Blair McDonald, New Coalitions and Other Ruptures: Foucault and the Hope for Bodies and Pleasures, M/C Journal, Vol. 13, No. 6 (2010) – ‘coalition’, Vol. 13, No. 6 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.293
See here for entire article
This essay takes its point of departure from a well known excerpt found in the final pages of Michel Foucault’s text, The History of Sexuality: Volume One. It reads as follows:
“It is the agency of sex that we must break away from, if we aim-through a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality- to counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures and knowledges, in their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance. The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures.” (157)
Here for the first time in this text Foucault outlines a tactic for resisting the various mechanisms of sexuality. Yet, how are we to make sense of the potential sexual politics inherent to this claim? Not only does this passage mark a significant shift in the tone and style of Foucault’s writing but it is arguable that his tactic – our point of resistance should be aimed at bodies and pleasures as opposed to sex-desires – is problematic in light of his own conception of power and sexuality discussed earlier in the book. In re-reading the above passage we see that Foucault clearly acknowledges that “bodies, pleasures and knowledges” come to be in and through the exercising of power; so how is it that Foucault invokes the possibility for counterattacks on the level of bodies and pleasures yet not on the level of sex-desire? In plain language, what is Foucault trying to say here?
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