Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

84 Making f ubjeca96. Foucault 1980a:89.97, Foucault I S)SOa:92-93,98. Hacking 1981:29.99, Foucault often speaks of "randarn" events and "accidents" when discussingthe development of techniques of knowledge and strategies of power. He evenclaims that reasoned inquiq itself "was barn ,., kom chance." Foucault 1971:78,But what sort of randomness and chance is this? Force relations interact in contributingto the dynamic whole of power. Changes in the totality of force relationsare due in part to some constituent force relations reinforcing one another and inpart to some constituent force relations dimkishing the effects of others, The effectof any given constituent act or force relation on the whole is not a function of somethingintrinsic to the act or force relation itself. It is a function of how that particularact or force relation relates to other acts and force relations* Changes in thewhofe therefore are unpredictatlile. It is not that some individual acts or force relationsare uncaused or witl~out histories; it is that their specific contributions to themultiplicity of force relations cannot he anticipated. Foucautdian randomness contrasts,not with causal deterlaination, but w~th what genealogy opposes: totaljizinghistory. The mechanics of power cannot be predicted; they can only he retrospectivelytraced through the "Lgra)r, meticulous, and patiently documentary" "tailingof developments in the asylum, in the clinic, in the prism.100, Foucault 1980b:98,l 01. Foucault 1980b:98.102, Dreyfus and Rahinow 1983:175.103, Foucault 1991a:48.104, Dreyfus and Rahinaw 1983:17$.105. Descartes made clear that there is a difference between conception andimagination, We can conceive a thousand-sided figure even though we cannot imagineit.106, Hekman 1990:4"7 Hekman refers to "pastmoderns" rratl~er than Foucaultin particular, but the paint applies to Foucautt if it applies to anyone.107, Brcnda Marshall points out rather than being a move in a familiar polemic,the postmodern critique "is most ccmsistently an impulse to look at the historical,philosophical, and cultural construction of the subjest," Marsl-rafl 1992:82,108. Thayer 1982:355,109. Foucault 1988b:24O,116, Norie of this is to suggest that Foucault would accept a nzetaphysicaf accountof the subject, For him, any such account would be a product of power andso historicat. Historiciq precludes metaphysics by disallowing reference to anythingoutside of discourse.111. Foucault 1980b:T3-74. If the philasophlcal question is asked about whatthere is ab lilZil;io if subjects are constructs, the short answer is: bodies. In Chapter 7I consider Foucault's implicit views on ""what there is."