From: "Windsor Shampi Leroke" <029LEROK-AT-muse.arts.wits.ac.za>
Date:          Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:26:03 GMT + 2:00
Subject:       Re: feminists and foucault


How different would Foucault be from sociologists and historians, if 
his analyses of power relations (and he, rightly so, dismisses the 
concept of power), concerned themselves with the social 
variables of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and so on?? 

"The differences in power between genders is something that has been around for
a long time, much longer than the deployment of sexuality which F aims at
in Hist of Sex."

Is it not the case that this difference is essentially 
methodological??? It is a difference between Domination and 
Relationality, between Power and Power Relations, between Dialectic 
and Genealogy/Archaeology.

Both the concepts of power and power relations are 
inscribed within certain research methodologies, within the idea of 
social ontology. The concept of power serves the social ontology of 
social stratification, while power relations is reference to 
horizontal immanence. The methodology of the concept of power allows 
us to see relations of domination between different kinds of social 
identities, while that of power relations allows us to perceive 
horizontal relations of different strategies in the contestation of resources 
and interests. Thus to be gendered in power relations is an effect of 
these relations, and the same applies to the formation of other 
identities. In this regard, in power relations there are no pre-given 
social identities, such as class, race, or gender that dominate or 
are even dominated. Power relations, for Foucault, are not relations 
of domination; there is no social identity that is denied 
participation and self-determination in the constitution of 
social life.
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