Subject: war
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 18:35:07 +0100
From: "Kevin Turner" <k.turner-AT-lancaster.ac.uk>


Hi all.

I have another question for you.

Firstly:

Clausewitz:
‘War is simply the continuation of policy with other means’ (Clausewitz,  
C. 1976 On War Howard, M. and Paret, P. (eds), Princeton: Princeton  
University Press: 87>.

Foucault:

'Should we turn the expression around, then, and say that politics is war  
pursued by other means? If we still wish to maintain a separation between  
war and politics, perhaps  we should postulate rather that this  
multiplicity of force relations can be coded – in part but never totally –  
either in the form of "war," or in the form of "politics;" this would  
imply two different strategies (but the one always liable to switch into  
the other) for integrating these unbalanced, heterogeneous, unstable, and  
tense force relations'
(Foucault, M. 1979 The History of Sexuality: Volume I, An Introduction,  
Harmondsworth: Penguin: 93).

And here’s the question:

Given the above statement, and given Foucault’s comments, presented some  
six years later towards the end of the essay 'The Subject and Power'  
(Foucault, M. 2001 'The Subject and Power,' in Foucault, M. Power:  
Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984 Vol. III, Harmondsworth:  
Penguin: 326-348.), concerning strategy, and his remarks, given some eight  
years later in an interview conducted not long before his untimely death,  
in which he stated that:

'[i]f God grants me life, after madness, illness, crime, sexuality, the  
last things that I would like to study would be the problem of war and the  
institution of war in what one could call the military dimension of  
society' (Foucault, M. 1989 'What Our Present Is,' in id. Foucault Live,  
New York: Semiotext(e): 407-415: 415)

is it feasible to say, yes or no, that, following the publication of The  
History of Sexuality Vol. 1, Foucault rejected the military model of  
discipline and the war model of power; that, in short, he rejected the  
"Nietzschean hypothesis"?

Regards – Kevin.



-- 
Kevin Turner
Dept. of Sociology
Cartmel College
Lancaster University
Lancaster
LA1 4YL

(01524) 594508