why is [Foucault] the target of a visceral rejection or at least a complete indifference for most of the anarchists?
The author suggests two reasons:
Foucault is characterized by a deep pessimism as to the possibility of getting out of power relations or more precisely of organizing them in an emancipative manner
and:
The second reason for the anarchists’ refusal or indifference to Foucault’s analyses stems from a paradox: the great proximity between both and more particularly, as Tomas Ibanez points out, the importance Foucault grants to the reality of power, its ubiquitous, brutal and insidious character, crossing through the most harmless interactions, organizing in series (in the sense that Proudhon gives to this word) and producing structures of domination (Churches, States, Political parties and the very Individuals) with a capacity of illusion and oppression that does not rely firstly on their blinding visibility but on the tight and often imperceptible network of immediate and tiny dominations of which these structures are but the resultant (Proudhon again).
While these two points may be right, one may also ask why in the first place that Foucault ought to appeal to anarchists (or vice versa). The fact that he doesn’t does indeed point to different conceptions of power.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Anarchism
Did he identify himself as anarchist anywhere? (pop quiz)
The closest I can come up with is his self-identification as “anti-strategic” in “useless to revolt?”
In their book Labor of Dionysus, Hardt and Negri report that Foucault says the following in “On the Government of the Living”:
“I am not saying that all forms of power are unacceptable but that no power is necessarily acceptable or unacceptable. This is anarchism. But since anarchism is not acceptable these days, I will call it anarcheology–the method that takes no power as necessarily acceptable”.
(I would check the quote myself but I don’t have access to those lectures, which from what I understand are still only available in French.)
I would say that Foucault definitly is one of the greatest anarchist thinkers of the last 50 years. Especially when you study his thoughts about the “ethics” he composed. It’s almost the most anarchist thing you can imagine that you have to refuse being leaded, that you have to taker care of yourself and above all that you can rule yourself, what is – indeed – the only way not to be ruled by others.
So yes, he was an anarchist, he just didn’t in the sense of “dogmatic” anarchists. And I think american anarchists (mostly the anarcho-primitivist I guess….) for example, often are influenced by Nietzsche, which also is one of the philosophers with a main influence in Foucaults thinking.
Nice blog, by the way, maybe you want to visit mine as well: http://www.wallflowers-zine.blogspot.com
A few thoughts on Foucault’s relation to anarchism: http://structuresmash.tumblr.com/post/35996077/anarchism-beyond-enlightenment