the subject within Foucault's mycrophisics of Power

Leuphana Universität Fakultät Kulturwissenschaften The Subject within Foucault's Microphysics of Power Seminar: Kulturphilosophie Sommersemester 2014 Dozentin: Kristin Drechsler MA Alessandra Carfi Spangenbergstr. 67, 21337 Lüneburg - alecarfi@yahoo.com Auslandssemester ohne Abschluss Matrikel Nr. 3020365 1 Summary Introduction .........................................................................................................................................3 1. Microphysics of Power............................................................................................................... 1a. Definitions....................................................................................................................4 1b. Power in its actual functioning.....................................................................................7 1c. Microphysics.................................................................................................................9 2. Criticisms.................................................................................................................................... 2a. Total Systems..............................................................................................................10 2b. Methodological Criticisms.........................................................................................12 3. A new Human.........................................................................................................................13 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................15 Bibliography.......................................................................................................................................17 2 Introduction In the following essay, I will try to enquire the status of the individual within Foucault's power theory and in particular the relative positions and interactions between those subject to power and those endowed with it. The question stems out of the reading of two of Foucaults's works: the monography "Discipline and punish" and the conference held in Bahia "As malhas do poder". The two date respectively 1975 and 1976, therefore they can coherently testify of Foucault's position in those years on the subject of power and social order. My first task will be reconstructing the major aspects of the theory, as it is presented in these earlier works. Such initial reconstruction of the theory will lead us to highlight the very question of the essay: it is in fact not immediately clear and may even seem contradictory how individuals and the network of coercive techniques and institutions do actually interact. How do relate the individual and the system? How do individuals, at the same time, undergo coercion from the system, take part to the system and pursue the ideals of enlightenment? In the following section I will try to analyse deeper this problematic aspect, in particular with reference to the an early wave of criticism contemporary to Foucault in the French area and to the later critic of Habermas and of Honneth, who systematically compared the social theory of Foucault and of the Frankfurter School. In the last section a possible reply will be addressed: material for it is to find in the evolution of Foucault's thought itself, as in various later contributions and elucidations from 1978 to 1983; I will refer also to the interpretation of Foucault by John Ransom, who takes into account the criticisms by the critical school as well. Summarizing, our critical path aims first at highlighting, then investigating a problematic in Foucault' s theory: at the end it must be judged whether the theory as a whole might overcome the doubts and the threat of incoherence; or whether the social and the individual must remain forever two poles, where no fruitful rule to understand the interaction can be found. 3 1. Microphysics of Power a. Definitions It is not easy to recall and summarize a theory that was never intended to be systematic: the question of Foucault's method, principles and foundation (or lack of them) has been widely discussed, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. In this essay Foucault's thought will be approached as a systematic theory, which is, however, gradually built up rather than plainly, neatly and at once presented1. Nonetheless, the task of summarizing remains challenging. Therefore two choices have been made: first, we are going to restrain us to a specific phase of Foucault's reflection on power, that is the years 1975-1976; secondly, we will use the Bahia conference as a skeleton, making then punctual references to the bigger monograph on prison, as well as to articles where other angles are highlighted. In fact, in the years '75-'76 Foucault tackles for the first time explicitly the topic “power”, after the historical studies on the systems of knowledge, on madness, on clinic and the development of the genealogical method, for which Nietzsche constitutes a fundamental source2. All of this prepared the theory of power, although Foucault himself came to admit: “What may I have been talking about in “History of madness” or in “Birth of the clinic”, if not about power? Nonetheless, I am fully aware that I practically never used the term nor I controlled this field of analysis”3. The turning point, which allowed the insight and rethinking of the concept of power, was the '68 movement: “...starting from the day-to-day struggle, lead at the bottom, by those who floundered within the narrowest maze of the power net. It is there that the concrete side of power appeared”4. Beginning with these stimuli, the approach of Foucault sets out as a research of 1 The above-mentioned elements of systematic theories like method, foundation are not first of all established and announce, but developed through decades of historical research and various stages of reflection, as well as through attentive response to criticisms with new research and new reflection. This includes, on the one hand, the successive expanding under different angles of the topic throughout his articles and interviews, on the other hand, the possibility of changes in the theory over the years – even in its principles. However, such proceeding is no sign of incoherence of thought, but of development of it; moreover, it becomes somehow a signature of the Foucaultian method itself. 2 Specific themes will be quoted, but it is maybe already useful to recall howthe theme of power and moral are present; and that they all mark deeply Foucault's approach. Cfr. in particular F. Nietzsche, “Genealogy of the Moral”, essay 1 and 2. 3 “Di cosa ho potuto parlare in “Storia della follia” e “Nascita della clinica” se non del potere? Pure, ho piena consapevolezza di non aver praticamente adoperato questo termine e di non aver avuto a disposizione questo campo di analisi”, Introduction/Interview to “Microfisica del Potere, scritti politici” M. Foucault, edited by A. Fontana, P. Pasquino, Einaudi Torino (1977), p. 9-10. The antology was first published in Italy in 1977, it collects works from 1971-76, it was agreed upon from the curators with Foucault himself, and it is introduced by an interview between them and Foucault. The interview also features in Dits et Ecrits, vol. III, p. 140 – 160. (Quotations have been translated in the text body for fluidity, the original has been directly quoted in the footnotes.Ed.) 4 "Non si è potuto cominciare a farlo che dopo il '68, cioè a partire dalle lotte quotidiane e condotte alla base di quelli che si dibattevano nelle più fitte maglie della rete del potere.E' lì che il concreto del potere è apparso” ibid. 4 the concrete functioning of power within society, continues through an historical analysis of concrete mechanisms of power and tries eventually to formulate a new conceptual frame for the category of power, at the same time criticizing the traditional one5. The text of 1976 starts precisely from such criticism of the traditional definition of power. The reference of such criticism is both theoretical and historical. Theoretically Foucault criticizes how the notion of power is always thought as negative, that is along the formula “you must not” 6; moreover, the same formula returns throughout different theories: as “repression” in the Freudian theory, as prohibition in ethnological research by Durkheim up to Lévy-Strauss, as “moral law” in the Kantian philosophy and at last and fundamentally as a formal notion of law in the jurisdictional thought from the XVI century onward. The problem commonly shared by all these theories is that they define and consider not power in itself but the “representational image” of it; even more accurately, these definition are all themselves imprisoned and acting, using another foucaultian expression, within the very same “discourse” of the power generating it. The full meaning and implications of this statement can be clear only when referred to the earlier results of the “Archaeology of Knowledge”(1969); secondly, one must highlight the following turning of such results to the theory of power in the “Order of the Discourse”(1970); the complex relation between power and knowledge is in fact one of the funding tiles of the theory. Discourse is that impersonal abstract network which links each and every enunciation as their condition of possibility. More precisely every discourse is actually a discursive practice, taking place within the dimension of a general history”; archaeological analysis “tries to discover the whole field of institutions, economical processes, social relations on which a discursive formation articulates”7. A last element hold discourses and enunciations together: archives, which are the meta-rules for discourse constitution. That is an archive is what decides how to decide, what establishes a criterion for truth. The notions of discourse, enunciation and archive do not refer only nor primary to language, but have to be understood within a history of ideas as the formal structure of systems of thought. The definition of discourse and archive rest upon a fundamental assumption 5 This passage from the interview offers a good example of the spiral movement typical of Foucault's philosophy. Many of the themes had been previously raised under certain aspects: the studies on madness and clinic were themselves for the content already studies about technologies of power. Then, followed the '68 insight, that is the turn to the concrete functioning of it– so according to his own recalling; according to Honneth, Foucault was forced to readdress the principles of his theory and thus reducing it to a single factor, so to explain the incoherences that the theory still showed with two equivalent factors of knowledge and power. cfr. Honneth, Kritik der Macht, p.170172. After the theoretical turn, the study of the techniques will be resumed and renewed with the studies on prison. However, the older works on the “archeology” of systems of thought are anything but left behind: system of knowledge and system of power will find a new common interaction and organization. 6 "Tu ne dois pas”, Les mailles du pouvoir, Dits et ecrits, tome IV, p. 183. 7 M. Foucault, Archéologie du savoir, quoted in http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/filpol/ktbo/2.html hosted by University of Bari. 5 of a structuralist semiotics: beyond any particular content, it is the structure itself to make “Sense”, as the whole of relations among the elements belonging to it 8. Such definition should allow to eliminate all reference to metaphysical or transcendental as well as to mysterious “thing in itself”. However, in the development of Foucault' s thought a point in particular is going to marks a distance with respect to structuralism. From the lecture “The order of discourse” onwards, the structural analysis of systems of thought is more clearly funded in that of power: the two social fields of power relations and discourses are not just corresponding, but the level of power is prior to that of knowledge, thus providing for a foundation of the “sense” external to the structure itself. Between the two there is a relation of production (from power to knowledge), and of stabilisation (of the power by knowledge)9. Such conglomerates of power relations and knowledge discourses are not absolute but historical: every age has its own diagram, so that “there is a becoming of forces which doubles the becoming of history10”. That is why it is possible to study and understand a discourse only when it is already past, when one is situated outside of it. The description of it is possible “only from the starting point of those discourses which are no longer ours; the threshold of its existance is established by the rift dividing us from what we cannot say anymore, and from what falls out of our discursive practice; it begins with the external side of our language and its place is the variance of our discursive practices” 11 Back to the definition of power in the 1976 conference, it is now clear why all definitions, which are juridical or whose theoretical reference is, cannot be relied upon because they are themselves a part of that self-referential network of discourses created by the same power they pretend to define. It becomes also clear that the juridical discourse is historically contingent. Consequently, Foucault then turns to history. Following his genealogical method, he relates such strong discourse dependence on the jurisdictional definition to the historical development of today's institutions of power: modern political institutions, law, jurisprudence and all other similar theoretical discourses have developed together12. 8 M. Foucault, Entrétien, La Quinzaine littéraire, 15 mai 1966, quoted by J.Domenach, Le système et la personne, Esprit, mai 1969. 9 Cfr. G Deleuze, Foucault, p. 80-93. 10 G. Deleuze, cit., p. 91 “il y a un devenir de forces qui double l'histoire”. 11 M. Foucault, Archéologie du Savoir, cit. 12 Beginning from the late middle-age the newly-born and developing national monarchies used jurisdiction as a tool to their strenghtening against feudal power; at the same time they used the law to represent their strenght. The passage of the jurisdictional to our time happen thanks to the bourgoisie. Also developing from the late middle-age, the bourgoisie used the law first for their trades, then at the political level, after replacing monarchy as prevailing force. “de sorte que le vocabulaire du droit a été le système de représentation du pouvoir commun à la bourgoisie et à la monarchie”. Les mailles du pouvoir, cit, p. 185. 6 b. Power in its actual functioning. Contrary to the traditional and representational discourse, Foucault intends to analyse power in its “actual functioning”13. The image of power emerging from an analysis oriented to functioning14 shows four main characteristics: power operates locally, originates locally, it has primarily a productive and inducive function, it performs through mechanisms which are out-andout techniques and together constitute a technology of power. The first formula summarizes that “there is no single power but several powers. Powers means forms of domination, forms of subjugation, which perform locally, for example in the workshop, in the army […] Society is an archipelagos of diverse powers”15. The second leads to the question of origin and foundation of power: such centres of power do not derive from a primitive central one16, vice-versa the greater apparatus of the State develops starting from each tiny power region17, as a result of the converging into a coordinated network in a one central institution of multiple independent forms of power, like hospital, barracks, school. The third point criticises again the juridical notion of power as negative instance. It is precisely at this point that Foucault inserts his most original notion, that is the productive character of power. It is not enough to contrast it to prohibitive power, as its opposite or as coercion. In the conference that we are following, Foucault recollects several aspects: the demand, due to technical innovations (e.g. Faster and more precise rifles as for the army, steam machines in the industry), for more efficient human performances; the demand for new ways of demographic and economic management, due to the unprecedented growth at the time; in general, the demand for the political power to transform from a traditional monarchic structure, which was essentially stranger to production and in the end marauding, to a new form of political power, which would foster the economical process, the early capitalism flourishing. Moreover, the new form of power should integrate within the capitalistic production system, be part and parcel of it, be an internal motor of it. Here the fourth from the above-mentioned points is added, that is the fact that productive power manifest as technology: 13 Les mailles du pouvoir, cit, p. 185. 14 This approach continuous at the level of power analysis some fundamental methaphsysical choices. The question shift from the classical “nature”, “origin”, “justice” of power to performing. Cfr. Deleuze, Foucault, p. 78 15 “Il n'existe pas un pouvoir, mais plusieurs pouvoirs. Pouvoirs, cela veut dire des formes de domination, des fomes de sujétion, qui fonctionnent localment, par exemple dans l'atélier, dans l'armée […] La société est un archipel de pouvoirs différents” Les mailles du pouvoir, cit, p. 186. 16 According to the line of thought of modern philosophy, only the presence of central sovereignty can allow the existance of society. The thought is widespread and fundative to the point that it can be found among thinkers who as a primary objective want to justify complete different political systems. For example, cfr. T. Hobbes, Leviathan or J.J. Rousseau, Du Contrat sociale. 17 Les mailles du pouvoir, cit, p. 187. 7 “I would group them [technologies, Ed.] in two chapters, because they seem to have developed in two opposite directions […] there are two great revolutions of power technology: the discovery of discipline and the discovery of regulation, the perfection of an anatomo-politics and the perfection of a bio-politics” 18. The power technologies of discipline and regulation taking shape in the XVIII century are the means and the essence of the passage from the discontinuous, expensive, marauding model of monarchic power to the continuous, integrated, productive power of industrial societies. One of the best examples to understand Foucault idea of discipline is that of the army: spurred by the invention of faster and more precise rifles, both single soldiers and the army as a whole underwent deep changes. Each soldier was now (because of the ability to shoot and the training) more valuable and effective in himself; at the same time, he would be useless as a simple individual with a gun and his effectiveness would be fulfilled only when rightly performing in array 19. Here the prevalent disciplinary tool is training, a sort of continuous intervention of the power on the body, a conditioning which creates automatism and eventually what Foucault calls the “norm”, standardized forms of behaviour. Moreover, bodily discipline implement the efficiency, the strength of each individual; at the same time, it fastens its clasp on it, it becomes able to direct it: discipline makes subdued and trained bodies, docile bodies20. In other institutions, the disciplinary methods are rather watching and monitoring, whose widely known perfect example and utopian model is the “Panopticon” 21. This would be the “architectural figure”22 of a series of diverse techniques which spread uncoordinated throughout society, showing in its purest form the principle underlying all of them: visibility as the possibility of constant control makes power anonymous, continuous, automatic. It renders power extremely economical and succeeds “in individualising within multiplicity”23. Another representative institution of those political ideals is police, who at their beginnings had been appointed, otherwise as today, not only at the restraining and punishing of crime, but also of 18 “Je les grouperai en deux chapitres, parce qui'il me semble qu'eles se sont développées en deux directions di1fférentes […] il y a deux grandes révolutions dans la technologie du pouvoir: la découverte de la discipline et la découverte de la régulation, le perfectionnement d'une anatomo-politique et le perfectionnement d'une bio-politique. Les mailles du pouvoir, cit, p. 191, 194. 19 Les mailles du pouvoir, cit, p. 188 ”assurant sa perfomance maximale avec l'unité d'ensemble selon la specificité de la position et du rôle de chacun”. 20 M. Foucault, Sourveiller et punir, p. 162 - “la discipline fabrique des corps soumis et exercés, des corps dociles”. To such statement follows an interesting parallel between the exploitation of bodies and the marxian interpretation of the exploitation of work. 21 J.Bentham, Panopticon, 1790 , quoted by Foucault in various works, e.g. Surveiller et Punir, cit, p. 233 ff. Foucault was curator for a french edition of the work in 1977. As introduction an discussion was published, which we consulted for these paragraphs., cfr. L'Oeil du Pouvoir in Dits et Ecrits, vol. III, p. 190-206. 22 M. Foucault, Sourveiller et Punir, cit, p. 233 - "figure architecturale”. 23 Les mailles du pouvoir, cit, p. 192 “... ces méthode dischiplinaires où les individus sont individualisés dan la multiplicité”, the phrase occurs in the context of disciplinary maethods in the education. 8 children's school attendance, supervising of the health of the population etc. Police were conceived as an all-comprehensive body of civil servants, present with their districts down to the smallest village, as extended as the population itself, who should take care of all matters concerning the smooth running of citizens' lives24. Discipline as monitoring and training is the model of power of industrial societies, having at its centre the “body of subject”25. Summarizing: “...Disciplines are techniques to assure order among human multitudes […] they try to establish, with respect to multitudes, power tactics which respond to three criteria[…] (such tactics, ed.) should be the cheapest (economically[...], politically[...]); they should have social effects reach […] as far as possible, without fail nor blank; (such tactics should, ed.) eventually bind […] power to the productivity of those apparatus within which it performs, brief it should let simultaneously grow docility and utility of all the elements of the system.”26 c. Microphysics After the description of disciplining technique, the picture of Foucault' s power theory becomes more concrete, and so the question of the subject's role in it. With regard to it, another aspect must be mentioned, that is the famous catchphrase microphysics. The expression explains simultaneously many characteristics of the Foucaultian power: power is physical, because it performs on bodies; it is micro because it performs through the minimal gestures (training); but also through minimalistic instruments (watching), because it reaches every detail of its land and population (examination). The phrase however brings forward one more aspect, which Foucault synthetically describes as the strategic aspect of power: microphysics hints at the particles physics, where it suggests the shift to another domain ruled by own rules for relations ever-moving, non-determinable relations27. Strategy concerns different interrelated aspects. First, the fact that power relations are always physical relations traversing bodies, the fact that power is in itself a relation between those physical forces. Secondly, conceiving power through the image of physics might also help to understand how such force relations are fundamentally impersonal: even if power consist in a struggle between two 24 M. Foucault, La téchnologie politique des Individues, Dits et Ecrits, vol IV, p. 822. 25 With the pun a shift in the definition e perception of the State is referred to - Cfr. La gouvernementalité, Dits et Ecrits, vol. IV, p. 635 ff. If in modernity the State was considered as a single, unitary, territorial entity and called the body of state, in the following period the state comes to coincide with the nation, i.e. the population of sunjects (in the political sense) living on a territory. 26 M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir, cit., p. 254 - “...les disciplines sont des techniques pour assurer l'ordonnance des multiplicités humaines. […] il tentent à définir à l'égard des multiplicité une tactique de pouvoir qui réponde à trois critères: […] le moin cou^teux possibles (économiquement[...], politiquement[...]); faire que les effets de ce pouvoir social soient portés […] étendus aussi loin que possible, sans échec ni lacune; lier enfin […] le pouvoir et le rendement des appareils à l'interieur dequels il s'exerce […], bref faire croi^tre à la fois la docilité et l'utilité de tous les éléments du système.” 27 G. Deleuze, Foucault, cit. p. 81. 9 forces it is important to abandon a view, traditional for western philosophy, according to which actions depend on an intentional subject. There are, instead, no intention, plan or subjects preliminary to the struggle itself. The absence of subjects implies, thirdly, that the theory of the social contract must be abandoned, given that there are no prior natural subjects between whom a contract could be established. The same reasoning applies to the “essence” of power: power itself comes to being within power relationships. Therefore, all models which understand domination as an appropriation should also be abandoned. The definition of power which emerges eventually turns around the one pivot of “micro”-relations: power as a relationship between forces, both active as affecting or affected28; power as immanent to these relations; power as unstable momentary balance between the struggling forces; power as diffused network of local relations between “particles”29. 2. Criticisms to a subject devoid system Foucault's theory has been presented in its articulation among the following three aspects of discourse, discipline, struggle. Such notions were elaborated separately over years and they are related but still not identically fitting. They gradually expanded the scope of the notion of power, covering eventually an “unplanned” theory. The question is admittedly: does the theory work? In particular, a question recurs: what exactly is the place and the role of the individual in this theory? How does the notion of it integrate with each of the three areas discipline, discourses, struggle? a. Total systems Reading the works of the “first” Foucault, one faces mostly historical inquires into systems, whether of thought, knowledge, medicine or punishment. As shown, the emerging image of “individual” does not seem to leave any space at all for the very individual. On the contrary one may well receive the impression of a compact system, reminding of a “1984” totalitarian reality. The general suspicion of dissolution of the subject and absolute prevalence of the system is indeed one of the most recurrent criticisms against Foucault. Of the areas analysed, recalling the notions of discourses and discipline only 30 would confirm such perspective of a crushing power. As for discourses (especially in the first works), the structuralist idea of “system” seems to prevail, where sense is impersonally determined and socially superimposed on individuals. According to a contemporary criticism31, Foucault, by using the method of structuralism, aims at rejecting the traditional notion of subject. Such objective would not 28 29 30 31 G.Deleuze, cit., p. 78. Vgl. M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir, cit. p. 30-37. Cfr. supra, par. 1a, 1b. J.-M. Domenach, Le système e la personne, Révue Esprit, mai 1969. 10 be surprising or new in itself, as reflection on the loss of the subject characterises a wider cultural wave, involving different forms of art, literature and thought. However as a philosophical theory, structuralism opens a problem: how is autonomy or action possible at all, within anonymous coercive systems and without any subject? Carrying on the argument, after denying human intervention one must deny also the possibility of contingency. From established systems seem to descend the denial of subject and history. Besides, the genealogical method, presents the reader with a lot of factual example and from it take its theory: it is the accusation of simply justifying the existing reality and validating capitalism as the perfect machine for self-reproduction of impersonal structures. As for disciplines, humans seem again tools of closed systems: at a first level they and their bodies would be governed by other humans, on a second by an unstoppable capitalistic rationality. A last angle of this criticism, searching for a equilibrium between system and subject, comes even to involve personal coherence: how can a certain left active political engagement coexist with such a system theory?32. b. Systems devoid of foundation. Methodological matters. The matters briefly discussed by Domenach can be found in other famous criticisms, i.e. that of Habermas and Honneth. Their contribution is however more polemic and articulated; indeed it is based on a methodological and foundational criticism. As for discourses and disciplines, the main objection challenges the claim to totality and autonomy of the systems: first, the possibility of rule formation without external foundation and that discourses could constitute auto-generative groupings of rules33; the criticism focusses on those aspects from the archaeology of knowledge which bring Foucault closer to structuralism. Indeed it could be interpreted as a criticism of the very methodology of structuralism. Habermas underlines how, in the early works of Foucault's, discourses are first defined as what binds the different conditions of a given historical context together (e.g. Economy, technology, society, politics...); the same discourses then should be simultaneously the normative principle of such historical context. The German philosopher questions the possibility of empirical foundation, thus accusing the system of a circular petitio principii, where the principle of explanation is taken from the same reality which should be explained. The assumption backing Habermas' criticism is that only a transcendental subject could establish categories34. 32 Domenach, Ibidem. This last criticism comes to hypothesiye the dependance choice on political disillusionment – Habermas is going to propose a similar argument as well. However, following such criticism, Domenach delevolps a more gradually understanding of the distinctions beterrn Foucault and structuralism and how in his theory one coul at the same time accept that impersonal is a component of the personal but leaving an open dialogue non man. 33 Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Suhrkamp, 1985, p. 315. 34 Ibidem, p. 298. The subject is here understood as a kantian subject, whose role is to perform the sythesis between the 11 A similar argument is used to question the later stage of Foucault's theory, when discourses are more explicitly founded on power relationships. The first step of Habermas' objection is based on a one-way interpretation of the relation between power and discourses, according to which the latter would be only a “protuberance”35 of the former. Discourses would be the immediate translation of otherwise meaningless power practices: how could sense be founded on or grow out of non-sense? 36 To do so, Foucault would exploit the ambiguity of his notion of power – which would be on the one hand the object of empirical enquiry, and on the other it would be the basis of a constitutional theory. Such self-foundation of power would fall again into a case of petitio principii. To sum up, Habermas raises such objection against discourses, disciplines and eventually against the very genealogical method37. His diagnosis is hard: the Foucaultian system, devoid of subjects, cannot be founded neither on discourses nor on power, nor on the genealogical method. As for the third aspect of power, that is the strategic model, Habermas questions the absence of a intermediary “function” between constant struggle on the one hand and institutions on the other. The argument is somewhat related to the previous one, criticising the connection between power relationships and discourses in the absence of a subject: here a an inter-subjective mechanism would be missing, which would support the passage from isolated struggles to society. Without such a mechanism, it is argued that, despite Foucault's claims against it, power is going to coincide with force. This criticism is carried out similarly by Habermas and by Honneth, whose work focuses indeed on a philosophical political aspect. Both criticisms imply the assumption of a peculiar interpretation of power, as cryptically derived in analogy with the notion of will. In turn will is also peculiarly interpreted as a Nietzschean will to power, and therefore force 38. The consequence of all these primary equivalences is that a technological application of a will on the bodies, i.e. biopolitics, cannot be but an application of violent force. If one follows this reasoning, productive power must equal coercive power: Eventually, according to Habermas' interpretation of Foucault, the subject is left with less and less space: as discourses and social-economical configurations are violently created by power, so are the subjects a mere bodily translation of it. They result in single standard occurrences, but no way two different realms of experience and categories. 35 Ibidem, p. 326. Such total dependence of discourses on power depends on the relation among action-truth-judgment. Foucault would reverse the direction of the relation judgments-truth, affirming that the validity of judgments is established by the success of actions . This means that truth ends up to be determined by power(cfr. p. 323). Such idea would be infered from an irrationalistic interpretation of Nietzsche on the part of Foucault (cfr. p. 327). 36 Ibidem, p. 326. 37 The method cannot at the same time be descriptive of phenomena and find the constitutive conditions of their beginnings. Ibidem, p. 322. 38 Ibidem, p. 322. Habermas seems to link this equivalence once again to a supposedly irrationalistic interpretation of Nietzsche by Foucault and to a series of simplifications that F would make from will to power to power tout court, simply omitting the subjective component to it. Which would, alas, operate at the basis tranfsorming Foucault's theory in a krypto-subjectivism, with all the incoherences that follow. 12 individuals39. 3. A new Human The previous criticisms express worries about totalitarian and violent consequences of the Foucaultian power theory. A single grounding argument seems to lie at heart of such reasoning, i.e. the absence of a transcendental subject, who can achieve the categorical synthesis and thus confer a meaning to the world. Without such a function, the power theory of Foucault must abandon altogether the possibility of conscious, history, at an extreme even all foundation. Indeed this criticism picks up quite correctly one of the premises of the very theory, i.e. the refusal of a traditional subject theory40. Therefore, a reply to such criticisms should focus on that passage of the reasoning when the consequences are drawn: it must be enquired whether denying a traditional subject really implies denying a subject altogether, in exchange for a standardised specimen. The possibility of different subjects should be enquired, beyond this rigid alternative. An interesting attempt in this direction is that of John Ransom41, who carries out precisely this enquiry on the basis of a radical interpretation of “microphysics” as a network of multiple force relations. As mentioned earlier, Foucault rejects from the very beginning the traditional notion of subject, in part borrowing a structuralist approach. In this view, the subject does not ground the meaning, rather receive his own meaning from the network of relations which “cut deeply through us; what was before us, what backed us up in time and space, was the system” 42. Later formulations became even more radical, as in Discipline and punish: the study of the microphysics of power implies that we “give up the model of knowledge and primary role of the subject.” Under this angle, the subject is defined as that interior space which was not previously given but is instead created for the first time by means of subduing techniques. “...the power applied on the body of the convict does not cause another type of doubling? That of a non-bodily, a soul, a de facto correlative of a certain technology of the power on the body. Individuals are made by techniques”43. According to Ransom, the mistake of many critics would be now to consider the man 39 40 41 42 Ibidem, p. 343. Cfr. Surveiller et Punir, p. 36. J. Ransom, Foucault's discipline, Duke University Press, Durham 1997. “nous traversent profondément, ce qui était avant nous, ce qui nous soutenait dans le temps et dansl'espace, c'était le système” Foucault, Quinzaine Litteraire... cit, quoted in Domenach, cit, p, 772. 43 “Le pouvoir exerce sur le corps du condamné ne provoque pas un autre type de dédoublement? Celui d'un incorporel, d'une âme, le corrélatif actuel d'une certaine technologie du pouvoir sur le corps”. M. Foucault, Sourveiller et Punir, cit, p. 38. with "another" Foucault refers here to the work of Kantorowitz The king's two bodies. He argues that as performing power doubles bodies, so does undergoing power. The passage is a good example for his microphysics: it shows clearly how power relationships are productive of effects on both sides of the relation, i.e. On the active-performing side and on the passive-undergoing side; moreover how power produces effects which step over the phisical domain to the domain of discourses. 13 resulting from the premises of microphysics once again along the traditional criteria of individual and unity – as a result, the sovereign rational subject would turn into a robot. Instead, he argues, the step following the premises of the microphysics must start considering indeed the specificity of these techniques and hence thinking over the kind of man resulting from them. Foucault describes often how such techniques are not determined by a top-down coordinated plan; on the contrary each area of social life is regulated by relatively autonomous mechanisms: sub-sectors, which one by one shape a side of man. The human born from such techniques will be sectioned, a man made of several sub-individuals. This notion of fragmented subjectivity allows to face the topic differently and allows to explain variability within disciplinary societies. The possibility of variation has to be understood both at a intra- individual and inter-individual level, i.e. men will not be identical to one another, nor will they be always identical to themselves. Because subjects are not monolithic units but bundles of several influences, they modify under the pressure of practices and they keep modifying with each new practice. Foucault mentioned this evolutionary aspect often in personal terms, telling about his relationship to writing or reading44 as a tearing experience45. On this basis, a new perspective for individual freedom is open. As for society, how does the composition influence its freedom? It has been explained how microphysics are that power model made out of the relation to one another of several forces, where force must be understood as “effect of an action”; within such a model what counts is the reciprocity and constant variability of actions. Therefore, power should be defined strictly only as the instant picture of a configuration of relations 46. Therefore, the totalitarian view of institutions as the stable winner of such microphysical struggle does not hold stand. In analogy to the freedom of individual composed of the flow of different forces, so in the society the sum of different forces in one political-institutional configuration preserves the relative autonomy of each force, constantly menacing the configuration of power to shift. Therefore a configuration of power does not imply the dependence on it of the actors in it, but on the contrary its very fragility. It is not a matter of a dualistic opposition of power and resistance external to one another 47- and not even of resistance trapped within power, but of interwoven relations within one another. 44 M. Foucault in D. Trombadori, Colloqui con Foucault, Salerno 1981, quoted in J. Ransom, cit., p. 55 45 Although the space to investigate a new topic is not given, it must be mentioned that starting from the '80s Foucault gave way to the analysis of the self. For as much as concerns our topic, it must be reminded how the techniques of the self consist in highly refined self-observation techniques. They are the tie-up between disciplines and the birth of consciousness. From this point on, each man receive a whole new area: a man would be a bundle of both disciplinary forces and self-governing rules. Such notion opens a new perspective for the individual development of freedom. 46 Cfr. supra, par. 1.c 47 Précisation sur le pouvoir, in Dits et ecrits, vol III, p. 631. 14 Concrete examples of the inhomogeneity of the system are reminded by Foucault in various texts. Resistance, for example, is present as viscosity in the public opinion: information alone can not steer it at wish, nor the relation between information and reception can be considered linear 48. In every system marginal groups can be found49. The “Panopticon” itself has always been nothing but an utopia: it is of course the perfect architectural expression of a model, which was present as thought and active as practice. However, Foucault reminds how in the archives both disciplines are documented as well as the resistance of people, for example in the working class residence areas; he reminds how disciplines aim ideally at modelling bodies into docile, but they have to do with the concrete material of bodies, which by their own nature oppose resistance50. Conclusion The essay has considered Foucault's theory of power and the place of subjects within it. A first section has been devoted to present the core aspects of the theory itself. Three central aspects emerged: discourses, disciplines, strategies. Strategies and disciplines could be defined as the concrete base of systems. The first define the relationships between the single individuals or group of individuals as constant reciprocal movement of the actors in a struggle for power; the second are one of the types of technologies with which power is in actual fact performed. The word technology should bring about such concrete and performing aspect of power. Indeed disciplines are in themselves training or observations aimed at the bodies and the lives of the subjects of power. They are the means by which power shifts from the rather coercive external model as in the monarchy of the classical age in France, to the model characterising the industrial age: it induces rather than forbidding, it is coextensive to life and the society. Properly, power should be identified with government, rather than the state51. The third aspect refers to the knowledge: as created by power relations and at the same time keeping such relations in an equilibrium, as providing the meaningful network among the economical, demographical, social, political conditions of an age. The articulation of this three elements makes what could be defined as a “system”. The question is then: how compact is the system and how do the single subjects within it behave? Keeping this question in mind we proceeded to the next two sections: one dedicated to criticisms 48 49 50 51 L' oeil du pouvoir, in cit, p. 204. M.Foucault, the subject and the power, in Dreuyfus, Rabinow, cit., p. 211. Ibidem. Cfr. Foucault, La gouvernementalité in Dits et Ecrits IV, p. 635 ff. e Deleuze, cit, p. 82-83. 15 and one pleading for the theory with respect to the existence and freedom of subjects. The second section reported an early and a later criticism: they both showed on the one hand a mostly compact system of power, in which disciplines are understood as coercive and violent, and a destroyed subject on the other. The second theory moved criticisms of methodological character: at the core of it lies the absence of a subject within this system, which could provide the foundational element. The argument underlying all the instances of the criticism revolves on the definition of subject: it is clear that all these critics have in common a Kantian conception of the subject as a rational centre of spontaneous activity, moreover responsible of establishing the categories of reality. Therefore, the third section of the essay has been devoted to the search of an alternative definition of subject. This reading privileges the texts dedicated by Foucault to strategies and tries a radical use of this concept. According to it, society appears “liquid”: it is an ever-moving temporary configuration of networks of power relationships among men, who are themselves the ever-changing temporary bundle of different forces, from the outside as disciplines and from the inside as care of the self. It is our opinion that such an approach, if not solving all the problems of the theory – for example the passage from a Hobbesian one-to-one struggle model to institutions remains quite obscure – can nonetheless point out some vital elements and prove fruitful of further developments, beyond the now already over-used image of a monolithic panopticism. 16 Bibliography Primary:  M. Foucault, Surveiller et Punir, Gallimard, 1975  M. Foucault, Dits et Ecrits, vol II, III, 1994 Les têtes de la politique, vol II, p. 9 -13. Entretien avec Michel Foucault, vol III. 140 – 160. L'œil du pouvoir, vol II, p. 190 -207. Précisions sur le pouvoir, Reponses à certaines critiques, vol III, p. 625 – 634. La gouvernementalité, vol. III, p. 635 – 657. La technologie politique des individus, vol IV, p. 813 – 828. Les mailles du pouvoir, vol. IV, p. 182 – 201.  M.Foucault, L'ordre du discourse, Gallimard 1971  M.Foucault, The subject and the Power, in H.L. Dreyfus, P. Rabinow, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, the University of Chicago Press, 1982. Secondary:  G. Deleuze, Foucault, Les éditions de minuit, 1986  J.-M. Domenach, Le système et la personne, p. 771 – 780, Vv.Aa. Révue Esprit, 1969  J. Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: zwölf Vorlesungen, Suhrkamp, 1985  A. Honneth, Kritik der Macht, Suhrkamp 1985  F. Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, Reclam 1988 (1887)  J. S. Ransom, Foucault´s discipline, Duke University Press, 1997 Durham Online Resources:  http://www.swif.uniba.it 17 Erklärung zur eigenständigen Arbeit Hiermit versichere ich, dass die vorliegende Arbeit von mir selbständig und ohne unerlaubte Hilfsmittel angefertigt worden ist. Insbesondere versichere ich, dass ich alle Stellen, die wörtlich aus Veröffentlichungen entnommen sind, durch Zitate als solche gekennzeichnet habe. Ich versichere auch, dass die von mir eingereichte Version mit der digitalen Version übereinstimmt. Alessandra Carfí Matr.-Nr. 3020365 Lüneburg, 18