ON POWER, FREEDOM AND GENDER: A FRUITFUL TENSION BETWEEN FOUCAULT AND FEMINISM

On Power, Freedom, and GenderA Fruitful Tension between Foucault and Feminism

Patricia AmigotUNIVERSIDAD PUBLICA DE NAVARRA

Margot PujalUNIVERSITAT AUTÒNOMA DE BARCELONA

ABSTRACT. In this article we highlight some aspects of Foucault’s work thatare useful for analyzing the processes of subjective production and relationsof power marked by gender, understood as dispositifs. Feminist theories andpractices offer fundamental resources both for the development of theFoucauldian perspective itself, and for the analysis and transformation ofpower relations. In relation to the tension between power and freedom, wehighlight the importance of two issues: first, the intermediate space betweenstates of domination and power relations—a distinction established byFoucault—which makes possible a more precise consideration of the dis-positif of gender as well as its transformation; second, the relation betweenpractices of the self and power relations, which makes it possible to identifythe conditions of possibility for the exercise of resistance and freedom.

KEY WORDS: feminism, gender, power, subject

The Value of a Reciprocal Elucidation1

Much feminist work expresses the specific desire to analyze and transforman order that configures normative sexual identities and generates effects ofdomination over women. The variety of feminisms does not constitute ahomogeneous theory or practice, thereby allowing for ongoing practices ofdiscussion and reflection that are attentive to their political effects.This specific feminist politics also acts as a problematizing device with

regard to currents of thought that may or may not be hegemonic. Accordingly,as Michel Foucault suggested about psychoanalysis, feminist theorization

THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY VOL. 19 (5): 646–669© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0959354309341925 http://tap.sagepub.com

AMIGOT & PUJAL: ON POWER, FREEDOM, AND GENDER 647

relies on a permanent principle of interrogation that questions academia andintellectual production. Indeed, Foucault’s work has itself been the object ofsuch critical feminist analysis.But it has also been a strategic ally for understanding and exploring con-

temporary relations of power, and a resource for problematizing the author’sassertions and omissions. Even considering divergences among feminisms,Foucault has become a privileged interlocutor for many theoretical develop-ments concerning power and subjectivity. The boldness of Foucauldian analy-ses with regard to regimes of knowledge/power or processes of subjectivationinterpellates many feminist authors. They have used Foucauldian method-ological and conceptual tools and have often subjected them, as GeorgesCanguilhem (1989) put it, to their own “methods of clarification, which is tosay, genealogy and interpretation” (p. 11).2

Foucault’s work is of special interest to feminism, but at the same time, fem-inist reflections and objections to it are relevant for any theory or analysis ofpower. The feminist domain had already been a pioneer historically in the crit-icism of forms of subjectivation and the workings of knowledge/power, as wellas in the promotion of new forms of subjectivity. Michel Foucault bore witnessto this. His work concerns absolutely relevant issues for feminism. Therefore,dialogue between feminism and Foucault cannot help but be fruitful.As we will suggest in the course of this article, we believe that this dialogue

allows us to refine our understanding of relations of power. Taking gender as ananalytic category, we can identify two levels of power’s operation and produc-tion theoretically: first, the production of the sex/gender dichotomy and of thehistorical subjectivities located within it; and, second, the production and regu-lation of power relations between men and women. Although any discussion ofpower requires the analysis of socio-historically located practices (both discur-sive and non-discursive), this theoretical specification can avoid some grossover-simplifications. First, it helps us to understand that both men and women,and the very existence of the gender dichotomy, are configured in networks ofpower.Although there may be different positions in the exercise of power, everysubject is subjected in its historical framework. It is this dimension of powerthat Foucault’s work insisted on above all. Second, this specification helps us tounderstand that, although “power is everywhere” and in all relationships, thedispositif 3 of gender specifically functions to subordinate women—somethingthat analysts of power can forget at times. Gendered relations of power alwaysinteract with other apparatuses, as postcolonial feminisms, among others, havedemonstrated. This interaction is not simply additive; it always constitutes aspecific exercise of power. As we note in this article, it is necessary to think ofgender as an apparatus of power; not invariably so, but as an historical one thatoperates insistently in diverse ways in interactions with others.With the aim of addressing both feminism and Foucault, we will analyze

intersections and divergences between them without attempting to systematizeeither domain. Foucault consistently rejected any pretensions to totality. The

648 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(5)

richness of feminist thought is difficult to domesticate under a schematic pres-entation where the disparities among different feminists could be recuperated.Consequently, we will offer neither synthesis nor totalization; we aim to identifythe theoretical and political intensities that reciprocal elucidation allows.We will address, first, the confluences between Foucauldian thought and

feminist theories, indicating the relevance of the analysis of power, whichpoliticizes identities, relations, and quotidian spaces; Foucault’s allusion tostates of domination with regard to global strategies; the consideration ofpower/knowledge regimes; the analysis of the dispositif of sexuality that somefeminist thinkers have displaced with an analysis of dispositifs or technolo-gies of sex; and, finally, the consideration of technologies of the self as sitesof possibility for self-creation and the exercise of freedom.Second, we will critically consider the androcentrism of Foucault’s thought,

problematizing certain elements of his work such as the failure to considergender in his analysis of disciplined bodies and his genealogy of the “man ofdesire” and the virile model of domination on which his theorization of thepractices of the self rests. This last issue generates a certain theoretical as wellas political ambiguity that we address in the third section of this article as partof a discussion on the pertinence of this author for feminist politics.We conclude the article by highlighting theoretical and analytical possibil-

ities that derive from the interlocution between feminist and Foucauldianthought. The Foucauldian approach to power offers very important elementsso long as we more subtly address the continuity between relations of powerand states of domination that Foucault described as counterpoints to oneanother. This would allow for spaces of analysis more suited to the situatedexperiences of women. To gender the analysis of power would also allow usto subtly illuminate the tension between subjection and agency. Finally, itwould be useful to clarify and deepen the approach to the practices of the selfby more clearly incorporating the intersubjective dimension—given that “totake oneself as an object” is inextricably linked to the relation with others—exploring its relation to techniques of domination, which clearly appears inthe configuration of both women’s and men’s sexual identities; and reflectingon critical distance as it is linked to the exercise of liberty.

Reading Michel Foucault: The Issue of SubjectiveTransformation and the Political

As Michèle Perrot (1997) shows, women are represented in Foucault’s earlywork as ambivalent figures, schematized and simplistic presences. It is onlyfrom the History of Sexuality onwards that they become objects of analysis.The female body appears as a strategic space, devoid of biopower and subjectto a process of progressive objectification and control on the part of medicaland psychological discourses. Foucault calls this the hystericization of the

female body; the pathologization of the female body is situated alongsidewomen’s responsibility to take care of children’s health, the institution of thefamily, and the family’s and society’s health (Foucault, 1976). The impor-tance he eventually accorded to the regulation of masculine and femininepositions as relations of power led Foucault to propose a future volume of theHistory of Sexuality that he would never write (Foucault, 1977a).The progression of his work was influenced by new kinds of struggle, such

as feminism and gay liberation movements, which politicized the everyday.Foucault recognized that these new political struggles, which emerged aroundand after 1968, made it possible to “see the concrete face of power” and tobecome aware of what had remained outside of political analysis up tothat point; relations between men and women are also considered political(Foucault, 1977b, p. 146). All of this is reflected in his thoughts on forms ofpower and resistance. The political moment in which Foucault lived, togetherwith his experience in the GIP (Group d’Information des Prisons), shaped hisanalysis of social practices and power.His analysis and genealogy of power became progressively more complex

and led him to interrogate it in terms of processes of subjectivation and thepractices of the subject’s self-production. His project of creating a “genealogyof the desiring man” (Foucault, 1984a) was derived from the approach to thepractices of the self and its relation to ethics—a virile morality—in classicalGreece and in the Hellenic period.From the 1980s onwards, lines of feminist analysis inspired by Foucault’s

work have focused on the disciplinary and normalizing technologies that pro-duce feminine bodies and the discourses that have exercised a naturalizedover-determination of the female subject. More recently feminists have paidattention to issues concerning subjectivation and the practices of the self.These practices, always situated, can be transformed into a process of detach-ment from normative identities (déprise de soi) and self-constitution, whichFoucault designates as the practices of freedom. Interest in this question isobvious; in fact, the feminist struggle has comprised an effective process ofsubjective transformations and the creation of new ways of life.Since the publication of important books such as Feminism and Foucault

(Diamond & Quinby, 1988), feminist theory has generated increasingly com-plex analyses of power together with subjectivity, offering very importantinsights about the body as a site of power, and progressively including analy-ses of the emotional and unconscious dimensions implied in the embodimentof norms, and of (im)possibilities. On the other hand, the co-existence of dif-ferent regimes of power, including the development in neoliberalism of newtechnologies of the self that are in themselves directed toward the motivatedself-production of flexible subjects, poses new problems for political theoryand practice. So too, we note that the institutional appropriation of feministdiscourses in recent years requires analyses of resistance in which Foucauldiantheory can be a valuable tool.


Still, criticisms abound in this dialogue. The most extended criticism is thatFoucault’s proposals are androcentric: a certain failure to address the con-struction of sexual difference and the subjection of women seems to runthrough his work. We will address various intersections and criticisms thathave emerged in the interlocutive process, highlighting the reflections on andspecific re-workings of Foucault in feminist theory.

Intersections with Foucault

Foucault’s work was echoed in feminist thought that crystallized in the polit-ical claims of the 1960s and 1970s. The Foucauldian reconsideration of theconcept of power converged with the analysis that grounded the feminist slo-gan “the personal is political.” This convergence led to the feminist interestin and use of Foucault’s ideas. We will identify some of these intersections,leaving more critical considerations for the subsequent section.

The Conceptual Reconsideration and Analysis of Power

The reach of relations of power. Foucault situates power’s fundamental operationin spaces normally excluded from the political, such that relations of power pro-duce and regulate quotidian practices. The term “microphysics” points to thecapillary reach that relations of power acquire in the social domain. Owing tothis reach, everyday struggles such as those that question “ways of loving, themode of sexual repression or the prohibition of abortion” are “explicitly politi-cal” (Foucault, 1973/1994a, p. 428). BothDiscipline and Punish and theHistoryof Sexuality describe these forms of power that reach into bodies, in addition tohis Lectures and short texts of that period (1975, 1976, 1977a, 1977b,1975/1994c, 1976/1994d, etc.). Power establishes regulated dispositions andcourses of action. Desires and pleasures also play a role in the webs of powerwhere “desires are created and pleasures provoked … and there it is necessaryto surprise it—power—and elaborate an analysis” (Foucault, 1975/1994c, p. 772).The idea that power works, for the first time in history, to produce and

regulate life—biopower—having as its target the individual body and thespecies-body (Foucault, 1976), offers possibilities for clarifying how genderconfigures adequate feminine bodies and localizes in women the function ofreproduction and care of the population. The concepts of biopower andbiopolitics are crucial for de-essentializing feminine identities and functionsas well as for questioning any gendered “destiny.”Once this productive dimension of power has been identified, the individual

becomes a “subjected” subject. Power, in its demarcating and discursive con-struction of objects/subjects, and in other interrelated practices, establishesspecific historical processes of subjectivation. Discourses of women’s natureand disciplining and normalizing practices are especially relevant with regard



to the production of “proper” feminine bodies and subjectivities. The conceptof regimes of power/knowledge provides a way of looking critically at canon-ical narratives and discourses, whether scientific, religious, or quotidian. Thedetailed Foucauldian characterization of the forms of power developed overthe past two centuries, prolific as they are in techniques of normalization andcontrol (1976), provides tools for analyzing the more specific processes ofnormalization and control of gender.Power, conceived as a strategic dispositif, becomes pertinent, going beyond

Foucault, for addressing the configuration of sexual subjects in relations ofpower that exceed rational or voluntaristic dimensions. It leads to an analysisof sedimented and embodied practices without relying on essentialist elements;it allows, concretely, attention to the historical processes that produce suchontologies. Genealogy, that form of history that intends to account for the con-stitution of objects and subjects, does not refer to a transcendent subject in rela-tion to the domain of events, but rather permits consideration of the regularitiesof such constitutions’ obstinate effects.4 The concept of genealogy makes itpossible to politicize historical processes of the constitution of the feminineand the masculine; gender becomes “an effect, an object of a genealogicalinvestigation that maps out the political parameters of its construction in themode of ontology” (Butler, 1990, p. 32). This genealogical analysis allows usto consider the multiform character of power and so too other dispositifs ofpower (class, ethnicity, sexuality, age, nationality, etc.) that inevitably interactwith gender to form hybrid identities, as postcolonial feminists have noted.This avoids homogenizing women under the gaze that produces the subalternin imperialism and colonialism, as these feminists have also argued (Anzaldúa,1987; Lorde, 2003; Mohanty & Alexander, 1995; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1981;Sandoval, 1995; Spivak, 1985; Trinh T.M.-H., 1989; among others).The biopower mentioned above is fundamental to the development of cap-

italism (Foucault, 1976). This development was sustained in economic rela-tions and control of the means of production, but also in the operation offorms of power that Marxists do not tend to contemplate and that are imma-nent in these relations. This criticism of economism, and of some of theassumptions of Marxist theories, accords with the feminist criticism of theseapproaches with regard to their inability to account for social relations ofreproduction, and for their subordination of any struggles that become sec-ondary according to this schema. We wish only to signal this point here, andwill not enter into a more detailed analysis.

The inherent resistance to power. From his first reconsiderations of the com-plex issue of power, Michel Foucault has conceived resistance as an intrinsicelement in it. If power “is a total structure of actions brought to bear uponpossible actions; it incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more dif-ficult” (Foucault, 1982a, p. 220), it never completely determines such possi-bilities. Resistance, whether more or less articulated, is always present. In all


of the complex, temporal, and heterogeneous exercise of power, it is neverabsolutely determining, though Foucault’s insistence on the disciplinary pro-duction of docile bodies obscures this point. On the contrary, as he himselfinsists later on, courses of action are open to unexpected effects, displace-ments, or strategic articulations of resistance. Foucault’s insistence on theubiquity and productivity of power does not negate the possibility of freedom,although it does imply a situated, partial consideration of power in practice.In Foucault’s conceptual web, freedom, like power, is rethought and reconsid-ered: there will be no relations outside of the operations of power; neverthe-less, there will always be a degree of freedom in practice and, consequently,the possibility that points of resistance and their articulation in processes ofemancipation will intensify.The Foucauldian analysis of power pushes us to analyze this inherent ten-

sion between subjection and the agency that repeatedly produces corporealityand forms of the subject without determining them, but also without allowingan imaginary space of absolute freedom and exteriority to historical andsocial conditions of its emergence. And this is a tension that, in differentways, has been addressed precisely in poststructuralist feminist thought.

Limits of Discursive Intelligibility and Regimes of Power/Knowledge

Foucault addresses the insertion of subjects in historical regimes of truth in histhesis inMadness and Civilization (1961) and, in a different way, in The Orderof Things (1966). The discursive demarcations—partages—of madness, aswell as the objectivation of “man” that the human sciences establish in the19th century, implicate this complex production of forms of the subject inhistorical regimes of truth.In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), Foucault set out to clarify the

rules of discursive formation. He distinguishes his archaeology from theanalysis of language as a finite system that authorizes an infinite set of possi-ble statements. He considers archaeology to be a form of analysis that is cen-tered on the limited field of historically produced statements, signaling itsmateriality and specificity. Various authors have emphasized the pragmaticdimension of Foucault’s archaeology, and have explored its connections withthe work of Wittgenstein, Austin, or Searle (e.g., Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982;Larrauri, 1999). Foucault himself recognized this congruence in the analysisof the performative dimension of discourse, in which the terms “statement”and “speech act” appear to be very similar; but he emphasized that the analy-sis of discourse is more explicitly located in historical contexts, and, there-fore, is more clearly linked to social practices and relations of power(Foucault, 1974/1994b). The performative function of discourses of identityand the productive work of concepts of sex and gender have also been objectsof feminist analyses. The limits of intelligibility these concepts entail havebeen specifically explored by Judith Butler to address the (im)possibility of

social intelligibility for some subjects in a particular historical moment.According to Butler, the categories “man” and “woman” enact a constructiveoperation that, once problematized, is shown to be an enactment of “natural”exclusion. Such historically naturalized categories constitute an abject andinvisible space to which those who subvert the discursive order and practiceare relegated (Butler, 1990, 1997a). For postcolonial and border feminisms,this space has been associated with “in/appropriated Others” (the blackwoman, the lesbian, etc.; Trinh T.M.-H., 1986).The discourses that Foucault focused on, those of the human sciences, are

located in regimes of historical truth, and constitute a politics of truth thatconfigures the objects of which it speaks. The concept of regime ofpower/knowledge establishes an explicit relation between the two poles.Discursive practices have established complex circular relations with otherpractices such as the disciplinary ones, and they nourish one another: formsof power have determined the conditions of “true” discourses and have pro-duced knowledge in that exercise of power itself; the development of knowl-edge has enabled the expansion of disciplinary and regulatory elements.With the emergence of the human sciences, the subject is objectified as an

individual with functions that imply the possibility of determining norms forthose functions. Norms operate as rules that indicate whether the individual’sfunctioning is adequate or pathological. In their productive dimension, normsregulate the functioning of the entire social body. As Foucault suggests, fromthe 18th century onwards, it is not the law but the norm that is the key elementin the workings of power. In relation to this, it is evident that femininity hasbeen the object of an emphatic normalizing and normative construction forthe past two centuries. The reproductive function, for example, has been, andcontinues to be, a fundamental element of normal femininity. The relationbetween knowledges and disciplinary practices, analyzed genealogically, hasprovided an interesting approach to the formation of the subject “woman”in medical, psychiatric, and educational discourses and in their relevantinstitutional practices.

The Dispositif of Sexuality

As Foucault argued in The Will to Power, the first volume of History ofSexuality (1976), “a certain inclination has led us, in a few centuries, to ask ofsex the question of what we are” (p. 96). This discursive incitement and thisproliferation of practices to speak of sexuality has had a double face, totalizingand individualizing—linked to the exercise of biopower and pastoral powerreflected in the extensive array of technologies of confession and control, suchas the scientific discourses for administrating life. The dispositif of sexualityhas generated various regulatory technologies of the body, both individual andsocial; its discursive-scientific dimension has been addressed by feminism interms of the historical analysis of sexology or of medicine and biology.



The naturalization of sexuality and the production of sex is one of the issuesthat has been of greatest interest in feminist readings. Foucault (1976) arguesthat “sexuality was defined ‘by nature’ as: a domain penetrable by pathologi-cal processes, which would therefore require therapeutic or normalizing inter-ventions” (p. 86). This definition “by nature” has been identified in feministthought as one of the principal sources of women’s subordination. If we attendspecifically to the construction of the feminine, the process described byFoucault seems to have been even more imperative: the truth described womenas incapable of transcending their bodily nature and reproductive function.Using Foucault’s approach more precisely, we can say that many discourseshave established for women less the possibility of an obstinate interrogation oftruth linked to their sex than a naturalized over-determination of that sex.The objectification of women in discourse and practice through the natu-

ralization of sex has operated as a mechanism for the constitution of (more)subordinated subjects. Feminist theory has denounced this through the ques-tioning of truths about the particularity and inferiority of the feminine and therefusal of any claim to biology as destiny. Although this intersection withFoucault can be found, it is simultaneously a site of criticism. It unravelscomplex forms of the construction of sexuality and governance of life, but ithas not made visible those that exercise an additional violence in a specificform due to a major naturalization of and, therefore, a major restriction on thepossibilities available in processes of individuation.Finally, we wanted to note the prolific use of the Foucauldian analysis of

sexuality, which sees sexuality as effects produced in bodies, social relations,and behaviors, and not as something natural and essential in human beings.Important analyses and theoretical work have developed out of this perspec-tive. First, there are those that celebrate the attention to the body and its mate-riality, and its complex interaction with socio-historical processes. Foucault’sperspective disrupts the dualism between nature and culture and does so, incontrast to other poststructuralist approaches, without forgetting the material-ity of bodies (Grosz, 1994). Second, there are the feminist analyses that dis-place the concept of the dispositif of sexuality with that of gender (De Lauretis,1987). The consideration of gender as a dispositif constitutes, in both its ana-lytic practice and its theoretical elaboration, one of the most interesting andsuggestive contributions of feminist theory.

The Consideration of “States of Domination”

The relations of power that traverse the social field require consideration ofresistance(s). But the relations of power, mobile and reversible, can come to befixed such that the margins of action are extremely limited. Foucault namessuch situations “states of domination.” In them, relations of power are per-petually asymmetric. For example, the author notes the traditional conjugalstructure of the 18th and 19th centuries, in which


… it cannot be said that only man’s power existed; woman could do a wholeseries of things: trick him, filch money from him, reject him sexuality.Nevertheless, she suffered from a state of domination such that in the end allof that constituted no more than a few ruses that never transformed thesituation. (Foucault, 1984/1994f, pp. 720–721)

In states of domination it is difficult for resistances to be effective or multiplystrategically. In such situations, “dispersed, heteromorphic and local processesof power have been transformed by global strategies [italics added]”(Foucault, 1977/1994e, p. 425). Foucault does not elaborate on the decisiveimplications that such situations would offer for an eventual transformation,but he does indicate the necessity, in such cases, of processes of liberation(1984/1994f).In The Will to Knowledge (1976), the author maintains that power comes

from below, and that there is not a “general matrix for a global oppositionbetween the dominators and the dominated” (p. 124); the great systems ofdomination are hegemonic effects sustained in the extensive microphysics ofpower. At this point in his work he identifies as a characteristic of power the“rule of double conditioning”: no strategy could ensure global effects if it didnot rely on precise and delicate relations that serve it (p. 131). As we will see,this explicit refusal to recognize the distinction between dominators and dom-inated has provoked numerous feminist criticisms. But we would like to con-sider the following two issues: first, that Foucault’s insistence on the operationof “precise and tenuous relations,” more than a simple strategy of global dom-ination, turns out to be very useful for addressing the practical processes ofinequality and their everyday implications. Second, the development of theconcept of governmentality makes possibly the microphysical consideration ofpower that works toward a more exhaustive description of the forms of gov-ernment, including centralized and hegemonic forms. As Jana Sawicki (1991)notes, this attention to the mobile conjunction of diverse strategies allowedFoucault to show how relations of power at different social levels have possi-ble global effects of domination such as class or patriarchal power, althoughhe does not take these as his points of departure. Foucault’s later distinctionbetween states of domination and relations of power makes it possible to moreadequately interpret and assess situations of gender oppression without dis-solving this in a diffuse consideration of the workings of power in general.

Practices of the Self and Agency

Practices of the self are those practices that rely on modalities of relation toitself through which the individual constitutes itself and recognizes itself as asubject (Foucault, 1984a, p. 12). These are objects of thought in Foucault’slast works. The intent to understand how the experience of sexuality was con-structed in modern “Western” societies is blurred as this work progresses.Foucault’s work becomes a genealogy of the Western subject open to new


elements of study. The practices of the self are operations that the individualcan effect over itself—and they are incited to work in the service of the socialcontexts to which they belong—to be transformed or to achieve some state ofperfection (Foucault, 1981). These techniques are always established at a his-torical level and rely on the active dimension of individuals, but they are neversimply invented by the individual alone (Foucault, 1984/1994f).Foucault analyzes various possibilities for the historical constitution of

subjects from the beginning of his work (discursive objectification, thepartages, the disciplining of bodies); in his late work he deepened hisunderstanding of the techniques that the individual uses on itself. From theanalysis of the techniques that Christianity establishes—examination andconfession—in which the subject is interpellated and obligated to speak itsinternal truth, Foucault goes back to Greco-Roman antiquity, in which theplay of truth establishes different ways of taking oneself as an object. Inantiquity, the truth of the subjects is not an internal a priori, but rather theeffect of a process, of a constant practice with oneself. This type of practicein antiquity, which Foucault links to the birth of ethics, allowed for consid-erable autonomy and problematizing reflection. And it is at this point that“practices of freedom” emerged.Foucault suggests that the practices of the self differed in their way of link-

ing with normative codes: there are forms of subjectivation that are orientedtoward the code, and other forms of subjectivation that are oriented towardethics. That is, there are techniques that obey codes and those that problema-tize experience as a constant work on the self. The latter is linked with possi-bilities of transforming and creating new forms of existence.Lately, the reading of Foucauldian thought has intensified (Allen, 2004).

Feminist theory values Foucault’s late works because they introduce a dimen-sion of agency that was obliterated in the notion of the docile body (McNay,1992), and because they emphasize the possibility of exercising freedom,although always as a situated practice aimed at emancipation or transforma-tion (McNay, 2000; Sawicki, 1996). The fact that the techniques of the selfare dependent on their socio-historical context makes it possible to considerthe agency of women under specific and multiple social restrictions. Attendingto various dispositifs of power and to women’s creative potential, it would bepossible to analyze in a non-schematic form both diverse situations of oppres-sion and diverse ways of subverting and modifying them.The relation that Foucault establishes between the concept of practices of

the self and that of governmentality remains one of his most brilliant andunexplored intuitions. The integration of different techniques of dominationand techniques of the self (Foucault, 1988/1994h) will make it possible toconsider the implication of women in the production of their own subjectionand, simultaneously, the capacity to transform it while avoiding either vic-timization or blame. Nevertheless, the implications of practices of the selfwith regard to political action need to be explored.


Problematizing Foucault

Up to now we have noted some of the fruitful intersections between feministtheory and Foucault’s work. We will now address more critical nodes, whichare also fruitful. The most repeated criticism is that Foucault’s work is anandrocentric construction. Certainly, although he always alluded to relationsbetween men and women as relations of power, he did not explore themspecifically. In addition, the subject of his genealogies has masculine charac-teristics. Foucault’s own work reveals, in Butler’s words, “a problematicindifference to sexual difference” (1990, p. xii). We note in the followingsection the feminist reflections that this lack of concern has generated andits implication for a feminist politics.

A “Gender Blindness”

According to some feminist authors, because Foucault never specificallyexamined the subordination of women or the sources of their subjectivation(Hekman, 2004, p. 200), he reproduces in his global analysis the sexism thatis endemic to “Western” political theory (Bartky, 1988). He also falls into theuniversalist trap that his own philosophical project rejected, due to his non-gendered vision of the body and the assumption of masculine sexuality as ananalytic model (McNay, 1992, p. 35). It can also seem that his work reveals a“will to not know about women,” as Diana Fuss ironically notes (1989, p. 107).The author himself left behind fleeting evidence of this eventual difficulty;asked about this in an interview, he noted: “These different types of repressionhave varied across the decades, but I cannot say that I have found fundamentaldifferences with regard to woman or man. But I am a man” (Foucault, 1975/1994c, pp. 778–779).This androcentrism is clearly evident if we link it to issues that are not

problematized in his analyses, or to his lack of attention to certain aspectsof the relations of power that have historically operated in the lives ofwomen.

Docile and masculine bodies. As Rodríguez Magda (1999) says, “neutral anduniversal bodies do not exist, however much sex is a construct and sexualitya choice” (p. 216). Sexual difference is an element that disciplinary tech-nologies have regulated in a specific way. Nevertheless, Foucault referred to“a neutral body, by which we must not be fooled, as it is a masculine body”(Le Blanc, 2004, p. 17). Rosi Braidotti, similarly, argues that Foucault neverlocates the female body as a site of the most internal and operative divisionsin our society, and consequently also one of the most persistent forms ofexclusion. Sexual difference, simply put, does not play a role in Foucault’suniverse, where the technology of subjectivity refers to a “human” desex-ualized and generic subject (Braidotti, 1991).


This limitation in Foucault’s analysis has become, at the same time,especially suggestive for feminist research. Consideration of “gender blindness”in thinking about the disciplinary politics of the body has stimulated specificanalyses about the disciplining of women’s bodies. Among the analyses ofthe body’s subjection and constitution that stand out are Susan Bordo’s workon agoraphobia and female anorexia, considered by the author as the bodilycrystallization of certain cultural imperatives and practices of power (Bordo,1988, 1993); and the work of Sandra Lee Bartky, which considers aestheticpractices as disciplinary practices of feminine subjection, and highlights theactive dimension of this subjection (Bartky, 1988, 1990).In not addressing the specific form taken by normalizing and disciplining

technologies that concretely affected women—in the disappearances of thesethrough the image of an abstract body that was at the same time alreadymasculine—Foucault’s notion of power “obscures many important experi-ences of power specific of women” (Deveaux, 1994, p. 232). It is imperative,then, to identify the androcentric dimension of his genealogy, but nothing pre-vents us from reconsidering his analyses and continuing with new ones.These would include genealogic studies more attuned to the discursive con-struction and practice of masculinity and femininity and would allow us toattend in a richer and more precise way to the functioning of technologies ofpower in general. The technologies of power are not neutral from a genderedpoint of view and must make visible the processes of female subordination.5

Sexuality and desire in feminine form. The productive incitement of the tech-nology of sexuality, a thread of argument in the History of Sexuality, hassimilarly been a disputed point. The “policing of statements” that does notprohibit but rather incites interrogation about sex—has it been non-gen-dered historically? And Foucault’s history of the subject of desire, a prod-uct of the technologies of power that increasingly linked power and sexfrom the 16th century onwards—doesn’t it forget the particularities linkedto sexual differentiation?That “Western man has seen himself for the past three centuries as devoted

to the task of saying everything about sex,” as Foucault argues in The Will toKnowledge (1976, p. 33), opens up the question of whether this intense inci-tation has functioned in this same way for women. As both feminist move-ments and feminist theory have frequently suggested, we suspect that this linkbetween desire and sex does not correspond exactly to the configuration ofthe feminine, given that historically femininity has been devoid of the char-acteristics of a desiring subject. It is likely that the discursive formations andpractical technologies have constructed a truth of feminine sex and sexualitywithout a desiring subject—more object than subject—or with a pathologi-cally desiring subject. The truth of sex in women is directed not toward desirebut rather toward a biological and reproductive function. Certain historicaltechnologies have sectioned off desire and pleasure from female sexuality.

As Judith Butler (1997a) suggests, asexuality is “sometimes linked togetherwithin dominant conceptions of female heterosexuality” (p. 131).This issue can be related to the link between technologies of domination

that shape the individual’s conduct and objectify the subject, and technologiesof the self. Perhaps the construction of individuals differentiated by sex andwith effects of inequality is linked to specific technologies of gender thatrestrict and particularize the technologies of self that female subjects take upin order to bring about, among themselves, the experience of pleasure.In an attempt to discover the ways in which individuals come to recognize

themselves as sexual subjects, Foucault proposes a genealogy of the man ofdesire. But who is the subject who desires? Foucault (1982b) is conscious ofthe virile characteristics of the practices he studies:

The Greek ethics of pleasure is linked to a virile society, to dissymmetry, exclu-sion of the other, an obsession with penetration, and a kind of threat of being dis-possessed of your own energy, and so on. All that is quite disgusting! (p. 233)

Still, this is not problematized in his own analyses, and remains diluted in adiscussion that is instead oriented toward a non-gendered formulation.The “woman” subject of desire has suffered more constricting avatars than

those offered by a “neutral” but actually masculine genealogy. It has been thesubject, but also in a complex way the object, of others’ desires; it has thoughtits sexuality linked, on one hand, to reproduction without pleasure6 and, on theother, to pathology (hysteria, criminalization). In some historical moments, forexample during the Franco dictatorship in Spain, as we have also seen else-where (Amigot, 2005), the technology of female sexuality appeared to workexclusively in terms of silences, inciting prohibitions, and promoting system-atic ignorance.All of this in a tangle of religious rhetoric and guilt, with explicitdisciplinary practices of obedience to the male and strategies of the reproduc-tion of the social body. In contexts such as this, women did not speak of sex. Insuch situations, speech, a fundamental element of normative sexuality accord-ing to Foucault, can presuppose the conquest of a saying and doing that sub-verts normative identity and opens the possibility of pleasure and creation.

Positions of power and practices of the self. We have suggested above howFoucauldian reflections on ethics and the practices of self, which broadenFoucault’s analysis of the processes of subjectivation, are positively consid-ered by feminist readings. Nevertheless, here again the androcentric dimensionposes some problems.The techniques of the self in the Greek culture studied by Foucault, whose

stylization will generate an ethic and an aesthetic, reside in a virile model.This mode addresses the practice of the domination of the self who dominatesothers; this subject must learn to dominate itself and take care of itself,precisely because it must dominate others. The “uses of pleasures” and the“care of the self” are sustained in a structure of domination.


In this structure it is women, among other social groups, who occupy theposition of the dominated. It is probably the feminine that acts as the dialec-tic and regulating element of the position of the free subject (RodríguezMagda, 1999, p. 254). The relation with adolescents, for example, that sexualpractice primarily problematized in Classical Greece is situated on the axis ofan asymmetric relation: the one that distinguishes between activity and pas-sivity. In contrast to adolescents, whose passivity is transitory, women aresubstantially passive. They find themselves excluded from the possibility ofproblematizing and fashioning their own existence.In his historical reflection on the practices of the self and the practices of

freedom, Foucault does not attend to the particular way in which differentdegrees of subjection can limit the possibility of self-creation. He does notelaborate the link between particular practices of the self—as he himself sug-gests, always a product of historical contexts—and the degrees of liberationthat are afforded the individual for its self-creation. His distinction betweenstates of domination and other strategic situations of power is not especiallypertinent for addressing this issue, and he does not go further than to note thenecessity of “processes of liberation” that exceed the limits of domination andpermit the exercise of freedom (Foucault, 1984/1994f, p. 710). Probably, thelimits of his analysis are conditioned by the specific ethical context he is con-cerned with: that of privileged subjects in Greco-Latin antiquity.In The Use of Pleasure (1984a), Foucault does not analyze something that,

on the other hand, he does clearly reveal in the text. He says that the freemale, insofar as he “had authority and hoped that he would exercise it byshowing dominion over himself, should limit his sexual choices” (p. 162);woman must, simply, obey. We see, then, how two distinct positions of powerimply very different possibilities in the care of the self: the activity of thewoman was regulated by obedience, which must be one of the virtues of heridentity, linked to a particular code. It is the male, the authority in that web ofrelations, who problematizes and responds to demands, reflecting and exer-cising himself in particular virtues. Morality is oriented to a code for her; toethics for him.

Paradoxes for a Feminist Politics

The agonistic consideration of power, which does not admit dualisms—dominators/dominated—as a point of departure, together with the blindnessof gender that Foucault displays in his analysis, has led some feminist theo-ries to reject his work. His model of diffuse power prevents the localizationof gendered inequality and the naming of an operative antagonism from thebeginning. Responsibilities, in this case masculine ones, dissolve (Deveaux,1994). Foucault’s blindness to the situation of women’s oppression wouldmake it difficult, too, to secure and legitimate female processes of emancipa-tion. “The price for giving in to his powerful discourse,” Toril Moi (1985)notes, “is nothing less than the depoliticisation of feminism” (p. 95). It is argued



that the evanescence of his conceptualization of power impedes protest andpolitical mobilization; if power is not anyone’s property, it is problematic toimpose responsibility for or abuse of it on individuals or groups.We think it is important to consider this more carefully and to establish ele-

ments that favor a theoretical dialogue. On one hand, some of these criticismsseem to imply the necessity of grounding political struggles and ethical con-siderations in epistemological terms. Nevertheless, even refusing the notionof power as property, Foucault sees that as a political formula, “they have thepower” is useful, even though it is epistemologically problematic because itconsists in an operation of theoretical homogenization. Although this formulasituates political actions in an interminable tension, they have a pragmaticdimension that should not be blocked by the epistemological necessity of dis-covering the truth, especially if it departs from a position that underlines thenatural and historical contingency of knowledge. In relation to this type ofdifficulty, addressed repeatedly in feminist discussions, Anne Phillips (1992)alludes to “the perennial difficulties in deducing politics from philosophicalpositions” (p. 13). We think that Foucauldian theory multiplies, and does notexhaust, the possibility of subversive politics, insofar as it considers conceptsof power and freedom in their practical and situated dimensions. It is the prac-tical analyses of effects and attention to their historical displacements that canregulate those very strategies of subversion or transformation.On the other hand, remembering what has already been said, Foucault does

not deny the existence of global situations of domination, such as masculinedominations, but rather notes the heterogeneity and complexity of the tech-nologies of power that operate in them: the global configurations of domina-tion articulate themselves in general strategies, but they also operate throughan infinity of tactics, techniques, and concrete and immediate relations thattraverse life. To our understanding, it is politically indispensable to maintainthis perspective, which does not prevent, in any way, the consideration ofhegemonies such as patriarchal ones. This complex view allows the politi-cization of everyday practices and relations, such as the elements of repro-duction in an unequal order for women, and the possibility of political actionabout them.Another point of debate is Foucauldian anti-essentialism: both identities

and experience are produced. The forms of subjectivity and life are seen aseffects of historical technologies. The radical interrogation of identity con-verges with feminist criticism of female “destiny.” It allows us to emphasizethe contingency of subjective forms and to imagine and act so that other newones can establish themselves. In fact, the conceptual distinction betweensex and gender, which is fundamental to feminist theory, was established to“denaturalize” characteristics and functions associated with the feminine. Inthe last few years, feminist voices have sought to overcome this duality andconceive of sex itself as a product of gender, thereby radicalizing feministanti-essentialism. The consideration of materiality and embodiment of cultureconstantly renews questions about sexual difference and its controls.


Nevertheless, some authors consider this rejection of authentic identity orexperience to be disempowering for feminist politics (Hartsock, 1990; Soper,1993).We think that feminist practice departs, very legitimately, from women’sexperience as women. But politicizing subjectivity, considering the processesof its configuration in patriarchal relations of power, does not have to disem-power feminist struggles. To historicize experience is not to affirm that it doesnot exist, or, much less, that it cannot legitimate political action. In fact, thisallows a more refined attention to the different contexts in which women arelocated, thereby avoiding homogenization and exclusion.Foucault has been similarly criticized for the absence of a normative frame-

work in which to root political aims. Certainly, he avoided exercising the func-tion of the “universal intellectual.” He wanted to be a “specific intellectual”:not to set out ethical guidelines and tell others what they should do, but ratherprovide instruments and specific analyses for political action (1977b). Hedoes not propose foundations of political practice, but rather demonstrates thecontingency of what appears as inevitable, noting possibilities for underminingit. That which must be resisted is an open question in his texts, circumscribedby historical reality. In addition, we think that in his work as a whole there is acritical and explicit criticism that can nourish with its theoretical and analyticalweb the practices that transform a given order:

In what is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is occu-pied by whatever is singular, contingent and the product of arbitrary con-straints? The point in brief is to transform the critique conducted in the formof necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of apossible transgression (Foucault, 1984/1994g, p. 574)

As Margaret McLaren notes, Foucault criticizes at least two different types ofnorms in his analysis of technologies of normalization. On one hand, there arethe universal norms linked to justice and rights. On the other, there are thesocial norms that prescribe particular behaviors and that categorize individu-als into groups (McLaren, 2004). Foucault probably did not capture the sub-versive potential of certain normative exigencies linked to equality of rights,and this demand for equality has been and continues to be fundamental forwomen, allowing on many occasions, precisely, the fracturing of imposedidentities and the creation of ways of life.Finally, we wanted to address the status of resistance and freedom in

Foucault’s work. If he has been so exhaustive in his analysis of power, it isbecause he believes that its creation is historical and contingent. As JohnRajchman (1991) suggests, “what is historically determined is never histori-cally necessary” (p. 111); therefore, freedom is another name for that whichinhabits relations of power. If relations of power are “a set of actions uponother actions” (Foucault, 1982a, p. 220), diverse courses of action are openand not completely determined a priori. Resistances are immanent in relationsof power; whether or not these resistances transform a situation will depend


on their articulation and proliferation. There are always forms of resistancesto perceive, activate, and articulate politically.Foucault notes the ethical nature of practices of the self in antiquity, given

that they are deliberations over one’s own actions and their relation to specificnormative codes. Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics (1984/1994f),because deliberation does not translate into a total obedience to moral imper-atives but rather consists of problematization. There is a critical distance thatcould be considered, in the same way, politically. Foucault’s work makes itpossible to think of freedom as a practical (Sawicki, 1996), situated exercisethat escapes utopian logics of absolute freedom.His analyses are located, nevertheless, in a virile model that does not con-

sider relations between equals.7 The exploration of the link between ethics andfreedom that Foucault realizes does not attend to the complexity that wouldbe introduced by, on one hand, a consideration of the relation between equalsand, on the other, the analysis of specific difficulties (or the impossibility) thatsubordinated subjects experience in seeking liberty.This occluded point in his work is especially relevant for feminist politics.

If the operationality of power converts us into agents of our own subjection,when does this action over oneself become a creative and liberatory prac-tice? When does this practice of the self respond to strategies of self-subjec-tion or self-vigilance? We think that the notion of criticism that appears inFoucault’s work is very important in this distinction, for problematizing theforms through which the self is produced and for the practical and politicalaction that is linked to experience and reflexive and critical problematization(Butler, 2002).

From Foucault Onwards: Interconnections betweenPower, Freedom, and Gender

The mutual elucidation with which we began this article generates fruitfulaxes of analysis and theoretical development. To end this text we will brieflynote some of them.Foucault did not effectively analyze a situation of domination such as that

which regulates the production of and relation between the sexes. Althoughhis work evolved, it tended to consider any type of global domination as theendpoint of its analysis (Foucault, 1976/1994d). This tendency to realize dis-tinctions such as that which is established between relations of power and vio-lent relations, or between relations of power and slavery (Foucault, 1982a),occludes the consideration of women’s situations of oppression. It occludesthe recognition of an intermediate gradation in which major or minor con-straints on the possible play a role. If determinations are absolute it is possi-ble to speak not of power, Foucault says, but of slavery; nevertheless, thereare situations that are more determining than others and are, precisely, those


that women have lived historically, at least in recent centuries: they were free,but less than others. Some feminist authors argue that Foucault established asimplistic dichotomy between power, on one hand, and violence or domina-tion, on the other (Deveaux, 1994). Although this can be contested, we doagree that this conceptual juxtaposition is problematic from a feminist pointof view.With a view to a more refined analysis of power, we think it is more ade-

quate to conceive of the distinction as a complex and gradual progression; itis precisely in the intermediate space that feminist practice has emerged. It isa situated practice, conscious of the constrictions and subjections of women,but with the capacity to act in order to generate transformations. But we donot reject a certain theoretical potency in this Foucauldian argument thatallows us to see differences in relation to the power of diverse women’s col-lectives and not always assimilate inequality in a global situation of gendereddomination.We believe that in any analysis of power a situated perspective and an explo-

ration in specific contexts of power relations and of resistance are appropriate,in the first instance. Secondly, the exploration of the tension between powerand freedom can be especially interesting when it is made through the analy-sis of technologies of gender. In such an analysis, the embodiment of power’seffects acquires a special visibility and indicates the existence of complexaffective and unconscious processes—the “psychic life of power,” in JudithButler’s words (1997b). The analysis of resistances and proposals for politicalaction require a special consideration of women’s impediments, illnesses, andinnumerable sufferings; along with strategies of resistance and subversion thatdo not conform to the hegemonic mode of the tactics of struggle.On the other hand, the problematization of the practices of the self from the

perspective of gender makes it possible to establish a connection betweenthese practices and the techniques of domination. In the “webs of power” thattrap us, men and women have ways of seeing themselves as objects markedby gender. This reading allows us to investigate, in a general way, the condi-tions of possibility of the use of the practices of freedom. The possibilities fordeliberation and critical distance, which are linked to the exercise of freedom,tend to be more restricted for women.Furthermore, in linking techniques of domination and practices of the self,

as well as practices of the self and practices of freedom in the exploration ofthis space, the consideration of intersubjectivity becomes very relevant. Thisis certainly a very diffuse point in Foucault’s analysis. First, we believe thatthe processions of the constitution of subjectivity and its production ofembodied effects that sediment hegemonic technologies pass, precisely,through intersubjectivity. Second, this claim brings us to think intersubjectiv-ity as the space of possibility for transformation in relations of power. Therules that regulate the workings of truth are never individual or transcendent;they are actuated and re-actualized in practices whose regulation exceeds that

of individuals. An intersubjective practice that problematizes configured sexualidentities and displaces regimes of truth in which they are inscribed fracturesand permits resignification and transformation. Intersubjective practice in thisway becomes a site of “empowerment” and a site of possibility for the use ofliberatory practices for groups of women. The political “wisdom” of feminismhas fundamentally consisted of this.Given all of the above, we consider it imperative to introduce the perspec-

tive of gender in any analysis of power and to consider gender as a technologyof power. The analysis of the technologies of gender can offer intelligibility inthe joint consideration of power and freedom. The non-totalizing character ofFoucault’s work offers extraordinary resources for analyzing relations of gen-dered power and the workings of its technologies. Feminist readings of thiswork offer a profound reflection on the implications for practice and a recordof the subversive strategies and creative practices of other subjectivities.

Notes

1. A term used by Foucault in opposition to “polemic,” in his text “Polemics, Politicsand Problematizations” (1984b).

2. All of the bibliographic references cite works in their original publication. Thecitations for Michel Foucault, including page numbers, refer to the original publi-cation in French, except those that were first published in English, such as Dreyfusand Rabinow’s 1982 book.

3. Translator’s note: Foucault’s term dispositif combines discursive and material ele-ments, thereby complicating the concept of discourse as that which is productiveof subjects. Whereas dispositif can be translated as dispositivo in Spanish, there isno such corresponding term in English. In English it has been translated as “tech-nology,” “device,” “deployment,” and “apparatus.” In order to retain the precisemeaning of the term, this translation retains the French dispositif in translationsfrom the French (direct quotes from Foucault) and the Spanish.

4. With regard to this, Foucault (1977b) notes that

… we need not do with the event what was done with structure. It is not a matterof situating it all on one plane, which would be one of succession, but rather toconsider carefully that there exists a stratification of events of different kinds thatdo not have either the same importance nor the same chronological amplitude, northe same capacity to produce effects [italics added]. (p. 145)

5. Such as the regulation of time and space within the feminine sphere of the West inthe 19th and 20th centuries, or the intensive disciplining of the body generatedfrom medical precepts (use of corsets and other techniques or restriction of move-ment, obligatory sedentarism, the pathologization of bodily functions, etc.), reli-gion (the alert vigilance and the sanction of the most minimal transgression ofwomen as sinners and objects of sin), and society (indoctrinations, codes, advice,instruction, and norms for proper femininity).

6. As Laqueur (1992) notes in relation to the “discovery” that female orgasm was notnecessary for procreation.


7. In an interview with Foucault, Dreyfus and Rabinow ask:

… why does sex have to be virile? Why couldn’t women’s pleasure and boys’ pleas-ure be taken account of without any big change to the general framework? Or is itthat it’s not just a little problem, because if you try to bring in the pleasure of the otherthe whole hierarchical, ethical system would break down? (Foucault, 1982b, p. 233)

References

Allen,A. (2004). Foucault, feminism and the self: The politics of personal transformation.In D. Taylor & K. Vintges (Eds.), Feminism and the final Foucault (pp. 235–257).Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Amigot, P. (2005). Relaciones de poder, espacio subjetivo y prácticas de libertad:Análisis genealógico de un proceso de transformación de género [Power relations,subjective space and freedom practices: Genealogical analysis of a gender trans-formation process]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universitat Autònoma deBarcelona, Spain.

Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands. La frontera. The new mestiza. San Francisco: AuntLute.

Bartky, S.L. (1988). Foucault, feminity and the modernization of patriarchalpower. In I. Diamond & L. Quinby (Eds.), Feminism and Foucault:Reflections on resistance (pp. 61–86). Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Bartky, S.L. (1990). Feminity and domination. NewYork: Routledge.Bordo, S. (1988). Anorexia nervosa: Psychopathology as the crystallization of culture.In I. Diamond & L. Quinby (Eds.), Feminism and Foucault (pp. 87–118). Boston:Northeastern University Press.

Bordo, S. (1993). Feminism, Foucault and the politics of the body. In C. Ramazanoglu(Ed.), Up against Foucault: Explorations of some tensions between Foucault andfeminism (pp. 179–202). London: Routledge.

Braidotti, R. (1991). Patterns of dissonance: A study of women in contemporaryphilosophy. NewYork: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London:Routledge.

Butler, J. (1997a). Excitable speech: A politics of performative. London: Routledge.Butler, J. (1997b). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Palo Alto, CA:Stanford University Press.

Butler, J. (2002). What is critique? An essay on Foucault’s virtue. In D. Ingram (Ed.),The political: Blackwell readings in continental philosophy (pp. 212–228). Oxford,UK: Blackwell.

Canguilhem, G. (1989). Présentation [Presentation]. In E. Balbier, G. Deleuze, H. L.Dreyfus, M. Franck, A. Glücksmann, G. Lebrun, et al. (Eds.), Michel Foucaultphilosophe [Michel Foucault, philosopher] (pp. 11–12). Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

De Lauretis, T. (1987). Technologies of gender. Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress.

Deveaux, M. (1994). Feminism and empowerment: A critical reading of Foucault.Feminist Studies, 20, 223–247.


Diamond, I., & Quinby, L. (Eds.). (1988). Feminism and Foucault: Reflections onresistance. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Dreyfus, H., & Rabinow, P. (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism andhermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. (1961). Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique [Madnessand civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason]. Paris: Plon.

Foucault, M. (1966). Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines[The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences]. Paris: Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1969). L’archéologie du savoir [The archaeology of knowledge]. Paris:Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison [Discipline andpunish: The birth of the prison]. Paris: Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1976). Histoire de la sexualité, I: La volonté de savoir [The history ofsexuality. Vol. I: The will to knowledge]. Paris: Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1977a). Non au sexe roi [No to the sex king]. In Dits et écrits [Wordsand letters] (Vol. III, pp. 256–269). Paris: Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1977b). Entretien avec Michel Foucault [An interview with MichelFoucault]. In Dits et écrits [Words and letters] (Vol. III, pp. 140–160). Paris:Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1981). Sexualité et solitude [Sexuality and solitude]. In Dits et écrits[Words and letters] (Vol. IV, pp. 168–178). Paris: Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1982a). The subject and the power. In H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow(Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208–226).Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. (1982b). On the genealogy of ethics: An overview of work in progress.In H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism andhermeneutics (pp. 229–252). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, M. (1984a). Histoire de la sexualité, II: L’usage des plaisirs [History ofsexuality. Vol II: The use of pleasure]. Paris: Gallimard.

Foucault, M. (1984b). Polemics, politics and problematizations. In P. Rabinow (Ed.),The Foucault reader (pp. 381–390). NewYork: Pantheon.

Foucault, M. (1994a). Prisons et révoltes dans les prisons [Prisons and prison riots].In Dits et écrits [Words and letters] (Vol. II, pp. 425–432). Paris: Gallimard.(Original work published 1973)

Foucault, M. (1994b). La vérité et les formes juridiques [Truth and judicial forms]. InDits et écrits [Words and letters] (Vol. II, pp. 538–646). Paris: Gallimard. (Originalwork published 1974)

Foucault, M. (1994c). Asiles, sexualité, prisons [Asylums, sexuality, prisons]. In Ditset écrits [Words and letters] (Vol.II, pp. 771–802). Paris: Gallimard. (Original workpublished 1975)

Foucault, M. (1994d). Cours du 14 du janvier 1976 [Course held January 14, 1976].In Dits et écrits [Words and letters] (Vol. III, pp. 175–189). Paris: Gallimard.(Original work published 1976)

Foucault, M. (1994e). Pouvoirs et stratégies [Powers and strategies]. In Ditset écrits [Words and letters] (Vol. III, pp. 418–428). Paris: Gallimard. (Originalwork published 1977)


Foucault, M. (1994f). L’éthique du souci de soi comme pratique de la liberté [Theethics of care of the self as a practice of freedom]. In Dits et écrits [Words andletters] (Vol. IV, pp. 708–729). Paris: Gallimard. (Original work published 1984)

Foucault, M. (1994g). Qu’est-ce que les lumières? [What is enlightenment?] In Ditset écrits [Words and letters] (Vol. IV, pp. 562–578). Paris: Gallimard. (Originalwork published 1984)

Foucault, M. (1994h). Les techniques de soi [Technologies of the self]. In Dits etécrits [Words and letters] (Vol.IV, pp. 783–813). Paris: Gallimard. (Original workpublished 1988)

Fuss, D. (1989). Essentially speaking: Feminism, nature and difference. London:Routledge.

Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile bodies: Towards a corporeal feminism. Bloomington:Indiana Universty Press.

Hartsock, N. (1990). Foucault on power: A theory for women? In L. Nicholson (Ed.),Feminism/postmodernism (pp. 157–175). London: Routledge.

Hekman, S.J. (2004). Feminist identity politics: Transforming the political. In D. Taylor& K. Vintges (Eds.), Feminism and the final Foucault (pp. 197–213). Chicago:University of Illinois Press.

Laqueur, T.W. (1992). Making sex: Body and gender from the Greeks to Freud.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Larrauri, M. (1999). Anarqueología: Teoría de la verdad en Michel Foucault[Anarchaeology: Theory of truth in Michel Foucault]. Valencia, Spain: Eutopías.

Le Blanc, J. (2004). L’arquéologie du savoir de Michel Foucault pour penser le corpssexué autrement [The archaeological knowledge of Michel Foucault for thinkingthe sexual body otherwise]. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Lorde, A. (2003). La hermana, la extranjera [The sister, the foreign]. Madrid, Spain:Horas y horas.

McLaren, M.A. (2004). Foucault and feminism: Power, resistance, freedom. In D. Taylor& K. Vintges (Eds.), Feminism and the final Foucault (pp. 214–234). Chicago:University of Illinois Press.

McNay, L. (1992). Foucault and feminism: Power, gender and the self (1st ed.).Cambridge, UK: Polity.

McNay, L. (2000). Gender and agency: Reconfiguring the subject in feminist andsocial theory. Malden, MA: Polity.

Mohanty, C.T., &Alexander, M.J. (Eds). (1995). Feminist genealogies, colonial lega-cies, democratic futures. NewYork: Routledge.

Moi, T. (1985). Power, sex and subjectivity: Feminist reflections on Foucault.Paragraph: Journal of the Modern Critical Theory Group, 8(5), 95–102.

Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.). (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings byradical women of color. Watertown, MA: Persephone.

Perrot, M. (1997). De Mme. Jourdain à Herculine Barbin: Michel Foucault et l’his-toire des femmes [From Mrs Jourdain to Herculine Barbin: Michel Foucault andwomen’s history]. In D. Franche, S. Prokhoris, & Y. Roussel (Eds.), Au risque deMichel Foucault [Michel Foucault’s risks] (pp. 95–108). Paris: Éditions du CentrePompidou.

Phillips, A. (1992). Universal pretensions in political thought. In M. Barrett &A. Phillips (Eds.),Destabilizing theory: Contemporary feminist debates (pp. 10–30).Cambridge, UK: Polity.



Rajchman, J. (1991). Truth and Eros: Foucault, Lacan, and the question of ethics.NewYork: Routledge.

Rodríguez Magda, R.M. (1999). Foucault y la genealogía de los sexos [Foucault andthe genealogy of the sexes]. Barcelona, Spain: Anthropos.

Sandoval, C. (1995). New sciences: Cyborg feminism and the methodology of theopressed. In C. Grey (Ed.) The cyborg handbook (pp. 407–422). London: Routledge.

Sawicki, J. (1991). Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, power and the body. NewYork:Routledge.

Sawicki, J. (1996). Feminism, Foucault, and “subjects” of power and freedom. InS.J. Hekman (Ed.), Feminist interpretations of Michel Foucault (pp. 159–178).University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Soper, K. (1993). Productive contradictions. In C. Ramazanoglu (Ed.), Up againstFoucault: Explorations of some tensions between Foucault and feminism (pp. 29–50).London: Routledge.

Spivak, G.C. (1985). Three women’s texts and a critique of imperialism. CriticalInquiry, 12(1), 243–261.

Trinh, T.M.-H. (1989). Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and feminism.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Trinh, T.M.-H. (1986). She, the inappropiate/d other. Discourse, 8, 1–38.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. We would like to acknowledge the Institut Memoire del’Édition Contemporaine (IMEC) and the staff of the Fond Michel Foucault,where we were able to consult Foucault’s unpublished work.

PATRICIA AMIGOT is Lecturer in Social Psychology and Gender Studies. Herinterests include: Foucauldian power analysis; feminist theory; subjectivity,subjection, and agency. ADDRESS: Departamento de Trabajo Social,Universidad Pública de Navarra, Edificio Las Encinas, 31006 Pamplona,Spain. [email: [email protected]]

MARGOT PUJAL is Teacher in Social Psychology and Gender Studies. Herresearch focuses on gender studies, subjectivity and power relations, healthand gender, and the women’s social movement. ADDRESS: Departamentode Psicología Social, Facultat de Psicología, Edificio B., 08193 Bellaterra(Barcelona), Spain. [email: [email protected]]

ON POWER, FREEDOM AND GENDER: A FRUITFUL TENSION BETWEEN FOUCAULT AND FEMINISM

Documents

Transcript of ON POWER, FREEDOM AND GENDER: A FRUITFUL TENSION BETWEEN FOUCAULT AND FEMINISM