Faux Amis: Foucault and Deleuze on sexuality and desire

Critical Inquiry

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 52-75

  Grace, Wendy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77249177180     PISSN: 00931896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/606122     Document Type: Review

References (111)

1. Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy, trans. Elizabeth Guild (New York, 1991), p. 66
2. Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault, trans. Betsy Wing (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), p. 62
3. John Marks, Gilles Deleuze: Vitalism and Multiplicity (London, 1998), p. 111
4. See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, L'Anti-Oedipe, vol. 1 of Capitalisme et schizophrénie (Paris, 1972)
5. trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane under the title Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, 1983); hereafter abbreviated AO
6. See Gary Genosko, introduction to The Guattari Reader, ed. Genosko (London, 1996), pp. 1-34
7. and Julian Bourg, From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought (Montréal, 2007), pp. 110-11, 125-43
8. Guattari gives an account of the circumstances leading to his collaboration with Deleuze for the writing of Anti-Oedipus, followed by a response from Deleuze, in the opening pages of Deleuze and Guattari, "Deleuze et Guattari s'expliquent," interview with François Châtelet, in Deleuze, L'Île Déserte et autres textes: Textes et entretiens, 1953-1974, ed. David Lapoujade (Paris, 2002), pp. 301-19
9. trans. Mike Taormina under the title Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-1974, ed. Lapoujade (Los Angeles, 2004)
10. Deleuze's partnership with Guattari had already borne fruit in 1970 when they wrote a joint tribute to Pierre Klossowski, anticipating themes that would later appear in Anti-Oedipus; see Deleuze and Guattari, "La Synthèse disjunctive," L'Arc, no. 43 (1970): 54-62
11. Deleuze, "Letter to a Harsh Critic," Negotiations, 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin (New York, 1995), p. 7
12. and Deleuze and Guattari, "Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari on Anti-Oedipus," interview with Catherine Backès-Clément, in Negotiations, pp. 13-24
13. See Michel Foucault, La Volonté de savoir (Paris, 1976)
14. trans. Robert Hurley under the title An Introduction, vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality (New York, 1978); hereafter abbreviated HS
15. Jacques Lagrange, "'La Volonté de savoir' de Michel Foucault ou une généalogie du sexe," review of La Volonté de savoir by Foucault, Psychanalyse à l'université 7 (June 1977): 551
16. Maurice Dayan, "D'un ci-devant sujet," Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, no. 20 (1979): 92
17. For a useful preliminary comparison of Foucault's power and Deleuze's desire, see Pierre Nora and Marcel Gauchet, "Mots-moment: Les Cinq Langages de l'esprit du temps," Le Débat 50 (May-Aug. 1988): 171-89, esp. pp. 181-83
18. Deleuze, "Letter to a Harsh Critic," pp. 5, 6
19. Foucault, "Critical Theory/Intellectual History," interview with Gérard Raulet, trans. Jeremy Harding, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York, 1988), p. 33. Moreover, Foucault claimed he read Nietzsche "by chance" in 1953 and was "surprised" to find that Georges Canguilhem, "the most influential historian of science in France at that time," was also very interested in Nietzsche and "thoroughly receptive" to what Foucault was trying to do (ibid., p. 23)
20. See Foucault and Deleuze, "Introduction général [aux Oeuvres philosophiques complètes de F. Nietzsche]," in Foucault, Dits et écrits, ed. Daniel Defert and François Ewald, 4 vols. (Paris, 1994), 1:561-64
21. The project had been made possible by access to Nietzsche's manuscripts after the transfer of these documents in 1950 to an archive at Weimer in the German Democratic Republic. Deleuze and Foucault hoped to "demolish" the false architecture built up after decades of dishonest manipulation of his difficult and nebulous thought in order to "reconstitute, as far as possible, the texts according to Nietzsche's own perspective" (ibid., p. 563). See also Foucault and Deleuze, "Michel Foucault et Gilles Deleuze veulent rendre à Nietzsche son vrai visage," interview with C. Jannoud, Le Figaro Littéraire, 15 Sept. 1966, p. 7
22. rpt. in Dits et écrits, 1:550
23. See also Deleuze, "L'Éclat de rire de Nietzsche," interview with Guy Demur, Le Nouvel Observateur, 15 Apr. 1967, pp. 40-41
24. rpt. in L'Île Déserte et autres textes, pp. 178-81
25. See Deleuze, "Les Intellectuels et le pouvoir," interview with Foucault, L'Arc, no. 49 (1972): 3-10
26. and in Dits et écrits, 2:306-15
27. trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon under the title "Intellectuals and Power," in Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Bouchard (New York, 1977), pp. 205-17
28. In 1964, when Sartre had refused the Nobel Prize for literature, Deleuze wrote a tribute, praising him for this courageous decision. See Deleuze, "Il a été mon maître," Arts, 28 Nov. 1964, pp. 8-9
29. See also Deleuze and Claire Parnet, "A Conversation: What Is It? What Is It For?" in Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York, 1987), p. 12
30. and the comments about Sartre in Foucault, "Critical Theory/Intellectual History," pp. 32, 44
31. See Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons: Archives d'une lute, 1970-1972, ed. Philippe Artières et al. (Paris, 2003)
32. Moreover, the model behind the specific intellectual formulated by Deleuze and Foucault was a professional on the inside of the penal justice system: Edith Rose, the prison psychiatrist at Toul, who published, with Foucault's support, denunciations of conditions there in December 1971. See Foucault, "Le Discours de Toul," Le Nouvel Observateur, 27 Dec. 1971-2 Jan. 1972, p. 15
33. See also Bourg, From Revolution to Ethics, pp. 84, 355 n. 5. Bourg's study is an indispensable and illuminating discussion of the GIP and its relationship to what he calls a general ethical turn in French thought after May '68. However, Bourg unfortunately does not discuss Foucault's conception of sexual ethics adequately
34. Foucault et al., "(Manifeste du G.I.P.)," Dits et écrits, 2:175
35. He continues, the GIP was neither "a subversive group inspiring, from the outside, the actions of prisoners" nor was it a bunch of "dreaming intellectuals"; rather, with the help of former detainees and their families, the aim was to create "an active popular base" on the outside that could "support and propagate" the demands of the prisoners on the inside (Deleuze, "Ce que les prisonniers attendant de nous . . . ," L'Île Déserte et autres texts, p. 286)
36. Deleuze and Defert, "Sur les lettres de H. M.," in L'Île Déserte et autres textes, p. 342
37. Deleuze, "L'Homme, une existence douteuse," review of Les Mots et les choses by Foucault, Le Nouvel Observateur, 1 June 1966, pp. 32-34
38. In 1970, Deleuze followed this with a more obscure, perhaps less straightforwardly positive, analysis of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge
39. See Deleuze, "Un Nouvel Archiviste," Critique, no. 274 (Mar. 1970): 195-209
40. See Foucault, "Ariane s'est pendue," review of Différence et répétition by Deleuze, Le Nouvel Observateur, 31 Mar.-6 Apr. 1969, pp. 36-37
41. See Deleuze, Différence et répétition (Paris, 1968)
42. trans. Paul Patton under the title Difference and Repetition (New York, 1994)
43. See Foucault, "Theatrum Philosophicum," review of Différence et répétition and Logique du sens by Deleuze, Critique, no. 282 (Nov. 1970): 885-908
44. trans. Bouchard and Simon under the title "Theatrum Philosophicum," Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, pp. 165-96
45. In a valuable analysis, Judith Revel identifies Foucault's review of Deleuze as a turning point in his oeuvre, where, amongst other writings between 1961 and 1970, constituting a sort of "literary" period in his work, Foucault attempted to free himself from dialectics and formulate a concept of difference indebted to Deleuze. See Judith Revel, "Foucault lecteur de Deleuze: De l'écart à la différence," Critique, no. 591-92 (Aug.-Sept. 1996): 727-35
46. See Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris, 1969)
47. trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale under the title Logic of Sense, ed. Constantin V. Boundas (New York, 1990)
48. Foucault, "Theatrum Philosophicum," pp. 180, 181
49. In an interview in 1972 explaining the text, Deleuze also claimed that, although their methods were not identical, they seemed to meet Foucault "on all sorts of points" and on paths he had "already mapped out" (Deleuze and Guattari, "Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari on Anti-Oedipus," p. 22)
50. Foucault, "Two Lectures," Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, trans. Colin Gordon et al., ed. Gordon (New York, 1980), p. 80
51. hereafter abbreviated "TL." These lectures are now available as part of the entire series of that year; see Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, trans. David Macey, ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana (New York, 2003), p. 5
52. Foucault claimed that, far from revealing the eternal crux of our unconscious and our desire, Sophocles's play spoke about, and in a certain way instituted, "a type of determined relation between power and expertise, between political power and scientific thought, from which our civilization has not yet freed itself." In short, Oedipus Rex is all about power/knowledge and has nothing to do with desire-incest; it is political, not psychological: "the play appears more as a sort of dramatized history of Greek law than as a representation of incestuous desire" (Foucault, "La Vérité et les formes juridiques," Dits et écrits, 2:554
53. trans. [without the closing discussion] Hurley et al. under the title "Truth and Juridical Forms," Power, ed. James D. Faubion [New York, 2000], p. 17)
54. Michèle Barrett, The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault (Cambridge, 1991), p. 115
55. Peter Dews, Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory (London, 1987), p. 167
56. Jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault, trans. Nicole Dufresne (New York, 1987), p. 19
57. Jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault, Ibid., pp. 18, 17
58. See Deleuze, "Ecrivain non: Un Nouveau Cartographe," review of Surveiller et punir by Foucault, Critique, no. 343 (Dec. 1975): 1207-27
59. See Deleuze, Foucault (Paris, 1986)
60. trans. Seán Hand under the title Foucault, ed. Hand (Minneapolis, 1988). This text was loosely based on a series of weekly lectures Deleuze gave at the University of Paris VIII dedicated to Foucault's work. Tape recordings of these lectures can be found in the Foucault archives, housed at the Institut Mémoire d'Éditions Contemporaine (IMEC), Caen, France
61. See Deleuze, Foucault, p. 53
62. See Deleuze, "Désir et plaisir," Magazine littéraire, no. 325 (Oct. 1994): 57-65
63. trans. Daniel W. Smith under the title "Desire and Pleasure," in Foucault and His Interlocutors, ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Chicago, 1997), pp. 183-92; hereafter abbreviated "DP."
64. Deleuze, "Breaking Things Open, Breaking Words Open," interview with Robert Maggiori, Negotiations, p. 83
65. See Dayan, "D'un ci-devant sujet," p. 99
66. Though, following Arnold Davidson's perceptive reading, one could also argue that Foucault's oeuvre is a general attempt to develop an ethnographic alternative to Freud's psychological unconscious by way of the idea of a "positive unconscious" of thought, a kind of vast, communal "unknown" archive. See Davidson, "Structures and Strategies of Discourse: Remarks towards a History of Foucault's Philosophy of Language," in Foucault and His Interlocutors, pp. 1-17
67. See Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance, esp. pp. 209-63
68. Jacqueline Rose, "Introduction II," in Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne, ed. Juliet Mitchell and Rose (London, 1982), p. 31
69. On this point, see the comments in Foucault, "Michel Foucault: Les Réponses du philosophe," interview with C. Bojunga and R. Lobo, Dits et écrits, 2:815
70. Donzelot, "Une Anti-Sociologie," Esprit 40, n.s. (Dec. 1973): 835-55
71. and Jean-François Lyotard, "Capitalisme é nergumène," Critique, no. 306 (1972): 923-56
72. Deleuze and Guattari continue: "Hence the goal of schizoanalysis: to analyse the specific nature of the libidinal investments in the economic and political spheres, and thereby to show how, in the subject who desires, desire can be made to desire its own repression" (AO, p. 105)
73. For a Freudian interpretation of schizophrenia, see Roland Jaccard, L'Exil intérieur: Schizoïdie et civilisation (Paris, 1975), esp. pp. 97-152
74. Foucault, "Prison Talk," interview with J.-J. Brochier, Power/Knowledge, p. 39
75. See also Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974-1975, trans. Graham Burchell, ed. Valerio Marchetti and Antonella Salomoni (New York, 2003), pp. 86-88 and
76. Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1973-1974, trans. Burchell, ed. Lagrange (New York, 2006), esp. pp. 13, 41-58
77. For the relation between disciplinary power and the constitution of the working class, see Foucault, Psychiatric Power, pp. 70-73
78. See Jos van Ussel, Geschiedenis van het seksuele probleem (Meppel, 1968)
79. trans. Catherine Chevalot under the title Histoire de la répression sexuelle (Paris, 1972)
80. The classic statement of this position, applied to all forms of the "civilizing process" including sexuality, is perhaps Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1982)
81. Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria (1893-95)
82. in Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey, 24 vols. (London, 1953-74), 2:221
83. Foucault, "Sexualité et pouvoir," Dits et écrits, 3:556
84. Baudrillard, Forget Foucault, p. 18
85. See Deleuze, "Qu'est-ce qu'un dispositif?" in Michel Foucault: Philosophe (Paris, 1989), pp. 185-95
86. trans. Timothy J. Armstrong under the title "What Is a Dispositif ?" in Michel Foucault: Philosopher (New York, 1992), pp. 159-68
87. Deleuze and Guattari, "Deleuze et Guattari s'expliquent," p. 303
88. A fascinating component of this political brawl was the bourgeois representation of Louis XVI and, especially, Marie-Antoinette as political monsters. See Foucault, Abnormal, pp. 95-98
89. In an interesting examination of this campaign, with a focus on Rousseau's Confessions, Philippe Lejeune implicitly confirms the Marxist interpretation. See Philippe Lejeune, "Le 'Dangereux Supplément': Lecture d'un aveu de Rousseau," Annales 29 (July-Aug. 1974): 1009-22, esp. p. 1015
90. For a Freudian perspective heavily derived from Lejeune, Thomas Szasz, and others, see Jaccard, L'Exil intérieure, pp. 75-95
91. On the different stresses applied to girls as opposed to boys, see Foucault, "The Confession of the Flesh," p. 217
92. and "Asiles," 2:779, where he concludes with the important qualification: "But I am a man."
93. Rose, "Introduction II," p. 28
94. Freud, "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" (1909)
95. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 10:8 n. 2 (added 1923)
96. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London, 1977), pp. 194, 193
97. See Ewald, introduction to Deleuze, "Désir et plaisir," p. 58
98. For an expert and absorbing treatment of these various critiques of Freud - from Wilhelm Reich and R. D. Laing to Kate Millet, via Karen Horney, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, and many others - see the classic text of Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (Harmondsworth, 1974)
99. See Foucault, preface to AO, pp. xi-xiv
100. Incidentally, a fact neither Baudrillard nor any other critic has explained, La Volonté de savoir received a cool critical reception from all quarters of the French intellectual public, supposedly made up of postmodern dérisant mates not known for their reticence when it comes to either sex or politics. One reviewer, a historian, seemed to voice a muted consensus when he accused Foucault, ironically, of an "an excess of historicism" (André Burguiere, "Michel Foucault: La Preuve par l'aveu," Le Nouvel Observateur, 31 Jan. 1976, p. 66)
101. See Eribon, Michel Foucault, pp. 269-77
102. Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (London, 1993), pp. 358-67
103. and Clare O'Farrell, Michel Foucault (London, 2005), p. 45
104. trans. Hurley et al. under the title "Lives of Infamous Men," Power, pp. 157-75
105. Foucault, "Lives of Infamous Men," p. 161
106. See Foucault, Fonds Foucault, D153, L'Institut Mémoires de l'Édition Contemporaine, Paris
107. According to David Halperin, the interview was originally published in Dutch as "Vijftien vragen van homosexuele zijde san Michel Foucault," Interviews met Michel Foucault, ed. M. Duyves and T. Massen (Utrecht, 1982), pp. 13-23
108. It did not appear in French until ten years later, reprinted in two instalments under the title "Le Gai Savoir" in Mec Magazine in 1988
109. Halperin provides an essential discussion of this interview and its implications for Foucault's general strategy of desexualization in David M. Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford, 1995), pp. 91-97, 215 n. 165
110. See also Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, pp. 365-66
111. For a further discussion of Foucault's concept of pleasure, see Davidson, "Appendix: Foucault, Psychoanalysis, and Pleasure," The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), pp. 209-15