The Primacy of Resistance: Anarchism, Foucault, and the Art of Not Being Governed

461 Pages·2017·2.48 MB·English

WWeesstteerrnn UUnniivveerrssiittyy
SScchhoollaarrsshhiipp@@WWeesstteerrnn
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
11-4-2016 12:00 AM
TThhee PPrriimmaaccyy ooff RReessiissttaannccee:: AAnnaarrcchhiissmm,, FFoouuccaauulltt,, aanndd tthhee AArrtt ooff
NNoott BBeeiinngg GGoovveerrnneedd
Derek C. Barnett, The University of Western Ontario
Supervisor: Mark Franke, The University of Western Ontario
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree
in Theory and Criticism
© Derek C. Barnett 2016
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd
Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, and the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons
RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn
Barnett, Derek C., "The Primacy of Resistance: Anarchism, Foucault, and the Art of Not Being Governed"
(2016). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4265.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4265
This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted
for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of
Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected].
i

Abstract

Beginning with a critical inquiry into the reasons why the field of the political is
traditionally elaborated in the archic nexus between government and state sovereignty,
this study examines the possibilities of elaborating an alternative theory of the political in
the intersections between Michel Foucault’s theory of resistance and anarchist political
theory. Taking Foucault’s fifth thesis on power from The History of Sexuality as an
alternative paradigm from which to reread the history of the political, the aim of this
study is to demonstrate that the hallmark of Foucault’s work emerges in the ways in
which his analytic of power strategically shifts the site of politics away from its
traditional locus in the exercise of government to the question of resistance. Under what
I will elaborate in terms of the primacy of resistance, I argue that Foucault’s studies of
power and governmentality reveal an anarchist hypothesis of the political in the critical
caesura between the political as archē and the political as agōn. Affirming a mutual
alliance between anarchist theory and Foucault against the orthodox foundations of
political philosophy not only exposes the conceptual principles that continue to sustain
Western political practices, but also opens up the space to pursue the implications of a
form of politics inseparable from the elaboration of permanent ethics of revolt, a distinct
way of being in the world through resistance—that is, a specific art of not being
governed. When the concepts of power and government are understood to emerge on
condition of resistance, the political conceived as archē reveals its own contingency, and
the question of politics is redirected from a constituent theory of an oikonomia to a
destituent theory of resistance, a critical ethos of becoming ungovernable, not as a
revolutionary overthrow of power, but as an art of not being governed. Rather than
reducing Foucault to anarchism, however, it is my contention that the intersection
between them emerges in the critical attempts to locate a form of politics which, in
refusing to reconstitute itself as power, could never assume the form of an archē.
ii

Keywords
Foucault, Michel; Anarchism; Anarchist Studies; Post-Anarchism; Resistance Studies;

Post-Structuralism; Political Philosophy
iii

Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the guidance, support, and time
provided by my supervisor Dr. Mark Franke. Dr. Franke’s patience and careful reading
of the early drafts of this work have had an immense impact on my own thought, and his
invaluable role in the completion of this project exemplifies an ethos of mutual aid. A
special gratitude is also to be extended to my colleagues and professors of the Centre for
Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario for cultivating a richly
intellectual environment from which a project like this could flourish.
I am eternally indebted to my mother, father, and two brothers whose love and kindness
have continuously supported me throughout my endeavors.
Far too many people have given me invaluable support and encouragement while I
worked on this project. Although I cannot list them all, I am forever grateful to all of my
friends, many of whom were the very inspiration behind the arguments developed
throughout this project. Among them, I need to especially recognize Alex Hunter and
Leah Ortiz whose genuine kindness is without end, Kayla Cerone and Heather Abraham
for their continuous encouragement, Abby Paulos and Jeremy Arnott for offering their
care in a time of need, and the Milwaukee punk community for refusing to be governed.
iv

Table of Contents

Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i
Keywords ............................................................................................................................ ii
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv
Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................48
1 On The Crisis of the Political: Government, Sovereignty, and the Paradigm of the
Archē……………………………………………………………………………………..45
1.2 The Aristotelian Paradigm of the Archē: Politics as an Exercise of Government. .55
1.3 The Schmittian Paradigm: Sovereignty as a Political Paradigm of Government ...73
1.4 Critical Turns Toward Anarchism ..........................................................................85
1.5 Postanarchism .........................................................................................................91
1.5 Meta-politics ...........................................................................................................99
1.6 Toward a Critical Theory of Anarchism ...............................................................108
Chapter 2 ..........................................................................................................................112
2 Anarchy and Anarchism: Rethinking the Political at the Horizon of the State and the
Exercise of Government ..................................................................................................112
2.1 Drawing the Line Once Again: Anarchism and Marxism on the Concept of
Struggle ............................................................................................................................117
2.2 Defining Anarchism ..............................................................................................127
2.3 Anarchy as a Philosophical Principle ...................................................................135
2.4 Anarchy as a Historical Principle of Intelligibility of the Political ......................143
2.6 Anarchy as a Historical Paradigm of Resistance ..................................................156
2.7 Towards an Anarchist Hypothesis of the Political ................................................170
Chapter 3 ..........................................................................................................................174
3 An Anarchist Hypothesis of the Political: Foucault, Critique and the Art of Not
Being Governed ...............................................................................................................174
3.1 Anarchaeology: Foucault’s Critical Anarchist Methodology ...............................183
3.2 Essays in Refusal: Critique and the Struggle Against Authority ..........................193
3.3 Critique and the Art of Not Being Governed ........................................................211
3.4 Towards a Theory of the Primacy of Resistance ..................................................233
v

Chapter 4 ..........................................................................................................................238
4 The Primacy of Resistance .......................................................................................238
4.1 Critical Reception of Foucauldian Resistance ......................................................242
4.2 The Analytic of Power and the Turn toward the Study of Resistance ..................250
4.3 On the Primacy of Resistance ...............................................................................268
4.4 From Power to Politics..........................................................................................297
Chapter 5 ..........................................................................................................................304
5 From Archē to Agōn .................................................................................................304
5.1 Critical Reception of Society Must Be Defended and the War Model of the
Political ............................................................................................................................311
5.2 Genealogy as an Analytic of Historical Struggle and Discourses of Resistance ..317
5.3 Politics as the Continuation of War ......................................................................323
5.4 Against Leviathan: Civil War as a Paradigm of Resistance .................................338
5.5 An Anarchist Hypothesis of the Political Emerges as a Theory of Stasiology .....353
Chapter 6 ..........................................................................................................................362
6 The First Revolt: Politics as an Ethics of Resistance to Government ......................362
6.1 Counter-Conduct: Politics as Resistance to Governmentality ..............................372
6.2 The Ethics of Revolt: Resistance as an Ethos of Counter-Conduct ......................386
6.3 Foucault’s Anarchist Ethic of Counter-Conduct...................................................396
6.4 An Anarchist Politics of Resistance Emerges as an Art of Not Being Governed .412
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................419
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................440
Vita……………………………………………………………………………………...444
1

Introduction
Anarchism, Foucault, and the Question of Government

The State is the external constitution of the social power…This external constitution of
the collective power, to which the Greeks gave the name the archē, sovereignty,
authority, government, rests then on this hypothesis: that a people, that the collective
which we all call society, cannot govern itself…it must be represented by one or more
individuals, who, by any title whatever, are regarded as custodians of the will of the
people, and its agents…According to this hypothesis…is the explanation of the
constitution of the State in all its varieties and form.1
--Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
It seems to me, in fact, that with the current economic crisis and the great oppositions
and conflicts that are developing…one can see a developing crisis of government…This
set of procedures, techniques, and methods that ensure the government of some by others
appears to me to be in crisis now…People are more and more dissatisfied with the way
in which they are governed: they have more and more problems with it and find it harder
and harder to bear. I’m talking about a phenomenon that’s expressed in forms of
resistance, and at times rebellion, over questions of everyday life as well as great
decisions…We are perhaps at the beginning of a great crisis of reevaluation of the
problem of government.2

I would like to suggest another way to go further toward a new economy of power
relations… one that implies more relations between theory and practice…It consists in
taking forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point.3
--Michel Foucault

According to the French anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the history of
political philosophy and practice finds its locution in a single hypothesis which, in
presupposing what the Greeks referred to as archē, culminates in the paradigms of
government and state sovereignty. For Proudhon, then, “[t]he form in which the earliest
men thought of order within society was the patriarchal or hierarchical form, which is to
say, in essence, authority and, in operation, government.”4 Presupposing the primacy of

1 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “Resistance to the Revolution,” in Property is Theft: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Anthology (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2011), 482.
2 Michel Foucault, “Interview with Michel Foucault,” in Power. Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, ed.
James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1994), 295-296.
3 Michel Foucault, “Subject and Power,” in Power. Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, ed. James D.
Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1994), 329; 336.
4 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “The Authority Principle,” in No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism,
ed. Daniel Guerin (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2005), 81.
2

government as the principal way in which order might be conceived within society is
what Proudhon refers to as the “authority principle,” or, “the governmental prejudice.”5
It is this principle of the archē, which as Proudhon correctly suggests both presupposes
and privileges “government as the “sin qua non condition for order” in society—that has
been absolutely foundational in the historical trajectory of Western political theory.6
Since its origins in Greek political thought, the terms of the political and the very
possibility of politics have been haunted by this paradigm which, following Proudhon,
might be termed the crisis of the political, or that which assumes the primacy of archic
government as the transcendental condition of possibility and material reality of politics.
For Proudhon, within the history of political philosophy the “two notions—
government and order—therefore, allegedly, have a cause and effect relationship with
one another: government being the cause and order its effect.”7 Working within the
paradigm of government, traditional conceptions of politics are, as anarchists often argue,
reducible to theories pertaining to the exercise of power, thus neglecting the potential
manifestation of alternative conceptions of both political theory and politics. Like the
anarchist Lucy Parsons once maintained, “government in its last analysis is this power
reduced to science.”8 It is in this regard that Mikhail Bakunin argues that the very term
“politics,” as traditionally understood in political theory, is taken to refer to a certain
simultaneity between authoritative power and government. Exploitation and government,
Bakunin contends, “are the two indivisible terms of all that goes by the name of politics,”
wherein the former represents “the pre-requisite as well as the object of all government,
which, in turn, guarantees and legalizes the power to exploit.”9 For Bakunin, then, the
indivisible nexus between the emergence of “politics” and the problem of government
forms the primary conceptual impasse of political theory from its classical incarnation to
its present form. Yet, according to Proudhon, the originary nexus between politics and
government is itself subject to a fundamental hypothesis that has sutured the domain of

5 Ibid, 81.
6 Ibid, 87.
7 Ibid, 87.
8 Lucy Parsons, “The Principles of Anarchism,” in Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality, Solidarity, ed. Gale
Ahrens (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2003), 29.
9 Mikhail Bakunin, “God and the State,” in No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism, ed. Daniel
Guerin. (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2005), 151-152.
3

the political to the manifestation of government as such. Proudhon writes: the “external
constitution of the collective power, to which the Greeks gave the name archē,
sovereignty, authority, government rests on this hypothesis: that a people, that the
collective being we call society cannot govern itself” (original emphasis).10 In Western
political thought, the history of the concept of politics not only begins with the practice of
government as its own transcendental condition of possibility, but also with an originary
nexus that legislates a specific continuity between archē and politeia. Between the
domain of the political and the paradigm of government lies the originary principle of the
archē, and it is this principle that has hitherto fundamentally structured the dominant
narrative of political theory and practice in the West.
With the paradigm of the archē acting as the theoretical and practical framework
from which a critical conception of the political might begin, the very rationale that posits
a fundamental nexus between the domain of the political and the manifestation of
government has never been called into question, and political thought from its classical
form through its present incarnation begins with the concept of government as its
fundamental presupposition. As Proudhon’s dissent demonstrates, within the historical
trajectory beginning with the seminal works of Plato and Aristotle, and stretching to
modern political theorists such as Hobbes and Schmitt, the general terms of political
theory arise by presupposing a synthesis between politics and the exercise of government
which, in turn, is subject to the principle of an archē. It is this principle of the archē that
at once designates the condition of possibility and teleological limit for thinking through
what lies at the essence of the political. In classical political theory, beginning with the
primacy of the archē has had the effect of both naturalizing the paradigm of government
as the fundamental essence of politics, while simultaneously demonstrating that what
causes the political to emerge as such is analogous to, and made possible by, power
exercised as government. It is precisely this conceptual model of the political that, until
recently, has remained unchallenged by the majority of philosophers, and has further
prevented political theorists from conceptualizing an alternative theoretical and practical
framework for the field of the political that could never assume the form of an archē as its
privileged domain.

10 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “Resistance to Revolution,” 482.
4

With such preliminary problematics in mind, this study takes as its critical turning
point the inquiry into the reasons why the terms of the political in the West have assumed
the form of government as the condition of possibility for a theoretical and material
conceptualization of politics. Contributing to what has recently been referred to as the
“anarchist turn”11 in politics and political theory, as well as to the development of what I
take to be an integral, yet historically neglected and critically undervalued concept found
in the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s collected works, the aim of this study is to
think through the philosophical and political problems underlying the historical terrain
that reduces and structures politics to the spacing and act of government in light of what I
posit as a key intersection between the resurgence of anarchist thought and practice and
the key concept of resistance found in Foucault’s political thought and writings.
Appropriating the concept of resistance as developed in anarchist political theory, as well
as its further elaboration in Foucault’s thought, in terms of the critical locus from which
to reread the history of the political against the primacy of government, it is my
contention that what must be at stake in contemporary debates about political theory
hinges on a unique relationship between Foucault’s philosophy of resistance and
anarchism that creates a fundamental rupture in the political logic of an archē, or the
specific rationale that presupposes the question of government as the implicit starting
point for a critical conceptualization of the political as such. Taking seriously the
potential of postanarchist philosopher Saul Newman’s claim that the goal of political
theory is to “affirm anarchism’s place as the very horizon of radical politics” (original
emphasis),12 this project pursues the implications of the emerging body of anarchist
praxis and scholarship along a trajectory following a core tenet of anarchist theory found
in Foucault’s thought—what will be elaborated throughout this project as the primacy of
resistance. Recognizing that resistance is primary with respect to power not only reveals
an alternative critical methodology that shifts the site of politics away from its traditional
archic locus in the exercise of power, but in doing so further illuminates the possibility of
developing an anarchist theory of politics in its irreducibility to the principle of an archē.

11 Simon Critchley, introduction to The Anarchist Turn, eds. Jacob Blumenfeld, Chiara Bottici and Simon
Critchley (London: Pluto Press, 2013), 2.
12 Saul Newman, The Politics of Postanarchism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 2.