| Austin Blanch | 26 January 2012 |
| 090491 | PH 102 sec QQ |
Power Relations and Subjectivity of the Individual
Midterm Paper on Michel Foucault works
and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Foucault's later work (The Use of Pleasure) prioritizes subjectivity and truth while the earlier work (Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1) focus on power and knowledge. More specifically, in the later work, Foucault aimed "to study the games of truth and the relation of self with self and the forming of oneself as the subject" (UP, 6).
Foucault acknowledged a third theoretical shift in The Use of Pleasure that encourages him to look at what he termed “the subject”. In the work he studied the games of truth in the relationship of “self with self”. He named his field of investigation: the history of desiring man. To conduct the above project, Foucault moved the system to a view on how the hermeneutics[1] of self materialized in ancient times. Ultimately the system became an analysis of the “games of truth,” and it brought certain risks – delaying the publication of the work and being forced to deal with ancient documents that were beyond his expertise.
Foucault emphasized that the freedom-power combination cannot be conceived of without considering its relationship to truth. Foucault wrote, “The relation to truth was a structural, instrumental, and ontological condition for establishing the individual as a moderate subject leading a life of moderation; it was not an epistemological condition enabling the individual to recognize himself in his singularity as a desiring subject and to purify himself of the desire that was thus brought to light”.[2] Furthermore, Foucault argues that the relationship to truth did not bring forth a hermeneutics of desire, but it instead offered aesthetics of existence. Foucault defined this aesthetics of existence as a way of life whose moral value did not depend either on one’s being in conformity with a code of behavior, or on an effort of purification, but on certain formal principles in the use of pleasures, in the way one distributed them, in the limits one observed, in the hierarchy one respected.
It is the study of the role of power in the transformations that Foucault is mostly focusing on, for he believes that it is the surplus of power that gave rise to the soul – it certainly has power over the body, but at the same time is a prisoner of the body. The history of the body is already there, written by historians since long ago, but Foucault said that the body is also involved in a political field. It is power that has a hold on the body, using it as a force of production and making sure that it does not go to waste. But it only becomes a useful force if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.
It has to be clear that power is exercised on the body, and not possessed. Foucault mentioned that we should abandon the belief that knowledge exists where power relations are suspended, and vice versa. It is that power produces knowledge, and one implies the other. We are analysing the relationship between power and knowledge, and how this affects the historical transformations. It is the study of the role of power in the transformations that Foucault was mostly focusing on, for he believed that it was the surplus of power that gave rise to the soul - it certainly had power over the body, but at the same time was a prisoner of the body. The soul exists and has a reality, and through punishment, power constantly produces it. The issue at hand therefore is the “materiality as an instrument and vector of power … the whole technology of power over the body that the technology of the ‘soul’ … fails to conceal or compensate.”[3]
Ars erotica focuses on senses. It is knowledge of sensual pleasure that questions every aspect of sex and pleasure. There are no rules on sex in ars erotica focuses solely on the pleasures attained from the act. Ars erotica views sex as a human phenomenon—sex is something we as humans naturally desire and enjoy. It is a knowledge that was derived from personal experience. It can only be passed down from a master to a novice. This knowledge is passed on in secret because of its sacredness and value. The scientia sexualis, on the other hand, focuses on the inhuman aspect of sex. It views sex as simply a fact. Unlike ars erotica, knowledge of scientia sexualis is taken from observing. Rather than the secrets of the knowledge being passed down from master to novice, the knowledge is extracted from the novice by the master. This is where the concept of confession comes in. Scientia sexualis sees the truth as something that must be forced out of one’s consciousness. Knowledge here is kept as a secret because it is something considered shameful and wrong.[4]
In relation to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Despisers of the Body, he has expression for anyone who teaches people to despise the human body. He said that he does not want these teachers to learn his own philosophy. Instead, he thinks that they should simply follow their teachings and die. Zarathustra told his listeners that only children believe in a soul. According to Zarathustra, there is only a body, and within that body is the self. The self is the ruler of the body, the essence of humanity. The self controls the ego, which in turn controls the pleasures and pains of life. What the self wants most of all is to create beyond itself.
In this speech, he compared a person's body to a kingdom in which the self is the absolute ruler of everything. Zarathustra's teaching presents a complication. The self was the ultimate ruler of a person's body, and it would create pain. Zarathustra answers that one who has decided to despise the body has led that person's self to despise his own existence. This, in turn, leads to the desire for self-destruction.
On Reading and Writing, the speech was concerned with how people communicate and how people understand one another in the essence of seeking truth. The speech starts with an aphorism: Zarathustra only loved what is written in blood. Aphorisms - short sayings that reveal a higher truth - are to be valued because they elevate the listener to a higher level of meaning. The listener will then look down on all those who do not understand. The ideas of ascending and descending once again come into play in this speech. If Thus Spoke Zarathustra had been written as an essay, most themes would be easier to comprehend. The idea of the superman, however, would be lost. The book is written as a series of aphorisms so that those who truly seek the truth will ascend to a higher level.
The rest of the speech is about how Zarathustra's own elevation allows him to "dance" above those not as enlightened by the truth as he is. He claims that the only god he could ever believe in is a god that can dance, and that a devil he can believe in is a devil of gravity and seriousness. Only through laughter can such a devil be killed. The speech ends with the image of Zarathustra flying high above the world, his enlightenment of the truth letting him look down on the rest of the world.
In this later work, Foucault analyzed how particular truths are mobilized in the formation of the subject, such that one might be required to recognize oneself as a subject through these truths. For instance, Ancient Greeks recognized themselves as individuals through their gender, class, age, wealth, marital status, and so on.
The concept of Sophrosyne[5] recalled, “State that could be approached through the exercise of self-mastery and through restraint in the practice of pleasure; it was characterized as a freedom”. For the Greeks the practice of restraint became linked to the idea of freedom. In the ancient writings, the greatest danger of aphrodisia[6] was not dishonest, but bondage to the idea of pleasure. Foucault wrote about the freedom that Greeks sought by suggesting that this “individual freedom should not, however, be understood as the independence off free will. Its polar opposite was not a natural determinism, nor was it the will of an all-powerful agency: it was enslavement—the enslavement of the self by oneself. To be free in relation to pleasures was to be free of their authority; it was not to be their slave”. For Foucault, this freedom was a “power that one brought to bear on oneself in the power that one exercised over other”. Moderation was on equal ground with justice, courage, or prudence for the Greeks.
In the ethics of pleasure, there are figures that represent the struggle for self-freedom. The first is the “vicious tyrant” who is represented of an inability to control themselves or their people. In sum, they enact serious sexual misconduct against the youth and are in need of regime change. On the other hand, the person to be praised is the leader who can exert the same control over his people that he asserts over himself.The Greek were also concerned with the manner in which the conception of mastery of oneself allowed the “virile” or “manly” character of moderation to comet to fruition. For the Greeks, a man should seek self-mastery because it allowed his manly qualities to rule his self.
The West was able to make some sense of this, although it is not so much a remarkable feature because of how we are inclined to “conquests” similar to this, since the olden times of the Greeks. The West has brought us to know sex with a certain logic that sex is coupled with desire, and it is the key to knowing who we are as a human person. Not anymore do we see sex as a means for reproducing but it now explains to us what life is. This is not anymore explained to us by scientific theories, but it is inferred by theoreticians and practitioners that sex explains everything. Foucault presented that for the Greeks the matters of sexual conduct were not the act itself, the idea of desire, or the pleasure, but the dynamics of all these ideas combined. The ontology to which the ethics of sexual behavior referred was the relationship that constituted what might be called the “texture of the ethical experience of the aphrodisia”.
Appearing in ‘On the Afterworldsmen’, Zarathustra dealt with old religion. Religion's viewpoint is that the body and earthly matters are to be overcome so that a person can experience God, but Zarathustra shows that such beliefs are unfounded. Zarathustra places a great emphasis on the body and on earthly experience. Nietzsche is beginning to explain how all truth must now be found in a subjective experience. A man can no longer look to his community or to a higher being to find meaning. A man must look inside himself and his own existence to find truth and meaning. We are made of flesh, and not spirit, and our physical needs dictate our values and desires. A sick or dissatisfied person will claim to be essentially spirit, and will create a God and an afterlife as distractions from the pains of this life.
Also mentioned in ‘On Love of the Neighbour’, he asked if people should love their neighbours. He answers no; a person should love himself more than he loves his neighbour. Until a person truly recognizes the sacred nature of his individuality, he will not become the superman. Zarathustra claims that people love their neighbours because they want someone to think highly of them. Loving one's neighbour is actually a selfish thing, but people do not think of it this way. For Zarathustra, the desire to reach the goal of superman should be greater than the desire to love one's neighbour. Instead of finding a neighbour, Zarathustra encourages his disciples to find a friend to compete with for enlightenment.
An important part of what it meant to be a subject, then as today, was to recognize that one has a certain truth to manifest in one's conduct. This focus on subjectivity and truth tends to prioritize the agency of the individual in that it highlights the action of the individual in constituting himself/herself as a subject through manifesting certain truths.
Foucault then moved to a discussion of the ideal conduct. He illustrated that many early Christian texts mentioned the elephant as the ideal form of sexual behavior because of its tenderness and compassion. For instance, Saint Francis praised the animal for its monogamous behavior. Foucault proved that the modelling behavior was present in many works, including that of Pliny[7] who Saint Francis models in other writings. Then he explained the “image” of the homosexual that speak to “not only his mannerism, his bearings, the way he gets dolled up, his coquetry, but also his facial expressions, his anatomy, the feminine morphology of his whole body, are regularly included in this disparaging description”. Foucault shows that this trend was present in much of the Greco-Roman literature particularly that of Dio Chrysostom[8].
Foucault made a reference to what he terms the “determination of the ethical substance” or the way an individual has to constitute a part of themselves in accordance with the prime material of their moral conduct. For Foucault, it is the contradictory movements of the soul, not the actual performances of the act, which serve as the prime material of moral practice. Foucault provided a description of the mode of subjection (mode d’assujettissement), which refers to the manner in which the subject recognizes a relationship with certain moral codes. This term referred to the obligation of the subject to put the rule into practice. For instance, a person can practice fidelity because they are part of a group that holds this as a high moral code and at the same time practice the rule because they feel they are then able to offer themselves as an example of the rule of morality. He concluded an idea that there might be differences in the telos of the ethical subject.
We are subject to the powers that we confess to and we ourselves become the very subject of our own confessions. Foucault talked about how confession has become a part of every aspect of our lives. This can be seen when we confess our sins to the priest, confess our crimes to the police, confess our illnesses to the doctor, etc. Confession has touched, so it seems, every institution of society. As a result, we see the concept of confession as something normal and not as power forcing us to unwillingly do so. Society has come to view confession as a way to find the truth. It is a way for us to free ourselves from the powers that keep us silent. Foucault argues that we have become subjects of both senses of the word.
In Zarathustra, the metamorphosis of the soul can best be described as a person's spiritual journey. The soul first becomes a camel, carrying heavy burdens. Then, the soul transforms again into a lion. Finally, the lion becomes a child. The camel is a beast of burden, and it represents the burdens that the laws and morality of religion place on individuals. These strictures carry the individual's soul into the desert. There, the soul transforms into a lion, fighting for its freedoms from the restrictions of religion. The lion fights viciously against the ingrained traditions of a society. The transformation of the soul into a lion is necessary to cast off the burdens of the camel. The soul must then become an innocent child once again seeking truth. By becoming a child again, the soul is able to gain its own sense of morality, not the morality imposed by religion. At the end of this speech, Zarathustra goes to a town called The Motley Cow.
Lastly, as mentioned in ‘On the Passions of Pleasure and Pain’, Zarathustra taught about true virtue as a private matter that a person feels deep down in the self. Virtue arises from passions, and is a kind of passion itself. But it is not a universal law, such as a law from God or a truth that everyone can share. Virtue is a private feeling for the individual. Religion and morality view certain passions as wrong or evil, yet Zarathustra tells his listeners that all passions are permissible and can be turned into virtue. For Zarathustra, even passions like anger and hate have been transformed into virtues so that a person who follows his teaching will no longer do evil. For him, it is mankind's battle with the virtues within that has caused all the evil in the world. The old teacher from the first speech said that only sleep could overcome this battle. Zarathustra gives another way for human beings to triumph in this battle: the superman.
Foucault's emphasis on the activity of the individual in constituting themselves makes it possible for us to spot openings for individual resistance, that is to say, activities we might perform to subvert or resist the power relations we are enmeshed in.
Contemplation on the necessity was not an attempt to reduce pleasure, but instead it was a focus on maintaining pleasure the need that brought the feeling into existence. The second aspect deals with notions of kairos[9]. In short, the important reflection required the ancient Greek to consider the appropriate time from which to make use of pleasure. Finally, the user of the erotic has to be aware of how such activities worked within their personal status in the larger hierarchy of the city-state. Foucault noted, “It may well be a trait common to all societies that the rules of sexual conduct vary according to age sex and the condition of individuals, and that the obligations and prohibitions are not imposed on everyone in the same manner. However, certain qualities were associated with certain classes of people. For example, the upper classes were expected to exhibit a greater degree of moderation than those in the lower ranks of society.
Stated in Discipline and Punish, whether punishment is carried out violently or in a "lenient" method concerning correction & confinement, one must understand that it is the body that is the focus. While it has been studied in terms of physiological processes, pathology and the like, it must be noted that it is also involved in a political arena. Power relations also have an "immediate hold upon it; they invest in it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out takes, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.”The body however is only useful when the body is both a productive body and a subjective body. The effect of power on the body must be further seen not due to appropriation and privilege, but due to "dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, and techniques, functioning; that one should decipher it in a network of relations constantly in tension.
Examination is the combination of the techniques of an observing hierarchy and normalizing judgment. It is a normalizing gaze that makes it possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish. It is the highly ritualized in all the mechanisms of discipline. Power relations and knowledge relations intersect in the examination. A whole domain of knowledge and power can be found in examination that lead to the development of human sciences. The hospital was organized as an ‘examining’ apparatus by the eighteenth century when visits of physicians were made regular and was demanded daily to examine patients at hospitals. Thus the hospitals became a place of training and correlation of knowledge and through which the medical discipline arose. Schools also share a similar experience that through examination, pedagogy functioned as a science.
The inadequacy of this Foucauldian ontology of the body for some sociological tasks: to be an interface between different domains: biological and social, collective and individual, constrained and free, has led some sociologists to turn to other works by Foucault for a more congenial model. In his writing, 'individual', and 'self' supplement the more usual'subject' and 'body'; in his writing on the History of Sexuality the move from concern with external technologies of power to technologies of the self is clear. Foucault's project was with how we become 'desiring subjects', in other words, how we articulate our bodies and desires within subjectivity capable of reflection.
Practices of the self mark the engagement between discourses of the social and the individual. That power is integral to the autonomous ordering of individual's own lives. Personal identities emerge not as prior and privileged ontologically, but 'in a battlefield', in which difference and opposition are the means by which identity and the boundaries of others become discernible. This formulation overcomes the criticism of Foucault’s ontology which leaves individuals as passive and totally inscribed by discourse, for now it can be seen that reflexivity plays a crucial part in the process of subjectivity. Yet the ontological implications of Foucault’s later position need further scrutiny, and three issues have been raised by critics, which are highly relevant for the application of the position in social analysis.[10]
On the Flies of the Market Place, Zarathustra returns to the marketplace, the place where he encountered the tight-rope walker in the prologue. After finishing his speech on the modern state, Zarathustra turns his attention to the marketplace, the place where ideas are exchanged. He begins to categorize the people of the market. He tells the disciple that what counts in a place such as this is showmanship. He says that there are great men, those who can attract a crowd and passionately express their opinions and ideas. These powerful people, the best showmen, are the politicians and intellectuals. They know best how to attract a crowd and to dominate the exchange of ideas. Zarathustra calls those who serve these powerful people the flies of the market. But, at the end of his teaching, Zarathustra shows the disciple that constantly being immersed in the marketplace is not the way to ascend. The exchange of ideas can only come to fruition when a person retreats into solitude to let the ideas come to light. Solitude is more necessary and noble than the market.
Conclusion
Foucault's detractors have always considered a refusal to a normative basis for resistance as a significant weakness, especially when considered in conjunction with his insistence that power relations are everywhere in human society. Foucault offers no hope of a society in which power would not operate. He insisted that the fact that 'power is everywhere' does not mean that nothing is possible – it means, rather, that everything is possible: 'if there are relations of power throughout every social field,' he argues, 'it is because there is freedom everywhere. This redefinition of power, however, carried with it the danger of removing the possibility of specifying those situations in which there is no freedom. In rejecting the view that power is an evil which is opposed to freedom, it carried the danger of implying that there is actually no such evil, that the removal of freedom is impossibility. This problem was compounded by Foucault's perceived inability to differentiate between power elations and states of domination. If power relations are inevitable, and they cannot be distinguished from relations of domination, then Foucault would seem to be giving, at the very least, a general justification for forms of domination.
As a result of these concerns, Foucault was clarified a distinction which had only ever been implicit in his work – the distinction between power and domination. He began to argue that power, or power relations, are always characterized by a more or less open play of 'strategic games between liberties', while states of domination are characterized by a shrinking space for freedom of action. A power relation can only exist in a situation in which a subjective choice is possible: 'there cannot be relations of power unless the subjects are free'. While relations of domination are those in which the power relation is fixed to such a degree that the possibility for subjective choice is almost non-existent. The examples when Foucault argues that all social relations are relations of power, he is not suggesting that domination is inevitable. He is rather suggesting that domination is the perversion of power; it represents the violent closure of social and political relations.[11]
On the Bestowing Virtue, the time has come for Zarathustra to leave the Motley Cow[12], and he and his disciples staggered out of town. Zarathustra told them that he desired to walk alone. His disciples provided him a staff on which he can lean as a present. Zarathustra was very pleased with the present and he granted them a teaching. He compared their quest for the superman to the mining of gold. H tells them that gold is valuable because it is uncommon. Their virtue is the same way. It is an uncommon virtue for a man to seek to ascend to the level of superman, but because it is uncommon it will soon become very valuable. Soon, men's souls will strive for the treasures and gems of the superman. This is selfishness, but it is a good selfishness that Zarathustra called holy. It is a good selfishness because, although Zarathustra and his disciples take these virtues for themselves, they do so in hope of bringing the superman to the rest of mankind.
There is another type of selfishness as well: a sick selfishness. This is a selfishness that takes for itself but has no desire to help mankind. This selfishness does not care if others ascend to the superman. A person who looks through history will be able to see signs of these two kinds of selfishness and must be able to see the underlying passions for good and evil. Zarathustra was a man who can read such signs. He pointed his disciples to the path to ascension. Zarathustra then preached to his disciples that they should devote their attention to the earth, to spreading the good news of the superman. He mentioned to them that humanity is a mistake, an error. Because of this mistake, madness has overcome men throughout history. Zarathustra presented to his disciples a teaching that will help humanity ascend to the superman. Like physicians, Zarathustra's disciples should keep themselves healthy while also working towards the health of other people. This part of the teaching ends with an enthusiastic declaration that the earth can recover and that humanity can be redeemed through the superman.
Zarathustra ended the speech by telling his disciples that he will be leaving them and that they should leave him as well. They should go away and even be ashamed of Zarathustra, in case he was misleading them with his teaching. He put a twist on the New Testament teaching by telling them that a person of knowledge must be able to love his enemies and hate his friends. Zarathustra told them this in case they have begun to idolize him instead of his quest for enlightenment. He wanted them to focus on themselves. Their own attempts at becoming the superman were more important than Zarathustra himself. When they have truly ascended, Zarathustra will meet up with them again. They will all meet again, he tells them, to proclaim that "Dead are all gods: now we want the superman to live."
The superman is the ultimate state of being in which man can achieve total self-mastery. For Zarathustra, the superman is the state toward which he is journeying, as well as the state to which he teaches his disciples to aspire. Human beings are only one step above animals in terms of biological evolution. The evolution that Zarathustra seeks in the superman, however, was rather a kind of spiritual evolution of self-awareness. Humanity, as Zarathustra envisioned it, was still tied with superstitious notions about God and Christianity. Those that have rejected such notions have instead accepted other notions of modern morality and justice - ideas that are just as superstitious and foolish, though for different reasons. The superman rejects these superstitions in favour a true communion with nature and with the self.
| Austin Blanch | 26 January 2012 |
| 090491 | PH 102 sec QQ |
Power Relations and Subjectivity of the Individual
Midterm Paper on Michel Foucault works
and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Thesis Statement
"Foucault's later work (The Use of Pleasure) prioritizes subjectivity and truth while the earlier work (Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1) focus on power and knowledge. More specifically, in the later work, Foucault aimed "to study the games of truth, and the relation of self with self and the forming of oneself as the subject" (UP, 6). In this later work, Foucault analyzed how particular truths are mobilized in the formation of the subject, such that one might be required to recognize oneself as a subject through these truths. For instance, Ancient Greeks recognized themselves as individuals through their gender, class, age, wealth, marital status, and so on. An important part of what it meant to be a subject, then as today, was to recognized that one has a certain truth to manifest in one's conduct. This focus on subjectivity and truth tends to prioritize the agency of the individual in that it highlights the action of the individual in constituting himself/herself as a subject through manifesting certain truths. Foucault's emphasis on the activity of the individual in constituting themselves makes it possible for us to spot openings for individual resistance, that is to say, activities we might perform to subvert or resist the power relations we are enmeshed in."
[1] The branch of theology that is concerned with explaining or interpreting religious concepts, theories, and principles
[2] Foucault, Michel. The use of pleasure.Reprinted. ed. London [u.a.: Penguin Books, 1992.
[3] Foucault, Michel. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.
[4]Foucault, Michel, and Robert Hurley.History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. S.l.: Allen Lane, 1979
[5] Greek philosophical term etymologically meaning healthy-mindedness and from there self-control or moderation guided by knowledge and balance.
[6]A desire for heterosexual intimacy.
[7] Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire.
[8] Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century
[9]An ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment).
[10] Fox, Nick. "Vol. 49 No. 3." In The British journal of sociology: index to volumes 41-50 (1990-1999). 415-433. London: Routledge, 1999.
[11] Leary, Timothy. Foucault: the art of ethics. London: Continuum, 2006.
[12] Represents the secular culture after the death of God.
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