The contemporary pertinence of the later Foucault. Have his strategies of resistance stood the test of time?

摘要

What happened during the fairly long silence following The Historyof Sexuality? … had he [Foucault] not trapped himself within the conceptof power relations?’ asks Deleuze. According to him, Foucaultwould have answered ‘that power does not take life as its objectivewithout revealing or giving rise to a life that resists power’ (Deleuze1988: 94). The object of this essay is to assess what happens ‘if thetransversal relations of resistance continue to become restratified’.When the long silence was finally broken, Foucault proposed a moreaffirmative – aesthetic – mode of countering power, but what exactlyis the contemporary pertinence of the late Foucault’s insistence thatan aesthetics of existence provides us with the means to resist anover-determination by power. This essay follows the trajectory ofFoucault’s turn to aesthetics: from care of the self as a reactionagainst constraining governmental regulations and institutionalisednormalisations; to self-(trans)formation as a more affirmative strategy;to the present day in which cultural capitalism has usurped allaesthetic strategies of resistance. The essay therefore questions thepotentially subversive status of self-creation in the light of the factthat contemporary governmental rationalities encourage self-stylisingindividuality, alternative life-style choices and original ways of beingdifferent. It concludes by arguing in favour of its continued relevance.