Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 09:45:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael J Donnelly <donnelly-AT-hopper.unh.edu>
Subject: Re: Re[4]: what is bio-power?




On Thu, 27 Jun 1996, Joe Cronin wrote:

>           To Michael DonnellY:
> 
>           I see your point, and I'm sorry I used terms that you don't,
>           however I didnt have the texts i had in mind at my disposal
>           when I brought up the last question.  Nevertheless, who says
>           that the "grey meticulous" work of genealogy has to stay at
>           the level of particularity?  In "The Eye of Power," Foucault
>           claims that he stumbled uponm Bentham while researching
>           early-mid nineteenth century architecture manuals;
>           references to Bentham's Panopticon are found almost
>           universally in those texts, and they all refelct a similar,
>           utilitarian, or as Foucault calls it throughout Discipline
>           and Punish, an "economistic" rationality.  The disciplines
>           develop out of this rationality - they produce signs which
>           achieve a maximum of representation with a minimum of cost.
>           In other words, in accounting for the development of the
>           disciplines, one must also account for the fact that they
>           developed in response to a growing conception of the social
>           whole.  It's true that Bentham's device was not universally
>           implemented, but it appears that(Foucault holdsthat)his
>           rationality was.  This kind of analysis is not new for him,
>           of course.  For instance, in his earlier work (The Order of
>           Things especially) he claims that what makes evolutionary
>           biology so fundamentally different from the "life sciences"
>           of the eighteenth century was the use of "historical
>           development" as part of the argument for how a species
>           achives its design.  History has an ontological presence in
>           the principle of natural selection.  In adddition to the use
>           of history, Darwin used certain principles from political
>           economy, such as overproduction, and the principle of
>           scarcity, to voercome the argument from design, which rests
>           on an exteranl prinicple to explain the design of a species;
>           "Design" for Darwin is an effect of natural selection.  The
>           basic poiont is that a certain kind of rationality was in
>           place before this sceicne developed; so why can't teh same
>           kind of analysis be applied to the human sciences?
>                You may claim that genelaogy is fundamentally different
>           from, or even opposed to, archeology; I persoanlly don't
>           think it has to be - in fact, Foucault claims in a number of
>           places that one cannot study power relations without a prior
>           analysis of the rationalities of the mechanisms through
>           which power achieves its effects. (eg. in "Two Lectures")
>           This "prior analysis" is archeological.  What, then, is
>           unique about genealogy?  First of all, "genelaogy" does not
>           represent a method, but a critical stance.  In Nietzsche's
>           case, a geenalogy is a waging of war against Western
>           religion, sceicne, rationality, and language (any quest for
>           "being" in general).  EvenNietzsche conducts his
>           genealogical work on a braod level, seeking to root out the
>           moral impulse which lies beneath Western science and
>           rationality. The thrust of Nietzschean genealogy is to
>           throw off certain consumptive mechanisms of power.  what is
>           the critical bent of Foucautldian genealogy?  It's certainly
>           not Nietzschean, because Nietzsche was a romantic
>           naturalist, searching for a primordial "return to Life,"
>           where life can only be defined as the Romantiocs defined it
>           - as immediacy, as aesthesis, as raw experience that is not
>           mediated by "modern" rationality, thought, language,
>           "truth," culture, morality, etc. It seeks to "throw off"
>           certain schemes.  In Foucault's case, in his writings on the
>           "specific intellectual," which Barry Smart discusses, the
>           critical aim is not directed toward a global conception or
>           theory, but his "genealogies" of the discipliens are
>           tactics which can only be deployed on a general level, by
>           "the masses" themselves.  Marx, in fact, makes teh saem
>           types of claims - only the proletariat can "presribe
>           history's task," it is not the work of the "intellectual to
>           "presribe," but to describe.
>           The "jump" that you find problematic is so only if you have
>           a nominalist reading of Foucault.  The "jump" is warrantedd
>           if one seeks to understand a geneal phenomena from the
>           outset - such as the "Western" conception of madness, or of
>           the state as "rational," or as "rationality embodied," as
>           Foucault claims in Remarks on Marx.
>           Perhaps I missed  your point entirely, and I will go back
>           this weekend and re-read your articles, but I would be
>           intrerested in your commentary on what I just said.
>           __Joe Cronin
> 
> 
Joe, I have the impression that we are still talking past each other.  
What I objected to were formulations such as "the panoptic schema . . . 
was destined to spread through the social body"; "It programmes, at the 
level of an elementary and easily transferable mechanism, the basic 
functioning of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary 
mechanisms" (see Discipline and Punish, 205-7).  Perhaps by way of a 
shorthand such characterisations are apt.  My point was that what carries 
Foucault to them is no longer a genealogical analysis.  There is a story 
to be told about how the disciplines developed; or, if you will, how it 
came to be that "prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, 
hospitals, which all resemble prisons."  That would indeed be a proper 
task for genealogy, and others have tried to follow Foucault's lead by 
delving into the development of the disciplines.  Foucault for his part 
made an exemplary start; he didn't, however, in my view earn his 
conclusion in Discipline and Punish that the Panopticon "was destined" to 
develop into panopticism.

In sum, I still agree with what I argued in the Economy and Society piece 
(vol. 11, no. 4 (1982), pp. 363ff.).

					Michael Donnelly