Reiner Schrmann - On Constituting Oneself an

Anarchistic Subject
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Praxis International
transgressive subject still fetishizes the law in daring
what is forbidden. Theanarchistic subject echoes Nietzsches
Zarathustra: Such is
my
way; where isyours?... For
the
way that does not exist.
38
A n a r c h i s m t h r o u g h d i s c u r s i v e intervention is a possibility
today, but it is not an ought.To be sure, there lies a
prima facie
paradox in claiming that constitutingo n e s e l f a n a n a r c h i s t i c s u b j e c t
amounts to contesting ones very insertion into agiven
arrangement of discourse and power: The target of these
struggles lies
i n power effects as such. As such? Is it not contradictory to hold, on one
hand,t h a t t h e r e e x i s t s n o E n e m y N u m b e r O n e b u t o n l y p r e c i s e
goals for skirmishesand, on the other, that the objective of
contemporary struggles is to
ght
t h e principle of encroachment by which social totalities con ne ones life t
o a pre-set locus in their over-all apparatus?
The impression of paradox diminishesi f i t i s u n d e r s t o o d t h a t
c o n t e s t i n g p o w e r e f f e c t s a s s u c h a m o u n t s t o t h e strategy of
exposing them where and as they occur. Thus the
medicale s t a b l i s h m e n t n e e d s t o b e d e n o u n c e d b e c a u s e i t
exercises uncontrolled power over peoples bodies,
their health, and their life and death.
39
Aiming dispersedinterventions at heterogeneous targets does
n o t i m p l y t h a t a n y a n d a i l p o w e r effects could be excised,
freedom fully appropriated, and everything en actedt h a t u n t i l
now
40
had remained inhibited. To that liberation ideology F o u c a u l t
opposes more modest tactics within reticular formations of
knowledgeand capillary strategies of power. Contesting power
effects as such remains
a piecemeal operation. It means intervening against ever new gures of maste
ry( w h i c h a r e n o t
instances
of any one Great Oppressor), starting over again and a g a i n ,
displacing coordinates of thinking as far as is
strategically possible. Theanarchistic subject constitutes
i t s e l f i n m i c r o - i n t e r v e n t i o n s a i m e d a t r e s u r g e n t patterns of
subjection and objecti cation.D o e s t h e p r o j e c t o f d r a f t i n g a
history of the subject lend itself to the sameessentialist
misapprehension as the histories of madness and sexuality?
Yes, if
by subject
one understands the bearer of qualities such as consciousness andt h e a g e n t
behind such acts as re ection; no, if that history is read
as an instanceof the history of constellational truth,
with its many diachronic deaths and
n e w beginnings. For a culture obsessed with what is deep inside the self
hidden,u n c o n s c i o u s , p r o f o u n d l y a n d u n f a t h o m a b l y m y o w n
anarchistic self-constitution means the dispersal of inward directed re ection into as manyoutward -directed re exes as

t h e r e a r e s y s t e m s o f p o w e r t o s h o r t - c i r c u i t , disqualify, and
disrupt.
41
NOTES1. Michel Foucault, Why Study Power: The Question of the
Subject, in Hubert L. Dreyfusand Paul Rabinow,
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics
(Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 209.2 M. Foucault,
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences,
transl. from theFrench (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. 343.
3 Ibid., p.
387.4 M. Foucault,
The Archaeology of Knowledge,
transl. by A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York:Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 12 and
14.
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5 The Order of Things,
op. cit., p. 387.6 In a lecture course of 1943, Martin
H e i d e g g e r s a i d : M o d e r n m a n , w h o i s b a r e l y t h r e e centuries
old...
Heraklit,
in
Gesamtausgabe,
vol. 55 (Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1979), p. 132.7 M. Foucault,
Historie de la folie lge classique,
2nd d. (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), p. 582.8 M. Foucault,
Lusage des plaisirs,
vol. 2 of Histoire de la sexualit (Paris: Gallimard,1984), pp.
16f.9 L e r e t o u r d e l a m o r a l e ( i n t e r v i e w ) ,
Les Nouvelles,
( J u n e 2 8 , 1 9 8 4 ) , p . 4 0 . 10
Ibid.,
p. 37.11 All quotes from What Is an Author?,
The Foucault Reader,
ed. by Paul Rabinow (New Y o r k : P a n t h e o n , 1 9 8 4 ) , p p . 1 1 8 - 1 2 0 . 1 2
M. Foucault, My Body, This Paper, This Fire,
Geoff Bennington, transl.
Oxford
Literary Review,
( A u t u m n , 1 9 7 9 ) 4 , p . 1 9 . 13 In the sentence that precedes, Descartes
describes
madness and its causes in medical terms:... those insane people whose
brains are so befogged by the black vapors of the bile that they
continually insist they are kings... As he
excludes
madness, he employs, however, thelegal vocabulary. Ren Descartes,
Meditations on First Philosophy
(AT VII, 19), transl. byD o n a l d A . C r e s s ( I n d i a n a p o l i s : H a c k e t t ,
1 9 8 0 ) , p . 5 8 ( t r a n s l . m o d i f i e d ) . 14 Foucaults essay is a
rejoinder to Jacques Derrida, Cogito and the History of
Madness,in
Writing and Difference,
trans. by Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press,1978), pp. 31 -63. In this piece, Derrida criticized in turn
three pages on Descartes in M.Foucault,
Folie et Draison: Histoire de la folie lge classique
(Paris: Plon, 1961), pp.5457, not included in the translation of the
abridged version,
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason,
Richard Howard, trans. (New York: Pantheon, 1965).1 5 M . F o u c a u l t ,
The History of Sexuality,
Volume I: An Introduction,
trans. by RobertHurley (New York: Vintage, 1980), pp. 72
and 91.
16 Ibid.,

pp. 153 ff. These four elements

together constitute a general theory of sex
a phrase left out in the English translation, doubtless for its essentialist
ring.17 M. Foucault,
Le souci de soi,
vol. 3 of Histoire de la sexualit (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p.115.
18 Ibid.,
p. 84.
19 Ibid.,
p. 49.
20 Ibid.,
pp. 84 ff.21 Shortly before his death, Foucault stated: What was
missing from classical antiquity wasrendering self -constitution as
a subject problematical, Le retour de la morale,
op. cit,
p.4 L T h i s l e a v e s o n e p e r p l e x e d s i n c e i n
Lusage des plaisirs
h e r e i t e r a t e s t h a t j u s t s u c h self-constitution as a subject
was at stake in Greek ethics,
op. cit.,
pp. 10f, 33ff, 45, 50, 56,7 3 , 9 6 , 1 0 0 - 3 , 1 2 3 , 1 5 4 , 1 9 3 .
22 Le souci de soi, op. cit.,
pp. 84 f.
23 Histoire de la folie, op. cit.,
p. 578.2 4 W h y S t u d y P o w e r ,
op. cit.,
p. 216.2 5 W h e n i n 1 7 8 4 K a n t a s k e d ,
Was heisst Aufklrung?
h e m e a n t , W h a t s g o i n g o n j u s t now? ... What are we? in a
very precise moment of history,
ibid.
p. 216. One may objectt h a t K a n t s e s s a y i s m o r e l i k e l y t o
raise the question of what is happening in
K a n t s historical period, when read in French translation.
Les Lumires
(as well as the Italian
Illuminismo)
is a term that designates an age in modernity, while
both the German
Aufklrung
and the English enlightenment (at least when
not capitalized)
d e n o t e primarily an intellectual project, not a century
the eighteenth in intellectualhistory.2 6 S e e F o u c a u l t s
analysis of Cassians
Institutions
and
Collations
i n L e c o m b a t d e l a chastet,
Communications
(XXXV, 1982), pp. 15-25.
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27 Why Study Power,
op. cit.,
p. 211.28 M. Foucault,
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews,
ed. byD o n a l d B o u c h a r d ( I t h a c a : C o r n e l l U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s ,
1 9 7 7 ) , p . 2 1 8 . 29 M. Foucault, Des supplices aux cellules
(interview),
Le Monde
(Feb. 21, 1975), p. 16.3 0 W h y S t u d y P o w e r ,
op. cit.,
pp. 211 and 216.

31 Ibid.,
p. 213.
32 Ibid.
pp. 215 f. (trans. modified).
33 Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, op. cit.,
p. 233.3 4 W h y S t u d y P o w e r ,
op. cit.,
p. 211.
35 Lusage des plaisiers, op. cit.,
p. 15.
36 Histoire de la folie, op. cit.,
p. 578.3 7 L e r e t o u r d e l a m o r a l e ,
op. cit.,
p. 41.38 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part III,
The Portable Nietzsche,
trans. byWalter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1968), p. 307. 3 9 W h y
Study Power,
op. cit.,
p. 211.4 0 R e v o l u t i o n a r y u n d e r t a k i n g i s d i r e c t e d [ . . . ]
against the rule of until now,
Language,C o u n t e r - M e m o r y , o p . c i t . ,
p. 233. I take this ambiguous remark as a warning againstu t o p i a n i s m ,
cf.
ibid.,
p. 232.41 Des supplices aux cellules,
op. cit.,
p. 16