The domestication of Foucault

Abstract

Though Foucault was intrigued by the possibilities of radical social transformation, he resolutely resisted the idea that such transformation could escape the effects of power and expressed caution when it came to the question of revolution. In this article we argue that in one particularly influential line of development of Foucault’s work his exemplary caution has been exaggerated in a way that weakens the political aspirations of post-Foucaldian scholarship. The site of this reduction is a complex debate over the role of normativity in Foucaldian research, where it has been claimed that Foucault’s genealogical approach is unable to answer the question ‘Why fight?’ The terms of this debate (on the neo-Foucaldian side) are limited by a dominant though selective interpretation of Foucault’s analytics of power, where power is understood primarily in terms of government, rather than struggle. In response we suggest that if we reconfigure power-as-government to power-as-war, this adjusts the central concern. ‘Why fight?’ becomes replaced by the more immediate question, ‘How fight?’ Without denying the obvious benefits of cautious scholarly work, we argue that a reconfiguration of Foucault’s analytics of power might help Foucaldian research to transcend the self-imposed ethic of political quietism that currently dominates the field.

Child as method and/as childism: Conceptual–political intersections and tensions

“…This converges with child as method as far as 'adultism' is concerned, while child as method would however draw back from 'reconstructing…' or perhaps see the social imaginary process as open and evolving -if also a key site of contestation -rather than a 'reconstruction'. Rather, while normativities may always be at play, as Allen and Goddard (2014) put it:…”

“…This converges with child as method as far as ‘adultism’ is concerned, while child as method would however draw back from ‘reconstructing…’ or perhaps see the social imaginary process as open and evolving – if also a key site of contestation – rather than a ‘reconstruction’. Rather, while normativities may always be at play, as Allen and Goddard (2014) put it:

The challenge now, is to develop new normative commitments through collective struggle and deliberation. It is to operate without the restraints and rationales imposed by a pre‐existing normative political programme, which will always presume too much, sharing in its formation many aspects of the regime to be overthrown.

…”

“…Allen and Goddard (2014) also point out that ‘this methodological injunction to avoid normativities carries with it an oddly normative note of interdiction.’ (42). Indeed, it could equally be argued, therefore, as childist theorists do, that it is better to be explicit about such norms rather than allow them to be harboured and so inform assumptions and practices uninterrogated.…”

“…Similarly, some readings of Foucault challenge the primacy of a dominant focus on governmentality and address to the charge that these promote political passivity or only individual resistance. In particular, Allen and Goddard (2014) retrieve a more militant Foucault to indicate ‘an important switch in emphasis, from individual subjective resistance to collective material refusal, from a personal desire to take control over the practices that form the self, to a communal project that seeks to promote disorder and introduce greater tactical polyvalence to those practices of self‐production’ (45). They present an activist Foucauldian account of power advocating for collective struggle and resistance.…”