2. The Genie Subjected and Aestheticizing: Subject Formation in Foucault
2.3. The Supposed Return of the Subject
2.3.3. Re-reading Discipline through Hermeneutics
work, now more explicitly expressed. Although disputed, this is not a fringe view, as I hope to have shown above. The question is then how the two aspects of subjectivity can best be combined through Foucault’s writings. Having already argued that the supposed individualism in his late work is somewhat exaggerated, I now turn my attention to showing how we can see a more active subjectivity in his early work. Through the combination of these two moves I hope to show that two different accounts have more commonality than may at first appear.
as Foucault outlines in detail in DP, but this influence should not be taken as totalising determination. The power that affects the constitution of subjectivity is itself liable to changing historical circumstances, and thereby will not have consistent control on subjectivity.
Furthermore, the functioning of discipline in this network of relations relies importantly on the subject themself. This creates a space of possible resistance to the effects of disciplinary power, that demonstrates a potential agency for the subject. Although I have framed discipline in section 1 of this chapter largely in its external dimension, as a power that is applied to the subject, there is also an important internal dimension to discipline’s constitution of subjectivity. We can see this in two ways. Firstly, the subject is utilised to control themself in the exercise of power. In speaking of the Panopticon, Foucault notes in it the subject “becomes the principle of his own subjection.”192 The structure of the Panopticon establishes the subject as always visible while their observer remains invisible. This difference in visibility means that the subject is induced to behave as if always under surveillance, which, in the absence of any actual surveillance, amounts to an internalisation of the norms being imposed on the subject through the structure of the Panopticon. Without any external pressure being applied to them, in a disciplinary technique the subject is essentially subjecting themself to discipline. We can thus see the formation of the subject, though partially an external manipulation, is also playing out in the subject.
This is further seen in the relation between the body and mind of the subject, and the effects of discipline on subject formation. Recall that discipline chiefly functions as a material practice on the subject’s body - “discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, ‘docile’
bodies.”193 However, this is not so straightforward. Firstly, the goal of discipline is more than simply the production of docile bodies. It goes further in forming subjectivity than working only on the materiality of the subject. Through working on the body, discipline extends into the internal life of the subject through processes such as habituation and training. It is in this sense that Foucault speaks of how a specific individuality is created by discipline “out of the bodies it controls”.194 The body is a means to the mind. Further than simply the internalisation of habit into bodily reflex, discipline attempts to change the interiority of the subject who it
192 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1995, p. 203.
193 Ibid., p. 138.
194 Ibid., p. 167.
manipulates. Subjectivity is therefore not only imposed from the outside in discipline, but takes on an importantly constitutive internal role in which power influences it from within.
This is not always successful however, and the transgressive potential of discipline reveals potential for agency within it. This relies on the productive aspect of discipline. The formation of subjectivity that discipline conditions is not purely negative. It aims at producing a subject suited to some end, and therefore trains the subject in certain skills. Indeed, Foucault notes that alongside an increasing dominance in power relations, discipline also increases the aptitude of those it trains.195 This increased aptitude has multiple effects. Firstly, this may be a positive aspect of power relations operating less repressively. As Heyes has noted, “with the intensification of power relations comes the increase of capabilities” under discipline which is “often interpreted by a liberal political tradition simply as the increase of autonomy.”196 Foucault complicates the picture of power as only restricting individual autonomy. However, this increase of capabilities is complexly interwoven with the increased exercise of power. Heyes gives the example of weight-loss dieting as a practice that exemplifies Foucault’s thesis that the growth of capabilities occurs in tandem with the intensification of power relations.197 Such interrelated growth complicates the picture of a determined subject in Foucault’s work, as it is seemingly paradoxically increasingly autonomous or capable in certain respects while being subject to increasing control in others.198 There is here the potential for a disciplinary practice almost to be co-opted as a practice of self-formation of the subject, and this points towards the fact that the supposed determination of the subject under discipline is not straightforwardly totalising.199
195 Ibid., p. 138.
196 C.J. Heyes, Self-Transformations, 2007, p. 77.
197 Ibid., p. 64.
198 For instance, Heyes points to the level of detailed control in weight-loss dieting as both a strict means of external control on the body of an individual, but also potentially
empowering for that person as they exercise mastery over themself (p. 67)
199 We can see this idea play out in different systems of power than simply discipline as well.
For instance Foucault’s later conception of governmentality, and particularly its
contemporary neoliberal variant arguably bears a similar relation with the subject in both restricting their constitution and simultaneously empowering them in specific ways. For discussion of neoliberal constitution of the subject see W. Brown, Undoing the Demos:
Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, New York, Zone Books, 2015, p. 84. For how
governmentality leaves more room for potentially free agency, see J. Oksala, Foucault on Freedom, 2005, p. 165.