Foucault, Foucauldians and Sociology Author(s): Nick J. Fox Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 49, No.

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NickJ. Fox

Foucault,Foucauldiansand sociology

ABSTRACT This paper considers the applicationof Foucauldianperspectiveswithin sociology. While Foucault'sepistemologyhas generated novel historicaland philosophicalinterpretations, when transposedto sociology,problemsarise.The first of these concerns the associationof knowledgeand power,and the concept of 'discourse'.Foucault suggested that there are 'rules' of discursiveformaiion which are extraneousto the 'non-discursive' realmof 'reality'. This formulation is consequentlyboth deterministicand incapableof supplyingexplanationsof why some praciicesbecome discursive which others do not. This determinismis reflected in some sociologicalanalysesof embodiment,offering a model of the 'body'which is passive,and incapableof resistingpower/knowledge.Secondly, Foucault'snotion of the sself'movesto the other extreme,inadequately addressing the constraintswhich affect the fabrication of subjectivity.Sociological accountsdo not always recognizethe ambiguities whichconsequentlyresultfrom effortsto use Foucauldian positions.It is arguedthatpost-structuralists other than Foucaultmayoffer more to sociology.

KEYWORDS Foucault; socialtheory;ontology;epistemology

INTRODUCTION: FOUCAULT AND THE FOUCAULDIANS

Within sociology, the work of Michel Foucault has supplied a different understanding of power from analyses deriving from Weberian and Marxist theory (Nettleton 1995: 8-13 passim). His 'empirical' analyses of historical and archival materials have been taken up with enthusiasm within sub-disciplinary groupings in sociology, notably health and illness, sociologies of gender and the body, social welfare and organizational sociology. In these fields, Foucauldian approaches have been applied to offer a critique of many features of modernity and the modern subject. Indeed, it has been claimed (Silverman 1985, Eckermann 1997: 155) that Foucault's perspective successfully bridges the agency/structure dichotomy which has been such an issue within sociology. However, closer examination of the 'sociological Foucault' which emerges in Foucauldian studies (Goldstein 1984) suggests the complexities of the de-centering of self and the 'deep structure' conception of the rules
Brit.Jnl. of SociolonVolume no. 49 Issue no. 3 September 1998 ISSN 0007-1315 (C) London School of Economics 1998

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NickJ. Fox 416 of discursive formation may not have been fully my argument will be that addressed. In this paper, Foucault's ontology is itself tradictory, and this ambiguity ambiguous and conmay be carried over into ology. While I am Foucauldian socisuggesting neither that such fatal flaw (perhaps indeed ambiguity is necessarily a it is an antidote to nor that we must modernist meta-narrative), somehow be 'faithful' to Foucault (Armstrong 1997: I shall suggest that 15), sociologists who would apply the cally appraise the approach might critiimplications of Foucault's ontology, and remain extremely cautious when extrapolating (and perhaps subtly position to sociological tasks. adapting) the Foucault was critical of theories which consider power as 'sovereign': a unitaryand centralized construct (Foucault 1980b: 115, Wickham, 1986: 169) and hence primarily repressive in character. A principal power, Foucault argued (1976,1979, technology of 1980a), is the gaze, with which is concerned the gathering of information, to inform and create a discourse on its subject-matter. Discourses create effects of truthwhich are of neither true nor false (Foucault themselves 1980b: 116-19). Because of of a productive power this association with the fabrication of effects of truth, Foucault speaks of power/knowledgea phenomenon which to cannot be reduced simply either component. Armstrong (1983) succinctly sums up this association Power assumes a relationship based on some knowledge which creates and sustains it; conversely, power establishes a in which certain particular regime of truth knowledges become admissible or possible. (1983: 10) Arange of studies in sociology have used a Foucauldian model to document these knowledges or 'knowledgeabilities'. For example, (Sawicki 1991, Weedon 1987), patriarchy masculinity (Hearn and Morgan architecture (Prior 1988), criminology 1990), (Pfohl and Gordon 1988), munity medicine and public nealth com(Armstrong 1983, 1994, Lupton Petersen 1997), dentistry (Nettleton 1995, 1992), developmental (Rose 1989, Tyler 1997), religion psychology (Moore 1994, Paden 1988), (Kaite 1988), education pornography (Goodson and Dowbiggin 1990, Grant 1997), beauty and fitness (Probyn 1988, Glassner 1989), and death In many of these studies, the (Prior 1987). gaze of power, operating through modernist techniques of surveillance, supplies the raw material for a turns people into subjects of discourse which professions (or disciplines). The authority of such disciplines are power and played out in the everyday between encounters professionals (or privileged others) and their they children, patients or clients, subject-matter, be workers, family members or lovers. other words, power/knowledge is In implicated in the formation of ity. subjectivThis relation between power and subjectivityis clearly of interest to theorists, and the attraction of social Foucault's formulation may be related to its apparent transcendence of both structuralism and humanism (Dreyfus Rabinow 1982, Smart 1985: 16). It and breaks with that structuralism in that it denies power is something which is merely coercive in a traditional Marxist or

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Weberian perspective (Pizzorno 1992). It marks a break with humanism inasmuch as it de-centres the individual as the prior agent in creating the social world, rejecting subjectivityas something essential, prior to discourse, which power acts against. Power is a productive process, creating human subjects and their capacity to act (Butler 1990: 139). Even what are apparently self-empowering practices (such as liberation from sexual prohibitions, or 'self-actualization') are the workings of new reflexive technologies of power (Foucault 1981, 1985). But how useful is this model for sociology (and in particular those arenas of sociology concerned with identity and embodiment)? Foucault was himself able to develop philosophical and quasi-historical analyses, but his position rendered him relatively politically impotent (Ostrander 1988: 180) . The reasons for such impotence and the kinds of manipulation/glossing/silencing of Foucault's positions which are made by sociologists to meet the objectives of an engaged (and embodied) sociology, will be explored more fully in the next three sections, which consider the ontological status of discourse, body and self in his work.

SOCIOLOGYAND THE FOUCAULDIAN ONTOLOGY OF DISCOURSE

The centrality of the concept of discourse in Foucault's work, and its association with knowledge and power, suggests a continuity between his project and the sociology of knowledge; in particular the kinds of approaches in sociology which have looked at the social construction of scientific and other knowledges (Nettleton 1992: 133). But is there a continuity here? For Foucault, the term 'discourse' referred both to the historically contingent sets of practices (for instance, the practices which constitute clinical medicine) which limit human actions and what may be thought, andto the theoretical concept which accounts for the fact that humans actually do act and think in line with these 'regimes of truth' (for instance, that people do - by and large - co-operate with a clinical gaze which turns them into patients). Foucault's archaeological and genealogical accounts address the first of these conceptions of discourse, and it is understandable how these seem attractive to sociologists as explanations of the impact of the social upon how people behave - a central concern of sociology since Durkheim. What seems to follow from this, is a willingness to accept Foucault's theorization of how discourse 'in and of itself' works, as reflected in the sometimes unthinking use of the term in sociology and cognate disciplines.l An exploration of this theory of discourse may suggest a more cautious response from sociology. Foucault sought to develop a basis for understanding what makes knowledge possible, to attempt an 'archaeology' of knowledge, underpinned by 'rules' which operate independently of subjectivity (Foucault 1974: 15-16). As such it has some aspects in common with linguistics, in which a set of grammatical rules authorizes an infinite set of language statements. Thus

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418 NickJ. Fox there is a 'deep' level of rules, and a surface level of discursive statements. Discursive practices, he says

. . . are characterised by a delimitation of a field of objects, the definition of a legitimate perspective for the agent of knowledge, and the fixing of norms for the elaboration of concepts and theories. (Foucault 1977b:
199)

Three aspects of Foucault's ontology of discourse can be identified. 1. While subjects may be capable of interpreting the surface meanings of discursive practices, and thus developing a contingent 'knowledge', the 'deeper' knowledge is not directly accessible, mainly because it is not knowledge at all in the everyday sense of the word. The system of rules which govern the production, operation and regulation of discursive statements (the surface level) mediates power or more precisely a 'will to power': not the will of one particular person or group but a generalized will to create the possibilities to be able to 'speak the truth' (Hacking 1986: 34-5). The willto power is productive, of 'new ways of saying plausible things about other human beings and ourselves. Subjectivity (that is, the ability to know oneself) is itself achieved through discourse (as the child of a deeper 'power/knowledge'), clarifying why a prior, privileged or essential subject mustbe unacceptable within a Foucauldian framework (Nettleton 1992: 132). 2.Foucault recognizes discursive practices as human activity, 'embodied in technicalprocesses, in institutions, in patterns for general behaviour, in forms for transmission and diffusion, and in pedagogical forms which, at once,impose and maintain them' (Foucault 1977b: 200). However, not all humanactivity or other events are discursive. Most 'real' historical events or pieces of human behaviour are what Foucault calls 'non-discursive practices', and the relationship between discourse and the non-discursive is not simply a mirroring, in which discourse is the surface manifestation of 'reality' (Brown and Cousins 1986: 36). Rather, discourse is the surface manifestationof the underlying will to power (which Foucault calls 'power/knowledge'in his later work) which cannot be reduced to human intentionality (ibid.: 37-8). Indeed, power/knowledge is that which links discourse to the non-discursive, that creates the connections which makes itpossibleto speak about some aspect of the world in a particular regime of truth. That which is non-discursive plays no part in such regimes, and whether or not it becomes discursive cannot be determined from essential features of the event itself. 3. If power/knowledge is unknowable in a traditional sense, then it follows that no-one or no group such as the sovereign, the bourgeoisie or the state can (intentionally) be its author or possess it absolutely (Foucault 1980c: 98) . Neither is discourse something which coincides necessarily with single works or groups of works or even specific disciplines. Discourse in this sense

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has a life of its own independent of human agency (Foucault 1977b: 200-1), and cannot be reduced to particular texts or practices. It is also clear that, given the unknowability of power/knowledge, discerning its 'hidden meaning' could not be the objective of analysis, Foucauldian or otherwise. This ontology of discourse is quite different from humanist sociological notions of the structuring of agency (Smart 1985: 71, Hacking 1986: 35). To summarize, discourse cannot be reduced to texts or other 'authored' practices, does not directly mirror the 'reality' of historical events (the nondiscursive), and is the surface manifestation of a deeper power/knowledge, which is anonymous, disseminated and cannot be known in a traditional sense. Nor is discourse simply a new way of thinking about social structure, which in traditional social theory- however deterministic - can always be 'explained' (as roles, the economic base or whatever): Foucault's conception of discourse is radically divorced, both from 'reality' and from traditional notions of human subjectivity. It follows that strategies appropriate to a humanistic framework, for instance recourse to authorial intention, historical events or contexts, cannot be adopted when utilizing this model. The unfamiliarity of such a notion of an ahistorical, non-authored discourse governed by a free-floating, anonymous, disseminated power/knowledge requires most cautious methodological rigour when applied to sociological analysis. Two opposing attractors await the unwary, and examples of both are discernible in the work of Foucauldian sociologists. The first of these is a tendency for essentialism concerning power/knowledge, such that power is seen as unitary and unifying, working through disciplinary discourses to achieve its ends. This can be seen most clearly in neo-Marxist or structuralist analyses, in which power is 'functional', closely associated with the interests of some group or institution (Wickham 1986: 153, 170-4). The second tendency leads in the opposite direction, to a position in which power/knowledge is acknowledged as unknowable and thus either vacuous (Rorty 1992: 330) or simply to be quietly forgotten about altogether, in favour of a focus on the surface phenomenon of discursive practice. Foucault was aware of how easy it would be to essentialize power (Freundlieb 1986: 158-162), but argued this would be to undermine his perspective on it as strategic, rather than something to be possessed, such that . . . its effects of domination are attributed not to 'appropriation', but to dispositions, manoeuvers, tactics, techniques, functionings; that one should decipher in it a network of relations constantly in tension, in activity . .. that one should take as its model a perpetual battle rather than a contract regulating a transaction or the conquest of a territory. (Foucault 1979: 26) At the level of the rules governing discourse, power/knowledge was a principle of 'dispersion' rather than a unity (Freundlieb 1986: 162), and was located between rather than within institutions (Foucault 1979: 26).

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Fox J. Nick 152-7) does discern Wickham (1986: and prior in this pronouncement, Despite comes over as unitary time a notion in which power/knowledge that from time to occasions unsurprising is it emerges in and own writing, can 'use' discourse and Foucault' wilful is that as something which power of Armstrong writes example, for So, studies Foucauldian the objects of an by making them bodies fabricated over the whole power had Panoptic exercised surveillance was in a better regime new eye. The observing the mind of everyone, power: both an because it observed and, of articulation for population point a to make the individual which power was exercised. (Armstrong position from of power and a point effect 70) asking 1983: notions of power, reflects on Foucauldian Sawicki objectification Similarly, through violence, primarily willingly? On operated it to power themselves patriarchal If subject women would attaching individuals repression, why and by inciting desire, underoperates also it if then it is easier to other hand, needs, the real 1991: and addressing a grip on us. (Sawicki specificidentities, to getting at effective how it has been so stand with 'the state' 85) becomes synonymous which a functionalism the extreme, power/knowledge At 29, grouping, reflecting 1986: particular or some and Punish (Donnelly model' 'society' or Discipline in 'control sometimes be discerned Maseide (1991) describes a can by doctors. 1986: 7-8). For example, Hoy practice is achieved clinical and describehow 'adequate' to to the clinical encounter, necessary always as situationally of act as .. . power is thought benign. It enables the doctor to demanded by often often is inthat respect competence Such is made competent. prescribed.... Power and institutionally As professionally and legally domination.... patients and it is and methods of her control or of his do forms doctor's ability to effective through resources for the is effective to the essential are such, they The impact of power knowledge and assumpclinical work adequately.... share a system of patient and effective and extent that doctor conflict-free interaction relatively tions that facilitates (Maseide 1991: 552-3) with the patient compliance. into such close allegiance brought are profession) of power is, the medical Herethe relations power works (that 1986: 171-2). interest whose power (Wickham groupingin (essential) door, with sovereign through the back thatwe are back back human agency potenthus brings and If this first tendency as unitary, sovereign re-introduces power/knowledge second the by essentializing person or persons, which cona of texts the tially the possession through the authorial voice of of archaeology the with concerned humanism elsewhere: less of power/knowFoucault became tribute to discourse. as with the genealogw over formation, non-discursive discourse to the the 'rules' of discursive of relationship ledge: the changing 420

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time (Smart 1985: 42), in other words to the objects of history - in particular, bodies, selves and subjectivity in general. Foucault's genealogies draw more heavily on the surface manifestations of discursive practices, the human productions of texts or non-textual practices, and there is thus the potential for any text or practice to be labeled 'discursive', eliding the distinction between written texts and 'discourse', between which Foucault quite clearly differentiates (Foucault 1977a: 123, 138; 1977b: 200). Genealogy supplies apparently convincing analyses of historical changes in discursive practices, filled with examples drawn from the surface manifestations. The existence of a discourse is discerned inductively, and with enough ingenuity any text can be linked to a 'discourse'. To give two examples: firstly, Paden's exploration of Puritan writings since the fifth century discerns the development of a reflexive identity, such that he concludes . . . Puritan writing, in spite of its God-centred theology, not only presupposed the importance of the self, the 'seeing I', but also pre-figured the modern division of the self into opposing parts.... Puritan suspicion of self represented a practice with implications which go well beyond the mythological agenda that invented it. By the logic of reflexive selfexamination, every religious assertion . . . could become subject of its own possible self-deception. (Paden 1988: 78) Similarly, having documented various Victorian texts which reported studies of the association of sugar with dental decay, Nettleton suggests that Each of these studies with their various and often conflicting conclusions was an attempt to find the 'truth' about the relationship between sugar and caries. But there was a more fundamental truth which each of these studies has already presumed, namely the existence of mouths, teeth, sugar and disease.... In effect, arguments for and against (sugar's) value were all part of the same discourse. (Nettleton 1992: 81) Such studies are based in the Foucauldian premise that the rules of discursive formation provide the 'conditions of existence' of particular statements, which make it possible to say certain things and not others: the 'discourse' is inductively derived from the texts under study. But what precisely is happening here? In Foucault's position, discourse is anonymous, dependent neither on human intent or historical context, and cannot be reduced to the texts of specific 'authors' (Foucault 1977a: 121), yet genealogy concerns itself principally with texts, from which we 'uncover' the discourse. Freundlieb suggests (1986: 176) that behind such analysis is a 'hidden model of historical sociology' which links discursive practices to historical events (non-discursive practices) in precisely the way which Foucault rejected. Capitalism, industrial development, the physicality of the body, particular historical events or whatever form an unacknowledged backcloth which structure the analytical work of discerning the 'rules' of discursive

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formation. Reflecting on Foucault's own strategy for linking the nondiscursive to the discursive, Freundlieb rather cynically comments that ... all the examples Foucault provides of changes in discursive formations simply name singular historical events. In other word, each socalled rule he postulates only applies once, thus emptying the notion of a rule of all content. (ibid.: 171) Transposed to sociology, it has been argued that Foucault's approach can 'rehabilitate' structuralist and functionalist kinds of analysis which deemphasize agency, by rejecting the concept of 'sovereign' power and thus overcoming the determinism of such analyses (Silverman 1985). In this section I have suggested that while Foucault's theorizing of discourse enabled him to construct quasi-historical accounts of regimes of truth, it does not work so well within a sociological application. On one hand, his version of discourse can result in a highly deterministic and essentialist reading of power (Lupton 1997: 102), while on the other, genealogies may turn out to depend far more upon authorial intent than is admitted. These tendencies towards determinism and humanism will be re-visited in the next two sections.

SOCIOI,OGYAND THE FOUCAUI.DIAN ONTOLOGY OF BODY

In his effort to avoid the 'liberal conception of individuals as unconstrained, creative essences' (Wickham 1986: 15), Foucault chose in works such as Birth of the Clinic and Discipline and Punish to de-privilege rationality and focus on the body as the site and target of power. This was indeed an effective rhetorical device for de-stabilizing some of the assumptions of philosophical discourse, opening up new ways of thinking 'subject', 'power' and 'knowledge'. Furthermore, it was central to the generation of genealogies of institutional power. Genealogy, Foucault suggested (1986), is a strategy which seeks to account for the constitution of knowledge from within the flow of history, rather than by reference to some supposedly objective standpoint such as 'madness' or 'criminality' (Foucault 1986: 59) . The genealogical approach, primarily a strategy to critique issues in philosophy and history, has gained the attention of sociologists concerned with issues of embodiment, notably in the sociologies of health, gender and sexuality. However, the emergence of a 'sociology of the body' (Turner 1992; Nettleton 1995) raises problems for this ontology. Firstly, by making the 'body' the new privileged object of a sociology, a new essentialism beckons, in which the body becomes the pre-existing focus of power's action, in place of a 'self', an 'individual' or an 'agent'. There is the potential for this Foucauldian body to become a romantic subject-substitute, continually buffeted by discourse, never able to self-actualize, doomed always to be the plaything of power/knowledge (Hacking 1986: 28). On the other, one has to question whether the ontological (or non-ontological) status

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attributed to the body by Foucault is really adequate for a 'sociology of the body': one is led to ask: whichbody? 1. The body is the physical body. For the strict Foucauldian, such a position is not acceptable. While from the early pages of Disciplineand Punish (Foucault 1979), it might be concluded that the physical body is the focus of disciplinary power, throughout that work, and in his Birth of the Clinic (1976), Foucault argues that power does not act directly on some biological entity (op. cit.: x). Indeed, the concept of the biological body, the 'organism' or 'body-with-organs' (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 158) is itself discursively constructed - by theology, by philosophy, by biomedicine and other discourses. 2. It is some kind of 'natural body' underpinning the 'organism'. Those who shy away from 'radical constructionism' (Nettleton 1995: 29), and acknowledge a natural body which is overlaid with cultural values, adopt an essentialist position, albeit one in which the essence's existence is determined phenomenologically, through 'experience', faith or 'commonsense' (see, for example Collins 1994). This position has been adopted in some post-structuralist feminisms, which while taking on board the perspective of the body as discursively constructed, wish at the same time to recognize the specific experience of sexual difference (McNay 1992: 36). 3. There is some kind of 'natural' body, but it is beyond discourse and thus unknowable. This avoids the tag of essentialism, but leaves us with a meaningless and pointless construct. As such, the 'sociology of the body' becomes the 'sociology oR' 4. It is always already some kind of socially constructed body and it is 'impossible to know the materiality of the body outside its cultural significations' (McNay 1992: 30). While there are certain actions and gestures in physical space, certain states of mind within the brain, anything which can be called a unified 'body' is the creation of power/knowledge. This Foucauldian body- a 'body-without-organs' (Deleuze and Guattari 1984, 1988) is a social body throughout. While there may be a willingness on the part of some sociologists of the body to indulge in 'epistemological pragmatism' (Turner 1992: 61), choosing from the alternatives above as the task in hand requires, for the Foucauldian protagonist of the 'sociology of the body', the phrase must surely be ironic, referring to the disappearance (or appearance?) of 'the body' as it is discursively written. Foucault himself seemed entirely unconcerned about whatever kind of material entity the body might be, and the way he wrote of the body implied that he often did not have in mind a conventional notion of the body at all. For example, using the Deleuzian term 'phantasms' to describe the writing of the body by discourse, he wrote that . . . Phantasms must be allowed to function at the limit of bodies; against bodies, because they stick to bodies and protrude from them, but also

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because they touch them, cut them, break them into sections, regionalize them, and multiply their surfaces, and equally outside of bodies, because they function between bodies.... (Foucault 1977c: 169-70) For Foucault, the important thing was not the body itself, but that it was both realized in the play of power and also the site of possible transgressions or refusals of power (Game 1991: 45). Civilization as the project of history relentlessly writes this body, seeking its total destruction by its transfiguration into a cultural object (Butler 1990: 129-30). This formulation reveals another aspect of the determinism of Foucault's ontology. Foucault's version of the body, despite his obvious political and personal inclinations to be on the side of those who are resistant (Haber 1994), turns out to be 'totally imprinted by discourse' (Butler 1990), and 'passive and largely deprived of causal powers' (Lash 1991: 261-70). While Foucault's analysis worked well in circumstances where discursive regimes of truth were successful in constructing relatively unresisting subjectivities (for example, the sick, the mentally ill), such a model cannot analyse the conditions under which resistance to power becomes possible, why some people resist and others do not, and how resistance may be successful, all issues of great interest to sociologists from Marx through Goffman to Bauman. Furthermore, although the model may be a useful tool for analysis, it cannot be a catalyst for resistance (Haber 1994: 111):while resistance is alwaysan aspect of power (Foucault 1980a: 142), to codify resistance is to destroy it. The passiveness of such a non-embodied body comes across in some sociological writing. Lupton (1997) chides Armstrong for his determinism, and we can find many examples of similar reification. Thus, Harding's discussion of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and the construction of the female body concludes that HRT can be viewed as a technology of power directed at bodies which establishes, at the level of the body, unequal distributions of power and thereby contributes to the manufacture of sexed subjects and the definition of conditions of being a sex. Sex can be seen as an effect of the investments in the body made possible by discourses, in this case on HRT, producing its natural and normal precondition and subsequent secondary characterisations. (Harding 1997: 147) By denying any essential self, such analyses leaves the non-discursive physical body entirely divorced from the discursive body written by power/knowledge. Such a position has seemed unsatisfactory to many sociologists; to post-structuralistfeminists - whose agenda is both analytical and political in particular. Sawicki sees the subjectification of women by discourses on reproduction as creating possibilities for resistance to patriarchy, for example, through demands for infertility treatment by lesbians and single women (Sawicki 1991: 84) . Butler warns that Foucault seems to be adhering to a long and suspect tradition in which the body is the passive recipient of

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culture,proposinginstead a body whose performative gender identitycan resist and subvert (Butler 1990: 129, 141). Annandale and Clark more bluntlyargue that . . . the body, as a hinge term constitutedthroughsocial relations,is both culture and nature.... In both creating and being transformedby culture,the body as cultureand natureis by the same token both sex and gender. (Annandaleand Clark1996) The inadequacyof this Foucauldianontology of the body for some sociological tasks:to be an interfacebetween differentdomains:biological and social, collective and individual, constrained and free (Bertholet 1991: 398), hasled some sociologiststo turnto otherworksbyFoucaultfor a more congenial model.

SOCIOLOGYAND THE FOUCAULDL N ONTOLOGY OF SELF

Once engaged on his projectconcerninghuman sexuality,Foucault's work underwenta re-focusingawayfrom the body, toward'the self'. This move, Foucaultsuggested,representeda 'shift'of emphasis(Foucault1985:6) to establishan analysis complementary to his earlierstudiesof knowledgeand power,although to some it appearedas . . . a tacit admissionby Foucault that his previouswork, which so systematically attackedand underminedthe notion of the subject,had been along the wrong lines and had run itself into a theoretical dead end. (McNay1992:48) Can this 'returnof the subject'successfullyaddressthe sociological need for a more subtle ontologywhich can theorize resistance? The ontological problemconcerningresistance wasone whichFoucaultwasto acknowledge (often with great poignancy)in manylater interviews(for example Martin 1988), and as he labouredto constructan ethicsof the self, he wroteof individuals not as docile bodies but as reflexive, living, speaking beings (Foucault1985:7) . The reflexiveself theorizedin the volumesof the History of Sexualitycontributesa more activenotion of subjectivity, in place of the passivebodies of the earliercarceralmodel (McNay1992:49-50). A living, speaking,reflexivesubjectivity implies the capacityto resist,and Foucault (1977c:165) appearedto endorse Deleuze's theorizingof a mechanismby which such an activesubjectmay activelyinterpretand re-writediscourse and hence its own subjectivity (Lash 1991:264-6). In this writing, 'individual', and 'self' supplement the more usual 'subject'and 'body';in his writingon the Historyof Sexuality(Foucault1981, 1985, 1986, 1988) the move from concern with external technologies of powerto technologiesof the self is clear.NowFoucault'sprojectis withhow we become 'desiringsubjects',in other words,howwe articulateour bodies and desireswithin a subjectivity capableof reflection. 'Practices of the self'

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the individual, discourses of the social and own the engagement between mark individual's of autonomous ordering priviand that power is integral to the prior such as not identities emerge opposi(McNay 1992: 67). Personal lives in which difference and battlefield', become ontologically, but 'in a others leged of and the boundaries criticism the means by which identity, are tion formulation overcomes the This (Pizzorno 1992: 207). totally and discernible passive as leaves individuals which ontology crucial a Foucault's of be seen that reflexivity plays of by discourse, for now it can implications inscribed Yet the ontological subjectivity. of process been the have in part scrutiny, and three issues later position need further the posiof Foucault's application the highly relevant for are which critics, by raised ln socla . ana .ysls. In Power/Knowtlon body has subtly changed. power, Foucault's ontology of the First, escapes which speaks of something he 1980a-d), (Foucault ledge irreducibilities'. As a 'discharge', 'energies and energy', 'inverse an is upon this notion which resistance is predicated (1984), Guattari and apparent Deleuze in to discourse: a position in irreducible and beyond something of concerning the relationship to all that has gone before contradiction 8, Pizzorno 1992: 207, non-discursive (Hoy 1986: the and discourse earlier evalubetween would imply, in terms of the positions Such 1986). Wickham from category four (a to be understoodS a move is body the how of ation 'natural' in some two, in which the body is category to body) cultural totally values. but overlaid with cultural way, writings that have some of the sociological in We can see this reflected in the postmodern era Krokers' analysis of sexuality The position. and alterthis taken own borrowed power; violent and of '. . . bodies living on their (Kroker .' . speaks and perfect inertness . bodies, scenes of surplus energy mobilize nating, that technologies 1988: 22), and Sawicki suggests desires, generKroker aliaby '. . . inciting and channeling 1991: 83). by violence but, inter not group energies' (Sawicki and focusing individual and within a govating the autonomy of the individual, is, a reflexive Second, by emphasizing (that of existence' which leads to a relativist 'art 'techernmentality to be a self), Foucault's means of what it differentiate to andcontextualized sense to 'self stylizations', failing niques of the self' are reduced individual, and pracmerely "suggested" to the between 'practices that are heavily laden with are 'imposed' in so far as they seems to tices that are more or less 1992: 74). Governmentality (McNay taboos' and culturalsanctions effectively shifts to the individual that it the 'rules' offer such a degree of autonomy concerning earlier determinism autonrelatively the balance from Foucault's a to become discursive, practices which up end which determine context, the position might sociological a In that omous subjectivity. account. Thus Weedon argues looking much like a phenomenological constructed in dispoststructuralism is socially in subject the feeling subject (a)lthough the less exists as a thinking, cursive practices, she none produced out of of resistance and innovations and social agent, capable
. . . .

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the clash between different contradictory subject positions and practices. She is also a subject able to reflect upon the discursive relations which constitute her and the society in which she lives, and able to choose from the options available. (Weedon 1987: 125) Similarly, in Eckermann's analysis of self-starvation, those who starve themselves may move from self-effacement to self-embracing, to 'recreate a sense of self' through their new body shape (Eckermann 1997: 16S7) Third, it was noted earlier that genealogy focuses for its raw material on texts, as in Foucault's final writings on sexuality. Poster (1986) argues that, whereas in such works as Discipline and PunishFoucault could interpret Bentham's texts on the Panopticon in wayswhich turned the author's intentions on their heads (op. cit.: 217), TheCareof theSelf is closer to a traditional history of ideas, relying heavily upon the intentional level of meaning and explicit phrases of 'key' textual accounts (for example, the writings of Plato or Marcus Aurelius). We saw how sociologists such as Paden and Nettleton have adopted a genealogical approach, and they, alongside Foucault himself, are open to traditional criticisms concerning the justification of precisely which texts are 'key'. Both Poster (ibid.: 218) and McNay (1992: 77-9) have offered alternative explanations to Foucault's efforts to interpret historical notions of sexuality, such as ancient Greek attitudes to sexual over-indulgence. 'Discourse' has become a moveable feast. Taken together, these shifts of emphasis undermine most aspects of the earlier positions concerning discourse and its relation to the non-discursive. The non-discursive 'residue' enables resistance to power/knowledge, no doubt providing a resource to the reflexive self as it is inscribed by discourse, while such subjects contribute to the generation of discourse through their texts. From what might be seen as an over-emphasis on determinism, we now find an over-emphasis on agency. Rorty has suggested that Foucault's dilemma rested on his twin aspirations - to be both a moral citizen concerned with the possibilities for resistance to power, and his refusal to be complicit with power by taking on its own vocabulary of essentialized subjects (Rorty 1992: 330-1). While his work on power and truth met the latter objective at the expense of the former, the re-introduction of a self privileges the former but makes his previous ontology untenable. Unfortunately both positions are naive when applied in sociology, and the much-vaunted rapprochement of agency and structure is illusory.

DISCUSSION

I have tried in these sections to unpack elements of Foucault's theorizing of discourse, power and subjectivity, and to show how these are frequently strained in Foucauldian sociology, both because of the multiple threads running through Foucault's own work, and because of the different concerns of history, philosophy and sociology. Some modernist sociologists

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Fox J. Nick use the arguapproaches may have Foucauldian to However, my efforts strongly are opposed who position. the and postherefurther to challenge ments commitment to post-structuralist a of It stands as a framework within 1993, 1995, 1997). been (Fox theory Weedon (1987), perspectives in social humanist with others including theory deriving along project within social of a to explore part (1991) - approaches Game and (1990) on Foucauldian ontology. Butler which do not depend is whether post-structuralism be asked in this concluding section from to which has phrase. Foucault's question The to use Baudrillard's which challenge Foucault', should 'forget in ways sociology human subjects may re-writes reference of and some sociologists the frame self and others, for of here outlined understandings humanist and contradictions ambiguities Others might the with approach. live to by the choose generated accounts any enterprise ofthe novelty of are a feature of sake contradiction and such, are particularly that ambiguity argue 1978), and that as (Derrida in both these seeks to persuade which I can see some justification coming to my sociology. to a postmodern suited looking at each before spend a little time will I and to sociology. positions, Foucault's contribution is both appealing to the concerning work position own of case that Foucault's does the attractions it is certainly the First, apparently it as andoffering the imagination, combining sociological and social constructionism, approaches of health and illness, structuralist both Within the sociology accounts. of archaeology/genealof novel promise spawned a generation through the pantheon Clinic the of Birth way his Foucault's Armstrong working Foucault's and Civilisation, with writers such as ogy, earlier Madness the fanciful Like and specialties. as inaccurate medical of was highly criticized problem a of medicine less of clinical 20), but that is study (Armstrong 1997: which linked circles historical within a way of writing history in which it gave sociology context rather sociologists: with the cultural for ideas or with the 'strong programme' innovation of technologies the held in common of quite position a 1976). This elision arose (ibid.), they (Bloor tenof scientific knowledge 1993: 151) may have led to the sociologists (Fox propositheoretical frameworks as a shorthand for any kind of different - the to use the term 'discourse' of 'sociological genealogies' dency or discussion the status in regardless of their and - as was noted tion, 'discursive' as common texts in all or nothing inclinationto treat studies have little other texts. Such with relationship of analysis. sociology, Foucault's own methods to the political imagination within Marx or with of appeals than either those Foucault's work also of power less monolithic is the key central to both Birth model a offering gaze analysis panopticon, whose re-reads the Weberian of modWeber.Indeed the subtly Punish, and era the and Discipline set the scene for oftheClinic and law, of capitalism which cage of regulation rationalizations iron an of the was last dark What for Weber to abolishing the ernity (Fox 1991). committed prison is ubiquian open in which resistance yet for Foucault becomes and hide, within soul might the gaze itself. Particularly corner in which the as much as of power tous, a function
428

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feminist sociology, this position has been highly productive, although as has been shown in this paper, on occasions this scholarship cuts across fundamentals of Foucault's positions concerning subjectivityand 'empowerment' in its challenge to patriarchy. In hands less skilled than Foucault's own, efforts to use the Foucauldian notion of the self come to look much like phenomenological sociology. The second justification for the use of Foucauldian or quasi-Foucauldian approaches might consist in an argument for a post-modern, fragmentary social theory, accepting of paradox and contradiction, and committed to opening up new readings rather than seeking truth in a definitive account (Owen 1997). From such a perspective, the kinds of problems with using Foucault in sociology which this paper has illustrated are not problems at all, but features of the end of a modernist meta-narrativefor sociology. The structure/agency dichotomy is not resolved by Foucault, rather it is seen as incapable of resolution: and ceases to be a problem. Foucauldian genealogies can proliferate, and even those which are contradictory in their analyses can co-exist: Foucault's role now becomes that of an unsettler, reminding us that social science is itself part of the history of ideas. Yet Foucault is actually a bad candidate for this kind of sociology, given the extent to which his work itself constitutes a kind of meta-narrative (Nettleton 1995), typified - according to Mouzelis (1995) by vagueness, grandiosity and over-generalization. While I have sympathy with a political project to destabilize sociology's modernist project (as perhaps would Foucault given his analysis of the human sciences in The Order of Things),my own appraisal of the Foucauldian corpus is different. While Foucault has contributed to the poststructuralist movements of the late second millennium which have radicalized the agendas of philosophy, literary theory and emancipatory politics, I believe the translation of Foucault into sociology is largely vapid, except to the extent that philosophy, literary theory and emancipatory politics impinge on the discipline. In this paper I have sought to show its limitations: firstly that the kinds of questions the discipline asks are much wider than those within Foucault's project, secondly that the 'tools' he created won't work beyond these limits, and thirdly that when adapted by Foucauldians so they do appear to work, the methods are indistinguishable from more traditional approaches. In place of an emphasis on Foucault's work as the source of key concepts for a sociology which rethinks structuralist approaches, which addresses the problem of subjectivity, and engages ethically and politically, theorists needs to look elsewhere within the body of work known as 'post-structuralist' or 'postmodern' which is now influencing many branches of the social sciences including psychology (Smith 1991), politics (White 1991), organization studies (Kilduff 1993), geography (Bondi 1990), gender studies (Ashenden 1997) and cultural studies (Landow 1992, Moi 1985). At the most basic level, post-structuralistconcerns with textuality render them congruent with the kinds of ethnographic and interview-based studies which

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NickJ. Fox

comprise much sociological research,whereas Foucauldiangenealogy is limited to documentary and historicalanalysis. In termsof theory,the work of Derrida,Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari addressissuesabout power,language and identity while avoiding some of the pitfalls identified in the earlieranalysisof Foucault'sproject (for example, Derrida's(1978) analysis of language, difference and authority,Lyotard's(1988) theorizing of power and resistanceand Deleuze and Guattari's(1986, 1988) writingon the body and freedom). At the level of practice,the use of these writers' work to inform what has been called a 'politicsof difference' offers possibilities for engagement which Foucault'sown project could not (Haber 1994). In conclusion, I do not wish (nor have I the skills ) to question the achievementsof Foucault in the arena of philosophy. But I do want to sound a note of caution concerning a 'Foucauldiansociology' which is often underpinned by dubious or unacknowledgedtheoreticalpositions. Paradigm shifts,Kuhnargued (1970), often occurfor non-rational reasons, without carefulevaluationof the advantagesand disadvantages of the old and the new position. Whetherwe wish to champion modernistsociology or embrace a post-modern alternative,on close inspection Foucault's contributionto the disciplineseems verylimited.
(Date accepted: February 1998) NickJ. Fox Schoolof Health and RelatedResearch University of Sheffield

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

NOTE

1. For example, in psychology, 'discourse analysis' has challenged the traditional essentialist understanding of the human subject.Foucault is invoked to suS stantiate the position, yet 'discourse' is under-theorised in this corpus, and bears little or no relation to Foucault's own notion of discourse.

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