Foucault’s notion of power erases class and revolution

Evidence

Foucault’s eagerness not to fall into Marxist economism causes him to obliterate the role of classes, the role of economics, the role of insurgency and rebellion in the societies he discusses…. The problem is that Foucault’s use of the term pouvoir moves around too much, swallowing up every obstacle in its path, … obliterating change and mystifying its microphysical sovereignty…. Foucault’s history is ultimately textual or rather textualized; its mode is one for which Borges would have an affinity … they [his archaeologies] make not even a nominal allowance for emergent movements, and none for revolutions, counterhegemony, or historical blocs. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 373

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to my 2001: A Space Odyssey reading about how systems-level models can erase human agency — Foucault’s power swallowing obstacles parallels the monolith’s opaque determinism in Clarke. — connects to: Omnipresent power undermines the grounding of resistance in Foucault’s theory — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 339; Foucault’s anti-Marxism blinded him to capital as domination — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 150; His revolutionary class critique is stripped from watered-down versions of Freire — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1409 (+1 more)

Related

• Foucault’s anti-economism leads him to erase class and rebellion (similarity 0.89)
• Foucault’s anti-Marxism blinded him to capital as domination (similarity 0.85)
• Foucault proposed war as the model for understanding political power (similarity 0.80)
• Power analysis must shift from sovereignty to relations of domination. (similarity 0.80)
• Western thought has no representation of power outside the legal model (similarity 0.80)
• Analyzing power requires abandoning the juridical-representation model entirely (similarity 0.79)
• Foucault’s resistance lacks grounding because he abandons ideology (similarity 0.78)
• Foucault sought to break thought free of the sovereign-model of power (similarity 0.78)