Sunday, April 10, 2005
(3:14 PM) | Old - Doug Johnson:
power, Power wonder working Biopower
From sovereignty week forward Discard has been pushing the question of power with several, myself included. Most recently the discussion came up under the heading of biopower and with respect to the Schiavo case. I have also promised (among other outstanding promises) a response to Discard's sovereignty week post. I will be assuming here his distinction in that post between "power" (constitutive) and "Power" (constituted).Recently I have been following Discard's concluding advice that one should read Negri before reading h/n. However, given our discussions of Biopower, I could not help but look ahead to the discussions of biopower in Empire and Multitude. Atrocious. The suspicion voiced earlier that h/n concede too much to Empire is now fully confirmed. A.Kotsko took a swipe at my project as nostalgic. Fair enough. I've made similar swipes at Badiou in the past. However, the possible naive, longing for the past involved in my project is not to be chalked up to some wistful hope that there remains some untapped, already outside, of the biopolitical. Rather one could charge nostalgia to the extent that any attempt to draw on the pre-biopolitical is such. In my case this means combining formerly antagonistic elements of the pre-biopolitical or, better put, universalizing that which the first three or so attempts at Empire could never capture - the Jewish legal order that has now actually been captured by the Fourth Reich. (But isn't universalizing that which has been captured another way of suggesting resistance by overflow rather than by subtraction? I digress.)
To answer Discard's questions concerning Biopower bluntly: the conception of Biopower I am working with is Foucauldian and, yes, it is absolutely a bad thing. I think Agamben's extensions of the Foucauldian project are provacative insofar as he remains within the bounds of new case studies, etc., but agree that the whole 'bare life' schtick is problematic. It corrupts Foucauldian analysis, derailing its potential into a paralyzing Derridean loop.
Back to h/n: the single paragraph (pp. 27-28) that Empire devotes to criticizing Foucault on biopower is cryptic and inadequate. The penultimate charge: that Foucault can't say "who or what drives the system" should cause a simple shrug of the shoulders (or better yet a return to apocalyptic/Iranean understandings of demonology in terms of political powers rather than our popular understanding of demon affliction). The final charge is that "Foucault fails to grasp finally ... the real dynamics of production in biopolitical society." In fact as I read and reread that single paragraph and perused the rest of the chapter I had to wonder if 'failure to grasp' was in fact a problem for h/n with respect to Foucault on biopower. I turned to Multitude and, lo and behold, this is absolutely the case.
The most poignant example has direct implications on the Schiavo question. In discussing biopower as instantiated in campaigns for population control, h/n protect their asses with this aside: We are certainly in favor of birth control and family-planning programs that are adopted voluntarily (166, emphasis added). WTF! Voluntarily adopted! Have they ever read Foucault? If the panopticon of population paranoia is internalized then it's fine and dandy?
In fact, Foucault's whole discussion of Biopower arises from and turns on his analysis of the normalization of the Malthusian couple. That process of normalization gave rise to the problems of the hysterical woman, the masturbating child, and the queer. The Malthusian response to these problems was critical in giving birth to the situation of biopower, and all of this is intimately related, of course, to the question of production and reproduction that h/n simply gloss. Controlled, Malthusian reproduction allows for a maximization of production. To which h/n can answer: Great, let's just make sure the Multitude properly controls such small 'p' productive power. Such an answer totally ignores, however, the suasive power of Foucault's larger analysis of the Malthusian question with respect to racism, nationalism, war, genocide (specifically Nazi), and the nuclear situation. These are particularly important themes in the current context of American Power where they very much still hold true, definitely not having been superseeded by a multinational multitude (in fact the two are rather copacetic).
Now Foucault realized, and I agree, that the totality of Biopower is complete. There is no remainder outside of its sphere. Yet Foucault insisted on striving to untangle his own subjectivity from biopower, and I find that quest admirable. For Foucault this meant a suicidal sadomasochism that refused subsumption into the Malthusian vortex. And here I cannot resist an aside. A Foucauldian take on the push for gay marriage: Homophobia, homoschfobia. Conservatives only think they are opposed. Gay marriage is late modern capitalism's wettest dream come true. Governmental regulation of perversion. Normalization of the queer. Production without reproduction. Two-income households with no deductions for dependents. In one fell swoop the solution to all three problems (hysterical women, masturbating children, and perverts). What's the best strategy for urban renewal? Paint downtown as pink as my little pony. And gay adoption? The absolute perfection of population control! It's even better than having your pet spayed or neutered.
and with that, I'll risk a 'to be continued' ...
