{"id":589,"date":"2015-11-23T18:30:13","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T23:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/?p=589"},"modified":"2016-02-07T19:21:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T00:21:48","slug":"foucault-613-robert-gooding-williams-on-foucault-and-modern-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/2015\/11\/23\/foucault-613-robert-gooding-williams-on-foucault-and-modern-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Gooding-Williams on Foucault and Modern Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Robert Gooding-Williams<\/strong><\/p>\n

My comments focus on Foucault\u2019s analysis of modern racism in Society Must Be Defended.<\/em> Part 1 explains the \u201chow-possibly\u201d question that motivates Foucault\u2019s analysis. Part 2 explains and evaluates Foucault\u2019s answer to that question, giving particular attention to his thesis that modern racism is racism against the abnormal (a thesis that he initially introduces, I believe, in Abnormal).<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Part 1: Foucault\u2019s Question<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Comment 1.1<\/u><\/p>\n

Foucault\u2019s analysis of modern racism stems from his observation that the nineteenth century saw a transformation of the concept of political right\u2014specifically that the right to \u201cmake live and let die\u201d came to complement, penetrate and permeate (p. 241) the right to \u201ctake life or let live.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>For Foucault this new right\u2014I shall call it \u201cthe political right of biopower,\u201d involves a paradox. On one hand, the function of the modern state\u2014the state in the mode of biopower\u2014is to make live: that is, to enhance life, to improve it. On the other hand, the political right of biopower entitles the state to let die. It seems, then, that the political right of biopower exceeds and contradicts the function of biopower. Foucault puts the paradox this way: \u201cGiven that this power\u2019s objective is essentially to make live, how can it let die?\u201d In other words, given that the objective of biopower is to improve life, what explains the legitimation of biopower by appeal to a novel notion of political right that sanctions the state\u2019s use of biopower to \u201ccall for deaths, to demand death?\u201d<\/p>\n

Comment 1.2<\/u><\/p>\n

Before considering Foucault\u2019s answer to this question, I wish to comment further on the form of the question itself. The question, I suggest, has the form of what philosophers have sometimes called a \u201chow possibly (or how-possible) question,\u201d a rather nice analysis of which Robert Nozick provides in his book, Philosophical Explanations<\/u><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Philosophical explanation is a form of philosophy appropriate to answering questions like: how is it possible for us to have free will, given that all acts are causally determined? Or, for example: how is it possible that we know anything given that it is logically possible that we are dreaming? As is evident from these examples, the questions that motivate philosophical explanations tend to involve the identification of what Nozick calls \u201capparent excluders.\u201d In other words, the questions that motivate these explanations tend to take the following form: how is it possible that such-and-such is the case, given (or supposing)<\/em> a set of considerations that appear to exclude<\/em>\u2014that is, to rule out\u2014the possibility that such-and-such is the case. In the first of the aforementioned examples, the consideration that all acts are causally determined appears to rule out the possibility that we have free will. In the second of the aforementioned examples, the consideration that it is logically possible that we are dreaming appears to rule out the possibility that we know anything. Philosophical explanations tend to answer the \u201chow possibly\u201d questions that prompt them by attempting to show how it is possible for such-and-such to be the case, notwithstanding <\/em>the considerations\u2014that is, the reasons\u2014that appear to rule out that possibility.<\/p>\n

In the 17 March 1976 lecture, the \u201chow possibly\u201d question to which Foucault offers a political philosophical explanation is: how is it possible to legitimate, or to justify, modern state biopower (the modern state in the mode of biopower) by appeal to a political right to call for deaths, or to demand death, notwithstanding <\/em>that the function of modern state biopower is to improve life.<\/p>\n

In Foucault\u2019s view, the consideration that the function of modern state biopower is to improve life appears to exclude<\/em>, or to rule out, the possibility of justifying modern state biopower by appeal to a political right to call for deaths, or to demand death. The point of the political philosophical explanation and answer that Foucault offers to the \u201chow possibly\u201d question he poses is to show how it is possible that modern state biopower justifies or legitimates itself by appeal to a political right to call for deaths, or to demand death, notwithstanding the consideration that the function of modern state biopower is to improve live.<\/em><\/p>\n

Comment 1.3<\/u><\/p>\n

Foucault would not have read Nozick\u2019s 1981 book before delivering the lecture we are considering, but he certainly read Nietzsche, and the \u201chow possibly\u201d question that he poses in the 17 March 1976 lecture at once echoes and brilliantly inverts the central, \u201chow possibly\u201d question that Nietzsche poses in the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morality<\/u>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Having distinguished the worldly asceticism of the philosopher from the life-denying, otherworldly asceticism of the priest (for a good discussion of Nietzsche\u2019s treatment of this distinction, see Alexander Nehamas\u2019s Nietzsche<\/em>), Nietzsche later suggests that the ascetic ideal of the priest expresses a paradox.<\/p>\n

On one hand, Nietzsche remarks that the priest\u2019s ascetic ideal relates our life, including nature and the entire sphere of becoming and transitoriness to \u201can entirely different kind of existence, which it opposes and excludes, unless<\/em>, perhaps, it were to turn against itself, to negate life<\/em>: in this case, the case of the ascetic life, life is held to be a bridge for that other existence.\u201d On the other hand, Nietzsche writes that the ascetic ideal is \u201cexactly the opposite of what its venerators suppose\u2026.[it] is an artifice for the preservation<\/em> of life.\u201d Thus, the \u201cascetic priest, this seeming enemy of life, this negating one\u2014<\/em>precisely he belongs to the very great conserving <\/em>and yes-creating <\/em>forces of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

On my reading, Nietzsche devotes much of the second half of the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morality<\/em> to explaining this paradox: that is, to sketching a philosophical explanation that answers the question: how is possible for the ascetic ideal to function as an artifice for preserving life, given the consideration that the raison d\u2019etre <\/em>of priestly asceticism is the negation of life\u2014a consideration that appears to exclude and rule out the possibility that priestly asceticism function as an artifice for preserving life.<\/p>\n

It is plausible, then, to say that, at an appropriate level of abstraction, Foucault\u2019s question inverts Nietzsche\u2019s question: for where Nietzsche asks: how can a force (the ascetic ideal) that exists to negate life function to preserve life, Foucault asks: how can a force (modern state biopower) that exists to enhance life legitimately or justifiably function to let die and to demand death.<\/p>\n

Put briefly, Nietzsche\u2019s explanation and answer to the \u201chow possibly\u201d question he poses is that the ascetic priest, in interpreting human suffering in the perspective of guilt, assigns an end, nothingness, to human willing, and so rescues<\/em> suffering life from a suicidal inclination to renounce willing. For, as Nietzsche famously remarks, \u201cman would rather will nothingness than not will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Put briefly, Foucault\u2019s explanation and answer to the \u201chow possibly\u201d question he poses is to be sought in his answer to another question, to which I shall shortly turn: \u201cWhat in fact is racism?\u201d (p. 254).<\/p>\n

Comment 1.4<\/u><\/p>\n

Just as it is important to identify the \u201chow possibly\u201d question that Foucault means to answer with his account of racism, so too is it important to identify the questions and concerns that he is not<\/u> intending to address.<\/em><\/p>\n

For example, Foucault is not intending to \u201ctrace the history of racism in the general and traditional sense of the term\u201d (P.87).<\/p>\n

Neither is he intending to explain what in Society <\/em>he calls \u201cordinary racism,\u201d which takes the form of \u201cmutual contempt or hatred between races\u201d (p.258), or what in Abnormal <\/em>he calls \u201cethnic racism,\u201d the prejudice or defense of one group against another (pp.316-17).<\/p>\n

Finally, Foucault is not intending to explain racist scapegoating\u2014what he describes as a sort of \u201cideological operation that allows states or a class to displace the hostility that is directed toward [them], or which is tormenting the social body,<\/em> onto a mythical adversary\u201d (p.258). With these remarks, Foucault no doubt means to distance himself from the Sartre of Anti-Semite and Jew<\/em>, who argued that anti-Semitism is a \u201cmythical, bourgeois representation of the class struggle\u201d that sums up all social divisions in the distinction between \u201cJew and non-Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part 2: Foucault\u2019s Answer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Comment 2.1<\/u><\/p>\n

Foucault\u2019s question, what in fact is racism (p.254), is, in fact, short hand for two distinct questions: 1) what does modern racism amount to as a doctrine\u2014as a set of claims; 2) what functions does this doctrine serve? <\/em><\/p>\n

That Foucault is committed to answering the first question is already implied in his acknowledgment that racism antedates the modern state\u2019s deployment of racism as a mechanism of power. Before the emergence of biopower, and before biopower inscribed racism in the mechanisms of the modern state, Foucault tells us that \u201c[i]t [racism] had already been in existence for a very long time. But\u2026it functioned elsewhere\u201d (p. 254). The second question is the question that really interests Foucault, for to say what functions doctrinal racism serves after the emergence of biopower is precisely to say how its deployment as a mechanism of power effectively answers his \u201chow possibly\u201d question.<\/p>\n

Comment 2.2<\/u><\/p>\n

Considered as a doctrine Foucault identifies modern racism with \u201c[t]he appearance within the biological continuum of the human race of races, the distinction among races, the hierarchy of races, the fact that certain races are described as good, and that others, in contrast, are described as inferior.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

At this point in his lecture, Foucault is summarizing and moving quickly, but what I take him to be setting forth here is a rather uncontroversial, ideal-typical account of Western race-thinking\u2014what the philosopher Paul Taylor calls \u201cclassical racialism\u201d\u2014as it had taken shape by the end of the nineteenth century. Following Taylor, the key tenets of classical racialism include: 1) that the human race can be \u201cexhaustively divided\u201d into a few discrete racial subgroups; 2) that each of these subgroups is distinguished by a \u201cunique set of heritable and physiologically traits,\u201d most notably, morphological differences in complexion and body shape; 3) that these distinctive sets of physiological traits \u201cvary\u2026with distinctive sets of moral, cognitive, and cultural characteristics\u201d; and 4) that the groups (races) defined by these clusters of traits can be ranked along \u201cgraduated scales of worth and capacity\u201d (see Taylor, Race: A Philosophical Introduction, <\/em>pp. 47-48)<\/p>\n

Comment 2.3<\/u><\/p>\n

Racism\u2019s first function: to subdivide the human species <\/em><\/p>\n

Here, Foucault is claiming that a) the emergence of biopower corresponds to a distinctive way of describing the human beings addressed by biopower (or \u201cat whom\u201d biopower is directed)\u2014which is to say that biopower addresses human beings not<\/em> as an aggregate \u201cindividuals,\u201d or \u201cindividual bodies,\u201d but as a \u201cspecies\u201d (a global mass) that is \u201caffected by overall processes characteristic of birth, death, production, illness, and so on\u201d (pp. 242-243); and b) that, in the wake of the emergence of biopower, the first function<\/em> of doctrinal racism (classical racialism) is to \u201cfragment\u201d the human species<\/em>; or, more precisely, to augment<\/em> the description under which biopower addresses (or is directed at) human beings by describing them not simply as a species, but, additionally, as a \u201cmixture\u201d of subspecies, or races, into which the species is subdivided by biological type (pp.254-55).<\/p>\n

Comment 2.4<\/u><\/p>\n

Racism\u2019s second function: to justify the state\u2019s call for death (for murder, for extermination).<\/em><\/p>\n

Foucault\u2019s account of modern racism\u2019s second function makes explicit his answer to the \u201chow possibly\u201d question he has posed.<\/p>\n

More exactly, Foucault claims that the second function<\/em> of doctrinal racism is to make possible the justification of modern state biopower by appeal to a political right to demand death, notwithstanding <\/em>the consideration that the function of modern state biopower is to improve life.<\/p>\n

Doctrinal racism serves this second function, precisely because it is a doctrine on the basis of which the state can justify and make acceptable its \u201cmurderous\u201d actions by appeal to the right to demand death. But justify to whom? Who demands this justification? Is Foucault suggesting that citizens would withdraw (would have withdrawn?) their allegiance to the biopower state were it not able to justify or make acceptable its murderous actions by explaining how these actions improved life? If this is his view, what evidence supports it?<\/p>\n

In short, doctrinal racism is a doctrine on the basis of which the state can argue that it is entitled to demand the death of some races\u2014of \u201cbad\u201d and \u201cinferior\u201d races\u2014because<\/em> the extermination of those races \u201cwill make life in general healthier: healthier and purer;\u201d or, in other words, because the extermination of those races will advance the cause of improving life, which, again, is the function of modern state biopower. (pp.255-56).<\/p>\n

It is perhaps obvious that doctrinal racism could not serve its second function without serving its first function; or, in other words, that doctrinal racism could not serve its justificatory function unless it were the sort of doctrine that served to fragment the human species by dividing it into distinct races. Thus racism\u2019s first function, no less than its second, plays a critical role in Foucault\u2019s philosophical explanation of the legitimation of modern biopower by appeal to a political right to let die.<\/p>\n

Note, finally, that Foucault\u2019s account of doctrinal racism\u2019s second function involves two theses, one weaker than the other.<\/p>\n

The weak thesis\u2014what I summarize above\u2014is that doctrinal racism suffices <\/em>to make possible the justification of modern state biopower by appeal to a political right to demand death.<\/p>\n

The strong thesis is that doctrinal racism is necessary <\/em>to make possible the justification of modern state biopower by appeal to a political right to demand death. Foucault asserts the strong thesis when he writes that racism is the \u201cindispensable<\/em> precondition that allows someone to be killed,\u201d and that \u201c[o]nce the State functions in the biopower mode, racism alone<\/em> can justify the murderous function of the State\u201d (p.256, my italics).<\/p>\n

The weak thesis is plausible, the strong thesis less so.<\/p>\n

With regard to the strong thesis Foucault neglects to show there are not<\/em> other, non-racialist<\/em> ways to conceptualize populations that could be adduced to justify \u201cthe murderous function\u201d of the state in the biopower mode (e.g., with regard to the dangers presented by rates of population growth that exceed certain thresholds, the state could select individuals to kill by lot\u2014thus, not by race).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Comment 2.5<\/u><\/p>\n

A further consideration of racism\u2019s second function: a fifth tenet<\/em><\/p>\n

Foucault\u2019s account of racism\u2019s second function involves the claim that modern racism obtains not only when the state undertakes to murder and exterminate the lower and inferior races, but, in addition, when it undertakes to murder the \u201cabnormal\u201d or \u201cdegenerate\u201d members of the superior race.<\/p>\n

As philosopher Ladelle McWhorter quite persuasively argues (see McWhorter\u2019s Foucault-inspired, Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America<\/em>), this claim relies on the idea that, in addition to tenets 1)-4) identified in Paul Taylor\u2019s definition of classical racialism, the doctrinal content of modern racism includes the claim 5), that morphological and physiological differences between racial types indicate differences in degrees of development, such that inferior races count as inferior because <\/em>they are less well or imperfectly developed. In Foucault\u2019s view, it is but a hort step from this fifth tenet to the argument that developmentally deficient (degenerate) members of the superior race\u2014imbeciles, criminals, consumptives, masturbators, deaf-mutes, epileptics, psychopaths, homosexuals and Appalachian paupers\u2014should be eliminated for the same reason that it is desirable to eliminate developmentally deficient inferior races: namely, to make life in general healthier and purer. Thus, if the white (Aryan, Nordic) race is the superior race, then doctrinal racism (fifth tenet included) allows modern biopower to argue that it is entitled to demand not only the murder of developmentally deficient non-white races, but, in addition, the murder of developmentally deficient members of the white race. \u00a0\u201cRacism against the abnormal\u201d is what Foucault calls racism directed against the developmentally deficient.<\/p>\n

Comment 2.6<\/u><\/p>\n

Objection 1: Foucault\u2019s account of modern racism is too narrow, for it fails to acknowledge other functions that racism can serve.<\/em><\/p>\n

To be sure, Foucault remarks that when he speaks of \u201ckilling\u201d he means to include \u201cevery form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.\u201d That said, we may still worry that Foucault\u2019s answer to the question \u201cWhat in fact is racism,\u201d overlooks some of the functions that doctrinal racism, or, again, classical racialism, served.<\/p>\n

In other words, we may accept that doctrinal racism fragments the species and that, in so doing, it also makes possible the justification of state biopower by appeal to a right to demand death (not only literal death, but figurative and otherwise \u201cindirect\u201d death), yet still wish to take note of the other<\/em> justificatory functions it has served during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; e.g., the function of justifying chattel slavery and, as Du Bois (Dusk of Dawn)<\/em>, Sartre (Critique of Dialectical Reason<\/em>), and many others have noted, the function of justifying colonial economic exploitation. \u00a0Foucault is certainly right to note that colonialism involved genocide, but that is not all it involved (p.257).<\/p>\n

Comment 2.7<\/u><\/p>\n

Objection 2: Foucault\u2019s account is too broad.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>It is too broad, for it loses sight of the historical, sociological, and ideological specificity of each of the different modes of oppression that Foucault comprehends under the notion of \u201cracism against the abnormal. Taking account of the multi-dimensional specificities of modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-black racism, and modern anti-Arab racism, not to mention sexuality- and gender-based oppressions, or the intersection between different kinds of oppression, is likely to argue against the thesis that all these phenomena always or even typically satisfy the notion of racism against abnormal.<\/p>\n

Comment 2.8<\/u><\/p>\n

A final conjecture: that Foucault\u2019s analysis is at once too narrow and too broad because he tends to equate Nazi racism with modern racism as such<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The thought here is that Foucault\u2019s central example drives his argument, leading him to underestimate<\/em> the functional scope of doctrinal racism and to overestimate<\/em> the extension of the concept of racism against the abnormal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robert Gooding-Williams My comments focus on Foucault\u2019s analysis of modern racism in Society Must Be Defended. Part 1 explains the \u201chow-possibly\u201d question that motivates Foucault\u2019s analysis. Part 2 explains and evaluates Foucault\u2019s answer to that question, giving particular attention… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1644,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38940,38959],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foucault-613","category-posts-6-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1644"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/foucault1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}