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Anarchic Bodies: Foucault and the Feminist Question of Experience Author(s): Johanna Oksala Reviewed work(s): Source: Hypatia, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 99-121 Published by: Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3811058 . Accessed: 30/08/2012 02:58
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and Foucault the AnarchicBodies: Feminist Questionof Experience

JOHANNA OKSALA

accountof the sexualbodyis not a naive The articleshowsthatMichelFoucault's and reductionism to returnto a prediscursive body,nor doesit amountto discourse as haveargued.Instead,Foucault's idea theexclusion experience, somefeminists of and as normalizing power of bodies pleasures a possibility thecounterattack of against an bodycan understanding the body.The experiential of presupposes experiential becomea locusof resistance becauseit is thepossibility an unpredictable event. of

1. THE RETRIEVAL EXPERIENCE OF

The aim of discussingthe centrality of experience in feminist theory is very likely to produce a feeling that we are again going over a much-troddenterrain that has become barrenin the process.The importanceof experience for contemporaryfeminist theory has swung like a pendulumfrom one extreme to the other during its fairlyshort history.In the 1970sfeminist theoristsheld experience to be one of the irreduciblestarting points for understandingthe situation of women. The explicit aim was to retrieve women's experiences, which fortoo long had remainedinvisibleand marginal.The pendulumreached the other extreme with Joan Scott's influentialarticle "Experience" (1992), in which she accusedfeministprojectsaiming to make experiencevisible of being exceedinglynaive:they precludeanalysisof the workingof the representational system itself and of its historicity,and reproduceinstead its oppressiveterms. The notion of experience has thus become polarizedas either a positive or a and negative term in feminist debates between postmodernism/modernism humanism/antihumanism.1 Sonia Kruks's book Retrieving (2001) shows that the pendulum Experience has not yet stopped.Kruksarguesthat feminist theory has become dominated
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by postmodern modes of thinking, such as Foucault'sphilosophy,and that it has thereforeunwiselycut itselfoff fromthe rich heritageof existentialthought. One of the central premisesof her book is that feminist theory would now do well to employexistentialism,and through it to also retrievethe central imporaim is to tance of lived experience (Kruks2001, 6). On the one hand, Kruks's accounts of discursivelyconstituted experience with subjective, complement lived accounts of it. She claims that experience can be accounted for on the basis of two dialecticallyrelatedpoles, one of which can take prioritydepending on the nature of our questions and goals: One pole explores experience froman impersonalor "thirdperson"stance, its projectbeing explanatory.The other explores it from a "firstperson"stance, in terms of its lived meaning, as an experienceto be graspedor felt ratherthan explained.Dependingon which pole we choose to startfrom,we can renderan account of the same experience as a discursiveeffect or as subjectivelylived (Kruks,141). This idea of two complementaryaccounts of experience generates more philosophicalproblemsthan it solves,however.Eventhough a distinction must exist between having an experience and describingit, as long as we move in the realm of philosophy,language is needed to describe even the lived or felt experience. Kruks'sdistinction between linguistically articulatedexperience and prediscursive,affective experience thus simply avoids the philosophical problemof the relationshipbetween experience and language. On the other hand, Kruksalso arguesfor the primacyof the lived pole. This leads her to a problematicposition of considering "femaleexperience"as an irreducible given groundedin female embodiment: In my example, the person in pain was, like myself,a woman. That she was a Nigerian woman whose physiognomy,speech, life experiences,and social statuswerevery differentfrommine did not interferewith my ability immediatelyto feel-with her pain. To clarify the place of gender here it is useful to ask a furtherquestion: Do I also feel-with the pain of a man whose face has been smashed?A bruisedeye and a split lip certainly communicateanother'spain to me irrespectiveof the genderof the sufferer, generallyI do find that my affectiveresponseto yet a man'spain is weaker.(Kruks,167) affectivereacEven though there are a numberof explanationsforwhy Kruks's tion to a man'spain is weakerthan to a woman'spain, she drawsher conclusion without hesitation: "This is surelybecause, although I share with him those key invariantsthat make us both sentient human beings, my lived body is also significantlydifferentfrom his" (Kruks,167). concern that accounting for the constitution of While I agreewith Kruks's for alone poses serioustheoreticaldifficulties in termsof discursivity experience

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feministtheory,I also claim that feministcriticisminfluencedby poststructuralism has made it difficultfor us to returnto a foundational"femaleexperience" groundedin the communalitiesof women'sembodiment.I arguethat feminist theory must "retrieveexperience,"but this cannot mean a return to a mute and original female experience. On the contrary,the philosophicalchallenge facingus is todayis by no means less demandingthan the one that has occupied much of twentieth-centuryphilosophical thinking: trying to understandthe relationshipbetween experience and language. I will focus on a limited aspect of this question in this article by discussing sexual experience and its relationship to discourse in Michel Foucault's philosophy.My aim is to show that Foucault'sthought offersfeminist theory tools, which are often overlookedby both his feminist critics as well as his in appropriators trying to understandexperience. I will thus argue that the dominance of postmodern questions in feminist theory does not amount to discoursereductionismas Kruks,for example,claims,but to genuine effortsto try to understandthe relationshipsbetween experience, body, discourse,and the power.Byseekingto understand historicalconstitutionof experienceas well as its discursivelimits, Foucaultproblematizes philosophical relationship the between discourseand experience. I will begin by discussingthe dominantfeministinterpretations Foucault's of of understanding embodimentand experiencein partstwo and three. My aim is to explicatethe problemsin these accounts in orderto waythe paveformy own readingdiscussedin partsfour and five. I arguethat Foucault'saccount of the sexual body is not a naive returnto a prediscursive body,nor does it amount to discoursereductionismand to the exclusion of experience. Instead,Foucault's idea of bodies and pleasures as a possibility of the counterattack against an normalizingpowerpresupposes experientialunderstandingof the body.
2. THE EXPERIENCEOF PLEASURE

Foucault is not generally regardedas a philosopher of experience. On the contrary, Foucault'sphilosophy and poststructuralistthought as a whole is generallyread as a critical reaction to those philosophical traditions,such as existentialismand phenomenology,that take lived experienceas their starting critics arguethat experience is alwaysstructured point. The poststructuralist and constituted by a culturallyand historically specific network of practices. The experience of the subjectcannot be the startingpoint for our knowledge of the world, because it is the knowledge of the world that constitutes the experience of the subject.2 Although experienceis a centraltopic in Foucault's thought, its importance has been bypassed by many of his commentators.3 point out only some To examples, in the Prefaceof his early book The Orderof Things (1966/1994),

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Foucaultclaims that in every culture the pure experience of orderexists and that "the present study is an attempt to analyze that experience" (Foucault 1966/1994,xxi). Nearly twenty years later, in the Introductionto The Use of Pleasure(1984/1992)he again characterizes work as a study of experience, his how the modernindividualcan experiencehimself the goal being to understand To as a subjectof"sexuality." do this, he claims,we mustundertakea genealogical study of the experience of sexuality."What I planned ... was a history of the experience of sexuality,where experience is understoodas the correlation between fieldsof knowledge,types of normativity,and formsof subjectivityin a particularculture"(Foucault1984/1992,4). criticismsof philosophiesof experiThis contradictionbetween Foucault's ence on the one hand, and his setting of experienceas the explicitsubjectof his commentaown studyon the other,has been pointed out by some of Foucault's tors. Thomas Flynn (2003), for example, arguesthat the contradictionis only becausewhatwe aredealingwith arein fact two differentconceptions apparent, of experience: experience as temporal and lived versus experience as spatial and objective.4Flynn arguesfor an "axial"readingof the Foucaultiancorpus, which advancesalong three axes:truth (knowledge),power(governmentality), and subjectivation(ethics as reflectionof the self on itself). These three axes constitute a prism,and the space enclosed by these prismaticplanes is "experiit ence."Foucault's experience is thus desubjectivized: leaves us with a pluralof correlationsirreducibleand nonsubsumableinto a largerwhole. Flynn ity warns that although the unwarymight be amazed to find Foucaultspeaking of "experience," throwbackto psychologicalor epistemologicalcategories any is excluded (Flynn 1985, 533). Foucault's understandingof the subjectdenotes neither the consciousness of phenomenologistsnor the atomic individual of Foucaultbelievedthat a genealogyof the constitutionof the subject empiricism. that has would free us from the philosophyof a meaning-bestowing"subject" of since Husserl.It is in pursuit this Nietzscheanprojectof historicizing prevailed the subjectthat Foucaultundertakeshis genealogiesof experience (534-35). I will return to the question of what an experience without a subjectmeans in Foucault's thought at the end of my article. If we read Foucault's Historyof Sexualitynot as a history of sexualitybut as a history of the experience sexuality,as Foucaulthimself characterizesthe of projectin the Introductionto VolumeTwo,then the firstvolume (Lavolontede savoir)also appearsin a new light. I will focus my discussionof sexual experithe ence mainly on this book, because of Foucault's books, it is inarguably one that has influencedfeminist theory the most. In it Foucaultstudiesthe birth of networks.Accordingto Flynn'sprimatic modernsexualityin power/knowledge model, the book would thus study the axes of truth and powerthat constitute experience. Foucaultdoes not explicitly mention experience in this work,but an he makesa claim aboutbodies and pleasures,which in my view presupposes

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of can bodyin so faraspleasure onlybe underunderstanding the experiential stoodas an experience pleasure, solelyas a conceptor as a practice. of not We mustnot think that by saying to sex,one saysno to power; the on yes onetracks ofsexuthe course outbythe general laid contrary, deployment along if of break from, weaim-througha ality.It is the agency sexthatwemust away tactical reversal the various of mechanisms sexuality-to counter gripof of the in withthe claimsof bodies,pleasures, knowledges, theirmultiplicand power The of ity andtheirpossibility resistance. rallying pointforthe counterattack the deployment sexuality but of against oughtnot to be sex-desire, bodiesand 157). (Foucault 1976/1990, pleasures Foucault claimsherethat sex-desire cannotofferresistance normalizing to but it. the power, on the contrary only strengthens By revealing truthabout ourdesirewe cannotfindournatural authentic or but sexuality, only solidify sexualidentities. Foucault that it is bodiesand pleasures prevailing suggests thatcan becomethe locusof resistance instead. WhatFoucault meansbythis claimis not veryclear, however. Somecommentators it interpret byemphasizDavidHalperin (1995,95-96), forexample, ing the notionof pleasure. argues that moderntechniques powermakeuse of sexuality order attachto of in to us a personal defined partbyoursexualidentity. in to identity According Halsexual that perin,the transformative of the queer power practices gaymenhave invented in the invention novel,intense,andscattered lies of pleasures. bodily In thisway,queer culture abouta tactical of reversal the mechanisms of brings whichultimately with sexuality destabilizes very and the sexuality, dispenses constitution identity of itself.5 The ideaofbodies pleasure a locusof resistance alsobeenstrongly and as has however. the most influential formof this criticism was criticized, Perhaps Butler Gender in Trouble whereshe interprets this (1990), presented Judith by ideaas a contradictory claimaboutthe body's returnto a non-normalizable wildness.6 Butler's of gender builds underperformative theory uponFoucault's of sex as a fictiveunitythat has been naturalized that grounds and standing the explanatory framework bothgender sexuality. of and to According Butler, Foucault's this ostensible "cause" "aneffect." as genealogical inquiry exposes It is produced a regime sexuality seeksto regulate of that sexualexperience by the categories sex as foundational causal of and functions within by instating discursive accounts sexuality of (Butler 1990,23). Butler Foucault's of bodilyresisidea partswayswith Foucault denying by tance.She argues that Foucault's claimthat the category sex is a fictitious of the sense unitymeansthat forFoucault, bodyis not sexedin anysignificant to withina discourse, whichit becomes invested prior itsdetermination through with an ideaof natural essential She alsodraws second,problematic or sex. a conclusion aboutthe body,claiming this alsomeansthat"thebodygains that withindiscourse in the contextof power relations" meaning (Butler, only 92).

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She denies any meaning to the body in Foucault'sthought, which is not discursivelyconstructed.The result is that his idea of bodily resistancebecomes contradictory.According to Butler,Foucaultseems to argue for the cultural constructionof bodies,but his theory in fact contains hidden assumptionsthat reveal that he also understoodthem to be outside the reach of power (94-95). When we consider those "textualoccasions on which Foucaultcriticizesthe of categories sex and the powerregimeof sexuality,it is clearthat his own theory maintains an unacknowledgedemancipatoryideal that proves increasingly difficultto maintain, even within the stricturesof his own critical apparatus" (94). While Foucaultadvocatesthe criticaldeconstructionof sexualityand sex he in The Historyof Sexuality, does not extend it to the sexed body,but naively presentsbodies and pleasuresas the site of resistanceagainstpower. Are Foucault'sreferences to the body as the locus of resistance merely naive slippagesinto the idea of a prediscursive body? Do we have to accept Butler's readingof the Foucaultianbody accordingto which these passagesare implicit contradictionswithin his thought?Are bodies and pleasureswithin the same discursiveorderas sex and sexuality?What can bodies and pleasures as an alternativeto sex-desiremean?Do they presupposean understandingof experience?
BODY 3. THE DISCURSIVE

To answer these questions and evaluate the Foucaultianbody from the perspective of feminist theory, we must firstask what exactly is meant by it. The are feminist appropriations based on varying readingsof it.7Foucaultdid not a theory or even a unifiedaccount of the body anywhere,and thus his present conception of it has to be discernedfrom his genealogicalbooks and articles that aim to bring the body into the focus of history.8It is often summarized by saying that Foucaultunderstandsthe body to be discursivelyconstructed. This, however,can be interpretedin very different ways. The first source of confusion is the fact that the notion of discourse is understood differently. is Sometimes"discursive" understoodin a strictlylinguisticsense, as something Sometimesdiscourseis understood or linguisticallystructured. that is linguistic sense as a cultural practice, and discursivemeans more or in a more general there are at least three less the same as culturallyconstructed. Furthermore, or cultural-construction. different interpretationsof discursive-linguistic I will explicate these three interpretationsin orderto bring out the problems in them. In the next part I will arguefor a fourth reading,which unlike most feminist appropriations gives a central role to Foucault'sclaims about bodies as a locus of resistance. 1. First,we can understanddiscursivein the strict sense of linguistic, and argue that by denying the prediscursivebody Foucault is claiming that the

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way we identify and theorize about the body is linguisticallyconstituted. The body is, by necessity, impossibleto identify and theorizebecause prediscursive as soon as we name it and start to talk about it we have alreadybroughtit into the realmof discourse.William Turner,for example, explicatesFoucault's and Butler's like this: "Ourconceptionsof ourbodies,whetheras material, thinking or important,or neither, come to us through language;the belief in a preculturally materialbody as the ultimate ground of identity itself depends on the circulationof meanings in a culture"(2000, 112). I call this first reading the weak version of the idea of a discursivebody, because by denying the prediscursive body it in fact says nothing about the were inevitablyconstructed body itself. Even if the linguistic representations in discourse,bodies themselves, in their materiality,could escape the cultural construction.However,this readingis refutedby Foucaulthimself:"HenceI do not envisage a 'historyof mentalities'that would take account of bodies only throughthe mannerin which they have been perceivedand given meaningand value; but 'a history of bodies'and the manner in which what is most material and most vital in them has been invested"(Foucault1976/1990,152). 2. The second interpretation,what I call the intermediate reading,claims that the cultural construction covers bodies themselves in their materiality and not just in their cultural and linguistic representations.There remains, however,a stablecore of the body, imposinga limit that culturalmanipulation cannot cross. This intermediate reading thus accepts that the Foucaultian body is culturallyconstructed,even in its materialityto a certain extent, but we must posit some kind of universalinvariance.The borderbetween nature and culture in this kind of reading is variablydrawn. Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982, 111) suggest that the stable core in Foucault'saccount is drawn from Merleau-Ponty's phenomenologyof the lived body and consists of ahistorical structuresof the perceptualfield such as size constancy, brightnessconstancy, and up-downasymmetry. This second reading is incompatiblewith Foucault'sexplicit effort to dismantle the nature/culturedichotomy on which it heavily relies. In Foucault's thought, we cannot assumeto have knowledgeof what is naturaland what is culturallyvariablein our bodies. This distinction between nature and culture should itself be understoodas an effect of a certain discoursethat producesthe idea of a naturalbody.Such an interpretation, while relyingon certain passages of Nietszche, mustalso either ignoreor attribute Genealogy, History(1971/1984), to Nietzsche the strongformulations concerning a culturallyconstructedbody that also occur in it. Foucaultwrites in this essay that "nothing in man-not even his body-is sufficientlystableto serve as a basisforself-recognition for or understandingother men"(Foucault1971/1984,87). 3. The thirdor strong readingdenies anydimensionsor variationsof embodiment not historically and culturallyconstructed.We can only understandas

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well as experience our bodies throughculturallymediatedrepresentations, but bodies themselves are also shaped in their very materialityby the rhythms of culture, diets, habits, and norms. Judith Butler appropriatesthis reading of Foucault'sthought when she arguesin GenderTrouble that the body gains within discourseonly in the context of power relations.According meaning to her, the body "is not a being, but a variableboundary,a surfacewhose permeabilityis politicallyregulated,a signifyingpracticewithin a culturalfieldof gender hierarchyand compulsoryheterosexuality"(Butler 1990, 139). Butler criticizesall feministeffortsto liberatethe femalebodyfromthe determinations of patriarchalpower.The culturallyconstructed body cannot be liberatedto its "natural" past, nor to its original pleasures,but only to an open future of culturalpossibilities(93). While the strong interpretationof the Foucaultianbody has resulted in such as Butler's,it also contains serious influential feminist appropriations9 froma feministpoint of view.The wide feministcriticismthat Butler's problems of receivedtestifiesthat at least some understanding the body in GenderTrouble difficultiesare involved in trying to encapsulatefemale embodiment through strongculturalconstructivistaccounts of the body. I will summarizethree sets of questions that I see as problematicfor feminist theory in Butler'saccount of the body as presented in GenderTrouble,and thereforealso in Foucault's account when it is interpretedaccordingto the strongreading.10 The firstproblemcan be called the question of identification. Butler,approin GenderTrouble that the unity of genderis an effect priatingFoucault,argues of a regulatorypractice that seeks to rendergender identity uniform through compulsoryheterosexuality.Cultural representationsof the body and its sex as a natural and necessarygroundfor gender identity have a normativefunction in the power/knowledge strategythat forcesindividualsinto two opposing Gender identity is discursivelyconstructed as a normative gender categories. ideal and then performativelyproduced by those acts understood to be its effects.This normativeunity is neverfully installed,however.The dichotomies of male/female,masculine/feminineare constantly underminedby genderdiscontinuities in the sexual communities in which gender does not necessarily Foucault'sthought, correspondwith sex. Butler'stheory, while appropriating when appliedto the also revealsthe limitations of the Foucaultianframework notion of genderidentity as an questionof gender:it leads to an oversimplified only imposedeffect. We cannot understandthe constitutionof gender-identity through the normative ideals and practicesthat prevail in our culture.There fit areexperiences,sensations,and lives that do not properly within the limits of the normal.People identifywith stigmatizedsubjectpositions, or even socially abjectpositions,and often this identificationis stronglytied to their bodies. As little aboutwhy the StuartHall formulates problem,Foucault's thought "reveals it is that certain individualsoccupy some subjectpositions ratherthan others"

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or "whatmight in any way interrupt,prevent or disturbthe smooth insertion of individualsinto the subjectpositions"(1996, 10-11). Feminist theory must develop some understandingof why or how subjectsidentify with the sexual subjectpositions, for example, to which, accordingto Foucauk'sanalysis,they are summoned.11 The second and relatedproblemcould be called the problemof singularity. The feminist question concerns not only how different subjectpositions are constituted,but also how subjectsfashion, stylize,and producethese positions, and why they neverdo so completely.If femaleembodimentas well as subjectivity is an effect of a constitutive power,how is it possiblethat there are several differentvariationsof it?Even if I identify with the genderedsubjectposition to which I am summoned, I still have the singularstyle of living my female embodiment.Despite providingan explanationforthe normativeconstruction of the female body, feminist theory has not yet accounted for or explained in any way the variationsof female embodiment. The third set of questions concerns the possibilityof resistanceto normative power.The only possibilitiesfor resistanceagainstsubjectionthat a strong interpretationof the discursivebody seems to allow open up through the gaps in the struggle with competing regimes. The subjection of bodies is never complete because the deploymentsof power are alwayspartial and contradictory. Foucaultinsists that "wherethere is powerthere is resistance"(Foucault fashion 1976/1990,95). The points of resistanceare distributedin an irregular the powernetwork.They are the "oddterm in relationsof power" throughout (96), its blind spot or evading limit. Poweris thus not deterministicmachinery, but a dynamic and complex strategicalsituationallowingfor resistance.In her book The PsychicLife of Power,Butler analyzes and concisely explicates this idea of resistance in Foucault'sthought. In Foucault,resistanceappears(a) in the course of a subjectivationthat exceeds the normalizingaims by which it is mobilized;or (b) through convergencewith other discursiveregimes,whereby inadvertently produceddiscursivecomplexityunderminesthe teleologicalaims of normalization.Butler concludes: "Thus resistance appearsas the effect of (Butler1997,93). Consequently,she power,as partof power,its self-subversion" the putsforward view that resistanceconstitutesan errorin the workingsof the normalizingpoweras the only viable account of resistancein Foucault. Froma feministpoint of view,this meansthat, while a focuson bodiesseems to open up importantconnections with Foucault's denial thought, the apparent of the body'scapacityfor resistanceseems to refuteall feminist political goals. Lois McNay, for example, argues in her book Foucaultand Feminism(1992) that Foucault'shistorical studies give the impressionthat the body presents no resistanceto the operationsof power.Although Foucaultinsists that power is alwaysaccompaniedby resistance,he does not elaborateon how this resistance manifestsitself throughthe body. McNay arguesthat this is particularly

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for problematic feminist theory given that a significantaim of the feministproject is the rediscovery revaluation the experiencesof women(12).Foucault and of cannot account for women'sstrategiesof resistance,for the fact is that women did not simplyslip passivelyinto socially prescribedfeminine roles (41). Butler's books that followedGenderTrouble, BodiesthatMatter particularly and The PsychicLifeof Power(1997), seek to answer the questions left (1993) While acceptingthe strongreadingof the Foucaultian open in GenderTrouble. body,she sees its limitationsforfeministtheoryand seeksto complementit with of In a moredynamicand productiveunderstanding embodiment.12 The Psychic Lifeof PowerButlerengagesmost comprehensivelyin combining Foucaultand She does this in connection with the question of resistanceto psychoanalysis. constitutive power.Her question to Foucaultis, how can one take an oppositional relation to power if one is constituted by the very power one opposes? Butlersuggeststhat to understandhow the subjectis formedin subordination while becoming the guarantorof resistance and opposition at the same time requirescombining the Foucaultiantheory of powerwith the psychoanalytic theory of the psyche (Butler 1997, 2-3). In Butler'sanalysisthe psyche-not the subject-resists the regularization that Foucaultascribesto normalizingdiscourses.According to Butler,psychoanalysiscan providea principleof resistanceto given formsof realitybecause the psycheexceeds the normalizingeffects of power(86).'3The psychoanalytically inspiredaccount of resistancethus does not locate resistancein the body either, but ratherin the psyche. If the problemwith the strong constructivist was account of the Foucaultianbody operativein GenderTrouble that cultural seemed to swallow up the materialresistance of the body, this intelligibility Life problemstill seems to be pertinent, at least to some extent, in The Psychic of Power.14 In regardto Foucault'spoststructuralist understandingof the body, Butler that "perhapsthe body has come to substitutefor the psyche in Fouwrites cault-that is, as that which exceeds and confounds the injunctions of normalization" (Butler1997,94). It is here I think that Butlerhits the mark.I will argue in the next part of my paper that the enabling shift in subjectionthat Butlerlocates on the level of the psyche can also be thought to take place on account of the level of the body.Thus, ratherthan complementingFoucault's I suggestthat we the constitution of the subjectwith a theory of the psyche, returnto his own formulationsabout the resistanceof the body.
BODY 4. THE EXPERIENTIAL

In addition to the three different readings of the Foucaultian body that I presentedearlier-the weak, intermediate,and strong-I will next arguefor a fourth reading of Foucault'sunderstandingof the body. It is my contention

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that if we wish to consider Foucault'sidea of bodily resistance,we must leave behind the conception of the body as a mere materialobject, the body as an object of natural sciences and disciplinarytechnologies. If we conceive of the body as a passiveobject, it is possibleto discipline it, but equally impossibleto theorize about its resistanceto normalizingpower.The question of resistance arises if we take the experientialbody-the body as experiencingin everyday practicesof living-as the startingpoint. Thus, when we discussthe different of interpretations a discursive body,we mustmakeone moredistinction.Rather than referringonly to the differentsenses or degreesof the culturalconstruction of the body as a materialand bioscientificobject, we must also distinguish when we talk about the discursiveconstruction of experiences. While Foucaultconceived of the body strictly in terms of an object of disand Punish(1975/1991),I arguethat such ciplinarymanipulationin Discipline a conception does not underlie his account of it in The Historyof Sexuality, Volume 1, in which he presupposes moreelaborateunderstanding the body a of The through sexuality.While feminist theory has widely appropriated History of Sexuality,Volume 1, in connection with issues of sexuality and sex, it is and normallyinterpretedas identical to Discipline Punishin its account of the body as an object of disciplinarymanipulation.Disciplinarypowerin connection with sexualityis simplycomplementedwith biopowerand deploymentsof sexuality.This kind of reading,however,overlookswhat I think aresome of the most interestingaspectsof the account of the body in The Historyof Sexuality, Volume 1, and that point to the potential of bodily resistance.15 A much earlieressay than Discipline PunishilluminatesFoucault'sidea and of bodies and pleasureas put forwardin The Historyof Sexuality, Volume 1. "A Prefaceto Transgression" written over ten yearsearlierthan The (1963/1998), Historyof Sexuality,Volume 1 and dedicatedto Bataille, takes up the question of sexual experience. Foucaultquestions the limits of experience and the acts of transgression that overcomethem. Throughhis readingof Bataille,Foucault that the importanceof the experienceof sexualityin ourculturederives suggests fromits connection to the death of God. Insteadof condemningus to a limited, positivist world,the death of God in fact gives us a world "totallyexposed by the experienceof its limits, made and unmadeby that excess which trangresses it" (Foucault1963/1998,72). Sexuality and the death of God are bound to the same experience, the experience of excess, of overcominglimits. Foucaultnotes that "transgression an action that involves the limit,"it is demands it for its existence (Foucault, 73). The limit and the transgression depend on each other: a limit could not exist if it were absolutelyuncrossable, and reciprocally,transgressionwould be "pointlessif it merelycrosseda limit composed of illusions and shadows"(73). The excess of experience, the transgression,not only presupposesthe limit, but also constitutes it in overcoming it and momentarilyopens it up to the limitless. It forces "the limit to face the

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fact of its imminent disappearance,to find itself in what it excludes." Foucault arguesthat transgressionis thus not victory over limits, it is not a negative or act. a revolutionary It reaffirms limited being, while also momentarilyopening up a zone of limitlessnessto existence. However, this affirmationcontains nothing positive either, in the sense that no content can bind this experience, which by definition, has no limits. Foucaultsuggeststhat perhapsit is simplyan affirmation a division, a testing of of the limit, a contestation. Transgression not relatedto the limit "asblack is to white, the prohibitedto the lawful,the outside to the inside, or as the open space of a building to its enclosed spaces"(Foucault,73-74). The relationship is between limit and transgression ratherlike "aspiralthat no simpleinfraction can exhaust"(74). Limit and transgressionare irrevocablytied to each other; they constitute each other and constantly reaffirmand contest each other. Transgressioncreates a limit that exists only in the movement that crosses it. It literallycrossesover the limits and thus brings an explicit experience of limits into being. If we read the idea of sexual experience as an overcoming of limits into Foucault's understandingof the body, we can interpretthis in differentways. the experientialbody can transgressthe limit between the normal and Firstly, the abnormal.The transgressive experiencesthat fall outside the limits of the normalarenecessaryforconstituting its limits.The experientialbody is a locus of resistance in the sense that it formsthe spiralof limits and transgressions. Powerinscribes the limits of normal bodily experiences, but it is exactly the existence of these limitsthat makestheir transgression possible.In an interview Foucaultopposesthe term desirebecause it functions as a calibrationin terms of normality:"Iam advancingthis term (pleasure), because it seems to me that it escapes the medical and naturalisticconnotations inherent in the notion of of no desire .... There is no 'pathology' pleasure, 'abnormal' pleasure" (quotedin view wouldthus be that bodies and pleasures Halperin 1995,93-94). Foucault's can gain meaning in discourse only, but that this discourse would be differdiscoursethat producesour conception of ent than the psychologico-medical normal sexuality. I argue that Foucaultalso makes a more radical claim by taking up limitintelligibilityand uninexperiences.He arguesthat the limit betweendiscursive can also be crossedin experience.Like Bataille, he is interestedin telligibility experienceson the limits of language.The experientialbody thus also contests the limit between the intelligibilityand unintelligibilityof experiences.This is a more radicalinterpretationbecause even abnormalexperiencesmay still be for we within discursiveintelligibility; can list and classifyperversions, example. Foucaultalso advancedpleasureand opposeddesire as a grid of intelligibility:

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That notion (desire)has been used as a tool, as a gridof intelligibility.... Desireis not an event but a permanentfeatureof the subject:it providesa basisonto which that psychologico-medical on can armature attachitself.The termpleasure, the otherhand, is virgin territory, unused,almostdevoidof meaning ... It is an or event "outsidethe subject," at the limit of the subject,taking place in that somethingwhich is neitherof the body or the soul, which is neither inside nor outside-in short, a notion neither assignednor assignable.(quoted in Halperin,93-94) constitutes subjecapparatus According to Foucault,the power/knowledge not mean that they are tivity as well as all formsof experience, but this does discursivelyconstituted. In Foucault'sgenealogy the regime of discourse,the episteme,only constitutes the specificallydiscursiveelement of a moregeneral or which is both discursiveand nondiscursive.16 regime,the dispositif apparatus, Foucault aims to overcome the distinction Through the notion of dispositif between transcendentalconstitution and empirical,causal formation.Power relationsare immanent to the social realityand have empirical,causal effects. who areto be insertedin them as inert They do not exist priorto the individuals are or consenting targets;powerexists only when it is exercised.Individuals the vehicles of power,not its points of application(Foucault1980, 98). But power in relations are also paradoxically"transcendental," the sense that they are a condition of possibilityfor the constitution of the subjectand its experiences.7 of Foucaul Byclaimingthat powerrelationsareproductive formsof subjectivity, does not simplysuggestthat the subjectand its experiencesareproducedas cars are producedfrom variousmaterialsin a factory.Nor does he claim that only the intelligibilityor the linguistic interpretations experiencesare formedby of We must rathertry to understandhow materialityand intelligibilityare power. which exploresthe historical dynamicallyentangled in the idea of a dispositif, materialization ideationalnorms. of BeatriceHan (1998/2002,125)providesan exampleof this materialization in her discussionof a coursegiven by Foucaultat the College de Francein 1974,in which the effects of truth specificto medicaldiscoursewere analyzed.Medical discourseelaboratesa theoretical object, following a processmade possibleby the hospital structureand thereforeby the techniques of subjectionpracticed on the patient. But by the same token, this discourse generatesa real object correspondingto its knowledge.The conceptual objectificationof the illness is thereforedoubledby a second materialformof objectification,in which the the patientreproduces phenomenain his or her veryperson.The objectification is thus transposedfromthe theoretical level to that of reality,where in process turn it produces concreteeffects,since realformsof illnessend up corresponding to the newly constituted concept of the patient'ssickness.

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The distinction between a regimeof discourseand a more general regime, or the dispositif apparatus,which is both discursiveand nondiscursive,leaves the possibilitythat not all experiencesare discursively constituted, even open their intelligibility is. It is possible to imagine limit-experiencesthat though fall outside of what is constitutedby discoursein the sense that these abjector experiencesare renderedmute and unintelligible in our culture. transgressive They might, for example,be experiencesinducedby drugs,or experiencesthat we try to make intelligible by classifyingthem as formsof insanity. However, what Foucaultalso seems to suggestis that sexual experiencesof pleasurecan never be wholly reducedto discursivemeanings either. Bodies and pleasures, an expression "almost devoid of meaning," would point to an experience on the limits of intelligibility that cannot be properlynamed or described at all. The sexual body is alwaysdiscursivein the sense that it is an object of scientific discoursesand disciplinarytechnologies.Nevertheless, the sexual body as experientialis capableof multiplying,distorting,and overflowingits discursive and definitions,classifications, coordinates.In Foucault's thought a constitutive outsideto the discursiveorderthus exists, even though there can be no outside or to the apparatus culturalnetworkof practicesas a whole. In BodiesThat MatterButlerherselfposits an outside to the culturallyconto structedbody. She writes that there is an "outside" what is constructedby an even though this is "not an absolute'outside,' ontological therediscourse, ness that exceeds or countersthe boundariesof the discourse" (Butler1993,8). "thatcan only be thought-when it can-in Rather,it is a constitutive"outside" She relation to that discourse,at and as its most tenuousborders." arguesthat for the bodies that fail to materializethe norm providethe necessary"outside" the bodies that qualify as bodies that matter (16). Thus, Butlerseems to hold that when Foucaultassumesan outside to the discursivelyconstructed body, whereasher he effects a naive slippageto an outsideas "ontologicalthereness," in quotation marksbecause it is not an is own notion of an "outside" always ontological outside, but only becomes possible in relation to discourse.I have account, understandingof the sexual body, like Butler's arguedthat Foucault's is an effort to dismantle the dichotomy of the culturallyconstructed vs. the limitsof embodimentand experience. natural,and to inquireinto the discursive account an ontologicalclaim It is, however,also possibleto readinto Foucault's about the experientialbody.
5. ANARCHIC BODIES: FOUCAULT'SONTOLOGY OF THE EVENT

If we return to Flynn's primatic model of experience, the limit-experience would thus be an experience that crosses over one of the sides of the prism that encloses it: the axis of powerconstituting the limit between normal and

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abnormalor the axis of knowledgeconstituting the limit between discursive intelligibilityand unintelligibility.To understandthe limit-experiencein relation to the third axis (forms of subjectivity),poses more problems,however. This axis deals with the waysthat subjectsunderstandand formthemselvesas subjectsof certain experiences. Beatrice Han argues that two contradictorynotions of experience are in fact at workin Foucault's laterthought dealing with the axis of subjectivization (1998/2002, 152-58). Foucaultstudies the formswithin which individualsare able to recognizethemselvesas subjectsof sexuality,and how sexuality is constituted as a singularexperience through this recognition.Han arguesthat on the one hand, Foucaultclaimsthat experienceis an objective,anonymous,and and generalstructure connectingfieldsof knowledge,typesof normativity, forms of subjectivity.On the other hand, his later understandingof the subjectalso a of presupposes moretraditionalunderstanding experienceas a subjectiveselfrelationof recognition. In Foucault's work,experiencerefersto a reflective late relationto oneself, which is furthermore capableof problematizing experience understoodas an objective structure.Han thus points out that the third axis is distinctly differentfrom the other two, because it does not referto objective conditions, but introducesthe reflectivedimension of subjectivity.Experience is understoodas a correlationsupposedto unite both objective (knowledgeand power)and subjectiveelements (formsof self-consciousness)(155). This more traditional, subjectiveunderstandingof experience at work in Foucault'slater thought is also desubjectivizedin connection with the idea of the limit-experience,however.Foucault'sinterest in subjectiveexperience is not primarilyinterest in "normal" experience:it is not an effort to account for everydayexperiencesor to reveal what is invariablein them. ForFoucault, experience is never an epistemologicalor ontological starting point. It is not analyzedthrough a phenomenologicaleffort to isolate essential structuresof consciousness or lived embodiment.By calling pleasurean event outside the subject,and not an experience of the subject,Foucaultis clearlylooking for a new perspectiveon the analysisof experience.He is interestedin experienceas the possibilityof a surprise,a transgression limits into something unanticiof patedor even unintelligible.Experienceis an event outsidethe subjectwhen it is experiencedas transgressing limitsof the normallifeworld the into something that exceeds the constitutive powerof our familiarnormativity;in this sense it throwsus outsideof ourselves.In an interviewFoucaultclarifiesthis difference between the phenomenologicalunderstandingof experience and the idea of the limit-experiencethat was so importantfor him. The phenomenologist'sexperience is basicallya certain way of bringing a reflectivegaze to bear on some object of "lived experience,"on the everyday in its transitoryform, in order to grasp its meaning. For Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot, on the other hand, experience is trying to reach a certain point in

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life that is as close as possible to the "unlivable," that which can't be lived to What is requiredis the maximumof intensity and the maximumof through. impossibilityat the same time. By contrast, phenomenologicalwork consists in unfoldingthe fieldof possibilitiesrelatedto everydayexperience.Moreover, phenomenologyattemptsto recapturethe meaning of everydayexperience in orderto rediscover sense in which the subjectthat I am is indeedresponsible, the in its transcendentalfunctions, for founding that experience togetherwith its meanings.On the other hand, in Nietzsche, Bataille,Blanchot,experiencehas the function of wrenchingthe subjectfromitself,of seeing to it that the subject is no longeritself,or that it is broughtto its annihilation or its dissolution.This is a projectof desubjectivization (Foucault1978/2000, 241). Foucault's understandingof experience can thus be understoodas an experience without the subject in two senses. Firstly,Foucault is aiming to study the historical constitution of experience through an objective conception of it: experience is a spatialstructureconstituted by the interrelatedelements of power,knowledge,and formsof relation to the self. Secondly, he is interested in experience as a possiblepath to the dissolutionof the subject.This sense of experience contains a potential of resistanceto normalizingpowerbecause it offersthe possibilityof transgressioninto the unpredictable. Foucault's understandingof subjectiveexperience is thus more akin to the of phenomenologicalunderstanding an event than of an experience.Franyoise an Dasturcharacterizes event phenomenologically describingit as the imposby sible that happens, in spite of everything, in a terrifyingor marvelousmanner (2002, 183). It comes to us by surprise,when and wherewe least expect it. She askswhathappenswhen the excess impliedin the event fractures horizonof the in such a mannerthat the mereencounterwith the event becomes possibilities impossible.An examplewouldbe a traumaticexperienceof which we can only speak about in the third voice and in past time, in the mode of it having happened to me. It is not comprehendedas an experience of the subject,but as an event outside of the subjectthat happened to him or her. I argue,therefore,that Foucault'sidea of bodies and pleasuresas a locus of resistance implies not a Foucaultianontology of the body, but an ontology of the event.'8The experiential body is the locus of resistance in the sense that it is the possibilityof an unpredictableevent. The experientialbody materializes in power/knowledge networks,but the limits of its experiencescan never be firmlyset because they can never be fully defined and articulated.It can multiply,distort, and overflow the meanings, definitions, and classifications undefined attachedto experiences,and in this sense it is capableof discursively and unintelligible pleasures.The experientialbody is the permanentcontestation of discursivedefinitions, values, and normativepractices.At the same because they constitute the time, these experiences are necessary "outsiders" limits of the normal and the intelligible.Experienceas an event can never be

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wholly defined.It alwaysremainscontestableand resistantto articulation.The experientialbody can take normal languageto the point where it fails, where it loses its powerof definition,even of expression.This does not mean a return to a prediscursive body, however.It is rather that the body as a contestation exists at the limits of language,in those moments "whenlanguage,arrivingat its confines,overleapsitself,explodesand radicallychallengesitself in laughter, tears,the eyes rolledback in ecstasy.. ."(Foucault1963/1998,83). The experience of the limit is realizedin languagebut only at the moment "whereit says what cannot be said"(86).19 To conclude, my point has been to arguethat Foucault'sunderstandingof embodiment and experience can provide importanttools for feminist theory. Rather than accusinghim of neglecting experience and the dynamismof the body in favor of regulateddiscourseand social constraints, my aim has been to show that his insights can be valuable exactly for those feminist analyses that try to understandthe importantrole of the body in resistanceto gender discourses.It is also importantfor feminists to keep in mind the limits of his resistanceof bodies and analysesforfeministpolitics,however.The Foucaultian cannot be accomplishedby the intentional subject.It is not the result pleasures of conscious choices and practicalsolutions.The feminist questionsas to what extent it is possibleto intend resistanceand how we shouldconsciouslychoose to act againstsystemsof powerare still left open.20 Bodies and pleasuresis thus not politicalresistancein the traditionalsense, but ratherresistanceunderstood as experimentationon what in our presentand in our experience is necessary and what is historicallycontingent.21 feminists we must thereforebe aware As that the resistancepresentedby the unpredictabilityof embodiment is never enough, because it alone will not be able to rearticulatethe cultural meanings of women'sexperiences. Nevertheless, the ontological contingency and unpredictabilityof the body opens up the philosophical space where political resistance in the form of conscious rearticulationsand alternativerepresentations of women'sembodimentand experiencesbecomes possible. Foucault'sproject of studying the experience of sexuality and its constitutive conditions was cut short because of his untimely death. Perhapsthis is one of the reasons why his understandingof experience seems deficient and deflectivefrom the point of view of feminist theory. Despite its problems,it is not as one-sided and crude as feminist theorists often claim. Foucault'swork is an original effort to rethink the constitutive conditions of our experiences as historical conditions while also acknowledgingthe resistanceand openness of our experiential bodies. I believe that feminist theory would do better by giving Foucault's thought the seriousattention it deservesratherthan dismissing it as excessive discourse reductionismand clinging to an ahistorical and notion of experience. unproblematized

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Kruks writes that "we need to move beyond the postmodern fascination with the discursive and to consider more immediate experiences of feminine embodiment" (Kruks 2001, 22). My aim has been to show that we need to study more carefully what this move philosophically entails. In a rigorous philosophical inquiry "the postmodern fascination with the discursive" turns out to be a complex account of the discursive limits and constitutive conditions of experience. Posing a philosophical question about the relationship between experience and discourse will take us beyond a mere description of"the immediate experiences of feminine embodiment."

NOTES

1. Among others, see Hekman 1990; Bigwood 1991;McNay 1991;Ransom 1993. 2. Foucaultexplicitly characterizedhis thought as a critical reaction to phenomenology in varioustexts and interviews.See Foucault 1966/1994,xiv; 1986, 174. 3. Notable exceptions are Thomas Flynn and BeatriceHan. See Flynn 1985;Han bias of Foucault's 2002; and Flynn 2003. In the latter,Flynn arguesthat the structuralist archaeologiesand the antihumanist intent of nearly all of his histories has distracted attention from the concept of experience that traditionallyhas been associated with fromwhich Foucault's generaphilosophiesof consciousness,especiallyphenomenology, tion wished to extract and distance itself. is 4. Flynn (2003) arguesthat one reason why the term experience (l'experience) so obscure in English and French philosophical writing is that the term corresponds The formeris favoredby Dilthay and to two German words, Erlebnisand Erfahrung. the hermeneuticians,including most existentialists, whereasthe latter is preferredby Kant, Hegel, and the idealist tradition as well as the empiricists.When Foucault,for example,divides the Frenchheirs of Husserlinto the partyof experience and the party could easilyhave served that he has in mind, becauseErfahrung of concepts, it is Erlebnis as an inspirationfor the party of concepts. 5. Ladelle McWhorter (1999) argues similarlythat bodies and pleasuresare not outside the deployments of sexuality, but that they have a different, strategically advantageousposition in it. They referto a personal way of life consisting of practices such as gardeningand line dancing that are capableof challenging normsand imposed identities. 6. See also Butler 1997, 92. Elisabeth Grosz reiteratesthis criticism in her book Bodies(1994, 155).In her next book, Space,TimeandPerversion Volatile (1995),however, meansby bodies of she presentswhat she calls "themost generousreading" what Foucault and pleasures.She arguesthat Foucaultis suggestingthat the body may lend itself to A other economies and modes of productionthan the ones that produce "sexuality." different economy of bodies and pleasuresmay find the organizationof sexuality, the implantation of our sex as the secret of our being, curious and intriguing instead of self-evident (218).

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7. Foucault's understandingof the historicalconstitution of the body throughthe It of power/knowledge influencedfeministtheoryprofoundly: has provided has apparatus a way to approachthe body in its materialitywhile subvertingall essentialist formulathe tions, and has given fruitfulpoints of entryforunderstanding disciplinary production of the feminine body. Forfeminist appropriations Foucault,see, for example, Bordo of 1989;Butler1990;Hekman 1990;Braidotti1991;Sawicki 1991;McNay 1992;and Bordo 1993. While a shared focus on bodies has opened up importantconnections between feminist theory and Foucault'sthought, Foucault'saccount of the body has also been severelycriticizedby feminist writers.Kruksreiteratesthe common feminist criticism that Foucaultunderstandsthe body as too passiveand culturallymalleable,and that his conception of it is thus too one-sided and limited for feminist purposes.For example, see also Bigwood 1991;McNay 1991;Soper 1993. 8. For instance, see Foucault1980, 1984, 1975/1991,1976/1990. 9. Elisabeth Grosz (1994) uses the figure of a Mobius strip-an inverted threedimensional figureeight-to describeand problematizethe relationsof the inside and outside of the body-subject,its psychical interior,and its corporeal exterior, and the uncontrollablemovement from the one to the other. While Grosz acknowledgesthat Foucault's account of the body as an inscriptivesurfacecan be useful for feminism as a she descriptionof the "outside," seeks to complement it with accounts of the "inside": psychoanalysis,phenomenology,and theories of the body image. 10. Despite Butler'scriticism of Foucault'sunderstandingof the body in Gender Trouble,her conception is often conflated with Foucault'sin feminist literatureand referredto as the poststructuralist body. Forexample, see Bigwood 1991. 11. In interviewsabouthomosexuality,Foucaultstressedthe dangersof legalcontrol imposed on sexual practices. He stronglyrefusedto offer any comment as regardsthe distinctionbetween innate predisposition homosexualbehaviorand social conditionto ing (Foucault1988, 288). All he wouldgrantis that there is "acertain style of existence, ... or art of living, which might be called 'gay"' (292). 12. Butlerarguesin BodiesThatMatterthat to defenda culturallyconstructedbody does not mean that one understands culturalconstructionas a single,deterministic or act as a causalprocessinitiatedby the subjectand culminatingin a set of fixedeffects.In place of these conceptionsof construction,she suggestsa returnto the notion of matteras "a that overtime to producethe effectof boundary, processof materialization stabilizes fixity, and surface call matter" we the (Butler1993,9). Butleremphasizes gapsandfissures opened the becomethe deconstitutive up in this processof materialization: constitutiveinstabilities She to these disruptions imaginary as possibilities. also turnsto psychoanalysis understand contestations effecta failure the workings the law,butalsoimportantly occasions that in of as fora radicalrearticulation the symbolicdomain.The politicaldimensionof her workis of thus againsafeguarded: even if the femalebodycannot be liberated, meaningof what the counts as a valuedand valuablebodycan be altered. 13. Butler (1997, 99) arguesthat norms are not internalizedin mechanical or fully predictableways,but assumeanother characteras psychic phenomena. Poweras a condition of possibilityof the subject is not the same as powerconsideredas the subject's agency-the powerthe subjectwields by virtue of being a subject in the social matrix. Butler'srecourseto a psychoanalyticaccount does not, however,mean that she posits

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a wild, unharnessedremainder,an unconscious outside of power.Instead she suggests a Foucaultianreading of psychoanalysisin which the resistance upon which psychoanalysisinsists is studiedas socially and discursivelyproduced.The symbolicproduces the possibilityof its own subversionsas its unanticipatedeffects. 14. Pheang Cheah (1996) criticizes Butler'saccount for the fact that although the aim is to understandthe body as a historical, social, and political entity, not as presignificative or nonintelligible matter,the resistantform or formativeagency over matter is the psyche. Butler'seffort to appropriate psychicalbody image in her account of the the body means that she theorizes the fluidity and malleabilityof bodies in terms of the unique role playedby the psychicalbody image in the formationof bodily subjects. The psychical body image becomes a transcendentalcondition through which bodily materialityappearsand can be experienced as such. The form/matterdistinction in which matter is immutableand form is a principleof dynamismcreeps in in a Kantian guise. Matterpossessesa dynamismas humanbodiesbecausebodies become meaningful and intelligible throughculturaland historicalpractices,not becausetheir existence is causallyproducedby culture (Cheah, 113-14). 15. ElizabethGrosz (1994, 146) argues that for Foucault,the body is the target of control over a materialitythat is dangerous powerand a stake in the struggleforpower's to it, preciselybecauseit is unpredictable able to be used in potentiallyinfinite ways, and accordingto infinitelyvariableculturaldictates. Groszclaims that Foucaultderiveshis of the understanding the body mainlyfromNietzsche, who understands body'scapacity forbecoming as something that can never be known or charted in advance.The body's limits cannot be definitivelylisted because it is alwaysin a position of self-overcoming, of expanding its capacities (Grosz 1994, 124). 16. Forexample, see Foucault 1980, 197. for 17. Pheng Cheah, for example, arguesthat power is quasi-transcendental Foucault because it is both the immanent causal origin of empiricalityand physicalityand a condition of possibility for graspingsocial reality, a grid of its intelligibility,which cannot itself be accessible to cognitive or practical-intentionalmastery and control (1996, 126). See also Mohanty 1997;Han 1998/2002. 18. My reading brings Foucault'sphilosophy close to Deleuze's in this respect. is Deleuze himself has suggestedthat Foucault's "pleasures-body" the correlativeof his the own ideaof "bodywithout organs," body as a site of the productionof positiveforces and creativedifferences.See Deleuze 1994/1997.Foucault's emphasison pleasureis also a gesture of rejecting Deleuze'sposition, however. David Halperin (1995, 93-94), for example, emphasizesFoucault'sdistinction between desire and pleasureas his way of philosophy.Accorddistancinghimselffromthe ideaof desireassociatedwith Deleuze's to him, Foucault'sremarksabout the political importance of attacking sexuality ing and promotingpleasuresat the expense of sex make more sense when they are set in the context of his insistent distinction between pleasure and desire. A study of the similaritiesand differencesbetween Deleuze'sand Foucault's philosophyis beyond the of this article. On feminist interpretationsof Deleuze'sconception of the body, scope see among others Braidotti 1994;Grosz 1994. 19. Compare to Shepherdson 2000, 5. According to Shepherdson,Lacan underThe rule of law does not repressor prohibit, and law very similarly. stands transgression

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butproduces ownexception. symbolic The order functions its onlyon the basisof this or The that the exception excess. excessisnot a natural phenomenon disrupts machinit a of an feature culture which itself, effectof language, eryof culture; is rather peculiar a that includesits own malfunction, remainder marks limits(Shepherdson its 2000, with is criticalin 175-80).AlthoughFoucault's relationship psychoanalysis explicitly TheHistory Sexuality, Volume behindthisexplicit lies 1, of relationship an unacknowldebt.Shepherdson that that Foucault and edged argues thecanonical reception opposes Lacan doesnot do justice the complexity theirrelation to of (2000,182).On Foucault's to see relationship psychoanalysis, alsoMiller1992. 20. Foucault's writings practices the self and the Enlightenment late on of offer someanswers thesequestions. his latethought to In Foucault focuses the subject's on activerolein implementing formsof resistance normalization. Foucault to See 1984 and 1984/1992. 21. See Foucault 1984.

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