Power is employed through a net-like organisation. And not only do individuals circulate between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power. They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation. (Foucault, “Two Lectures,” 98)
In one sense, this is exactly the kind of permeability I’m talking about. The body, the Self, is not a unitary, bounded entity, engaged in a constant struggle for sovereignty, sending wave after wave of amateur soldier-acts into gory battle with the infinite Other. War is a worn metaphor, and politics is, indeed, war. The Self is an open border with the outside.
Then again, I’ve never thought about the permeable self in terms of power. But isn’t evaporation also the erasure of power? It is the end of war, but it is both more and less than peace. Something remains of the earlier discourse, the earlier Self, but it is integrated again into something larger: global, but not yet total.
No Comments