Page 146 - Cultural Theory

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••• Foucault: Interpretive Analysis and the Social •••

subjects that can refute, deny and accept the ‘truth’ claims of biotechnology. In the
case of lifestyles in popular culture, the active adoption of particular consumer prac-
tices, such as uses of biotechnology contributes to a narrative that is compensatory
in its construction of self (Biggs and Powell, 2001). Thus, the recourse to the notion
of technologies of self is capable of accommodating the complexity of the ‘subject’.
Although Foucault maintained the distinction between the technologies of
power/domination and the technologies of self, these should not be regarded as act-
ing in opposition to or in isolation to one another. Indeed, Foucault frequently spoke
of the importance of considering the contingency of both in their interaction and
interdependence, by identifying specific examples: ‘the point where the technologies
of domination of individuals over one another have recourse to processes by which
the individual acts upon himself and, conversely, the points where the technologies
of the self are integrated into structures of coercion’ (Foucault, 1993: 203). The dis-
tinction should therefore be considered as a heuristic device and not the portrayal of
two conflicting sets of interests. Overall, we should see Foucault’s entire works as pro-
viding ways of understanding social relations that require on our part active inter-
pretation, not passive regurgitation.
To take one modern example of how we might think with, alongside (and against
perhaps?) Foucault. Consider the question: how is modern bio-ethics rooted in a
specific configuration of subjectivity? The body culturally represents the best hiding
place, a hiding place of internal illnesses that remains inconspicuous until the advent
of ‘expert’ intervention. In other words, what are the effects of this problematization,
given its conditions of possibility? Subjective relations to the self will be affected to
the extent that social life confronts individuals with the proposition that this sub-
jective truth – the truth of their relation to themselves and to others – may be
revealed by ‘bodies’, which are also object of manipulation, transformation, desire
and hope. In this way we might anticipate through ‘culture’ (Morris, 1998) the rela-
tions between illnesses, new technologies, power, the body and desire. When facing
an illness, this involves a deliberate practice of self-transformation and such tranfor-
mativity must pass through learning about the self from the truth told by personal
narratives within popular culture. How are this culture and the body itself, however,
interacting with and being changed by advances in bio-medical technology and the
power of huge pharmaceutical companies?
Foucault is often seen as a structuralist, along with those such as Barthes, Althusser
and Lévi-Strauss. In reply to questions which sought to make such parallels, he was
consistent: ‘I am obliged to repeat it continually. I have never used any of the concept
which can be considered characteristic of structuralism’ (1989, 99). Perhaps the best
way to view this is by examining his idea of historical ‘events’. He refuses to see events
as symptomatic of deeper social structures and focuses upon what seems to be marginal
as indicative of relations of power. Events thereby differ in their capacity to produce
effects. The following quote helps us see how this can be applied to cultural analysis:

The problem is at once to distinguish among events, to differentiate the net-
works and levels to which they belong, and to reconstitute the lines along

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