In Robert Resch's masterful 1992 survey of Althusserian Marxism, Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory responds to Poster’s concerns by developing a wide-ranging Marxist critique of Foucault. Starting from Foucault’s archaeological ‘period’ (in which Foucault's work focused on the formation and transformation of discourses independently of questions of power), Resch argues Foucault's failure to theorise a link between the autonomous laws of discourse and their organisation into an episteme is imported into his genealogical work via his refusal to theorise the connections between what is being studied and the total ensemble of social relations.
But strangely, even though it went untheorised the 'connective' issue was contradicted in Foucault's scholarly practice. For example, he writes "this class [the bourgeoisie] must be seen rather as being occupied, from the mid-18th century on, with creating its own sexuality and forming a specific body based on it, a ‘class’ body with its health, hygiene, descent and race: the autosexualisation of its body, the incarnation of sex in its body, the endogamy of sex and the body" (1978, p.124). This suggests there is indeed a relationship between the capitalist class and the particular kind of body it favoured, that the concerns of ‘health, hygiene, descent and race’ which became leitmotifs of 19th century medical discourse had its origins in the bourgeois body, and these discourses multiplied as capitalism became more dominant. Even more explicitly:
Bio-power was without question an indispensable element in the development of capitalism: the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes. (Ibid, pp.140-1)
While Foucault can point to linkages he cannot explain them because the genealogical method rules it out of court. The emphasis on discontinuity, anti-teleology and refusal to factor the wider social formation into his method is dangerously one-sided, erecting a barrier to any approach that tries to theorise and explain social complexity while avoiding foundational and essentialist thinking.
For Resch, this mystifying moment is also present in Foucault’s fusing of power/knowledge. It does have the value of recognising knowledges are the production of material apparatuses (institutions etc.) and are stamped by the circumstances of their birth. But Foucault does not explore this with all due sensitivity. He merely collapsed knowledge into power reducing the former into an expression of the latter. If knowledge is only the expression of certain power networks, then resistance and subjugated knowledges stand implicitly condemned for articulating alternate networks of power. Resistance, while not futile, will only ever replace one set of power networks with another.
This impasse, Resch argues, would have been avoided if Foucault had theorised a separation between power and the effects of knowledge. But perhaps Foucault is only guilty of bending the stick too far in one direction – he recognises power does not necessarily invalidate the truth of a knowledge and his genealogies do not deny the efficacy of knowledge. What Foucault says of his method is "it is really against the effects of the power a discourse that is considered to be scientific that the genealogy must wage its struggle" (cited in Jon Simons (1995) Foucault and the Political. London: Routledge, p.93). Despite conceptually fusing power and knowledge, Foucault does leave a space for epistemological investigations of a discourse’s truth claims.
Resch’s final argument against Foucault concerns the conceptualisation of the social field. Recognising power is dynamic and conflictual, Resch notes types and degrees of power cannot be conceptualised by Foucault’s model. From this perspective, the micro-foundations of power are writ large by Foucault and generalised across social space. While this may be the case on one level, Foucault inadvertently provides a model analogous to Hobbes’ general war of all against all. In other words, at this level of abstraction little or nothing can be said about wider social processes. An appropriate biological analogy for Foucault's method of analysing power would be an attempt construction of a theory of the cardio-vascular system from the study of a single red blood cell.
In sum, Poster’s Foucauldian critique established an opposition to Marx's method, taking him to task for relying too heavily on a metaphysics of narrative and reason. However, Marx’s dialectics themselves are not critiqued. In turn, Resch’s criticised Foucault’s method and the conception of power that flows from it. The actual studies of the prison, sexuality, etc. are left untouched.
Do their respective silences denote a space in which work toward a theoretical convergence can take place?
Perhaps. To bridge the gap between the dialectical and genealogical methods, abstraction as derived from Ollman's discussion of dialectics is more than a free-floating analytical technique magically capable of fusing incompatible methods. It must be wedded to a materialist approach that is dynamic, open to revision and has the potential to conceptualise a wide range of phenomena, encompassing the macro and micro levels of social movement that Marx and Foucault respectively address. The re-reading of Marx and particularly the reconstruction of the Marxist method by Althusser may have fallen out of academic fashion, but contains within it important methodological procedures that could potentially allow for a productive Marx-Foucault relationship, and offer a way of realising the promise of abstraction.
The whole contents of Toward a Marxian/Foucauldian Encounter can be viewed here.
Last Sunday's Hardcore Profits was must see viewing for anyone interested in the commodification of sex in contemporary capitalism. In Hardcore Profits, "Tim Samuels explores the rising pervasiveness of pornography, discovers how new technology is changing porn, and questions porn films' reluctance to portray safe sex on screen." All of this is linked to money - big money. According to a guestimate by the American porn industry's trade publication, Adult Video News, its value was somewhere in the region of $13bn. That was three years ago.
Samuels reveals there are some surprising names with their snouts in the porn trough. In Britain Sky and Virgin take a cut from individual subscriptions to the adult channels doing the rounds on cable and digital. So when Jacqui Smith's hubby went on an evening's fact-finding mission with Dirty Debutantes, chances are some taxpayers' cash ended up in Rupert Murdoch's pockets. Google and other search engines also trouser porn money through adsense and preferential rankings. Samuels also brands the biggest purveyors of porn in Britain happen to be wholesome family-friendly companies like Vodafone and 3. According to an industry expert he interviewed, the mobile porn market is worth $1.7bn with projections of it rising to $4.6bn by 2012. On top of all this the big hotel firms make a packet from the pay-per-view porn they pipe to their rooms. And lastly Visa and Mastercard make a healthy margin from charging porn firms a premium on internet-based card transactions. According to Scott Cotman, CEO of the free PornTube site, this amounts to 1.5% extra over and above what straight businesses have to pay.
With this cash sloshing around Wall St have started showing an interest. Samuels meets up with Francis Koenig, founder of the Adultvest hedge fund. It is unique because it only invests in the adult entertainment industry. Since launching in 2005 the fund has - according to Koenig - been catapulted into the top quartile for investment returns. Asked about who has invested in the fund Koenig keeps mum. This isn't surprising - the two funds he runs require $100k and $1million as base investment. The steep entry level rules out everyone but wealthy individuals and institutional investors.
The influx of big money and the demands for large returns has led to unforseen social consequences, quite apart from those traditionally flagged up by feminists. The health of pornographic actors frequently comes second to the aesthetics of fucking. In short condoms are out because sex looks better without them. When three female stars contracted HIV in 2004, the studios adopted but quickly discarded condom use (Wicked Pictures remains the only studio where condoms are mandatory). The only precaution the industry has taken is compulsory monthly testing for all (registered) performers. One actor, Randy Spears, notes this is woefully inadequate. The big customers of porn - the hotels that buy it for pay-per-view for example, could make a difference by bulk ordering porn that promotes safe sex. And yet they don't, leading Spears to conclude another HIV outbreak is likely (in fact there was a small scare this June).
In the age of globalisation unforseen consequences can spread well beyond the porn sets of southern California. Samuels takes off to Ghana and finds how porn is invading even the most remote of villages. He meets up with Earnest who's trying to promote abstinence-based HIV prevention. But we soon find out he's competing with mobile porn cinemas that get hauled around the countryside. According to interviews with some of the villagers this has led to an increased frequency of rapes and marital breakdown. If this wasn't bad enough the Ghanese AIDS commission sees the corrosive effect American porn has on its work. In the opinion of its director general, one legacy of colonialism and Western hegemony is an acceptance of the superiority of its cultural artifacts and norms over Ghanese customs. So when they see Americans having sex without condoms young men are likely to follow suit. Samuels speaks to Kofi and Frank, who are HIV positive. In the absence of sex education they learned about it via porn and did not pick up on the importance of condoms.
Unfortunately Samuels' report slightly disappoints on three counts. While the big firms are asked to provide statements on the place porn occupies in their business (Visa, Mastercard, etc. gave non-answers and empty spin) they are not challenged about the more testy issue of condom use. Second, little is given over to the misogyny underlying mainstream male-oriented straight porn. It is touched on occasionally in the discomfort felt by one actress and the objectifying/dehumanising reduction of women to genitals and sex acts, but more could easily be made of it. This is just as critical an issue as condom use - if porn is the main sex education received by millions of young men then it will affect their perception of and behaviour toward women. Third there is a question of timing. It would appear the film was shot before the economic crisis kicked in early Autumn last year. Since then the porn industry has proven to be anything but recession-proof. According to this piece in the LA Times, the recession has driven traffic away from DVDs and paysites to free porn. The result has been falling revenue for the studios, fewer productions, declining rates for work and reduced hours for performers. If you're a top-ranking star you should be okay. But for those who are not there is an increasing competition among models, a competition favouring women willing to do more and more extreme performances. Despite this porn is more pernicious than ever. Ironically economic crisis is now driving its expansion as the main players fight for their share of the free to view market by offering up more material for nothing.
These criticisms might be unfair. After all I haven't seen the second part of the documentary yet. But whatever conclusions the film has reached, it offers a glimpse into a complex world socialists need to get a handle on.
Most readers will now know the BBC is entertaining the possibility of inviting Nick Griffin onto Question Time. As you would imagine this has sent some sections of the left into howls of rage. Some have argued this gives the BNP the layer of "legitimacy" and "acceptance" they crave. Others have said Griffin should not be afforded a platform to spout his racist drivel.
This is the stock response we should expect from establishment anti-fascism. No doubt tomorrow's press release from Unite Against Fascism will wag its finger at the BBC and ask if the editors know the BNP is a Nazi organisation full of Holocaust-denying freaks and people with criminal records. Nor would I be surprised if the UAF commit itself to picketing future Question Times Nazi Nick has been invited to.
The problem with all this is it plays right into the BNP's hands. We may not like it but the BNP has successfully built up a semi-stable, semi-localised electoral base who are receptive to what the fascists have to say. A core element of their propaganda is a persecution complex where the BNP are victimised by powerful forces for daring to tell the "truth". This is compounded by anti-fascists attempting to no platform the BNP without offering a rebuttal of their racist narrative. In the minds of casual BNP supporters it looks as though they have the establishment running scared.
Underlying this commitment to a no platformist strategy is a thinly veiled belief the BNP's target audience - white working class people - have a hard time thinking for themselves. They need shielding from their Nazi lies because there's a danger at any moment they'll become slobbering racists.
I for one have much more faith in working class people. If they can see through the bollocks regularly churned out by Gordon Brown and co, they are more than able to see Griffin for the thick, prejudiced tosser he is.
Mark Poster's Foucauldian critique of Marxism in his 1984 book, Foucault, Marxism, and History: Mode of Production Versus Mode of Information argues Marx's method is underpinned by metaphysical thinking on four counts.
First, Poster argues Marx constructs history as a narrative of a subject (the labourer) acting on an object (nature) in which the subject increasingly comes under the domination of impersonal forces. This is theoretically expressed in Marx’s youthful theory of alienation and its mature rendering as commodity fetishism. Poster asks if premising critical theory on a labour-centered foundation is adequate to the task of unmasking contemporary forms of domination, particularly in the advanced capitalist societies where production is being displaced by service industries as the main sector of employment.
Second, Marx comes under fire for his notion of proletarian universality – the idea the self-liberation of the working class will eliminate all oppressions that appear independent of class, such as sexism, racism and homophobia. Poster argues this is little more than an expression of faith. For example he believes Marxism passes over awkward questions such as the oppression of working class women by working class men, which in turn reinforces his scepticism class struggle will sweep away all forms of oppression.
Thirdly, Poster argues that for Marx socialism was the end point of history, a not-so-subtle recoding of Hegel's philosphy of history. Here history is understood as the progress from lower to higher forms of social organisation. The further along the historical track the nearer history is to the instantiation of the Absolute - the point where history ends and reason begins. The difference for Poster is whereas for Hegel the Absolute is destined to come about naturally, for Marx the proletariat is the bearer of a higher form of social organisation which is established as the successful outcome of class struggle.
Finally, Poster criticises Marx’s method for its imputed teleology, where conjunctural specifics and accidents of history are reduced to class and related to the inevitable march to the communist future. Working class interest in ‘non-class’ issues are therefore products of an inadequate socialist consciousness, of false consciousness.
The Marxist method for Poster stands in the Enlightenment tradition of affirming the ability of reason to grasp and restructure the real. In contrast, "for Foucault, history is a form of knowledge and a form of power at the same time ... it is a means of controlling and domesticating the past in the form of knowing it. The historian pretends to recreate the past ... as it really was. Using an awkward combination of anecdote and statistic, the historian paints the landscape of the past in the colours of the present" (ibid. p.75).
In other words, Marxism is another network of power/knowledge with typical Enlightenment characteristics. It totalises history, premising it on a metaphysical labour narrative and is compromised as a critical theory by its inability to conceptualise oppressions arising outside of the production process. Therefore, Poster is predisposed toward Foucault because he eschews metaphysics, affirms anti-teleology, anti-totalisation while emphasising the discontinuities of history.
Despite this, Poster notes a couple of problems with Foucault. The radical anti-teleology and resistance to totalisation embedded in the genealogical approach rules out theorising relationships between micro-technologies of power and the wider social formation. Second, Foucault uses concepts with the barest minimum given over to conceptual construction. This, Poster argues, not only leaves Foucault’s concepts open to contention but has hampered their diffusion. Nevertheless Poster believes they are a clear advance over Marxism, providing answers to questions Marxism has barely addressed.
The whole contents of Toward a Marxian/Foucauldian Encounter can be viewed here.
Back in July I predicted socialist bloggers would be squeezed by new Labour blogs and the participation of LabourList, Conservative Home and LibDem Voice in the annual Total Politics top 100 poll of political blogs.
I was wrong - so much for the science of perspectives! Overall the position of the proper left has improved in the top 100 left of centre blogs. Here's the top 20:
1 (1) Tom Harris MP
2 (2) Hopi Sen
3 (-) LabourList
4 (-) Alastair Campbell
5 (13) SNP Tactical Voting
6 (6) Luke Akehurst
7 (12) Harry's Place
8 (-) Next Left
9 (3) Stumbling & Mumbling
10 (27) The Daily (Maybe)
11 (59) Guerilla Welsh Fare
12 (17) A Very Public Sociologist
13 (10) Dave's Part
14 (-) Third Estate
15 (43) Two Doctors
16 (73) Blog Menai
17 (11) Sadie's Tavern
18 (-) Blackburn Labour
19 (74) Kerry McCarthy MP
20 (-) Malc in the Burgh
What's that blog at number 12?
What I would count as counter-hegemonic blogging has gained more than it's lost. I'm glad to see excellent new blogs like The Third Estate, The Polemical Report, Left Outside and Cllr Tim Blog make the grade. It's also gratifying to see Charlie Marks, Liam Mac Uaid, Shiraz Socialist, GrimmerUpNorth, Madam Miaow, Stroppyblog, Splintered Sunrise, Derek Wall, Lenin's Tomb, Though Cowards Flinch, HarpyMarx, Penny Red, The F-Word, Socialist Unity, The Bickerstaffe Record, Dave Osler, Jim Jepps and Chris Dillow maintain and in most cases improve their rankings.
There's no reason these and the many other fine left blogs who didn't make the list shouldn't continue winning new audiences and building the profile of socialist blogging over the next 12 months.
For last year's results, see here.
And yes, just like a year ago myself and Brother S toasted our success over a green tea!
This email was sent to all members of the University and College Union this morning concerning the dispute the union is in with London Metropolitan University. Greylisting is the UCU's "nuclear option". Therefore it's imperative the action succeeds and brings management back to the negotiating table.
Dear colleague,
As you will know, I seldom email you directly and only do so when I feel that a situation is extremely important to our union. As such, it is with regret that I write to you today to formally notify you of the greylisting of London Metropolitan University (LMU). Those of you who have been in the union since its inception or were in one of the predecessor unions, AUT or NATFHE, will be aware that this is the most serious sanction available to us and this will be the first time in UCU's history when greylisting has been formally implemented rather then threatened (such as at Keele University and Nottingham Trent University).
As of today, 1 September, UCU will be asking colleagues across the country, other trade unions, labour movement organisations and the international academic community to support our members at the university in any way possible, including:
* non-attendance, speaking at or organising academic or other conferences at LMU
* not applying for any advertised jobs at LMU
* not giving lectures at LMU
* not accepting positions as visiting professors or researchers at LMU
* not writing for any academic journal which is edited at or produced by LMU
* not taking up new contracts as external examiners for taught courses
If you are able to support in this way, please email: jstephens@ucu.org.uk
Please could I also ask that you, as a matter of urgency, write to the
vice-chancellor at LMU, Alfred Morris (Alfred.Morris@londonmet.ac.uk ) to:
* express your concern
* state that that you will not take part in any collaboration with LMU for the duration of greylisting
* call on the university to honour UCU's redundancy avoidance procedure
* request that the findings of the independent enquiry currently being conducted by Deloitte Touche are made public and are acted upon
* call for an urgent internal review of LM management following the reports of both HEFCE and Deloitte Touche
Please copy any correspondence to: jstephens@ucu.org.uk
All UCU members are also asked to consider the following questions and respond as soon as possible to jstephens@ucu.org.uk in order that we support our colleagues and students at London Metropolitan as effectively as possible.
* Are you involved in collaborative research activity with LMU?
* Are you aware of any collaboration between LMU and other HE/FE institutions, including international?
* Are you planning to attend any conferences and/or are you booked as an external speaker/guest lecture?
* Are you aware of any high profile speakers or events being planned at LMU?
* Are you aware or involved in any other collaborative relationships - such as with business?
* Have you been approached to be an external examiner at LMU?
Background to the dispute:
As I am sure you will by now be aware, toward the end of last year, LMU was hit by a £15 million reduction in recurring grant and repayment demands totalling more than £36 million by HEFCE following submissions of incorrect student completion records. The university responded by stating that they intended to cut 550 posts. Despite our best efforts over the last nine months to attempt to persuade the university to enter into formal negotiations to reach a resolution, and a vigorous, nationally and regionally supported branch campaign, including industrial action, the university is forging ahead with the planned compulsory redundancies – the first 50 FTEs of which are imminent.
The situation at London Metropolitan University is unprecedented. The vice-chancellor, Brian Roper resigned in March and a special report into HEFCE's role in the crisis at LMU was published last month (available here). After months of public pressure from the academic community, UCU and our sister unions, Deloitte Touche have been commissioned to undertake an independent inquiry into the situation at London Met and UCU will be contributing to this inquiry.
UCU's position:
We believe that this reinforces the dire need for a fresh start for London Metropolitan. The staff and the students deserve a new leadership and new, open and productive industrial relations. Yet, in spite of our calls for a suspension of their proposals until after the independent reports have been made public, the management appears dogmatically committed to press on with its plans to make 550 redundancies of which many, we fear, will be compulsory.
I believe that we cannot stand back and allow this university to be destroyed. We cannot stand by and allow hundreds of staff and students pay the price for a catastrophic failure of management and governance. As a national union, we must be able to say that it is unacceptable for staff to pay for mismanagement with their jobs and students to suffer huge detriment to their education and we must establish the principle that universities must be accountable for their actions.
UCU remains committed to a negotiated solution and we hope that management will back away from a course which we believe will threaten the long-term future of the university.
Many thanks,
Sally Hunt,
UCU General Secretary
At this point it appears Marxism and Foucault could not be further away from each other. Though both share a framework that is historical and materialist (broadly speaking), the radically decentred conception of power favoured by Foucault operates at the level of individual bodies and flows from the epistemological ‘low ground’ on which his methodology is based. This does not sit with Marxist objectives of uncovering and explaining macro-level historical trends and the political goal of replacing capitalism with socialism. A reconciliation between Foucault and Marx seems insurmountable.
Nevertheless there is an aspect of Marx's method that can facilitate an encounter between the two. Bertell Ollman's 1993 book, Dialectical Investigations places abstraction at the centre of Marx’s dialectical method. Dialectical thought argues Ollman "restructures our thinking about reality by replacing the commonsense notion of a ‘thing’ as something that has a history and has external connections with other things, with notions of ‘process’, which contains its history and possible futures, and ‘relation’, which contains as part of what it is its ties with other relations" (ibid, p.11). According to Ollman a ‘thing’ is always irreducibly social, enmeshed and constituted through relations that act on it, and in turn are acted on by it. For Ollman Marx abstracts the part from the whole, recognising that this is just an analytical separation - it is in actuality organically embedded in the social substance. It is important that abstraction remains sensitive to this fact and not mistake the things of logic for the logic of things. Marx therefore does not take an object and build up its external connections with other objects, an approach characteristic of methodological individualism or Enlightenment rationalism. "Externalities" are always considered internal to an object and constitutive of it.
Once this standpoint has been adopted dialectical research is concerned with identifying four faces of social relations. First, the particular character of ‘identity/difference’ needs to be established – an operation that goes beyond a banal comparative accounting of similarities and differences by looking beyond appearance. In Marx’s Capital the different appearances classical political economy bestows upon rent, interest and profit is suppressed to bring out their identity as forms of surplus value. Likewise, the Marxist approach to the state brackets their differences (i.e. whether they be dictatorships, monarchies, or liberal democracies) as a means of bringing out their common identity as capitalist states.
Second is the recognition of the interpenetration of opposites - how an object's appearance and functions derive from its surroundings. In class society this generally assumes a contradictory unity. For example, Ollman notes that a machine can be viewed as an instrument from which a capitalist can derive a profit, and from the workers standpoint a tool that increases production, thereby intensifying their economic exploitation. This insight can be extended to capitalist society itself: the bourgeoisie exist by virtue of extracting a surplus from the working class through economic means, while the working class must necessarily take part in this process in order to earn a living. Each depends and constitutes the other, even though their interests are diametrically opposed.
Third, the dialectical approach to process is expressed in the passage from quantity to quality, whereby quantative change reaches a point where the object undergoes a qualitative break. Engels famously demonstrated this with reference to how the application of heat to water caused its molecules to become excited to the point where they underwent qualitative transformation into steam. To illustrate with a sociological example, Marx noted that capital is only a social relation that came into being under a specific set of circumstances that emerged out of the contradictions of feudal society. The functions performed by the circulation of money were radically transformed when it reached a ‘nodal point’ and became capital. From here it went on to reorganise the division of labour, replacing feudal agricultural exploitation by capitalist workplace exploitation and effecting a qualitative change in the nature of society itself. For Ollman, this makes us sensitive to the ‘before’ and ‘after’ character of a process and undermines notions of ahistorical continuities.
Finally, Marx emphasises the role contradiction plays in his method as it reflects the contradictory character of capitalism. Understood by Ollman to be "the incompatible development of different elements within the same relation, which is to say between elements that are also dependent on one another" (ibid. p.14). Abstraction allows for this mutually supportive but contradictory character to be brought out and ‘weighed’ so that possible outcomes could be explored. For instance, Trotsky’s prognosis on the Second World War assessed the balance of class forces in Europe and forecast that war weariness would result in either revolution or a victory for fascist or Stalinist despotism (see Leon Trotsky 1973 In Defence of Marxism. For Ollman, there is anotherl revolutionary moment in the dialectical method. With its emphasis on change it iis self-evident that nothing can be eternal. What we hold dear today will be superseded tomorrow. The dialectical method allows us to become conscious of our role in society and aware of what can and must be done in the struggle against capitalism.
The direction dialectical research takes is made possible only through the particular character of Marx’s use of abstraction. It is not enough to merely acknowledge the research object is organic to a wider process and has a fourfold character. Ollman argues that Marx’s abstractions must delineate the object along three axes. First there is an ‘abstraction of extension’, a setting up of analytical spatial and temporal boundaries around the research object. Secondly, the abstraction of a level of generality. I.e. the degree of analytical focus, be it an individual, group, institution, state, mode of production or world system. Finally, the abstraction of vantage point - the position one takes up with regard to the research object. To illustrate these three coordinates, Ollman’s ‘Theses on the Capitalist State’ (an intervention in the ongoing debate among Marxists on the capitalist state - particularly the exchange between Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas) argues the protagonists each adopt a particular vantage point, a level of generality, and a set of social relations on which to construct their analyses. However, each only succeed in illuminating a particular aspect of the state. But if these positions were combined dialectically in the framework Ollman advocates a more rounded theoretical approach to the state could be the result.
The implications for a Marxian-Foucauldian encounter through the category of abstraction should be apparent. If we liken abstraction to a microscope then the argument can be made that Marx and Foucault operate at different levels of focus: Marx principally with macro-level social relations such as capital, class and the state; Foucault with the micro-level foundations where the capillaries of power position bodies and make them subjects. This kind of approach has already been taken up by Smart where he uses Foucault to enrich Gramsci’s ‘macro’ concern with forming hegemonic blocs. Here, Smart defines hegemony as a process that "contributes to or constitutes a form of social cohesion not through force or coercion, nor necessarily through consent, but most effectively by way of practices, techniques and methods which infiltrates minds and bodies, cultural practices which cultivates behaviours and beliefs, tastes, desires and needs as seemingly naturally occurring qualities and properties embodied in the psychic and physical reality (as truth) of the human subject" (Barry Smart, ‘The Politics of Truth and the Problem of Hegemony’ in David Couzens Hoy (ed) 1986 Foucault: A Critical Reader. Cambridge: Blackwell, p.160). Smart correctly draws attention to the micro arena, which has long been neglected by Marxists and provides a starting point for theorising a socialist politics of the everyday. However, though Smart’s contribution is insightful abstraction is not theorised - it is assumed but at the price of not addressing the differences between the two approaches. Having discussed Foucault’s genealogical method and Marx’s dialectical method, even with abstraction in mind the two cannot be straightforwardly compatible. The respective methods and the tool abstraction provides must undergo a theoretical transformation so that the conceptual strengths of each can be incorporated into a unified approach. It is therefore necessary for Foucault to critique Marx, and for Marx to critique Foucault.
The whole contents of Toward a Marxian/Foucauldian Encounter can be viewed here.
It's been a long time since AVPS succumbed to meme fever, so when this one caught my eye I thought "why not?" This one is definitely for the politics anoraks.
First political experience During the 1987 general election my junior school hosted a mock election. As a 10 year old Tory boy I did Thatcher proud debating with the kids of local Labour luminaries and making sure no one gave the SDP/Liberal Alliance the time of day. I don't know if my efforts helped but the Tories romped home with a majority of 100+ votes!
First vote This will have been in 1995, by which time I'd left the cold dark heart of Conservatism far behind me and had become a Marxist thanks to life experience, A Level sociology and a year working in Derby Morrison's. In my village the local election was a straight up fight between the Tory stalwart and the dad of a girl at school I never particularly liked. But once I was in that booth the class consciousness kicked in and I duly put my cross next to Labour. (As an aside nearly everyone in my group of friends went and voted. The one who admitted to voting Tory was rightly branded a twat).
First demo I was a late comer to demonstrations but the first I went on was a bit of a monster. The summer of 1997 found me a very angry young Trot in the orbit of Workers' Power. I travelled with what must have been most of their membership to Amsterdam to take part in the People's March for Jobs (at least that's what I think it was called). I remember a turn out of around 50,000, Dutch coppers armed with some very big guns, stupid expensive beer prices and members of the proto-REVOLUTION group being assailed by the Sparts.
Last vote That would have been the European elections and council elections this year. I voted No2EU in the former and Labour in the latter - for want of anything better.
Last political activity Does booking a room for the last North Staffs TUC public meeting count? If not and discounting trade union and Stoke SP meetings, I suppose it has to be marching with the Shrewsbury 24.
Who to tag? How about Though Cowards Flinch, Harpymarx, The Daily (Maybe) and Proper Tidy to start the ball rolling.
So far the radical divergence between Marxism and Foucault has been explored through their respective treatments and understandings of power. Crucially, the former has traditionally been interested in the capitalist state and the kind of body required by the working class to install its own socialist state. Foucault on the other hand has charted the emergence and rise of particular constellations of power/knowledge and how they produce subjects and knowledges through their ‘microphysical’ positioning of bodies in discourse.
The respective macro/micro notions of power flow from the different levels on which their methods operate. This chapter seeks to go beyond a simple recapitulation of more differences between Marxism and Foucault. We argue here that a discussion of methodology identifies the grounds for a possible convergence between the two camps. The aim is to map this out so the sophistication of Foucault’s approach can be embedded in a broad explanatory framework capable of theorising all levels of social formations, while avoiding a lapse into essentialism and reductionism.
The exploration of method begins with a more detailed discussion of Foucault’s genealogy, which appears to put even more distance between itself and Marxism. But at this point of radical divergence the possibility of convergence is raised by the place ‘abstraction’ occupies in Marx’s method. While recognising the implications of Marx’s use of this conceptual tool, the space between Marx and Foucault is too great for an unproblematic wedding of the two to take place. Here the discussion turns to Althusser and it is argued the way he theorised social formations and recast Marxism is capable of sufficiently transforming both Marx and Foucault into compatible entities while simultaneously disgarding essentialist and irrationalist moments of both. The possibilities opened up by this approach are discussed in the concluding chapter.
Foucault and Genealogy
Here we are concerned with a more in depth treatment of Foucault’s genealogical method centering on his important 1971 essay, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. Presenting a broad outline of the approach, Foucault’s "genealogy retrieves an indispensable restraint: it must record the singularity of events outside of any momentous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history – in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in different roles. Finally, genealogy must define even those instances where they’re also absent, the moment when they remained unrealised" (Foucault 1977, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, New York: Cornell, pp.139-40).
Foucault here privileges two heuristic devices: the methodological isolation of an occurrence from overarching historical explanatory frameworks (particularly evolution), and following Nietzsche Foucault calls for an historical investigation of ephemeral and ignored phenomena. For example, Nietzsche provided the beginning of such a history in his 1887 book Genealogy of Morals. In his discussion of Nietzsche’s text in the original German, Foucault notes the word urspungs is deployed in two senses. First, it denotes origin. But Nietzsche makes an ironic use of it – he plays on its connotations of mystical and metaphysical origins (and the pursuit of them). Nietzsche made polemical use of this term for much the same reason Foucault found it useful for it undermines the metaphysics of origins, "what is found at the historical beginning of things is not the individual identity of their origin: it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity" (ibid p.142). That is to say a phenomena is not in its purest form at the point of its emergence but is born marked by the scars of its emergence, and it is these disparate conditions that genealogy seeks to unmask. Investigating what a discourse "forgets" (its marked Other) tends to undermine majestic and universalist pretensions by exposing their primitive beginnings. This can be visualised by the striking metaphor Nietzsche provided of a monkey that perpetually followed his reworking of the prophet Zarathustra.
Second, the name genealogy implies a study of a line of descent – in this case of a particular discourse/practice. In methodological terms this involves empirically winding back the film of history to the point where the discourse studied breaks qualitatively from what preceded it. For example, in The History of Sexuality, Foucault notes the contemporary understanding of sex is rooted in the late 18th century at the point of confluence between the creation of a "class" body by the rising bourgeoisie and the growing perception of the population as a problem requiring management by the state. The discourses of sex grew along the axes of demography, pedagogy and medicine, producing a scientific (but discursive) apparatus. Prior to this point pre-industrial discourses of sex were very different and were for the most part embedded in Christian discourses of sin and tended to come under legislative rather than discursive regulation. Likewise the opening pages of Discipline and Punish contrast two very different forms of punishment, establishing a discontinuity between them that Foucault analyses.
Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore an unbroken continuity that operates beyond the dispersion of forgotten things; its duty is not to demonstrate that the past actively exist in the present, this it continues secretly to animate the present, having imposed a predetermined form to all its vicissitudes. Genealogy does not resemble the evolution of a species and does not map the destiny of a people. On the contrary, to follow the complex course of descent is to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion: it is to identify the accidents, the minute deviations – or conversely, the complete reversals – the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being do not lie at the root of what we know and what we are, but the exteriority of accidents (Ibid p.146).
Keeping with the anti-epistemological and anti-teleological foundations outlined above Foucault is careful to rule out necessity as an explanation. Therefore this "effective history differs from traditional history in being without constants. Nothing in man – not even his body – is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding other men. The traditional devices for constructing a comprehensive view of history and for retracing the past as a patient and continuous development must be systematically dismantled" (Ibid p.153). Furthermore the eschewal of totalising practice means the genealogist occupies the "low ground" of being close to an object without metaphysical baggage intervening. In Foucault’s empirical genealogies this low ground is invariably the body. Hence it is no accident that Foucault’s theory of power seizes hold of bodies – it is the expression of his methodological outlook. In sum, genealogy "painstakingly exposes the tiny influences on a body that, over time, not only produce a subject of a certain sort, a subject defined by what it takes to be knowledge about itself and its world, but a subject under the illusion that it is a substantial, autonomous unity" (Prado 1995, p.36).
The whole contents of Toward a Marxian/Foucauldian Encounter can be viewed here.
