Page 147 - Cultural Theory

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••• Tim May and Jason Powell •••

which they are connected and engender one another. From this follows a
refusal of analyses couched in terms of the symbolic field or the domain of sig-
nifying structures, and a recourse to analyses in terms of the genealogy of rela-
tions of force, strategic development, and tactics. Here I believe one’s point of
reference should not be to the great model of language (langue) and signs, but
to that of war and battle.
(Foucault, 1980: 114)

What about those questions concerned with whose culture, whose identity and how
is this produced? These are the questions that preoccupied Foucault. His refusal to see
power as a property of, say, a particular class, immediately leaves a question over his
politics in terms of the idea of struggle. As he said: ‘I label political everything that
has to do with class struggle, and social everything that derives from and is a conse-
quence of the class struggle, expressed in human relationships and in institutions’
(1989: 104).
This leaves us with a question: against whom do we struggle if not those who hold
and exercise power without legitimacy? Who creates cultures and how might alter-
native forms find public expression and does this change anything? These questions
immediately bring forth issues concerning the relationship between Foucault and
Marxist theory. Class structure, race and gender are key determinants of the position
of individuals in capitalist society. It is difficult for ‘techniques of resistance’ to be
mobilized when particular groups are de-commodified and marginalized and lose
their social worth and voice (Biggs and Powell, 2001). At the same time Foucault sees
subjectivity not as a fabricated part of a deeper reality waiting to be uncovered, but
as an aspect of the reality systematically formulated by resistances and discourses. He
sidesteps the binary relationship set up by Marxist theory between true and false real-
ities, ways of knowing and political consciousness (Foucault, 1980) and seeks to
loosen knowledge, ideas and subject positions from categories of social totality, for
example, social formation, mode of production, economy and society.
Culture is rearticulated in Foucault’s thought to historical and societal features
ignored in those models of social reality that ‘read off’ culture according to deeper
structures . Foucault looks to areas such as medicine, sexuality, welfare, selfhood and
the law, and to marginalized social groups, local politics and the micro-levels of cul-
ture. In these studies he found social, discursive and historical substrata in which
relations of domination were apparent that were not simply reducible to modes of
economic exploitation. The idea of ‘governing’ then captures the ways in which the
‘possible field of action of others’ (Foucault, 1982a: 221) are structured. Yet, in inher-
iting this approach, authors have produced panoptic visions in which resistance is
subsumed within impersonal forces. This results from overlooking two main aspects
in Foucault’s work. First, in terms of his own question, what are the ‘limits of appro-
priation’ of discourse? Without this in place, all does appear quiet on the battle-
ground. Second, and relatedly, the agonism that exists between power and freedom
(May,1999). This suggests that where there is power, there is also resistance; power
thus presupposes a free subject. If there is no choice in actions, there is no power.

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