Date: Sat, 20 Jan 1996 13:56:13 -0800
From: cwelch-AT-cln.etc.bc.ca (Colin B. Welch)
Subject: Re: ethics and poststructuralism


Recently, Gregory Coolidge wrote the following re: the apparent difficulty 
in grounding an ethic of resistance, through a self never removed from 
power. I have two specific problems with Coolidge's argument:

a) Coolidge continues to cling to a conception of power and freedom which 
Foucault denies. Only by ignoring Foucault's argument on power does his 
theory of resistance become problematic. Coolidge's vexation is a common 
issue in the "Foucauldian industry" (and appears inexhaustable), but I 
believe it is futile and unnecessary. Foucault argues that power is not 
merely negative, but is also positive and productive. (See the book 
"Technologies of the Self".)  But Coolidge falls into the trap of seeing 
power as merely negative when he says that Foucault "offers no uncolonized 
self removed from the influences of power". BUT THIS IS PRECISELY THE 
POINT... TO REMOVE YOURSELF FROM POWER, ACCORDING TO FOUCAULT, IS TO REMOVE 
YOURSELF FROM LIFE. Power is life precisely because it is productive and 
constitutive. This can be seen in virtually everything he wrote in the last 
10 years of his life. I believe that Foucault significantly helps focus and 
improve the liberal's debate on pos. vs. neg. power; it greatly expands the 
ideas of, say, C.B. McPherson and C. Taylor. Foucault's Janus-faced view of 
power is, to be sure, a real challenge to some.  Many refuse to believe that 
social discourses can constitute the "I", yet at the same time plant the 
seed of self-reflection and resistance. I would argue that the field of the 
"history of mentalities" in fact demonstrates this possibility.

b) Coolidge argues that Foucault has continually denied any "hint of 
essential humanness, or untouched self". Now, "untouched" indicates 
Coolidges' thorough, an unhelpful, belief that power is negative, as I've 
argued above. But insofar as Foucault believes that the self is grounded in 
a positive web of power/discourses, Foucault does indidcate resistance is 
"essential" (given the Janus-faced nature of power and resistance within a 
discursive matrix). For example, Foucault talks about resistance in a very 
Camus-like manner when he argued that the Iranians who fought the Shah 
demonstrated that:

        In the end, there is no explanation for the man who revolts. His 
action is necessarily a tearing that breaks the thread of history and its 
long chains of reasons so that a man can genuinely give preference to the 
risk of death over the certitude of having to obey.
                                (Phil. & Soc. Crit., #1, Vol.8,1981)

Remember , this resistance is NOT extra-social. It is based on the 
possibilities inherent on the productive nature of social power.

Colin Welch
formerly of Social And Political Thought 
York University, Toronto

  The problem with Foucualt's interest in self creation, that is, in 
creating a subjectivity that is partly one's own  making, is that he offers no 
>uncolonized self removed from the influences of power ( the subject of
> humanism) in which such autonomouss self creation is to occur. Such an 
>admission by Foucualt that any such essential humanness exits (be it reason,
> being, human nature, consciousness), would be an admission that his 
radically de-centered, socially constructed subject of theory is incorrect 
and flawed. 
> It would open the door for theories claiming that there is something 
natural, normal or reasonable about human beings and their behaviors.  Such 
an assertion is clearly what Foucualt hoped to counter by presenting the 
subject as
> entirely a social construction devoid of any essential humanness which 
defines its humanity. ........
 Foucualt 
>consistently denied, from at least the time of  'Discipline and Punish' until 
>his death, any hint of essential humanness, or untouched self, which acts as
> the source, at least potentially, of auotnmous actions.  Foucault is left in 
>his latest writings with a call for autonomy and self-determination (remnants
> of humanism's dream of autuonmnous human life), without any theoretical
> subject in which to ground such a hope. Foucault, is thus, left with a
> humanist project of securing autonomy and self-determination (that most 
human of attributes), grounded in a theory of the subject which denies that 
autonomy is a possibility,since such a subject is devoid of that essential human
> something that secures, at least potentially, its auotonmy.
>
>
 Colin B. Welch
 SD88
 
   CANADA  
 eMAIL: cwelch-AT-cln.etc.bc.ca   *  Phone: 1+604+
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