Paul's close relationship with his mother has provoked many Freudian and Oedipal readings of the novel. Discuss the validity if this kind of reading

OEDIPUS COMPLEX IN SONS AND LOVERS

‘Sons and Lovers’ by D.H Lawrence is read as a modernist novel to which Oedipus complex can be applied. This psychoanalytic theory is visible at many levels in the novel; in relation to Mrs. Morel and her sons, Miriam and Clara as mother substitute and Baxter as a father substitute. The answer focuses mainly on the relationship between Paul Morel, the protagonist and his mother.

Oedipus complex is a term coined by psychologist Sigmund Freud in the book ‘Interpretation of Dreams (1899)’. Oedipus was the protagonist of the book “Oedipus Tyrannus” written by Sophocles in 429 BC. King Oedipus driven out of his native land because of prophesy that he will kill his father and marry his mother grows up and unconsciously kills his father and marries the woman who is his mother. In psychoanalytic theory, Oedipus complex refers to the child’s desire for sexual involvement with the opposite sex parents particularly a boy’s erotic attention to his mother. This complex played an important role in psychosexual development. It also leads to a matured sexual identity. According to critics D.H Lawrence’s novel ‘Sons and Lovers’ is an evidence of Oedipus complex but is the mother- son love really oedipal and not out of pure biological love between parent and child.

Freud thinks that the boy child develops feeling of hatred towards father and love towards mother from childhood. The boy then for having taken mother as his own possession regards father as enemy wanting to take his place. Thus this complex is also called ‘Mother Fixation’. Mrs. Morel because of her failed marriage paid all attention to her sons especially Paul since William died at a young age and Paul had an illness. lI Haiyan says ‘because of the strong abnormal maternal love from his mother, Paul has Oedipus complex and so Paul’s life becomes a tragedy’. Is Paul’s relationship with Mr. Morel really oedipal? Does William also have Oedipus complex or does only the mother love the children not the other way around.

If there is Oedipus complex then the root cause of it would be the failed marriage of Mrs. Morel and her love towards her sons. Why does the child hate the father? Because the father establishes prohibition against incest, the mother is deprived of child and child suffers from imaginary castration and since father has the phallus he becomes the rival. Child’s personality is marked by Oedipus complex. According to Lacan if the dissolution of the complex is to take place the child must identify with the father, love for father can’t be avoided as it will allow the son to assume his own masculinity. Doreen Dewart says that Lawrence selected the name Gertrude because of the mother- son relationship between Hamlet and his Mother Gertrude. In Hamlet father is absent and in Paul’s case, the conventional father figure is absent. Hamlet does not want his mother to go his uncle’s bed and Paul realizes that his mother has not had sexual fulfillment. Mrs. Morel because of her disappointment in Mr. Morel finds a husband/ lover substitute first in William then in Paul. She dedicates her life, energy and love on her children. Through them she wishes to improve the financial and social situation of the family which has become miserable in the coal mining neighborhood. But can’t a mother love her sons and be protective of them? Why the relationship is named Oedipus? Oedipus kills the father and has sexual relationship with mother. Yes William and Paul have a hatred for father; they do not want to tell him anything that happens in family, “He was shut out from family affair” (p.64). His role is limited only to a bread earner. They do wish him to die but none of the sons actually have a sexual relationship with the mother. The love that the mother and sons felt was because of social factors and social environment. The relationship between William and Mrs. Morel is defined in the first chapter. William is proud to be seen with his mother because “no other women looked such a lady as she did” (p.41). William is the substitute husband whom Mrs. Morel can’t find in her marriage and the sons are a source of emotional fulfillment for her. William takes his father’s place in mother’s heart. “Already William was a lover to her”. (p.44). Mrs. Morel disapproved of William’s dancing and girlfriends. Can’t a mother disagree with her child’s decision? Is every mother who disapproves of his son’s girlfriend then in love with her son? Aruna Sitesh says “William dies torn between his lady love and mother”.

The psycho sexual development of Paul began in his early age, he would have no peace if the mother was upset he knew how she felt. While sharing space with mother in bronchitis he says “sleep is most perfect…when it is shared with a beloved” (p.64). Every child likes to sleep with their mother because of the protective, loved and comfortable space provided by the mother. Does it make it Oedipal then, just because he called her beloved? Lawrence uses the words like “love token” (p.65), “beloved” (p.64) to make their relationship sound Oedipal but Paul and Mrs. Morel do not have a relationship like the one Oedipus shared with Jocasta. It could be an overtly loved mother- son relationship but critics label it Oedipus complex. Paul and Miriam’s love blooms but because Paul comes home late he feels guilty and Gertrude on the other hand recognizes Miriam as a threat, a rival for Paul’s affection. She makes her dislike clear when Miriam comes for tea, when they sit in the chapel he becomes happy because he finds it “wonderfully sweet and soothing to sit there for hour and a half next to Miriam and near mother, unifying his two loves under the spell of the place of worship” (p.183). But while coming back Paul and Gertrude blame Miriam for their own reasons. Gertrude does not want Miriam to “absorb him”. When Paul says “no, mother I really don’t love her, I talk to her but I want to come home to you” (p.202). it’s as if a husband is assuring his wife of loving her when she is accusing him of infidelity. Why is Paul feeling guilty? Is it because he does not want to enjoy the pleasure his mother does not get? Why does Gertrude say she never “actually had a husband” to her son? Does she want the pleasure and life of a woman who has a husband like Paul? Like Gertrude choose a wrong husband, she does not want her sons to find a bad match and so she gets anxious when they find a girl and have them met with her. Paul always comes to his mother’s defense like any other son would. Paul is at peace whenever he is with Gertrude, he loved his mother best. Paul tries hard to alleviate family poverty. According to Lacan Paul has become Mother’s phallus meaning he is anxious about Mrs. Morel’s lack of sexual fulfillment. When his father is hospitalized he fancies himself as “the man of the house”. Children get excited when a responsibility is entrusted upon them, it’s casually said, take care of house or mother or sister to boys, does it mean every boy is suffering from Oedipus complex? After his break with Miriam Paul is driven towards Clara Dawnes who was introduced by Miriam to him.

The relationship Paul has with Clara and Miriam are not wholesome like he wants. He tries to find a mother substitute in both the women. But don’t we all try to find a mother substitute? In front of Clara the mother looks older, Clara is luxuriant and appears superior to Mrs. Morel. Paul finds age and vitality in Clara which was missing in Mrs. Morel. Earlier he was with Miriam for artistic and spiritual quality which was also lacking in Mrs. Morel. Clara has all the qualities which lack in mother, maybe Paul is looking for a younger version of his mother but because of Oedipus complex he is unable to stay with her. The mother substitute which he tries to find doesn’t appear to be successful as both lack in some quality. Faith Pulin says Lawrence is a ruthless manipulator of women since he tries to show that its women who lack something or the other and not Paul; his only excuse is the Oedipus complex whose truth value is not even proved completely. Paul according to critics is not able to maintain a steady relationship with any women because of his attachment to this mother. Paul also finds a father substitute in Baxter (Clara’s husband). He finds the missing father figure in Baxter; earlier he hated his father and even wished him to die which is an oedipal element but in Baxter he finds a father figure as well as a friend. Like Lacan said the boy has to love the father to overcome the complex, Lawrence provides Paul with a father figure so in the end he is able to kill his mother and overcome the complex.  Baxter and Mr. Morel use the same dialect and Baxter fights with Paul as many times as Mr. Morel did. At the time Paul give an overdose of morphine to Mrs. Morel Paul says “My love…oh my love” (p.410), the shock of seeing the mother dead is expresses in horror and he keeps on calling her “my love” like a lover would. Can’t a son address his mother as “love” when the mother dies? Of course the son would express more love than he ever has. Even at funeral he kisses her in order to wake her up like a fairytale but unfortunately realism sets in and she doesn’t wake up. Paul is first of all in guilt and secondly a very important part of his life has gone, it’s obvious all his emotions would come up on surface. Ashok Celly says the killing was to free himself from the crippling hold of mother. If he wanted to get free he would have got freed after some time, why would he take on the sin of killing his own mother?  Paul finds incomplete mother substitute in Miriam and Clara and a father substitute in Baxter, the reunion of Mr. and Mrs. Morel. We can say Paul overcame his Oedipus complex when his mother died but did he really have the complex?

Is it Oedipus complex or Jocasta complex? Or both? Paul is shown as curious about mother’s sexual life, wants to be in the same cottage as her, man of house, and quotes her with words used by lovers. On the other hand Mrs. Morel makes the children her emotional support, she is anxious of her son’s girlfriends. She desires her son’s as substitute for her husband says Doreen Dewart. Is it not okay for mother and son to love each other without getting labeled as incestuous or sexual? Why is too much emphasis placed on sexual aspect of a relationship rather than its aesthetic aspect? The only Oedipal aspect of the novel is the son’s hatred towards father and finding a father substitute in Baxter. There is no sexual desire in Paul towards mother and calling loving names is not part of sexual behavior, attachment to one’s mother is natural and not a part of Oedipus complex.

WORKS CITED

Celly, Ashok. Sons and Lovers edited by Ashok Celly. Delhi: worldview publications, an imprint of Book Land Publishing Co., 2015.

Doreen, Dewart. Jacques Lacan’s interpretation of the Oedipus comlex and its application to the family dynamics depicted in D.H Lawrence’s sons and lovers.

L.H.Y., Weng, R.Q., and Guo, X.J (2016). Paul Morel’s Oedipus complex in sons and lovers. Studies in literature and language, 13 (1), 2016.

Salgado, Gamini. A preface to D.H Lawrence. (2000)

Sitesh, Aruna. Women in sons and lovers. Sons and Lovers edited by Ashok Celly. Delhi: worldview publications, an imprint of Book Land Publishing Co., 2015.

Deepali Yadav

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Notes and summary of Renaissance self-fashioning

 

Renaissance self-fashioning

Before beginning lets understand some important terms

1-          New historicism- it was coined in 1980s by Stephen Greenblatt and is a form of literary theory. It means to understand intellectual history through literature and recovering lost histories. It includes paying close attention to historical context of literary works. New historicists see power as class related extending through society.

2-     New criticism- it was coined in 19^th century by John Crow Ransom and was a formalist movement.  It dominated American literary criticism in mid-20^th century. It puts emphasis on close reading to discover how literature functioned as self- contained, self-referential aesthetic object. It forgets about the author and focusses only on text. It studies how literature affects us intellectually and emotionally, before this it was all about history.

3-    Utopia- it was coined by Thomas more in 1516. It describes non-existent society. It is about an imagined community where government laws and social conditions are perfect.

4-     Intentional fallacy- fallacy of basing an assessment of a work on author’s intention rather than on one’s response to actual work.

5-     Affective fallacy- refers to the supposed error of judging or evaluating a text on the basis of emotional effect on a reader. It is an attack on impressionistic criticism.

Stephen Greenblatt belonged to the school of new historicism. The subject is ‘self- fashioning from More to Shakespeare – starting point 16^th century England. He talks about six main figures Wyatt, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spencer, More and Tyndale

There was less autonomy in self –fashioning in 16^th century; family, state, religion imposed discipline on middle and aristocratic families. The major issue is of power; power to impose a shape upon oneself and to control identity of others.

Perception is central- it’s old in academic writing and in early modern period there is a change in intellectual, social, psychological and aesthetic structures which govern the identity. This change is resolutely dialectical hence difficult to characterize.

In 16^th century there was an increased self- consciousness about fashioning of human identity as manipulable artful process. This self- consciousness was widespread among elites but Christianity brought suspicion of man’s power to shape identity.

In 1539 Spencer says ‘fashioned’ means to “fashion a gentleman”. Fashion does not occur in Chaucer’s poetry.

Fashion- 1-Action or process of making

                2- Particular features or appearance

                3- Distinct style of pattern

                4- Designating the forming of a self

Fashioning may suggest the achievement of a less tangible shape, distinctive personality, characteristic address to the world, consistent mode of perceiving and behaving. Recurrent model for fashioning is Christ.  Separation from imitation of Christ leads to anxiety thus self -fashioning acquires a new range of meaning, it describes practice of parents and teachers, linked to manners or demeanor (of elite) can suggest hypocrisy or deception. Representation of one’s nature or intention is in speech or actions.

Interest of self-fashioning- it functions without distinction between literature and social life

What self-fashioning does?

1-          Crosses boundaries between literary characters

2-     Shapes one’s identity

3-    Experience of being modeled by forces outside one’s control

4-     Attempt to fashion other selves

We begin to lose meaning in culture by differentiating between literary and behavioral style.

Geertz meaning of culture- set of control mechanisms- plans, recipes, rules, instructions for governing behavior. Greenblatt counts it as a virtue; older historicism talked about every kind of knowledge is historically constructed.

“I”- it is not I of an individual; it is the individual who questions and is everything (social and political). It shows a specific form of power (church, state, patriarch etc.)

There are very small amount of people who promise to access to larger cultural patterns. There is a will to be culture’s voice among artists; they wish to create the abstract and brief chronicles of all time. In early 16^th century art didn’t pretend to be autonomous, the written word is self-consciously embedded in specific communities, life- situations and structures of power. We don’t have access to figures of shared culture, we have to access to the writings of dead and speech of the contemporary.

All these famous men like Shakespeare, Spencer, and Marlowe came into a social sphere where they could be in contact with the powerful and great. All knew people with no power, status or education. They could not be mobile in sociological sense but they had geographical and ideological mobility.

The six writers- Wyatt, Tyndale, Spencer, Marlowe, More and Shakespeare are displaced. They are not from a stable, inherited social world but they all have something powerful and influential form of renaissance self- fashioning. Aspects are still difficult.

1-Conflict between More and Tyndale is Wyatt.

2-Conflict between Spencer and Marlowe is Shakespeare

Wyatt’s self-fashioning is affected by the conflict between More and Tyndale. Shakespeare does not resolve the moral conflict. Still his theatre was influenced by both Spencer and Marlowe.

Wyatt and Shakespeare express the historical pressure of an unresolved and continuing conflict. Issues at theological level in work of More and Tyndale are recaptured at secular level in Spencer and Marlowe’s works. While Shakespeare works with male sexual anxieties, betrayal, and aggression in Othello. Complexity in one’s own torment was voiced in Wyatt’s lyrics.

Direction in relation to power-

1-          1^st  Triad- shift from church to book to absolutist state

2-     2^nd Triad- shift from celebration to rebellion to subversive submission

We can assume a direction enacted by works of literature in relation to society: shift from absorption by community, religious faith or diplomacy towards establishment of literary creation as a profession. Such approximate and scheming chartings are of limited value. The closer we go to these figures they seem less convenient counters in historical scheme.

No single “history of self” was there in the 16^th century except when complex and creative beings were to be reduced to safe and controllable order.

A set of governing conditions common to most instances of self- fashioning are-

1.               No figure has a title, ancient family tradition or hierarchical status that would have fired identity in particular class.

2.          For these figures self-fashioning is submitting to an absolute power or authority like God, sacred book, court, church etc. Marlowe was an exception.

3.         Self-fashioning is achieved in relation to something perceived as alien or strange. This strange must be discovered and destroyed.

4.          The alien is something unformed or chaotic or that which is false or negative. The chaotic slides into demonic and thus it’s constructed as a distorted image of authority.

5.          One man’s authority is another man’s alien.

6.          When one authority or alien is destroyed, another takes its place.

7.           There is always more than one authority and more than one alien in existence at a given time.

8.          If both the authority and the alien are located outside the self, they are at the same time experienced as inward necessities, so that both submission and destruction are always already internalized.

9.          Self- fashioning is always, though not exclusively, in language.

10. The power generated to attack the alien in the name of authority is produced in excess and threatens the authority it sets out to defend.

Hence self-fashioning involves threat, some wiping out or loss of self

Self-fashioning occurs at the point of encounter between authority and alien. Any achieved identity always contains within itself signs of its own loss.

Deepali Yadav

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Summary of Truth and Power Interview of Michele Foucault

Summary of Truth and Power Interview of Michele Foucault 

The first question by the interviewers Alessandro Fontana and Pasquale Pasquino asks Foucault about how he proceeded towards his study of criminality and delinquency from his work on madness in the classical age.

Foucault then answers the question saying that in the early 1950s the problem of political status of science arose and what ideological functions it could serve in the society. Power stands for political and economic structures of the society and knowledge stands for sciences like theological physics, organic chemistry, psychiatry and medicine and many more. Questions on power and knowledge were being asked in that time and then Foucault wrote MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION which catered around the questions on power and knowledge. Then he compares the two forms of sciences, theological physics and organic chemistry with psychiatry; He says that the problem with physics and chemistry is that when seeing its relations with political and economic structures of society then it becomes complicated while psychiatry practices with the whole range of institutions, economic requirements and political issues of society. In THE BIRTH OF THE CLINIC he says that medicine has a more solid scientific armor than psychiatry but it is deeply tangled in social structures. He gives three reasons for his questions not interesting those to whom it was addressed.

The first reason is that the Marxist intellectuals in France wanted to gain attention of the university administration the raised theoretical questions same as the establishment of the administration. The intellectuals said that they are Marxist but not strangers and are the only ones who can provide solutions to new concerns. Marxists wanted a liberal renewal of university tradition at the same time communists thought they are the ones who can take over and give new life to national tradition. To Marxists history of science were more important than medicine and psychiatry also the latter two were not serious and neither was on the same level of classical rationalism.

The second reason was that there was no vocabulary, terms or ready-made concepts for the power effects of psychiatry and medicine. Post-Stalinist Stalinism won’t permit or approve of anything that wasn’t a repetition of what was already said or repeated. Many like Marx, Engels and Lenin had done a discourse on sciences (Science as was seen in the 19^th century) and academics.

The third reason he is not very sure about but still states it saying that he wonders whether the intellectuals of PCF ( party communist France or the communist party of France) didn’t want to confine the political aspect of psychiatry, they were concerned about the disciplinary grid of the society. In 1955-60 real extent of Gulag (prison houses of Stalinist period) were not known since it was danger zone marked with warning signs. It’s difficult to consider people’s degree of awareness. The leading party being dominant and thus influential and in power could stop the people or prevent them from saying a certain thing or writing about it. If Pavlovian psychiatry was discussed among PCF intellectuals then psychiatric politics or psychiatry as politics were hardly respectable topics. Because of political opening in 1968 Foucault could resume his discipline in penal theory and prisons.

The second question is directed towards the concept of discontinuity.

In empirical forms of knowledge like biology, political, economy, psychiatry and medicine the rhythm of transformation doesn’t follow smooth. It does not seem to me to be pertinent to history. Why there are certain changes and order of knowledge which result in evolution and these transformation do not correspond to the calm and continuous image which otherwise prevails.

The third question deals with the concept of event.  The interviewers said the Concept of event is central to the thought of discontinuity. Event is what escapes our rational grasp; it’s the domain of absolute contingency. Anthropologists analyze structure history is of no use to them. The opposition of event and structure is product of anthropology. Historians are trying to dismiss the event and the event is shown as inferior order of history dealing with trivial facts, changes etc. there are knotted problems in history which are neither trivial nor about beautiful structures that are easy to analyze. Great internment- madness and civilization represents knotted dichotomy of structure and event. Elaborate this from the stand point on event.

1.               Event was evacuated by structuralism not only from ethnology but from other sciences and history as well. He calls himself an anti-structualist. Important thing is to not do for event what you did for concept of structures. Everything should not be located on the level of event but its necessary to realize that there are many events differing in amplitude, chronology etc.

2.           Problem is to distinguish among events, to differ the networks and levels to which they belong and reconstitute the lines with which they are connected to one another.

3.           Refusal of analyses in terms of symbolic field or structures, analysis will be only in terms of genealogy of relations of force, strategic developments and tactics

4.           Reference should not be great model of language and signs but war and battle. History has a form of war not language but it also has no meaning because it works through relations of power. History is intelligible and should be susceptible to analyzing smallest details but only about struggles, strategies and tactics.

5.           Structure of communication can account for intelligibility of conflicts unlike dialectic or semiotics. Dialectic is avoiding the reality of conflicts by reducing it to Hegelian skeleton, semiologists avoiding violent, bloody and lethal character by reducing it to platonic form of language

The fourth question is about discursivity. The interviewers say that Foucault was the first to post the question of power regarding discourse at a time when analysis along with semiology and structuralism were in fashion. Does question of power means to ask who does discourse serve. The matter isn’t of analyzing the discourse, understanding its meaning because as Foucault says discourse must be transparent, they need no interpretation or meaning. Question of power addressed to discourse has particular effects and implications in relation to methodology and contemporary historical researches. Is it true? Or has Foucault posed it?

Foucault wonders whether it’s on the left or right that the problem of power is posed.

Right- power was posed in terms of constitution, sovereignty etc. i.e. judicial terms

Left (Marxist) - power posed in terms of state apparatuses.

How power would be exercised in terms of its techniques and tactics and specificity was not ascertained. Power was announced in a polemical and global fashion as it was in adversary camp. Totalitarianism is where soviet socialists power was in question; power in western capitalism was denounced by Marists as class domination, but power mechanics were never analyzed.

After1968 on level of daily struggle and grass root level mechanics of power was analyzed, concrete nature of power became visible here and all this would be useful for political analysis. Meaning psychiatric internment and mental normalization of individuals, and penal institutions have very little to offer if one is looking for their economic significance, on the other hand they are very essential for the working of power. If power was calculated through economic significance then it would be considered of very small importance.

So Marxism and phenomenology had an objective obstacle to the forming of this problematic of power and economy?

 Foucault says yes to this question giving two ways of analysis

1-          Constituent subject

2-      Economic; ideology and superstructure and infrastructure

The sixth question asks Foucault to situate genealogical approach and what made it necessary.

Foucault wanted to see how problems of constitution could be resolved by history not madness or criminality. But historical contextualization needed to be something more than just revelation of phenomenological subject. Problem can’t be solved by historicizing the subject or fabricating it. To get rid of subject one has to dispense with constituent subject. Therefore we can come on an analyses which can account for constitution of subject with a historical framework- this is genealogy.

Marxist phenomenology is screen and certain kind of Marxism is obstacle. How ideology is screen and repression is Marxism. History comes to be thought within these categories which give a meaning to phenomena like normalization, sexuality and power. These two concept of screen and obstacle are utilized, on one hand is ideology- it’ s easy to make reference back to Marx and on the other hand is repression- concept often employed by Freud throughout the course of his career. These thoughts and the people who employ them have nostalgia among them; behind the concept of ideology, nostalgia of quasi-transparent form of knowledge which is free from all error and illusion and behind the concept of repression. Behind repression there is nostalgia of a form of power innocent of all coercion, discipline and normalization. Ideology and repression are negative, psychological and insufficiently analytical, in Discipline and Punish where there is a kind of analysis that allows me to go beyond traditional forms of explanation and intelligibility. Interviewer asks for thought on the matters of ideology and repression. In Discipline and Punish there is positive history emerging free of negativity and psychologism implicit in ideology and repression.

Foucault says there is difficulty in making use of ideology

1-          It’s supposed to count as truth and the problem lies in seeing historically, now effect of truth are produced in discourses which are neither true nor false.

2-      Concept of ideology refers to concept of subject.

3-      Ideology is a secondary position relative to something which functions as its infrastructure, as its material, economic determinant, etc.

Repression corresponds well with whole range of power. In Madness and Civilization he posits the existence of a sort of living, voluble and anxious madness which the mechanisms of power and psychiatry were supposed to have come to repress and reduce to silence. Repression is inadequate for the productive aspect of power. When we define effect of power as repression, one adopts purely juridical conception of such power. We identify power with a no saying law. Power carries force of prohibition, but this is all negative because had power only saying no would we obey it? Power is a force that induces pleasure, knowledge and produces discourse that is why it is accepted and hold good, it’s a productive network and not something whose function is repression.

In Discipline and Punish he wanted to show how 17^th and 18^th century onwards there was a technological take off in productivity of power. There was a new economy of power which allowed effects of power to circulate in a manner continuous, uninterrupted, adapted and individualized through entire social body. These techniques are effective and efficient and not risky or wasteful

The eighth question is about repression of sexuality. Bourgeoisie class represented sexuality, sexual desire etc. there were many campaigns against masturbation and homosexuality in 18^th and 19^th century respectively. These discourses on sexuality make possible a whole series of interventions of surveillance, circulation and control which give appearance of repression.

Bourgeoisie society repressed sexuality to the point it would be considered no-existent. Freud discovered that eve children have sexuality. Children’s sex is spoken in pedagogy and child medicine. The discourse of sexuality was seen as problematic by the parents and this focus was to prevent children from having a sexuality.it was put in children’s head that this relationship with their body was also problematic. The consequence was that children would be under vigilance of their parents, the result then is a sexuality of familiar domain. Sexuality is a positive product of sexuality then power was repression of sexuality. One must free oneself of juridical schematism of all previous characteristics of nature of power. A historical problem arises of discovering why west insisted on seeing the power it exercised as juridical and negative rather than as technical and positive.

The west maybe sees its power as juridical because the thought power is mediated through the forms prescribed in the great juridical and philosophical theories. There is an immutable guilt between those who exercise power and those who undergo it.

This can be or can’t be related to monarchy because it developed during middle ages at the backdrop of previously endemic struggles between feudal power authorities. Monarchy presented itself as a power capable of ending a war, violence and pillage and saying no to these struggles and private Feuds. It was accepted because of its juridical and negative function. Sovereign law and prohibition formed a system of representation; political theory wasn’t obsessed with person of sovereign. We need a political philosophy that is not affected by problem of sovereignty and so it won’t be around law and prohibition. King’s head needs to be cut off.

People are trying to replace King’s head with discipline (17^th century comprising functions of surveillance, normalization and control, punishment, correction, education). Where does this system come from? Why it emerges and what its use? There is a tendency to attribute a subject to great molar, totalitarian subject- modern state (16^th and 17^th century) which brought with it a professional army or admin bureaucracy.

A problem of state means problem in terms of sovereign and sovereignty in terms of law. If phenomena of power is dependent on state apparatuses this means grasping them as repressive; army as power as death and police and justice as punitive instance. He is not saying state is not important but wants to say the relation of power and its analysis must be made of state and it must extend beyond limits of state in two senses-

1-          Because state can’t occupy all actual power relations

2-      State can operate on basis of other, already existing power relations

State is superstructural in relation to a whole series of power networks that invest body, sexuality; knowledge, technology etc.

The interviewers say can’t we open about possibility of overcoming the dualism of political struggles that feed on opposition between state and revolution. Doesn’t it indicate a wider field of conflict than where the adversary is state?

State consists in codes of power relations which made its functioning possible and revolution works with different codes of same relations. It means there are many revolutions as many as there are possible subversive recodification of power relations and that can conceive revolutions perfectly which leaves essentially untouched power relations which form basis for the functioning of the state.

The twelfth question deals with Power as an object of research that one has to arrive at the idea that politics is continuation of war. One has to invest classes with formula. Is military model the best for describing power, is war simply a metaphor? Or is it the literal, regular, regular, everyday mode of operation.

As one detaches power with its techniques and procedures form of law one is driven to ask the question- isn’t war a form of warlike domination? Shouldn’t all problems of power be n terms of relations of war? Isn’t power a generalized war considering forms of peace and state? Peace would be a form of war and the state a means of waging it. Who wages war against whom? Is it between two classes or more? What’s role of army and military in civil society? What are the concept of tactics and strategies for analyzing structures and political processes? What is mode of transformation of power relations?

The thirteenth question in on the concept of population. Moheau saw the problem in political control of population. Does this disciplinary power act alone? Doesn’t it draw support from the conception of population; we then have on one hand molar body and micro body. Molar is body of population with discourses and micro is docile, individual bodies. Asks how you see nature of relationships which are engendered between these different bodies- molar and micro?

During 18^th and 19^th century, with new technical inventions a new power also emerged which was more important than constitutional reforms and new forms of government. Leftist view- power is that which abstracts, which negates the body, represses, suppresses and so forth. Foucault thinks that these new technologies of power are concrete and have precise character; they have a grasp of a multiple and different reality. A new form of power comes with exercises through social production and social service. It obtained productive services from individuals. A real and effective incorporation of power needed to gain access to bodies of individuals, their acts, attitude and behavior. Schools were a course of manipulation and conditioning. The new power needed to grapple with problem of population. Problem of demography, public health, hygiene, longevity, fertility and housing condition arise. Political significance of sex- sex is between discipline of body and controlling of population.

Interviewers say how your work is related to everyday political struggle. What is the role of individuals?

Like proletariat is bearer of universal because of historical necessity, similarly intellectuals through moral, theoretical and political choice aspires to be bearer of universal. The intellectual means to be the consciousness/ conscience of all. Intellectuals can also work within specific sector where their own conditions of life situate them (hospital, asylum etc.). This gave them awareness about struggles and non-universal problems. Intellectuals are close to proletariat for 2 reasons

1-          It’s a question of real material and everyday struggles.

2-      Confronted in the same category as proletariat.

Two types of intellectuals are specific and universal.

The figure of specific intellectuals emerged after Second World War. The discourse of nuclear threat was universal and the atomic scientist intellectuals were seeked by political powers because of his knowledge and at this level he became a political threat.

The universal intellectuals derived from specific figures. The man of justice, power, law, who is against abuse, arrogance of wealth, believes in justice and equity. The Foucault talks about Darwin, post- Darwin, and the figure of atomic scientists started appearing clearly. Debates began between theorists of socialism and theorists of relativity.

Biology, physics were limited to zone of specific intellectual. His real importance came from technico- scientific structures in economic and strategic domain. He is no longer ‘writer of genius’ but ‘absolute savant’. He opposes unjust sovereign. He is strategist of life and death. Foucault says that we are experiencing the disappearance of the figure of ‘great writer’.

There are certain dangers that the specific intellectuals face:

1-          Danger of remaining at the level of conjectural struggles.

2-      Pressing demands restricted to particular sectors

3-      There is risk of letting himself be manipulated by political parties and trade union apparatuses

4-      Risk of being followed by limited groups

An example of this is France. There is struggle around the prison, penal system and police- Judicial systems because it developed in ‘solitary’, social worker and ex-prisoner. Separate themselves from the forces which would make them grow. There is a new ideology that makes the criminal into a victim and pure rebel. Return to 19^th century anarchist themes was possible because new strategies failed. As a result there is a deep split between these campaigns and only few masses have good reason not to accept it as a valid political currency.

Function of specific intellectuals need to be reconsidered but not abandoned despite the nostalgia for universal intellectuals. The role of specific intellectual’s becomes more and more important in proportion to the political responsibilities which he is obliged to accept. It would be dangerous to remove him from power- on ground that his specialty does not concern the masses.

1-          Specific intellectuals serve interest of state or capital.

2-      He propagates a scientific ideology

Foucault then talks about truth. Truth doesn’t lack in power and also is not reward of free spirits. It induces regular effects of power each society has its own rule of truth and politics of truth. Political economy of truth is characterized by five important traits.

1-          Truth is centered on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it.

2-      It is subject to constant economic and political incitement

3-      It is object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and consumption

4-      It is produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic apparatuses.

5-      It is the issue of a whole political debate and social conformation.

Intellectual is not the ‘bearer of universal values’. It’s the person occupying a specific position. The intellectual has threefold specificity.

1-          Of class position

2-      That od his conditions of life and work, linked to his condition as an intellectual

3-      The specificity of the politics of truth in our societies

With this last factor the position can talk on a general significance and his specific struggle can be unprofessional. The intellectuals can struggle a general level of rule of truth which is essential to structure of society. It is necessary to think of the political problems of intellectuals not in terms of ‘science’ and ‘ideology’, but in terms of ‘truth’ and ‘power’. And thus the question of the professionalization of intellectuals and the division between intellectuals and manual labor can be envisaged in a new way.

Then Foucault gives certain propositions about truth. 

1-          Truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements.

2-      Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it.

The rule of truth is not merely ideological or superstructural; it was a condition of the formation and development of capitalism. The essential political problem for the intellectual is not to criticize the ideological contents supposedly linked to science, or to ensure that his own scientific practice is accompanied by a correct ideology, but that of ascertaining the possibility of constituting a new politics of truth. What we have to change is the production of truth. We have to detach the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time.

The political question, to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienated consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself.

Deepali Yadav

 Student at Kamala Nehru College (DU)

Contact me @ deepaliyadav2896@gmail.com

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