Foucault’s The Life of
Infamous Men
by Beth Metcalf
In Part three of Negotiations,
Deleuze writes about the parallels between his works and those of
Michel Foucault. Deleuze (N 89) hasn’t approached
things through structure, linguistics, psychoanalysis, science,
or history. That is because he thinks there are raw
materials of philosophy that enter into external relations with
other disciplines. And isn’t this a parallel with
Foucault that allowed them both to appreciate philosophy as a
naïve innocence of raw art?
Deleuze calls (N 90 & 108)
Foucault’s essay, The Life of Infamous Men, a
“masterpiece”. He tells us that (N 94-8) Foucault
is not a historian but a philosopher who invents new relations to
history. There is no general history. History does
not fix the identity of what we are, but is the process of
dispersion into the otherness of what we are becoming. There
are different historical forms of knowledge and forces of power
that are inseparable composites at different times. I take
this to be parallel to Deleuze’s raw materials of intensity
that are indivisible, not because they do not divide but, because
when they do divide, there is real change in nature. There
is no maintenance of a same structure. Processes of
struggle between knowledge and power vary from one historical
period to another because there is dispersion into new forms of
knowledge and rules of power. Another dimension is needed
to make forces fold back on themselves. This dimension is
the doubling process of subjectification that makes life a work
of art. Subjectification is not a matter of determinate
forms of knowledge or rules of power. It is
‘will to power’ that invents new possibilities of life.
Deleuze says that Foucault’s essay
expresses creative crisis. Foucault’s concept of
knowledge is (N 107) a struggle between the heterogeneity of what
is seen and what is said. We never see what we say, or say
what we see (1). The visible is between two propositions.
The utterance is between two things. Foucault’s
concept of power is strategic relations of forces. His
power-relations are not just relations between force and object,
but relations of force with other forces that it affects or that
affect it. Forces of power are also related to forms of
knowledge --- knowledge is a combination of forces. Then,
Foucault’s third dimension is the process of
subjectification that takes form and vanishes within the fabric
of seeing and saying. Foucault’s ‘infamous
man’ is just an ordinary man or woman who is seen by forces
of power and then must speak. (N 108) “The
infamous man is Dasein. The infamous man’s a
particle caught in a shaft of light and a wave of sound.”
Dasein is judged by a Power structure that does not even try to
understand his otherness. The infamous man or woman is
judged to be mad or insane, but must attempt to defend himself or
herself without any relation (not even a relation of opposition)
to Power. The problem for the philosopher of history is how
to cross a line in order to get Outside the oppositional power
structure. The Outside can’t be reached by a negative
dialectics that merely brings an exterior back into its interior.
How can we get outside the oppositional relations of power that
predetermine what individuals in a particular society are able to
see and speak? How do we cross this line (N 110-11) to
reach “the double’s otherness”? Isn’t
this ‘double’ parallel to what Deleuze describes as the
singular intensive coupling of the content (what we see) and
expression (what we say) that changes nature with each new
intensive coupling? Foucault had to ask how it is possible
to open the forms of knowledge and the functions of power. Like
Deleuze, Foucault asks how it is possible to cross the line to
get to the void of the Outside --- not to the outside that is the
opposite of an inside --- but how to reach an (N 97 & 110)
Outside non-relation farther than any external world and closer
than any internal world. How do we cross this line into the
void in which the subject disappears without disappearing into
that Outside? How do we fold the line into an indiscernible
zone (2) where thinking becomes an art of living?
Foucault folds the line of the Outside.
Then language goes beyond actualized relations of knowledge and
power. There is (N 113) a process of subjectification as
force folded back on itself. This has no phenomenological
sense (3). There are relations of knowledge and power that
are already structured in any given society but disappear in the
void of the Outside. Forces of subjectification affect, and
are affected by, forces of knowledge and power. However,
subjectification is also the bending of force back on itself.
There is no subject as a fixed form. There is no search for
an authentic unity of self. There is only a process whereby
subjectification is produced. Subjectification is not one
form of knowledge. It is not one function of power. It
is a creative process of singular individuation. I take
this process to be parallel to Deleuze’s
counter-actualization. Foucault, like Nietzsche, sees a
“will” to truth that is not a method toward some
objective, universal generality given to a subject. There
is no subject in general. There are not already given
relations of objects. There are only external relations of
elements and terms that may constitute multiplicities of
knowledge-power relations. Life becomes art of singular
process of subjectification.
So, what do we encounter in this essay
Deleuze calls a “masterpiece”? Foucault’s
essay, The Lives of Infamous Men, is an introduction to an
anthology of prison archives. Foucault tells us that this
is not a book of history. Rather, “it’s an
anthology of existences….nameless misfortunes and adventures
gathered into a handful of words”. These singular
lives are “brief effects whose force fades almost at
once”. Foucault senses the intensity of these lives
beneath the dry words. He wanted to understand why it had
been so important in different historical formations of society
to suppress certain inconsequential and ordinary men. Why
were these unimportant lives selected for condemnation? But
Foucault felt incapable of conveying this intensity of affect in
any discursive analysis. He decided it would be better to
leave the words in the very form that had evoked the affect.
So, Foucault does not write as a historian. He does not
write to establish historical truth. He is not interested
in theory. His writing functions as experimentation that
transforms the writer and the reader. In order to follow
the affective forces, he has some simple rules. His raw
material includes only actual, obscure words of ill-fated
existences, recounted in brief sentences. These tales of
misfortune or dubious madness still shock with a dreadful beauty.
They are recounted in a rarity of words that may be false or
unjust. But these are real existences. They express
the pure discursive description of the real event.
The event is revealed in a speech act that constituted a weapon.
Performative acts of dominant discourse transformed the obscure
lives into the “insane”. These obscure existences
were destined to vanish without a trace. That is, they
would have vanished except for an encounter with forces of power
that illuminated them. We can never grasp these lives in a
free state, but they may be open to repetition and
transformation. They are inseparable from the power
relations that brought them to light. If we separate
historical forms of knowledge from the power relations that cross
them transversally, nothing would remain of the singularity of
these ordinary lives.
These obscure lives were nothing in history.
They have no existence apart from the rarity of the words. They
have only a verbal existence that makes them
“quasi-fictional beings”. Only a chance encounter
focused the attention of power on the unfortunate individual.
Only a chance rediscovery of an obscure document brought it to
light once more. These lives are now revealed only by the
words that were once used to crush them. These words are
read in the light of new historical formations and power
relations.
Throughout different periods of history,
there is no unity of discourse describing the
“infamous”. They do not always have the same
status. They may have a religious, criminal, magical, or
pathological status. Or, sometimes they are just those
unfit for work (the old, sick, unemployed, or the fool.) However,
they are all said univocally as those designated as the
“mad” to be confined or excluded. Foucault
notices that the infamous are seen as really different,
yet always said as same --- “mad”. That
is, this is not thinking several different things according to
categories of representation. It is thinking the same thing
(madness) differently. This is thought as univocal being.
“Madness”, according to Foucault, is a void of
dispersion (4).
There is no historical unity of structure.
Conditions of subjective experience are heterogeneous. Conditions
of objects of experience are heterogeneous. Knowledge and
that which is known have no prior resemblance or continuity.
At some point in history, an object (madness) took form. A
subject capable of understanding that object was being
constructed. In the process of constituting objects, the
subject is transformed. Foucault wants to discover
different historical modes of transformation. What were the
conditions that motivated a conceptualization of a historical
object? How are the mad distinguished from the sane, the
legal from the illegal? Like Deleuze’s concept of
‘transcendental empiricism’, Foucault’s
‘historical a priori’ is the condition of disparate
relations that does not resemble the conditioned uses. Power-relations,
like Deleuze’s sub-representative intensities, open new
possibilities for action. They are not the many
related in one conceptual structure. They are
multiplicities.
We can see why Deleuze finds affinity with
Foucault. Foucault does not use a historical method. He
does not assume causal continuity. He does not give special
attention to the ideals of a dominant power. He does not
depend upon a prior conceptual structure of what is thought to be
historically important. He looks for singularities that are
not already assumed to be ‘what history means’. He
does not interpret. His raw material is the singularity of
the ‘event’. He reaches the intense affect of
becoming other. The infamous is a man, a
woman, a singular becoming in a zone of indiscernibility
where there is no prior continuity or connection between what is
and what is becoming, what is seen and what is said. Becoming
is a real change in nature that does not maintain the identity of
subject or object. Words in an obscure document reveal a
singular event that has no meaning in itself. There is only
the trace left by the words as they provoke an intense becoming
in the reader. There is no form of generality. There
is no unified subject. There are only singular assemblages
of haecceity that are not the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, or
in different historical readings. Rather, the
‘event’ enters into compositions of singular intensity.
These assemblages are dimensions of multiplicity. With each
intensive change of power relation, there is the becoming of a
new singularity—and the assemblage cannot divide without
changing nature within or across historical periods. There
are multiplicities of entangled time spans of really different
events. That is, a new degree of singularity brings a real
change in quality when read in the light of new power relations. Intensities
are said in one sense, but in dividing or changing degree, they
create real difference. There are no prior relations of
opposition. There are only assemblages which constitute the
consistency of a singular event. There is no maintenance of
one historical structure which, although infinitely variable,
would still be an invariant concept of what is thought to be
possible.
We have no idea what world the supplications
of the infamous tried to reveal. All that is left for us is
a trace event. All we know is that the “infamous”
were judged. Their entreaties fell on the deaf ears of the
powerful. The infamous were excluded into the otherness
outside the dominant structure. Meanwhile, dominant
historical forces got the privilege of writing the history.
Foucault’s “infamous” are inessential forces
Outside the powers of the dominant structure. Who, among
the humble, could appropriate and capture the forces of power?
The inessential man had, in some way, an important secret that
could be manifested only when forces of power came crashing in on
him. Even the little accidents and everyday squabbles had
to appear to be under the control of a grand language. Each
individual could try to appropriate the sovereign’s power
for one’s own good. But what hope did the ordinary man
have of presenting a petition with the required eloquence of that
grand language? The speech of the common man or woman could
not rise to the level of that dominant language. There was
a disparity between the content recounted and the manner of
expression. There was a disparity between a minor language
of the ordinary life and the major dominant language --- between
the language of helpless frustration and that of power
structures. However, at the turn of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, knowledge and power were related in a new
way. Literature was born. Literature’s task was
to search for the hidden, the forbidden, and the scandalous.
Literature was a non-truth presenting itself as artifice that
produces effects of truth. Literature is more than a form.
It is an obligation to tell the most ordinary secrets as
conditions of existence. Literature is the language of the
infamous. Literature is that singular art that brings to
light the new strategies of power and forms of knowledge.
We can see parallels between Deleuze and
Foucault. Saying is doing. That is, when discourse is
performative, then language itself stutters. There are
bifurcating terms and external relations of intensive continuous
variation (not a constant variability). Foucault, like
Deleuze, rejects any generality of structure which, although
diverse and changeable, still represents an invariant reality.
The stuttering of language creates a minor use of a major
language. The minor language is not outside (opposed to an
inside) of the major language. Language is a rhizome that
grows from the middle. It is the becoming in an intensive
zone of indiscernibility. When language stutters, language
reaches this limit of an Outside that makes language fall silent
because there is no subject. A minor language is not to be
confused with a structure of relations among fixed objects or
positions of subjects. Rather, there are new dispersions of
continuities and discontinuities that Deleuze & Guattari
describe as “flows” that do not close a structure.
Flows open new fields of possible action. Minoritarian
languages are the creative flows that the dominant language of
Power seeks to bring under its control.
Foucault writes a history of Western Culture
that, as I see it, exemplifies Deleuze’s univocal thought.
He understood that, when history is conceived to be a method that
presupposes prior objectifications, it cannot be the basis for
them. Foucault understood that we need a new
conceptualization of singular conditions of historical events.
A historical formation is a system of light that makes things
visible. A historical formation makes things visible and
utterable. But the visible and utterable are heterogeneous.
They battle against each other in the creation of new forms and
strategies.
Foucault, like Deleuze, rejects
structuralism. Foucault’s ‘power-relations’
are forces acting on other forces, not closed oppositional
relations of a prior structure. Power relations and forms
of knowledge always struggle against each other to create new
strategies. There are formations of knowledge-power that
constitute what can be seen or said by different social
institutions or historical periods. Foucault asks how
dispersion of singular events can create new constituent
oppositions for disparate practical uses.
Human beings find themselves already in
relations of signifying knowledge and forces of power that would
control individuals and determine their place in society. Foucault
changes the question about the relations of knowledge and power.
The question is no longer about relations in general. It
becomes the question about how it may be possible to liberate the
individual from dominant forces of power that predetermine
possibilities of individuation. How can there be new forces
of subjectification that do not subjugate the individual to
forces of domination?
Therefore, Foucault’s historical
process is in contrast to the usual historical method. Foucault
makes a distinction between the method of historical analysis
(which he does not mean to disqualify) and his own philosophy of
history. He makes a distinction between the historical
study of causes, ideologies, institutions, and theories on the
one hand; and his own research into the conditions that make
certain practices acceptable for a given period in history, on
the other. Instead of a presumption of historical constants
that appear to be self-evident, he attempts to make the singular
visible. He means to reveal connections and blockages that
condition appearances of self-evidence, universality, or
necessity. He means to discover practices that connect new
singular events of seeing-saying. Discontinuities are not
overlooked. New continuities are discovered that are never
predetermined. Reason is not presumed to be an absolute or
inherent value. ‘Reason’ must be restricted to
the singular conditions of its practical use. Like Deleuze,
Foucault looks for the truth of relative uses, not the relativity
of universal totalizing Truth. This is not historical
interpretation that would claim to integrate data into an Ideal
general essence. Foucault does not look for some essence of
society as a Whole. Like Deleuze’s difference,
Foucault’s forces do not constitute negative oppositions.
Rather, a constituent opposition is actualized from its own
singular positive difference, each time. He attempts to
find singular conditions of disparate distinctions between true
and false --- disparate conditions of the visible (what is seen)
and the expressible (what is said). The void of
indiscernibility conditions disparate distinctions between Reason
and Madness (2).
Both Deleuze and Foucault write of an
Outside void where art and reason are indiscernible from the
madness of unreason. Creative power relations of this zone
of indiscernibility act to change the nature of reality
throughout history. But the dominant Powers attempt to plug
up all lines of flight to the Outside. The dominant Power
must attempt to maintain control. It labels as
“mad” anything that threatens the maintenance of its
structural identity. Whether by negative dialectics,
structuralism with its regimes of madness, Oedipal images of
psychoanalysis, or performative speech acts of exclusion;
dominant Power attempts to admit only such difference that
maintains its own structural identity. But Deleuze and
Foucault now, at our time in history, radically challenge the
right of Power to decree what madness is. Deleuze and
Foucault see/say health as art of life that opens structures into
new forms of becoming. Now they see/say madness to be the
blockages that keep structure closed. Madness forecloses
the process that is open to the Outside.
In the Conclusion of The Archaeology of
Knowledge, Foucault imagines how a debate with a critic might
unfold. I briefly paraphrase the debate as follows:
Foucault’s critic: You disavow
structuralism. However, historical method can’t
analyze discourse outside the time of its occurrence. Historical
discourse can’t separate a speaking subject from the time of
its representations.
Foucault: There is no discourse
immanent to a subject (5). Diachrony is not a
general universal form of knowledge or structure of continuity.
There is no universal model of temporal discourse. There
are only disparate discursive practices that constitute the
positions and functions a subject may come to occupy.
Critic: The discursive succession of
history must be the study of a teleological continuity. Reason
must be developed within the structure of the subject’s
thought. There must be a language of reason that determines
the structure by which other languages can be analyzed.
Foucault: Structuralism that
determines who the subject is in its transcendental dominance can
only see that which has made it possible. We need to free
history from this transcendental subjectivity in order to be open
to possible discontinuities. We must not assume there are
pre-established horizons, teleology, subjective form, structure,
or phenomenology. But this debate is not really about
structuralism. It is really about the attempt to maintain
the identity of subjective consciousness.
Critic: How can your discourse avoid
the structure you want to free yourself from?
Foucault: My discourse avoids any
prior ground. There is no concealed origin, law, or general
theory. There is dispersion not reducible to one system of
differences. My archaeology is not a science. It
constitutes new systems of differences. It constitutes new
objects, subjective positions, concepts, and strategic choices of
different practices. However, these positivities are not
determined from inside (i.e. subjective consciousness) or outside
(i.e. empirical states). Rather, they are discursive
practices of formation. There are speech acts that do
something. There are performative discursive practices that
have singular uses. They do not say what a subject thinks. They
do not maintain a structure of identity.
Foucault’s question for his critic:
How can there be any real historical change under your
assumptions of universal presence? What is the fear that
motivates you to seek (beyond boundaries, ruptures, and real
changes) a transcendent destiny of Western thought? You can
only be motivated from within an already formed structure of
political power. However, the time of discourse is not of
consciousness. History is not merely the synthesizing
activity of the subject. It does not trace back to an
origin. Historical discourse leaves only an insubstantial
trace of objects that have no identity through time. There
is only a time of dispersion (4). Enunciative divergence
never maintains a constant relation to truth.
(1) Isn’t
this why Foucault elsewhere says that perhaps one day the 20th
century will be known as Deleuzian? Certainly during that
century, that which Foucault-Deleuze could see or say had not
much chance of being seen or heard.
(2) This zone
is a void where art and madness are indiscernible. See my
article ‘Art and Madness’.
(3) See my
article ‘Univocity vs. Phenomenology’.
(4) This time
of dispersion is parallel to Deleuze’s empty form of
‘Aion’.
(5) Deleuze
would agree that anything immanent to a subject
reintroduces transcendence of representational thought.