in terms and according to concepts
that only belong in the present. Consequently, we must concede that any access we
may have to a source or origin can only ever be via tradition and it is tradition that
bars access to the source. Tradition constitutes our way of understanding the past
and as such never actually belongs to the past and can never allow us access to the
past. Tradition functions in a similar way to the Freudian notion of trauma. It refers
to an experience that is always a non-experience existing only in the present, never
in the past.19
However, it is not in Archaeology of Knowledge that Agamben identifies
Foucault’s most precise articulation of the archaeological method and its strategies,
but rather in a much earlier text, the extended preface to Ludwig Binswanger’s
Traum und Existenz.20 Here, Foucault critiques a psychoanalytical interpretation of
dreams that locates their meaning in the past. According to Foucault, the primary
interest in the analysis of dreams during Antiquity lay in their ability to indicate
possible future events.21 Dreams are not therefore associated with the repetition or
reconstitution of past desires repressed by waking consciousness, but with one’s
freedom to act in the future. According to Agamben, this ‛mouvement de la liberté”
identified by Foucault has much in common with his later archaeological method.
Both are concerned with a perpetual calling into question; in the case of dreams this
is the questioning of one’s very existence; with reference to archaeology, it is the
questioning of our understanding of the world. Where the past is evoked, it is done
in order to locate the moment at which the self, a particular tradition, discourse or
phenomenon emerged in order to move beyond this moment towards a different
Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London & Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1978), 278-293.
20 Ibid., 119. See Michel Foucault, «Introduction à Ludwig Binswanger, Le Rêve et l’existence»
Dits et écrits. 1954-1988, vol. 1 (Paris : Gallimard, 2001), 93-147.
21 Interestingly, the theme of dreams returns in Foucault’s later work in his discussion of
Artemidorus’s Oneirocritica in the opening chapter of the third volume of the History of
Sexuality, The Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1988).
While both texts enact a critique of psychoanalysis, suggesting dreams are projected
towards future action, they differ in their discussion of the form such action takes. In The
Care of the Self, dreams are inextricably bound up with one’s social, economic and family
situation, whereas in Foucault’s earlier discussion, dreams belong to a lexicon of death,
suicide and, ultimately, freedom.
87
mode of being or thinking.22 Drawing upon Foucault’s claim that ‛the genealogist
needs history in order to conjure the chimera of the origin‛ in ‛Nietzsche,
Genealogy, History,‛ Agamben elucidates the two-fold meaning of ‛conjure‛ as a
means of explaining the process at work.23 In the first instance, ‛to conjure
something up‛ is to evoke it, call it into existence or even bring it back from the
dead. Yet this ‛conjuring‛ (especially in the case of spirits) is carried out in order to
dispel or expel the thing being conjured. So in this sense the past is ‚conjured up‛ in
order to dispel the traditions, myths and so-called ‛truths‛ it has created.
Agamben thus reasserts the claim made by Foucault that we should cease to
concern ourselves with origins and focus on what Nietzsche refers to as Entstehung
(emergence).24 Moreover, it is not the content but the modality, the shifts and
displacements that should form the basis of an archaeological and genealogical
study of history. It is not what counts as true at a particular moment but how it
came to count as true at that moment and the (frequently imperceptible) shifts and
displacements that have occurred to a discourse or practice that are of interest.
Foucault is not like Freud in search of the origin of infinitely repeated trauma but
rather recognises that there is no origin, only an endless series of displacements.
Archaeology is not about constructing or even re-constructing the past since the
object being examined is never ‛fully and empirically present‛ but about uncovering
the ruins of this past (Agamben uses the term ‛ruinology‛) in order to arrive at a
better understanding of the present.25 Conceived thus, archaeology takes the form of
a ‛future anterior,‛ – ‛what will have been.‛
While making regular references to Nietzsche and genealogy throughout his
study of the signature, Agamben nevertheless insists on a critical framework based
on the notion of archaeology rather than genealogy. It is a common misperception
that Foucault replaced his archaeology with genealogy following criticisms that the
archaeological method was both too theoretical and in perpetual risk of lapsing into
the very ahistoricism it was supposed to be attacking. While genealogy offered a
more useful critical tool for examining the constitution of individual subjects as a
result of power relations operating on and through the body, archaeology had
nevertheless paved the way for such an examination. As Dreyfus and Rabinow have
pointed out:
Underlying the longer continuities of cultural practices which the genealogist

isolates, the archaeologist still has a purifying role to play. The demonstration of
discontinuity and shifts of meaning remains an important task. [...] Archaeology
22 Agamben, Signatura rerum, 120-121.

23 Michel Foucault, ‛Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,‛ in Donald F. Bouchard (ed.), Lan-
guage, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1977), 137-164.
24 Ibid.
88
still isolates and indicates the arbitrariness of the hermeneutic horizon of

meaning. It shows that what seems like the continuous development of a
meaning is crossed by discontinuous discursive formations. The continuities, he
reminds us, reveal no finalities, no hidden underlying significations, no
metaphysical certainties. 26
Moreover, Foucault himself suggests in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de

France, The Order of Discourse, that the critical task of archaeology operates alongside
genealogy:
So there are some projects for the critical side of the task, for the analysis of the
instances of discursive control. As for the genealogical aspect, it will concern the
effective formation of discourse either within the limits of this control, or outside
them, or more often on both sides of the boundary at once. The critical task will be to
analyse the processes of rarefaction, but also of regrouping and unification of
discourses; genealogy will study their formation, at once dispersed, discontinuous,
and regular. In truth these two tasks are never completely separable: there are not,
on one side, the forms of rejection, exclusion, regrouping and attribution, and then
on the other side, at a deeper level, the spontaneous surging-up of discourses which,
immediately before or after their manifestation, are submitted to selection and
control. *<+ The difference between the critical and the genealogical enterprise is not
so much a difference of object or domain, but of point of attack, perspective, and
delimitation.27
Nevertheless, as the question of power assumed an increasingly central role in

Foucault’s work, archaeology was forced to take a back seat to genealogy within his
methodological framework. With Agamben a reversal takes place whereby
genealogy is in a certain sense relegated to a secondary status in relation to
archaeology. Genealogy now operates as part of the archaeological method rather
than superseding it. It is through this modulation of the commonly perceived
relationship between archaeology and genealogy that Agamben is able to construct
his own critical framework within which to conduct his own study of government
that draws on the Foucauldian method but makes it more suited to the study of
doctrine than practice.
II. Towards an economic-theology of government

As we mentioned briefly in the previous section, one of the key examples Agamben
uses to explain his theory of signature is the process of secularisation.
Secularisation, he points out, should not be conceived as a concept but as a
26 Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Herme-
neutics (Brighton: Harvester, 1982), 105-106.
27 Michel Foucault, ‚The Order of Discourse,‛ in Robert Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A
Poststructuralist Reader (London: Routledge, 1981), 48-78.
89
signature. It is the process not, as Max Weber claimed, whereby society becomes
disillusioned with theology and religion and abandons it outright but, in fact, as Carl
Schmitt suggests, the means by which religion remains ever present in modern
society. Through secularisation, the theological leaves its mark on the political
whilst avoiding a direct correlation between political and theological identities.28
However, unlike Schmitt, Agamben locates oikonomia [economy] and not the
political as the founding principle of modern forms of government. Furthermore,
using his theory of signature, he traces the use of the term back to first century
Graeco-Roman society and also the messianic communities which made up the early
Christian Church. The consequences of his analysis of oikonomia in relation to
modern, secular forms of government is not simply that it calls for a revised
understanding of how Western societies govern but at the same time demands a
radical revision of how we conceive of the theological principles underpinning these
secular modes of government.29 Taking as our starting point, Foucault’s explanation
of oikos in The Use of Pleasure, we will then proceed to look at how Agamben
develops his ‛genealogy‛ of the term in relation and contrast to Foucault before
considering how this revised understanding of oikonomia might serve to bring the
two thinkers yet closer together.
In The Use of Pleasure, Foucault identifies oikos (the household) as requiring
an art of government comparable to that found in political and military spheres
since all involve the government of others. In Antiquity, the fidelity of free males to
their spouses was not required by law, yet it was something prescribed in certain
philosophical texts as being fundamental to the successful management and
continued prosperity of a household. Foucault’s enquiry into oikonomia begins with
the problematisation of marital relations in a society where free male citizens were
apparently exempt from the rules that later came to govern marriage as Christianity
took hold on the Western world. Yet he is quick to acknowledge that sexual
relations between husband and wife constituted just one aspect of a complex art of
economy, the management of the household.30
It is this domain of the private, the administration of the family and
household that also forms the starting point for Agamben’s study of government but
his line of enquiry takes a different direction from Foucault. Whereas Foucault
identifies an art of government operating within different domains: the political, the
military and the economic, Agamben emphasises a sharp opposition between
politics and economy. Politics is posited in terms of the legal and judicial where
economy constitutes management and administration.31 Agamben stresses this
28 Agamben, Le Règne et la gloire, 20-21.

29 Ibid., 52.
30 Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert
Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 154 ff.
31 Agamben, Le Règne et la gloire, 17.
90
opposition in order to bring these two spheres together under the notion of
government and it is via the paradigm of the trinity that emerged during the second
and third centuries that he achieves this.
As Agamben points out, the term economy can already be found in Paul’s
epistles.32 Oikonomia is the term used by Paul to explain the task that God has given
him, the duty that God has conferred upon him to preach the message about Jesus
Christ.
I am entrusted with a commission [oikonomia] (1 Corinthians 9:17)
I became its servant according to God’s commission *oikonomia] that was given to
me for you, to make the word of God fully known (Colossians 1:25)
In both of the above passages Paul defines his role as being commissioned or
administered to him by God. Moreover, the use of the term oikonomia in Ephesians 3
makes it clear that what is being administered is precisely God’s mystery.
for surely you have already heard of the commission [oikonomia+ of God’s grace
that was given to me for you, and how the mystery was made known to me by
revelation (Ephesians 3.2-3)
However, while the Pauline epistles refer to the economy, the administration or
commission of God’s mystery, with the doctrine of the trinity this is reversed to
become the mystery of economy, the mystery of God’s rule and government of the
world.33 The trinity functions as the means of explaining God’s ability to govern on
Earth whilst remaining transcendent. It embodies the notion of unity, thus
maintaining the idea of monotheism whilst resisting the threat of polytheism. It
clarifies how God administers and manages his creation. Initially, this functioned as
a duality of God-Christ based on a model of household relations, master-slave,
father-son, husband-wife, with the third dimension, the Holy Spirit, being added
later on. Yet Christ does not exist in a subordinate relationship to God, as a son does
to a father, but represents the means by which God, as a unity, governs in the world.
Just as an army requires both order and strategy to function effectively, God’s rule
on earth requires that he is at once transcendent and present in the world. It is not a
question of different being or even modes of being but, rather, the distinction
32 The term oikonomia appears nine times in the New Testament: in Luke 16:2, 16:3, 16:4, 1
Corinthians 9:17, Ephesians 1:10, Ephesians 3:2, Ephesians 3:9, Colossians 1:25, 1 Timothy
1:4. See Agamben, Le Règne et la gloire, 47 ff.
33 Agamben refers specifically to Tertullian, Hippolytus and Irenaeus as active proponents
of the trinity, Le Règne et la gloire, 67. See also Agamben, What is an Apparatus? 9.
91
between being and praxis. The paradigm of the trinity facilitates this relationship
between the immanent and transcendent.34
It is this duality, composed of the transcendent and the immanent, reign and
government, that forms what Agamben refers to as a bi-polar machine.35 Modern
government is founded upon this bi-polarity. Hence, for Agamben sovereign power
and bio-power are both always present to a greater or lesser degree. Power is
necessarily separate from its execution. God’s absolute power is distinguished from
his administrative power. This distinction effectively solves the problem of how it is
possible for man to sin. If God is both all-powerful and all-present, why does he
allow the existence of sin in the world? The concept of economy evokes the idea that
God, like the master of any successful household, does not need to occupy himself
with minor details. Elsewhere, Agamben explains this with recourse to the analogy
of the master of the house who while aware that rats and spiders both live within his
household and are sustained and fed by the household does not need deem it
necessary to actively deal with these vermin.36
Subsequently, we arrive at a paradox whereby God governs in the world yet
the world always remains other.37 As a result, the relationship between sovereignty
and governmentality is always vicarious. Moreover, it is impossible to access
ultimate power since it is always deferred from one realm to the other. This is why,
Agamben claims, in modern forms of government, there can never be one person
held accountable or absolutely responsible.38 There is no substance to power. It is
pure economy, the art of management.
In a short essay entitled ‛What is an Apparatus,‛ Agamben elucidates this
idea of pure economy further with reference to Foucault’s notion of the dispositif
[apparatus]. Identifying dispositio as the Latin translation of the Greek term
oikonomia, Agamben suggests Foucault’s use of the term dispositif might somehow be
rooted in this ‛theological legacy.‛ According to Agamben, a dispositif functions as a
kind of ‛universal‛ in Foucault’s thought. A dispositif is not a specific technique,
strategy or exercise of power but the complex network which links different
strategies and techniques together. Conceived as a network or relation, dispositif is

35 Ibid., 180.
36 Giorgio Agamben, Lecture series entitled ‛Oikonomia, Gloire, Désoeuvrement‛ given at
the Collège International de Philosophie, January 2008. Lecture given 21 January 2008.
37 Agamben evokes the idea of the pilgrim or his modern day counterpart, the tourist, to
clarify this paradox. A pilgrim or tourist travels the world, yet in doing so emphasises his
or her otherness to the societies and cultures he or she encounters. Whether, in assuming
the role of a tourist, you choose to embrace the lifestyle and customs of the country you
are visiting or not is irrelevant. Moreover, it is precisely your ability to make this choice
that differentiates you and marks you as a tourist. Op. cit., lecture given on 21 January
2008.
38 Ibid.
92
pure praxis with no substance, ‛a pure activity of governance devoid of any

foundation in being.‛39
All this calls for a revised understanding of divine power, not in terms of
absolute domination but rather as a power that manages and administers. Yet it is
nevertheless as a power of domination that divine power provides the model and
justification for the sovereign power Foucault identifies in operation during the
Middle Ages. What is interesting here is that despite identifying two very different
discourses of divine power both Agamben and Foucault make reference to
Kantorowicz’s famous study of medieval political theology, The King’s Two Bodies, in
order to elucidate their arguments. I would like to suggest therefore that it is via
Kantorowicz’s discussion of kingly power that we can bring these two discourses
together.
The theory that a king was in possession of two bodies, the body-natural and
the body-politic, offered the means by which a sovereign could present his power
over his subjects as absolute and incontestable. Moreover, as Foucault points out,
such power tended to manifest itself most notably in the form of physical
domination over subjects, the king’s right to take life or let live.40 Yet emphasizing
the body-politic as the site of such absolute power, the divine soul that passed from
one king to another, also made it possible to challenge the king’s power. While the
evocation of the body-politic set the king apart from his subjects, it also separated his
physical presence, the body-natural, from the power he was supposed to enjoy
spiritually. Thus, while the king can evoke the divine power that enables his
executive power, this power is always deferred and he is never really in possession
of it nor can he guarantee it. This is why it was possible for parliament to depose
Charles I. By separating body-politic from body-natural, parliament was able to
challenge the executive powers of Charles I while continuing to evoke allegiance
towards the king as spiritual entity.41
The consequence of this perpetual deferral of power is that which Agamben
refers to as collateral damage. Collateral damage refers to those whose lives are lost,
whether as casualties of war or victims of natural disasters or epidemics. According
to Agamben, the paradigm of collateral damage constitutes the paradigm of all acts
of government and as such represents the dominant paradigm today. Collateral
damage is not the by-product of an oppressive and violent political regime but is
rather fundamental to democratic modes of government.42 As such it does not
represent the negligence or incompetence of a country or state to assure the safety of
39 Agamben, What is an Apparatus? 11.

40 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New
York, NY: Vintage Books, 1977), 48.
41 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 20.
93
its inhabitants, but instead forms part of the effective management and
administration of those inhabitants. Understanding government in terms of colla-
teral damage can be compared to Foucault’s notion of security. Where sovereign
power involved coercion and violence and disciplinary power techniques of
regulation and normalisation, security operates according to a principle of
‛circulation.‛ Unlike disciplinary power that seeks to contain and limit, security is
concerned with growth and production, and the increase of its mechanisms.
Whereas disciplinary power is centripetal, security is a centrifugal force operating
within and beyond society.43 Security can be linked to the emergence of capitalism
and provides the possibility for economic growth by simultaneously encouraging
and restricting circulation of goods, opening up borders and delineating new
boundaries.
Where sovereign power conceived the scope of its authority in terms of a
territory, security concentrates on the notion of population. The population is what
is at stake in the management and control of various ‛events.‛ A key example of
such an event is the famine or widespread food shortage. Where previously famine
was something to be avoided at all costs not least because of its association with
moral judgment, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries food shortages
become something that could be managed and used to control the economic market.
Subsequently, famine as an ‛event‛ is eliminated from society despite the continued
existence of food shortages and starvation.44
What has occurred is a dissociation between the individual and the collective.
The collective no longer corresponds to the number of individuals of which it is
composed. Moreover, the elimination of famine requires the prevalence of hunger
and starvation. ‛The scarcity-scourge disappears, but scarcity that causes the death
of individuals not only does not disappear, it must not disappear.‛ 45 Individual
starvation and death is the condition that makes it possible to eliminate hunger and
starvation from the population at large. The population is always the final objective
of security’s operation. But, Foucault points out, this concept of population is not to
be understood as composed of groups of individuals.
In identifying his analysis of government with Foucault’s notion of security,
Agamben is reopening the dialogue on biopower but from an entirely new
perspective. Aligning his recent work with Foucault’s discussion of security is
perhaps the most effective way to move beyond the well-worn debate over
sovereign and bio power. Both security and the notion of collateral damage provide
the means of explaining the persistence of death within a biopolitical society without
reverting to sovereign discourses of racism. Moreover, they are able to re-
appropriate such death into what is ultimately a reaffirmation of life. While
43 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 44-45.

44 Ibid., 30 ff.
45 Ibid., 42.
94
sovereign power still remains ever-present (yet increasingly absent), in Agamben’s

bi-polar government machine it has ceased to represent a discourse of death and
now exists in contradistinction to executive power, caught up in an endless game in
which each form of power refers back to the other. The idea that sovereign power is
powerless to intervene and that executive power is only a form of administration or
economy echoes Foucault’s claim that power is never in the possession of one
individual or group but exists as a series of relations and as such is always in
constant flux. Consequently, what is at stake is not the question of who possesses
power but how the absence of any definitive power can itself be used by
governments and government agents to deny or abdicate responsibility for certain
actions.46
Developing the notion of dispositif beyond the use attributed to Foucault so as
to include within its scope ‚literally anything that has in some way the capacity to
capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures,
behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings,‛ Agamben suggests rethinking
the term in a new context.47 Evoking once more the theological underpinnings of the
term, Agamben explains how a dispositif functions by a process of capture and
separation. Thinking in theological terms it is possible to link this process of
separation to the notion of the sacred and sacrifice. It then becomes evident that the
way to counter such a process, the way to fight against the apparatuses that govern
us, is through profanation, that is, by restoring such practices to ‛common use.‛48
Just as Foucault adamantly refused to prescribe Graeco-Roman technologies and
ethics of the self as pertinent to our own ways of living and redefining ourselves in
relation to power, Agamben offers little concrete suggestion as to how one should
set about carrying out such a profanation. His recognition that profanation seems
increasingly impossible in relation to modern apparatuses renders the need for
counter-apparatuses all the more urgent, yet at the same time makes the situation
seem all the more hopeless. In this sense, his call to profanation is little more, or
perhaps less, than a reiteration of Foucault’s call to carry out a care of the self and
like Foucault fails to deal with the problem of the inevitable re-absorption or
recapture of such practices into dominant power structures.
Conclusion
Where Agamben may appear to be repositioning himself in relation to Foucault, it is
important to note, nevertheless, that there are a number of difficulties or limitations
to his critical project. Firstly, there is the possibility that in reactivating and refining
Foucault’s archaeological method, he is risking the very over-theorizing that
46 Agamben develops this further in his subsequent discussion of glory, the empty throne
and deactivation (inoperositá) in the later chapters of Le Règne et la gloire.
47 Agamben, What is an Apparatus? 13-14.
48 Ibid., 19.
95
Foucault was so anxious to avoid. This is particularly evident in Agamben’s desire

to define and heavily conceptualize methods and terms, such as dispositif, that
Foucault himself left undefined. The theory of signature, most notably, has a
tendency to universalise certain themes, thus emptying them of any real historical
significance.49
Second, it is important to note that his interest in governmentality stems from
influences and motivations very different from those which drove Foucault. Most
notably, Foucault dedicates more time to discussion of the practices that make up
the art of government, whereas Agamben concentrates on unpacking the etymology
of various terms associated with government, particularly oikonomia, and charting
their semantic shifts. Furthermore, it is important to remember that Agamben’s
study of government appeals to a notion of political theology that is heavily inspired
by the work of Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes and the legal theorist Carl Schmitt,
even when it calls for a revised understanding of the legacy of theology on modern
government.
With the possible exception of his discussion of pastoral power in Sécurité,
territoire, population, Foucault’s work on governmentality never really developed
along the lines of a political theology. In both the Hermeneutic of the Subject and Le
Gouvernement de soi et des autres, what is at stake is the shift from a form of
governmentality reserved for an elite few – the idea that in order to govern others
one needs first to govern oneself – to a form of self-government disassociated with
the government of others and consequently accessible to all. Consequently, practices
such as parrêsia, the act of speaking freely despite the potential risk involved, along
with maintaining one’s silence for a certain period of time, constituted a way in
which the individual carried out a certain care or ethics of the self. As such these
practices can be seen to differ enormously from the corresponding acts of confession
and silence that came to assume central roles within Christianity. Rather than
constituting a form of care of the self, a means of forming a relationship with oneself,
these practices became associated with a renunciation of the self. Confession and
silence, as described by Foucault in Discipline and Punish, became the means by
which the institutional power of the Church, and more recently its secular
counterparts, operated on and through individuals within a wider process of
normalisation.
Much of Foucault’s work is based on the question of how practices produce
certain truths about the self, either in relation to discourses of normality or in
49 This criticism has been made elsewhere with reference to Agamben’s discussion of the
exception. See Andrew W. Neal, ‛Foucault in Guant{namo: Towards an Archaeology of
the Exception,‛ Security Dialogue 37, 1 (March 2006), 31-46. Neal suggests that Agamben’s
development of Schmitt’s theory of the exception glosses over temporally specific events
from Auschwitz to Guantánamo, thus endorsing as universal rather than questioning the
practices carried out in each instance.
96
opposition to such discourses. Yet his interest in practices should not be considered
as one belonging to that of a detached observer. Foucault is not an anthropologist
who simply watches and records the practices engaged in by others. Rather, he
implicates himself in these practices not least when he posits the question of what it
means to be a philosopher. In his discussion of the role and responsibility of the
philosopher during Antiquity and the negotiation that a philosopher must carry out
between logos and ergon, Foucault is carrying out his own negotiation of these two
terms, calling for a renewed appreciation of philosophy in terms of a practice or
exercise where the philosopher constitutes the one who both partakes in such
exercises and also guides others in their care or ethics of the self.
Foucault’s discussion of the role of the philosopher in Antiquity draws
heavily upon Plato. The mere fact that nothing attributed to Plato was actually
authored by Plato himself does much to emphasize the importance of philosophy as
a practice, an oral exercise that does not simply entail the philosopher passing his
knowledge, unmediated, on to others. Philosophy is an active dialogue and as such
is not something that can simply be committed to paper for use by future
generations. This is because, according to Plato, philosophy is not just something
concerned solely with logos defined as a specific form of knowledge. Among various
types of philosophical knowledge, Plato identifies to on. The process of acquiring
such knowledge is translated by Foucault as ‚le frottement.‛50 It is knowledge
conceived of as a practice that calls into question and modulates other forms of
knowledge. Considered thus, philosophy cannot be isolated from its practice, just as
logos cannot be isolated from the process whereby different forms of knowledge
confront one another and undergo certain modulations or modifications as a
consequence.
Thus, in carrying out different philosophical practices and exercises, the
philosopher is responsible for making alterations to such practices, yet does so with
the very intention of changing himself in the process. This process can be explained
using the analogy of a lamp that is lit when it comes into contact with the fire – it is
the oil in the lamp that enables the lamp to burn, not just the fire.51 It is easy to see
how this analogy might be applied to Agamben’s work as a philosopher. He is not
simply continuing the relationship between politics and theology inspired by Taubes
and Schmitt, but rather developing an understanding of government based on the
relationship between economy and theology. Moreover, in their evocation of the
‛resistances‛ and counter-technologies demanded by Foucault, the counter-
apparatuses Agamben suggests might equally be developed in new and different
ways that act in response to the shifts and modifications to the dispositifs of power
50 Michel Foucault, Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres. Cours au Collège de France 1982-1983
(Paris : Seuil, 2008), 232.
51 Ibid.
97
occurring since Foucault’s death, although it remains to be seen how exactly this
could be achieved.
98
Samuel Rocha 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW ESSAY
Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx: Conversations with Duccio Trombadori.

Translated by R. James Goldstein and James Cascaito (New York: Semio-
text(e), 1991), ISBN: 978-0936756332 & Michel Foucault, Power: Essential Works
of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Translated by Robert Hurley (New York: The
New Press, 2000), ISBN: 978-0140259575
Introduction
The question of the place and role of subject in Foucault has given rise to a multitude
of new questions and potential uses (and abuses) of his work. In the English-
speaking world, Eric Paras’ controversial Foucault 2.0 (2006) is a good example of the
positions taken and the resistance that followed. What cannot be taken lightly is that
as more of Foucault’s work becomes available in English, the more we encounter
statements that come to many as a shock. The careful reader, however, will note
(and many have) that these ‚shocking‛ statements on the subject have been available
in English for some time. With all the novelty and excitement of this ‚new‛
quandary in Foucault studies, it seems appropriate to return to some of those texts
that, at the very least, precede the more recent revelations. Two of these texts are the
early translations of Foucault’s 1978 interview with the Italian Marxist, Duccio
Trombadori.
In this unique interview, we find that Foucault pays special attention not only
to the constitution of the subject in general, but also to the constitution of the author
through the act of writing. To be more specific, the most notable example he gives is
himself. On more than one occasion, he uses the self-referential term ‚experience,‛ a
word that many see as an opening move to a ‚humanist Foucault.‛ This theme of
‚the writing of the self‛1 would continue to be of special interest to him, but that is
not the only reason why this interview is particularly important to remember.
The production of the interview into an English language text was itself
controversial. It appeared first with the title, Remarks on Marx, in 1991, and then
reappeared in a new translation with the title ‚An Interview With Michel Foucault‛
1 For a more detailed treatment of this as it relates to education and teaching, see: John
Ambrosio, ‚The Writing of the Self: Ethical Self-Formation and the Undefined Work of
Freedom,‛ Educational Theory, v. 58, no. 3 (August 2008), 251-267.
131
Rocha: review essay of Remarks on Marx and Power
in Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 (2000). This peculiar way in which the
two translations of the same interview have ‚become books,‛ so to speak, is striking
when we consider the question within the actual interview about the constitution of
books and their authors. So, by looking at the actual production of this text itself we
access a unique entry into the deeper question of the central theme of Foucault’s
work: the constitution of the subject.
Before doing so, however, I would like to avoid what I see as a mistaken
interpretation of Foucault’s affinity for the subject. In order to do so, I would like to
go back to the question Foucault asked about this topic a full decade earlier in 1968
and 1969 (in The Order of Things and What is an Author?) and point out that there
need not be a discontinuous reading of Foucault’s supposed polemics on the subject.
From that cautionary point of view, this featured interview should not appear as a
novel topic for discussion. We might even come to understand Foucault’s thoughts
on the production of the subject through writing as a continuation of the question he
raises in What is an Author?
I will then offer a comparative analysis of the two different publications of
the 1978 interview and, in doing so, raise the provocative question Foucault brings
up in the interview, namely: How are experience books born? The analysis will end
with two ‚identical‛ passages from the texts that leave the reader to ruminate on
their textual (in)difference to each other.
Background
What I hope to do in this first portion of the essay is to clarify my position on the
placement of Foucault’s interest in the subject within the chronology of his oeuvre by
relating his 1978 interview with Duccio Trombadori to his 1969 lecture and essay,
What is an Author?, published between the appearance of The Order of Things and
Archeology of Knowledge. My main point here is that one need not periodize Foucault
to find fruitful engagement with his deep interest in the human subject, particularly
the person who writes books (in the case of What is an Author?) or the books
themselves (in his interview with Trombadori). In other words, unlike many of the
polemics surrounding the issue of Foucault’s affinity for the subject that seem to
require a certain abandonment or revision of his early and middle work, I do not see
such tidy divisions as exegetically necessary or as adding value to a more robust
understanding of the work of this particular human subject and author, that is to
say, the writer of these particular books: Michel Foucault.
Another, more familiar, way of framing this issue outside the scope of the
controversial question of whether Foucault was or became a humanist is by
revisiting the question of whether or not he was a structuralist. Of course, these two
questions are really one and the same because they cut to the indispensable issue:
are we actually studying Michel Foucault—the man? What I mean to suggest here is
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that the very question, ‚Who is Foucault?‛—or, to put it another way, the study of
Foucault as a historically intelligible person—cannot ignore the inconvenient reality
that we call him by name and attach that name to ‚his‛ books. And, we use that
name, which we assume to be his own, as a name that gives him a real identity for
us, because we assume to be speaking about him in the usual way we do with
everyone else.
So, from the very outset of our investigation we must agree, at least in
practice, that Foucault is someone: a person, an ego and so forth. At the very least he
is a somesuch, as Butler puts it, meaning that he is at least ‚something‛ in the
ontological sense. None of this delineates what kind of a thing a person is; there is
nothing easy about making sense of what we mean by those person-things we so
often take for granted, but, in addressing the very idea of authorship, the production
of books, and the constitution of the subject through such literary events, I think that
whether one considers it a matter of structuralist or humanist orientation, the brute
force of Foucault’s selfhood will be difficult to avoid. What is especially exciting to
me about this matter is that Foucault himself saw the need to confront this issue
during the very heart of what is widely considered to be his ‚post-human‛ period.
To make this point I will deal with two texts (The Order of Things and What is
an Author? in the order in which they were published) in order to preface and
contextualize Foucault’s 1978 interview with Trombadori. Before I do, however, let
me be clear: I do not see Foucault’s late period as discontinuous from his earlier
ones. Even though the 1978 interview is a part of this ‚later‛ period of work, I do not
want to make too much of it. Making my argument in this way should not only
bolster the idea that Foucault’s productive relationship with the subject is here to
stay in Foucault studies, it should also serve to erode some the interpretations that
seem to conveniently divide him into time-exclusive things.
The Order of Things & Phenomenology

In The Order of Things, Foucault appears to engage in an all-out offensive against
phenomenological humanism and this is usually understood to mean that he is also
opposed to the human subject, at least during this period of his work. In his
foreword to the English translation, he remarks that while discourse should remain
open to ‚different methods,‛ there is one method that he rejects outright. This, of
course, is phenomenology. He writes:
If there is one approach that I do reject, however, it is that (one might call it,
broadly speaking, the phenomenological approach) which gives absolute
priority to the observing subject, which attributes a constituent role to act, which
places its own point of view at the origin of all historicity – which, in short, leads
to a transcendental consciousness.2
2 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1994), xiv.
133
What is important to note is that Foucault’s opposition in this passage is, primarily
(if not exclusively), methodological.
It is true that underpinning these words was the Parisian struggle between
the ‚old school‛ of Sartre and the emerging ‚new schools‛ of structuralist and post-
structuralist thought. It is also indisputable that the brunt of Foucault’s attack seems
to fall on the ‚observing subject.‛ This polarizing caricature, however, can be
misleading. The subject is not the primary victim. It is, rather, a matter of the
‚absolute priority‛ given to the ‚observing subject‛ in phenomenological method. In
other words, Foucault’s contention is not that phenomenology is wrong outright. It
is instead that the way (or method) by which the phenomenologist approaches
things is misguided. Misguided, that is, by the priority of the observing subject and
transcendental ego, which, conveniently, happens to be the phenomenologist herself.
A critic might respond by citing passages throughout The Order of Things
where there is evidence to bolster an argument that Foucault is directed against the
actual ‚man‛ or ‚subject,‛ not against philosophical method. For example, Foucault
ends by writing ‚<that man would be erased, like a face in the sand.‛3 We might
observe, however, that if this were the case Foucault would have set himself up, so
to speak. If his purpose really were to ‚erase‛ the subject, then he would have to
begin with himself. But, if his point remains methodological, as it was in the
beginning, then the subject can retain its face, albeit differently from before.
Insofar as Foucault has a face and hands—a self—that freely thought and
wrote and felt and wondered, it seems that he must be offering a much more ironic
and different erasure of ‚the face‛ than one framed by a simplistic distaste for
phenomenology. In the end we can say that Foucault was not necessarily opposed to
phenomenological method in toto. Instead, we might simply maintain that he
rejected any method that prioritizes the subject as supreme knower, the Godhead,
the face, leading to notions of transcendental consciousness.
In other words, Foucault’s opposition to phenomenology was not, so it
seems, in order to destroy ‚man.‛ Similar to misunderstandings of Derrida’s
deconstruction, that wrongly assign a nihilistic destructiveness to things under
erasure, so too with Foucault’s erasure of ‚man‛ in The Order of Things: we find that
Foucault is not denying the phenomenological veracity of human existence. He
seems only to resent the phenomenological, and exclusive, priority given to her. This
interpretation suggests that Foucault—even the Foucault of The Order of Things, his
most abrasive treatise against phenomenology—is opposing a rigid subject, a true
‚man,‛ not phenomenology outright.
Besides Foucault’s authorship of The Order of Things, what are we to make of
the authors he frequently cites? This very question is addressed, and corrected, in
What is an Author? And it is precisely this notion of authorship that displays
134
Foucault, at the height of his ‚post-human‛ powers, in harmony with the notion of
‚an experience book‛ that he articulates a decade later in his interview with Duccio
Trombadori.
What is an Author? & The Literary Subject

Lest one think that Foucault was oblivious of the points I made above, or that I am
simply offering a convenient reading of his project, one need only look to his own
words in What is an Author? In this essay he confronts the problem that ‚the author‛
presents to his thesis in The Order of Things:
<my objective in The Order of Things had been to analyse verbal clusters as
discursive layers which fall outside the familiar categories of a book, a work, or
an author. But while I considered ‚natural history,‛ the ‚analysis of wealth,‛ and
‚political economy‛ in general terms, I neglected a similar analysis of the author
and his works; it is perhaps due to this omission that I employed the names of
authors throughout the book in a naïve and often crude fashion. 4
In other words, Foucault shows himself to be highly sensitive to the problematic of

the self as writer. Later on he places this literary sense of subjectivity against the
more general question of the subject when he writes:
Is it not possible to reexamine, as a legitimate extension of this kind of analysis,

the privileges of the subject? Clearly, in undertaking an internal and
architectonic analysis of a work (whether it be a literary text, a philosophical
system, or a scientific work) and in delimiting psychological and biographical
references, suspicions arise concerning the absolute nature and creative role of
the subject. But the subject should not be entirely abandoned. It should be
reconsidered, not to restore the theme of originating subject, but to seize its
functions, its intervention in discourse, and its system of dependencies. 5
These two passages make the argument that Foucault was not theorizing against or
beyond the subject during this period, however complicating the questions of
authorship (and others) are to his desired points. Also, his literary preoccupation
with the subject is clearly not to abandon it completely; instead, he proposes what he
would later say are the purposes of his work when he wrote:
I would like to say, first of all, what has been the goal of my work during the last
twenty years. It has not been to analyze the phenomena of power, nor to
elaborate the foundations of such an analysis. My objective, instead, has been to
create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings
4 Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University

Press, 1980), 113.
5 Foucault, Language, Memory, Practice, 137.
135
are made subjects< Thus, it is not power, but the subject, that is the general
theme of my research.6
When we look at how this ties into the notion of an ‚experience book‛ that he
articulated a decade later in his interview with Duccio Trombadori, I think it is safe
to say that, while his thought is developing new layers all the time, there is no such
radical break or discontinuity to be found between his earlier and later work;
especially considering that if there were to be a time when he would have been
entirely against the subject, this would have been it. Instead, we find a Foucault who
is deeply interested in the question of constitution from beginning to end. In
particular we find a keen interest in the literary aspects of constitution embedded in
the questions of authorship and books.
While this is something of a preliminary point in this review, it should make
for a more productive analysis of the interview in question. Now we begin to
consider the unique, and somewhat controversial, nature of the production of the
actual texts of this interview and then move on to how the issue of its production
helps to underscore the more general notion of how books constitute their author(s),
in this case, Michel Foucault.
The Birth of These Books: Remarks on Marx vs. An Interview with Michel Foucault
Rather than begin with ‚these‛ books, I think that Nietzsche’s insight in the preface
to Genealogy of Morals is indispensable to the work that lies ahead in this review. It
both opens the general theme of the role of literacy (reading and writing) in
Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s work and also brings to mind the role of the author.
Nietzsche writes:
If this book is incomprehensible to anyone and jars on his ears, the fault, it seems
to me, is not necessarily mine. It is clear enough, assuming, as I do assume, that
one has first read my earlier writings and has not spared some trouble in doing
so: for they are, indeed, not easy to penetrate. Regarding my Zarathustra, for
example, I do not allow that anyone knows that book who has not at some time
been profoundly wounded and at some time profoundly delighted by every
word in it; for only then may he enjoy the privilege of reverentially sharing in
the halcyon element out of which that book was born and in its sunlight clarity,
remoteness, breadth, and certainty. In other cases, people find difficulty with the
aphoristic form: this arises from the fact that today this form in not taken seriously
enough. An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been ‚deciphered‛
when it has simply been read; rather, one has then to begin its exegesis, for which
is required an art of exegesis< To be sure, one thing is necessary above all if one
is to practice reading as an art in this way, something that has been unlearned
most thoroughly nowadays—and therefore it will be some time before my
6 Michel Foucault, Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954 - 1984 (New York: The New
Press, 2000), 326-327.
136
writings are ‚readable‛—something for which one has almost to be a cow and in
any case not a ‚modern man‛: rumination.7
Here we find Nietzsche not only writing, but also telling his reader how to read his
books. This is different from Foucault’s approach in this interview in one way, yet
similar in another: Different, in that Foucault focuses on the production of the text
through the author, not the reader; similar, in that Foucault demonstrates the same
subjectivity as Nietzsche when he talks about ‚his books,‛ a subject position not
unlike our own when we seek him within the pages he left us.
The imposing, material temporality of books arouses the same curiosity
Foucault seems to have had of their authors: What is a book? Under what conditions
does it appear? How is it born? It seems altogether inconvenient and distracting—
and therefore of great interest to Foucault studies—that books and their authors
cannot be ignored entirely.
To further confound the matter, I am addressing a particular book that is not
a book. It is an interview taken down and produced in print. Not only has it been
produced, it has gone through linguistic reproduction: translation. The general issue
of translation seems imposing enough, but, in this case, it has been translated twice.
We have the 1991 English translation from the Italian translation of the ‚original‛
French (or French/Italian) interview done by Semiotext(e), titled: Remarks on Marx.
And then there is the translation into English from the ‚original‛ French version
taken from the authoritative Dits et Ecrits included in Power: Essential Works of Michel
Foucault 1954-1984 (New Press, 2000): An Interview with Michel Foucault.
There are striking variations between the two and, perhaps even more
interesting, is the manner in which we seek out the ‚original‛ one and what it might
mean for a Foucault scholar to embark on such an originalist quest. The situation, it
seems to me, is pregnant with meaning and tension. I would like to begin by noting
some of the major contrasts between the two publications of the 1978 interview with
Duccio Trombadori, and then ask some questions about how these texts further
Foucault’s critical evaluation of the ‚order of things‛ and the ‚archaeologies of
knowledge‛ without losing sight of his interest in the production of the subject. In
this case, I am interested in something that touches on archeology, anthropology,
and immortality: the production of Foucault via the ongoing birth of (his?) books.
The 1991 Semiotext(e) version, Remarks on Marx, took a great deal of liberty in
transforming the interview into a full-fledged book. It bears: a title; a 1991 preface by
R. J. Goldstein (the English-language translator); a note on the Italian-to-English
translation; an English-language translation of the 1981 Italian-language
introduction by Duccio Trombadori; and six chapters, each neatly titled and divided
by subject or theme. Along with this are several promotional advertisements of
7 Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Walter Kaufman (New
York: Modern Library, 1992), 458-459 (italics in original).
137
various other books published by Semiotext(e). The book cites the first Italian
publication of this interview as appearing in 1981, published by ‚10/17 cooperativa
editrice,‛8 under the title, Colloqui con Foucault.9 The authorship of the book is
credited directly to Michel Foucault. The title page appears as follows:
MICHEL FOUCAULT
REMARKS
ON MARX
Conversations with
Duccio Trombadori
Translated by R. James Goldstein
and James Cascaito
SEMIOTEXT(E)
The 2000 New Press version, ‚An Interview with Michel Foucault,‛ is not a
book really, at least not in the strong sense. It is an interview included in a
collection—a bundle of editors’ selections of writings or, in this case, transcribed
‚speakings‛—under a generic title that cites the interviewer (D. Trombadori) in an
endnote and, in the same note, claims that the interview was first published in 1980
(a year earlier than the claim made by Semiotext[e]) in the Italian journal, Il
Contributo. With five editorial endnotes the interview is presented as a single entity,
with no chapters or divisions, and a translation that reads quite differently and
suggests that it is an entirely separate thing from the Semiotext(e) version. In fact,
nowhere in the pages of the book—using the term ‘book’ in the weak sense—does
any reference appear to the 1991 publication, not even a critical reference. The
silence, of course, says a lot. Clearly, the controversy concerning the liberty taken in
8 While this title is only the name of the publisher (and bears no important relation to
Foucault, as I see it), it may be useful to consider its meaning: I am not sure what the
significance of the date, ‚10/17,‛ is, but I suspect that it has some politcal meaning. It also
seems that the lowercase lettering is intentional and significant for the title. The English
equivalent of the title would be: ‚the 10/17 editorial cooperative‛ (my translation).
9 The Italian word colloqui is, of course, the plural form of the Latin-derived English
cognate, colloquium (my translation). Semiotext(e) translated it into the more germane
conversations.
138
the English publication almost a decade earlier created a need for a true(r) version of
the interview. The complete omission of Remarks on Marx in ‚An Interview with
Michel Foucault‛ gives the sense that the Semiotext(e) version is justifiably
forgotten, quarantined, inferior, and wrong. If we want to find Foucault—the real
Foucault—then, for us English-speakers without advanced French reading ability,
we ought to look at the legitimate, 2000, version of the 1978 interview.
This basic contrast is perhaps too suggestive. I should note that an interview
involves two or more people, of course. Until now, however, we almost get the
impression that the only (important) voice is Foucault’s. This is certainly not the
case. Especially in this particular interview. Here Trombadori, an Italian, plays a
major role. This is not a traditional interview, not the kind we might call
‚journalism.‛ In this case, Trombadori, a Marxist journalist and scholar, turns this
interview into an interrogation, an agonistic exchange. His questions are not of the
generic, information seeking, type; instead, there are frequent Marxist challenges to
Foucault’s non/anti-Marxist positions. It is not easy to grasp in-advance or construe
this interview under these uniquely agonistic terms, without reading the
introduction that Trombadori wrote in 1981 that is included in the Semiotext(e),
Remarks on Marx, version. I should add that I think that Trombadori’s introduction
serves the reader well for the purposes of introducing Trombadori, but I do not find
the actual points that Trombadori attempts to argue particularly persuasive,
especially considering what Foucault says in the interview.
Nonetheless, lacking that introduction and Semiotext(e)’s of Trombadori’s
personal profile that reveals that he was, ‚born in Rome in 1945, holds a degree in
philosophy of law. The author of a study of the political thought of Antonio
Gramsci, he has taught at the University of Rome. As a journalist, he has been editor
of the cultural page of L’Unita. At the time of the publication of Colloqui con Foucault,
he was political and parliamentary correspondent for the newspaper,‛10 we lack a
great deal of context.
Furthermore, the primary English-language translator of the Semiotext(e)
edition, R. J. Goldstein, also helps to frame the uniqueness of this interview in his
preface that offers insightful commentary. He ends his brief prefatory remarks by
writing, ‚In reply to Marx’s famous thesis that philosophers have hitherto only
interpreted the world when the real point is to change it, Foucault would no doubt
have argued that our constant task must be to keep changing our minds.‛ This, to
me, is—interview aside—remarkably important. It strikes to the very heart of the
Foucauldian-Marxist divide. Following Nietzsche, Foucault sees hermeneutics as
change, whereas Marx grows impatient and calls for revolution. There is also a less
polemical way to put this: interpretation is revolution. In other words, the hermeneutic
task of changing our minds is the revolutionary art of exegesis and rumination, from
which books are born.
10 Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx (New York: Semiotext(e), 1991), 15.
139
Considering these mostly external differences, it is hard to decipher which

book to accept and which one to reject. I think it is well understood that the literal
translation of the Semiotext(e) edition is less suited to the purposes of hearing what
Foucault has to say. However, to listen to the Italian Trombadori, it may suit the task
just fine. In fact, we may find that Trombadori’s questions are ‚better‛ posed in the
Italian-to-English translation. Yet, we seem to assume that Trombadori’s questions
are marginal and unimportant. However, this is misleading. Just as it is somewhat
misleading for the New Press to present such an austere and cold Trombadori, who,
unlike Foucault, requires some introduction to general English-speaking readership.
These speculations are not to suggest which version the reader should choose
or which is really the ‚good one‛ to have or purchase; instead, it is to ask the ironic
questions: What does it mean for Foucault scholars to seek him out as though he
could be found, as though he were hidden in his books or interviews, or what have
you, and/or, what is the alternative? Should his disciples give up hope that Foucault
will be resurrected as some kind of Christ? Is Foucault our Zarathustra, our Christ?
What do we do when we are left with these words—this controversial canon of
synoptic gospels, epistles, and testaments—that drift so far from their origins, from
their true author?
These questions may be construed as passive-aggressive accusations of
ignoring Zarathustra’s cutting words to believers. However, as Nietzsche noted in
his preface to Genealogy, ‚every word‛ should profoundly wound and delight. We
need not let go completely of this bookish quest because, as exegesis serves for
Nietzsche to transform the inferior modern man into the superior ruminating cow,
experimental writing serves Foucault to create experience books: books that (or
should I say, who) transform the way we think and, subsequently, who we are. In
this interview, using a different word than power, the book serves in the same
powerful way to constitute the subject, or, more specifically, to change, and thereby
constitute, Foucault himself, by his own admission.
A Concluding Comparison
To conclude, here are the same passages from the respective translations addressing
the claims I have made about Foucault and experience books. The question that
haunts them, as I see it, is still the question of the subject and her constitution:
From Remarks on Marx (Semiotext(e), 1991):
Many things have certainly been surpassed. I’m perfectly aware of having
continuously made shifts both in the things that have interested me and in what
I have already thought. In addition, the books I write constitute an experience for
me that I’d like to be as rich as possible. An experience is something you come
out of changed. If I had to write a book to communicate what I have already
thought, I’d never have the courage to begin it. I write precisely because I don’t
140
know yet what to think about a subject that attracts my interest. In doing so, the
book transforms me, changes what I think. As a consequence, each new work
profoundly changes the terms of thinking which I had reached with the previous
work. In this sense I consider myself more an experimenter than a theorist; I
don’t develop deductive systems to apply uniformly in different fields of
research. When I write, I do it above all to change myself and not to think that
same thing as before.11
From ‚An Interview with Michel Foucault‛ (New Press, 2000):
Many things have been superseded, certainly. I’m perfectly aware of always
being on the move in relation both to the things I’m interested in and to what
I’ve already thought. What I think is never quite the same, because for me books
are experiences, in a sense, that I would like to be as full as possible. An
experience is something that one comes out of transformed. If I had to write a
book to communicate what I’m already thinking before I begin to write, I would
never have the courage to begin. I write a book only because I still don’t know
what to think about this thing I want to think about, so that book transforms me
and transforms what I think. Each book transforms what I was thinking when I
was finishing the previous book. I am an experimenter and not a theorist. I call a
theorist someone who constructs a general system, either deductive or analytical,
and applies it to different fields in a uniform way. That isn’t my case. I’m an
experimenter in the sense that I write in order to change myself and in order not
to think the same thing as before.12
Samuel Rocha, Doctoral Candidate & Gates Millennium Scholar,

Ohio State University
11 Foucault, Remarks on Marx, 26-27.

12 Foucault, Power, 239-240.
141
© Marius Gudmand-Høyer & Thomas Lopdrup Hjorth 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW ESSAY
Liberal Biopolitics Reborn
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-
1979. Edited by Michel Senellart. Translated by Graham Burchell (New York:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), ISBN: 978-1403986542
Marius Gudmand-Høyer & Thomas Lopdrup Hjorth, Copenhagen Business School
Introduction
What interest is there in talking about liberalism, the physiocrats, [Marquis]

d’Argenson, Adam Smith, *Jeremy+ Bentham, the English utilitarians, if not be-
cause this problem in fact arises for us in our immediate and concrete actuality?
What does it mean when we speak of liberalism – when we, at present, apply a lib-
eral politics to ourselves, and what relationship may there be between this and
those questions of right that we call freedoms or liberties [libertés]?1
There is something uncannily familiar about Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège
de France in the spring of 1979. This twelve-lesson lecture course, intriguingly entitled
Naissance de la biopolitique, was published posthumously in French in 2004 and trans-
lated into English as The Birth of Biopolitics in 2008,2 and it now seems that Foucault
was already then describing the nativity of an imminent future in remarkable detail.
1 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. Translated
by Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), 22 [Michel Foucault, Naissance
de la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France 1978-1979. Edited by Michel Senellart (Paris:
Gallimard/Seuil, 2004), 25]. Throughout the essay the English translations are consulted
with – or, as in this case, modified with references to – the (more) original French text ver-
sions. References to the French original texts are provided in brackets after the reference to
the English translations.
2 An informative overview of the editorial conditions of the lecture course is found in Mike Gane,
‚Foucault on Governmentality and Liberalism,‛ Theory, Culture & Society 25: 7-8 (2008): 353-
363. Cf. also Michel Senellart, ‚Course Context‛, in Michel Foucault, Security, Territory,
Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78. Translated by Graham Burchell (New
York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 369-401 *Michel Senellart, ‚Situation des cours‛, in Michel
Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France 1977-1978. Edited by
Michel Senellart (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2004), 379-411].
99
Gudmand-Høyer & Lopdrup Hjorth: review essay of The Birth of Biopolitics
Covering topics such as the art of government, population, liberalism and neo-
liberalism, the state, civil society, political economy, sovereignty, enterprise, liberty,
security, governmentality, and, not least, biopolitics, Foucault’s account truly seems to
provide what he later called ‚an ontology of the present.‛3 The lectures seek to dis-
close the ‚domain‛ *champ+ in which several of our ‚currently possible experiences‛
come about as something we must engage in or relate to.4 But while Foucault had
previously explored more specific areas of modern experience – madness, the clinical
gaze, the rise of language as subject, delinquency, sexuality, etc. – the experiential do-
main at the center of Foucault’s attention in 1979 is of a much more extensive nature.
In fact, The Birth of Biopolitics addresses nothing less than one of our greatest common-
places, that is, the experience of the social order that we currently take for granted,
which Foucault, characteristically, prefers to describe through the history of the do-
mains in which this experience has taken shape as well as place. Certainly, this is not
the phenomenological experience of society without calendar or geography, nor is it a
theoretical reconstruction of political philosophy; rather it has to do with the critical
experience of society after it has become the privileged site for ‚the government of
men insofar as it appears as the exercise of political sovereignty.‛5 Foucault’s lectures
address a situation where the primary field of intervention for the arts of government
materializes as a civil society inhabited by a population that is somewhat self-
regulating and at the same time somehow juxtaposed to both the super-institution of
the state and the global environment of the market. It is in this context that Foucault
in 1979 studies the ‚rationalization of governmental practice in the exercise of political
sovereignty‛ as it has been worked out by different variants of liberalism.6
Compared to Foucault’s other works, The Birth of Biopolitics has a relatively
simple outline. After a short review of classical eighteenth-century liberalism (Lec-
tures 1-3), Foucault presents his investigations of two forms of neo-liberalism of the
twentieth century: the German neo-liberalism associated with the ordo-liberals in the
1930-50s (Lectures 4-7) and the American neo-liberalism associated with the Chicago
School of Economics in the 1960s (Lectures 9-10), linked by a short reflection on French
liberalism in the 1950-70s (Lecture 8). After that, Foucault returns to a small selection
of related problematics of classical liberalism, including the creation of homo
œconomicus, the question of the invisible hand in Adam Smith, and the rise of civil so-
ciety in Adam Ferguson (Lectures 11-12). Yet, even if the subject of liberalism appears
to occupy most of the space in these lectures, the societal experience in question is not
reducible to the ‚lack‛ of society typically associated with neo-liberalism.7 The lec-
3 Michel Foucault: ‚Qu’est-ce que le lumières‛ (1983), in Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits IV. Ed-
ited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 687-688.
4 Ibid., 688.
5 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 2 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 3].
6 Ibid., 2 [4].
7 Cf. e.g., Margaret Thatcher: ‚There is no such thing as society. There are individual men
and women, and there are families.‛ (Margaret Thatcher, ‚Interview‛, Women’s Own (1987),
October: 8-10). Cf. also Sverre Raffnsøe, Alan Rosenberg, Alain Beaulieu, Sam Binkley, Jens
100
tures do not address an experience we can simply distance ourselves from, be it his-
torically or academically, critically or ideologically, although this has often been the
case in the one-sided debate on neo-liberalism with reference to Foucault’s work. The
lecture course also contains a philosophical exploration that runs in some way beneath
or parallel to the mainly sociological elaborations carried out from the ‚governmental-
ity perspective,‛ the existence of which is the main reason why the content of The Birth
of Biopolitics is not unknown even though the full text version has only been generally
available within the last few years.8 While The Birth of Biopolitics is obviously required
reading for anyone who aspires to advance and widen the studies of governmentality,
it is by no means exhausted by this perspective. The lecture course also demonstrates
how the societal experience has grown under our skin and is partaking of our every-
day working and private lives, whether on the margins or at the centre of the social
order. It has become the other face of our own governmentality, and in order to study
it a question such as this must be asked: ‚What is then this ever so fragile moment
from which we cannot detach our identity and which will carry this [identity] along
with it?‛9 The immediate answer might simply be that it is a ‚biopolitical moment.‛
However, in order to corroborate such a reading it is necessary first to take account of
the allegedly very limited reception of the role of biopolitics in The Birth of Biopolitics.
Even though the concept of biopolitics has received enormous attention in
modern research over a great range of societal and economic problematics, both in
conjunction with the governmentality perspective and more independently, there
seems to be an incompatibility between the title of The Birth of Biopolitics and its actual
content. On this ground a number of commentators have emphasized that the lectures
in fact do not deal with biopolitics, but rather represent a long digression into the his-
Erik Kristensen, Sven Opitz, Morris Rabinowitz, & Ditte V. Holm: ‚Neoliberal Governmen-
tality,‛ Foucault Studies 6 (2009): 1-4.
8 This familiarity is not least due to Colin Gordon’s introductory overview of Foucault’s 1978
and 1979 lectures in the seminal work published by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon & Pe-
ter Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1991). Informative reviews of the reception of governmentality comprise
Jacques Donzelot and Colin Gordon, ‚Governing Liberal Societies – the Foucault Effect in
the English-speaking World,‛ Foucault Studies 5 (2008): 48-62; Nikolas Rose, Pat O'Malley
and Mariana Valverde, ‚Governmentality,‛ Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2 (2006):
83–104; Sylvain Meyet, ‚Les trajectories d’un texte: ‚La gouvernementalité‛ de Michel Fou-
cault,‛ in Sylvain Meyet, Marie-Cécile Naves and Thomas Ribemont (eds.), Travailler avec
Foucault: Retours sur le politique (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005); and Thomas Lemke, Eine Kritik
der politischen Vernunft: Foucaults Analyse der modernen Gouvernementalität (Berlin/Hamburg:
Argument, 1997).
9 Michel Foucault, ‚For an Ethics of Discomfort‛, in Michel Foucault, Power: Essential Works of
Foucault 1954-1984, Vol. 3. Edited by James D. Faubion (London: Penguin Books, 2002), 443
*Michel Foucault, ‚Pour une morale de l’incomfort‛ (1979), in Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits
III. Edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 1994), 783] (transla-
tion modified).
101
tory of liberalism.10 Even Foucault himself seems to be of this opinion. In the course
summary of the 1979 lectures he writes that this ‚year’s course ended up being de-
voted entirely to what should have been only its introduction,‛11 and during the lec-
tures he almost apologizes for himself: ‚I would like to assure you that, in spite of eve-
rything, I really did intend to talk about biopolitics, and then, things being what they
are, I have ended up talking at length, and maybe for too long, about neo-liberalism.‛12
However, although there might be good reasons for such a reading, the central argu-
ment of this review essay is that such a conclusion underemphasizes the extent to
which these lectures on liberalism and political economy actually do deal with biopo-
litics in a fundamental way. This review argues, not only that political economy al-
ready in its modern conception is biopolitical by nature,13 but also that Foucault’s ac-
count, much more than a mere prelude to biopolitics, represents an exposition of bio-
politics analyzed in the register of liberal governmentality.
In order to substantiate this argument, the essay begins with (1) a brief account
of how the concept of biopolitics found in Foucault’s 1979 lectures both differs and
concurs with the assorted characterizations of the concept he had previously pre-
sented. Here it is also demonstrated how The Birth of Biopolitics should not be re-
garded as a mere parenthesis in the history of liberalism, but as Foucault’s most com-
prehensive analysis of modern biopolitics, situated within the framework of what he
in 1978 designated ‚the history of governmentality‛14 and in 1979 ‚the general disposi-
tive [dispositif] of governmentality.‛15 Having established a more comprehensive con-
10 Mark Kelly, ‚Afterliberalism,‛ Radical Philosophy 153 (2009): 46-49; Mike Gane, ‚Foucault on
Governmentality and Liberalism,‛ Theory, Culture & Society 25: 7-8 (2008) : 353-363; Thomas
F. Tierney, ‚Review Essay: Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the
Collège de France, 1977-78,” Foucault Studies 5 (2008): 90-100; Diogo Sardinha, ‚Le découverte
de la liberté,‛ Labyrinthe: La Biopolitique (d’)après Michel Foucault, 22:3 (2005): 89-99; Jeanine
Hortoneda, ‚Sécurité, territoire, population et Naissance de la biopolitique de Michel
Foucault‛, Empan, 59:3 (2005): 61-70; and Michel Senellart, ‚Course Context‛, 369-401
*Michel Senellart, ‚Situation des cours‛, 379-411]. Cf. also Lars Gertenbach, Die Kultiverung
des Marktes: Foucault und die Governementalität des Neoliberalismus (Berlin: Parodos, 2008),
158-164; Laurent Jeanpierre, ‚Une sociologie Foucauldienne du néoliberalisme est-elle
possible?‛ Sociologie et Sociétés 38:2 (2006): 87-111; Didier Fassin, ‚La biopolitique n’est pas
une politique de la vie,‛ Sociologie et Sociétés 38:2 (2006): 35-48; and Bernard Andrieu, ‚La
fin de la biopolitique chez Michel Foucault,‛ Le Portique: Foucault: usages et actualités, 13-14
(2004): 1-20.
11 Foucault, ‚Course Summary‛ (1979), in Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 317 [Foucault, Nais-
sance de la biopolitique, 323].
13 Cf. Lars Thorup Larsen, ‚Speaking Truth to Biopower: On the Genealogy of Bioeconomy,‛
Distinktion 14 (2007): 9-24.
14 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 108-109 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 111-
112].
15 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 70 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 71] (translation mo-
dified). Here Foucault himself uses the French word “dispositif”, which we choose to trans-
late not with the common, yet inaccurate, ‚apparatus‛, but with the old, now rather rare
102
cept of biopolitics, the next three sections review Foucault’s studies of (2) classical lib-
eralism, (3) German neo-liberalism, and (4) American neo-liberalism, with special em-
phasis on how biopolitics is deeply involved in these liberal arts of government. As a
conclusion, the review (5) recapitulates the different accounts of liberal biopolitics and
outlines Foucault’s analysis of French neo-liberalism in the 1970s.
1. Governmental Concepts of Biopolitics
And this ‘bio-politics’ must itself be understood on the basis of a theme developed
since the seventeenth century: the management of state forces [la gestion des forces
étastique].16
The reason why it is difficult to resolve whether Foucault’s lectures of 1979 do or do

not deal with biopolitics is that such judgments presuppose that the meaning of
'biopolitics' is both clear in itself and in Foucault’s work. The judgment becomes even
more difficult since the notion of biopolitics, which was not originally invented by
Foucault, has a history that both precedes and succeeds his writings considerably. It
stretches from an eugenic kind of biopolitics, which was primarily advocated by Ger-
man and Swedish scholars of a National Socialist orientation in the early twentieth
century, to a biologically oriented biopolitics, which was originally delineated as a
subfield of political science focusing on biological factors involved in political behavior
by a group of American and French researchers in the 1960s. After Foucault, the con-
cept has been expanded even further to include not only a well-known biopolitical
distinction between ‚bare life‛ (tò zôon) and political existence (ho bíos) in relation to
sovereignty, but also a biopolitical mode of production in the world of postmodern
capitalism, although the most prevalent use of the concept is perhaps to be found in a
sizeable literature having as its critical target the biopolitics that is related to new in-
ventions of biotechnology and bioeconomy.17 None of these delineations of biopolitics
match Foucault’s, although many have found inspiration in his work.
and obscure English word, ‚dispositive.‛ As a noun this word has the connotation of
‚something that disposes or inclines,‛ but in accordance with the adjective form, also ‚dis-
positive,‛ which is more precisely designating: first, being ‚characterized by special dispo-
sition or appointment;‛ second, having ‚the quality of disposing or inclining: often op-
posed to effective, and so nearly [equivalent to] preparatory, conducive, contributory;‛ and,
third, ‚having the quality or function of directing, controlling, or disposing of something;
relating to direction, control, or disposal‛ (cf. Oxford English Dictionary, OED Online, 2009,
s.v.).
16 Foucault, ‚Course Summary‛ (1978), Security, Territory, Population, 367 [Foucault, Sécurité,
territoire, population, 377].
17 Informative studies of the history of biopolitics include: Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics
and Philosophy (2004). Translated by T. Campbell (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneso-
ta Press, 2008); Thomas Lemke, Biopolitik – zur Einfürung (Hamburg: Junius Verlag GmbH,
2007); A. Somit and S.A. Peterson, ‚Biopolitics After Three Decades – A Balance Sheet,‛
103
It is not enough, however, to disentangle the relationships between the various

types of biopolitics and Foucault’s use of the concept, since he does not employ the
notion of biopolitics with a stable set of connotations over time. When he first intro-
duced it in 1974, in the context of social medicine, he only loosely indicated that biopo-
litics had to do with a political regulation of the biological aspects of human beings
insofar they were members of given cities, nations or other groupings of people.18 In
the closing section of The Will to Knowledge (1976), meanwhile, in which sexual matters
from the eighteenth century and onward are described as a kind of contact point be-
tween a disciplinary anatomo-politics of the human body and a regulative biopolitics of the
population, the concept becomes more distinct.19 While the first dispositive or major
social technology of discipline works by atomizing a multiplicity of people into indi-
viduals in order to organize, monitor, utilize or cultivate them as discrete bodies, the
latter dispositive of biopolitics works by amalgamating the same multiplicity of people
into a population in order to stimulate, assist, regulate or manage them as a living re-
source residing in a particular environment.20 In Foucault’s work, therefore, the notion
of biopolitics soon begins to designate a societal dispositive which is not only different
from the classic juridical dispositive of law and sovereignty that originates in medieval
times but also from the modern dispositive of discipline and surveillance established
at the beginning of the eighteenth century.21 It is also in continuation of this new regu-
latory dispositive of the late eighteenth century that Foucault can call attention to what
he regards as a decisive transformation in the general economy of power, from the
sovereign’s right to take life and let live to the biopolitical capacity to foster life or disal-
low it to die, also described in 1976.22 Biopolitics now comes to involve a new set of
political techniques that situate human life at the center stage of the political order, but
also the effects of these techniques upon other political notions, phenomena and insti-
tutions such as sovereignty, the state, democracy, law, economy, civil society, etc.23 In
the second part of the eighteenth century, biopolitics thus came into view as a kind of
‚threshold of political modernity,‛24 at the same time as the ‚population‛ appears as a
British Journal of Political Science 28 (1998): 559-571; and Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose,
‚Biopower Today,‛ BioSocieties 1 (2006): 195-217.
18 Michel Foucault, ‚La naissance de la médicine sociale,‛ in Foucault, Dits et écrits III, 210.
19 Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge. The History of Sexuality 1 (St. Ives: Penguin Books,
1990), 139 [Michel Foucault, La volonté de savoir. Histoire de la sexualité 1 (Paris: Gallimard,
1976), 173].
20 Michel Foucault, ‚Les mailles du pouvoir‛ (1976/1982), in Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 188-193.
21 Ibid., 194.
22 Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 139-143 [Foucault, La volonté de savoir, 178-182]. Cf. also
Michel Foucault, “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-1976 (New
York: Picador, 2003), 240-241 [Michel Foucault, “Il faut défendre la société:” Cours au Collège de
France 1975-1976 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 1997), 220].
23 Cf. R. Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, 13.
24 Lars Thorup Larsen, ‚Biopolitical Technologies of Community in Danish Health Promotion.‛
Unpublished paper presented at the conference ‚Vital Politics: Health, Medicine and Bio-
economics into the Twenty-first Century,‛ London School of Economics, September 5-7,
104
‚machine of production‛ for the actualization of prosperity and welfare by use of its
own resources and potentials.25
So it is true that The Birth of Biopolitics does not deal directly with these more
familiar instances of the concept. It does not address the mentioned biopolitics of so-
cial medicine, of sexuality, or of power of death versus power of life, nor the well-
known biopolitical war of races and state-racism in the nineteenth century, or even the
famous shift during which the Aristotelian human being, ‚a living animal with the
additional capacity for political existence,‛ becomes modern man, ‚an animal whose
politics places his existences as a living being in question.‛26 This is so because the
understanding of the concept of biopolitics that is at stake in Foucault’s study of libe-
ralism in 1979 passes through the comprehensive history of governmentality he em-
barked upon in the previous lecture course of 1978 known as Security, Territory, Popu-
lation. Here many of the connotations of biopolitics are integrated into Foucault’s re-
conceptualization of ‚the ugly word ‘governmentality’,‛27 but without leaving the bio-
political scope behind.28 In addition to referring the concept to the governmentaliza-
tion of the state, and to the historical conflict between this major social technology of
government and the dispositives of law and discipline, Foucault thus defines govern-
mentality as:
the ensemble formed by institutions, procedures analyses and reflections, calcula-

tions and tactics that allow the exercise of a very specific, albeit very complex,
power that has the population as its target, political economy as its major form of
knowledge, and dispositives of security as its technical instrument.29
It is through and in continuation of this historical triangulation that Foucault

develops the biopolitical framework in which he begins to study the liberal arts of
2003. Other important reviews and critical studies on Foucault’s biopolitics include:
Bernard Andrieu, ‚La fin de la biopolitique chez Michel Foucault,‛ Le Portique: Foucault:
usages et actualités, 13-14 (2004): 1-20; Michael Dillon & Luis Lobo-Guerrero, ‚The
Biopolitical Imaginary of Species-Being,‛ Theory, Culture, & Society 26:1 (2009): 1-23; Didier
Fassin, ‚La biopolitique n’est pas une politique de la vie,‛ Sociologie et Sociétés 38:2 (2006):
35-48; Lars Thorup Larsen, ‚Speaking Truth to Biopower: On the Genealogy of
Bioeconomy,‛ Distinktion 14 (2007): 9-24; and Yves Charles Zarka (ed.), ‚Michel Foucault:
de la guerre de races au biopovoir (dossier),‛ Cités 2 (2000): 8-96.
25 Michel Foucault, ‚Les mailles du pouvoir,‛ in Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 193 (translated by
the authors).
26 Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 143 [Foucault, La volonté de savoir, 188].
27 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 115 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 119]. It
was Roland Barthes who, in Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1957), originally coined the term ‚gou-
vernementalité‛ to indicate an ideological mechanism presenting the state as the effective
originator of all social relations. Cf. also Thomas Lemke, ‚An Indigestible Meal? Foucault,
Governmentality and State Theory,‛ Distinktion 15 (2007): 43-64.
28 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 1 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 3].
29 Ibid., 108-109 [112] (translation modified; emphasis added).
105
government in The Birth of Biopolitics, which is also why a short summary is appropri-
ate here.30
First, Foucault considerably expands his conception of the population as a bio-
political target of government in 1978. When describing the emergence of ‚the human
species‛ *l’espèce humaine+ as an alternative to ‚mankind‛ *le genre humaine] in the
eighteenth century, he is not only referring to the integration of this new species of
living beings with biology, but also to the opening up of ‚the public‛ *le public].31 Rep-
resenting the population when it is seen from the perspective of its opinions and be-
liefs, ways of doing things, customs and habits, forms of conduct and behaviour, re-
quirements, fears and prejudices, this is the field where the population becomes man-
ageable, but in a positive line of attack by way of campaigns, education, promotion,
alteration of attitudes, or assurances.32 So even if Foucault designates this new field of
biopolitical intervention as the natural ‚environment‛ or ‚milieu‛ of the population,
this environment does not match a biological habitat. Rather it is a particular biosocial
domain in human history, in which different series of events produced by the popula-
tion itself interconnect with the more circuitous natural events happening around the
living beings that constitute this population. For that reason, the population is not
merely a biological species, a group of legal subjects, or individual bodies of discipline;
it also represents its own natural or intrinsic logic, constituted as it is by different
probabilities, by uncertainties and temporalities, by dangers, risks, and contingent
events, in the same ways as this population varies with the climate, the material sur-
roundings, the intensity of commerce, the circulation of wealth, laws and traditions,
etc.33 Hence, in 1978 Foucault conceptualizes the governmental target of the popula-
tion as a new collective focus of biopolitics, representing a ‚political object‛ insofar the
population is that on which and towards which the acts of government are directed,
but also a ‚political subject‛ insofar as it is the population that is called upon to con-
duct itself in a particular way.34
30 Informative studies on this triangulation include: Michael Dillon, ‚Governing Through Con-
tingency: The Security of Biopolitical Governance,‛ Political Geography 26:1 (2007): 41-47;
Charles Ruelle, ‚Population, milieu et normes: Note sur l’enracinement biologique de la
biopolitique de Foucault,‛ Labyrinthe: La Biopolitique (d’)après Michel Foucault 22:3 (2005): 27-
34; Anault Skornicki, ‚Le ‘biopouvoir’: détournement des puissances vitales ou invention
de la vie (L’économie politique, le pian et le peuple au XVIIIe siècle),‛ Labyrinthe: La
Biopolitique (d’)après Michel Foucault, 22:3 (2005): 55-65; Ute Tellmann, ‚Foucault and the
Invisible Economy,‛ Foucault Studies 6 (2009): 5-24; and Thomas F. Tierney, ‚Review Essay:
Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78,”
Foucault Studies 5 (2008): 90-100.
32 Foucault, ‚Course Summary‛ (1978), in Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 367
[Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 377].
33 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 20, 70 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 22,
72].
34 Ibid., 42-43 [44-45].
106
Secondly, in Foucault’s account the surfacing of a population being both self-

regulating and regulated in this way is incomprehensible without the second compo-
nent in the triangulation, that is, political economy. Here Foucault departs in a seminal
transformation from a mercantilist to a physiocratic problematization of scarcity and
the circulation of grain in the eighteenth century.35 While the mercantilist policy had
worked for the protection of the wealth of the state by preventing scarcity from occur-
ring by various disciplinary restrictions on the cultivation, pricing, storage and export
of grain, the physiocrats advocated for an opposite strategy that was based on the free
circulation of grain, both within and between nations. Instead of working to prevent
the one singular event of scarcity, this new approach allowed for spontaneous fluctua-
tions in a free circulation, being composed of various series of plural events – of
pricing, supply, demand, and production; of the behaviour of producers, consumers,
buyers, importers, and exporters; of weather conditions; and of the world market –
which were now all being analyzed as processes not to bring under control but to
grant their natural course.36 According to Foucault, the activation of the physiocratic
agenda thus entailed that economic government should not so much aim to prevent
something in advance in accordance with the logic of the established ‚juridical-
disciplinary system‛ as to be ‚working within the reality of fluctuations between
abundance/scarcity [or] dearness/cheapness.‛37 Parallel to widening the concept of the
population, Foucault also expands the relevant form of governmental knowledge rele-
vant for biopolitics to include not only such disciplines as social medicine, public hy-
giene, statistics and demographics but also political economy, constituting a science
that analyses and reflects upon ‚the production of collective interest through the game
of *individual+ desire‛ along with its circulation within the household of society.38
Thirdly, Foucault stresses that the art of government requisite for the economi-
cal perception of the population’s self-regulation is not that of the prototypical disposi-
tives of law and of discipline, the former working by prohibitions in relation to legal
subjects in a territory of sovereignty, and the latter by prescriptions in relation to indi-
vidual bodies in a coordinated space of surveillance.39 Instead, this government works
in accordance with ‚the dispositive of security‛ [“le dispositif de sécurité”], which seeks
to regulate the open series of events produced by the population in its natural envi-
ronment, not by ‚assurance‛ and ‚safety‛ *“sûreté”+, but by ‚taking into account that
which can happen‛ *‚sécurité‛+.40 As such, security could oftentimes ‚make use of
some instruments of prescription and prohibition,‛ but then as means to an end and
not as goals in themselves, and this end would be ‚to respond to a reality in such a
way that this response cancels out the reality to which it responds – nullifies it, or lim-
35 Ibid., 29-53 [32-56].

36 Ibid., 45 [47].
37 Ibid., 37 [39].
38 Ibid., 72 [74].
39 Ibid., 4-9 [6-11].
40 Ibid., 21 [23]. Cf. also Mariana Valverde, ‚Genealogies of European States: Foucauldian
Reflections,‛ Economy and Society 36:1 (2007): 159-178.
107
its, checks, or regulates it.‛41 Therefore it is not the case that security lets anything
happen at random or arbitrarily, but that it allows things to happen exactly at the level
where certain things are able to regulate themselves naturally. In other words, securi-
ty works by
allowing circulations to take place, controlling them, sifting the good and the bad,
ensuring things are always in movement, constantly moving around, continually
going from one point to the other, but in such a way that the inherent dangers of
this circulation are canceled out [through] a progressive self-cancellation of phe-
nomena by the phenomena themselves.42
The basic principle that is set up for state government by this logic of security is that
government must in some way constrain itself in respect of the natural processes of the
population and not intervene too much by prohibitions and prescriptions. In its place,
the government will have ‚to arouse, to facilitate, and to laisser faire, in other words to
manage [gérer] and no longer to control through rules and regulations [réglementer].
The central objective of this management [gestion] will be not so much to prevent
things as to ensure that the necessary and natural regulations work, or even to create
regulations that enable natural regulations to work.‛43
Consequently, what Foucault establishes in the lectures of 1978 is an indisso-
luble triangulation of security, political economy and population, which should be
regarded as genuinely biopolitical insofar it does not dismiss his earlier conceptualiza-
tions but rather adds to or adjusts them. This adjustment is carried out within the his-
torical framework of governmentality, whose new ‚fundamental objective < will be
state intervention with the essential function of ensuring the security of the natural
phenomena of economic processes or processes intrinsic to the population.‛ 44 Yet, it is
also in this historical development of the eighteenth century that Foucault discovers
how the questions of ‚freedom‛ and ‚liberalism‛ arise as internal problematics for the
new governmentality to handle. For the freedom that surfaces here is neither the old
aristocratic question of exceptions and privileges to be granted to certain individuals
nor the juridical question of legitimate individual rights as opposed to the abuses of
power of government or sovereignty.45 What arises is the problem of managing an
element of freedom that has become indispensable and vital to government itself, and
without which the government will fail to govern not right but well, that is, in accor-
dance with the self-regulation of the population. Thus Foucault corrects his earlier
claim that the establishment of liberal policies and demands for freedom in the eigh-
teenth century should be seen on a background of disciplinary observations and in-

42 Ibid., 65-66 [67-68].
43 Ibid., 353 [360-361].
44 Ibid., 353 [361].
45 Ibid., 48-49, 353 [49-50, 361-362].
108
structions, concurrently restricting and guaranteeing the exercise of this freedom.46 In

the biopolitical history of governmentality the major social technology against which
the conduct of free conduct should be analyzed is now security, according to which
‚freedom‛ becomes nothing other than ‚the correlative of the development of the dis-
positives of security,‛ which cannot ‚operate well except on condition that this free-
dom is given to the circulation of things.‛ What Foucault discovers in this history is a
modern form of freedom, that is, ‚the possibility of movement, change of place, and
processes of circulation of both people and things,‛ which is also what the liberal arts
of government began venturing to secure and bring into play by acting on the actions
of the population.47
It is on the background of all this that Foucault launches his biopolitical explo-
ration of liberalism and neo-liberalism in The Birth of Biopolitics, which is clear from the
following note found in the manuscript for his first lecture in 1979:
With the emergence of political economy, with the introduction of the limiting
principle into governmental practice itself, an important substitution, or doubling
rather, is carried out, since the subject of right on which political sovereignty is ex-
ercised appears as a population that a government must manage [doit gérer+ < This
is the point of departure for the organizational line of a ‚biopolitics‛.48
‚But who does not see,‛ Foucault continues, ‚that this is only part of something much
larger, which *is+ this new governmental reason?‛ And then formulates the general
aim of the lectures: ‚To study liberalism as the general framework of biopolitics.‛49 So
while liberalism and biopolitics are by no means equivalent constructs, they are not
entirely separable in Foucault’s work of thought either. Rather they present them-
selves as major overlapping circles partly covering each other in a comprehensive
study of ‚the way in which the specific problems of life and population have been
posed within a technology of government which, although far from always having
been liberal, since the end of the eighteenth century has been constantly haunted by
the question of liberalism.‛50
46 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 48 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 49]. Cf.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, (London: Penguin Books: 1991) 221-224 [Michel
Foucault, Surveiller et punir (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 223-225].
48 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 22n* [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 24 n*] (transla-
tion modified). Foucault did not present this point at the lecture but only in the manuscript,
which is found in a footnote in the published edition.
49 Ibid.
50 Foucault, ‚Course Summary,‛ (1979) in Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 323-324 [Foucault,
Naissance de la biopolitique, 329] (tranlation modified).
109
2. Classical Liberalism
[S]tarting from the end of the eighteenth century, throughout the nineteenth cen-
tury, and obviously more than ever today, the fundamental problem is not the con-
stitution of states, but without a doubt the question of the frugality of govern-
ment.51
In Foucault’s reading, the birth of liberalism is inseparable from the notion of ‚frugal
government‛ by which the question of ‚the too much and too little‛ develops into the
central criterion around which the art of government will revolve.52 However, in
order to understand how this principle attains the importance it does, it is necessary to
consider first Foucault’s study of liberalism in the context of the governmental practice
and rationality associated with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century raison d’État or rea-
son of state, which was the topic of several of his lectures from 1978. Because this type
of government had the maximizing of the state’s strength as its primary objective and
therefore was relatively autonomous in its workings, Foucault links it to mercantilism
regarded not only as proto-economical doctrine, but also as a particular organization
of commercial production and circulation, according to the principles that the state
should enrich itself through monetary accumulation, strengthen itself by increasing
the population, and uphold itself in a state of permanent competition with foreign
states.53 While this last principle was the permanent objective of an external military-
diplomatic technology of the state, Foucault finds the other two to be organized by an
internal technology of the police, also described in the 1978 lectures. Seeing that this
police technology, which represented a set of administrative techniques and statistical
knowledges concerned with maximizing the volume, productivity and health of the
inhabitants within the state territory in order also to maximize state power, was prin-
cipally exercised by means ‚of permanent, continually renewed, and increasingly de-
tailed regulation,‛ Foucault also links the birth of liberalism with the ‚breaking up‛ of
this ‚over-regulatory police‛ being unable to deal with the ‚spontaneous regulation of
the course of things.‛54
Yet, what Foucault in 1979 locates in the tradition of classical liberalism is first
of all an ongoing reflection on the question of how to rationalize that exercise of
government that was already established between state reason, mercantilism and the
police. Taking this existing governmental practice as a point of departure, the liberal
critique problematized and embarked upon correcting the rationale and practice of
reason of state from the inside. Rather than overthrowing the established order, the
51 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 29 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 30-31].

52 Ibid., 28 [30].
53 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 5 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 7]; Foucault,
Security, Territory, Population, 285-310 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 293-318].
54 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 340, 354, 344 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population,
348, 362, 352].
110
critique pointed to ‚an internal refinement of raison d’État,‛55 being principally op-
posed to the continuously expanding government of state reason. An incessant and
indefinite government of this self-sufficient type, the liberal critique objected, would
never be able to give any comprehensive account as to why it was governing in the
first place, or how it was to govern in the best possible way. In opposition to the prin-
ciple of maximizing government, the liberal critique pointed to the principle that gov-
ernment should recognize and take account of the self-regulation of the governed,
which also implied that not just any type of government would be an appropriate
government. The regulation of government should take hold of this self-regulation of
the governed by imposing on itself what Foucault describes as a work of ‚auto-
limitation.‛56 Accordingly, classical liberalism established itself as an art of govern-
ment that was to economize with its interventions on a scale between minimum and
maximum, almost by the same logic as the dispositive of security mentioned above,
but always prioritizing the minimum as the optimum, as long as this was possible and
appropriate with regard to the self-regulation of the population.
This is why Foucault suggests that this biopolitical and liberal art of governing
of the late eighteenth century is describable as the emergence of a new ‚frugal gov-
ernment‛ within the governmentality of raison d’État; it was the entry into the art of
government of the problematics pertaining to the question of the necessary amount
and extent of governmental intervention.57 Here a good government is no longer au-
tomatically equal to a detailed and comprehensive government. Rather, a good gov-
ernment is a government that takes into consideration, reflects upon and fine-tunes its
operations according to its overall goals, as well as the nature of what it governs. As
such, good government also reflected the answer that a group of merchants, in Mar-
quis d'Argenson’s famous account, should have given to a mercantilist minister asking
them what he could do for commerce: Laissez-nous faire.58
In this period of time, when Europe began to gain the position of a particular
and privileged region of unlimited economic development in relation to a world mar-
ket, Foucault also identifies two interrelated problematics of primary importance for
the formation of the new art of government. The first of these is the installation of the
market as a place and instrument for the formation of truth.59 From the Middle Ages
to the eighteenth century, the market was essentially ‚a site of justice,‛60 in the sense
that it was characterized by an extreme and thorough regulation pertaining to what
55 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 27, 20-22 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 29, 23-24].
56 Ibid., 10 [12].
57 Ibid., 28 [30].
58 D’Argenson, ‚Lettre à l’auteur du Journal économique au sujet de la Dissertation sur le commer-
ce de M. le Marquis Belloni, Journal économique, April (1751): 107-17; quoted in Foucault, The
Birth of Biopolitics, 25 n16-17 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 28, n16-17]. D’Argenson
was also the originator of the related expression pas troup governer (‚do not govern too
much‛).
60 Ibid., 30 [32].
111
products were to be sold, their origin and manufacture, and not least their price. This
price had to reflect ‚the just price, that is to say, a price that was to have a certain rela-
tionship with work performed, with the needs of the merchants, and, of course, with
the consumers’ needs and possibilities.‛61 Adding to this, the market was a site of jus-
tice, tightly organized in order to prevent fraud and theft. Overall, the market could
thus be seen as ‚a site of jurisdiction‛ in the sense that it functioned as ‚a place where
what had to appear in exchange and be formulated in the price was justice.‛62 Mean-
while, what happens in the eighteenth century is a fundamental transformation of sig-
nificant importance for the formulation of a liberal art of government. By way of
eighteenth-century political economy the market is reconfigured as a place that has a
certain naturalness, which one has to be knowledgeable about. From being an ordre
artificiel, established and regulated through the mercantilist policies, the market now
becomes an ordre naturel. From being a site of jurisdiction, the market becomes a site
for the formation of a ‚normal,‛ ‚good,‛ ‚natural‛ or ‚true price‛; that is, a price that
‚fluctuates around the value of the product‛ and is determined by the interplay be-
tween the costs of production and the concrete demand.63 Thus, to the extent prices
are formed through ‚the natural mechanisms of the market they constitute a standard
of truth which enables us to discern which governmental practices are correct and
which are erroneous.‛64 In this sense, the market becomes a site of the formation of
truth, a ‚regime of veridiction‛ as to the governmental practice.65 Not because politi-
cal economy as such tells the truth to government, but because political economy
points to the site where government will have to look ‚to find the principle of truth of
its own governmental practice.‛66
Foucault associates the second problematic of importance for the formation of
the new art of government with nineteenth-century English radicalism and utilitarian-
ism. Here a new critique of the proper limitation of government was established based
on an estimation of the utility versus the non-utility of governmental actions and in-
terventions.67 Being less directed at the question of whether government had the legal
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid., 31 [33].
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid., 32 [34].
65 Ibid., 36 *38+. With his neologism of ‚the regime of veridiction‛ (which is later on also called an
‚alethurgia‛) Foucault aims at studying ‚under what conditions and with what effects a
verdiction is exercised, that is to say, < a type of formulation falling under particular rules
of verification and falsification‛ (ibid., 36 [38]). Therefore Foucault does not seek to study
what truth is as such, but rather how something has come to work as truth in particular
ways. In connection with this he can also retrospectively point to his earlier work on the
psychiatric institution, the penal system and the sexual confessional, to some degree in-
cluded in the same formation of specific ‚veridictional regimes‛ with ‚political signific-
ance‛ (ibid., 36 *37-38]).
66 Ibid., 32 [34].
67 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 51 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 53]. Cf. also Fou-
cault, Security, Territory, Population, 74 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 76].
112
right or not to interfere as is does, this critique considered instead government in

terms of its concrete objectives and whether the exercise of government was in accor-
dance with these objectives or if it was governing too much or too little. This critical
question about the appropriate and desirable way to limit governmental practice was
therefore also a question regarding what kind of auto-limitation government should
impose on itself given that it was to regulate in agreement with the self-regulation of
the governed and with their natural environment and actual conditions. With
reference to the general utility of the governmental practice the critique was to con-
front cases where regulation would be unreasonable, counterproductive or simply
futile, and for that reason it would seek to define the limits of governmental compe-
tence on the basis of what it would be useful or useless for government to do or not to
do. It is from this position that the radical limitation-critique can persistently raise the
question to every single governmental action: Is this useful and for what? Within
what limits is it useful? When does it stop being useful? And when does it become
harmful? But even if these questions are very close to what Jeremy Bentham sought to
distinguish as the agenda and the non-agenda, designating the economic actions of gov-
ernment with regard to whether or not they increase general happiness according to
the utilitarian principle of maximizing happiness and minimizing pain,68 Foucault is
cautious not to reduce English radicalism to a mere projection of utilitarian theory or
ideology onto the field of political practice.69 Instead, it is utilitarianism that could be
regarded as more than a philosophy or science, since it is first and foremost to be con-
sidered a technological attempt to define the competences of the art of government,
with a more or less direct reference to what Foucault regards as ‚the fundamental
question of liberalism‛: ‚What is the utility value of government and all actions of
government in a society where exchange determines the true value of things?‛70
These two central elements – the market as a site of veridiction operating
through the principle of exchange and the limitation calculus by which the utility of
government is measured – Foucault understands as tied together by the category of
interest. The new art of government is not organized around a self-referring state,
seeking the maximization of its power, men and wealth, but must deal with the com-
plexities of interests as they become manifest in the complex and delicate ‚interplay
between individual and collective interests, between social utility and economic profit,
between the equilibrium of the market and the regime of public authorities, between
basic rights and the independence of the governed.‛71 From directly interfering with
68 Jeremy Bentham, Method and Leading Features of an Institute of Political Economy (including fi-
nance) considered not only as a Science but also as an Art (1800-1804); quoted in Foucault, The
Birth of Biopolitics, 24, n9 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 26-27, n9]. Besides the agenda
and the non-agenda Bentham also works with the third category of sponte acta, designating
the economic activities spontaneously developed by the members of the community with-
out governmental intervention.
70 Ibid., 46 [48].
71 Ibid., 44 [46].
113
and regulating things, men and wealth with the aim of maximizing the strength of the
state, as in the logic of state reason, government should now only deal with these inso-
far as they are of interest to somebody. Hence, as Foucault states, government ‚is only
interested in interest.‛72 But at the same time government ‚must not obstruct the in-
terplay of individual interest,‛ not only because of respect for freedom of circulation
and self-regulation of the population, but also because it is impossible for government
to have full knowledge of the logic of this multiplicity of interests it seeks to encour-
age.73 This is why Foucault accentuates the ‚invisibility‛ rather than the ‚hand‛ in the
famous analogy of Adam Smith. In addition to the existence of something like a
providence bringing together the multiple threads of individual interests, the analogy
also refers to the fact that the connection between individual pursuit of interests and
profit and the growth of collective wealth and welfare is essentially imperceptible.74
Both to facilitate the formation of individual interests for the collective good and to
allow this invisible formation to self-regulate thus becomes another exigent balance for
the liberal art of government to work with again from the standpoint of too much or
too little.
It is in continuation of this liberal and biopolitical art of governing, which re-
volves around the balancing of individual and collective interests, that Foucault re-
turns to the question regarding the relation between security and freedom that he initial-
ly raised in the 1978 lectures. According to Foucault, it is futile to state that a liberal
mode of governing is more tolerant and flexible than previous modes of governing,
because it is founded on and utilizes freedom in a particular way. Such an idea should
be avoided, since it presupposes that freedom is a quantitative measurable entity, but
also because it implies that freedom is a universally given that is progressively rea-
lized over time. Foucault instead proposes that freedom ‚is never anything other –
but this is already a great deal – than an actual relation between governors and go-
verned, a relation in which the measure of the ‘too little’ existing freedom is given by
the ‘even more’ freedom demanded.‛ When Foucault employs the term ‚liberal,‛ he is
therefore not referring to an art of government that is content to respect or guarantee
particular forms of freedom. Instead he is referring to a governmental practice that ‚is
a consumer of freedom‛ since ‚it can only function insofar as a number of freedoms
actually exists: freedom of the market, freedom of discussion, possible freedom of ex-
pression.‛75 This entails that liberalism is an art of government that constantly has to
manufacture and produce freedom, just as it must make sure that there is a sufficient
amount of freedom in order to benefit from the natural capacities inherent in the self-
regulation of the population and the market. The actual freedoms called for and en-
tailed by this governmentality are not first and foremost established according to ju-
ridical principles. Rather, they are balanced according to the dispositive of security
72 Ibid., 45 [47].
73 Ibid., 280 [282].
74 Ibid., 278-282 [275-284].
75 Ibid., 63 [65].
114
that functions as a counterweight and ensures that the wellbeing of the population is
not endangered by an overflow and excess of freedom. According to Foucault, liberal-
ism’s production, consumption and utilization of freedom is thus inseparable from the
establishment of a variety of limitations, interventions and controls that show up in
limiting the freedom of the market through anti-monopoly legislation, for example, or
special taxes on import:
In short, strategies of security, which are, in a way, both liberalism’s other face and
its very condition, must correspond to all these imperatives concerning the need to
ensure that the mechanism of interests does not give rise to individuals or collec-
tive dangers. The game of freedom and security is at the very heart of this new go-
vernmental reason. The problems of what I shall call the economy of power pecu-
liar to liberalism are internally sustained, as it were, by this interplay of freedom
and security.76
The emergence of this type of governmental activity also contributes to Foucault’s

more formal re-conceptualization in 1979 of governmentality, now being ‚the way in
which one conducts the conduct of men,‛77 where the latter notion, la conduite in
French, has a twofold meaning for Foucault: (a) the activity of conducting [conduire]
and of conduction [la conduction] and (b) the way in which one conducts oneself [se
conduire], lets oneself be conducted [se laisse conduire], is conducted [est conduit] – that
is to say, the way in which one finds oneself to behave [se comporter] as an effect of a
conduct [une conduite] that represents an action of conducting or of conduction.78
When the law prohibits certain acts and legitimizes certain rights, and when discipline
prescribes an obligatory behavior under supervision, the economy of power associated
with this new formal governmentality approaches the modern freedom of liberalism
insofar as both the ‚political‛ conduct of others and the ‚ethical‛ conduct of oneself
actively presupposes and seeks to regulate a freedom that is always already at hand
but equally in need of security measures in order not to deteriorate or be led astray.79
The intrinsic challenges for this economy of biopolitical power are clearly discernable
in the two adaptations of neo-liberalism that Foucault also studies in the 1979 lectures.
76 Ibid., 65 [67].
77 Ibid., 186 [192].
78 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 193 [Foucault, Sécurité, territoire, population, 196-
197].
79 Cf. Michel Foucault, ‚The Subject and Power,‛ in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow,
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd Ed. (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1983); and Foucault, ‚Un système fini face à une demande infinite,‛ (1983) in
Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 374.
115
3. German Neo-Liberalism
The German model which is being defused, debated, and forms part of our actually,
structuring it and carving out its real shape, is the model of a possible neo-liberal
governmentality.80
The 1979 course gives considerable attention to German neo-liberalism, primarily in

the form of the ordo-liberals of the Freiburg School. Central figures in this School are
the economist Walter Eucken and the jurists Franz Böhm and Hans Grossmann-
Doerth, but Foucault also analyses the work of Alfred Müller-Armack, Wilhelm Röpke
and Alexander Rüstow, who were not part of the Freiburg School but still played im-
portant roles in shaping neo-liberal thinking and policies in Germany in the twentieth
century.81 Foucault focuses on these thinkers not just because of their historical prece-
dence in regards to American neo-liberalism, which was inspired by the Germans, but
also because the ‚governmental style‛ that marks the specific form of German neo-
liberalism is something that we are ‚immersed in‛ – ‚the contemporary neo-liberalism
which actually involves us.‛82
Foucault begins his analysis of German neo-liberalism by considering the wide-
spread contemporary ‚state-phobia‛ that united otherwise discordant groups all
across the political spectrum. He does this in order to show how the phobia of the
state is actually caught up in a much more fundamental and important ‚crisis of gov-
ernmentality,‛83 manifesting itself in a number of re-evaluations of the liberal art of
government:
Everyone is in agreement in criticizing the state and identifying its destructive and
harmful effects. But within this general critique < through and in the shadow of
this critique, will liberalism in fact be able to bring about its real objective, that is to
say, a general formalization of the powers of the state and the organization of so-
ciety on the basis of the market economy? 84

81 Cf. Viktor J. Vanberg, ‚The Freiburg School: Walter Eucken and Ordoliberalism,‛ Freibur-
ger Discussionpapers on Constitutional Economics, 04/11 (2004): 1-21. Informative studies on
Foucault’s reading of American neo-liberalism include: Lars Gertenbach, Die Kultiverung
des Marktes: Foucault und die Governementalität des Neoliberalismus (Berlin: Parodos, 2008);
Laurent Jeanpierre, ‚Une sociologie Foucauldienne du néoliberalisme est-elle possible?‛
Sociologie et Sociétés 38:2 (2006): 87-111; Mark Kelly, ‚Afterliberalism,‛ Radical Philosophy 153
(2009): 46-49; and Thomas Lemke, ‚‘The Birth of Bio-Politics’: Michel Foucault’s Lecture at
Collège de France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality,‛ Economy and Society 30:2 (2001): 190-
207.
82 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 133, 101 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 137, 105].
83 Ibid., 76 [78].
84 Ibid., 117 [121].
116
Alongside or below the ‚state-bashing‛ efforts and the incautious, imprecise and mis-
leading accusations of the state becoming fascist,85 Foucault thus identifies a more
fundamental and relevant problem which turns on the re-evaluations and proposals
on renewing the art of government in Germany immediately before and after the
Second World War. In the same way as Discipline and Punish had illustrated how the
humanization of the practice of punishment was caught up in a more general discipli-
narization of the social corpus,86 and The Will to Knowledge had shown how the repres-
sion-hypothesis was bound up in a more wide-ranging transformation marked by a
proliferation of discourses on sex,87 Foucault here links the wide-spread contemporary
critique of the state with a more fundamental transformation emerging as a crisis and
reformulation of governmentality. In doing so, he marks out some important shifts
that distinguish German neo-liberalism from the preceding classical form, especially
when it comes to the principle of laissez-faire and the extension of the associated biopo-
litics.
First of all, Foucault emphasizes that German neo-liberalism brings with it a
reversed relationship between the state and the market. Where the problem for clas-
sical liberalism was how to make room for a market given an already existing and legi-
timate state, the problem for the German neo-liberals is the opposite: ‚given a state
that does not exist, how can we get it to exist on the basis of this non-state space of
economic freedom?‛88 The space for this renewal is cleared by the way in which histo-
ry ‚had said no to the German State,‛89 and from the neo-liberals’ reevaluation of
historical events in light of their experience with Nazism. All the supposed ills of capi-
talism (one-dimensionality, standardization, uniform mass society, etc.) are according
to neo-liberals actually not the result of the market and its allegedly inherent failures.
Rather, they are the result of a set of interventionist ‚anti-liberal policies‛, which the
neo-liberals locate as invariant components employed and utilized in a wide set of
government-programs ranging from the Beveridge Plan and the New Deal to the poli-
cies of the Soviet Union and Nazism.90 Since all the dangers and problems hitherto
associated with capitalism and the market’s mode of functioning have their origin in a
set of more or less radical interventionist anti-liberal policies, the solution, according to
the German neo-liberals, will be to ‚adopt the free market as organizing and regulat-
ing principle of the state, from the start of its existence up to the last form of its inter-
85 In connection with protests against the arrest, incarceration and extradition of the German
lawyer of the Baader-Meinhof Group, Klaus Croissant, Foucault had refused to sign a peti-
tion circulated by Félix Guattari because it described West Germany as being ‛fascist.‛ Cf.
Senellart, 393.
86 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 104-131 [Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 106-134].
87 Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 15-49 [Foucault, La volonté de savoir, 23-67].
88 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 86-87 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 88].
89 Ibid., 86 [88].
90 Ibid., 111 [115].
117
ventions.‛91 In other words, a state supervised by the market, rather than the other
way around.
Yet, this neo-liberal proposal of adopting the market as organizing and regulat-
ing principle does not imply a subscription to the naturalness inherent in the classical
liberal conception of the market; in fact, the German neo-liberals find it both erroneous
and counterproductive to believe in the virtues of laissez-faire and a naturally free mar-
ket. Instead, the market is conceptualized as a ‚political-cultural product, based on a
constitutional order that requires careful ‚cultivation‛ for its maintenance and proper
functioning.‛92 But, although Adam Smith’s invisible hand is in need of a helping
hand to function, this helping hand need not interfere directly in the market or with its
outcomes. Rather, it should only work on the conditions allowing it to function, which
first and foremost means setting up the necessary preconditions for the flourishing of
competition. In this prioritization of competition over exchange as the distinctive es-
sence of the market, the neo-liberals diverge from classical liberalism, but in doing so
they accentuate what a range of nineteenth century economists – like Leon Walras and
Alfred Marshall – had already attributed so much importance to.
Furthermore, since government should not prioritize redistributing wealth, but
instead seek to establish the conditional rules under which competition will flourish,
this also entails a radical reversal of social policy as traditionally understood. It is no
longer a question of compensating for the unfortunate effects of a market economy.
Instead, what is to be established is a government that is not against but for the mar-
ket.93 And since this necessitates ‚an active, intense, and interventionist social policy,‛
aspiring to nothing less than the government of society, it is an exaggeration when
Foucault apologizes for having spoken for too long about German neo-liberalism in-
stead of addressing the biopolitical problematic head on.94 Instead of opposing the
two, Foucault’s examination of the social policy proposed by the German neo-liberals
should be read as an analysis of biopolitics par excellence, since the neo-liberal pro-
posals imply interventions that would govern everything but the economy, including
the population, its conditions of life and social surroundings.
This social policy is a far-reaching and widely encompassing form of biopolit-
ics, geared towards governing society by reference to and in accordance with the mar-
ket. While this could sound like the reappearance and intensification of the commodi-
fication process already denounced by Karl Marx,95 Foucault emphasizes the singulari-
ty of German neo-liberalism by stressing its difference from a society of commodities,
‚in which exchange value will be at the same time the general measure and criterion of
elements.‛96 It is not the man of exchange or man as consumer who provides the idea-
91 Ibid., 116 [118].

92 Vanberg, 9.
94 Ibid., 160 [165]
95 Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Buch I: ‚Der Produktionsprozeß des Kapitals‛ (1867-1890); men-
tioned in Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 147.
118
lized figure of the German neo-liberals, but rather the competitive and productive
creature of enterprise:
The individual’s life must be lodged, not within a framework of a big enterprise
like the firm or, if it comes to it, the State, but within the framework of a multiplici-
ty of diverse enterprises connected up to and entangled with each other, enterpris-
es which are in some way ready to hand for the individual, sufficiently limited in
their scale for the individual’s actions, decisions, and choices to have meaningful
and perceptible effects, and numerous enough for him not to be dependent on one
alone. Finally, the individual’s life itself – with his relations to his private property,
for example, with his family, household, insurance, and retirement – must make
him into a sort of permanent and multiple enterprise.97
In programming this new art of government, the multiplication and dissemination of

the enterprise form within the societal body plays a crucial role. Not merely to be un-
derstood as a particular institution, it is the mobilization of a special social êthos mark-
ing out a whole competitive and enterprising way of being and behaving in terms of
personal plans and projects and with specific objectives, tactics and agendas.98 Thus, it
is a matter of nothing less than making the enterprise into ‚the formative power of
society.‛99 It is a matter of intervening deeply in the very fabric, tissue or vital parts of
society by way of a policy of life – that is, what the economist and originator of the
term Neo-liberalismus, Alexander Rüstow, refers to as Vitalpolitik: ‚a politics of life,
which is not essentially oriented to increased earnings and reduced hours of work, like
traditional social policy, but which takes cognizance of the worker’s whole vital situa-
tion, his real, concrete situation, from morning to night and from night to morning,‛
including material belongings and moral hygiene, sense of property and of social inte-
gration.100 What is at stake here is a biopolitics that should address ‚all the factors on
which the happiness, well-being and contentment of man truly depend,‛ and which
should take into account what Rüstow and Röpke conceptualize as the worker’s ‚four-
fold embeddedness‛ in his community, in nature, in his property, and in his tradi-
tion.101 This is the comprehensive biopolitical and neo-liberal governmentality that is
formulated in Germany, and it is this German model, not the ‚Bismarckian state be-
coming the Hitler state,‛ ‚which is being diffused, debated, and forms part of our ac-
tuality.‛102
97 Ibid., 241 [247].

98 Ibid., 147, 175 [152, 180].
99 Ibid., 148 [153].
100 Alexanter Rüstow is quoted from Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 157, n62.
101 Cf. Jan Hegner, Alexander Rüstow: Ordnungspolitische Konzeption und Einsfluß auf das wirt-
schaftpolitische Leitbild der Nachkriegszeit in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stuttgart: Lucius,
1999), 52-68.
119
4. American Neo-Liberalism
Liberalism in America is a whole way of being. It is a type of relation between

the governors and the governed much more than a technique of governors with
regard to the governed.103
Whereas the ordo-liberals endorsed the idea that society should be governed for the
market, the effort of the American neo-liberals was rather to redefine all of society as
an economic domain or form.104 Noticing this as a general background of the Ameri-
can adoption of neo-liberalism, Foucault’s examination focuses on the governmental
and biopolitical implications of the proposed expansion of economic analysis and pro-
gramming to areas of the social field not formerly associated with economic principles
or rationality. This analysis is primarily based on work by economists like Henry C.
Simons, Theodore W. Schultz and Gary Becker, whereas Foucault pays less attention
to other famous figures of the Chicago School such as Milton Friedman and George
Stigler.105
In his reading of the American neo-liberals Foucault accentuates their recon-
figuration of the homo œconomicus that was already on the agenda in the works of clas-
sical economics. But while economic man in this context was interpreted as a creature
of exchange in accordance with his needs and wants, which implied that he repre-
sented one of two partners in a process of exchange, the economic man in the anarcho-
liberal context is, as with the German neo-liberals, recast as a creature of competition,
whose inclination towards competing may not always be actualized by itself, but al-
ways potentially ready to be encouraged and spurred. Accordingly, the freedom that
is in need of security here becomes the freedom of liberated competiveness, and the
associated competitive homo œconomicus comes into view not just as ‚an entrepreneur
of himself,‛106 as was the case in German neo-liberalism, but also as the living being
who is in need of being set free to freely compete. The human creature of competition
cannot therefore be a man of exchange for the reason that, instead of being one among
103 Ibid., 218 [224].

104 Ibid., 239-241 [245-246].
105 Cf. e.g., Johan Van Overtveldt, The Chicago School: How The University Of Chicago Assembled
The Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics And Business (Chicago, IL: Agate, 2007). Informa-
tive studies on Foucault’s reading of American neo-liberalism comprise: Jacques Donzelot,
‚Michel Foucault and Liberal Intelligence,‛ Economy and Society 37:1 (2008): 115-34; Frances-
co Guala, ‚Critical Notice: Naissance de la biopolitique,‛ Economics and Philosophy 22 (2006):
429-439; Thomas Lemke, ‚‘The Birth of Bio-Politics:’ Michel Foucault’s Lecture at Collège
de France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality,‛ Economy and Society 30:2 (2001): 190-207; Mi-
chael Peters, ‚Education, Enterprise Culture and the Entrepreneurial Self: a Foucauldian
Perspective,‛ Journal of Educational Enquiry 2:2 (2001): 58-71; Jason Read, ‚A Genealogy of
Homo Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity,‛ Foucault Studies 6
(2009): 25-36; and Maarten Simons, ‚Learning as Investment: Notes on Governmentality
and Biopoli-tics‛, Educational Philosophy and Theory 38:4 (2006): 523-540
120
other partners in a process of exchange, he is converted into a subject of personal en-

terprise, who not only earns his own wages, administers his own consumption and
produces his own satisfaction, but also embodies his own assets and productivity.107
Here even consumption becomes another entrepreneurial activity used for the produc-
tion of personal satisfaction, which also implies that the opposition between an active
production and a passive consumption ceases to have any meaning.108 In short, man
has become an amount of ‚human capital,‛ which may always be still further aug-
mentable with reference to his acquired and hereditary resources. ‚The distinctive
mark of human capital,‛ Theodore W. Schultz writes in 1961, ‚is that it is a part of
man. It is human because it is embodied in man, and it is capital because it is a source
of future satisfactions, or of future earnings, or of both.‛109 It is the biopolitical implica-
tions of this kind of economization of everyday life that draws Foucault’s attention.
Through this reconfiguration of the economical man the interventional field of
anarcho-liberal biopolitics becomes a radicalization of the Vitalpolitik of the German
neo-liberals, as it includes not only every aspect of enterprising human conduct across
all possible social fields but also the very genetic makeup predisposing this conduct of
enterprise.110 But besides venturing to stimulate and ameliorate the human population
all the way down to their hereditary equipment, and to prepare for potential situations
where this equipment could pose a ‚danger,‛111 it is primarily on the side of the ac-
quired and acquirable factors that this neo-liberal biopolitics endeavours to have an
indirect effect on the economy. It is especially in regard to the making of a ‚compe-
tence-machine‛ producing a continuous surplus of human capital that Foucault points
to how this neo-liberal biopolitics identifies the problems for which it also proposes its
solutions. In the case of educational investment, for example, professional and school
education is evidently important for the development of human capital. But this radi-
cal biopolitics also argues on an experimental basis that the very development of the
human being acquiring competences is also relevant and includes factors such as the
time spent by the parents on the formation of their child, the emotional atmosphere in
the family, or the quality of the child’s social relationships. Foucault thus locates the
competence-machine within a comprehensive neo-liberal ‚environmental analysis‛ of
human capital, entailing the possibility of analyzing
the simple time parents spend feeding their children, or giving them affection, as
investment which can form human capital. Time spent, care given, as well as par-
ents’ education – because we know quite precisely that for an equal time spend
with their children, more educated patents will form a higher human capital than
107 Ibid., 225 [231].

108 Cf. Donzelot.
109 Theodore W. Schultz, Investment in Human Capital: The Role of Education and Research (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 148; quoted in Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 23
n33.
111 Ibid., 228-229 [234-235].
121
parents with less education – in short the set of cultural stimuli received by the
child: all this will contribute to the formation of those elements that can produce
human capital.112
Every subject matter on the basis of which the population is potentially inclined to
reach an end – in childhood, in youth, at work, on vacation, in marriage, in civil life, as
parents, in friendships, on retirement, in health care – comprises a field of economic
analysis because it is also the ground from which human capital can be extracted and
put into production. Accordingly, Foucault mentions how the American neo-liberals
also point to the potential human capitalization of assets pertaining to social phenom-
ena such as social mobility, migration, and the innovations conceptualized by Joseph
A. Schumpeter.113 Even public hygiene, health care, criminality and the function of
penal justice emerge as economic forms in this analysis of the Chicago School.114
Is it in continuation of this that Foucault draws attention to the neo-liberal con-
struction of a ‚grid of economical intelligibility‛ with which it becomes possible to
appraise a long range of human behaviours not usually deemed economic as economic
nevertheless.115 With this grid it is not only possible to analyze all facets of the rela-
tionship between mother and child in terms of investments, being measurable in terms
of time and convertible into human capital. It becomes possible to invert a vast multi-
plicity of human conducts and behaviours, which were previously the objects of disci-
plines such as demography, psychology and sociology, so that they, on a certain level,
become visible for the economic rationality at the same time as they begin to express
an economic rationality themselves. In this context, however, it is not only every ra-
tional aspect of human conduct and life that is amenable to economic analysis, in ac-
cordance with the classical formulation that economics ‚is the science of human be-
haviour as a relationship between end and scarce means which have mutually exclu-
sive uses.‛116 According to Gary Becker, this already very extensive definition does
not go far enough since economical analysis can perfectly well be applied also to indi-
vidual non-rational behaviour, with the only criterion being that the conduct in ques-
tion reacts to reality in a non-random way. Given that the irrational conduct responds
to the modifiable stimuli of the environment in a systematic way, given that the con-
duct in spite of irrationality ‚accepts reality‛ in Becker’s words,117 it is apposite for
economic analysis, and economics become the science of the systematic nature of re-
sponses to reality in the form of environmental variables.118
112 Ibid., 229 [235-236].

113 Ibid., 230-231 [236-238].
114 Ibid., 248-261 [254-266].
115 Ibid., 246 [253].
116 Lionel C. Robbins, ‚Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science‛ (1931);
quoted in Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 222 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 228].
117 Gary Becker, ‚Irrational Action and Economic Theory,‛ Journal of Political Economy 70:4
(1962): 153-168; quoted in Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 287, n6-7 [Foucault, Naissance de
la biopolitique, 290-291, n6-7].
122
Meanwhile, in conjunction with this grid of economic intelligibility Foucault

also points to the neo-liberal construction of a ‚critical assessment instrument‛ di-
rected at the exercise of public power in terms of the market.119 Where the first con-
struction was ‚analytical‛ in its scope, because it was able to make social processes
visible and intelligible in a generalized economic form, this second construction is
rather ‚programmatic‛ in capacity, because it makes it possible ‚to test governmental
action, gauge its validity, and to object to activities of the public authorities on the
grounds of their abuses, excesses, futility, and wasteful expenditure.‛120 Together the
two constructions form an effective analytic-programmatic technology with which a
great part of the social field can be reconstructed so they take part in an economic real-
ity, and with which a permanent economical-political criticism of almost all political
and public authorities can be secured and empirically substantiated in terms of the
market. All governmental initiatives can be met with this critical assessment accord-
ing to principles of supply and demand, cost and benefit, efficiency, and the potential
losses due to public interventions in the field of the market. In contrast to the ordo-
liberal rejection of a natural sphere constituting the beneficial functioning of the prin-
ciple of laissez-faire, Foucault argues that the American anarcho-liberals rather turn this
principle upside-down by means of their analytic-programmatic technology. ‚Here
the laissez-faire is turned into a ne-pas-laisser-faire directed at the government, in the
name of a law of the market that will permit each of its activities to be measured and
assessed.‛121 This conversion of the laissez-faire principle leads to a situation where the
market no longer functions as the veridictional regime for the self-limitation of gov-
ernment as in classical liberalism, since the market converts into something that is now
hostile towards the government. What emerges is ‚a sort of permanent economic tri-
bunal,‛ the truth-telling of which is no longer responsive and oracular but determined
and antagonistic when it comes to guiding government. Additionally, Foucault speci-
fies, this economic tribunal is not merely a private or cooperate matter, but has been
institutionalized in a number of American organizations or think tanks, such as the
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, the Consumer Safety Product
Commission, and the Food and Health Administration, from whence the permanent eco-
nomic tribunal can be brought into action in an almost positivistic critique of the ‚non-
sense‛ and ‚contradictions‛ of governmental procedures and actions.122 In concert
with this radical economization of government action, the American neo-liberals there-
fore also express a now familiar aspiration to extend the market across all social and
political domains, thus breaking down the traditional divisions between the economic,
the social and the political in what constitutes not a governementalization but a mar-
ketization of both state and civil society.
119 Ibid., 246 [253].

120 Ibid.
121 Ibid., 247 [253] (translation modified).
122 Ibid., 246-247 [252-253].
123
5. Conclusion: Liberal Biopolitics and the Economic Game
The lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics represent Foucault’s last encounter with modern
biopolitics. Despite its distinctly biopolitical title, the subsequent (still unpublished)
lecture course of 1980, On the Government of the Living, begins to trace back to Early
Christianity the important connection between the pastoral conduct of conduct and
another ‚regime of veridiction‛ that took the form of the specific truth-production by
which individuals bring into being subjective evidence about themselves.123 While this
study was a revitalization of Foucault’s interest in procedures for truth-telling (e.g.,
mesure, enquete, examen) in the early 1970s,124 it was also the beginning of a journey that
led him further back to alternative relationships between truth and government of the
self and of others (e.g., chresis aphrodesiôn, epimeleia heautou, parrêsia) established in
Roman and Greek antiquity.125 But since Foucault never returned from this journey to
the ancient world, he was unable to inaugurate that full-scale genealogy of contempo-
rary biopolitical power that he the year before his death in 1984 not only asserted
‚could be done‛ but also ‚had to be done.‛126 Therefore The Birth of Biopolitics in fact
represents Foucault’s very last, and most comprehensive, attempt to uncover the na-
123 Michel Foucault, ‚On the Government of the Living‛ in Michel Foucault, Ethics: Essential
Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol. I. Edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Penguin, 2000), 81-85
*Foucault, ‚Du gouvernement des vivant,‛ in Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 125-129]. It is also in
these lectures that Foucault develops the substitution of power/knowledge [pouvoir/savoir]
problems with problematics of government/truth [gouvernement/vérité] which he began in
1979 with the concept of the ‚veridiction regime‛ of the economy (Cf. Lecture at Collège de
France, 9 January 1980; authors’ transcription).
124 The study of mesure, enquete and examen is summarized in Michel Foucault, ‚Penal Theories
and Institutions‛ in Foucault, Ethics, 17-21 *Michel Foucault, ‚Théories et institutions
pénales‛ in Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits II. Edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald
(Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 1994) 389-393]; but see also Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 184-194
[Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 186-196].
125 The study of chresis aphrodesiôn is found in the lecture course of 1981, ‚Subjectivity and Truth,‛ in
Foucault, Ethics, 87-92 *Foucault, ‛Subjectivité et vérité,‛ in Foucault, Dits et écrits IV, 213-
218], in Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasures (St. Ives: Penguin, 1990) [Michel Foucault,
L’usage des plaisirs (Paris: Gallimard, 1984)], and in Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self (St
Ives: Penguin, 1990) [Michel Foucault, Le souci de soi (Paris: Gallimard, 1984)]. The study of
epimeleia heautou is primarily found in Foucault, The Care of the Self [Foucault, Le soici de soi],
and in Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-
1982 (New York: Palgrave, 2005) [Michel Foucault, Le herméneutique du sujet: Cours au
Collège de France, 1981-1982 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2001). The study of parrêsia is found in
Foucault’s last Collège de France-lectures – that is, Le gouvernement de soi et des autres: Cours
au Collège de France, 1982-1983 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2008) and Le gouvernement de soi et des
autre: Le courage de la vérité: Cours au Collège de France, 1983-1984 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil,
2009); but see also the U.S. lectures from 1983 in Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech (Los
Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2001).
126 Michel Foucault, ‚On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,‛ (1983)
in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Herme-
neutics, 2nd Ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 232.
124
tivity of modern biopolitics. It is here that he for the last time studies the biopolitical
rationalization of liberal arts of government being concerned with securing those self-
regulatory processes of the population and the economy.127 Hence, in the summary of
the 1979 lectures, where Foucault, as touched upon, expresses some regret as to only
having covered the introduction to the birth of biopolitics, he also maintains that by
‚biopolitics‛ he meant ‚the attempt, starting from the eighteenth century, to rational-
ize the problems posed to a governmental practice by phenomena characteristic of a
set of living beings forming a population.‛128 And although this summary only men-
tions such well-known phenomena of life as health, morbidity, hygiene, mortality,
natality, life expectancy, and race, a careful reading of the full lecture course also re-
veals the manifestation of biopolitical phenomena such as competition, consumption,
danger, education, enterprise, family life, freedom, genetic equipment, human beha-
vior, innovation, interests, limitation, nature, rights, risks, will and work. The biopolit-
ical nature of many of these phenomena has been exemplified in the previous sections.
Yet, in order to recapitulate more specifically it is therefore not so much on the
backdrop of Foucault’s earlier biopolitics of social medicine, of sexuality or of the
threshold of life and death that the biopolitical scope of The Birth of Biopolitics should
be judged. Instead this scope should be evaluated in continuation of the type of bio-
politics that became an important factor in the history of governmentality and in the
ingrained triangulation of population, political economy and dispositives of security,
which are also the starting point of Foucault’s exploration of the arts of government
pertaining to classical and more contemporary forms of liberalism. Accordingly, the
biopolitics of classical liberalism revolved around the biopolitical nature of the modern
economy and the political economists’ conception hereof insomuch as this field of ex-
change, intervention and knowledge from the very beginning was directed at a popu-
lation ranging from its biological embeddedness in the natural milieu, through the
human species with its desires, and up to the public with its interests.129 The objective
of this liberal biopolitics became the creation of a regulation that could assist the natu-
ral self-regulation of the population to work by way of the correlative logic of freedom
and security. It was also through this work of dynamic and facilitative laisser-faire that
governmental rationality came upon the need to restrain its activities in order to give
room for self-regulation in the new societal household. Likewise, it was in this process
that the auto-limitation of societal utility convened with the veridiction regime of the
market, in the same way that the process of principally infinite economic growth
enabling advancement in the welfare of populations convened with the interplay of
interests between the individual and the collective. By way of the new frugal govern-
128 Foucault, ‚Course Summary,‛ (1979) The Birth of Biopolitics, 317 [Foucault, Naissance de la
biopolitique, 323].
129 If this is true, it is therefore somewhat difficult to maintain that the economy has recently be-
come biopolitical, given that it has been so from its modern beginning in the eighteenth
century. On this point see Lars Thorup Larsen’s important article ‚Speaking Truth to Bio-
Power: On the Genealogy of Bioeconomy,‛ Distinktion 14 (2007): 9-24.
125
mentality, all these elements have worked their way into the political rationality of the
occidental world.
The biopolitics of both German and American neo-liberalism revolves around
the economical enterprization of virtually every individual agent of the population,
but does so in different directions. German neo-liberalism inscribes the human enter-
prise in a ‚vertical movement‛ by reversing the relationship between state and market
in order to establish conditions under which competition will flourish, being con-
vinced that regulation of prices by the market itself is so delicate that it must be sup-
ported and managed. For its part, American neo-liberalism inscribes the human en-
terprise in a ‚horizontal movement‛ by expanding the economic to principally all so-
cial forms in order to transform a long range of non-economic entities and activities
into means of competition, being confident that the grid of analysis and the decision-
making criteria it offers ought to be more generally applicable.130 While the German
conception of Vitalpolitik therefore stands for factual reconfiguration of traditional so-
cial politics focusing on enabling the individuals to become entrepreneurs of them-
selves (e.g., assistance to the unemployed, health care cover, and housing policies), the
American conception of human capital rather takes for granted the entrepreneurial
mode of existence and provides it instead with still new sources from which the capi-
tal of competition can be accumulated (e.g., family life, education, and genetic equip-
ment). Thus two biopolitics of facilitation emerge, endowed with a more societal and
a more individual proclivity respectively, but both breaking away from the natural-
ness of classical liberalism. Here German neo-liberalism projected instead a sort of
‚economic cultivation‛ for the safeguarding and affluent performance of the market
by indirect governmental planning and intervention, whereas American neo-
liberalism planned for a kind of ‚economic realism‛ according to which a transversal
level of economic reality could incorporate almost all social forms in terms of econom-
ics, but which at the same time allowed them their differences on all other levels.131
Both strategies thus implied a massive enabling process directed at the population, but
in such a way that the population was effectively to enable itself by way of the econ-
omy as well. Here the population was not so much to comply with legal prohibitions
and disciplinary prescriptions as it was to vitally empower itself through economic
forms and work out its own personal norms for this activity, within the continual in-
terchange of freedom and security.
Meanwhile, it is on the topic of French neo-liberalism, which is presented be-
fore the anarcho-liberals in The Birth of Biopolitics but succeeding their work chrono-
logically, that Foucault most directly addresses the encounter between liberal biopoli-
tics and the question of social security. With reference primarily to Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing, the French minister of finance and economy from 1969 to 1974, and the two
economists Christian Stoffäes and Lionel Stoléru, Foucault calls attention to a number
130 Foucault, ‛Course Summary,‛ (1979) The Birth of Biopolitics, 323 [Foucault, Naissance de la
biopolitique, 329].
131 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 256-259 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 266-269].
126
of features pertaining to the challenge of creating a social policy within a neo-liberal

framework.132 D’Estaing held that government should ‚completely separate that
which corresponds to the need of economic expansion from that which corresponds to
the concern for solidarity and social justice,‛ because the social system can disrupt the
economic system with negative consequences (e.g., rise of wages, increase of unem-
ployment or uneven redistributions) even if social security is deduced solely from
earned wages.133 By introducing ‚an economic tax‛ versus ‚a social tax,‛ d’Estaing
projects a separation of the economy as a system with its own rules and the social as a
system with its own particular objectives, which should at once correspond to and be
entirely impermeable to each other. This ‚decoupling,‛ Foucault argues, is part of the
application of a seminal idea, being equally traceable in German, American and
French neo-liberalism, according to which ‚the economy essentially is a game *un
jeu+.‛134 This means, on the one hand, that the economy should progress as a game be-
tween partners and the whole society should be permeated by it, and that the role of
the state in this regard is restricted to defining the rules of the game and to making
sure that they are in fact applied. And since the rules of this game, on the other hand,
have to ensure that the economy develops and progresses as actively and keenly as
possible and to the advantage of the greatest possible number of players, the primary
and categorical rule of the game should be one that also ensures that the players do
not lose so much that they become unable to continue playing.
It is through this ‚rule of non-exclusion‛ in the economic game that Foucault
sees the policy of neo-liberal social security coming into view,135 which he sketches out
on the basis of ‚negative tax‛ as Stoléru and Stoffaës outlined it in the 1970s.136 In op-
position to positive income tax where government claims a portion of income and
where the sum paid increases as income rises, this negative tax system sends money
back to the taxpayers if, but only if, their earnings are below a given threshold, and
conversely reduces that payment as income rises. Through this system government
provides social security in the form of supplementary cash benefits relative to how
much the citizen is economically below the threshold, which is usually fixed at ‚a ’vi-
132 Ibid., 196-197 [199-201].

133 Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, ‚Preface,‛ in Économie et Société humaine: Rencontres internationales
du ministre de l’Économie et des Finances (Paris : Denöel, 1972); quoted in Foucault, The Birth
of Biopolitics, 211, n39-45 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 218-219, n39-45]. See also
Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 198-202 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 205-209].
134 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 201 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 207] (translation
modified). Cf. e.g., Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1962), 225-227.
136 Cf. Christian Stoffaës, ‚Vaincre“Rapport du groupe d’étude de l’impôt negative (Paris, 1973-74),
and Lionel Stoléru, Vaincre la pauvreté dans les pays riches (Paris: Flammarion, 1977). It was
Milton Friedman who made the negative income tax famous by proposing that all welfare
programs should be restructured with this system as the model, so that government sup-
port for those with low incomes would be withdrawn only at a low marginal rate and
would not distort the market; Cf. Friedman, chap. 12: ‚The Alleviation of Poverty.‛
127
tal minimum’ < of elementary needs.‛137 According to Foucault, this neo-liberal tax
policy has a number of consequences. First, it guarantees the non-exclusion of the eco-
nomic game because it ensures that citizens who are temporarily made redundant do
not end up below what is considered as a proper level of consumption. Second, it nev-
ertheless keeps this assured level of minimum consumption so low as to motivate, in-
centivize or frustrate the unemployed to always prefer working and participating in
the economic system before receiving benefits, thus counteracting the well-known
problems with the negative work incentives and benefits dependency of traditional
welfare programs as well. Third, the neo-liberal drift in this system is not only that it
fully decouples the ‚economic tax‛ and the ‚social tax,‛ but also that it does not pro-
vide the social security associated with a standard policy of full employment; people
are not forced to work if there is no interest in them doing so. It only guarantees the
possibility of minimum existence at a given level, essentially leaving the incentives to
be a matter for the jobless themselves.138
Although Foucault is perfectly aware that the negative tax system has never
been applied in full effect or in pure form, it is nevertheless here that he maps out his
last outline of neo-liberal biopolitics, chronologically speaking.139 Because the negative
tax provides something like a minimal level of social security, though at the lowest
possible level and principally substituting all welfare such as food stamps, public
housing, farm price supports or minimum wage laws with cash benefits defined with
regard to the threshold, it allows the economic system and the mechanism of competi-
tion to function in the rest of society. Above the threshold the ‚enterprise society‛ of
vibrant competition and investment in the capital of oneself is thus given free to run
its course without any interruption from social security or inopportune citizens below
this threshold point:
Full employment and voluntarist growth are renounced in favour of the integra-
tion in a market economy. But this entails a fund of a floating population, of a limi-
nal, infra- or supra-liminal population, in which the assurance mechanism will en-
able each to live, after a fashion, and to live in such a way that he can always be
available for possible work, if market conditions require it.140
This type of biopolitics directed at a population that is dynamically divided according

to the threshold of enterprise looks as if it rigidly resigns itself and the human beings it
comprises to the economic order that was formerly the expression of the self-
137 Stoléru 23; quoted and translated in Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 213, n51 [Foucault,
Naissance de la biopolitique, 220, n51].
138 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 207 [Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 212-213].
139 Ibid., 204, 207 [209, 212]. A review of the factual experimentations with negative tax is
found in Robert A. Moffitt, ‚The Negative Income Tax and the Evolution of U.S. Welfare
Policy,‛ Journal of Economic Perspectives 17:3 (2003): 119-140.
128
regulatory household of the same population. According to Foucault, however, it is

also a very loose-fitting and alterable economic order:
[It] is not at all the ideal or project of an exhaustively disciplinary society in which
legal network hemming in individuals is taken over and extended internally by <
normative mechanisms. < On the horizon of this analysis we see instead the
image, the idea, or theme-program of a society in which there is an optimization of
systems of difference, in which the field is left open to fluctuating processes, in
which minority individuals and practices are tolerated, in which action is brought
to bear on the rules of the game rather than the players, and finally in which there
is an environmental type of intervention instead of a internal subjugation of indi-
viduals.141
This theme-program, which he also designates ‚an environmentalism open to un-

knowns and transversal phenomena,‛142 is Foucault’s last proposition of a neo-liberal
biopolitics, concurrently regulating the population both rigidly and loosely in accor-
dance with economic principles.
Conclusively, it is also within the framework of a neo-liberal biopolitics such as
this that Foucault locates an imperative mutation in the general dispositive of go-
vernmentality. Instead of finding its governmental rationality in its own strength, in
maximizing itself, or in calculating the forces of itself and others, as was the case in the
tradition of raison d’État in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the problem of this
new governmentality, being worked upon since the late eighteenth century, has now
grown to be a matter of fashioning government
on the rationality of those who are governed as economic subjects < It is a matter
of modeling government [on] the rationality of individuals insofar as they employ
a certain number of means, and employ them as they wish, in order to satisfy these
interest in the most general sense of the term: the rationality of the governed must
serve as the regulating principle for the rationality of government. 143
Hence, what has characterized the development of ‚liberal rationality‛ in Foucault’s

account is ‚the rationalization of the art of government on the rational behavior of
those who are governed.‛144
Evidently, this is also the situation in which government as regulation of self-
regulation, as conduct of conduct, as management of self-management, or as the arti-
culation of the crossing point between political technologies of power and ethical
techniques of the self, comes into view as imperative problematics to engage in both
practically and theoretically. Though Foucault’s lectures were given thirty years ago,
the relationship between government and self-government in all its different forms,
141 Ibid.
142 Ibid., 261, n* [266, n*].
143 Ibid., 312 [316].
144 Ibid.
129
not only has long historical roots that need to be further sorted out, but also remains
with us and forms our actuality as something we still have to relate to and act upon in
our individual and collective ways of being. With the publication of The Birth of Biopo-
litics an important milestone in this historical work on the ontology of our present can
now finally reach a wider audience. Additionally, being brought back to the be-
ning of one of the most elaborate explorations of how modern liberal biopolitics has
grown into our cultural skin may also open an opportunity to bring even further our
critical evaluations of how this biopolitical endeavor continually seems to be reconfi-
gured and reborn.
130
Jonathan Zeyl 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Ellen K. Feder, Family Bonds: Genealogies of Race and Gender (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), ISBN: 978-0195314755
Ellen K. Feder’s book, Family Bonds: Genealogies of Race and Gender, creatively and
insightfully applies a Foucauldian analysis of power to explain the differences be-
tween the production of gender and the production of race in America in the second
half of the twentieth century. With an examination of (i) the construction of
Levittown, a post-World War II suburban housing development, (ii) the emergence
of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the 1970s, and (iii) the Violence Initiative in the
1990s, Feder investigates three separate ways in which the production of gender and
race intersect by focusing on the family as the critical site for the production of
difference. The originality of Feder’s work is evidenced in the way she applies a Fou-
cauldian analysis of power to understand the production of difference of race and
gender: gender, Feder argues, can be understood as a function of “disciplinary”
power operating within the family, whereas race can be understood as a function of
“regulatory” or biopower operating from outside the family. Beginning in chapter 1
with a well-written exegesis of Foucault’s methodology, Feder applies his archaeolo-
gical and genealogical method to her own genealogies of race, gender and the family.
In chapter 2 Feder documents the production of a “new whiteness” (26) that
emerged alongside the development of Levittown, New York. Feder turns to Levit-
town to tell her story about the intersection of race and gender because Levittown,
she notes, “provides a rich example of the way in which state or regulatory power is
deployed to create a new community, what would become the prototypical suburb.”
(26) This prototypical suburb maintained the homogeneity of ethnic identities from
previous ethnic enclaves entrenched in the cities. African Americans, however, were
excluded from this community because their presence, it was rightly assumed,
would depreciate its property values. After telling her story about the production of
racism, Feder refocuses her lens and shows how this story intersects with the
production of gender by showing how such suburbs also created the impetus for
women’s “return” to the home. To tell this story about the operation of power
within the family she turns to Bentham’s famous panopticon model that informs
Foucault’s analysis of power and shows how housewives, whose role it was to
supervise children, cook, and clean, became continually subject to the gaze of
142
Zeyl: review of Family Bonds
neighbors and thus internalized the community’s expectations into the raising of the
family. Though each story about the production of gender and race involves the
other story, Feder shows how these situations nevertheless resist a narrative union
because of the differences of the means of their production of power.
In chapter 3 Feder tells a different story about the production of power.
Turning to the treatment of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the 1970s, Feder
chronicles how this story “reveals the distinctively disciplinary enforcement of
gender difference in everyday life, as well as the ways that the family is implicated
in that enforcement.” (47) This story reveals how gender roles are invisibly rein-
forced in the family by way of showing how the diagnosis of professionals implied
the belief in a natural gendered response on the part of children and a natural
gendered way to rear a child. Of all of her stories, however, this one seems to resist
a story on the production of race, (67) an omission that proves for Feder how discur-
sive formations can make it possible for relevant factors such as race or ethnicity to
appear inconsequential.
Turning more explicitly to the production of race in chapter 4, Feder
examines more concretely the development of biopower – that is, power that creates
“biological” distinctions within a valued hierarchy (71) – by writing about the
government-funded Violence Initiative that researched supposedly genetic and
biological links to the surge in violence in America in the 1990s. This project,
couched in scientific language, demonstrates for Feder how knowledge and power
cannot be separated, as one begins to see how racism and the collective grouping of
dangerous individuals depend on these concepts. While this is a story about racism,
Feder finishes the chapter by refocusing her lens on the family and shows how the
role of mothers of dangerous individuals intersects in this story which is explicitly,
though not exclusively, about race.
Feder’s stories convincingly support her overarching claim that the
production of gender and race “resist*s+ a certain narrative union.” (87) In
discussing the discursive strategies of gender and race in the final chapter, Feder
remarks that discourse both limits our thinking and makes our thinking possible,
thereby pointing out why such a narrative union between race and gender is so
difficult to conceive. With that said, however, Feder notes that by highlighting the
peculiar limitations of the external regulative function of race and the internal
disciplinary function of gender in the family, one can begin to develop a new
strategy, a new starting point, for telling how the family functions in the production
of both race and gender. Feder’s remarkable ability to clearly apply Foucault’s
method to the above stories, combined with the complexity and depth with which
she tells her stories, will undoubtedly encourage others to construct narratives about
the intersection between race and gender.
Jonathan Zeyl, Professor of Philosophy, Humber College, Toronto, Canada
143
Samuel Rocha 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Michael A. Peters and Tina (A.C.) Besley (eds.), Why Foucault? New Directions
in Educational Research (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007), ISBN: 978-
0820478906
Why Foucault? New Directions in Educational Research seems to be well-suited for two
particular audiences and purposes. For those engaged in the academic study of
education who are either unfamiliar with Foucault or who have not found his work
applicable to educational scholarship, it will introduce Foucauldian ideas. To
Foucault scholars from other fields, it will direct their attention to educational
studies. In other words, depending on the audience, this book can be seen as
primarily Foucauldian and/or educational. At the same time, there is little doubt
that these dual purposes are not mutually exclusive and have many reciprocal and
overlapping interests. Though there are many other potential uses for this collec-
tion, in this review I will focus on the range of interpretations that orbit around
Foucault’s relation to the subject, provide a few remarks on the notion of
‚educational research,‛ and conclude with my overall impression of the book.
In the Introduction, the editors address the titular question ‚Why Foucault?‛
in the more attenuated interrogation ‚Why read Foucault today?‛ In other words,
they raise the question of whether Foucault (and poststructuralist thought in
general) is still necessary and important. Yet, they conclude that ‚the question is too
melodramatic‛ and seems to be more a matter of reception than one of finality or
importance. They reframe the issue as ‚a hermeneutical question in the philosophy
of reading and the sociology of knowledge and culture.‛ (1)
Addressing this hermeneutical question, the editors put the initial question
aside and begin to organize their collection according to the complexities of
identifying, situating, and naming Foucault himself—whom they refer to as ‚Mr.
Elastic Man‛ (3)—and the cacophony of interpretations, trends, and disciplinary
(ab)uses of his work. That is to say, for the editors, this international survey of
Foucauldian treatments of educational issues is not for the sake of variety, pure and
simple; indeed, the scholarly breadth of the book is the methodological key to their
project. Appropriately, then, they offer a wide range of interpretations from
respected scholars in the field of educational studies. Peters also dedicates chapter
12 to discussing the many-sidedness of Foucault in Anglo-American discourse.
144
Rocha: review of Why Foucault?
As diverse as the essays in this collection are, chapters 2 through 5 present an

intelligible progression of Foucauldian interpretations that encapsulate both the
stronger and weaker points of this book. This sequence begins with two essays
(chapters 2 and 3) that use Foucault to consider the disciplinary aspects of schooling.
Those chapters give way to the next pair of essays (chapters 4 and 5), which focus on
the confessional elements of pedagogical practice as they substitute for more overt
disciplinary practices, and begin to address the formation of the self. These four
chapters describe the range of Foucauldian analysis in this book as beginning with
the view of education and schooling as they relate to questions of power and
discipline—educational ‚regimes of truth‛—and ending in the relation of education
to the ascetic and ethical constitution of the self—educational ‚games of truth.‛
These differences between the ‚regime‛ and the ‚game‛ (also noted by Peters
in chapter 12), that is, between the discipline-power/knowledge and the formation-
of-the-self Foucault, are well-known in recent Foucauldian scholarship and vary in
many ways. In these essays, each interpretation seems to turn on the author’s own
navigation (or lack thereof) of these interpretations. As sharp and polemical as this
apparent difference may seem, I think it is important to emphasize that it need not
be construed as a dualism. The fact that the subject is constituted in her relations
with power—the core of Foucault’s notion of subjectification and subjection—
appears to be a dynamic relationship that is spoiled and distorted when we try to
isolate it. Nonetheless, it is possible to ignore this relational aspect of Foucault’s
thought by assuming that the relation need not address the subject as something real
and serious for Foucault.
An interesting treatment of this polemic is in chapter 6 where James Wong
addresses this interpretive difference by discussing Foucault’s relationship to the
Enlightenment through the Kantian notion of ‚critical ontology.‛ This chapter
provides a unique view of Foucault’s relation to the subject from his affinity—not his
disdain—for the Enlightenment, as described by Kant’s 1794 essay, What is
Enlightenment? This is an interesting argument that differs from the usual chrono-
logical argument that Foucault gradually left behind ‚power‛ or, as he put it (and
which was *is+ cited more than once in the book), he ‚*insisted+ too much on the
technologies of domination and power.‛ (57) Wong argues that ‚Foucault takes
from Kant’s essay the idea that the hallmark of enlightenment is the attitude of
challenging assumptions about what we know and how we act.‛ (72) This leads to
Foucault’s critical ontology, which Wong uses to question the developmental model
of childhood, which is not a simple matter of how power is exerted; more than that,
the key point rests in how such techniques constitute the subject, in this case, the
‚developmental‛ child.
This particular essay (and other ones in this collection) provides insightful
views into different prisons and other madnesses. These essays, at their best, allow
the reader to imagine other modern institutions and technologies—education and
145
schooling comes to mind most straightforwardly in this collection—that are not

merely ripe for ‚new‛ Foucauldian analysis, but rather, such institutions and
technologies were already present in Foucault’s general critique of modernity, albeit
without the elaboration he gave to prisons, madness, sexuality etc. To say
otherwise, to describe education as something ‚new‛ to Foucault, would be the
equivalent of contending that Foucault’s genealogies were absent from the ethos of
Nietzsche’s genealogical project and general critique of modernity. These critiques
of modernity—including the erasure of modern ‚man‛—cannot be adequately
explained without considering the full range of issues that include power and the
subject, something we must say about both Foucault and Nietzsche.
The essays that leave out the constitution of the self in their analysis and
focus exclusively on power and discipline lack depth (for the reasons I mentioned
above) and, in the end, seem outdated, insistent on a Foucauldian hermeneutic that
leaves too much of his work unconsidered. Now, it is certainly important to see
education, schooling, and pedagogical norms etc. as disciplinary practices in which
power is present. However, if that is the answer to ‚Why Foucault?‛ in this book,
then, it may be a stale answer we have heard (again and again) before. In the
chapters where this is the case, I think that without losing different points of
emphasis and without instituting a permanent and ‚real‛ Foucault, some of the
work in this book requires a deeper consideration of the opening question (‛Why
Foucault?‛) in relation to the subject. This seems to the point of Foucault’s own
interest—wherever and whenever one considers this interest to be in the
Foucauldian corpus—in the ethics, ascetics, and care of the self and the games of
truth. Thankfully, most of the essays deal with these issues at length.
What I have left out so far is the very idea of ‚research‛ and, more
specifically, what this book means by ‚educational research.‛ James Marshall raises
this question in chapter 2 and offers a direct and insightful response to it. He writes,
‚The title for this book suggests that we need new directions for educational
research. Michel Foucault, however, would not have offered “new directions‛ for
educational research, though he might have offered suggestions as to how research
might be done.‛ (15, emphasis in original) This seems right, as ‚new directions‛ has
a certain ring to it that sounds very non-Foucauldian (although there is sure to be a
nuanced interpretation that could justify it). But, regarding the ‚research‛ element of
the title, to those familiar with what is usually considered to be ‚educational
research‛—or, to put it another way, the modern-scientific studies that go on in
modern universities (places that are outlined and investigated in chapter 10) and
affect public schools and their policies—it goes without saying that Foucault would
have had very little patience with such rigid regimes and games of truth. But, lest
anyone be deceived about what is normative in educational research today,
‚educational research‛ is used in this book in a way that might be better put by
borrowing Derrida’s description of democracy in the Politics of Friendship (2005) as a
146
Rocha: review of Why Foucault?
venir: educational research-to-come. Unfortunately, there is much more that could

be, and perhaps should be, said about this matter in this book.
All in all, though the essays are as advertised—that is, they are a diverse
arrangement of theoretical and cultural interpretations of Foucault written by an
international cast of leading scholars of educational studies—the dismissal by the
editors of the titular question in the beginning appears premature and the
corresponding subtitle is misleading. ‚Why Foucault?‛ in education is a deep
question that does not simply ask about the relevance and need for more or less
Foucault; it also asks the critical ontological question central to his own project: How
do educational discourses and pedagogical practices serve in the constitution of
modern subjects? So, leaving that question aside for a range of options to better
describe Foucault and his spectrum of intellectual traditions might have been
premature. More importantly, it may obscure the point that when considering the
broad range of Foucault‘s project, any genealogical investigation does not end with
an analysis of power; there is more to be said that brings us to the question of
constitution—a question that can addressed and approached in a variety of ways but
cannot, to my mind, be ignored. Also, as Marshall pointed out earlier, ‚New
Directions in Educational Research‛ is a mysterious, if not inappropriate, subtitle
without subsequent deeper reflection and explanation of what it means. This, of
course, says very little about the pages that follow the title and subtitle, but it seems
worth mentioning.
Putting aside that minor issue, the contents of the book do provide a rich
array of resource for the purposes I mentioned at the beginning of this review. For
someone interested in seeing how educational scholarship might be affected—and
disturbed—by Michel Foucault‘s seminal thought, this collection will stimulate new
ways of thinking about education. For the Foucauldian scholar who has yet to
consider the implications of Foucauldian analysis in the specific, yet broad, area of
educational discourse, this collection will be stimulating in both harmonious and
agonistic ways that parallel and augment Foucault’s own genealogical treatments of
other modern institutions. And this can only be a good thing for Foucauldian and
educational studies.
Samuel Rocha, Doctoral Candidate & Gates Millennium Scholar,

Ohio State University
147
joshua j. kurz 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Tina (A.C.) Besley and Michael A. Peters, Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education,
and the Culture of Self (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007), ISBN: 978-0820481951
The long impact of Michel Foucault’s scholarship is well documented in fields as diverse as
Geography, Philosophy, and Political Theory. Other fields, however, are still coming to
grips with the entirety of Foucault’s works, including the field of education. This is not to
say that Foucault has not inspired researchers in and of education – several important
anthologies especially come to mind1 – rather, it is to say that the genre is still rapidly
maturing. Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education, and the Culture of Self by Tina (A.C.)
Besley and Michael A. Peters marks a significant turning point in that maturation process.
The authors have been writing about Foucault for quite some time and are two of the most
respected Foucault scholars in educational studies. Therefore, it is unsurprising that they
would author the ‚first systematic exploration of the relevance of Foucault’s explorations of
subjectivity and truth, and its significance for educational theory of what Foucault referred
to on a number of occasions as ‘the culture of self,’ especially in a course of lectures he gave
in Berkeley in the early 1980s.‛2 Much of the book is drawn from conference presentations
and course offerings by the authors, with significant revisions in order to make them cohere
as a whole.3
Besley and Peters mobilize Foucault’s later work, especially his lectures, to frankly discuss
the neoliberal shift in society and its implications for education. This is a crucial and
welcome move, as discussions of neoliberalism in education are almost the exclusive
playground of Marxist-inspired educational researchers such as Peter McLaren, Henry
Giroux, and Michael Apple. Besley and Peters provide a rationale for looking at
1 Bernadette M. Baker and Katharina E. Heyning, Dangerous Coagulations?: The Uses of Foucault in
the Study of Education (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2004); Thomas S. Popkewitz and Marie
Brennan, Foucault’s Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education (New York: Teachers
College Press, 1997).
2 Tina (A.C.) Besley and Michael A. Peters, Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education, and the
Culture of Self (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007), 5. Abbreviated throughout as ST.
3 Besley & Peters, ST, xi.
148
Kurz: review of Subjectivity and Truth
neoliberalism from a non-Marxian point of view in a lengthy paragraph that deserves a

significant excerpt here:
First, a neo-Foucauldian approach to the sociology of governance avoids interpreting

liberalism as an ideology, political philosophy, or an economic theory and reconfigures it
as a form of governmentality with an emphasis on the question of how power is
exercised. Second, such an approach makes central the notion of the self-limiting state
which, in contrast to the administrative (or police) state, brings together in productive
ways questions of ethics and technique… Third, it proposes an investigation of
neoliberalism as an intensification of an economy of moral regulation first developed by
liberals… Fourth, the approach enables an understanding of the distinctive features of
neoliberalism… And, further, it understands neoliberalism through the development of
a new relation between expertise and politics…4
This lengthy section clearly differentiates Besley and Peters’ project from much other
writing on the topic of neoliberalism. It also provides the particular grounds on which this
book stands.
The taking up of neoliberalism follows from Foucault’s discussion of the topic in his
Collège de France lecture series of 1978-1979, and recently translated into English as The
Birth of Biopolitics.5 The final two chapters of Subjectivity and Truth address the new
paradigm of neoliberalism exclusively; however, the first three quarters of the book are
spent laying the groundwork for this later discussion.
The book begins by discussing the subject in the tradition of philosophy. As Besley and
Peters note, ‚Ever since the first moment of institutional philosophy the notion of the self
has presented itself as an object of inquiry, as a problem, and as a locus for posing questions
concerning knowledge, action and ethics.‛6 This statement acts as a foil in order to situate
Foucault’s shift from the study ‚of sexual behavior and pleasures in antiquity based on
aphrodisia to extract from it and study the more general problem of ‘the subject and truth’.‛7
Periodizing Foucault’s work is helpful in many ways, and Besley and Peters are perhaps
correct to begin by analyzing the disjunctures in Foucault’s oeuvre. However, dividing
Foucault’s work into early, middle, and later periods8 is problematic in that it gives the
impression that there were separate projects being undertaken, which can lead to the false
understanding that, for example, the ‚early‛ and ‚late‛ Foucault were at odds with one
4 Besley & Peters, ST, 132-133.

5 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, translated by
Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
6 Besley & Peters, ST, 3.
7 Ibid., 4.
8 As do, for example, Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism
and Hermeneutics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Eric Paras, Foucault 2.0: Beyond
Power and Knowledge (New York: Other Press, 2006).
149
Foucault Studies, No 7, pp. 148-153
another or that he revised his earlier work on power to re-inject a liberal subject.9
Nonetheless, it is a necessary place to begin.
The remainder of ‚Chapter One: The Culture of Self‛ is dedicated to laying the
groundwork for the rest of the book. Besley and Peters draw attention to Foucault’s
discussion of technologies of the self, a brief discussion of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of
Narcissism, an analysis of the notion of care of the self, and, finally, the practices of reading
and writing the self. The latter section is particularly important for educationalists,
because, as the authors note, ‚It is especially this last notion *learning how to read+ that is
worth pondering in relation to pedagogy.‛10 Finally, they close the chapter with the
following observation:
Almost certainly we are witnessing a shift from the shaping of an individual of classical
liberalism – the ethical individual of Kantian humanism – to a market individualism of
neoliberalism where the self is shaped as a utility maximizer, a free and contractual
individual, who is self-constituted through the market choices and investment decisions
that he/she makes.11
This statement has clear implications for the remainder of the book.
Chapter 2 is entitled ‚The Genealogy of the Confessional Self: Self-Denial or Self-Mastery?‛

and traces Foucault’s conception of the self from the death of man through the confessional
technologies of Christianity and ‚medico-therapeutic confessional practices.‛12 Most
notable here are the concluding thoughts of Besley and Peters, when they, along with
Foucault, reject the Christian ethic of self-denial and instead ‚suggest that confession as a
technology of self should be based less on an ethic of self-denial than one of self-mastery.‛13
This is clearly a moment in which Besley and Peters illustrate the project of Foucault’s later
writing, especially his work on the technologies of the self. They also illustrate that
Foucault’s discussions of power and discourse are integral to the care of the self:
Foucault (1997a) contrasts two different models of self-interpretation: liberation and

freedom, suggesting that the latter is broader than the former and historically necessary
once a country or people have attained a degree of independence and set up a political
9 This point is especially poignant when the authors state on page 89, ‚In his early work Foucault,
[sic] treated truth as a product of the regimentation of statements within discourses that had
progressed or were in the process of progressing to the stage of a scientific discipline. In this
conception, the subject, historicized in relation to social practices, is denied its freedom or
effective agency. This early conception of Foucault’s is to be contrasted with his later notion of
the subject where freedom is seen to be an essential aspect of its constitution as in the concept of
governmentality and in his studies of the history of sexuality.‛
11 Ibid., 18
12 Ibid., 36.
13 Ibid., 39.
150
society. For Foucault, liberation is not enough and the practices of freedom do not
preclude liberation, but they enable individuals and society to define ‘admissible and
acceptable forms of existence or political society’ (Foucault, 1997a, p. 283).14
One must be free of chains in order to enter the realm of the political, but that political
existence is tied to dominant discourses and regimes of truth.
By this point in the book, areas for clarification have become apparent. First is the
somewhat productive, possibly distracting, tension between education, by which I think the
authors mean schooling, and counseling and counseling education. I understand that
counselors play significant roles in schools and in the lives of the young people with whom
they work, but I wonder about the seeming conflation. At the least this tension deserves a
more straightforward account. What do chapters that foreground counseling do for readers
who are expecting to find a book on education? Is it because counseling happens within the
school building? Or is it because counseling is particularly complicit in the production of
neoliberal subjects skilled at negotiating risk and the actuarial self described by Besley and
Peters in the later chapters which focus more squarely on schools and school policy? I am
confident that the inclusion was intentional and calculated, but a more direct discussion
would have been welcome.
A second troubling indistinction is the attempt to discuss education in the context of not
just one or two major English-speaking countries, such as the United States and/or the
United Kingdom, but also in Australia and New Zealand. Each of these countries has a
robust educational research community and complex national and regional issues that
greatly complicate their inclusion in a pan-Anglo discussion of schooling. Clearly there are
global currents at work that need to be identified and engaged, but this area too could have
used greater explication and sustained attention by the authors. However, neither area
seriously detracts from the major arguments presented or from the valuable contribution
the authors make to educational research.
Much of the middle portion of the book is useful and deserves thoughtful engagement, but
for the purposes of this review I will move on to chapters 7 and 8, entitled ‚Understanding
the Neoliberal Paradigm of Education Policy‛ and, ‚Enterprise Culture and the Rise of the
Entrepreneurial Self.‛ Together, these chapters signal a new direction that I hope will be
taken up by educational researchers in much more detail in the future. Where Besley and
Peters survey the grounds of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New
Zealand in this book, it will be up to other researchers to address the specific ways in which
neoliberalism interacts with individual subjects on a local level.
14 Ibid., 23 (citations in the original).
151
Chapter 7 traces the shift from liberalism to neoliberalism through what Foucault referred
to as biopolitics. They note:
He [Foucault] focused on government as a set of practices legitimated by specific

rationalities and saw that these three schools [German ordoliberalism, the Austrian
school, and the Chicago school] of contemporary economic liberalism focused on the
question of too much government – a permanent critique of the state that Foucault
considers as a set of techniques for governing the self through the market.15
Later, they write;
This approach centers on Foucault’s concept of governmentality as a means of mapping

the ‘history of the present’ and understands the rationality of government as both permitting
and requiring the practice of freedom of its subjects. In other words, government in this sense
only becomes possible at the point at which policing and administration stops; at the
point at which the relations between government and self-government coincide and
coalesce.16
Essentially, Besley and Peters are pointing to the zone of indistinction between government
and self-government where neoliberalism seems to have space to operate on and through
subjects.
Besley and Peters highlight, in chapter 7, the rise of human capital theory under Theodore
Schultz, Gary Becker, and the (second) Chicago School of Economics. The contemporary
investment in human capital theory is a strong indicator of the path illuminated by
Foucault in the Birth of Biopolitics lectures. In a generation, by Schultz’s own admission,
human capital went from being ‚inconceivable‛ in public discourse to being a focus of both
Clinton and Bush in the 1992 presidential campaign.17 More and more since the 1970s,
governments are crafting education policy based on the assumptions put forth by Becker,
essentially willing human capital theory into reality.
The one area in the book that could have been more developed is how the subject is
produced at the moment that neoliberal education policy interacts with human bodies.
This is unsurprising, though, as Foucault never truly addressed the issue either; indeed,
Judith Butler provides a much more sophisticated account of subjectivation,18 which may
highlight some of the limits to which we can take Foucault’s work (even his newly released
15 Ibid., 131-132 (emphasis in the original).

16 Ibid., 132 (emphasis mine).
17 Ibid., 154.
18 See Judith Butler, Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1997); Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). See also
Jason Read, The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 2003).
152
later lectures). As it is, Besley and Peters mention the mutual reinforcement of what they
term ‚modes of responsibilization‛ (i.e., student loan debt) and the subject’s application of
‚certain management, economic, and actuarial techniques to themselves as subjects of a
newly privatized welfare regime,‛19 but they do not adequately describe how and why the
subject would actually do so. This could have been addressed through a more intentional
linking of Foucault’s later work on the care of the self to his earlier discussions of
disciplinary and sovereign power.
All told, Besley and Peters make a strong contribution to research on Foucault and
education. There are a few areas where their analysis could have been more specific (i.e.,
by focusing more on localized techniques of neoliberalism), but overall they provide a
strong reading of Foucault’s later work in a field Foucault himself only addressed
tangentially and on occasion. It is worth reading and extending in future work.
joshua j. kurz, The Ohio State University
153
Cynthia M. Paccacerqua 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Marc Djaballah, Kant, Foucault, and Forms of Experience (London: Routledge,

2008), ISBN: 978-0415956246
Under the easy dictum of making Kant the “enemy” in twentieth-century French
philosophy, it may still come as a surprise to find in Foucault’s work deep structural
similarities to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.1 In his newly published book,
Marc Djaballah aims at revealing the extent to which these two thinkers interlock at
a formal level. By developing further the Foucaultian concept of a distinct attitude of
thought present in Kant, Djaballah subverts the often invoked and expedient way of
understanding Kant that splits his philosophy into the salvageable idea of criticism
and the outdated and hence disposable doctrine of science and system from which the
latter arises; it is this conceptual move that opens up for Djaballah a single analytical
space to expose in Foucault's work a nuanced underlying indebtedness to and
parallelism with Kant’s thought. Indeed, according to Djaballah’s main argument,
the same Kantian practice of criticism is operative not only in Foucault’s reading of
Kant, but also and most importantly for his thesis, in the very form of Foucault’s
analysis of history.
Setting aside current problems in Kantian scholarship as well as historical and

philological issues, Djaballah identifies the “guiding thread of Kant’s enigmatic
response to the problem of criticism”: that order and regularity in experience can be
accounted for “in terms of a priori formal conditions that determine what can be
cognized.” (30-31) This thread weaves together the five elements that Djaballah
argues are both the faces and the regulative contours of what it means to speak of an
attitude or “practice of criticism in the theoretical domain.” (30-31) He categorizes
these as follows: i) the capacity to abstract; ii) the need for the exercise of skepticism;
iii) a functional understanding of the capacities of thought; iv) the submersion of
1 See Translators’ Introduction to Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties,
Deleuze’s early book on Kant, for a reference to Deleuze's characterization of the book: “I
wrote it as a book on an enemy.” Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam
(MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
154
Paccacerqua: review of Kant, Foucault and Forms of Experience
experience in thought; and v) the distinction between real and logical possibility as a
background to the definition of the aim of philosophy.
The first chapter of the book contains a detailed account of these five constitutive
and regulative elements of a practice of criticism that Djaballah finds decisive for
Kant’s thought. He successfully avoids detours into minute interpretative polemics
while at the same time showing an exceptional depth and breadth of scholarship as
he construes his argument for a distinctly Kantian critical attitude of thought by
reference to a diverse array of sources beyond the major Critiques and the prize essay
“Was ist Aufklärung?” His references include pre-critical work, correspondences,
lectures and other essays such as Kant’s famous response to Eberhard and his never
finished “Welches sind die wirklichen Fortschritte...” The most important secondary
referent is Deleuze’s La philosophie critique de Kant, specifically in relation to the
latter’s analysis of Kant’s theory of the capacities of thought.
Having established his interpretation of Kant in Chapter 1, Djaballah dedicates the

rest of his study to showing the extent to which these five elements are identifiable
in Foucault’s historical analysis. In one of the statements that elaborate on this
transition, he writes:
In his analysis of discursive practices, Foucault revives this movement of

reasoning, and integrates it into a historical frame of reference, not in relation to
objective experience as such, but in relation to historically and culturally local
practices and the forms of experience they deploy. The following exposition of
Foucault’s conceptual practice shows how this transposition of Kantian criticism
allows his studies to determine forms of experience in history, and their
respective possible objects, the field of statements that appear as candidates of
truth-or-falsity. (91)
The first such transposition is discussed in Chapter 2, entitled “Nietzsche and the
Critical Need to Wake Up.” In this chapter, Djaballah argues that Foucault’s practice
of criticism shares with Kant’s a “need for skeptical arousal.” (92) Foucault’s version,
however, is presented as containing a significant Nietzschean component. To make
his case, the author dedicates a substantial part of the chapter to a reading of
Nietzsche’s own texts. Two of the central ideas discussed in this section are
Nietzsche’s understanding of any philosophical production as always already
containing a personal aspect of the person who generates it and of knowledge as an
invention, an essentially violent ordering of the world and a source of security that
acquires value through a process of habituation. With this conceptual orientation,
Djaballah then continues with the main thrust of the chapter.
155
A salient conceptual thread in Chapter 2 is Djaballah’s argument that there is a

formal similarity between Kant’s antinomical moment in criticism —which he shows
coincides in its theoretical significance with Kant’s awakening from the dogmatic
slumber by his confrontation with Hume’s skepticism—and what Foucault takes to
be the aim of thought and the goal of the various textual devises used in his historical
work. (149) The aim entails a new understanding of the practice of philosophy as
experimentation and the goal is the inauguration of a “thinking otherwise” by way
of experiments embodied in his archaeological or genealogical work and the use of
literature, as in his reference to Borges’ Chinese Encyclopedia in Les mots et les choses.
These experiments are the source of shock and self-estrangement in relation to what
otherwise appear as naturalized regimes in epistemology, relations of power, and
understanding of the self operative within the present historical moment.
In Chapter 3, Djaballah pursues further the topic of the aim of Foucault's practice of
criticism. He argues that the most important motivational and constitutive principle
of Foucault’s practice entails a movement from a kind of criticism defined in terms
of the finitude of human reason (Kant) to one in terms of the historical contingency of
rationality. (195) In his account, Djaballah discusses, first, Foucault’s interpretation of
the epistemological role of Kant in Le mots et les choses and his conceptualization of a
model of philosophical thinking in “Qu'est-ce que les Lumières?” in order to show
points of convergence between the two authors. And second, he discusses in what
ways both thinkers are concerned with limits. He argues that despite Foucault’s
introduction of historical contingency, they share the same understanding of the
function of rationality within forms of experience. But most interestingly, he
identifies two distinctly Foucaultian elements in the practice of criticism also relating
to limits. First, there is a “deliberate theoretical restraint” in methodology by giving
“no principled priority in the relation between the historical and the theoretical,”
thus creating what he calls a “theoretical instability” in his critical attitude. And,
second, there is a constant endeavor through “experimentation” to go beyond the
limits of thought, that is, to “think otherwise.” (201)
Having already brought into the fold the concept of “form of experience,” Djaballah
makes this the locus of Chapter 4. His argument for this transposition revolves
around his analysis of the Foucaultian concepts of practice, discourse, and the
historical a priori as corresponding to the Kantian concepts of form of experience,
spontaneity, and receptivity. By limiting the correspondence to the function that
these concepts play within their respective works, he accommodates the diachronic
element in Foucault’s theory as well as the fact that his analysis is retroactive (of past
forms of experiences, but not of the form of experience in general). (222) This
chapter is the most Foucaultian in that the original and distinct characteristics of his
work are brought to the fore.
156
Paccacerqua: review of Kant, Foucault and Forms of Experience
It is possible to point out that some of the five facets and regulative segments
introduced by Djaballah as woven through Kant’s solution to his critical problem are
not unique to Kant, and thus that the very underlying raison d’être of Djaballah’s
project is undermined. This is a criticism raised by Oksala in her review of the text,
in particular with respect to the skeptical moment that Djaballah argues is shared by
Kant and Foucault; she rightly points out that variations of it are also found, for
instance, in the works of Descartes, Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty.2 Thus, one
asks: Why Kant? Despite this observation, however, it is important to keep in mind
that Djaballah is not arguing that any one of these cannot be found elsewhere, but
that all five are essential characteristics of Kant’s critical way of theorizing and that
precisely these five are also found working together, renewed by the demands of a
new historical epoch, within Foucault’s theoretical orientation. Moreover, if one
takes into account the specter of Kant throughout all stages of Foucault’s work,
something that Djaballah establishes convincingly and is becoming ever more
apparent thanks to new publications on the subject, then it becomes harder to claim
that these parallels in the form of practicing criticism is mere coincidence.
What is at stake for any reader of Djaballah’s study is to determine, first, if he

accurately identifies the relevant elements in Kant’s critical attitude. In other words,
are what he extracts from Kant’s work as formal elements of his thinking Kantian
enough? And, following this, to consider whether he sufficiently transposes these
elements, while retaining the specificity of Foucault’s diachronic and practice-
centered approach, to accept the claim that they share in the same form of criticism.
The arguments are too complex and nuanced to carry out such an evaluation here.
However, with a wealth of textual evidence and incisive interpretations of the work
of all of the figures, the author makes a very compelling case for both of these.
The text is not always easy reading because of a writing style characterized at times
by unnecessary complex sentence structures, repetitions and analytic detours that,
albeit extremely interesting, obscure the main points at hand—likely the result of
working with the disparate styles of those about whom he is writing. Aside from
this minor note, Djaballah’s Kant, Foucault and the Forms of Experience is undoubtedly
a major contribution to Foucault studies as a whole. The author’s approach is also
an invitation to reevaluate the role Kant’s work played in twentieth-century French
philosophy and an opportunity for the reader to reconsider the resources available
within it. Finally, for those of us who have been involved for some time now in
research that focuses on Foucault’s Kantianism, it is an exciting work that does a
2 Johanna Oksala, “Kant, Foucault, and the Forms of Experience,” Notre Dame Philosophical
Review, (January 28,, 2009), http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15127
157
wonderful job of extending our interpretative road maps. It sets a standard that will
be hard to match.
Cynthia M. Paccacerqua, SUNY at Stony Brook
158
Sophia Prinz 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Dietmar Kammerer, Bilder der Überwachung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,

2008), ISBN: 978-3518125502
In “Bilder der Überwachung” (images of surveillance), Dietmar Kammerer moves beyond the
common limits of surveillance studies, which primarily focus on the repressive function of
video surveillance. Instead of denouncing the entire system of surveillance as nothing but an
extension of eighteenth-century panoptic power, he simply asks why CCTV is still so
widespread and widely accepted?
According to Kammerer, this acceptance is neither a question of technological
determinism nor a simple discursive effect of politics or police authorities. Rather, it also
results from the (pop)cultural image of surveillance technology and observation practices. The
“representation of systematic observation, based on technology,“1 as it is conveyed by the mass
media, shapes the collective conception of surveillance. In this way the particular imaginary
of the surveillance society is established. Kammerer takes his distance from purely theoretical
approaches as they are found in Cultural Studies. Instead of perpetuating a Foucauldian-type
exegesis ad infinitum, he strives for an empirical analysis. He directs his attention to
pedestrians whose steps are traced by cameras, to the practice in control rooms, to the
algorithms of face recognition software, and to the status of video footage as evidence.
Consequently, a great deal of the book is devoted to a diligent analysis of the dispositif of
surveillance: micro practices, technologies, and representations.
The book has two parts. While the first deals with “surveillance images,” i.e., the
development and implementation of CCTV and monitoring devices, the second part takes
issue with “images of surveillance,” i.e. how surveillance is represented within the mass
media. Unfortunately, the theoretical and methodological toolbox of this analysis remains
implicit for too long. Only in the fourth chapter, does Kammerer begin to discuss the general
aspects of ocular power and the fundamental ambivalences that haunt visibility. Here, he
criticizes Foucault’s reading of the panopticon in two regards. First, he challenges the absolute
dissociation of “the see/being seen dyad,”2 and argues instead that the prisoners have to see at
least something in order to keep the panoptic mechanism going. Secondly, he casts into doubt
the alleged absolute rationality of the disciplinary machine by underscoring its theatrical,
illusionary and fictional aspects.3 Kammerer also criticizes the discourse of electronic
panopticism4 for applying the historical categories of Foucauldian analysis all too easily to the
1 Dietmar Kammerer, Bilder der Überwachung (Frankfurt: am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008), 9. (my
translation)
2 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 202.
3 Kammerer, Bilder der Überwachung, 120.
4 See, e.g., Oscar Gandy, The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1993) and Mark Poster, The Second Media Age (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers,
159
Prinz: review of Bilder der Überwachung
postmodern network society. In his view, CCTV goes beyond a mere disciplinary mechanism
that locates and observes its subject. Referring back to Deleuze’s Postscript on the Societies of
Control,5 he points out that CCTV does not correspond to the logic of the “environments of
enclosure” (Foucault) that is governed by normative rules. Rather, it is directed at the
changing public localities of a subject whose movements are not restricted.6
How this neoliberal surveillance actually works is the topic of the first and larger part
of the book. In this part, Kammerer gives a detailed description of the dispositif of surveillance
by covering areas as disparate as criminological and public discourse, technological set-ups
(the network of CCTV cameras, control monitors, and automatic recognition software), spatial
arrangements (urban space, private and public institutions, control rooms, court yards),
different subject positions (the observer, the deviant, the pedestrian, etc.), and the order
projected by visibility and invisibility. Necessarily, this whole ensemble of heterogeneous
elements contains paradoxes and blind spots that are opposed to the official discourse.
Unlike the conventional Foucauldian approach, Kammerer’s history does not start with
Bentham’s panopticon as the birthplace of contemporary practices of observation. The
ancestors of the electronic eye of power are to be found elsewhere: in public street lighting, as
it was introduced in seventeenth-century Paris, whereby the individual human being becomes
radically exposed, hypervisible,7 and in the beginnings of criminological photography and
archival documentation, as they were pioneered by Alphonse Bertillon in the late nineteenth-
century.8 The second chapter is primarily dedicated to the most important steps in the actual
implementation of CCTV in Great Britain and Germany.9 After being used to monitor and
channel traffic flows in the 1950s, CCTV began to invade wider society mainly via private
institutions like shopping malls, banks, and office buildings. Based on this normalization
process, both the German and British government sought to expand the public “surveillance
webs” in the 1990s, both in quality and numbers in order to improve crime prevention
measures and to render cities more attractive for consumers. Interestingly, that CCTV never
yielded the expected results was never considered as a problem of the system as such. It was
rather seen as a question of advancement of technology, a view that inevitably generates a
never-ending spiral of technological rearmament and refinement.10 Kammerer, by contrast,
underlines the fact that video surveillance is not just a matter of technology. It is also a social
practice that leads to a range of individual decisions that depend in turn on a complex
arrangement of subjects, institutions, space, and technology. 11 In other words, surveillance
images have to be looked at in order for them to have an impact on reality. In the fifth chapter,
Kammerer explains how the scopic regimes of control rooms, institutionalized production and
reception of images, and the constructive character of visual evidence are intertwined. A
control room is usually equipped with both a wall of monitors (fed automatically with images)
and single spot monitors (showing images which are chosen by the individual observer). It is
1995).
5 Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control.“ OCTOBER 59, (1992) 3-7.
6 Kammerer. Bilder der Überwachung, 136.
7 Ibid., 20.
8 Ibid., 33.
9 See also: Dietmar Kammerer, “Police Use of Public Video Surveillance in Germany from 1956:
Management of Traffic, Repression of Flows, Persuasion of Offenders.“ Surveillance & Society 6 (1),
(2009), 43-47.
10 Kammerer. Bilder der Überwachung, 67.
11 Ibid., 143.
160
evident that such an arrangement is creating its own blind spots, first, because the observer
can only focus on either the overview or the detail and might therefore miss something
important, and, second, because the technology is not transparent. The surveillance images do
not convey a coherent picture of the controlled space.
Kammerer underscores the ambivalences and difficulties of the controlling gaze 12 by
pointing out that what is actually seen is not simply determined by the image on the monitor.
It depends also on the cognitive synthesis performed by the attentive observer. In order to
assess correctly what is happening beyond the scope of the camera’s gaze, he or she has to
know the real physical space and the blind spots of the camera; he or she also has to recognize
the incidental within the permanent stream of boring images; at last, he or she has to identify
suspicious activities and eventually call for a police operation (which only rarely happens).
These acts of seeing are highly precarious and necessarily biased by subjectivity and
prejudices. Kammerer voices his doubts whether this fundamental problem can be solved by
face recognition and automatic recognition systems, as their respective software is far from
working reliably. It always contains a “technological bias.”13 Another set of problems stems
from the dubious legal status of surveillance images. Since digital images are always exposed
to the danger of being manipulated and never showing the entire scene, their value as pieces
of evidence seems at least ambiguous. Consequently, the archiving and processing of
surveillance images has always been subject to procedures of authentication. Moreover,
Kammerer emphasizes that the scopic regime of surveillance does not work unilaterally. The
observers and the police officers are also observed by the camera system. Ironically, this
observation of the observer quite directly affects the way in which police officers work, as they
think that their actions have to “look right” on the video.14
All these detailed descriptions indicate that CCTV is neither an efficient technology nor
a reliable tool for crime prevention and detection. Moreover, official and non-governmental
evaluations have shown that CCTV does not fulfill the two fundamental promises that are
propagated by politics and media. First, the positive impact of CCTV on the crime rate is
relatively low and varies according to the kind of offense and, second, the inhabitant’s
subjective feeling of safety is not increased.15 Generally, the biggest effect of video surveillance
results from its initial symbolic power. Newly installed, the cameras are perceived as
operating properly, i.e., immediately repressive, although their effectiveness declines as soon
as people get used to it. The power of CCTV is thus partly based on the lack of knowledge
about its actual effects.16 Considering the failure of CCTV, Kammerer poses the reasonable
question why this technology is still regarded by both experts and the wider public as a
reliable instrument of crime prevention and public safety. In surveillance studies, this
phenomenon is mostly attributed to a broader transformation of society, like the advent of an
“information society” or “risk society,” or to a paradigmatic shift in crime and city policy.
Beyond these classical sociological approaches, Kammerer claims that the wide acceptance of
CCTV is also the result of a cultural image machine that puts visual observation in a certain
light and helps to create a “myth” (Barthes) of surveillance.
This “image of surveillance” in popular culture is the subject of the second, shorter part
12 Ibid., 56 ff.
13 Ibid., 200.
14 Ibid., 152.
15 Ibid., 74, 79.
16 Ibid., 83.
161
Prinz: review of Bilder der Überwachung
of the book. According to Kammerer, the modern iconology of surveillance is still primarily
shaped by the classical symbol of the divine eye that is simultaneously protective and
repressive.17 As video surveillance appears to be more effective when the citizens are
reminded that they are being watched, state authorities try to multiply the visibility of
cameras by signs and pictograms that use the icon of the eye to indicate the presence of CCTV.
These short messages perform the paradoxical task of communicating simultaneously a
feeling of safety and of posing a threat to potential criminals. Apart from these
representations of CCTV in public space, surveillance is also a subject of pop cultural imagery.
Fashion advertisements make use of the aesthetics of surveillance images by using bluish and
coarse-grained photographs that reveal models seemingly “caught in the act.” Other
advertisement strategies capitalize on the myth of the omnipresent surveillance camera by
using such slogans as “You are on a video camera an average of 10 times a day. Are you
dressed for it?”18 This new “paranoid chic”19 is equally communicated by pop music,
architecture, TV, and cinema. Kammerer claims that the “spectacle of surveillance” has a great
impact on how surveillance is actually experienced in public space: the “image of
surveillance” conditions “surveillance images.”20 However, Kammerer keeps a distance from
the simple thesis that Cinema, Reality-TV, and Real-Crime formats encourage a new
voyeurism and narcissism, thereby provoking an expansion of video surveillance.21 He argues
for a close analysis of the ways in which the media are making surveillance popular and of
their actual effects on the collective imaginary and power relations. Consequently, he reads
four Hollywood films which deal with the impact surveillance has on the process of
subjectivation. Whereas in Truman Show and Enemy of State the protagonist himself comes to
realize that he lives in a self-referential universe of total surveillance without an outside,
Minority Report and Panic Room are about the ambivalence between the wish for protection and
the actual threat that results from total observation. Other short case studies focus on how
certain surveillance images acquire a life of their own in mass media’s depiction of certain
spectacular crimes. Ironically, these icons of surveillance imagery did not really help to solve
the case or prevent the crime. Nevertheless, they served as potent justifications for the
expansion of CCTV. Finally, in the last chapter, Kammerer discusses some critical strategies
which may subvert the dispositif of surveillance. Usually, these maneuvers try to destruct the
machinery of observation from the inside by confronting it with acts of counter-surveillance or
by sabotaging the cameras, misusing surveillance images, and hacking the digital networks of
the monitoring system. Predictably, Kammerer arrives at the Foucauldian formula that there
is no outside to power. As these kinds of critical practice are operating on an immanent level,
they simultaneously react to and perpetuate the always changing modulations of the dispositif
of surveillance.22 Thus, the dispositif will not be eliminated but reproduced ad infinitum.
One of the main virtues of the book lies in its high level of information. In contrast to
the more theoretical emphasis one can find in Cultural Studies, Kammerer provides detailed
17 Ibid., 227.
18 Ibid., 259.
19 See Eric Howeler, “Anxious Architectures - the Aesthetics of Surveillance.“Archis 3, (2002): 11-20.
20 Ibid., 268.
21 See, eg., Thomas Mathiesen, “The viewer society: Michel Foucault’s Panopticon Revisited ,“
Theoretical Criminology 1 (2), (1997), 215-234 and David Lyon, “9/11, Synopticon, and Scopophilia:
Watching and Being Watched,“ in: Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson (eds.),The New Politics of
Surveillance and Visibility (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 35-54.
22 Ibid., 342.
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accounts of the actual historical, technological and cultural development of surveillance. Of

particular strength is his sensitivity for the paradoxical effects of technology and the way he
analyzes image production and control room practice. The close analysis reveals that vision
and observation, far from being just a question of optical processes, are based on practices that
are culturally contingent. They are also dependent on heterogeneous elements, including
architectural settings, artifacts, subject positions and the interplay of visibility and
intransparency. Another strong point is Kammerer’s central argument that surveillance is
more than just a rationally organized scopic regime or a technology that advances step by step.
Central to its functioning is the nature of the visual spectacle as well as the imaginary of the
mass media. Putting so much emphasis on the irrational and phantasmagoric aspects of the
society of control causes some important theoretical and empirical shifts in the discourse on
surveillance. However, the reader feels sometimes at a loss in following up the main line of
argument or in identifying the general analytical structure of the book. Nowhere in the entire
study are its heuristic and methodological tools or the historical and empirical sources
explicitly stated. While each chapter is devoted to a certain aspect of surveillance, the
connection between them remains quite loose. For example, it never becomes clear how the
Deleuzian paradigm of control has to be expanded in order to grasp the imaginary and
spectacular dimensions of surveillance. Nor do we ever learn how the (pop) cultural
imaginary and the technological or material set-ups affect each other precisely. Still, Bilder der
Überwachung is well worth reading because of the extensive overview it gives of all the
heterogeneous aspects which, taken together, constitute the paranoid living conditions of the
surveillance society. How this power/knowledge can be transcended is, as it were, another
story.
Sophia Prinz, Research Assistant, University of Constance, Germany.
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Antonio Donato 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Pierre Hadot, The Present Alone is Our Happiness: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and
Arnold I. Davidson. Translated by Marc Djaballah (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2009), ISBN: 978-0804748353
This book contains a series of interviews conducted by J. Carlier and A. I. Davidson with Pierre
Hadot, the famous French scholar of ancient philosophy. The interviews are arranged in ten
chapters; the first two offer a short “intellectual biography” of Hadot; the remaining eight cover
those topics that constitute the hallmark of Hadot’s thought. The literary genre of the interview
makes the book very enjoyable to read, with difficult topics presented in a straightforward way
that avoids technicalities without being trivial or superficial. The book offers an excellent
introduction to the basic tenets of Hadot’s revolutionary interpretation of ancient philosophy and
arouses in the reader the curiosity to read his more scholarly works. The Present Alone is Our
Happiness is, however, not just an introduction to Hadot’s thought but also a learned and
stimulating discussion of the essence of philosophy. Intellectuals interested in investigating the
question “what is philosophy?” will find this book insightful. The breadth and engaging style of
The Present Alone is Our Happiness makes this book suitable not only for scholars but also for
students – the book would be beneficial for any “introduction to philosophy” course.
The Present Alone is Our Happiness can be read from many different perspectives. Those
who are familiar with Hadot’s works will find particularly fascinating the first two chapters,
which take us “behind the scene,” so to speak, to follow the intellectual and personal journey
through which Hadot came to develop his interpretation of ancient philosophy. The way a
scholar approaches a topic, the views he develops, and the style of research he employs are often
the result of the combination of a series of particular factors that are strongly bound up with his
personal life; this is particularly true in the case of Hadot, as the first two chapters demonstrate. In
the first chapter Hadot recalls his experience as a young priest in a seminary, where the religious
education he received allowed him to acquire 1) a firm knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin, 2)
a basic understanding of how to read ancient texts, 3) an initial acquaintance with philosophy. In
remembering his high school years, Hadot mentions a telling event, his 1939 high school
examination in philosophy, which consisted of commenting on a famous quotation by Bergson,
viz., “Philosophy is not the construction of a system, but the resolution made once to look naively
at the world in and around oneself.” (10) The enthusiasm, we are told, that the young Hadot had
in discussing the relevance of philosophy for our life can be seen as an early indication of his
inclination to consider philosophy not as an abstract enterprise but predominantly as an activity
that has an existential value. Hadot’s adolescence was also the time when he developed the
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Donato: review of The Present Alone is Our Happiness
profound interest in mysticism that subsequently led him to study Plotinus and Neoplatonism. It
is pertinent that Hadot’s scholarly interest in mysticism started when he was a teenager; this
interest was motivated by his experience of being one with the Universe - the impression of
“being part of a mysterious and infinite reality.” (8) The second chapter continues Hadot’s
“intellectual biography” and places him within a French intellectual context. Hadot focuses on the
significance of his encounter with the famous classicist Paul Henry, under whose supervision he
completed his graduate work on Marius Victorinus. Under Henry he learnt philological rigor and
how to read an ancient philosophy text with careful awareness of its historical context.
The initial two chapters of the book very effectively illustrate the relation between “Hadot
the scholar” and “Hadot the man,” but it is the remaining part of the text that is more thought-
provoking. Each of the remaining eight chapters deals with key philosophical issues that are
presented in such a way as to stimulate the reader to continue thinking about these issues rather
than to provide the final word on the matter. It is this capacity to stimulate the reader's
intellectual curiosity that is one of the main virtues of The Present Alone is Our Happiness. This
book, however, also does a fine job in challenging some of the common assumptions of many
contemporary philosophers. It advocates a way of studying ancient texts and of understanding
philosophy that is very different from that prominent today, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world,
which regards philosophy as a purely academic discipline.
The third and fourth chapters investigate the challenges a scholar encounters when dealing
with the text of an ancient author. Hadot wisely advocates the importance of taking into
consideration the literary genre employed by an author when studying the text of an ancient
philosopher, as the same philosophical view can be expressed in different ways depending on the
particular aspect of the theory that the author intends to emphasize. In antiquity, hence, the
author’s choice to write, e.g., a dialogue, as opposed to a consolation or a letter, gives us an
indication of what specific aspect of a given theory he intends to highlight. Hadot’s suggestion to
take into account the literary genre of an ancient text when we interpret it should be taken
seriously, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world where the tendency is to treat ancient
philosophical texts as if they were written by contemporary analytic philosophers, a practice that
has led to misleading interpretations. In chapter three Hadot also reminds us that many ancient
texts have a relation to an oral tradition that contemporary scholarship often overlooks. This is
particularly true for the scholarship on Plato and Aristotle; if contemporary scholars were more
attentive in taking into account the relation to the oral tradition of the texts of Plato and Aristotle,
our understanding of these authors would be enhanced. Chapter four directly addresses a
fundamental hermeneutical problem: is it possible to interpret a text objectively or is a scholar
irremediably influenced by his own interests, mind-set, and goals? Hadot provides a fairly
optimistic view according to which, although complete objectivity is only an ideal, a scholar
should and can aim to adopt a rigorous exegetical method that will allow him to reach a high
degree of objectivity. Hadot’s discussion of this issue might disappoint many readers; he seems,
indeed, to dismiss too quickly a problem which deserves more serious consideration.
Nonetheless, if we locate Hadot in the context of French scholarship we may surmise that his
position is more a reaction to the extreme views of some of the followers of Gadamer rather than
a fully worked out thesis on the issue. At a closer look, however, Hadot’s approach towards
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ancient texts contains a serious philosophical problem that needs to be mentioned. Hadot seems
to believe that the meaning of a text can be completely reduced to what the author intended to
say. The problem with this position is that it overlooks the awareness that the strength of
influential works consists in their ability to transcend their authors and their historical contexts. It
is by virtue of this strength that classical texts have been reinterpreted in such unexpected ways
by Humanists.
Chapters five, six, and seven discuss from different perspectives Hadot’s original
interpretation of ancient philosophy as a way of life. Hadot uses this expression to indicate that in
the classical world philosophy was not merely a theoretical enterprise but was also an activity
that was intended to lead human beings to transform the way they live and how they regard their
existence. Chapter five focuses on mysticism. Hadot recalls his studies on Neoplatonism and
explains that according to Plotinus, philosophy, understood both as a theoretical enterprise and a
way of life, prepares us for mystical experience. Hadot emphasizes that Plotinus’s mysticism is
only one among many different types of mystical experiences. Though mystical experience is
universal, the way it is described and understood depends on different historical and cultural
mind-sets. Hadot shows that, although different thinkers and philosophical traditions
(Neoplatonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Wittgenstein) disagree in the analysis of the mystical
experience, they concur in recognizing its significance for man’s discovery of his “true self.”
Chapters six and seven continue the discussion of Hadot’s idea that in antiquity
philosophy was a way of life. He employs the insightful Stoic distinction between “philosophical
discourse” and “philosophy,” with philosophical discourse being an abstract intellectual
enterprise, whereas “philosophy” is the “effective, concrete, lived” (94) practice of philosophical
doctrines. He views both philosophical discourse and “philosophy” both as being necessary for a
philosopher, with the latter having a predominant role over the former. According to Hadot’s
interpretation, the understanding of philosophy as a way of life led ancient philosophers to
develop a series of practices that he calls “spiritual exercises.” Hadot, however, is not the first to
use the expression “spiritual exercises”; he borrowed it from Christian spirituality and, more
precisely, from St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, who popularized this
expression. Spiritual Exercises is the title of the book written by St. Ignatius that outlines a
program of meditations, prayers, and mental exercises designed to help men to recognize the role
of God’s will in their lives. Hadot adopts the expression “spiritual exercise” with some degree of
freedom since he regards ancient “spiritual exercise” as practices designed to “bring about a
transformation of the individual,” (87) though not necessarily in a religious sense. Ancient
spiritual exercises varied significantly; some were purely theoretical (reading, discussing, writing
philosophical texts), others spiritual (meditations), yet others corporeal (dietary regimes,
respiratory techniques). Despite what some scholars suggest, Hadot is right in holding that the
expression “spiritual exercises” is the most suitable for capturing the variety of these practices.
What a reader might find problematic is not the expression used by Hadot but his discussions of
ancient spiritual exercises. Although he argues that in Antiquity spiritual exercises were a series
of very diverse practices, when he actually discusses them he mainly focuses on purely theoretical
exercises. Hadot gives the impression that the transformation required to lead a philosophical life
is a purely theoretical enterprise, i.e., a relentless and continuous rational investigation. This
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impression is furthered by Hadot’s recurrent example of the emperor-philosopher Marcus

Aurelius, who wrote the Meditations in order to constantly remind himself how to live according
to Stoic principles. Nevertheless, if we consider what motivates Hadot to choose the expression
“spiritual exercises,” it appears that he probably thinks that the transformation that allows a man
to lead a philosophical life requires theoretical as well as non-theoretical spiritual exercises. It is,
however, disappointing that Hadot tells us so little about non-theoretical spiritual exercises. A
discussion of the relation between theoretical and non-theoretical spiritual exercises would have
been enlightening and useful.
Hadot’s discussions of the status of philosophy in antiquity in chapters five, six, and seven
have the merit of making the reader aware that in the Greaco-Roman world philosophy was
regarded in a way that has very little in common with the one predominant today, viz., as an
exclusively academic discipline. In the discussion in chapters five, six, and seven Hadot contrasts
the contemporary way of regarding philosophy with that of the Greaco-Roman world.
Surprisingly, he fails to indicate the important conclusion we reach if we follow his argument
historically: philosophy, like all other disciplines (e.g., medicine, law, engineering, etc.) was
developed as an attempt to address some special needs, such as to live happily, to come to terms
with human suffering, and to find meaning in human existence. Thus, the problem with the
contemporary understanding of philosophy as only an academic discipline is that it completely
divorces the discipline from the purposes for which it was developed.
In the final pages of chapter seven Hadot, using the conflict between Humanists and
Scholatics to support his view, (115) argues that since the Middle Ages there has been a ongoing
conflict between thinkers who regard philosophy as a way of life and those who consider it as a
purely academic discipline. This historical claim, however, needs to be reconsidered. It is true, as
Hadot suggests, that there have been philosophers (like the Scholastics) who were accused by
their contemporaries of forgetting that philosophy cannot be reduced to a purely academic
discipline, but it is also true that these philosophers would not have accepted that type of
criticism. The consideration of philosophy as the “handmaiden” of theology did not mean that the
practice of philosophy had no existential value for the Scholastics. Thomas Aquinas, for example,
emphasized the importance of the study of philosophy for reaching the beatific vision. The
divorce of philosophy from its existential dimension seems to be a specific feature of our time, as
many of today’s philosophers find it difficult to accept that philosophy can be regarded as a way
of life. It is in light of this attitude of many contemporary philosophers that The Present Alone is
Our Happiness makes such a significant contribution to the contemporary debate on the status of
philosophy.
Hadot’s influential thesis that ancient philosophy was ultimately a way of life is not only
convincing and well-argued but also historically sound. There is, however, one additional
historical issue that needs to be mentioned. Although Hadot is right to claim that in antiquity
philosophy was mostly regarded as a way of life, he seems not to realize that in ancient
philosophy the relation between “philosophy” and philosophical discourse was more
complicated than he suggests. As Michael Frede has shown in an excellent article, in ancient
philosophy it is possible to distinguish different ways of understanding the relation between
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“philosophy” and philosophical discourse.1 The so-called “Presocratics” and, more specifically,
the Milesians regarded philosophy as a predominantly theoretical enterprise which has,
nonetheless, the practical purpose of understanding the world around us in order to alter it. It is
only with Socrates that philosophy became more overtly a way of life. Nonetheless, Socrates’
extreme intellectualism – according to which there are, objectively, such things as the just, the
pious, etc., that can be rationally discovered - still gives priority to philosophical discourse over
“philosophy.” Once knowledge of the virtues is attained, leading a certain way of life is an
inevitable consequence. Plato as well seems to consider philosophical discourse prior to
“philosophy” since he believes that knowledge of the forms constitutes both the condition sine
qua non and the reason for conducting a philosophical life. It is only with the Hellenistic schools
and, even more so, with the development of Roman Imperial Schools, that the priority of
philosophical theory over “philosophy” turns decisively in favor of the latter.
In the first part of chapter eight Hadot offers a brief but fascinating analysis of the way the
figure of Socrates has been understood by some major philosophers throughout history. Hadot
shows convincingly that every age had its own understanding of Socrates - i.e., in different times
in history the figure of Socrates evoked different meanings and interpretations. In the second part
of the chapter, Hadot examines how Socrates' idea that philosophy is, ultimately, a way of life has
been understood by contemporary thinkers. Hadot shows appreciation of the Existentialists’ idea
that philosophical investigation should lead us to “learn to see the world again.” (131) He
disagrees, however, with those Existentialists who argue that once we see the world in a new
light, we realize its absurdity, with such a realization creating a sense of “nausea.” Hadot
contrasts the Existentialists’ conclusion with that of the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus who claims
that the experience of seeing the world in a new light leads not to nausea but to a sense of
“wonder in front of the fact that the world exists.” (133) In the final pages of chapter eight Hadot
reflects on the relations between his view of the Graeco-Roman world and that of Foucault. Hadot
notes that, although he disagrees with Foucault concerning the method of studying ancient
philosophy and the understanding of the Graeco-Roman notion of pleasure, his notion of
philosophy as a way of life is closely related to Foucault’s idea of philosophy as the practice of
“care of the self.”
In chapter nine Hadot addresses the fascinating question of whether the teachings of the
ancient philosophers can still provide guidance for us today. He notes that the difficulties an
ordinary man of the twenty-first century has in following the teachings of ancient philosophers
are no different from those of men who lived in the Graeco-Roman world. Hadot indicates that
the main difficulty involved in leading a philosophical life consists in overcoming the attachment
to so-called “external goods” (wealth, power, fame, love of family and friends, etc.) that most
societies throughout history have regarded as the requirements for a happy life. He believes,
however, that the philosophical ideal of the sage, who is completely detached from “the world,”
serves as an ideal that is unattainable for ordinary people. Ordinary people should content
themselves with merely aspiring to be like the sage.
In the concluding chapter, from which the book takes its title, Hadot advocates the view,
1
Michael Frede, “The Philosopher,” in Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey Ernest Lloyd (eds.), Greek
Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 2000, 3-19.
168
common to many thinkers from the Stoics to Goethe, that it is only by focusing on the present that
men can be happy. Human beings are constantly torn between memory of the past and
projections of the future and do not “know how to recognize the infinite value of every moment.”
(165) The view Hadot advocates, though it rightly emphasizes that each moment of our life is
unique and must be valued, nevertheless presents a difficulty. Human history shows that great
cultural, social, and political advancements have often been the result of the dedication of
individuals who constantly “lived in the future” and who focused their energies on a world to
come, which they often did not live to see. Hadot does note that the concentration on the present
should not result in oblivion of the future, but he does not seem to fully appreciate the complexity
of combining these two different attitudes towards life.
The Present Alone is Our Happiness is an enriching book that forces us to question our fixed
beliefs about the status of philosophy and the attitudes people ordinarily have towards life. The
method Hadot employs, i.e., presenting his views not directly but through the views and words
of ancient philosophers, results in a text of depth and sophistication.
Antonio Donato, D.phil (Oxon.), Assistant Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy,
Queens College, CUNY
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Hilmar Schäfer 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Susanne Krasmann and Michael Volkmer (eds.), Michel Foucaults “Geschichte der
Gouvernementalität” in den Sozialwissenschaften. Internationale Beiträge (Biele-
feld: transcript, 2007), ISBN: 978-3899424881
Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer and Yves Winter (eds.), Gouvernementalität und
Sicherheit: Zeitdiagnostische Beiträge im Anschluss an Foucault (Bielefeld: tran-
script, 2008), ISBN: 978-3899426311
Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality defines a complex of heterogeneous

practices directed at the conduct of collective bodies and individuals, including their self-
conduct. It has resonated strongly in the social sciences, proving very powerful in the
analysis of neoliberal forms of government. Although research on governmentality has
been carried out since the 1990s,1 Foucault’s lecture series Sécurité, territoire, population
and Naissance de la biopolitique held at the Collège de France in 1977/78 and 1978/79, in
which he developed his concept and genealogy of governmentality, have only recently
been published in their entirety. The strong German interest in Michel Foucault’s
concept of governmentality is not least marked by the simultaneous publication of the
lectures in French and in German translation in 2004 (the English translation appeared in
print 2007/20082). With only archival documents and tape recordings to refer to, Thomas
Lemke laid the ground for the German reception of Michel Foucault’s concept of
governmentality in 1997.3 His book was followed in 2000 by a volume of studies on
contemporary forms of governmentality,4 which ultimately established the analytical
concept of governmentality in the social sciences. Since then, the production of literature
on the subject has been prolific.
The two German-language edited volumes under discussion here for English-speaking
readers explicitly relate to Michel Foucault’s lecture series and explore the possibilities
1 Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Govern-
mentality (Chicago: IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
2 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures
at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
3 Thomas Lemke, Eine Kritik der politischen Vernunft: Foucaults Analyse der modernen Gouverne-
mentalität (Hamburg: Argument, 1997).
4 Ulrich Bröckling, Susanne Krasmann, Thomas Lemke (eds.), Gouvernementalität der Gegenwart:
Studien zur Ökonomisierung des Sozialen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2000).
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Schäfer: review of Michel Foucault’s ”Geschichte de Gouvernementalität” in den socialwissenshaften
& Gouvernementalität und Sicherheit
their publication has opened up. Both volumes assemble contributions from the social
sciences with a strong focus on political theory and contend that the state has a more
important role in governmentality studies for Foucault than has been acknowledged up
to now. While Susanne Krasmann and Michael Volkmer have mixed theoretical and
empirical studies, the volume by Patricia Purtschert et al. focuses exclusively on articles
exploring the heuristic power of Foucault’s analytical categories for the diagnosis of
contemporary societies.
The volume edited by Susanne Krasmann and Michael Volkmer features international
contributions from America, Australia, Great Britain, France and German-speaking
countries. It is divided into three parts: Governmentality and State, Governmentality
between Sovereignty and Biopower, and Governmentality and Neoliberalism. The
editors assess the importance of the publication of Foucault’s lectures in two key
respects: first, they locate them at a point of reorientation in his historical interests, where
Foucault shifted from the analytics of modern power relations to ancient technologies of
the self and ethics. The lectures reveal the gradual process of this reorientation, in
contrast to the three monographs of The History of Sexuality where this shift appears
relatively abruptly between the first and the second volume. Second, the editors
highlight the extent to which Foucault uses his lectures to comment extensively on
questions of contemporary political importance, much more than is common in his other
works. Thus, although all of his historical work relates to questions of current political
interest, the lectures form a unique contemporary history as Foucault directly addresses
forms of neoliberal governmentality.
The key interest of the volume, and one that guides the selection of contributions, is to
explore the specific value of the recently published lectures. One section focuses on the
systematic modifications in Foucault’s theory of power by contextualizing the lectures
within the corpus of his work as a whole. This indicates Krasmann’s and Volkmer’s
interest in using the lectures on the history of governmentality to correct misunder-
standings or desiderata of the current reception of governmentality, a perspective they
advance with two main points. First, the lectures reveal that the distinction between
different forms of power is not to be understood as a logic of succession, but rather as an
area of conflict between sovereign power, disciplinary power, and biopower. Second,
Foucault clearly points out in his lectures that the state has to be understood as a specific
complex of practices in itself and has to be taken into account in the analysis because of
its specific relevance in the history of power. A further interest of the volume is to
continue the analytics of governmentality by working on the analytical categories as well
as undertaking material analyses.
Martin Saar’s article opens the volume with a very precise reading and evaluation of
Foucault’s lectures in the context of his wider body of work. Saar stresses their unique
value: they have no equivalent in the monographs, unlike Foucault’s other lectures.
Thus, they form an important hinge between Foucault’s analytics of power and his
interest in ethics, while at the same time they remain fragmentary and lacking resilient
connection to his late works. Saar identifies three main topics of the lectures: knowledge,
171
state, and freedom. He contends that the originality of the lectures is grounded first in
their account of the connections between political power and political knowledge;
second, in defining the systematic position of the state in the history of modern power;
and last, in understanding freedom as a medium and not as an opposite of power. Of all
the questions Foucault raises in his lectures, the question of government – understood as
a relation between conduct and self-conduct – forms the bridge leading to his late
studies.
Thomas Lemke reviews the contribution of Foucault’s analytics of government to

theories of the state. According to Lemke, their importance is founded on three
theoretical innovations: First, Foucault’s perspective is nominalist, stressing the
significance of political knowledge for the constitution of statehood; second, it uses a
broad concept of technology, encompassing the material and the symbolic as well as
political technologies and technologies of the self. Third, Foucault conceives of the state
as both an effect and an instrument of political strategies. On this basis, Lemke seeks to
expand and strengthen materialistic concepts of the state by inserting poststructuralist
elements. He identifies the theoretical profile of the analytics of government in three
specific shifts: from objects to practices, from functions to strategies, and from
institutions to technologies, which are further elaborated. In the Foucauldian analytics of
government, the interest moves from the state to practices of government that can be
analyzed in terms of processes of subjectivation, technologies of the self, as well as
material and symbolic political technologies. Lemke closes with a comparison of
governmentality with governance approaches, focusing especially on the latter’s
normative perspective.
Mitchell Dean5 starts off with an account of the historical circumstances that rendered
the concept of “governing societies” possible. He then characterizes its main features,
concluding that this concept rests upon two distinctions: an inner distinction between
the state and society, as well as an outer distinction between the state and its other –
whether understood as a society of states, the international community, or a state of
nature as conceived by Hobbes. Dean’s historical and theoretical account is well-
informed. However, his dreary and rather general conclusion, “*<+ the certainty we
must now contest is a form of liberalism so assured it drowns the concepts of state and
society in the great tsunami of globalization under the grey skies of global cosmopolitan
governance,”6 sticks out awkwardly, especially in the context of the thorough
investigation of the complex and sometimes contradictory elements of contemporary
governmentality in the thought of Foucault, an investigation achieved by some of the
other contributions to the volume.
5 As Dean’s contribution is a translation of the first chapter of his Governing Societies: Political
Perspectives on Domestic and International Rule (New York: Open University Press, 2007), the
English-speaking reader is best advised to refer to this publication.
6 Mitchell Dean, Governing Societies: Political Perspectives on Domestic and International Rule (New
York: Open University Press, 2007), 43.
172
A global perspective characterizes the article by Anne Caldwell, who focuses on Human
Rights Complexes (HRC) as a phenomenon of global governmentality. While the
increasing influence of Human Rights is generally seen as a shift from territorial
sovereignty to a global orientation towards the common good of humanity, Caldwell
maintains that HRC create new forms of sovereign power. Caldwell supplements
Foucault with Giorgio Agamben’s analyses of the connection between sovereignty and
biopolitics in order to describe how new and heterogeneous forms of transnational
sovereignty are legitimized relating to “states of exception.”
The wish to open and extend the analytical vocabulary of governmentality studies also
animates Susanne Krasmann and Sven Opitz, who confront Foucault with the notion of
inclusion/exclusion as elaborated by Niklas Luhmann’s sociological systems theory.
They fear that the analytics of government could remain blind to the phenomena of
exclusion since it focuses on power as immanence, leading to an inclusionist paradigm.
As systems theory fundamentally conceives of exclusion as inclusion into other contexts,
the study of intricate practices of in/exclusion could complement the analytical grid of
the triangle sovereignty – discipline/control – governmentality.
Petra Gehring examines the systematic importance of the juridic and a theory of law for
Foucault in her precise reading of the two lecture series. She finds questions centering
on juridical forms addressed in Foucault’s discussion of the complexes of security and
normalization, the problem of population, as well as pastoral power in the lecture series
Security, Territory, Population. In her analysis of The Birth of Biopolitics, she points out that
Foucault’s notion of “juridic technologies” remains empty; it is not dealt with as an
object in its own right, but merely as a foil that remains vague. Gehring draws the
conclusion that Foucault only presents fragments of a genealogy of the juridic, which
cannot be taken as a contribution to a theory of law.
Kevin Stenson7 employs Foucault’s analytical vocabulary of governmentality in his

empirical study of contemporary communal regulation of crime and public security in
Britain against the backdrop of the political and spatial turns in criminology.
Jan-Otmar Hesse evaluates Foucault’s discussion of German Ordoliberalism with great

insight. Based on a thorough review of contemporary research on Ordoliberalism, Hesse
comments on Foucault’s interpretation and corrects some misunderstandings in
Foucault’s reception, drawing the conclusion that his perspective is still very valuable.
Sophia Prinz and Ulf Wuggenig criticize the tendency of governmentality studies to
conceive of neoliberalism as a homogeneous entity. They aim for a more differentiated
perspective by emphasizing the heterogeneity and inner complexities of the neoliberal
paradigm. Prinz and Wuggenig draw on the German reform of the university in
7 As Stenson’s contribution is a translation of his article “Sovereignty, Biopolitics and the Local
Government of Crime in Britain,” Theoretical Criminology 9 (3), 2005, 265–287, the English-
speaking reader is best advised to refer to this publication.
173
connection with the Bologna-process to exemplify their points. Their convincing

argument demonstrates that neoliberal claims of regulation paradoxically result in top-
down-processes, a decrease of individual autonomy, a chastening of the market, as well
as an increase in the bureaucratization of the university.
Stefanie Graefe’s contribution is concerned with the German discussion on

“Patientenverfügung,” a document that enables the patient to regulate which medical
measures are to be taken if s/he is severely ill and unable to decide for her/himself, and
especially under which conditions a medical treatment is to be suspended. Graefe
sketches out the ambivalent notion of autonomy and subjectivity guiding the discourse.
Mathieu Potte-Bonneville discusses the notion of “civil society” in light of two

contemporary incidents, the French referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution
for Europe (TCE) in 2005 and the presidential election and Orange Revolution in Ukraine
in 2004. Against the backdrop of the Foucauldian discussion on “civil society” at the end
of The Birth of Biopolitics, Potte-Bonneville concludes that “uncivil sociability” guides
political activism.
The focus of the collection edited by Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer and Yves Winter is
”the political.” From researchers predominantly based in Basel, Berkeley and London,
these contributions are analyses of contemporary developments, centering on the notion
of security – a key concept in Michel Foucault’s lecture series. The editors give an
introductory overview on the development of the notion: In the course of Security,
Territory, Population, “security” is first established as a generalization of the notion of
biopower. In the third lecture it is then transformed and taken up by the notion of
government, finally being replaced by “governmentality” in the following lecture.
Although the importance of the term “security” decreases, the editors stress the specific
value of the concept as constituting the population as a complex of individuals in need of
protection, as subjects and objects of technologies of security at the same time. “Security”
is understood by the editors to encompass militarization and rearmament in connection
with biometric surveillance and alleged terrorist threats to society. In the name of
security, the relationship between the individual and the state is redefined in various
respects. The editors regard security not only as a category that legitimizes the
undermining of basic rights, it is also central to the liberal state as a pivotal form for the
rationalization of modern power. Accordingly, the editors argue against a decisive
rupture in this development marked by the events of 9/11. Instead, their choice of
contributions is guided by an interest in the transformation of the comprehension of
security, understood as a category that has always been central to the liberal state.
All contributions focus on contemporary “societies of security”, seen from a twofold

perspective: First, Foucault’s concept of governmentality is employed as a diagnostic tool
for contemporary societies; second, the analysis forms the starting point for a critical
reading of Foucault and possible revisions of his conceptualization of sovereignty,
disciplinary power, and government. Individual contributions deal with questions like:
How is the population constituted as subject and object of technologies of security? Who
174
is accounted for as being in need of protection, who or what is seen as a threat? What
does security mean? How is it distributed, in which way is it related to violence, and
which price is to be paid for it?
Susanne Krasmann’s article is concerned with forms of torture in the context of security
and rule of law. She argues that torture has amounted to a kind of normality in
connection with its privatization in the so-called „war on terror,” despite the fact that it
is constitutionally banned. This “practice of outsourcing” (Krasmann) enables the state to
exercise illegal power externally, not revoking but rather bypassing the rule of law by
rendering torture invisible.
Yves Winter also deals with the privatization of violence, here in regard to “new wars,”
understood in the sense of Mary Kaldor and Herfried Münkler. He asserts that the
discourse on “new wars” has primarily dealt with the question of historical uniqueness.
By contrast, Winter focuses on the privatization, individualization, and economization of
violence and the specific logics of risk and security, understanding these processes as
part of a neoliberal order of security.
Comparing “bio-preparedness,” i.e., practices of biosecurity in connection with the threat

of bioterrorism, in France, Great Britain and Germany, Filippa Lentzos and Nikolas Rose
find different logics in the conceptualization of threats and their defense. These can be
identified as “contingency planning” (F), “resilience” (GB) and “protection” (D), which
structure the different measures to be taken to obtain biosecurity. Pointing out that the
distinction between these European logics is not sharp, Lentzos and Rose also reveal
differences in comparison with American conceptualizations and measures. While the
article is mainly to be understood as an outline followed by more thorough studies
(sketched out by the authors), it also provides the following valuable insight: in spite of
global tendencies, the analysis of different rationalities of government still cannot ignore
the dimension of the nation state.
Katharina Pühl undertakes an overdue extension of the concept of governmentality to an

analysis of gender. She shows that neoliberal processes of (de)regulation of social
security from welfare to competition fail to change asymmetric gender relations because
the alleged gender-neutral economization of security results in discrimination against
women in connection with the reorganization of wage labor.
In her case study, Katherine Lemons analyzes governmental social security in

postcolonial India, pursuing the significance of religion in relation to the increased
flexibility of the judiciary and family law. Her contribution foregrounds the relationship
between neoliberalism and religion, opening up the discourse of this often neglected
category for further investigation.
Katrin Meyer and Patricia Purtschert take a close look at the mechanisms of Swiss
“migration management,” a term meant to encompass all technologies of government
that claim to govern processes of migration in the best possible way for all concerned. It
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can be shown, though, that the measures taken are part of a biopolitical dispositif, in
which laws are not broken or suspended, but rather employed in flexible tactics
oscillating between, on the one hand, flexible liberal law and basic rights directed
towards individual interests; and on the other, the fixed, legalist practice of the nation
state which promises security for the population.
Dominique Grisard analyzes the anti-terrorist discourse on security in Switzerland in the

1970s, underlining the specific value of the Foucauldian perspective. She points out that
a classical notion of the state does not sufficiently describe the intersection of public
administration, civil movements, the economy, and media coverage that constituted this
specific discourse on security. Thus, the problematization of terrorism can be identified
as the interconnection between nationalizing, subjectivating, and economic rationalities.
Sven Opitz starts off with a critical reflection on the usage of the notion of security in the
context of governmentality studies, first comparing modern sovereignty with govern-
mental logic and then Foucault’s conceptualization of security with the theory of
securitization established by the Copenhagen School. Opitz argues that Foucault uses
sovereign power only as a foil in his analysis of contemporary forms of power. In
contrast, Opitz suggests that by examining processes of securitization, the decentral
rearticulation of sovereign power could be rendered visible. This would open up the
analytical perspective on a unique rationality: “illiberal governmentality.”
Alex Demirović argues that security has to be understood as an effect of liberal

government. He contests a conceptualization of security within contexts of repression, an
authoritative state, or a state of exception. Instead, security should be understood as an
effect of liberal governmentality, consisting of technologies for the establishment of
averages, statistical norms, and expectation levels organizing and coordinating freedom.
Both volumes offer valuable contributions to the research on governmentality. Their

main virtue lies in the way their attention to Foucault’s recently published lecture series
Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics leads the authors to surpass a
simple concentration on analyses of the redistribution of risks in neoliberal economies.
One of the central shifts triggered by the reception of Foucault’s lectures is an
understanding of the state as a specific category in the analysis of government, and as a
correlate of governmental practices, without reducing political explanations to the state.
As is true for every edited volume, the contributions vary in quality. With few
exceptions, the more theoretical studies offer very precise readings and valuable insights,
indicating a high level of acquaintance with Foucault’s body of work, and can well be
recommended for reading. The best of the empirical studies produce a reflexive usage of
Foucault’s analytical vocabulary, showing that thorough empirical analyses based on his
concepts are still required. Generally, one gets the impression that the specific relevance
of “pastoral” power has been underestimated in these contributions. That concept-
tualization is central to Foucault’s genealogy of modern forms of government and
provides a specific link to his late work as it would have been basic to the fourth,
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unpublished volume of The History of Sexuality. Attention to pastoral power in

governmentality studies might prove to be a substantial field for further exploration.
The final remark is not so much directed at the two edited volumes themselves, but
rather at the body of research using the concept of governmentality in general. Michel
Foucault’s heuristic vocabulary aside, we might recall that the most vital and
fundamental feature of his thought is a specific analytical attitude, characterized by a
high degree of sensitivity towards the complexities of its subject matter, and a skeptical
perspective open to the contingent, the ambiguous, and sometimes the contradictory.
The greatest threat to studies of governmentality thus seems to be a quite different
critical stance, which makes use of the concept of governmentality as a ready-made unit
in itself, reducing Foucault’s analytical attitude to a mere analytical reflex.
Hilmar Schäfer, Department of Cultural Sociology, University of Konstanz
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Sylvia V. Morin 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
John J. McDermott, The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture

(New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), ISBN: 978-0823226634
John J. McDermott’s The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture not only
provides an aperture in the philosophical dialogue with Foucault’s thought, but it is first
and foremost a seminal work in the field of philosophy and the humanities as a whole. The
text is a collection of essays divided into five key sections: ‚An American Angle of Vision,‛
‚Environing,‛ ‚Turning,‛ ‚Bequeathing,‛ and ‚Teaching‛ that link the genesis of the
American project to a thought-provoking discussion of the pedagogical status of our
country and the author’s vision and hopes for the future. Through this approach,
McDermott weaves theoretical discourse with matter-of-fact anecdotes to illustrate his
ideas. ‚So long as I was able to marry the rich historical and philosophical versions of the
wisdom literature with an affective reconnoitering of my own experiences and those of my
family, my children, my students, and my friends, the pedagogy took place and the
possibilities for growth became extant.‛ (7) Thus, the crucial point for McDermott is the
‚reconnoitering of my own experiences.‛ In other words, he sets out to inspect, examine,
survey, and explore the American philosophical landscape not just through an abstract and
solipsistic discussion, but through what McDermott so aptly calls experience. In doing so,
he summons his experience both as a philosopher and as a teacher. For him teaching is a
calling that requires intellectual sophistication, which has an almost spiritual purpose and
McDermott is sincere in the undertaking of such an important task. Thus the mission of his
writing is ‚in response to the calling of the public.‛ (9)
So what does McDermott want to communicate to the general population? The
object of the missive is two-fold. First, McDermott seeks to contextualize and explain the
American philosophical tradition within the greater Western heritage, and second he
actively promotes philosophy as a cornerstone to the pedagogical endeavor and to
American culture. The purpose of elucidating some of the caliginous nooks and crannies of
philosophy is in order to create a new understanding of the country’s intellectual heritage
that may perhaps create a renewed sense of community, which McDermott at times fears
and doubts will happen again as it has been done in the past three centuries. ‚Eros‛ builds
the collective and allows society to come together not as a selfish Eros, but rather as a desire
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Morin: review of The Drama of Possibility
for self-preservation and continuity. But if the love of knowledge and wisdom falters,
McDermott fears the threat of an inconspicuous enemy, namely fascism. Fascism for
McDermott, like drug abuse, seems harmless initially, but soon the high of the substance
becomes a compulsion. This metaphor serves McDermott to illustrate how subtle forces
can threaten liberty when there is ignorance and a lack of solidarity among a country built
on the commitment to freedom.
In the midst of a pluralistic society that requires a renewed promise to community,
the response is often one of ‚indifference‛ or of ‚stereotypical ignorance.‛ Yet, McDermott
is careful about his approach. He does not want an added surveillance mechanism that will
normalize judgment, as was done during the eighteenth century when various calls to
reform punishment were put into place that resulted in the development of the penal
system and the disciplined and docile body, as explained by Foucault in Discipline and
Punish (1977). For McDermott, ‚The attempt to legislate moral sensibility has been and can
only be but a prod, a DEW line that signals the presence of trouble ahead.‛ (28) The
analogy of the DEW Line or the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations in
the far northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the North Coast
and Aleutian Islands of Alaska that was set up to detect incoming Soviet bombers during
the Cold War, a task which quickly became outdated when intercontinental ballistic
missiles became the main delivery system for nuclear weapons, encourages a wary outlook
on anything that has to be imposed by autocratic means. The codification of normative
behavior silences society when suddenly there are metal detectors in courthouses, hospitals,
and even schools. According to McDermott, these forms of constant vigilance are not for
outside terrorists, but rather they are directed to control what they perceive as local
violence, including crimes committed by children. Like Foucault, McDermott perceives the
watchful eye of the ever-present panopticon. Given the power of such a system,
McDermott urges the reader to be aware of that control and that instead of feeding the fire
through more regulation, society should instead seek to create acceptance by compassion,
rather than by legislation.
Having established the present challenge for the United States, McDermott moves
from a description of the lurking enemy of Democratic society to an overview of the
American philosophical heritage. He begins by noting the lack of overall unity that
characterizes philosophical pursuit in the United States. In fact, theoretical and abstract
endeavors have given way to experience instead of thought. Why is an empirical approach
now favored over a contemplative outlook? According to Daniel Boorstin, the New World
was more than just a place that provided new discoveries for the early pioneers. It was not
the awe-inspiring geography or the diversity of the new flora and fauna that led to such
revolutionary changes in the epistemology that came to characterize American philosophy.
What changed was the sensibility of how knowledge was acquired. Faced with a horizon
that seemed to stretch infinitely westward and confronted with what could sometimes be a
promising environment and sometimes a menacing terrain, the newly-arrived pilgrims had
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to choose action over the meditative philosophy of Europe. With that approach, the new
Americans made the westward movement an experience that permeated their very core
and shaped how they saw the world. ‚The wending of the West is an attitude, a reflection
of what Karl Jaspers calls an ‘epochal consciousness’…‛ (47)
Prior to the American genesis there were decisive changes in the Western world,
such as ‚the cartographical revolution brought on by the awareness of the new continent,
Protestantism, and Copernicanism.‛ (44) All of the changes brought about significant
developments for the American way of life as opposed to the historical and philosophical
continuity that characterized European existence. McDermott regards the novel American
approach as simply the continued transformation that began in sixteenth-century Europe
with the geographical upheaval. Given the task of creating a new society, emphasis was
placed on growth and change. Pragmatism took precedence over the lofty endeavors that
could easily be enjoyed by society in Europe, which had already reached ripeness and
maturity. As a result, the settlers of New England were more interested in the new
landscape and the possibilities that if offered than in reestablishing the weary systems of
the past. McDermott explains that
they opened themselves to new experience and, in so doing, saw the full continuity
of their doctrine, in time, beget the historical event that is America. If this
fundamental approach to experience is of critical religious import, as Protestantism
holds – or as John Dewey thought, as witness his plea for an ‘intellectual piety
towards experience’ – then in the most profound sense, the marrow of the American
tradition is religious in implication. (52)
McDermott reiterates the idea that the Protestant tradition of individual understanding of
the divine allows the American individual to interpret the creation of a new society as a
religious calling that then characterizes daily life with constant activity that is necessary for
survival and also as a fulfillment of God’s plan. American life thus became imbued with
enterprise and gave people little time to spare. Even though the nation’s forefathers lacked
time, they did enjoy the expanse of ‚space – organic, pragmatic space – the space of action.‛
(72) In this territorial frontier, the emerging American both perceived the landscape as an
‚Edenic garden‛ and at times as a hostile wilderness. As a result, there arises an
‚anthropocentric approach to nature.‛ Both metaphors place the individual squarely in the
center of importance, either easily yielding to dreams and desires or as a place to be tamed
and dominated. This inevitably, as McDermott highlights, leads to ‚a systematic
destruction of natural resources under the press of an aggressive and collective adolescence
in which liberation from feudal and antique political patterns generated a hostility to any
structure, even the rhythm of forests.‛ (74) If nature itself is seen as a tyrannical authority
that needs to be overthrown, then it should come as no surprise that American sentiment
has a general ‚disrespect for tradition and history.‛ (74) In closing this section of the book,
McDermott acknowledges the anti-intellectual attitude in American culture, but he does not
180
wallow in the negative aspects of the situation. Instead, he quickly moves into a detailed
account of what does constitute the American philosophical tradition.
Provided that experience is the element that establishes the epistemological
paradigm in the American landscape, the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josiah Royce,
William James, and John Dewey help to reconcile the empirical with the philosophical.
Both Emerson and James believed words created a ‚world of meaning.‛ The lexicon of a
society is more than grammatical links. Words are a manifestation of relations that proved
more than just a definition of a particular concept. For a community, existence is
experience through words as well and thus becomes emblematic in nature. ‚Parts of speech
are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.‛ (95) The
idea that language evolves into a metaphoric expression that separates itself from the object
it seeks to define is not entirely different from what Foucault expresses in The Order of
Things, where he states that ‚…the primacy of the written word went into abeyance. And
that uniform layer in which the seen and the read, the visible and the expressible were
endlessly interwoven, vanished too. Things and words were to be separated from one
another…‛1 As language unfolds and unravels, there is a certain amount of distrust in
language itself. For this reason, it is not surprising then for McDermott to establish
Emerson as an incipient radical empiricist within the expanding landscape. For American
thinkers like Emerson, the territory itself escapes the classifications of old Europe, given
that the flora and fauna are outside what has been known until then. More importantly,
however, the very spirit of the new inhabitants resists the limitations of history and
language and in turn creates a distinctly new relation to the land itself and with the rest of
the world.
McDermott, however, is clear in making a distinction between the forging of new
relations and the isolationism that often characterizes the United States. He does not think
it is salutary for Americans to be isolated from other cultures, beliefs, or ideologies if
Americans are to create a society in the most complete sense. In 1908, Royce, in his
collection of sermonic essays entitled Race Questions, Provincialism and other American
Problems, envisioned a ‚beloved‛ or ‚great‛ community that certainly would not thrive
through reclusiveness; only through the fomenting of a communal relationship would new
links and relations be established and serve to cultivate in society a new alliance of the
knowledge of the past and the experiences of the future. Just a year later, William James in
The Meaning of Truth states that ‚Experience, as such, is potentially pedagogical, if we but
pay attention.‛ (147) Each observation and step forward allows the formation of new
relational leads as the individual connects ideas and experiences to create meaning. With
each new association, the previously diminished capacity that had been constricted by the
‚self-defining, circular character of our inherited conceptual schema‛ expands with new
1 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage
Books 1994), 43.
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possibilities. The very idea that we must name, define, or catalogue knowledge should be
seen as a task of last resort for the purposes of organization. Experience should provide the
vagueness that allows questioning and a constant reconceptualization of knowledge. With
this assertion, McDermott explains how James subverts the supremacy of the Aristotelian
conceptual framework that had been inculcated and internalized in Western scholarship for
more than two thousand years.
This break with tradition paves the way for modern science as well as modern art,
both of which are no longer descriptive in nature but essentially relational. Movement,
possibility, and events are essential to the understanding of a variety of recent
developments in human learning such as modern painting, jazz, modern dance, and even
modern physics. Knowledge, according to McDermott, can no longer fit neatly into
schemata because nothing can be understood in isolation. Rather it is through relations and
the experience of those connections that new meanings are constantly created. Reaching for
definitive conclusions, naming, and defining are simply ways to provide the individual
with workable solutions within what McDermott terms as an ‚infinite abyss.‛ There is no
single approach or angle that will allow for a complete and total experience. Rather each
person bestows his or her contribution to the developing narrative ‚as to how it is with the
world.‛ Furthermore, each individual view of his or her surroundings is in direct relation
to how that world is perceived by the Other.
Such ideas are not entirely different from Foucault’s pronouncement at the end of
The Order of Things in which thought is a ‚certain mode of action.‛ In fact, Foucault states
that thought both ‚attracts and repels.‛ Knowledge or thought both draws in and resists
definition at the same time. ‚…thought both for itself and in the density of its workings,
should be both knowledge and a modification of what it knows, reflection and a
transformation of the mode of being of that on which it reflects. Whatever it touches it
immediately causes to move: it cannot discover the unthought nearer to itself – or even,
perhaps, without pushing it further away…‛2 Similarly, James, through his pragmatism,
creates the idea of pluralism. He establishes an obligation towards ambiguity and the idea
that there is no set definition or even a concordance between an object and the ideas that
attempt to describe and circumscribe it. A common thread could then be established as
being one of experience and of formulating links that create a new but constantly changing
system of knowledge. John Dewey announces that he wants to write about “knowing” not
as having access to concrete facts, but as a method that allows language to interact with
material objects, machines, and tools for the purpose of an “experimental transaction.”
McDermott acknowledges, implicitly for James and explicitly for Dewey, that knowing
becomes a series of processes and not an awareness of certain concrete concepts.
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After the first three sections of essays that explain the philosophy of experience and
the forging of new relations in the American landscape, McDermott embarks in what could
be termed as a shift to dramatic possibility. The last two sections, ‚Bequeathing‛ and
‚Teaching,‛ invite the reader to ‚live at the edge‛ and to find ‚surprises‛ and ‚relational
novelty everywhere.‛ McDermott emphasizes through the ideas developed by James that
nothing can be clear until each and every person expresses their own experience and every
possible relation has been made, which in a sense is a continuous and infinite task. With
this in mind, McDermott shifts to a collection of essays that focus on modern aesthetics. He
demythifies modern art by explaining how this new approach to painting seeks to fashion
novel ways of looking in order to articulate aesthetic values. What is innovative in modern
art is not what could be termed as something entirely different or the discovery of an
innovative painting technique, for example, but rather that modern art is a ‚metaphysics of
relations.‛ Being, substance, time and space, causation, change, and identity all then have
implications when viewing and creating modern art. The duality between the subject and
the object loses its significance in modern art because ultimately they are both abstract
formulations in what is really a ‚dynamic process.‛
Modern art is not only important for its relational quality, but it serves McDermott
as a springboard for both discussing the philosophy of aesthetics and for rendering concrete
the idea of forging relations. With respect to traditional art, ‚…Michel Foucault criticizes
the supposed one-to-one correspondence between our language and the object, and the
proper name, in this context, is merely an artifice: it gives us a finger to point with, in other
words, to pass surreptitiously from the space where one speaks to the space where one
looks; in other words, to fold one over the other as if they were equivalents.‛ (381) The
criticism made by Foucault resonates as well when McDermott acknowledges that the
multiplicity of meanings extends beyond art and into language itself. Often when words
seem to hinder expression, one looks for metaphoric forms of discourse. One employs
jokes, fiction, and poetry to express what one truly means because set definitions leave gaps
of possible meaning. At times, words themselves fail to convey the desired message and the
artist must turn to even more symbolic forms such as music, painting, and sculpture, which
allow for a different sort of rich relational experience. Out of this necessity for meaningful
participation in the creation and communication of knowledge, McDermott establishes that
philosophy and the arts are paramount in the creation of relations and that if the American
experiment is to have continued success, then as a society we must recognize the value that
these afford to us.
In the final section, McDermott concretizes philosophical discourse. His last essays
take on a very pragmatic approach. He laments that ‚…children are doomed to living
second-hand lives‛ (463) if they are not allowed to make their own meaningful relations.
The educational system has mostly failed American students as they grapple through a
system that seems to expect them to have a certain amount of cultural literacy, but does not
provide them with the resources for achieving such cultural literacy. In fact, critical
183
thinking seems to have virtually disappeared in favor of standardized testing at every level.
McDermott adds that the purpose of education is not to establish definitions that ‚exhaust
the meaning, texture, tone, or implication of that which is defined,‛ (465) but, instead,
teaching should involve the creation of an environment where ambiguity is permissible and
where doubt and questioning become part of the learning process. This seems very
idealistic given that many teachers are also victims of a skewed pedagogical training that
fails to show them the way towards creating relations of their own and focuses on teaching
them classroom management.
Even with such a grim scenario, McDermott does not bemoan the current status of
the philosopher, but instead clarifies the purpose of the philosopher, which is to provide
meaningful experience for the creation of relations. The philosopher and the teacher are
one, and philosophical discourse should reach beyond established academic circles to
mentor young philosophers and the general population. Though philosophy’s position is
in a precarious state in terms of it being regarded as useful and necessary, McDermott
believes that ‚somehow the philosophy crowd thinks that I’m less if I’m understood.‛ (480)
McDermott’s overall message suggests without pretense or condescension that American
society needs ‚a turning of the heart,‛ a teshuvah in order to redirect our efforts, not only at
understanding our tradition, but in keeping it alive.
Sylvia V. Morin, PhD. Candidate in Spanish Literature, University of Houston, Texas
184
Marcus B. Schulzke 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
John T. Lysaker, Emerson and Self-Culture (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University

Press, 2008), ISBN: 978-0253219718
In Self-Reliance Emerson says of original writings that “The sentiment they instill is of more
value than any thought they may contain”1 and the same could be said for Lysaker’s book
which conveys the sentiment of Emerson’s writings in a way that few academic books can.
Emerson and Self-Culture contributes to a growing philosophical literature on Emerson that
includes recent books by Lawrence Buell,2 Stanley Cavell,3 and Naoko Saito.4 It is a
welcome addition to the resurgence of Emerson scholarship and one that is distinct from
the others in its highly personal style. It is less a formal exploration of Emerson’s thought
than a meditation on self-culture that is taken up in the Emersonian spirit. Its focus is self-
culture and Lysaker says that it is the concept that interests him most, Emerson being a
particularly effective thinker through which to grasp it.5 Despite this admission, Lysaker
does indeed deliver a great deal of insight on Emerson, insight that goes beyond simply
using him as a means of exploring self-culture. Throughout the book Lysaker treats
Emerson’s ideas with a sense that it is the ideas themselves that matter most and not
Emerson’s particular formulation of them. This makes the book feel as though it is not
simply a commentary on Emerson but also a continuation of his thought.
Not only does Lysaker wish to push Emerson’s project beyond its original formulation, he
also gives the reader a sense of why Emerson is important, especially with regard to self-
culture. In the first chapter, “Taking Emerson Personally,” the author shows how to read
Emerson’s work as existentially relevant, not simply as a philosophical curiosity, through
exploring what Emerson would think about Lysaker’s own musical tastes. Such personal
commentary is normally out of place in a work of serious philosophy, but Lysaker’s
1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson's Essays, edited by Irwin Edman (New York: Harper Collins, 1981), 31.
2 Lawrence Buell. Emerson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
3 Stanley Cavell. Emerson's Transcendental Etudes. Edited by David Justin Hodge (Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2003).
4 Naoko Saito. The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2005)
5 Lysaker, Emerson and Self-Culture, 6.
185
Schulzke: review of Emerson and Self-Culture
personal insights are among the book’s most memorable passages because they challenge
the reader to make similar investigations while reading the book.
Throughout Emerson and Self-Culture there is a tension between expressing Emerson’s own
ideas and building upon them to arrive at new insights. Conveniently, this is a problem that
Emerson has already wrestled with so we can watch Emerson in the act of deciding how we
should read him. As Lysaker points out in the second chapter, “The Genius of Nature,”
quotation is problematic, even when one evokes wise maxims, because they are not one’s
own words. No matter how useful the thoughts of others may be, they discourage us from
putting our own genius to work. A person must strike a balance between imitation and
originality by following the insights of predecessors without losing sight of one’s own
contributions. In the investigation of self-culture this is the only way one can proceed.
Although Emerson gives many indications of what self-culture is, his explanation of it feels
like a deliberately unfinished project. Like Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and philosophers taking
a therapeutic approach, Emerson is not so much interested in espousing a doctrine as he is
in inciting readers to conduct their own investigations. “The address of an Emersonian text
is ever present, always asking to be taken to heart, to be taken personally, and in the
fullness of its responsive provocations.”6 Thus, Lysaker shows that his approach to reading
Emerson in terms of our own lives is the one Emerson would recommend to us.
Most of Lysaker’s book is concerned with showing what self-culture is and how it differs from
other forms of individualism. Self-culture is a radical concept because it encourages us to
question rules whenever they conflict with our own values. It confers upon us a nearly divine
power to determine value – the power to judge the world and praise or condemn it according
to our own standards. Neither the laws of man nor those of religion are laws that an authentic
person is beholden to without question. Emerson recognizes the potential criticisms of this
iconoclastic trust in the self and in Self-Reliance argues that, even so, trust in oneself should not
be diminished though it may conflict with religious doctrines and social norms. We must trust
our impulses, he argues, even when we are not sure whether their source is good or evil. From
this line of reasoning we can see that it was only a short step to Nietzsche’s position that our
capacity to create our own values should not be restrained by “herd morality.”
Lysaker chooses to refer to Emerson’s notion of individuality as “self-culture,” even though there
are more common words that initially seem synonymous. Words like “individualism” and
“private” have strong liberal connotations that mislead those trying to understand Emerson.
They bring to mind an affirmation of the self at the expense of others, or at least separate from
them, but Emerson’s self-culture differs a great deal from liberal individualism. The self that
Emerson deals with is one embedded in social relationships. Most important among these are
friendships; however, looser connections with other members of society and even the govern-
ment are also essential. Among the reasons why we must abandon atomistic individualism is that
6 Lysaker, Emerson and Self-Culture, 24.
186
the means by which we express ourselves are inherited from our predecessors. Our language, the
tools we have to realize our potential, and even perceptions are shaped by what has come before
and the context we are rooted in. As Lysaker puts it, “the self of self-culture neither stands nor
proceeds alone, but only with the support of others.”7 There is also a sense in which one loses
oneself to one’s own genius. We are not in complete control of our thoughts; they take on a life of
their own. “We do not command our own best thoughts, but they us.”
In spite of the emphasis on individuality, neither Emerson nor Lysaker wishes to present
self-culture as something selfish. It affirms self-trust while at the same time affirming the
value of relationships with others. In the second half of the book Lysaker explains how self-
culture is developed by our relatedness to others in friendship. Lysaker finds two reasons
that friendship is central to self-culture. First, it gives us a more accurate impression of the
world by showing us that it is not empty. Second, and more importantly for self-culture,
friendship challenges us to improve. A friend who is interested in music, for example,
might open one to new genres that would otherwise go unexplored. In the first chapter
Lysaker reflects upon his own musical preferences and sees how doing so propelled him
into an investigation of himself. In concluding his analysis Lysaker shows how a friend
might have the same effect. The reconciliation of individualism with the necessities of
group life is thus affected in the same way as in Aristotle’s in Nichomacean Ethics. For
Aristotle the deepest form of friendship is found in unity between two virtuous individuals
who associate for mutual benefit without either one losing indepen-dence. Yet although
friends help us realize self-culture, they are insufficient in themselves. So too are other
associational ties. Self-culture is thus a complex topic that ties together our own conscious
strivings to understand ourselves, the innate genius which at times seems to overwhelm
our consciousness, and our relations with others.
Lysakers shows that Emersonian self-culture concerns the entire being of the individual. It
is not the improvement of certain faculties, nor is it superficial improvement through
cultivating a better attitude. The transformation that Emerson recommends is a total
metamorphosis in which the individual is constantly recreating himself to affirm youthful
energy, resilience, and openness to new possibilities.8 It is the kind of radical self-creation
that was picked up by Nietzsche and became a dominant theme of existentialism. Because it
concerns a person’s entire character self-culture is a constant concern; it is made through
every action and inaction. Whether or not we are conscious of it, we are constantly engaged
in creating ourselves. What Emerson offers us is a way of making this process conscious
and an indication of what kinds of people we ought to become.
There are many interesting parallels between Emerson’s thought and that of other
philosophers and literary figures. Unfortunately, Lysaker does not speculate much about
7 Ibid., 38.
8 Ibid.,195.
187
Schulzke: review of Emerson and Self-Culture
Emerson’s influence, nor does he say much about his influence on subsequent thinkers. He
writes at length about contemporary interpretations of Emerson, especially Cavell’s work,
but does not have much to say about how other prominent philosophers understood
Emerson’s contribution. It may be outside the scope of the book to dwell on such
relationships, but it would be a valuable aid to understanding self-culture if they received
more explanation. This is especially true given Lysaker’s desire to explore the concept of
self-culture for its own sake. He admits that more is said about self-culture than appears in
Emerson’s writing and that it would improve the reader’s understanding of Emerson to
have some idea of what these other conceptions of self-culture are.
Despite Lysaker’s claim to be writing a book about self-culture, which only takes up
Emerson as a useful starting point, the book never moves far in a new direction. It remains
a work of intellectual history, albeit one that does not approach the subject in a purely
academic manner. Lysaker’s enthusiasm for taking up self-culture in an Emersonian spirit
and writing as though the idea mattered beyond the academic context is both a strength
and a weakness of the book. It provides new insight into the philosopher’s work and
distinguishes this study from other recent works on Emerson. Yet Lysaker’s approach also
deprives the work of a critical edge. He does not call Emerson into question, nor does he
have a basis on which to do so since the book opens with the assumption that the self-
culture project is a good one, only needing some further explication.
Lysaker’s inclusion of quotations from countless essays and notes reveals his knowledge of
Emerson’s work and gives the reader a large supply of profound ideas to reflect on. There
is, however, one difficulty with the breadth of the study. By building the concept of self-
culture from an array of Emerson’s writings, including unpublished work, there is little
sense of how Emerson’s idea developed and changed over the course of his writings. The
historical dimension is lacking, as are any biographical insights into what may have driven
Emerson to revise his thoughts. Using all of Emerson’s work to build a single view of self-
culture also makes the concept somewhat vague.
Emerson and Self-Culture is, as the title suggests, a detailed examination of one aspect of
Emerson’s thought and not a general examination of his philosophy. Through that concept
one gets a sense of the Emerson’s work as a whole because it is a recurrent theme
throughout his writings. Nevertheless, the book only approaches other areas of Emerson’s
thought tangentially and always through the lens of self-culture. Because of this focus
Emerson and Self-Culture is best suited for readers who are already familiar with Emerson.
The book is excellent for those who seek a deeper understanding of Emerson or readers
interested in concepts of individuality and self-exploration. It is essential reading for
philosophers interested in the renewed debate over Emerson’s philosophy.
Marcus B. Schulzke, SUNY Albany
188
Edward McGushin 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Paul Allen Miller, Postmodern Spiritual Practices: The Construction of the

Subject and the Reception of Plato in Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault (Columbus,
OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2007), ISBN: 978-0814210703
Paul Allen Miller argues for two original and important claims in Postmodern
Spiritual Practices. First that French postmodern thought cannot be fully compre-
hended without taking account of its deep and continuing engagement with the
texts of classical antiquity, and in particular those of Plato. Second, that this
engagement is not simply a matter of producing postmodern ‛readings‛ of Plato but
rather is what Miller calls a ‚spiritual practice.‛ In order to make his case Miller
presents careful explications of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault,
who each turned to the works of Plato in an effort to formulate a way of thinking
adequate to the problems of modernity.
Miller borrows the language of ‚spiritual practice‛ from Michel Foucault and argues
that the work of Foucault himself, as well as that of Lacan and Derrida, is best
described in those terms. Foucault's final books and lectures make the case that the
primary aim of ancient Greco-Roman philosophy was not to produce and transmit
systematic knowledge of nature and the self; instead, it was an askésis or spiritual
exercise that aimed at transforming and taking care of the self. Foucault stated that
his own goal in studying the ancients was not first and foremost to discover new
knowledge and create new theories, but rather to carry out his own spiritual
practice.1 So, while there is precedent in Foucault’s work for using the notion of
spiritual practice to characterize his thought, it might seem more controversial to
characterize the work of Lacan and Derrida in such terms. But Miller makes a
persuasive case that Lacan and Derrida turn to Plato as part of an attempt to
‚rethink the self and its limits.‛2 According to Miller, Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault
1 See, for example, the frequently quoted passage from the introduction to The Use of
Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, volume 2, translated by Robert Hurley (New York, NY:
Vintage Books, 1990), 8-12.
2 Paul Allen Miller, Postmodern Spiritual Practices: The Construction of the Subject and the
189
McGushin: review of Postmodern Spiritual Practices
use the work of Plato ‚simultaneously as a genealogical point from which to observe
the creation of the present and as a mode of access to what Foucault labels la pensée
du dehors, or ‘thought from the outside’.‛3 Accessing this thought from the outside
opens up the possibility of taking a different relation to oneself and to one’s present.
Miller writes that at a time when
religious fundamentalism has become increasingly the ideological correlate of a

world seen purely as a collection of instruments for advantage, in which
ecological disaster threatens, and in which the commodification of daily life has
become the answer to the problem of desire, the question of the self’s relation to
itself, and thence to the good, has never been more urgent.4
Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault turn to Plato in order to question and transform the
self's relation to itself. Thus, contrary to the way it is sometimes portrayed,
postmodernism ‚represents not the rejection of the classical tradition but precisely
its revitalization as a living means of thought.‛5
In his introductory chapter, Miller sheds light on the question of why the
postmodern reflection on Plato has been largely unappreciated in the American
academy. He attributes this fact to a cultural division in American life that has not
been felt to the same extent in French culture.6 Namely, French culture, and not just
the academy, defines itself in relation to classical antiquity, whereas Americans are
more likely to see the classics as little more than ‚an effete curiosity.‛7 Furthermore,
our rigidly disciplinary academic institutions inhibit dialogue among classicists,
philosophers, modern language scholars, and literary theorists. Few American
scholars, then, are properly trained or constitutionally inclined to pursue the
complex interpretations of Plato that inform postmodern thought. Consequently, in
American universities the works of these thinkers ‚are taught as ‚theory‛: that is, as
a body of abstract concepts that students can use to produce ‚readings‛ of texts.‛8
But such a view of postmodernism is, as Miller writes, ‚a disciplinary fiction.‛9 One
of Miller’s tasks in this book is to demonstrate that what ‚we call theory is a series of
ongoing debates about the nature of meaning, texts, knowledge, and subjectivity
Reception of Plato in Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State
University Press, 2007), 10.
3 Ibid., 11.
4 Ibid., 3.
5 Ibid., 10.
6 Ibid., 2-3.
7 Ibid., 8.
8 Ibid., 4.
9 Ibid., 5.
190
that extend from the Platonic dialogues, through Aristotle and Cicero, Seneca,
Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, and so on to the present.‛10
Chapter two establishes another thread in Miller’s genealogy of the postmodern

appropriation of Plato: the postmoderns turn to Plato as part of their critical
dialogue with the modernist thinkers who preceded them. During the first decades
of the twentieth century the ‚commodification of culture and the rise of market- and
media-based democracies gave rise to a widespread sense of disenchantment among
the writers, thinkers, and artists of the early twentieth century.‛11 Classical texts
served ‚as timeless myths or universal monuments‛ for a generation of thinkers and
artists whose role had been displaced and who looked at a world seemingly devoid
of any real, objective values.12 Miller’s gripping commentaries on Sartre’s, The Flies,
Camus’s, Caligula, and Anouilh’s, Antigone – three texts he takes as exemplary of the
modernist use of classical antiquity – are full of insights and rich contextualization.
Each of these proto-typical modernist works uses classical antiquity as an allegory
through which it can portray the ethical and political dilemmas of their present as
timeless existential truths of the condition of humankind. Consequently, these
adaptations of classical works are deliberately anachronistic. For example, their
characters express views and attitudes that would be unrecognizable to ancient
Greeks or Romans. Sartre’s Orestes, Camus’s Caligula, and Anouilh’s Antigone, are
depicted in modern existential terms as individuals confronting the dreadful
solitude of freedom in a world devoid of objective values or rational laws. The
concrete historical details of the original stories and of the cultures that produced
them – myth, fate, politics, familial bonds – are removed or reworked to suit the
allegorical aims of the modernist authors.
In Miller’s genealogy, Sophocles’ Antigone is the hinge between the modernist and
postmodernist encounter with the classical tradition. Anouilh’s controversial
modernist adaptation – attacked in the resistance press as a proto-fascist work –
raised the questions of existentialist ethics in the starkest terms: how can one
distinguish an ethical act of resistance from a fascist act of revolt? Is genuine human
action and community possible in the modern world? In Anouilh’s version Creon is
depicted as a calculating, utilitarian politician. He lives in a world of bourgeois
contentment and order and is resigned to the sad fact of political and moral
comprise needed to maintain the bourgeois regime. Antigone is heroic in that her
desire remains pure; she wishes to affirm something of higher meaning that remains
uncorrupted by the dirty exigencies of politics or the base satisfactions of bourgeois
materialism. The act she chooses, then, has nothing to do with the awesome fate of
10 Ibid., 6.
11 Ibid., 28.
12 Ibid.
191
the house of Oedipus, or even with fraternal love. Rather, she chooses it simply to
reject the inauthentic order embodied by Creon. In effect, Antigone’s choice entails a
rejection of history, politics, of utilitarian ethics and pleasures, of everything Other
than the pure self. In the end, Antigone chooses to act ‚for no one, for herself.‛13
But if this is all one can aspire to then ethics and politics become impossible because
futile. It is in part as a response to Anouilh that Lacan turns to Antigone in his
attempt to articulate an ethics of psychoanalysis.14
For Lacan, just as for Anouilh, Antigone is the tragic hero who refuses to give up on
her desire in all of its purity. As such she embodies Lacan’s ethical imperative of
psychoanalysis: do not give up on your desire. But Miller shows that Lacan departs
from Anouilh’s ahistorical and apolitical depiction of desire. Furthermore, Lacan
rejects the modernist's allegorical use of the tragedy and instead argues that
Antigone’s choice to contradict the law of Creon and Thebes
is not made in the name of abstract purity or empty self-assertion, as

in the case of Anouilh, but in the name of specific and determined
claims of flesh and blood that are rooted in the grammatical and
ideological structures of fifth-century Athens. The affirmation of her
desire cannot be separated from the tragic fate of the Labdacids.15
In other words, Antigone’s desire is constituted by the Other: namely, the law,
Creon, the tragic fate of her lineage, her familial bonds. The Symbolic order is
precisely that which constitutes Antigone’s unique identity by denying her of it;
Creon’s law is Antigone’s symbolic death. To remain true to her desire, her fate, she
must pursue it to her actual death. But, according to Miller, Antigone ‚represents
only the first movement‛ of the psychoanalytic ethics of desire.16 Lacan’s reading of
Antigone leads him to Plato's Symposium, where Socrates’ relation to Alcibiades is
seen as a sort of proto-type of analyst-analysand relation in psychoanalysis: ‚The
analysand desires the analyst’s desire, as Alcibiades does Socrates’. He wishes both
to be the object of the analyst’s desire and to desire what the analyst desires.‛17
Socrates, for Lacan, establishes the place – or the ‚no place‛ – of the analyst in
society. It is this disquieting no-place, ‚the thought from the outside‛, that is
necessary for a critical comprehension of the present and the possibility of a different
relation to oneself. Socrates ‚is the intimate other that reveals both what the
13 Ibid., 55.
14 Ibid., 65.
15 Ibid., 66.
16 Ibid., 131.
17 Ibid., 131-132.
192
community is and what it wants to be, without his ever being fully assimilable to the
dominant Symbolic structures that define the polis.‛18 Where Antigone’s refusal of
the Symbolic order of society could lead only to her own death, Socrates, as proto-
analyst, opens up the possibility of a creative ethical and political articulation of that
desire.
Lacan’s use of the Symposium launches a series of postmodern confrontations with

the works of Plato. Miller argues that Derrida and Foucault turn to Plato in part in
order to respond both to Lacan and to each other. Derrida calls into question the
attempt to fix a meaning in the text of Plato, claiming that Lacan has fallen prey to
‚Platonism‛ – the belief that a transcendent source of meaning, even if it is a primal
lack, can be rationally established. Derrida’s readings reveal how Plato’s texts
undermine all attempts to do so through the critique of writing, the experiences of
aporia, and the self-perpetuating, constantly mutating ‚method‛ of collection and
division presented in the Philebus and Phaedrus.19 It is in mediating debates such as
these that Miller’s training as a classicist is especially valuable. He is able to show
that both the psychoanalytic and philosophic positions are portrayed in the figure of
Socrates, who is able to shift from one to the other depending on the needs and
capacities of his interlocutor.20
Foucault, on the other hand, challenges the appeal to a core of desire that originates
history, arguing that the genealogy of ‚desiring man‛ leads to an experience that is
fundamentally Other, even if it is at the root of our present. The ancient Greek
experience is less focused on desire than on the mastery and use of pleasure, argues
Foucault. Further, Foucault is critical of Derrida for essentializing the texts of
philosophy. He argues that philosophy itself must be understood through an
archaeology and genealogy of the discursive practices that constitute it. Finally, of
course, it is through his reflection on classical philosophy that Foucault came to see
his own work as a spiritual practice. Miller’s reading provides another response to
those who remain perplexed by what they continue to see as a sudden break in
Foucault’s work. If we are sensitive to the central role of Plato in French postmodern
thought, Miller argues, then we will understand that ‚Foucault's final turn to ancient
philosophy in general, and Plato in particular, is neither surprising nor announces a
major break. It is rather part of an ongoing productive dialogue.‛21
Miller makes an important contribution to our understanding of the development of

postmodern thought in France in the twentieth century and provides a model for
18 Ibid., 132.
19 Ibid., 141-142, 151-166.
20 Ibid., 164-165.
21 Ibid., 229.
193
postmodern scholarship. He shows that the texts of Plato serve as a focal point for a
spiritual practice through which Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault engage their
modernist predecessors, each other, and their contemporary situation, a spiritual
practice that aims at fashioning a critical relation to oneself and one’s present. In the
end, I read Miller’s book just as Miller reads Foucault’s study of Plato, as ‚an
example of how such a critical practice of the self’s relation to itself, and thence to
the other, might be undertaken with the requisite rigor, diligence, and care.‛22
Edward McGushin, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy,

Saint Anselm College, Manchester, NH
22 Ibid., 230.
194
Antti Sadinmaa 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Mark G. E. Kelly, The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault (New York: Routledge,
2009), ISBN: 978-0203883747
Mark Kelly’s The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault embarks on the formidable task of
presenting Foucault’s thought as a coherent political philosophy. It is formidable because of
Foucault’s personal dislike of viewing his work as a coherent oeuvre, as well as the well-
known shifts that characterise the way in which his work developed. Nevertheless, Kelly’s
book manages to deliver on its promise and provides an interesting and convincing
reconstruction of Foucault’s political philosophy suitable both for beginners and more
advanced readers. However, the stated scope of the book naturally limits the way it deals with
Foucault’s less politically influenced writings, especially regarding his very early work. The
book is divided into seven laconically titled chapters dealing with key concepts essential to
Foucault’s philosophy, making it very accessible and valuable for those looking for more
information on specific elements of Foucault’s thought. In what follows, I will go through the
chapters in their chronological order focusing on what I consider to be some of their most
interesting or controversial claims. If the development of Foucault’s thought could be charac-
terised as a roller-coaster ride filled with abrupt twists and turns, Kelly’s main concern in his
book is to make visible the tracks that guide it and constitute the fundamentals of his political
ontology.
Although Kelly claims that the first chapter of the book should be considered the least
interesting in the book, I found it important because it explores the methodological
foundations of Foucault’s political thought, about which Kelly also makes subsequent remarks
in the latter chapters of the book. The first chapter provides a reading of Foucault’s
epistemology and ontological orientation, emphasising it’s their materialism. However, he
makes it clear that Foucault’s materialism is of a very different order than what is generally
understood as materialism, the difference of which is highlighted in Foucault’s archaeological
writings on the concept of event and statement. For Kelly, Foucault’s materialism of the
incorporeal provides an ontological basis for his entire thought. Furthermore, this materialism
is reflected in Foucault’s epistemology, which emphasises the violent interconnection between
discourse and extra-discursive reality. Ultimately, in Kelly’s opinion the notion of extra-
discursive reality with which discourse is in continuous contact constitutes ”a constant feature
of Foucault’s thought.” (29) Though this, together with his later remarks on Foucault’s being a
realist rather than a nominalist (86), might put Kelly at odds with those who tend to view
Foucault as social constructionist, I found Kelly’s emphasis on the materialist aspects of
Foucault’s thought important, especially against such interpretation that misleadingly
exaggerates the discursive construction of things at the cost of neglecting the way how, for
195
Sadinmaa: review of The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault
instance, power relations operate in a very material way and are irreducible to language.
The two subsequent chapters (chapter 2 and 3) deal with power and here Kelly provides some
thought-provoking claims regarding Foucault’s conception of power. First of all, Kelly sees
Foucault’s way of developing his ideas of power as, ultimately, a trajectory towards a future
theory of power, despite Foucault’s insistence on his method’s being opposed to theory.
According to Kelly (34), Foucault’s scepticism is not directed at the possibility of a theory of
power as such but rather on the possibility of forming an a priori theory of power without any
empirical investigation. In addition, in Kelly’s opinion Foucault’s account of power is ulti-
mately transhistorical. But this does not mean that power would simply refer to some timeless
substance existing outside history, but is instead something more complex than that. Kelly
acknowledges that Foucault emphasises the purely methodological role of concepts of power
and knowledge, but also points out how power is related to a Nietzschean ontology that is
based on a struggle between forces that form the conditions of the possibility of history. (39–
40) This means that power is in a sense transcendental since it ultimately refers to relations of
force that are in a state of constant flux and can only be studied through the different historical
forms they happen to take. Hence, changes in power do not happen at the level of its form but
instead concern the modes it takes during different historical periods. (40)
In the second chapter, on power, Kelly claims, in accordance with his earlier arguments about
the transhistorical nature of power, that Foucault’s view of power is ultimately coherent. Kelly
here devotes especial attention to repudiating interpretations of Foucault that emphasise the
meaning of the shift from Foucault’s views on power as warlike phenomena to his late 70’s
emphasis on governmental forms of power, most notably made by such scholars as Thomas
Lemke.1 Pace Lemke, Kelly does not see this as implying two mutually exclusive models of
power. According to him, the shift from power as war to power as games where the adver-
saries are trying to conduct each other’s conduct happens merely at the metaphorical level and
cannot be interpreted as a change in the models of power itself. Instead, what can be seen as a
basis for both modes of power can be found in the relation between forces as a condition of
possibility for power relations to exist. (58–59) Though Foucault drops the description of
power as war after employing the notion of government, what is at stake according to Kelly is
a more accurate re-elaboration of what was already presented earlier, since both war and
government ultimately find their basis in a conception of power as a clash between forces.
Kelly’s ultimate claim is that war and government should be considered as two different
perspectives on power, the former being macroscopic, whereas the latter is ”microphysical.”
(62) This move from war to government is correctly interpreted by Kelly as a result of Fou-
cault’s growing interest in the state and its role in the network of power relations, a concern he
had earlier bracketed when reacting against the Marxist tendency to privilege state power.
However, Kelly notes that Foucault’s way of analysing the state from a governmental
perspective is not intended to replace Marxist analysis but to function as a corrective to it.
The chapter on subjectivity (chapter 4) is aimed against such interpretations of Foucault,
1 See Thomas Lemke, Eine Kritik der politischen Vernunft: Foucaults Analyse der modernen Gouvernemen-
talität,(Argument Verlag:: Hamburg/Berlin, GE, 1997).
196
recently presented, inter alia, by Eric Paras,2 which tend to claim that Foucault’s later
philosophy is characterised by an abrupt repudiation of his earlier antihumanism and the
introduction of a subject somehow external to power. Though Kelly disagrees with Paras, the
main target of his criticism, is, however, Judith Butler, whose Foucault sees the subject as a
pure effect of power. Kelly locates correctly Butler’s (mis)understanding of subjectivity in
Foucault’s thought as originating from her tendency to equate subjectivation as an active
process of self-constitution with the passive subjection (assujettissement) to power. (87–89)
Kelly’s counter-argument emphasises the materiality of the subject by relying on a
Nietzschean-Deleuzian under-standing of the body as composed of a multiplicity of sub-
individual forces that are folded upon themselves in subjectivation. Kelly is quick to
distinguish Foucault from Deleuze though and emphasises how Foucault’s demand for the
promotion of new forms of subject-tivity is something different from Deleuzian
deterritorialisation, since deterritorialisation presupposes that individuality is something that
is harmfully imposed on us and hence ”*...+ constitutes a harking after an authentic existence
(103),” which Kelly deems as alien to Foucault. Instead of deterritorialisation Foucault, Kelly
avers, is concerned about resisting the ways in which individualisation is governed. Though I
agree with Kelly that equating Foucaultian ethics with Deleuze’s would be misleading, I found
his point here rushed, taking into consideration, for instance, the notion of an “outside
thought” that Deleuze considered to be one of the key themes in Foucault’s philosophy and
that also resonates, albeit uneasily, with certain Deleuzian themes. Moreover, it could be
questioned in my opinion, whether deterritorialisation really has authenticity as it goal. In
Kelly’s opinion, however, deterritorialisation is not compatible with Foucault’s interest in
exploring ”unlimited possibilities of perpetrating violence against reality.” (148)
Unfortunately, he does not elaborate the differences between Deleuze and Foucault any
further, which leaves readers interested in both their mutual points of convergence and
disagreements somewhat empty-handed. However, a critical and exhaustive assessment of
Deleuze’s way of interpreting Foucault is obviously outside the scope of Kelly’s book.
The final chapters of the book are devoted to resistance (chapter 5), critique (chapter 6) and
ethics (chapter 7). Here Kelly examines resistance as something co-extensive but transversally
opposed to power. He argues how one of the key elements of power and resistance is the
notion of will, which provides an element of unpredictability and purposeful resistance to
power relations. However, the notion of will should be understood in a relatively broad sense
since even the sub-individual forces that form the subject have their own “wills.” (118) Kelly
does not, however, dwell too much on this somewhat problematic notion, partly because of
Foucault’s own ambiguity and reluctance to elaborating his way of using the term. Most of the
chapter on resistance is devoted to the problem of co-option which Kelly identifies operating
in two different ways. In the trivial sense co-option refers to the fact how all of our action are
always born in a given socio-political milieu and will always be part of it. However, this is to
be distinguished from the dangerous form of co-option where supposed acts of resistance end
up reproducing or supporting the relations they were meant to challenge. Indeed,
distinguishing between emancipatory resistance and co-opted resistance forms the
fundamental task of Foucaultian critique. (123) Now, resistance as emancipation does not
mean getting rid of power as such but should be understood more narrowly as combating
2 See Eric Paras, Foucault 2.0. Beyond Power and Knowledge (New York, Other Press, 2006).
197
Sadinmaa: review of The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault
specific forms of domination that ossify power relations. This also means that Foucaultian
critique is hostile to all utopianism and does not have any need to subscribe to an alternative
vision. (132) Furthermore, critique plays a double-role depending on whether we are dealing
with macroscopic or microscopic resistance. From the macroscopic perspective critique has to
do with analysing power relations, which is a task Foucault assigns to philosophy as an
historical investigation of the relationship between politics and truth. From the microscopic
perspective critique is linked to ethical practice as a resistant response to forms of government
that strive towards the creation of new modes of subjectivation. Kelly locates two ways how
the concept of ethics is employed in Foucault’s thought where ethics is characterised as
“practices of self-relation,” as well as “permanent resistance.” (151) These two aspects,
however, overlap when ethics encounters politics and, in Kelly’s opinion, ethics, as deliberate
practices of self-formation, represents a solution to the problem of identifying subjection with
subjugation by offering alternatives modes of subjection without recourse to scientific
knowledge of the self. (158–159)
Despite its relatively brief length, Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault is a thought-provoking
elaboration of Foucault’s political thought. According to it, Foucault’s political philosophy is
fundamentally coherent and guided by a materialism that is aimed to correct the shortcomings
and misleading simplifications made in Marxist thought. Indeed, though Kelly explicitly
states how his intention is not to situate Foucault along the philosophical map, but instead to
provide a reading of him in his own terms, it could be argued that sketching the relation
between Marxism and Foucault’s political thought acts as an implicit motif in the book.
Unfortunately Kelly does not attempt to elaborate the kind of Marxism it could be compatible
with in a detailed manner. Another concern I had with Kelly’s book was that it does not
engage adequately with the relevance of Foucault’s political thought to our present,
characterised, for instance, by Deleuze as a shift from disciplinary societies to societies of
control. Analysing the benefits as well as the potential shortcomings of Foucaultian critique in
relation to our own present in a more detailed manner would have provided an important
addition to an otherwise informative and well-written book. Nevertheless, Political Philosophy
of Michel Foucault deals with one of the most important and immediate aspects of Foucault’s
thought in an interesting manner and will be valuable to all those interested in Foucault and
politics.
Antti Sadinmaa, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Social and Moral Philosophy,

University of Helsinki, Finland.
198
Philip Webb 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
REVIEW
Thomas Dumm, Loneliness as a Way of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 2009), ISBN: 978-0674031135
In the middle of the last century, American sociology became preoccupied with
anxieties about loneliness. The advent of the interstate highway system enabled
Americans to be tucked away into bedroom communities dotting the landscapes
around cities. This suburbanization and its correlating increase in the atomization of
the nuclear family precipitated much reflection on social isolation. The early 1950s
proliferation of studies on loneliness—e.g., David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, Paul
Halmos’s Solitude and Privacy, and Margaret Mary Wood’s Paths of Loneliness—
appeared as reflections on these trends.
This move was nearly coterminous with the advent of the concept of the nuclear
family in the work of anthropologist George Peter Murdock.1 At this mid-century
point, American sociologists regarded the nuclear family as a bulwark against the
increasing threats of modernity. For them, loneliness, or social isolation, was either
one of those great threats to family or an unfortunate side effect of modern life
against which family was a panacea.
In Loneliness as a Way of Life, Thomas Dumm continues in this tradition of linking

loneliness in America to the nuclear family. From his readings of King Lear, Death of
a Salesman (with Willy Loman comparisons to his own salesman father), Moby Dick,
Paris, Texas, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.E.B. DuBois, and personal anecdotes of his
mother parenting nine children, his wife’s death, travels with his brother, his
daughter leaving home, etc., family is at the core of his account of loneliness.
Dumm is the chair of Political Science at Amherst College and author of earlier
volumes of political theory, including Michael Foucault and the Politics of Freedom and
A Politics of the Ordinary. In this very personal exploration of loneliness, he shifts
from more structural/systematic understandings of loneliness into more idiosyn-
cratic, subjective, and existential accounts. In his frequent recourse to the first
1 George Peter Murdock, Social Structure (New York: Macmillan Co., 1949).
199
Webb: review of Loneliness as a Way of Life
person plural, Dumm tries to create a collective experience of which his anecdotal
use of his life and literary and filmic texts provide examples. This practice increases
as Dumm shifts between more analytic and more essayistic genres. Over the arc of
the book, he changes genre, style, and argument to move increasingly from an
analysis of the collective social conditions giving rise to loneliness to the existential
experience of it.
This tension emerges at the level of defining the concept of loneliness. On the one
hand, he talks of loneliness as a domain of life, a ‛structural situation,‛ (25) or an
effacing of public and private realms of life (29); on the other, he focuses primarily
on individual experiences of the condition and how loneliness is mediated in
particular lives. He believes that ‚being present at the place of our absence is what it
means to experience loneliness.‛ (16) This experience is not alienation or anomie; it
does not arise through negotiations of technology or capital. While Dumm puts a
social structural tint to it, his examples are about individual relationships. He never
reconciles the individualistic idiosyncratic propensities of the objects of his analyses
with the broader, structural claims. And more importantly, he demonstrates no
method, no possible synecdochic or metonymic relationships between the
fragmentary issues of individual experience and the nature of modern American life.
He explores this experience through a prologue on King Lear and an epilogue on his
personal experiences of writing on loneliness and four chapters ‚about how we are
in the world (Being), how we attempt to hold the world (Having), how we desire
(Loving), and how we suffer loss (Grieving).‛ (19) In the first two sections—
‚Prologue: Cordelia’s Calculus‛ and the chapter ‚Being‛—Dumm bases his
argument most explicitly on basic structures of modern life. Over the arc of the
subsequent chapters, he provides an increasingly subjective (and personal) account
of loneliness. Only in retrospect does it begin to appear that Dumm is working more
in the tradition of American belles lettres—the essayistic lineage of Emerson, Thoreau,
and DuBois—than in the vein of political theory. This retrospective realization
leaves some of the early chapters—especially ‛Being‛— not integrating well with
this more essayistic bent.
In the prologue, Dumm uses King Lear’s family as the locus of his initial analysis of
loneliness, but he is attentive to its concerns to broader questions of modernity. (13-
14, 15, 18) Yet, his interpretation of the play emphasizes the missing mother—an
absence that, he argues, permeates the entirety of the action, and thus implicitly
introduces his argument that the sources of loneliness are in the family. But
Cordelia’s negotiation of this absence and her father’s demands for a public
declaration of love create the conditions for eliciting Dumm’s conclusion that she is
our first modern person—she relegates a thoughtful, rationalized sense of love to a
200
private sphere where it cannot have a role in the public affairs of state and
succession. By asserting that such sentiments belong within a private relationship,
she not only affirms a modern public/private split, but also develops a sense of
individual autonomy. Yet in concluding this interpretation of King Lear, Dumm lays
a foundation for his argument to slide from a structural analysis of modernity to one
of the subjective experience of loneliness—he tells us that ‚Love is all we need to
overcome absence—and loneliness is the absence we cannot overcome. This is the
present in which we live.‛ (15) He shifts his discussion of loneliness from the
structures of modern life into the domain in which Cordelia had just relegated her
sentiments, the private internal workings of her family.
Dumm briefly brings the discussion back to the level of modernity in his chapter on
Being. In this most complex and most difficult of the chapters, he paints a forlorn
picture of modern life, in which the public/private distinction articulated by
Cordelia becomes completely effaced. (29) The feeling of loneliness, which most of
the text relegates to the personal realm of the family, becomes political in this one
chapter. ‚Loneliness thus may be thought of as being a profoundly political
experience because it is instrumental in the shaping and exercise of power, the
meaning of individuality, and the ways in which justice is to be comprehended and
realized in the world.‛ (29)
His political reading of loneliness draws somewhat peculiarly on Hannah Arendt’s

The Origins of Totalitarianism, though her The Human Condition (which does receive a
passing mention) would be a far more relevant text for an analysis of loneliness,
especially since Dumm does not explain how a discussion of totalitarianism accounts
for loneliness in American life. He argues that loneliness is an implement of
totalitarianism, fully extricating it from the familial realm; it (on Arendt’s account)
comes from ‚a condition of being superfluous that grows out of uprootedness.‛ (39)
To further explore this uprootedness, Dumm draws upon Arendt’s essay ‘We
Refugees’ and uses the status of being a refugee as an analogy for the experience of
loneliness. (44) But he does not make the argument that there is something inherent
in modern life that resembles the condition of being a refugee. This status is not a
model of modern life; just the effects of being a refugee are similar to those of
loneliness. While he starts to place the problem of loneliness into a public realm, he
pulls it back from being fully political; it falls back onto individual experience.
In his chapter ‚Having‛ Dumm argues that capitalism is a symptom of the lonely
self. By interpreting it as a sign of, rather than cause of, loneliness, he establishes a
framework in which loneliness arises through the personal negotiations of modern
family life and not from a common experience of modernity. In his readings of
capital and consumption as symptoms, he briefly discusses the commodification of
201
Webb: review of Loneliness as a Way of Life
the self, in which the self develops through self-possession: to be free is to be no

longer beholden (to own oneself), i.e., to be alone (70), but his analysis here collapses
being alone into loneliness.
While Death of a Salesman may justify such a reading of one’s role in a family, he
recasts Moby Dick as a tale of a sundered family. (85, 88) As in much mid-century
sociology, Dumm rests his sense of loneliness in family life. As he shifts discussions
to the locus of the family, his salesman father appears alongside the lonely Willy
Loman. Here we see the beginning, of what becomes a predominant motif in the
latter half of the book, Dumm’s own family dynamics.
As he moves into his chapter ‛Loving,‛ he places the discussion of loneliness

entirely in the nuclear family, including his marriage and a discussion of his mother
bringing up nine children. In his reading of the Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas, he
explores the nuclear family and its shifting boundaries of inclusion/exclusion and
the forlornness of a man who cannot fully integrate into his natal one (with his
brother) nor his conjugal one. Their presence is insufficient to overcome an internal
loneliness.
In his chapter ‛Grieving‛ we find the lineage into which Dumm imagines Loneliness
as a Way of Life falling, the essayistic tradition of American belles-lettres. His dis-
cussion of his wife’s death from cancer is approached through Emerson’s and
DuBois’s own discussions of the deaths of their respective sons. Here he asserts
connections between ‛personal grief and the world at large,‛ (134) though he
acknowledges that it is difficult to describe this connection. But the possibly
synecdochic or metonymic relationship is not fully explored. Does he smuggle in
some of Emerson’s transcendentalism to implicitly make this argument? What does
his grief for his lost wife tell us about loneliness in America? He tries to answer
some of these questions via recourse to Judith Butler’s ‛Violence, Mourning,
Politics.‛ However, his appropriation relies on a reduction of grief as relational to
grief as public. While grief may arise from an ‛I‛ losing a ‛you,‛ that bond is not
necessarily public; he effects that same effacement of the public/private split the
collapse of which leads to loneliness. Arendt’s effacing of the public/private split
arises through a totalitarian elimination of the social space of the public. But the
grieving loss of Dumm’s space does not 1) preclude some other presence in the
private, e.g., his children, and 2) does not occur in a place in which social space is
publicly unavailable. There remains the possibility of a retreat into a private space,
e.g., the haven of a nuclear family.
In his Epilogue, we learn that after returning home from a trip to Africa with his
brother, the process of writing became a means to understand the loss of his wife
202
and to embrace loneliness as a solace for the pain. One wants to like the text for its
seeming honesty and openness, but still there is a sense that he has withheld as
much as shown; the text reveals a discomfort with his own call for revelation. There
is a greater honesty to be found in his readings of narratives—Paris, Texas, Moby Dick
and King Lear. There is a tacit confession of a personal loss in these readings that is
very honest. As we learn how he understands these texts, we have a greater sense of
Dumm than in the controlled revelations of his family life. Lingering longer with
the pathos of these characters and less with his own family would strengthen the
book.
His structural reading of loneliness as a condition of modern life is the least

compelling, a weakness that makes the subjective readings of loneliness in Wenders,
Melville and Shakespeare stronger by comparison. And yet the effacement of the
public/private, which in Arendt’s reading of totalitarianism is about the elimination
of a public space for the social, becomes perpetuated by his making public of the
private, a propensity increasingly common with social networking, ‘reality tv’, etc.
Does the voluntary collapse of privacy produce loneliness? Perhaps, more
accurately, it arises from it. However, we remain unclear about the status of this
question and the experience of loneliness. We are uncertain because we are left not
knowing the status of the personal in a society in which the self is established
through processes of consumption and in which public space is far too subordinate
to the personal. Dumm moves too much in this direction and thus fails to account
fully for the presence of loneliness in American social life.
Loneliness as a Way of Life is a text in which the indecision of genre undermines some
compelling analyses, one in which the inability to articulate the means of switching
from an individual loneliness to a problem of modern American life undercuts the
sensitive readings of many texts.
Philip Webb, Lecturer, Program in American Studies

DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois
203
Sverre Raffnsøe, Alan Rosenberg, Alain Beaulieu, Sam Binkley, Jens Erik Kristensen,
Sven Opitz, Chloë Taylor; with Morris Rabinowitz & Ditte Vilstrup Holm 2009
ISSN: 1832-5203
Foucault Studies, No 7, p. 204, September 2009
CORRIGENDUM
Sverre Raffnsøe, Alan Rosenberg, Alain Beaulieu, Sam Binkley, Jens Erik Kristensen, Sven
Opitz, Chloë Taylor; with Morris Rabinowitz & Ditte Vilstrup Holm
In Trent H. Hamann's review of Edward F. McGushin's Foucault's Askesis: An Introduction to

the Philosophical Life (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), which was published
in Foucault Studies 6, it is stated in note 1, p. 126, that Madness and Civilization was originally
published as Histoire de la folie. That is incorrect, as the original French title in full was Folie et
déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique.
204

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Sverre Raffnsøe, Alan Rosenberg, Alain Beaulieu, Sam Binkley, Jens Erik Kristensen, Sven

We are very pleased to introduce Foucault Studies 7, which is a non-themed issue

The journal is steadily consolidating its position. This is manifested by a rising

In addition we have a number of special issues under preparation by experts in their

lization. Second, experimental friendship challenges excessive normalization of

norm makes it possible to distinguish normal and abnormal individuals and

Foucault’s view of normativity and normalisation are then contrasted by Habermas’s

Anthony Alessandrini’s article on “The Humanism Effect: Fanon, Foucault, and

Sophie Fuggle’s article “Excavating Government: Giorgio Agamben’s Archaeological

imminent future has since almost uncannily exerted itself as an indecipherable

The second review essay discusses two consecutive English translations of an

Subversive Friendships: Foucault on Homosexuality and Social Experimentation

Keywords: Enlightenment, Foucault, friendship, homosexuality, politics.

16 Ibid., 162. Cf., 160.

[T]he idea of a program of new proposals is dangerous. As soon as a program is

According to Foucault, homosexuality must provide a space for innovation and

20 Halperin, Saint Foucault, 100.

22 Michel Foucault, “Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity,” 161.

Pornographic Confessions? Sex Work and Scientia Sexualis in Foucault and

Keywords: Foucault, Linda Williams, pornography, prostitution

of Michel Foucault (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press,

employed authoritatively by numerous other scholars; however, I shall contest both

Scientia Sexualis or Ars Erotica?

And accompanying this encroachment of powers, scattered sexualities rigidified,

3 Ibid., 48 (my italics).

Granted this unprecedented importance, Foucault suggests that desire has

erotica would consequently be a deindividualizing practice. Unlike patients and

A special flavour is given to obscene films through the scrupulously realistic

involuntarily provided, and Sacher-Masoch was appalled to find a sexual perversion

have it? Is pornography primarily about satisfying curiosity or desire? Is porno-

Let it be granted, then, that pornography can serve a pedagogical function, as is so

16 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 54.

motivation or merely a side-effect. Since pornography tends to be repetitious, it also

19 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 21.

confessional but a ‚confessional frenzy,‛24 and ‚proceeds by soliciting further

To summarize Foucault’s understanding of this crucial Western practice of truth-

confessional according to Foucault’s analysis of confession? Contra Williams, I

Another way that pornographic performances may be constitutive of sexual identity

Most importantly, it seems to me that no one considers the majority of pornographic

whereas, as Philippe Lejeune has argued, confessional texts are to be understood as

In Venom, a popular selection produced by Vidco Home Video, ten porn

Along these lines, Williams interprets the pornographic representation of rape, in

Williams acknowledges that in most hard-core ‚confessions of pleasure‛ it is the

The Perverse Implantation and the Proliferation of Sexualities

Importantly, Foucault’s claim is not that sexualities or perversions proliferate within

sexualities. On the contrary, Foucault’s argument is that while sexualities proliferate

50 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 48.

‚type‛: heterosexual pornography featuring women with large, natural breasts.

confessional practice, my focus on consumption more easily makes sense of how

Normativity and Normalization

Keywords: Norm, Normativity, Normalization, Freedom.

I recently presented a conference paper in which I argued that Foucault’s

A norm is normalizing if, as noted above, it links the increase of capacities

irrelevant or dangerous; instead, its value in promoting practices of freedom can be

determines what is normal.8 Subjects constitute themselves and are in turn

13 Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 56-57.

view modern societies as being characterized by both disciplinary and biopower –

19 Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian

of ‚normative rightness‛ different from claims of ‚propositional truth‛ and there-

21 Habermas argues that what he refers to as ‚non-cognitivist approaches‛ are insufficient

of universality ‚makes agreement in moral argument possible in principle.‛27 This

32 Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 47.

constitutive of rational discourse as such) will constrain the emergence of liberatory