Date: Thu, 02 Nov 1995 18:04:14 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Foucault and Agency



Peter Campbell asks: 

>Who acts in Foucault's world?
>He is mute on this key point. When he speaks of the will to knowledge,
>whose will is he talking about? Society's? History's? Humanity's?
>

There is a certain irony to this question.  ok, yes Foucault was working out 
an analytical framework that did not privilege individualized subjects/ivity 
as the locus of agency/action.  so his "theory" which seems to be what you 
want it to be versus a "fiction" does not have all the answers; it does not 
try to smooth out/cover over the gaps, pimples, and stinky smells of a 
nonsubject centered analysis.  The value of this is in its power to effect a 
rethinking of a whole horizon of assumptions, practices, etc.  Is not this 
what was achieved?  his is not an attempt at an ontology of desire.

>Can we begin to formulate such an ontology of desire?

not from foucault. why bother? its not the point;  why criticize the stone 
garden for being a garden and for being made of stone when you wanted to sit 
in a grassy meadow by the river?  not only is it not his intention to make a 
metanarrative of power given his professed statements regarding 
theory/fictions, but furhter, i suggest that many ask what of F. can we make 
use of in terms of the politics of our subjects/sitautions of study; so, 
right there: a will to power that moves through a certain knowledge, both 
locally and globally manifest in and through individuals.  

 >>He frequently speaks of power as if it were capable of action. "These
>>polymorphous conducts were actually extracted from people's bodies and from
>>their pleasures; or rather, they were solidified in them; they were drawn
>>out, revealed, isolated, intensified, incorporated, by multifarious power
>>devices." (Vol.1, pp 48-49) How are "multifarious power devices" capable of
>>doing this? How is it possible that "power devices" can draw out, reveal,
>>isolate, intensify, and incorporate? How can the will to knowledge DO this?

who acts in "foucault's" world,? hm., well, lets ask his ghost.  but, it 
seems that various persons have provided foucaultian or foucault-informed 
answers to "who acts" in the strategic will to knowledge in scientific 
biopower:  e.g., Haraway's primate visions illustrates the multiciplity of 
agents acting, desiring and willing to know.  she amply demonstrates some of 
the multifarious power devices and agents caught up in a general, 
subjectless will to knowledge that she inspects via the plotting out of 
survial literatures, especially in the mode of primatologies.


>It seems to me that agency has almost everything to do with desire, and
>that desire is the principle driving force behind the will to knowledge.
>The real question is, Is this a universal phenomenon? 

Is your  "real" question, about desire being universal? or the will to 
knowledge?  I would rather ask how do such universally human and social 
traits such as desire and will to knowledge/power get shaped differently and 
similarly in and through specifically different historical, cultural, 
economic and political situations.  why universalize?  why ontologize? why 
make foucault a warden in your metaprison of metanarrative?

>Can we begin to formulate such an ontology of desire?
>
of course you can.  but be honest in elaborating why.  what compels the 
desire in you for an ontology of desire?

beast switches, 
Quetzil.



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