From: "MRFanning" <MRFanning-AT-email.msn.com>
Subject: RE: Ever-Present Resistance and Cryptonormativity
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 22:17:16 -0400




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of Asher
Haig
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2000 6:21 PM
To: Foucault
Subject: Ever-Present Resistance and Cryptonormativity





The question that seems troubling to me is rather, why is that resistance is
ever-present? How do we know that there is a plurality of resistances? If
"wherever there is power there is resistance" (Not sure if that quote is
exact or where the source is) then the question clearly seems to turn to how
and where we can resist rather than why, but how is it that we can assume
that foundation exists?

***The way I read this is (pretty loosely) that we first of all have to keep
in mind that this description of power, its operations, relations, etc. is
itself historical, particular, etc. rather than a transhistorical (or
ahistorical)"law". So the claim that these resistances exist is an aspect of
power (which also needs to be understood in the way that Foucault is using
it) is a claim about the process of power's productive operation, which
would seem to make calling it a "foundation" a way of confusing what
Foucault's trying to describe with some older, more traditional models. As I
read it, to prescribe sites and/or strategies for resistance (where and how
to resist) would be self-defeating in so far as yesterday's site of
resistance is tomorrow afternoon's bastion of domination; or an effective
strategy of resistance in Paris is not an effective strategy in Tokyo,
Prague, or Phoenix. But rather than ramble on and on I'd rather suggest
"Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics" by Paul Rabinow and
Hubert Dreyfus if you haven't already had a chance to read through it.

rf
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Asher Haig           ahaig-AT-warped-reality.com
Greenhill Debate     Dartmouth 2004