Magazine: Style, Fall, 1995
FOUCAULT'S RESPONSE TO FREUD: SADO-MASOCHISM AND THE
AESTHETICIZATION OF POWER
-------------------------
I. FOUCAULT'S SADO-MASOCHISTIC PARADIGM: THE "UNTHOUGHT"
OF FREUD'S THEORY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS?
Among the numerous modern theorists who have attempted to bring the
insights of psychoanalysis to bear on political and social theory,
Michel Foucault is one of the names that certainly comes readily to
mind. But while few would see one critic as doing more than stating the
obvious when he wrote that Foucault, like other leading French theorists
of his generation, was "deeply affected by Marx and . . . Freud" (Said 2)
, most of Foucault's interpreters have had little to say about his
relation to psychoanalysis and have focused almost exclusively on his
contributions to historiography and social theory. The relative lack of
interest in the psychoanalytic dimension and implications of Foucault's
work can be explained and even justified in various ways. First, there
is the fact that Foucault wrote very little that explicitly concerned
Freud. Second, the little he did write on psychoanalysis was principally
focused on its status as an institution and its contributions to the
creation of what Foucault called "disciplinary society." In addition,
Foucault's critique of the central psychoanalytic concept of repression
in volume one of The History of Sexuality could be evoked to justify the
view that Foucault was only peripherally or even negatively involved in
a discussion of psychoanalysis.[1]
Factors such as these, however, even if they help explain the relative
neglect of the psychoanalytic dimension of Foucault's work, are perhaps
ultimately less important than the nature of the psychoanalytic concept
that represented for Foucault the central contribution of psychoanalysis
to the theory of power and of the socio-political: sado-masochism. It is
true that the term sado-masochism was rarely, if ever, used by Foucault
in his discussion of political power. But even if it remains implicit in
his work, a concept of sado-masochism is nonetheless central to both the
social and psychological dimension of Foucault's theory. In neglecting
the psychoanalytic dimension of Foucault's works, his interpreters may
unwittingly have confirmed the truth of what Foucault in his histories
and genealogies often claimed: that the "dirty secret" of power has long
been hidden from us by a form of repression or censorship as strong as
or stronger than the one that relates to sexuality per se and that the
deepest critical implications of his own work lie in a transgression of
this other, deeper form of censorship?
One aim of this essay is to bring to light and analyze critically
Foucault's implicit "dialogue" with Freud, in particular that part of
the dialogue that has to do with the concept of sado-masochism. In the
process I shall explore the critical implications for psychoanalysis of
an approach to sado-masochism that does not limit its significance by
treating it as characteristic only of a particular stage of development
or form of neurosis, as Freud most frequently did. What I shall try to
show is the force and implications of Foucault's critique of one of the
central components of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, but I do not seek
to test the rigor of Foucault's critique of Freud through an extended
discussion and analysis of Freud's work as a whole. It may be worth
noting at the start, however, that a fuller discussion of Foucault's
dialogue with Freud would reveal the problematical dimension of a number
of Foucault's assertions when they are confronted with the entirety of
the Freudian corpus.
A second aim of this analysis relates more narrowly to Foucault's work
and the psycho-social model it proposes. As I have already suggested, my
approach to Foucault stems from a sense that both his critics and
defenders have failed to recognize the critical impact of Foucault's
concept of sado-masochism and in the process missed one of the most
significant elements of his work in relation both to psychoanalytical
and social theory. But I will argue as well that these same defenders
and critics may have also missed what is one of the most serious
limitations of his work, a limitation that becomes fully evident in
Foucault's History of Sexuality. In this last work on sexuality and
power, Foucault not only uses the concept of sado-masochism as part of a
critical strategy aimed at psychological theories based on a reductive
notion of repression. He also generalizes the concept and thus
privileges sado-masochism as the model for the social and the
psychological in general. The question here is whether such a privilege
can be justified not just in terms of Freudian or other forms of
psychoanalytic theory, but also ultimately in terms of The History of
Sexuality itself and the analysis it offers of the psychic dimension of
social life in Ancient Greece.
The importance to Foucault of a concept of sado-masochism to his
critical project is evident when one considers his critique of another
Freudian concept he discusses explicitly and repeatedly: the concept of
repression. Even the most cursory reader of Foucault would have
difficulty missing the point that for Foucault himself it was his
approach to the problem of repression that distinguished his work from
that not only of Freud, but also that of "para-Marxists like Marcuse"
and Reich who similarly sought to combine the insights of psychoanalysis
and Marxist analysis (see Power/Knowledge 58, 90). Nor is it easy to
overlook what for Foucault is the decisive point in distinguishing his
work from theirs. As Foucault was to state more than once, their chief
limitation lies in the fact that they have "given the notion of
repression an exaggerated role--because power would be a fragile thing
if its only function were to repress" (59). In other words, their
limitation--and also the limitation of Freud before them--lies in the
reductive, narrowly repressive or negative nature of their concept of
repression, as contrasted with his own emphasis on the positive or
productive aspects of this process (118-19).[3]
But in what sense is repression (or power) "productive," and what is
gained either from the perspective of social or psychoanalytic theory by
an analysis that focuses on the productive nature of repression as
opposed to its restrictive nature? Foucault's concept of power implies
that many institutions and forms of thought are produced by repression.
Nonetheless, in the light of the work of Marxist and para-Marxist
theorists who came before him, it is difficult to argue that our sense
of the nature of power and repression are substantially transformed
simply by viewing them as productive in this sense (see Minson 117).
There is a second sense in which power is productive for Foucault,
however, one that goes to the heart of his dialogue with psychoanalysis
and that does radically transform our perspective on both power and
repression. Power, Foucault tells or reminds us, is productive of
pleasure, and he feels that one of the most important features of his
work is that it has "described the way in which different instances and
stages in the transmission of power were caught up in the very pleasure
of their exercise" (Power/Knowledge 186).
It is at this point in Foucault's argument that an implicit concept of
sado-masochism emerges, because it supplies the mechanism that makes
power productive in this second, "libidinal," sense. Power implies the
existence of inequality, subordination, humiliation, or pain, and it is
primarily the concept of sado-masochism that can account for the
conversion of such an experience of displeasure, whether it is inflicted
on others or on the self, into a source of pleasure:
The medical examination, the psychiatric investigation, the
pedagogical report, and family controls may have the over-all and
apparent objective of saying no to all wayward or unproductive
sexualities, but the fact is that they function as mechanisms with
a double impetus: pleasure and power. The pleasure that comes of
exercising a power that questions, monitors, watches, spies,
searches out, palpates, brings to light; and on the other hand the
pleasure that kindles at having to evade this power, flee from it,
fool it, or travesty it. The power that lets itself be invaded by
the pleasure it is pursuing; and opposite it, power asserting
itself in the pleasure of showing off, scandalizing, or resisting.
Capture and seduction, confrontation and mutual reinforcement. . .
. These attractions, these evasions, these circular incitements
have traced around bodies and sexes, not boundaries not to be
crossed, but perpetual spirals of power and pleasure. (Sexuality
1: 45)
Foucault makes no attempt here to distinguish a masochistic from a
sadistic manner of mixing pleasure and power. On the contrary, he
stresses the interchangeability of the dominant and subordinate
positions in the "spirals of power and pleasure," with the result that
both pleasure and power are exchanged freely between them. It is not
just that these spirals place the subject in differing positions, some
of which are sadistic and others masochistic. Instead, each position in
the spiral is indeterminately sadistic and masochistic, both sadistic
and masochistic at the same time, because attached to each position is a
certain pleasure and a certain power.
The critical implications for psychoanalysis of Foucault's sado-
masochistic paradigm are particularly evident when one turns to a text
from the middle of Freud's career, "The Economic Problem of Masochism."
Of the various texts Freud wrote in which repression is a central theme
or problem, this is the one where Freud appears to come closest to
acknowledging what Foucault calls its productive character. Equally
important, although Freud had already discussed sado-masochism at some
length in the Three Essays on Sexuality, only in "The Economic Problem
of Masochism" does he explicitly relate the phenomenon of sado-masochism
to that of repression.
In "The Economic Problem of Masochism," Freud indicates that the
mechanisms of masochism and repression (and of masochism and sadism) are
in fact one and the same, when he identifies "moral masochism" with what
he calls the "sense of guilt," that is, with repression (161). Masochism,
according to Freud, is a psychic disposition that consists in
experiencing "pleasure in pain," so much so that even the most extreme
forms of pain can be a source of pleasure for the masochist: "Even the
subject's destruction of himself cannot take place without libidinal
satisfaction" (170). If this is the case, then masochism is clearly
capable of converting the displeasure or pain of repression into
pleasure. But the pleasure derived from (the) displeasure (of repression)
can also be understood as belonging to a "sadistic conscience (as it is
exemplified in so many Russian character types)," which enjoys the
suffering it inflicts on the ego (169). This means that the "economic
problem of repression" can be understood in terms either of sadism or of
masochism. Thus "The Economic Problem of Masochism" makes it seem
perfectly plausible to say that in Freud's own terms repression is not
only negative or restrictive, but is also productive--it produces a
pleasure derived masochistically or sadistically from unpleasure.
Moreover, the parallel with Foucault is all the more striking inasmuch
as Freud does not speak only in terms of the conflict between libidinal
and destructive instincts in this essay, but speaks also of a "will to
power." Freud uses this term as a synonym for aggressiveness or
destructiveness when it has been directed toward objects in the external
world (103), but he also indicates that the will to power can be
productive in Foucault's sense, inasmuch as it can serve the sexual
function (103).
Though many elements of his theory of sado-masochism seem to point in
the direction of a theory of productive repression, Freud obviously
never became a proponent of such a theory. No single factor prevented
him from doing so. Instead, he appears to have been impelled by several
rather different considerations. As concerns a number of them, it is
difficult to escape the conclusion that Freud shrank from pursuing what
could be called the "Foucauldian" implications of "The Economic Problem
of Masochism" mainly because of the potential risks they posed to the
authority of psychoanalysis as an institution and to his own interests
as its founder. In the concluding pages of "The Economic Problem of
Masochism," we see Freud defending psychoanalysis as a therapy and
acknowledging that its effectiveness-depends on the creation of a
"desexualized" relation of the subject to authority. For the subject to
achieve this relation, sado-masochism must be overcome. Freud goes on to
write of the detrimental consequences for the subject when a
desexualized relation to authority cannot be established. But the threat
of such detrimental consequences is not in itself sufficient grounds for
establishing either the existence of such a desexualized relationship or
the reality of its psychic foundations, even if Freud argues as though
it did. Given the obvious weakness of the argument Freud makes on behalf
of the therapeutic effectiveness of psychoanalysis, it seems that
Foucault was right to insist on the way psychoanalysis was shaped by the
"will to power" of its own institutional nature. From the standpoint of
Foucault's analysis of power, it comes as no surprise that Freud sought
to establish the authority of the psychoanalyst by setting precise
limits on the significance of sado-masochism. It could not have been
otherwise. Only by analyzing sado-masochism in terms of a limited number
of neurotics could Freud avoid accepting the implications of the
argument he himself seems to be making in "The Economic Problem of
Masochism." When he connects masochism to repression, he implies that
sado-masochism is not a restricted but rather a general phenomenon and
that all relations between subjects, even those of patient to analyst,
have an irreducible sado-masochistic component.
The authority of the analyst is not the only form of authority undercut
when sado-masochism is seen as a general rather than as a limited
phenomenon. The authority of the father is also put in question,
inasmuch as masochism entails a subject's sexualized relation to him, a
"wish, which so frequently appears in phantasies, to be beaten by the
father" and a closely connected wish "to have a passive (feminine)
sexual relation to him" (169). A boy's admittedly sexualized
relationship to the mother is not the real problem in psychoanalytic
terms. It is not only compatible with but even an essential factor in
the desexualization of the relationship to the father, because it drains
the relationship of son to father of its sexual components in order to
invest them in the relation to the mother. Rather, the real problem is
the masochistic relation of son to father. That relation truly disrupts
paternal authority, because it undercuts the desexualization at the
basis of that authority and in the process reveals that an important
element of the son's relation to the father is to be found in the
pleasure of sado-masochism.
The framework within which Freud treats the subject of feminine
sexuality and the feminine sense of guilt (or lack thereof) is similarly
undermined if this Foucauldian perspective on sado-masochism is adopted.
In "Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between
the Sexes," Freud was to argue that the superego of women "is never so
inexorable, so impersonal, so independent of its emotional origins as we
require it to be in men" (257-58). Freud had already laid the groundwork
for this argument concerning the feminine superego in "The Economic
Problem of Masochism," when he wrote that the basis for his remarks on
masochism is to be found in 'the case histories of a group of male
patients. When Freud goes on to label their masochism as "feminine," he
thus identifies masochism itself with femininity, despite the fact that
it can be--has been--found in men. The implication of Freud's gesture is
clear: masochism is essentially feminine. Moreover, if masculinity
involves masochism only in certain instances, whereas femininity is
masochist in principle, then, clearly, the father emerges as the one
legitimate authority, and the son with equal clarity emerges as the
legitimate (male) heir of the father. But this view also becomes highly
questionable in the light of a theory of sado-masochism that stresses
its general character, because such a view does not support Freud's
thesis concerning the insufficiently impersonal nature of the feminine
superego alone. Instead, it points to the importance of the "emotional
origins" of the superego in general. Such a challenge to the
"inexorable" character of the male superego implies, moreover, a clear
and powerful challenge to Freud's patrocentrism.
II. SADO-MASOCHISM AND THE AESTHETICIZATION OF POWER
In the light of the critical implications of Foucault's concept of sado-
masochism, The History of Sexuality, especially the second and third
volumes, comes as something of a surprise. Jean Grimshaw is one critic
who has pointed to the apparent incongruity between the critical
potential of Foucault's other works and the uncritical manner in which
Foucault seems in these final texts to depict a social system giving
unlimited opportunity for self-creation to a few adult males while at
the same time seriously limiting the scope of activity of women and
slaves. The Use of Pleasure, volume 2 of The History, and The Care of
the Self, volume 3, clearly do not validate patriarchy. But they appear
to validate something just as problematic--an aristocracy in which
activity and virility are the unquestioned values and in which the adult
Greek male is the exclusive model for those values.
Though it is difficult to dispute Grimshaw's conclusion that the second
and third volumes of The History of Sexuality represent a significant
shift in Foucault's thinking, it is important to see that these works
are nonetheless a natural, though not inevitable, extension of the
arguments concerning repression found in the works that preceded them.
In The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self, Foucault continues to
stress the productive nature of repression. But whereas in his earlier
works the point of his argument was to refine and complicate various
views of repression that reduce it to its negative effects alone, in the
last two volumes of The History of Sexuality Foucault embraces a concept
of repression that is reductive in another sense: he attempts to defend
a purely productive concept of repression. That Foucault embraces such a
purely productive concept of repression is evident in his description of
the adult Greek male, who is at one and the same time supreme sado-
masochist, supreme artist, and supreme work of art. For Foucault, the
sexual practices and etiquettes of the Greeks constituted "an aesthetics
of existence, the purposeful art of a freedom perceived as a play of
power" (The Use of Pleasure 253; translation slightly modified). In its
Greek form, Foucault unveils a repression that has become productive in
an ultimate sense. Through his sado-masochistic mastery of his own
sexuality, the Greek becomes the ultimate expression of his will to
power and his own self-created work of art.
Of course The History of Sexuality is not the first work by Foucault in
which art plays a crucial role, for a "transgressive" concept of art and
an exploitation of its critical potential could be argued to be unifying
features of Foucault's work as a whole.[4] But what is equally important
is that a link between art and Foucault's concept of productive
repression is implicitly being made in many, if not all, of Foucault's
texts where art is in question. One of Foucault's earliest published
works, his introduction to the French translation of Ludwig Binswanger's
Dream and Existence (introduction and translation published in English
as Dream and Existence: Michel Foucault and Ludwig Binswanger) is an
important case in point. Though it appeared in 1954, this text already
articulates fully the concept of productive repression found in
Foucault's subsequent and better-known works, and significantly it does
so by linking productive repression to an unconscious "art"--the
creation of dream symbols. Foucault's argument in this essay is in
effect that Freud denied the productive nature of repression by reducing
dream-images to the role of merely expressing dream-thoughts. In
contrast, Foucault insists on the irreducibility of image to thought or
discourse, on the "density" of the image as image (35). Thus, says
Foucault, "one looks in vain in [Freud's] work for a grammar of the
imaginary modality, and for an analysis of the expressive act in its
necessity" (36). But, from Foucault's standpoint, it is clearly just
such a "grammar" and "analysis" that are needed. Whereas, for example,
Freud interprets the work of Leonardo da Vinci as a collection of
symbols that refer to early childhood experiences,[5] Foucault attempts
to grasp the (psychic) significance of art in relation to its pure
expressivity, that is, in relation to itself as a productive art. At the
same time, however, Foucault does not intend that his "grammar" of the
image should replace Freud's hermeneutics, whose results, Foucault
states, remain "valid" (36).
Foucault's concepts of sado-masochism and of art are inextricably
intertwined, for both stem from a common root--the concept of productive
repression. Indeed, the critical force of Discipline and Punish could be
argued to derive from the way Foucault combines these two para-Freudian
threads of his thought in his critique of the modern theory and methods
of punishment. Central to that critique is the contrast he draws between
pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary justice. Clearly, the former is
the more "productive" both from the standpoint of sado-masochism and
from the aesthetic standpoint as well. The centrality Foucault
attributes to the body and its pain is one obvious element confirming
the sado-masochistic nature of the punishments meted out in pre-
Revolutionary France. That centrality also, however, confirms the
aesthetic dimension of these punishments, insofar as art, like sado-
masochism, may involve the transformation of pain into pleasure.[6]
Another striking characteristic of the supplices--the name Foucault
gives to the punishments that for him best typify criminal justice under
the ancien regime--is their theatrical ("spectacular") quality, the fact
that they expose punishment to full public view.[7] The result of this
visibility is that the (false) depth or invisibility created by
(negative) repression is rendered less important, and the productive and
aesthetic character of repression is accentuated. The supplices are not
just sadistic or cruel acts, but, in Foucault's view, also artistic or
aesthetic "rituals," albeit "somber" ones.[8]
Initially, at least, the most striking aspect of Foucault's portrait of
punishment under the ancien regime is how "attractive" he makes it. But
the emphasis Foucault places on what for him are the productive aspects
of these early modern forms of punishment is not to be confused with an
unequivocal valorization--or aestheticization--of them. Discipline and
Punish also depicts their cruelty, their merely repressive nature, most
spectacularly in the opening excerpt from the account of the execution
of Damiens, but elsewhere as well. Furthermore, the implications of his
analysis of the aesthetic and sado-masochistic dimension of the
supplices are inextricably linked to his contrasting analysis of the
supposedly more humane methods of punishment that were to prevail from
the French Revolution on into the nineteenth and even twentieth
centuries. Foucault's argument is that post-Revolutionary punishment was
equally as cruel as--if not more cruel than--pre-Revolutionary
punishment, but it lacked its "aesthetic" and openly sado-masochistic
dimension. By the same token, pre-Revolutionary punishment did not
differ from post-Revolutionary punishment in its cruelty, but rather in
its "eclat"--its brilliance or its scandalousness.
In contrast, Foucault's portrait of the adult Greek male in The History
of Sexuality represents a more ambitious claim concerning the productive
nature of repression and the significance of art as the exemplification
of this productivity. In this final work, Foucault is no longer simply
arguing that the existence of the Greeks had an aesthetic dimension, but
that their existence constituted a genuine work of art. In Foucault's
account of Greek sexual practices, the adult Greek male exemplifies a
repression whose truth and essence have now been identified with its
productive, creative nature. Foucault sets the stage for this more
ambitious interpretation of repression with a discussion of a Greek
"Interpretation of Dreams" in which Foucault restates but also
radicalizes the argument of his much earlier introduction to
Binswanger's Dream and Existence. There, Foucault defended the necessity
of a "grammar" of the image that would complement Freud's hermeneutics,
but at the same time he insisted on the validity of the results Freud
derived from his method (36). In The History of Sexuality, however,
Foucault defends a mode of analysis that he implicitly claims breaks
totally with the interpretative model of Freud.
This break with Freud is particularly explicit in the opening sections
of The Care of the Self, where Foucault presents his analysis of the
"Interpretation of Dreams" authored by the Greek Artemidorus. If one
keeps in mind Foucault's early essay on Freud and Binswanger, it is
clear that, for Foucault, Artemidorus's interpretation of dreams has a
basis radically different from that of Freud's. For Artemidorus, "the
analysis of dreams was one of the techniques of existence" (5). The
importance of such techniques for Foucault is not that they permit the
Greek to plumb the depths of his unconscious or uncover the secrets of a
repressed sexuality. Rather, it is that they enable the Greek to situate
himself better and more surely within his society and to master social
relations. This practical dimension of dreams and dream interpretation
is important, because it means that dreams have no hidden meanings.
Because dreams should be understood as performances of social relations
whose significance is completely contained in them, their meanings
therefore can be made--indeed are made--totally explicit. Foucault's
view of Artemidorus's mode of interpretation makes the Freudian theme of
sexuality equally irrelevant to the social relations enacted in the
dream process, at least if by "sexuality" what is meant is the object of
(a negative form of) repression. The predominant form of sexuality
commented on by Artemidorus, "the act of penetration--the core of sexual
activity"--is instead, says Foucault, "perceived within a social
scenography. Artemidorus sees the sexual act first and foremost as a
game of superiority and inferiority" (30), as, that is, a form of
behavior that is explicit precisely because it is social. The Greek
unconscious, in Foucault's view, is structured not like a language, but
like a tableau or theater in which the sado-masochistic spectacle of
domination and submission, humiliation and pleasure has become wholly
visible--and wholly productive.
It is against the background of this renewal and radicalization of his
critique of repression that Foucault's description of the adult Greek
male and his sexual practices takes on its full significance. For
Foucault, the sexual practices and etiquettes of the Greeks constituted
"an aesthetics of existence, the purposeful art of a freedom perceived
as a play of power" (The Use of Pleasure 253; translation slightly
modified). It comes as no surprise that here, as in Discipline and
Punish, art is evoked in connection with the "play of power." In both,
the function of art is to suggest the productive dimension of
repression. Of course, at first glance, an "aesthetics" that involves
the stylization of sexual practices could be seen to be as repressive as
repression in its negative sense. But Foucault hastens to reassure us
that in reality such an aesthetics serves only to heighten the pleasure
of the Greek male. Ultimately, for Foucault, the Greek aesthetics of
existence embodies a free, "unrepressive repression" that takes the form
of "intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set
themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to
change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into
an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain
stylistic criteria" (The Use of Pleasure 10-11). In its "true," that is,
Greek form, because it is presented as an art, both in the sense of a
creative activity and of a work of art, sado-masochism has become
totally aestheticized. It has thus ceased to have any negative dimension
whatsoever.
The idea of a totally positive, aestheticized repression as exemplified
in the adult Greek male is thus for Foucault the distinctive principle
of ancient Greek society. As such, it provides the basis for Foucault's
interpretation of the other social relations he discusses--those between
the adult Greek male and his wife, his slaves; and "boys." The mere fact
that Foucault treats these other relations suggests a desire to test the
productive model of repression and to confirm that it is as central to
them and hence to Greek society as a whole as to the adult Greek male's
relation to himself. In the end, however, Foucault's discussion of these
other relations raises more questions than it answers, questions that in
fact cannot be answered in terms of Foucault's productive model of
repression alone. A striking case in point is to be found in Foucault's
discussion of a number of important Greek treatises recommending
conjugal fidelity to both spouses. The existence of such recommendations,
Foucault acknowledges, indicates a potential discrepancy between the
apparently negative or narrowly repressive logic underlying them, on the
one hand, and the productive form of repression he argues constituted
the essence of the freedom and self-creation of adult Greek males, on
the other. But, for Foucault, these recommendations of conjugal fidelity
ultimately are consistent with an aestheticized sado-masochistic model.
In order to see this as the case, Foucault tells us, we must understand
that for the Greeks the recommendations did not imply the existence of a
limitation in the possibilities of satisfaction of the husband or even a
belief--whether conscious or unconscious--in the desirability of such a
limitation: "For the Greek moralists of the classical epoch," Foucault
writes, "moderation was prescribed to both partners in matrimony, but it
depended on two distinct modes of relation to self, corresponding to the
two individuals. The wife's virtue constituted the correlative and the
proof of a submissive behavior; the man's austerity was part of an
ethics of self-delimiting domination" (The Use of Pleasure 184).
It is difficult at this point in Foucault's text to see why we should
accept such an interpretation of Greek discourse on matrimony. This
difficulty does not mean that Foucault's argument is totally implausible
and that there could not have been a dissymmetry of the kind for which
he argues underlying the admonition to be faithful to one's wife. But it
seems equally plausible that such admonitions were simply repressive of
male (and female) sexuality. When Aristotle recommends conjugal fidelity,
is it really obvious he was advocating a "stylization" and enhancement
of male sexual pleasure? Equally important, is it obvious that such
restrictions were consistent with the view that adult Greek males did or
should enjoy unlimited freedom and that their wives were or should be
subject to serious restrictions? It seems equally likely that such
restrictions reflected a view that the unlimited freedom of the Greek
male might itself be repressive, if not of his own sexuality, then of
that of his spouse.[9]
Even if one were to accept Foucault's highly debatable interpretation of
the treatises he mentions in the section of The Use of Pleasure
discussing relations between Greeks and their wives, there would still
be an important question as to whether a system that consistently not
only tolerated, but even encouraged the unlimited sexual freedom of
males and subjected the sexuality of women and slaves to serious
restriction can be interpreted solely in "productive" terms. Foucault
himself seems to entertain this question in the conclusion to The Use of
Pleasure. There he asserts once again that the Greek "arts of existence"
in effect restricted the (sexual) freedom of women and slaves. The
sexual ethics of Greeks, says Foucault "rested on a very harsh system of
inequalities and constraints (particularly in connection with women and
slaves); but it was problematized in thought as the relationship, for a
free man, between the exercise of his freedom, the forms of his power,
and his access to truth" (252-53). The rhetorical construction of this
passage reflects its significance in the context of Foucault's broader
argument, however. The issue posed by the restrictions that are the
correlative of the Greek's exercise of his freedom is not ultimately
significant, unless those restrictions are viewed in terms of the way
they enhanced the adult Greek's freedom and pleasure. Insofar as they
were mere restrictions, their existence has only to be noted and can
then be left behind, because they simply do not fit with the productive
model of repression Foucault assumes.
While Foucault evinces little concern for or interest in the potential
discrepancy between his thesis and the rules of conduct governing the
behavior of adult Greek males and their wives, relations between adult
Greek males and "boys" provide an instance where the productive nature
of repression is explicitly in question for Foucault and, Foucault
argues, for the Greeks themselves. In the opening sentence of the
chapter entitled "A Problematic Relation," Foucault writes: "The use of
pleasures in the relationship with boys was a theme of anxiety for Greek
thought" (187). Foucault asserts that these relations were the object of
the most extensive, fully articulated discussion and etiquette--and
hence, implicitly, the occasion for the most productive form of
repression. The apparent reason for this extensive discussion was that
the implications of an aestheticized sado-masochism were seen as
potentially negative in the case of relations between adult males and
boys, more so than in the case of relations between adult men and slaves
or adult men and women.
In the end, however, Foucault asserts that the intensity with which the
Greeks reflected on relations between adult men and boys stems from the
fact that those relations exemplified particularly well the productive
nature of repression:
It seems clear . . . that in classical Greece the problematization
[of sexuality] was more active in regard to boys [than young
women] . . . . What is historically singular is not that the
Greeks found pleasure in boys, nor even that they accepted this
pleasure as legitimate; it is that this acceptance of pleasure was
not simple, and that it gave rise to a whole cultural elaboration.
(214)
Despite the assertion Foucault makes here, however, another
interpretation of Greek "anxiety" seems equally plausible: it was not at
all clear to the Greeks that the freedom, even stylized, of the adult
Greek male did not have a negative repressive meaning, if not for the
adult Greek, then at least for his much younger sexual partner. In this
connection it is worth noting that though Foucault does in certain
passages speak of "boys" as adolescents, in others he specifies that he
is writing of young males who have not yet reached puberty or grown
their "first beard" (199).
What made relations between adult Greek males and boys problematic,
according to Foucault, was "the juxtaposition of an ethos of male
superiority and a conception of all sexual intercourse in terms of the
schema of penetration and male domination" (220). The consequence of
this was that, on the one hand, the "'active' and dominant role was
always assigned positive values, but, on the other hand, it was
necessary to attribute to one of the partners in the sexual act the
passive, dominated, and inferior position. And while this was allegedly
no problem when it involved a woman or a slave, the case was altered
when it involved a male," even if the male were not yet an adult. Given
this formulation of the problem, however, the real surprise of The Use
of Pleasure is that it focuses on relations between adult males and boys
and almost totally neglects relations between adult males. And yet,
according to the logic of Foucault's argument, these latter relations
presumably would have posed the most serious challenge to the
"productive" model of repression but, as a consequence, would also have
confirmed it in the most striking manner.
In the end, Foucault's omission of a discussion of sexual relations
between adult Greek males undoubtedly relates less to a lack of material
that could have provided the basis of such a discussion than to a
limitation of Foucault's purely productive concept of repression.[11]
What a depiction of relations between adult men would have obliged
Foucault to confront is the irreducible ambiguity of the sado-
masochistic domination and humiliation of another being. He would have
had to acknowledge that in the case of sado-masochistic relations
between two adult Greek males, the potentially negative--non-productive--
dimension of the Greek "aesthetics of existence" concerned not only
those whom Foucault readily--perhaps too readily--acknowledged suffered
from its restrictions, but also those who supposedly benefited in every
way from its permissions. Equally important, Foucault would have had to
see that in a sexual relation between two adult males, that is, between
a Greek male and another being who for him would represent another
autonomous self, the potentially negative significance of the
humiliation and domination of the other could not but reflect the
negative implications of the Greek's aestheticized sado-masochistic
relation to himself and the arguably restrictive and not merely
expressive character of his "art."
It could be argued that what makes Discipline and Punish such a powerful
work is the way in which Foucault himself appears to stress the
ambiguity of the various tableaux studding his narrative of the history
of punishment in the last four centuries, whether the tableaux depict
the interrogator and the interrogated, the king and the condemned, or
the policeman and the criminal. Discipline and Punish and many of
Foucault's other texts provide a powerful critique of psychoanalysis by
underscoring the productive, aesthetic dimension of repression, a
critique, moreover, that adds to the richness and complexity of our
understanding of the unconscious. In contrast, what limits The History
of Sexuality is that Foucault sought to eliminate the ambiguity for
which he himself had so forcefully argued in his earlier work. Despite
Foucault's intentions, The History of Sexuality testifies to the
limitations of a theory of repression that formulates repression in
positive terms alone. Foucault did not and could not have demonstrated
in this or in any other work that repression has (or at one time had) a
totally productive character, because he was unable to neutralize
totally the ambiguity of even aestheticized forms of sado-masochism and
of the "spectacles" in which, throughout his work, they are enacted.
Despite Foucault, The History of Sexuality testifies thus not just to
the limitations of a negative concept of repression, but also and above
all to the limitations and inherent contradictions of a purely
productive, aestheticized concept of repression. In this sense, Foucault
has demonstrated the timeliness of a critical "return to Freud" that
focuses on the fundamentally contradictory--that is, simultaneously
productive and destructive--nature of repression.
Notes
1 In Read My Desire, Joan Copjec makes a number of legitimate criticisms
of Foucault's work and contrasts his perspective unfavorably with a
Lacanian approach to several of the historical and cultural problems
Foucault addressed. But Copjec does not take seriously enough the depth
of Foucault's involvement with psychoanalysis and the critical
contributions he made to our understanding of it.
2 A notable exception to the tendency I am describing is James Miller's
controversial The Passion of Michel Foucault. In an approach that
attempts to combine autobiography and intellectual history, Miller
evokes sado-masochism, which he discusses in terms of Foucault's concept
of the "limit-experience" (378). Given this focus, Miller is led to
emphasize Foucault's debt to Sade and Bataille, whereas he mentions
Freud only in passing.
3 See, of course, Judith Butler, who, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and
the Subversion of Identity, has emphasized this "positive" dimension of
repression in an analysis of gender and performativity.
4 In Paraesthetics: Foucault/Lyotard/Derrida, David Carroll discusses
the aesthetic dimension of Discipline and Punish and its connection to a
general privileging of art and literature that is argued to shape
Foucault's critical project as a whole.
5 Freud writes, for instance: "If Leonardo was successful in reproducing
on Mona Lisa's face the double meaning which this smile contained, the
promise of unbounded tenderness and at the same time sinister menace . .
. then here too he had remained true to the content of his earliest
memory" (11: 115).
6 This point is conveyed most clearly in the contrasting picture
Foucault provides of nineteenth-century forms of punishment, in which,
he argues, "one no longer touched the body" (Discipline and Punish 15).
His implication is clear. Under the ancien regime the body was "touched,
" it occupied a central position in the somber "festival" of punishment.
7 This point also becomes clear through Foucault's contrasting portrait
of the forms of punishment that replaced the supplices. In the
nineteenth century, Foucault writes, "the power to punish no longer
dared to manifest itself openly" (Discipline and Punish 256), a clear
indication that the supplices were characterized by their openness, by
their public visibility as a "theater of cruelty."
8 This point is clearest in Foucault's assertion that the supplices were
an "art mingled with the ceremony of pain" (Discipline and Punish 257).
9 One of Soloh's laws, to which Foucault refers in passing, should be
cited in this connection. It "required the husband to have sexual
relations with his wife at least three times a month if she was an
'heiress'" (The Use of Pleasure 146).
10 Foucault similarly recognizes a potential discrepancy between the
existence of a law prohibiting free Athenian males from raping slaves
(and also minors) and the supposedly unlimited character of the freedom
of adult Greek males--or at least their status as the only agents with
the authority to limit their own activities. From Foucault's standpoint,
it is inconceivable that such a law might reflect a belief that even
slaves, the most dispossessed class of all, possessed certain
inalienable rights implying a corresponding necessity for a restriction
in the sexuality of adult Greek males. Instead, he offers what it is
difficult not to see as a contorted argument to demonstrate that it did
not. Foucault appropriates this argument--but without taking any
critical precautions--from Aeschines, whose ironic rhetoric is noted by
Robert Hurley as posing problems for Foucault in connection with another
of his references to Aeschines's work in The Use of Pleasure (218).
According to that argument, the law concerning the rape of slaves is
really designed to affirm the absolute nature of the hierarchy between
slaves and free men, because it was intended to impress upon Athenians
the serious nature of the crime of rape when its victim was a minor, by
comparing the minor in such an instance with the slave (The Use of
Pleasure 216).
11 Not only is Foucault's omission of a discussion of adult homosexual
relations inconsistent with his whole argument, but what little he does
say about such relations is itself highly inconsistent and indicates the
kinds of insurmountable problems that would have been posed to Foucault
by a discussion of them. At one point Foucault cites mentions of an
"abiding love relationship between two men who were well past
adolescence" that implied no censure of such relations (The Use of
Pleasure 194). But a few pages later, he asserts that "the first beard"
represented a "fateful mark," and "the razor that shaved it must sever
the ties of love" (199) between the boy and his adult lover.
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~~~~~~~~
By Suzanne Gearhart
University of California, Irvine
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Source: Style, Fall95, Vol. 29 Issue 3, p389, 15p.
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