Political Consequences of the Foucauldian Error

 

As I wrote in my previous post, Foucault's main error was his failure to fully think through his "doubts" regarding the repressive hypothesis, resulting his faulty contention that "Where there is power, there is resistance" as if resistance must just always automatically appear, as if by magic.  In other words, Foucault has a dogmatic belief in the automatic spontaneity of resistance, that it always arises "everywhere".  It's not hard to see potential political consequences of this theoretical error: if we are always automatically guaranteed resistance, then it is not necessary to do the work of organizing resistance.  If it is, so to speak, already there - "everywhere" - and so producing it is utterly superfluous, then one might even be led to a kind of suspicion regarding those who are trying to build resistance through too totalizing (rather than local) organization as somehow inauthentic. Thus, quite paradoxically, a theory whose very inspiration was the insight that power is not always repressive and can be productive eventually led people to become suspicious of the some of the very ways in which power can be productive of resistance.

Anyone who has engaged in political activism knows that "Where there is power, there is resistance" isn't always true.  Organizing is hard work, with many potential obstacles and pitfalls.  A Foucauldian analysis, with its romantic notion that resistance arises automatically in response to power, or is inseparable from it, would lead one to expect that people are just waiting with bated breath to participate in resistance, or better yet spontaneously engaging in resistance on their own.  On the contrary.  Just getting people to come to a meeting can be extremely difficult - let alone expecting them to use up their time and energy, engage in strategies and struggles that they may find unpleasant morally objectionable, or even risk their lives - especially doing so in a coordinated and effective way.  

Why don't people always resist?  People who are being oppressed and exploited will fail to show up to their own liberation.  But why?  (As Napalm Death put it in their immortal song, "You Suffer": "You suffer... but why?")  Indeed, not only do people not always resist, sometimes they willfully participate in their own subjection.  Wilhelm Reich posed a question that was later quoted by Deleuze and Guattari: "The astonishing thing is not that some people steal or that others occasionally go out on strike, but rather that all those who are starving do not steal as a regular practice, and all those who are exploited are not continually out on strike: after centuries of exploitation, why do people still tolerate being humiliated and enslaved, to such a point, indeed, that they actually want humiliation and slavery not only for others but for themselves?”

It would be easy to say that the reason people do not resist is simple laziness.  There are so many good movies, and television shows, and video games.  "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" is so entertaining.  Or perhaps, more than laziness, the problem is cowardice.  Or that people are brainwashed by propaganda.  Yes, all of these are probably partial answers, but none of them seems strong enough to fully solve the profound conundrum. 

I do not wish to imply that spontaneity is a myth, or that it never happens.  It happens, and it can be a wonderful, exhilarating experience when it does.  I'm a musician.  In my opinion, improvisation is the essence of music.  People who cannot improvise should not be considered musicians.  I've had the experience of playing music with friends, and spontaneously creating an entire song - in real time - the rhythm, the harmony, the melody, the lyrics, everything.  It was like we had a psychic bond.  It's an indescribably powerful experience.  I wish everyone could have it.  But moments like these are so special, in part because they are so rare.  

Sometimes improvisation yields these wild bursts of creativity, either on the individual level, or on the collective.  But sometimes it doesn't.  It's remarkably easy to fall into patterns of behavior - ruts that are surprisingly difficult to get out of.  

Do I think that moments of collective spontaneous political uprising are possible?  Yes, I do.   But the Foucauldian analysis becomes an idealist and ideological delusion when it leads people to think that spontaneous resistance always arises automatically.