L.A.P.
18th August 2013, 06:55
Interviewer: You depict in Discipline and Punish a political system where the King's body plays an essential role....
Foucault: In a society like that of the 17th century, the King's body wasn't a metaphor, but a political reality. Its physical presence was necessary for the functioning of the monarchy.
Interviewer: And what about the Republic, 'one and indivisible'?
Foucault: That's a formula that was imposed against the Girondins and the idea of an American-style federalism. But it never operated in the same manner as the King's body under the monarchy. On the contrary, it's the body of society which becomes the new principle in the 19th century. It is this social body which needs to be protected, in a quasi-medical sense. In place of the rituals that served to restore corporal integrity of the monarch, remedies and therapeutic devices are employed such as the segregation of the sick, the monitoring of contagions, the exclusion of delinquents. The elimination of hostile elements by the supplice (public torture and execution) is thus replaced by the method of asepsis - criminology, eugenics, and the quarantining of 'degenerates' ........
Interviewer: Is there a fantasy body corresponding to different types of institution?
Foucault: I believe the great fantasy is the idea of a social body constituted by the universality of wills. Now the phenomenon of the social body is the effect not of a consensus but of the materiality of power operating on the very bodies of individuals.
Interviewer: The 18th century is usually seen under the aspect of liberation. You describe it as the period when a network of control (quadrillage) is set in place. Is the liberation possible without the quadrillage?
Foucault: As always with relations of power, one is faced with complex phenomena which don't obey the Hegelian form of the dialectic. Mastery and awareness of one's own body can be acquired only through the effect of an investment of power in the body: gymnastics, exercises, muscle-building, nudism, glorification of the body beautiful. All of this belongs to the pathway leading to the desire of one's own body, by way of the insistent, persistent, meticulous work of power on the bodies of children or soldiers, the healthy bodies. But once power produces this effect, there inevitably emerge the responding claims and affirmations, those of one's own body against power, of health against the economic system, of pleasure against the moral norms of sexuality, marriage, decency. Suddenly, what had made power strong becomes used to attack it. Power, after investing itself in the body, finds itself exposed to a counter-attack in that same body. Do you recall the panic of the institutions of the social body, the doctors and politicians, at the idea of non-legalised cohabitation (l'union libre) or free abortion? But the impression that power weakens and vacillates here is in fact mistaken; power can retreat here, re-organise its forces, invest itself elsewhere ... and so the battle continues.
Interviewer: Would this account for the much-discussed 'recuperation' of the body through pornography and advertising?
Foucault: I don't agree at all with this talk about 'recuperation'. What's taking place is the usual strategic development of a struggle. Let's take a precise example, that of auto-eroticism. The restrictions on masturbation hardly start in Europe until the 18th century. Suddenly, a panic-theme appears: an appalling sickness develops in the Western world. Children masturbate. Via the medium of families, though not at their initiative, a system of control of sexuality, an objectivisation of sexuality allied to corporal persecution, is established over the bodies of children. But sexuality, through thus becoming an object of analysis and concern, surveillance and control, engenders at the same time an intesification of each individual's desire, for, in and over his body.
The body thus became the issue of a conflict between parents and children, the child and the instances of control. The revolt of the sexual body is the reverse effect of this encroachment. What is the response on the side of power? An economic (and perhaps also ideological) exploitation of eroticisation, from sun-tan products to pornographic films. Responding precisely to the revolt of the body, we find a new mode of investment which presents itself no longer in the form of control by repression but that of control by stimulation. 'Get undressed - but be slim, good-looking, tanned!' For each move by one adversary, there is an answering one by the other. But this isn't 'recuperation' in the Leftists' sense. One has to recognise the indefiniteness of the struggle - though this is not to say it won't some day have an end ....
Interviewer: Doesn't a new revolutionary strategy for taking power have to proceed via a new definition of the politics of the body?
Foucault: The emergence of the problem of the body and its growing urgency have come about through the unfolding of a political struggle. Whether this is a revolutionary struggle, I don't know. One can say that what has happened since 1968, and arguably what made 1968 possible, is something profoundly anti-Marxist. How can European revolutionary movements free themselves from the 'Marx effect', the institutions typical of 19th and 20th century Marxism? This was the direction of the quesions posed by '68. In this calling in question of the equation: Marxism = the revolutionary process, an equation that constituted a kind of dogma, the importance given to the body is one of the important, if not essential elements.
Interviewer: What course is the evolution of the bodily relationship between the masses and the State apparatus taking?
Foucault: First of all one must set aside the widely held thesis that power, in our bourgeois, capitalist societies has denied the reality of the body in favour of the soul, consciousness, ideality. In fact nothing is more material, physical, corporal than the exercise of power. What mode of investment of the body is necessary and adequate for the functioning of a capitalist society like ours? From the 18th century to the early 20th century I think it was believed that the investment of the body by power had to be heavy, ponderous, meticulous and constant. Hence those formidable disciplinary regimes in the schools, hospitals, barracks, factories, cities, lodgings, families. And then, starting in the 1960s, it began to be realised that such a cumbersome form of power was no longer as indispensable as had been thought and that industrial societies could content themselves with a much looser form of power over the body. Then it was discovered that control of sexuality could be attenuated and given new forms. One needs to study what kind of body the current society needs ...
Interviewer: Would you distinguish your interest in the body from that of our contemporary interpretations?
Foucault: I think I would distinguish myself from both the Marxist and para-Marxist perspectives. As regards Marxism, I'm not one of those who try to elicit the effects of power at the level of ideology. Indeed I wonder whether, before one poses the question of ideology, it wouldn't be more materialist to study first the question of the body and the effects of power on it. 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 then thought to seize on.
Interviewer: But the Marxist perspective does include an awareness of the effect of power on the body in the working situation.
Foucault: Certainly. But whereas today political and economic demands are coming to be made moe on behalf of the wage-earner's body than of the wage-earning class, one seldom hears the former being discussed as such. It's as though 'revolutionary' discourses were still steeped in the ritualistic themes derived from Marxism analyses. And while there are some very interesting things about the body in Marx's writing, Marxism considered as a historical reality has had a terrible tendency to occlude the question of the body, in favour of consciousness and ideology.
I would also distinguish myself from para-Marxists like Marcuse who give the notion of repression an exaggerated role - because power would be a fragile thing if its only function were to repress, if it worked only through the mode of censorship, exclusion, blockage and repression, in the manner of a great Super-ego, exercising itself only in a negative way. If, on the contrary, power is strong this is because, as we are beginning to realise, it produces effects at the level of desire - and also at the level of knowledge. Far from preventing knowledge, power produces it. If it has been possible to constitute a knowledge of the body, this has been by way of an ensemble of military and educational disciplines. It was on the basis of power over the body that a physiological, organic knowledge of it became possible.
The fact that power is so deeply rooted and the difficulty of eluding its embrace are effects of all these connections. That is why the notion of repression which mechanisms of power are generally reduced to strikes me as very inadequate and possibly dangerous.
Foucault: In a society like that of the 17th century, the King's body wasn't a metaphor, but a political reality. Its physical presence was necessary for the functioning of the monarchy.
Interviewer: And what about the Republic, 'one and indivisible'?
Foucault: That's a formula that was imposed against the Girondins and the idea of an American-style federalism. But it never operated in the same manner as the King's body under the monarchy. On the contrary, it's the body of society which becomes the new principle in the 19th century. It is this social body which needs to be protected, in a quasi-medical sense. In place of the rituals that served to restore corporal integrity of the monarch, remedies and therapeutic devices are employed such as the segregation of the sick, the monitoring of contagions, the exclusion of delinquents. The elimination of hostile elements by the supplice (public torture and execution) is thus replaced by the method of asepsis - criminology, eugenics, and the quarantining of 'degenerates' ........
Interviewer: Is there a fantasy body corresponding to different types of institution?
Foucault: I believe the great fantasy is the idea of a social body constituted by the universality of wills. Now the phenomenon of the social body is the effect not of a consensus but of the materiality of power operating on the very bodies of individuals.
Interviewer: The 18th century is usually seen under the aspect of liberation. You describe it as the period when a network of control (quadrillage) is set in place. Is the liberation possible without the quadrillage?
Foucault: As always with relations of power, one is faced with complex phenomena which don't obey the Hegelian form of the dialectic. Mastery and awareness of one's own body can be acquired only through the effect of an investment of power in the body: gymnastics, exercises, muscle-building, nudism, glorification of the body beautiful. All of this belongs to the pathway leading to the desire of one's own body, by way of the insistent, persistent, meticulous work of power on the bodies of children or soldiers, the healthy bodies. But once power produces this effect, there inevitably emerge the responding claims and affirmations, those of one's own body against power, of health against the economic system, of pleasure against the moral norms of sexuality, marriage, decency. Suddenly, what had made power strong becomes used to attack it. Power, after investing itself in the body, finds itself exposed to a counter-attack in that same body. Do you recall the panic of the institutions of the social body, the doctors and politicians, at the idea of non-legalised cohabitation (l'union libre) or free abortion? But the impression that power weakens and vacillates here is in fact mistaken; power can retreat here, re-organise its forces, invest itself elsewhere ... and so the battle continues.
Interviewer: Would this account for the much-discussed 'recuperation' of the body through pornography and advertising?
Foucault: I don't agree at all with this talk about 'recuperation'. What's taking place is the usual strategic development of a struggle. Let's take a precise example, that of auto-eroticism. The restrictions on masturbation hardly start in Europe until the 18th century. Suddenly, a panic-theme appears: an appalling sickness develops in the Western world. Children masturbate. Via the medium of families, though not at their initiative, a system of control of sexuality, an objectivisation of sexuality allied to corporal persecution, is established over the bodies of children. But sexuality, through thus becoming an object of analysis and concern, surveillance and control, engenders at the same time an intesification of each individual's desire, for, in and over his body.
The body thus became the issue of a conflict between parents and children, the child and the instances of control. The revolt of the sexual body is the reverse effect of this encroachment. What is the response on the side of power? An economic (and perhaps also ideological) exploitation of eroticisation, from sun-tan products to pornographic films. Responding precisely to the revolt of the body, we find a new mode of investment which presents itself no longer in the form of control by repression but that of control by stimulation. 'Get undressed - but be slim, good-looking, tanned!' For each move by one adversary, there is an answering one by the other. But this isn't 'recuperation' in the Leftists' sense. One has to recognise the indefiniteness of the struggle - though this is not to say it won't some day have an end ....
Interviewer: Doesn't a new revolutionary strategy for taking power have to proceed via a new definition of the politics of the body?
Foucault: The emergence of the problem of the body and its growing urgency have come about through the unfolding of a political struggle. Whether this is a revolutionary struggle, I don't know. One can say that what has happened since 1968, and arguably what made 1968 possible, is something profoundly anti-Marxist. How can European revolutionary movements free themselves from the 'Marx effect', the institutions typical of 19th and 20th century Marxism? This was the direction of the quesions posed by '68. In this calling in question of the equation: Marxism = the revolutionary process, an equation that constituted a kind of dogma, the importance given to the body is one of the important, if not essential elements.
Interviewer: What course is the evolution of the bodily relationship between the masses and the State apparatus taking?
Foucault: First of all one must set aside the widely held thesis that power, in our bourgeois, capitalist societies has denied the reality of the body in favour of the soul, consciousness, ideality. In fact nothing is more material, physical, corporal than the exercise of power. What mode of investment of the body is necessary and adequate for the functioning of a capitalist society like ours? From the 18th century to the early 20th century I think it was believed that the investment of the body by power had to be heavy, ponderous, meticulous and constant. Hence those formidable disciplinary regimes in the schools, hospitals, barracks, factories, cities, lodgings, families. And then, starting in the 1960s, it began to be realised that such a cumbersome form of power was no longer as indispensable as had been thought and that industrial societies could content themselves with a much looser form of power over the body. Then it was discovered that control of sexuality could be attenuated and given new forms. One needs to study what kind of body the current society needs ...
Interviewer: Would you distinguish your interest in the body from that of our contemporary interpretations?
Foucault: I think I would distinguish myself from both the Marxist and para-Marxist perspectives. As regards Marxism, I'm not one of those who try to elicit the effects of power at the level of ideology. Indeed I wonder whether, before one poses the question of ideology, it wouldn't be more materialist to study first the question of the body and the effects of power on it. 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 then thought to seize on.
Interviewer: But the Marxist perspective does include an awareness of the effect of power on the body in the working situation.
Foucault: Certainly. But whereas today political and economic demands are coming to be made moe on behalf of the wage-earner's body than of the wage-earning class, one seldom hears the former being discussed as such. It's as though 'revolutionary' discourses were still steeped in the ritualistic themes derived from Marxism analyses. And while there are some very interesting things about the body in Marx's writing, Marxism considered as a historical reality has had a terrible tendency to occlude the question of the body, in favour of consciousness and ideology.
I would also distinguish myself from para-Marxists like Marcuse who give the notion of repression an exaggerated role - because power would be a fragile thing if its only function were to repress, if it worked only through the mode of censorship, exclusion, blockage and repression, in the manner of a great Super-ego, exercising itself only in a negative way. If, on the contrary, power is strong this is because, as we are beginning to realise, it produces effects at the level of desire - and also at the level of knowledge. Far from preventing knowledge, power produces it. If it has been possible to constitute a knowledge of the body, this has been by way of an ensemble of military and educational disciplines. It was on the basis of power over the body that a physiological, organic knowledge of it became possible.
The fact that power is so deeply rooted and the difficulty of eluding its embrace are effects of all these connections. That is why the notion of repression which mechanisms of power are generally reduced to strikes me as very inadequate and possibly dangerous.