Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies:
"The Continental Origins of Postmodernism"

Week 5: October 11-October 17

Jason Walker Comments on William Dale's Review of Michel Foucault's "History of Sexuality, Volume I"

Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 10:43 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Commentary on WD on Foucault

[From: Jason Walker ]

COMMENTARY ON FOUCAULT

ABSTRACT

I make a number of observations about the way Foucault operates. I notice,
first, a parallel between his view of history with Hegel and Rand. Next, I
criticize the way Foucault writes in floating abstractions, and his
consistent habit of referring to Western Civilization as though it was a
monolith. I conclude with comments concerning Foucault as a postmodernist.

INTRODUCTION

First, allow me to apologize for taking so long to write this essay. But it
is here, at long last.

As I've never been involved in a Cyberseminar or anything like it before, I
wasn't sure how to go about writing this commentary. Obviously, trying to
"refute Foucault" would be a bit of burden, not to mention beside the point,
which as I understand it is more about discussion and understanding rather
than a childish attempt to prove Rand was superior to all of the
philosophers we're studying combined. As such, I decided to simply list
some general observations I made of the text, some in the form of criticism,
some not. The criticisms I do offer here might already be answered by
Foucault in another one of his works, but I fail to find anything dispelling
them from within the assigned reading. My other main difficulty is my own
lack of familiarity with Foucault as a thinker, so a lot of what I write
here might merely spring from my own lack of understanding about his system.
I wish I had been able to read other works by Foucault to better
understand concepts he flings around in this text, like "power-knowledge."
William Dale wasn't the only person who found understanding Foucault to be a
difficult task.

OBSERVATIONS

First and foremost, I want to complement William on writing an excellent
review of the material. I thought he did an excellent job of balancing the
need to write in detail and the value of brevity, especially considering the
subtlety of Foucault's writing. And like William, I have render unto
Caesar's what is Caesar's, and also give Foucault the benefit of being "an
entertaining, sensually engaging writer." While the concepts Foucault
refers to are not always clear, his imagery usually is.

Second, in any study of Foucault, it should be mentioned that any claims of
historical fact Foucault makes should always be taken with a grain of salt,
even more than is normally warranted. This is a thinker who once remarked
that, "I am well aware that I have never written anything but fictions. I
do not mean to say, however, that truth is therefore absent. It seems to me
that the possibility exists for fiction to function in truth, for a
fictional discourse to induce effects of truth, and for bringing it about
that a true discourse engenders or 'manufactures' something that does not as
yet exist, that is, 'fictions' it. One 'fictions' history on the basis of a
political reality that makes it true, one 'fictions' a politics not yet in
existence on the basis of a historical truth" (_Power/Knowledge_ p. 193).
Keith Windschuttle, an Australian historian who wrote the anti-postmodernist
tract _The Killing of History_, devotes an entire essay to Foucault alone,
serving as an expose of some of Foucault's sloppy historical research
methodology.

With that out of the way, I wanted to move on to something more positive,
and point out a remarkable connection between aspects of Foucault's theory
of history and Rand's. This connection is a Hegelian conception of history;
all three thinkers look for the primary cause for events not in something
strictly material, like the means of production, but rather in the ideas of
a given time. Rand writes, "Just as a man's actions are preceded and
determined by some form of idea in his mind, so a society's existential
conditions are preceded and determined by the ascendancy of a certain
philosophy among those whose job is to deal with ideas" (Lexicon 203). Note
that in the passage that we read for the seminar, Foucault does not point to
a single material factor in his explanation for the evolution of sex and
related thought. Instead, Foucault is concerned primarily with the
_discourse_ of a given time period as being indicative of how a given
society operates.

Of course, unlike Hegel, Foucault does not see a logical unfolding of
history that will eventually give rise to the Absolute; but rather a more
chaotic Heraclitian flux of power-knowledge and resistances. Rand, as an
advocate of free will, similarly sees no reason why any given outcome is
necessary, although associating her ideas with anything like flux would be
misleading. The chief disagreement I think Foucault and Rand would face in
this would be with the cause of the indeterminism. Dale's characterizations
of Foucault, that, "People as individual actors are basically irrelevant to
Foucault; the 'forces' acting in a society act through people, but the
people themselves are not actors," is an accurate one as far as I can tell.
There simply isn't room for free will in Foucault's system.

As a historian, Foucault leaves much to be desired, because we see very
little in the way of specific concrete examples for his claims about
history, and little in the way of cites (not that Rand herself wasn't guilty
of this too, but that's another topic).

For example, on page 94, Foucault explains, "Power is not something that is
acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to
slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of
nonegalitarian and mobile relations." Fair enough. But to argue a point
like this, Foucault needs to do a lot more than simply state it. It would
be helpful conceptually speaking if we can see a real-world referent,
perhaps from history or even literature, to this phenomenon. Foucault could
show a specific example wherein, for instance, despite law-power being
shared under a significantly different arrangement the previous balance of
power overall remained the same. Foucault could explain, for example, in
drawing this distinction, how things would operate differently if power was
indeed something that _could_ be acquired, seized or shared. Otherwise, we
are dealing with floating abstractions here, with no clear way to decipher
what they mean for us.

Also, Foucault repeatedly commits a pet peeve of mine, when he refers to
"society." There were many instances where it was difficult to tell _which_
society he was referring to; was he discussing Parisian, Western, American,
Human? Fortunately enough, there were a few places where Foucault alludes
to the society he intends to critique as the Western, such as near the
bottom of page 7. But there is a huge difficulty here, in that Western
Civilization, like its Eastern counterpart, is no monolith. The
intellectual atmosphere (or discourse, if Foucault prefers) was far
different in say 18th century Russia or Spain, which for all intents and
purposes were still in the Middle Ages with no real Enlightenment to speak
of, than it was in France and the US. And even here, the Enlightenments of
these two nations had very different characters, as did their respective
revolutions. Taking it one step further, we can even get into a specific
nation, and talk, as good Objectivists do, of different subcultures.
Foucault speaks of a society, "castigating itself for its
hypocrisy...speak[ing] verbosely of its own silence (p. 8)," when it would
make much more sense to think of the situation as different warring
subcultures (perhaps with their own "discourses") rather than a single
schizophrenic culture. Oddly, Foucault himself seems to recognize this in a
different context: "Hence there is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul
of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary.
Instead there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case...
(p. 96)."

Why is this a problem for Foucault's analysis of sex? To illustrate, I
refer to Ben Franklin's visit to France to negotiate an alliance in 1776.
Franklin was a well-known international celebrity, and in particular was
well known as being a lady's man. He had several affairs with married women
(many of whom were married to top government officials, like the Minister of
the Treasury) while there, and the French reaction is mild amusement more
than anything else. Imagining the very different reaction he would've
received had he been in Madrid instead of Paris, and remembering that both
countries are Catholic, it's easy to see how a difference of locale from
within so-called Western Civilization can radically alter things.

But the main point is that to speak of a Western society in such broad
terms can not only lead to inaccuracies, but it can also weaken the
philosophical strength of any meaningful critique. When he claims "society
castigates itself for its hypocrisy," I want him to name names, and give a
few specifics. Describing the characteristics, as Foucault does here, of
the nature of sex and the discourse of the entire Western civilization makes
about as much sense as saying Eastern philosophers were all religious.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Based on everything here, I don't think there can be any serious doubt that
Foucault was a postmodernist, at least as Hicks conceives pomo. While he
and Rand do share a conviction that history is determined by ideas, in every
other branch of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, etc. Foucault fits
the mold. Although (not having played an active role in the defining
postmodernism discussion), I can only stress a general reluctance to even
use the term in describing anyone, because ideas about what postmodernism is
differ so widely, and it's become this almost meaningless catch-phrase for
the 90's. Under Hicks' definition, pomo could practically be described as
Anti-Objectivism. Yet in a blurb on the back of Sciabarra's _Russian
Radical_, we find Rand herself being described as a postmodernist by Douglas
Rasmussen, who suggests, "Sciabarra shows that Rand is best understood as a
postmodern thinker, for she was concerned with creating a culture that
overcame the dichotomies of modernity..." So, if you must use the term, use
discretion. It's a bit overused, IMHO.

Otherwise, I would like to hear others' thoughts on things I've noticed
here, especially the Hegel/Rand/Foucault connection.

- Jason



Works Cited:

Foucault, Michel _The History of Sexuality, Volume I: an Introduction_.
trans. Robert Hurley. Vintage Books, New York: 1990.

Foucault, Michel _Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972-1977_. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John
Mepham, Kate Soper. Pantheon Books, New York: 1980.

Rand, Ayn _The Ayn Rand Lexicon_. Ed. Harry Binswanger. Meridian Books,
New York: 1986.

Windschuttle, Keith _The Killing of History_. The Free Press, New York:
1997



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Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

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