Power, Freedom, and Individuality: Foucault and Sexual Difference

Abstract

This paper offers a detailed account of Foucault's ethical and political notion of individuality as presented in his late work, and discusses its relationship to the feminist project of the theory of sexual difference. I argue that Foucault's elaboration of the classical ethos of "care for the self" opens the way for regarding the "I-woman" as an ethical, political and aesthetic self-creation. However, it has significant limitations that cannot be ignored. I elaborate on two aspects of Foucault's avoidance of sexual difference as a relevant category for an account of political and ethical individuality, which thus implicitly associates individual agency with men. I argue that Foucault implicitly assumes the existence of an ontological desire to become engaged in political self-creation. However, the ethical position of self-knowledge and desire should be understood as a contingent option that depends on material and historical conditions for its realization. Hence, I argue that a feminist reworking of Foucault's notion of political individuality should add a substantial ethical condition to the imperative of self-knowledge and self-creation -making possible the desiring woman subject.For more than 25 years, feminist theory has been considering possible alliances between feminist political thought and Foucault's work. One of the issues related to these alliances is the actual plausibility of Foucault's political suggestion of a feminist ethical and political endeavor of refiguring subjectivity. It is widely accepted that Foucault's ideas bear only limited relevance to the project of sexual difference theory, which holds the basic premise that the category of "woman" and its specific symbolic and imaginary significance is a necessary locus for overcoming phallocentric subjectivity. The major controversy revolves around the role of sexed identity in the political project of creating new and multiple positions of subjectivity. 1 Individuality and The "Folding" of PowerJudith Butler describes Foucault's notion of the subject in terms of the possibility of exceeding the linearity of power:

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