Foucault on Sex and Power
In an interview on films that deal with the French experience of World War II, Foucault comments on the use of the Nazi aesthetic in pornography.
'So there's a fairly elementary antithesis between power and love...
Power has an erotic charge. There's an historical problem involved here. How is it that Nazism-which was represented by shabby, pathetic puritanical characters laughably Victorian old maids, or at best, smutty individuals-how has it now managed to become, in France, in Germany, in the United States, in all pornographic literature throughout the world, the ultimate symbol of eroticism? Every shoddy erotic fantasy is now attributed to Nazism. Which raises a fundamentally serious problem: how do you love power? Nobody loves power any more. This kind of affective, erotic attachment, this desire one has for power, for power that's exercised over you, doesn't exist any more. The monarchy and its rituals were created to stimulate this sort of erotic relationship towards power. The massive Stalinist apparatus, and even that of Hitler, were constructed for the same purpose. But it's all collapsed in ruins and obviously you can't be in love with Brezhnev, Pompidou or Nixon. In a pinch you might love de Gaulle, Kennedy or Churchill. But what's going on at the moment? Aren't we witnessing beginnings of a re-eroticization of power, taken to a pathetic, ridiculous extreme by the porn-shops with Nazi insignia that you can find in the United States and (a much more acceptable but just as ridiculous version) in the behavior of Giscard d'Estaing when he says, "I'm going to march down the streets in a lounge suit, shaking hands with ordinary people and kids on half-day holidays"? It's a fact that Giscard has built part of his campaign not only on his fine physical bearing but also on a certain eroticizing of his character, his stylishness.'
Michel Foucault (1996) 'Film and Popular Memory' in Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984), New York: Semiotext(e), p. 127. French original 1974.
Misreading of Foucault as arguing for eroticization of destructive power explains part of the problem of processing Mackinnon. Along comes Mackinnon who identifies the generative power of imperialism as the wargasm. But she hasn't developed her critique of the eroticization of power nearly well enough to do anything other than refine the use of her work as a part of the global eroticization of power. This bothers the effete aesthetes the sort of people the futurists heaped scorn on and perhaps rightly so the movement has no use for people who think revolution is some dinner party some refined ballroom dance and not in fact an act of violence wherein one class ousts another from the seat of power.
MIM left you the idea of a permanent opposition in the First World of a disciplined minority vanguard able through coordinated minority action to severely fuck with the imps. All the shards of the shattered Maoist Internationalist Movement simply have to process what MIM was saying. If they need to get confronted by porn for that process of reflection too fucking bad wimps.
Be glad you are not being presented horrific images of people dying, split apart, heads falling off, two girls one cup sort of stuff is mild in comparison. If gore would work to oppose imperialism I would use that. Sex works. You don't like it? Tough shit.
'So there's a fairly elementary antithesis between power and love...
Power has an erotic charge. There's an historical problem involved here. How is it that Nazism-which was represented by shabby, pathetic puritanical characters laughably Victorian old maids, or at best, smutty individuals-how has it now managed to become, in France, in Germany, in the United States, in all pornographic literature throughout the world, the ultimate symbol of eroticism? Every shoddy erotic fantasy is now attributed to Nazism. Which raises a fundamentally serious problem: how do you love power? Nobody loves power any more. This kind of affective, erotic attachment, this desire one has for power, for power that's exercised over you, doesn't exist any more. The monarchy and its rituals were created to stimulate this sort of erotic relationship towards power. The massive Stalinist apparatus, and even that of Hitler, were constructed for the same purpose. But it's all collapsed in ruins and obviously you can't be in love with Brezhnev, Pompidou or Nixon. In a pinch you might love de Gaulle, Kennedy or Churchill. But what's going on at the moment? Aren't we witnessing beginnings of a re-eroticization of power, taken to a pathetic, ridiculous extreme by the porn-shops with Nazi insignia that you can find in the United States and (a much more acceptable but just as ridiculous version) in the behavior of Giscard d'Estaing when he says, "I'm going to march down the streets in a lounge suit, shaking hands with ordinary people and kids on half-day holidays"? It's a fact that Giscard has built part of his campaign not only on his fine physical bearing but also on a certain eroticizing of his character, his stylishness.'
Michel Foucault (1996) 'Film and Popular Memory' in Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984), New York: Semiotext(e), p. 127. French original 1974.
Misreading of Foucault as arguing for eroticization of destructive power explains part of the problem of processing Mackinnon. Along comes Mackinnon who identifies the generative power of imperialism as the wargasm. But she hasn't developed her critique of the eroticization of power nearly well enough to do anything other than refine the use of her work as a part of the global eroticization of power. This bothers the effete aesthetes the sort of people the futurists heaped scorn on and perhaps rightly so the movement has no use for people who think revolution is some dinner party some refined ballroom dance and not in fact an act of violence wherein one class ousts another from the seat of power.
MIM left you the idea of a permanent opposition in the First World of a disciplined minority vanguard able through coordinated minority action to severely fuck with the imps. All the shards of the shattered Maoist Internationalist Movement simply have to process what MIM was saying. If they need to get confronted by porn for that process of reflection too fucking bad wimps.
Be glad you are not being presented horrific images of people dying, split apart, heads falling off, two girls one cup sort of stuff is mild in comparison. If gore would work to oppose imperialism I would use that. Sex works. You don't like it? Tough shit.
posted by Maoist Internationalist Movement at 3:36 PM
1 Comments:
Foucault sucks. You don't like it? Tough shit.
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