Quotes, Notes & Transcripts : Part 1(Love and Power, On Foucault )

Michel Foucault on Power

• Critique of  the Subject. He agrees with the decentring of the subject as does Marx and Freud (Before the prevalent discourse was Cartesian , the subject determines reality “Cogito Ergo Sum”)
• However, Foucault did not entertain any hope of recovering the lost transparency of the subject (as Heidegger did) at a higher level or at a later stage (as Marx and Hegel did) f human development. Like Freud, he was ambivalent.
• The objective of Foucault’s work ‘has been to create a history of the different modes by which in our culture human beings are made subjects and this entails POWER.
• Domination or Subjugation. ‘There are two meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and ties to his own identity by a conscience of self knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to’.
• The subject is no longer an autonomous “I”, but simply an object of analysis.
•  ‘There is no longer a privileging of the subject as the centre of discourse, as an active agent who determines everything and shapes reality. In fact, the subject is simply a social and historical construct’.
• Implication in Epistemology. The subject is no longer the absolute condition of all knowledge an action (as it was the case in Kant’s transcendental philosophy). ‘If knowledge is based on a finite or contingent subject, then the conditions of knowledge are neither timeless nor universal, and anything like absolute is unattainable’.
• Foucault follows Nietzsche in the conviction that power and knowledge are two sides of the same coin. Power an knowledge as an indivisible amalgam.
• ‘The WILL TO TRUTH (as in Nietzsche) is just one manifestation of an underlaying WILL TO POWER and the exercise of power is accompanied or paralleled by the production of apparatuses of knowledge.’ To gain knowledge is to gain power, my misinformation about Love and my Self led me to surrender my power and will. Who / What shapes are knowledge ? The exercise of power requires knowledge.
• KNOWLEDGE IS ALWAYS POLITICAL as its condition of existence or possibility include POWER RELATIONS. Symbiotic relationship between power and knowledge.
• Two types of power for Foucault : Negative and Positive Power.
• Negative Power – Juridical = a prohibitive function of a repressive state apparatus, law and police. (Which in my believe is shaped by patriarchy). Power is seen as something possessed and consciously exercised by an agent  or group of agents over others in order to further its own interests. For Foucault, juridical power is rendered obsolete by the increasing positive and productive deployment of power in modern societies.
• Positive Power – Biopower = a productive & positive power exercised over “bodies”, HUMAN BODIES. The classical mode of government (kings) is gradually replaced by a more productive management of individuals and peoples. Power here is seen as positive as it is geared towards productive goals.
• Disciplinary power = directed primarily against the body-biopower = designed to produce SUBJECTED & PRACTICED or docile bodies. Discipline transform it into a malleable and obedient subject.
• With the DISCIPLINARY POWER of correctional institutions such as prisons, hospitals , psychiatrics, factories and some schools, it seems as though everyone is a prisoner in modern society as the system of internalization of rules inside these correctional institutions has been extended to the entire society and individuals everywhere become their own guardians.
• ‘The new disciplinary system “celebrated” the child, the deviant, the mad and the criminal because the subjugation of their souls feeds the social order and propels the functioning of the entire SYSTEM OF DOMINATION’. In this case , also binary oppositions are crucial for the preservation of the system of domination.
• Discoursive Power = Foucault traces the emergence of a series of discourses and practices that are designed to make the subject more reliably and extensively responsible for itself. His Discourse on Sexuality.
• Since the subject internalizes the system, in modern societies it is no longer the system that dominates the subject, but its now the subject that dominates itself (thinking is the system). The subject participates in the act of dominating itself. Therefore, individual change in subjectivity is crucial in order to change or break with internalised systems of domination.
• Because there is no scape from this type of domination, and given that everyone participates in the act of dominating themselves, the idea that it is the intellectuals (as in orthodox Marxism) who can liberate the masses is a blind concept. The intellectuals, much as the masses, are also directs victims of domination.
• Foucault never offers a concrete solution to the issue, he suggests that the problem can be addressed by exposing the insidious effects of power through “geneaological critique”
• ‘Only the critical capacity of the geneaological account will make resistance possible by making the insidious features of these technologies of power evident’ ‘…the geneology should enable historical knowledge to oppose and struggle against coercion of theoretical, unitary, formal and scientific discourse’.
• For Foucault genealogy has the power to reduce, if not, eradicate control and domination to the minimum’. This is the role of critique.
• Critique as the art of not being governed so much.
• The type of resistance that Foucault offers is a LOCAL RESISTANCE. A single grand resistance, like what Marx endorsed, is no longer possible for Foucault. Power is complex and dispersed, so resistance should be multi-centred and diverse.

Faucault and Feminism : Power, Gender and the Self, Lois McNay (Polity Press 1992)

• ‘The poststruturalist philosophical critique of the rational subject has resonatec strongly with the feminist critique of rationality as an essentially masculine construct’. P.2 ‘feminist have dranw extensively on the poststructuralist argument that rather than having a fixed core or essence, subjectivity is constructed through language and is, therefore, an open-ended, contradictory and culturally specific amalgam of different subject positions.’ ‘This argument is often used by socialist feminists to criticized the tendency amongst ceratin radical feminist to construct women as a global sisterhood linked by invariant m universal feminine characteristics, i.e essentialism’.
• For Faucault ‘sexuality is not an innate or natural quality of the body , but rather the effect of historically specific power relations’ p.3 ‘the idea that the body is produced through power and is, therefore, a cultural rather than a natural entity has made a significant contribution to the feminist critique of essentialism’.
• OVERCOMING ESSENTIALISM ‘Although the oppression of women is based on the appropriation of their bodies by patriarchy, it does not follow, therefore, that oppression derives from body or sex’ ‘Rather m the natural body must be understood as a device central to the legitimization of central certain strategies of oppression’ p.21

Spotify Podcast : ‘Love Kills Capitalism’ from A World to Win with Grace Blakeley

• The core of International Women’s Day as a radical revolutionary festivitie its lost.
• White feminism has become synonymous with liberalism ,as if the challenges that women face are all about individual prejudices . The idea that “all we need is a little bit of diversity and inclusion training, to make more female CEOs and then everything will be fixed”. There is this kind of trend were misogyny and patriarchy , these structural issues, are boiled down to individual sexism”.
• “Capitalism actually makes sexism economically rational, through something called statistical discrimination” . This is not an individual problem, this is structural, systemic problem of a system that devalues care work for example, that is often done foe free by women in the private sphere. In capitalism wages are paid according to their reliability , however, if women have to withdraw from work in order to be carers , they will get lower wages for being unreliable, even if they end up working double. Women’s wages are determined by their unreliability in the labour force. This is why regulation is so important. The system does not discriminate individuals alone, but with the entire class of people who are statistically more likely to have to leave the labour force and get paid lower wages, reinforcing the cycle.
• Capitalism does not want to recognise women’s unpaid labour because it would be very expensive for society, so they’re “saving money”.
• • In some northern countries there are well stablished social services in order to ensure children or the elderly are taken cared of etc etc. Society as whole helped with the weight of raising next generations . For example, socialising cooking , like Comunal Kitchens in Peru or Khibús in Israel.
• How we structure the way we live? We could structure the way we live so we live more communally and we get that weight out of women’s shoulders/private sphere.
• Women and abuse
• With pandemic, abuse against women has gone up. Where does this violence comes from ? We have a lot of voices in the media saying things like “this is just how men are” or “this is because of particular religions / culture”
• This is an outgrowth of Capitalist patriarchy. Capitalism as an economic system , because of the exploitation of labour and the alienation that many people feel from themselves, really dehumanises people. We don’t talk enough about this dehumanisation .
• These people are not only feeling alienated from their labour, but also from their emotions, their attentions ad affections as capitalism also exploits us in an affective level .
• As well, so many women are still economically dependent of their partners, and this creates a particular kind of vulnerability. For example, in the Unite States many women under the age of 65 are dependent on their husband to get health insurance, something unthinkable in the UK or Spain. You would literally lose health insurance if you divorce your abusive husband. Because of this capitalism reproduces.
• The power imbalance that capitalism creates between men and women is also a factor.
• Glorification of motherhood without the provisions required to raise children. In many countries there is no parental leave, or very little leave.
• What families need to look like in a more equitable society?
• Plato’s Republic : Comunal family.
• Kinship relations. Alo parenting.
• Alexandra Colentine – How Love changes according to the economic system. ‘When you have a more equitable society your romantic relationship has less pressure on it because you have a match wider network of friends and colleagues that support you.’
• We should spend more time nurturing our relationships with friends. (This is very common in Cuba, for example, despite my mom being an only child I have like 12 tias and tios and the list is always expanding)

The Bonds of Love : Psychoanalisis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination , Jessica Benjamin, Pantheon Books New York, 1988.

• Freud believed that ‘the repression demanded by civilization is preferable to the truthlessness that prevails in the state of nature’ P.4 . In line with Hobbes, he believed that humans were naturally destructive.
• ‘Only when we realise that power is not simply prohibition can we step outside the framework of choosing between repressive authority and unbridled nature’ P.4.
• ‘Obedience to the laws of civilization is first inspired, not by fear or prudence, Freud tells us, but by Love,  love for those early powerful figures who first demand obedience.’ P. 5
• ‘Freud has thus given us a basis for seeing domination as a problem not so much of human nature as of human relationships—the interaction between the psyche and social life. It as problem that must be defined not simply in terms of aggression and civilised constraints, but as an extension of the bonds of love.’ p.5 .
• On Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor , ‘Christ returns to earth during the inquisition and confronts the inquisitors with the Church’s debasement of faith: Why has a free act of love been transformed into a practice of submission? The Inquisitor responds that people do not want freedom and truth, which only cause depravation and suffering; they want miracle, mystery and authority (…) The awesome nearness of the ultimate power embodied in the church makes pain tolerable, even a source of inspiration or transcendence. This ability to enlist hope for redemption is the signature of the power inspires voluntary submission. We recognize it in a wide range of social phenomena—weather pope or political party—as  the power that inspires fear and adoration simultaneously.’ P.5
• ‘Every binary split creates a temptation to merely reverse its terms, to elevate what has been devalued, and denigrate what has been overvalued. To avoid the tendency towards reversal is not easy—specially given the existing division in which the female is culturally defined as that which is not male. In order to challenge the sexual split which permeates our psychic, cultural and social life, it is necessary to criticize not only the idealisation of the masculine side, but also the reactive valorization of femininity. What is necessary is not to take sides but to remain focus on the dualistic structure itself.’ P.9
•  The weakness of radical politics has been ‘to idealize the the oppressed, as if their politics and culture were untouched by the system of domination, as if people did not participate in their own submission’ P.9
• Benjamin believes that (Oedipal polarity as in polarized structure of gender difference) ‘Oedipal polarity (…) its not restricted to the individual psyche, where it is expressed in terms of mother and father. This polarity has its analogue in other long-standing dualisms of Western culture: rationality and irrationality, subject and object, autonomy and dependency.’ P.184 She argues that ‘the split that constitutes gender polarity is replicated in intellectual and social life, eliminating the possibility of mutual recognition in society as a whole’.