Magazine: Social Therapy & Practice; Spring 1997
FOUCAULT AND THE SUBJECT OF FEMINISM
------------------------------------
There is no single feminist stance regarding the usefulness of
Foucault's work for feminist theory and practice. The relationship
between Foucault and feminists has been alternately characterized as a
dance, as complementary, and as contradictory.[1] Many feminists are
wary of a collaboration with Foucault, while others have rejected the
possibility that Foucault (or postmodern thinkers in general) might
provide any theoretical resources for feminism.[2] Nonetheless, many
feminists have been engaged in applying and extending Foucault's work as
well as criticizing it.[3] Those who think Foucault and feminism can be
allies cite his rejection of metanarratives, his emphasis on the body
and sexuality, and his deconstruction of the subject.[4] In their
introduction to the anthology Feminism and Foucault, Irene Diamond and
Lee Quinby identify four convergences between the theoretical projects
of feminism and Foucault: both identify the body as a site of power,
both view power as local, both emphasize discourse, and both criticize
Western humanism's privileging of the masculine and its proclamations of
universals.[5] Because feminist theory is necessarily political--working
to end the oppression of women--it is committed to a conception of the
subject capable of political and moral agency. Thus, feminist criticisms
of Foucault have focused on his lack of a normative framework and his
conception of a subject seemingly incapable of moral and political
agency.
Feminists fault Foucault for lacking an adequate theory of the subject.
I argue that this is in part because of a tension in Foucault's work. He
rejects the classical subject of philosophy, then seems to reconceive
subjectivity as an always subjected, docile body enmeshed in relations
of power. Quite rightly, this view of the subject arouses the suspicion
of some feminists. According to Rosi Braidotti,
The combination of conceptual elements is quite paradoxical:
deconstructing, dismissing, or displacing the notion of the rational
subject at the very historical moment when women are beginning to have
access to the use of discourse, power and pleasure ... The truth of the
matter is: one cannot deconstruct a subjectivity one has never been
fully granted.
On some readings, this suspicion of Foucault seems to be well founded.
He does explicitly reject the subject of the Enlightenment:
Because what troubles me with these analyses which prioritise ideology
is that there is always presupposed a human subject on the lines of the
model provided by classical philosophy, endowed with a consciousness
which power is thought to seize on.[7]
One has to dispense with the constituent subject, to get rid of the
subject itself, that's to say, to arrive at an analysis which can
account for the constitution of the subject within a historical
framework. And this is what I would call genealogy, that is a form of
history which can account for the constitution of knowledges, discourses,
domains of objects etc., without having to make reference to a subject
which is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or
runs its empty sameness throughout the course of history.[8]
This rejection of the subject worries feminists, who argue that we must
retain a notion of the subject in order to have political and moral
agency. Feminists object not only to Foucault's rejection of the subject
but also to the determinism they see as the result of his genealogical
investigation of subjectivity as produced through discourses and
practices. Feminists view Foucault's subject as totally determined,
because it is enmeshed in relationships of power and is produced as
effect through disciplines and practices. Lois McNay claims,
The emphasis that Foucault places on the effects of power upon the body
results in a reduction of social agents to passive bodies and cannot
explain how individuals may act in an autonomous fashion. This lack of a
rounded theory of subjectivity or agency conflicts with a fundamental
aim of the feminist project to rediscover and re-evaluate the
experiences of women.[9]
I shall argue that feminists should not be so quick to dismiss
Foucault's subject as a passive body incapable of autonomy. I propose
that his rejection of an a priori subject is in line with much of
feminist theory, and further that his reconception of the subject may
also be consistent with feminist goals. While Foucault has claimed that
there is no subject, his later work is about the relation of the subject
to herself: what he calls "objectivizing the subject."[10] In what
follows I try to clarify just what Foucault's rejection/refusal of the
subject involves. I show that his refusal of the subject is the refusal
of a particular historical form of consciousness and not meant as a
complete dismissal of the theoretical problematization of the self. In
the introduction to The Use of Pleasure, Foucault describes his
genealogical project in the History of Sexuality as a shift from self to
subject, as well as a genealogy of sexuality.[11] Many scholars argue
that Foucault's later work--volumes two and three of the History of
Sexuality and various interviews and article--belatedly introduces an
active and autonomous notion of the self.[12] This active self is
especially apparent in Care of the Self, where Foucault analyzes the
self's relation to self.[13] Critics raise two problems for this active
subject of the late Foucault: they view it as inconsistent with his
earlier work (particularly Discipline and Punish),[14] and while some
see it as a corrective to the overly passive view of the subject in
Foucault's middle works, they criticize his new focus on the self as
primarily aesthetic and individualistic.[15]
While the issue of the continuity of Foucault's work will undoubtedly
continue to be the subject of debate, I employ the principle of charity
in heeding Foucault's claims that his last work developed out of his
earlier work and that the subject is the general theme of his
research.[16] My reading of Foucault's later work emphasizes his
portrayal of this self as social, as being constituted through relations
to others. Foucault's focus on the "ethical subject of sexual conduct"
in volumes two and three of the History of Sexuality invites comparison
with other views of the ethical subject. I draw some parallels between
Foucault's discussion of the care of the self and the feminist idea of a
relational self in care ethics. I demonstrate that Foucault and
feminists agree about the pervasiveness of power and the correlative
expansion of the political. Moreover, power and subjectivity are
inextricably linked in Foucault. If we consider carefully what Foucault
says about the subject and power, and take seriously his distinction
between power and domination, Foucault's subject seems constituted by
social relations, yet capable of resistance. Foucault does not give
feminists a theory of the subject to reject; instead, he suggests new
possibilities for conceiving the self, including a fundamentally social
self that bears a resemblance to care ethics' relational self. This
social subject capable of resistance that emerges out of my reading of
Foucault is compatible both with feminist aims of capturing the
specificity of women's experience and the political and social
transformations necessary to end the oppression of women. I conclude,
however, that the relationship between feminists and Foucault is best
characterized as conflictual.
1. Foucault's Refusal
What is Foucault refusing when he refuses the subject? In an interview
shortly before his death, Foucault responds to the question, "But have
you always 'refused' that we speak to you about the subject in general?"
by saying, "What I refused was precisely that you first of all set up a
theory of the subject . . . What I wanted to know was how the subject
constituted himself, in such and such a determined form "[7] His denial
of the subject here is not a denial of the subject tout court, but a
hesitation to begin from a theory of the subject. Foucault refuses the
subject as the condition for the possibility of experience, claiming
instead that it is experience which results in a subject or
subjects.[18] When asked whether his books prior to the History of
Sexuality "ruin the sovereignty of the subject," Foucault replies that
he wanted to return to the problem of the subject and follow its
developments through history to analyze "the combination of processes by
which the subject exists with its different problems and obstacles and
through forms which are far from being completed."[19] Foucault does not
reject the subject altogether, but refuses a particular formation of it,
the formation that was constituted through the practices of Christianity
and has continued on through its influence on and embeddedness in
European morality. This is evidenced by his claim that there is no
theory of the subject in Greek philosophy and hence no subject.[20] The
problem was constructed differently and resulted in a different
theoretical object--the individual. On Foucault's view, refusing what we
are would enable us to liberate ourselves from the type of individuality
(subjectivity) that has imposed itself on us through disciplines and
practices for the last several centuries. The refusal to be what we are,
to be a subject and hence subjected, opens up new possibilities for
being.
2. Foucault's Subject
By his own description, most of Foucault's work is devoted to a
genealogy of the human subject:
My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the different
modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects. My work
has dealt with three modes of objectification which transform human
beings into subjects. Thus it is not power, but the subject, which is
the general theme of my research.[21]
The modes of objectification follow a rough chronology of Foucault's
work--the first mode of objectification is scientific and rule-bound,
for example, the speaking subject. The second mode of objectification
Foucault calls "dividing practices," where the subject is either divided
from others, for example, the criminal from the non-criminal, or divided
within herself. Much of the debate about the usefulness of Foucault to
feminism is concerned with Foucault's institutional analyses, especially
Discipline and Punish. The third mode of objectification is really
subjectification, that is, an analysis of how individuals turn
themselves into subjects, for example, the sexual subject. Although it
is this third mode of objectification that is concerned with the active
constitution of the subject, there has been little attention to it by
feminists.[22] This oversight is unfortunate, since the later works of
Foucault contain a view of the self that has affinities to recent
feminist moral theory.
Understanding power is central to understanding Foucault's analysis of
subjectivity. In History of Sexuality: An Introduction (vol. 1),
Foucault explicitly rejects the paradigm of power as repression, arguing
that power is not only negative but also productive. He rejects the
juridical model of power, wherein power is characterized as repressive,
rule-based, uniform, and prohibitive. According to this model, the
subject is constituted as one who obeys this negative unilateral power.
Foucault characterizes power as positive and productive. Power is
everywhere, a multiplicity of force relations; it is always local and
unstable. This ubiquity of power does not preclude resistance. On the
resistance(s) only exist in the strategic field of contrary, Can power
relations.[23] Power is action that runs through and between things;
power is first and foremost relational.[24] Not only is power always a
relationship, but power relationships exist everywhere:
Between each point of a social body, between a man and a woman, in a
family, between a teacher and a pupil, between the one who knows and the
one who doesn't, there pass relations of power which are not the pure
and simple projection of the great sovereign power over individuals;
rather they are the mobile and concrete ground upon which power comes to
be anchored, they are the conditions of the possibility for its
functioning.[25]
Foucault's analysis of power as omnipresent and dispersed coincides with
feminist claims that power is present in many arenas of life that on a
traditional liberal view were considered private or apolitical, such as
the family and the classroom. Likewise, both feminists and Foucault
expand the realm of the political to include issues previously
considered private, such as personal relationships, sex, and the body.
Both view the body as not simply given, but as culturally constructed,
as the "field of inscription of sociosymbolic codes."[26]
The body as the site of cultural inscription has been developed in
interesting ways by feminists Sandra Bartky and Susan Bordo. Their
analyses stress that the cultural construction of the body is always
gendered. Bartky comments on Foucault's curious oversight of gender
difference: "Women, like men, are subject to many of the same
disciplinary practices Foucault describes. But he is blind to those
disciplines that produce a modality of embodiment that is peculiarly
feminine."[27] Bartky extends Foucault's discussion of disciplinary
practices to investigate female identity and subjectivity. These
disciplines and practices include cosmetics, fashion, and the
incorporation of bodily norms. Her analysis illuminates the ways in
which the cultural norms of a patriarchal society transform women into
properly feminine bodies. Susan Bordo illustrates the significance of
gender in the cultural malleability of the body when she points out that
a disproportionate number of women suffer from anorexia nervosa.[28]
These analyses focus on the feminine body and the disciplines particular
to it. The Foucauldian framework of disciplines and practices that both
use to explore female subjectivity does not simply describe the creation
of passive feminine bodies, but reveals the contingency of the cultural
construction of gender. Although the political is pervasive, it is not
all-powerful. For example, in consciousness-raising groups women
questioned the disciplines and practices of femininity and developed
individual and collective resistance to them. Symbolizing this expanded
notion of the political as present in everyday life is the well-known
phrase from the Women's Liberation movement, "The personal is
political." Foucault, too, recognizes the pervasiveness of politics in
everyday life: "To say that 'everything is political' is to recognize
this omnipresence of relations of force and their immanence to a
political field."[29] The pervasiveness of power and its effect on all
aspects of our daily life is a significant move away from the
traditional liberal understanding of a centralized political power
emanating from the state. Foucault's understanding of power as pervasive
supports feminist challenges to the public/private split and encourages
extending the analysis of power dynamics to interpersonal relationships.
Despite this apparent harmony, Foucault's concept of power strikes the
wrong chord with many feminists. They argue that his concept of
pervasive and dispersed power cannot account for the persistent
asymmetrical relationship of power between men and women. Insofar as
abolishing the asymmetry of power between sexes is central to feminism,
Foucault's conception of power seems antithetical to it. But nothing in
Foucault's work precludes having both micro- and macro-levels of
analysis. Foucault acknowledges more than once that although power is
pervasive it is not equally distributed.[30] His methodological
recommendation is that we reverse the usual order of an analysis of
power. Rather than a "from the top down" analysis such as Marxism, we
should conduct what Foucault calls "ascending analyses of power." This
type of analysis moves from the local and particular to the more general
in order to capture the myriad forms and techniques of power.[31]
A second feminist objection is that the omnipresence of power seems to
inhibit the possibility for agency and resistance on the part of the
subject. But Foucault is quite clear that power is always subject to
reversal and that freedom is a condition of the possibility for power's
existence. In "The Subject and Power," Foucault puts it this way:
Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are
free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced
with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several
reactions and diverse comportments may be realized. Where the
determining factors saturate the whole there is no relationship of
power.[32]
The possibility of reversal distinguishes power from domination;
relationships of domination are static, irreversible relationships of
power. Whereas relations of power exist everywhere, relations or states
of domination are those particular formations--"the locking together of
power relations with the relations of strategy"--in which reversal is
possible only through revolution or collective resistance.[33] While
subjectivity is constituted through discourses of truth that are imbued
with relationships of power, this nonetheless does not automatically
preclude the possibility of moral and political agency or resistance.
Indeed, without the possibility of resistance there can be no power in
Foucault's sense, only domination. And it is through power and its
constitution of the subject that resistance is possible. There is a
certain reciprocity between the subject and power: "The individual is an
effect of power, and at the same time, or precisely to the extent to
which it is that effect, it is the element of its articulation."[34] If
we follow Foucault in rejecting the paradigm of power as repressive, it
is easier to see that power is inescapable not because it imprisons us
but because it produces subjects, disciplines, and discourses. Since
Foucault says that "power is everywhere" in several discussions of power,
we can conclude that situations where it would be impossible for a
subject to resist are the exception rather than the role. Power is
always relational and always subject to reversal.[35]
While in earlier work Foucault examined the role of institutions in
constituting the subject, his later work deals with the active
constitution of the subject, the role the subject plays in self-
constitution. Considerable debate attends how to read Foucault's work,
with some scholars, such as Peter Dews,[36] arguing that the later work
reveals an abrupt theoretical shift, while Foucault views it as
developing out of earlier work.[37] Even within Foucault's earlier work,
many have noted inconsistencies regarding his simultaneous dismissal of
the subject and preoccupation with subjectivity, and his implicit appeal
to normative concepts such as freedom, truth, and justice.[38] To
explore the possible alliance between Foucault and feminism, I take Kate
Soper's suggestion to view the contradictions in Foucault's work as
productive.[39] I read Foucault's later work as continuing to focus on
subjectivity as socially constituted and historically variable.
In volume one of The History of Sexuality, Foucault explicitly links sex,
truth, and the subject. Telling the truth about oneself, especially
through the practice of confession regarding oneself as a sexual subject,
constituted the self as subject while proliferating discourses of
sexuality. In confession, the subject is expected to tell the truth
about herself, and in so doing participates in the process of
individualization. Confession is a double-edged sword. Apparently giving
the individual greater freedom through the articulation of the truth
about herself, it simultaneously contributes to the process of
subjectification because it takes place within relations of power and
ties one to one's identity. This production of the truth about oneself
takes place within a social context. One of the ways that sexual
confession was codified in scientific terms was through the method of
interpretation. Foucault puts it this way: "The truth did not reside
solely in the subject who, by confessing, would reveal it wholly formed.
It was constituted in two stages: present but incomplete, blind to
itself, in the one who spoke; it could only reach completion in the one
who assimilated and recorded it."[40] This practice of telling the truth
about oneself is central not only to the production of the discourse of
sexuality and the corresponding scientific and medical institutions that
sprung up around it, but also to the shift in the formation of the
subject.
Volumes two and three of The History of Sexuality trace the continuities
and the changes of the discourses of sexuality from the ancient Greek to
the early Roman period. The Use of Pleasure analyzes specific "practices
of the self" and the series of problematizations out of which arose the
discourse of sexuality and the desiring subject. "Practices of the self"
refers to the specific practices one engages in to live an ethical life.
The task of becoming an ethical subject was achieved not through
universalizing principles, but through individualized action. Becoming
an ethical subject involved overcoming the conflict between passion and
reason by moderating one's desires. This exercise of moderation in turn
produced self-mastery. Self-mastery involved not simply restraint, but
also discipline through exercising and training in the gymnasium. This
training involved the care of the self which was requisite for self-
mastery.
Self-knowledge, too, plays a role in care of the self: one cannot care
for oneself without knowing what is needed. Self-knowledge connects the
formation of the ethical subject to the formation of an epistemological
subject. Foucault states: "One could not form oneself as an ethical
subject in the use of the pleasures without forming oneself at the same
time as a subject of knowledge."[41] Care of the self involved using the
pleasures properly. Having a proper relationship to the pleasures was
achieved through regimen. Regimen, both diet and regulation of sexual
pleasure, is a way of forming oneself as a subject with proper concern
for the body. This use of the pleasure through regimen[42] holds an
important place in the story of the constitution of the subject.
Foucault locates the formation of the subject in the history of ethics:
"a history of 'ethics' understood as the elaboration of a form of
relation to self that enables an individual to fashion himself into a
subject of ethical conduct."[43]
The Care of the Self continues the analysis of the process of
subjectification. The formation of the subject takes place in part
through sexual austerity, since this intensifies one's relationship to
oneself through constant vigilance. Cultivation of the self was fostered
through care of the self. Nonetheless, this active process takes place
within established social practices, discourses, and institutions.
Foucault states, "I would say that if now I am interested in fact in the
way the subject constitutes himself in an active fashion, by the
practices of self, these practices are nevertheless not something the
individual invents."[44] This care of the self did not result in
individualism, but on the contrary was a social practice. Foucault
provides a different interpretation of the rise of individualism,
suggesting that the intensification of the relations to self may be
independent of the individualistic attitude of the singular subject.[45]
Care of the self and the attendant intensification of the relation of
self to self relied on communication with others: "Around the care of
the self, there developed an entire activity of speaking and writing in
which the work of oneself on oneself and communication with others were
linked together. Here we touch on one of the most important aspects of
this activity devoted to oneself: it constituted, not an exercise in
solitude but a true social practice."[46] Foucault argues that this new
mode of the subject is not simply a response to social and economic
changes. "Hence the cultivation of the self would not be the necessary
consequence of these social modifications; it would not be their
expression in the sphere of ideology; rather, it would constitute an
original response to them, in the form of a new stylistics of
existence."[47] This new stylistics of existence formed out of the
practices of the self is a result of the subject active in her own self-
constitution, not simply the passive recipient of economic and social
determinants. Foucault's subject as sketched out in his later works is
constituted through disciplines and practices but not determined by
them. On the contrary, it is only through the process of
subjectification that we become subjects capable of resisting the
institutions, discourses, and practices that constitute us as subjects.
3. The Relational Feminist Subject
It would be impossible to capture the range and variety of feminist
notions of the subject. However, one commonality stands out. Most
feminist theorists reject the notion of the Enlightenment subject as
disembodied consciousness. Feminist analysis focuses on the embodied
subject embedded in a social context. Though the notion of the subject
as social is central to many feminist approaches, here I focus on the
recent Anglo-American psycho-analytic approach of care ethics. I trace
some similarities between the relational self central to care ethics and
the actively self-constituting subject in Foucault's later works.[48]
Both avoid the false dilemma that pits the sociality of the self against
moral and political agency.
Deontological moral theory holds that the moral point of view is
impartial, that moral autonomy depends on resisting socialization, and
that moral agents ought to follow universalizable moral rules. Feminist
moral theory challenges this paradigm of moral agents as independent,
autonomous, justice-oriented bearers of rights. Carol Gilligan
criticizes Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development for
privileging the use of universal principles by autonomous moral agents.
In contrast to the traditional view of the moral agent as autonomous,
Gilligan argues that the ethic of care[49] comes out of a sense of self
that is relational. Drawing on Nancy Chodorow's object relations theory,
which holds that a person's identity develops out of his or her early
relational experiences, Gilligan argues that girls develop a sense of
self that is relational because they do not need to differentiate
themselves from their primary caretaker as dramatically as boys.[50]
Both Chodorow and Gilligan criticize as masculinist the view that moral
autonomy is characterized by separation. Their criticisms indicate an
implicit normative view that the ideal for both genders is a sense of
self as connected to others. Chodorow draws the general conclusion that:
"becoming a person is the same thing as becoming a person in
relationship and in social context."[51] Chodorow's self, like
Foucault's as sketched out above, arises through social relations.
Because the self emerges through social relations, moral agency and
autonomy are not viewed as contrary to socialization, but as arising
from it. Gilligan recounts one of her subject's describing a moral
dilemma as "a network of connection, a web of relationships that is
sustained by a process of communication."[52] This emphasis on
communication echoes Foucault's claim cited above that care of the self
relied on communication with others. Gilligan's ethic of care redefines
the moral subject as relational. Correlative with this relational moral
subject is a move away from universal principles. On this view moral
action arises from within a network of social relations.
Expanding on the work of Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan, feminist
philosophers have proposed a self both social and capable of resistance.
Diana Meyers reformulates autonomy as a competency acquired through
socialization. This reformulation overcomes the dichotomy between
viewing autonomy as the resistance to socialization and viewing the self
as social.[53] Seyla Benhabib, too, offers a view of a social self
capable of autonomy while recognizing that we are embedded in social
networks:
[T]he web of human affairs in which we are immersed are not simply like
clothes which we outgrow or like shoes we leave behind, They are ties
that bind; ties that shape our moral identities, our needs, our visions
of the good life. The autonomous self is not the disembodied self.[54]
This feminist reconceiving of the subject gives weight to the network of
relationships and social roles that constitute subjects while still
allowing for moral agency. This social subject--a self who is relational
and situated within specific historical and political circumstances--
predominates in recent feminist moral theory.[55]
4. Conclusion
Foucault and feminism, then, agree that the subject is socially
constituted through a network of discourses, institutions, and
practices. If Foucault's notion of subjectivity is compatible with the
feminist aim of social and political action, why shouldn't feminists
adopt it? There are at least three reasons that feminists may not want
to simply adopt Foucault's notion of subjectivity. First, some feminists
may still be wary, asking: Does Foucault really present a subject
capable of resistance? Even if a resisting subject can be gleaned from
Foucault's work, he does not provide the normative framework necessary
to know what one ought to resist. These feminists may conclude that
Foucault's corpus is fraught with ambiguity about the possibility of the
subject resisting and too vague on how that resistance is possible.
However, as Jana Sawicki points out, Foucault's discourse does not
preclude the possibility of appealing to norms such as rights, liberties,
and justice.[56] Indeed, Foucault's implicit appeal to norms, such as
freedom from domination, may be strategic, because it allows him to do
an immanent critique without explicitly invoking the modem categories he
criticizes.
Second, why should feminists adopt Foucault's subject when, as I
demonstrated earlier, a notion of a relational and social subject is
already available within feminist theory? The feminist approach that I
discussed does not draw on Foucault or postmodernism, but comes out of
object relations theory.[57] However, object relations theory has been
criticized as ahistorical and acultural.[58] Foucault's genealogy of the
subject is explicitly historicized and thus not vulnerable to such
criticisms. If Foucault's genealogy of the actively self-constituting
subject were gender-neutral, then perhaps it would be preferable to
object relations theory. However, his inattention to gender has led to
charges of androcentrism by many feminists.
This androcentrism reveals itself in Foucault's earlier work by an
inattention to gender and in his later work through his explicit focus
on the male ethical subject.[59] Because Foucault's genealogy of the
subject in The Use of Pleasure and The Care of Self is explicitly a male
subject, it cannot be adopted by feminists who want to resist a male
bias inherent to the construction of subjectivity. His exclusive focus
on the male subject in the elitist and male-dominated societies of
classical Greece and Rome ignores inequalities of gender and class. Only
free men become ethical subjects through the care of the self. However,
since there is no gender-neutral subject, Foucault's genealogy of the
male subject helps to expose the construction of masculinity and
denaturalize the subject as male. A genealogy of the male subject does
not preclude feminist genealogies of the female subject. Investigations
of the constitution of the female subject may raise important questions
about the conditions under which women become constituted as subjects.
Foucault's rejection of the Enlightenment subject and his suggestive
remarks about a socially constructed subjectivity tempt many feminists
to engage with his work. I argue that Foucault's subject, especially as
sketched out in his later work, is not only compatible with feminism,
but bears on the surface a significant similarity to a feminist
relational subject. However, I do not think feminists should
uncritically adopt Foucault's subject. Although I argue that resistance
is possible on Foucault's account of the subject and power, this notion
of resistance is underdeveloped in Foucault's work. Some feminists have
suggested that feminists use Foucault's theory as a "toolbox,"[60]
taking what we need at the time and leaving the rest behind. I suggest
that we think of the relationship between feminism and Foucault, as he
characterizes the struggle in power relationships, as an agonism, a
straggle, a permanent provocation.[61,62]
Notes
1. Maureen McNeil characterizes the relationship between Foucault and
feminism as a dance: see "Dancing with Foucault: Feminism and
Power/Knowledge," in Caroline Ramazanoglu (ed.), Up Against Foucault:
Explorations of Some of the Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism
(London: Routledge, 1993). The relationship is viewed as complementary
by many feminists who view Foucault's work as useful for feminism, for
example, Susan Hekman, in Gender and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern
Feminism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990). Isaac Balbus
explicitly states that Foucauldian feminism is a contradiction in terms:
see his "Disciplining Women: Michel Foucault and the Power of Feminist
Discourse," in Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell (eds.), Feminism as
Critique: On the Politics of Gender (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 110-27, and this position is implied by many
others who hold that Foucault's work is not relevant for feminist
theory. Linda Alcoff suggests a limited collaboration: see "Feminist
Politics and Foucault: The Limits to a Collaboration," in Arleen Dallery
and Charles Scott (eds.), Crises in Continental Philosophy (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1990).
2. For instance, Nancy Hartsock, in "Foucault on Power: A Theory for
Women?" in Linda Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (New York:
Routledge, 1990), argues that postmodern theories give little guidance
to those interested in social change. For a discussion of the
heterogeneity and complexity of applying the categories postmodernism
and poststructuralism, see Judith Butler, "Contingent Foundations:
Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism," Praxis International 11
(1991): 150-65. For an argument for including Foucault in the postmodern
camp, see Hekman, Gender and Knowledge, pp. 17-18. For a feminist
critique of the usefulness of postmodernism in general (including
Foucault), see Somer Brodribb, Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of
Postmodernism (North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1992).
3. See, for instance: Sandra Bartky, "Foucault, Femininity, and the
Modernization of Patriarchal Power," chap. 5 in her Femininity and
Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York:
Routledge 1990); Susan Bordo, "Anorexia Nervosa and the Crystallization
of Culture," The Philosophical Forum 17 no. 2 (1985-86): 73-104; and
Susan Bordo, "Docile Bodies, Rebellious Bodies: Foucauldian Perspectives
on Female Psychopathology," in Hugh Silverman (ed.), Writing the
Politics of Difference (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991); Hekman, Gender and
Knowledge; and Jana Sawicki, Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power and
the Body (New York: Routledge, 1991).
4. Even around a single issue there are conflicting feminist views.
Although some feminists, for example, Susan Hekman, agree with Foucault
that met narratives are a form of totalizing and ahistorical discourse,
others, such as Seyla Benhabib, think that feminism must retain some
metanarratives, for example, about liberation and justice, to ground
political action.
5. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby (eds.), Feminism and Foucault:
Reflections on Resistance (Boston: Northeastern Press, 1988), pp. ix-xx.
6. Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in
Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),
pp. 140-41.
7. Michel Foucault, "Body/Power," in Power/Knowledge: Selected
Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin
Gordon et al. (New York: Pantheon, 1980), p. 58.
8. Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power," in ibid., p. 117.
9. Lois McNay, "The Foucauldian Body and the Exclusion of Experience,"
Hypatia 6 (1991): 125-37.
10. For Foucault's claim that there is no subject, see Power/Knowledge,
pp. 58, 117. He uses the phrase "objectivizing the subject" in the
afterword to Hubert L. Dreyfuss and Paul Rabinow's Michel Foucault:
Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982), p. 208.
11. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, vol. 2 of The History of
Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), p. 5.
12. See Peter Dews, "The Return of the Subject in the Late Foucault,"
Radical Philosophy 51 (1989): 37-41; Jean Grimshaw, "Practices of
Freedom," in Up Against Foucault; and Linda Alcoff, "Feminist Politics
and Foucault."
13. Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self, vol. 3 of The History of
Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1986).
14. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison,
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
15. For criticisms of Foucault's later work as focusing on the aesthetic
and lapsing into individualism, see Peter Dews, op. cit., and Jean
Grimshaw, op. cit. See also Terry Eagleton, Ideology of the Aesthetic
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 384-95; Lois McNay, Foucault and
Feminism (Boston: Northeastern Press, 1992), pp. 158, 164-65, 172; and
Kate Soper, "Productive Contradictions," esp. p. 38, in Up Against
Foucault.
16. See, for instance, Foucault's introduction to The Use of Pleasure
and his "The Subject and Power," in Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics.
17. Michel Foucault, "The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of
Freedom," trans. J.D. Gauthier, S.J., in James Bernauer and David
Rasmussen (eds.), The Final Foucault (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988),
p. 10.
18. Michel Foucault, "Final Interview," Raritan 5 no. 2 (1985): 1-13.
19. Ibid., p. 11.
20. Ibid., p. 12.
21. Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," in Beyond Structuralism
and Hermeneutics, pp. 208-9.
22. Notable exceptions are Jean Grimshaw, op. cit.; Lois McNay, Foucault
and Feminism; and Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on
Theory, Film and Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987),
chaps. 1 and 2.
23. Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, p. 96.
24. Foucault, "The Ethic of Care for the Self," p. 11.
25. Michel Foucault, "Interview with Lucette Finas," in Meaghan Morris
and Paul Patton (eds.), Michel Foucault: Power, Truth and Strategy
(Sydney: Feral Publications, 1979), p. 70.
26. Braidotti, op. cit., p. 103.
27. Bartky, op. cit., p. 65.
28. Bordo, "Anorexia Nervosa."
29. Foucault, "Interview with Lucette Finas," p. 72.
30. See Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 99; "Interview with Lucette Finas,
" p. 72; "The Subject and Power," pp. 217-18, esp. p. 223; "The Ethic of
Care for the Self," pp. 3, 12.
31. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 99.
32. Foucault, "The Subject and Power," p. 221.
33. Ibid., p. 226.
34. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 98.
35. Foucault, "The Subject and Power," p. 225.
36. See Peter Dews, "Power and Subjectivity in Foucault," New Left
Review 144 (March-April 1984): 72-95; and "The Return of the Subject in
the Late Foucault," Radical Philosophy 51 (1989): 37-41.
37. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, p. 6.
38. For example, in "Disciplining Women," which deals with the early and
middle works of Foucault, Isaac Balbus writes: "We have seen that the
Foucault who tries to 'get rid' of the subject is at odds with the
Foucault who embraces subjectivity as a vital source of history" (p. 124)
. For Foucault's implicit appeal to norms, see Nancy Fraser, "Foucault
on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions," Praxis
International 1 (1981): 272-87; Charles Taylor, "Foucault on Freedom and
Truth," in David Couzens Hoy (ed.), Foucault: A Critical Reader
(Cambridge: Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 69-102; and Terry
Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
39. Kate Soper, "Productive Contradictions," in Up Against Foucault, pp.
29-50.
40. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 66.
41. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, p. 86.
42. In addition to the regimen of dietetics, The Use of Pleasure also
examines economics, erotics, and philosophy in the use of the pleasures
and the stylization of sexuality.
43. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, p. 251.
44. Foucault, "The Ethic of Care for the Self," p. 44.
45. Foucault, The Care of the Self, p. 42.
46. Ibid., p. 51.
47. Ibid., p. 71.
48. Others who have made this comparison include: Isaac Balbus, in
"Disciplining Women"; Jean Grimshaw, in "The Practice of Freedom"; Lois
McNay, in Foucault and Feminism; and Jana Sawicki, in Disciplining
Foucault, esp. chaps. 3, 4, 5. Balbus, Grimshaw, and McNay contrast what
I am calling the feminist relational self with the active self of the
later Foucault. They find Foucault's notion of self in his later works
individualistic and androcentric. Sawicki's position is closer to my own,
which views Foucault's self as similar to the relational view of self
held by object relations theorists.
49. The ethic of care is, of course, not restricted to women. Gilligan
says that the rights ethic and the care ethic are themes to be found in
the moral reasoning of both men and women.
50. Carol Gilligan, In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and
Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982),
p. 8.
51. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and
the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978),
p. 76.
52. Gilligan, Different Voice, p. 32.
53. See Diana Meyers, "The Socialized Individual and Individual
Autonomy: An Intersection Between Philosophy and Psychology," in Eva
Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers (eds.), Women and Moral Theory (Totowa,
N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), and more recently, Diana Meyers,
Subjection and Subjectivity: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Moral
Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1994).
54. Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and
Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992), p.
189.
55. See, for instance, Kittay and Meyers, Women and Moral Theory; Eve
Browning Cole and Susan Coultrap-McQuinn (eds.), Explorations in
Feminist Ethics (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992); Claudia
Card (ed.), Feminist Ethics (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991)
; Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Values (Palo Alto,
Cal.: Institute of Lesbian Studies, 1988); and Elisabeth J. Porter,
Women and Moral Identity (North Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991).
56. Sawicki, Disciplining Foucault, pp. 100-1.
57. In addition to object relations theory, other approaches such as
pragmatism and Marxism hold that the self is social. I owe this point to
Sandra Bartky.
58. For criticisms of the false universalism of the theories of Nancy
Chodorow and Carol Gilligan, see Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson,
"Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and
Postmodernism," in Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism; Elizabeth
Spelman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1988); and several of the essays in Mary Jeanne
Larabee (ed.), An Ethic of Care: Feminist and Interdisciplinary
Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1993).
59. For criticisms of Foucault's androcentrism, see Diamond and Quinby,
Feminism and Foucault, pp. xiv-xvii; Frances Bartkowski, "Epistemic
Drift in Foucault," in Feminism and Foucault, pp. 43-58; Meaghan Morris,
"The Pirate's Fiancee: Feminists and Philosophers, or Maybe Tonight
It'll Happen," in Feminism and Foucault, pp. 21-42; and Balbus,
"Disciplining Women," pp. 110-27. For criticisms of Foucault's
androcentric bias relating specifically to volumes 2 and 3 of the
History of Sexuality, see Soper, "Productive Contradictions," pp. 39-42;
Grimshaw, "Practices of Freedom," p. 65; and Lynn Hunt, "Foucault's
Subject in The History of Sexuality," in Domna C. Stanton (ed.),
Discourses of Sexuality: From Aristotle to AIDS (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 78-93.
60. Meaghan Morris uses this toolbox metaphor in "Pirate's Fiancee," p.
24.
61. Foucault, "The Subject and Power," p. 222.
62. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Mid-South
Philosophy Conference, the Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy, the
Eastern Society for Women in Philosophy, the Central Division of the
American Philosophical Association, and the Society for Phenomenology
and Existential Philosophy. I thank those audiences for their comments
and questions. Special thanks go to those who read an earlier version
and provided extensive written or verbal feedback: Ellen Armour, Sandra
Bartky, Harland Bloland, Susan Bordo, Ellen Feder, Marilyn Frye, Tamsin
Lorraine, Ladelle McWhorter, and Jana Sawicki. I would also like to
acknowledge the support of a Jack B. Critchfield Faculty Development
Grant (Rollins College), which provided me with financial support in the
initial stages of research, and the support of The Center for the
Humanities at Wesleyan University, which awarded me a research
fellowship during the 1995-96 academic year. The Center for the
Humanities provided a stimulating and congenial environment in which to
work on this article.
~~~~~~~~
By Margaret A. McLaren
Department of Philosophy Rollins College. mmclaren@rollins.edu
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Source: Social Theory & Practice, Spring97, Vol. 23 Issue 1, p109, 20p.
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