And finally, across 150 years, it's the same voices, the same accents, the same maladroit and raucous speech that
recounts
the same thing with almost nothing trans- posed.
Foucault-Live
However, if we define criminality in purely political terms, we necessarily forego the traditional contempt for "common" criminals that is an essential element of the penal system itself And if we consider all crime to be political, then our response to it must be equally pohtical.
But in fact, the guard towers, the police dogs, and the endless gray barracks are only "political" in so far as they are sinister evocations of Hitler and Stalin, who used them to dispose of their enemies.
The penal methods themselves--incarceration, deprivation, forced labor, brutality, humiliation--^are not far removed from those invented by eighteenth-century Europe.
Those v,'ho break the laws of the Soviet Union are subject to bourgeois penal techniques some two hundred years old.
And far from changing these techniques, the Soviets have made them more atrocious and carried them to their logical extreme.
What so moved those who saw the Riga documentary was not only the specter of Dachau, but beyond it, the endless procession of human beings condemned to penal servitude--a two-hundred- year spectacle used by those in power for the purpose of in- stilling fear.
? Q: I think the explanation of these paradoxes lies in the fact that the Soviet Union claims to be a sociaUst state but is in reality not at all socialist. The hypocrisy of Soviet leaders and the incoherence of their official statements follows logi- cally from this fact. It has been evident for some time now that if the Soviet Union has been unable to evolve along lines that the Twentieth Congress seemed to suggest, it is because the weaknesses of the Soviet society are structural and lie in the mode of production, and not simply in a more-or-less bureau- cratized leadership.
? 124 Politics of Soviet Crime
? MF: It is undoubtedly true that although the Soviets indeed changed the distribution of property and the role of the state in the control of production, they merely adopted certain power and management techniques perfected by nineteenth- century European capitalism. The particular morality, esthetic forms, and disciplinary methods that already functioned effec- tively by 1850 in European bourgeois society--^its forms of social control--^were adopted wholesale by the Soviets. I think the system of imprisonment was invented as a generalized penal system during the eighteenth century and consolidated in the nineteenth century in connection with the development of capitalist societies and states. Moreover, the prison system was only one of the techniques of power necessary to the development and control of the forces of production. The dis- ciplined life--disciphne in school, at work, in the army-- is also a technical innovation of that period. And techniques are easily transplanted. Just as the Soviets adopted the principles of scientific management and other related management tech- niques developed in the West, they also adopted our discipli- nary techniques, adding one new weapon--^party discipline-- to the arsenal we had perfected.
? Q: It seems to me that Soviet citizens have even more difficulty than Europeans in understanding the political significance of these mechanisms. I see proof of this in the unfortunate prejudice of Soviet dissidents against non-political prisoners. Solzhenitsyn's descriptions of the latter are abso- lutely chilling. His "ordinary" criminals are subhuman crea- tures incapable of expressing themselves in any known lan- guage. The least we can say about his attitude is that he shows them no compassion.
? MF: The hostility shown toward "ordinary" crimi- nals by those who consider themselves political prisoners can
? Politics of Soviet Crime 125
? seem shocking to those of us who think that poverty, rebellion, and the rejection of exploitation and humiliation are at the root of delinquency. But we must try to look at things in terms of their tactical relevance. We must take into account the fact that in the Soviet Union, just as in France or elsewhere, the crimi- nal element is controlled, infiltrated, and manipulated by those in power. Among criminals as among non-criminals, rebels are a minority and conformists a majority. Do you think that a system of punishment that provides recidivism could have been maintained if criminal behavior did not serve some fiinc- tion? Early in the nineteenth century it became obvious that in most cases imprisonment tumed the condemned into lifetime offenders. Other methods of punishment would certainly have been invented, were it not for the fact that the professionaliza- tion of crime created a kind of reserve army useful to those in power for providing services such as prostitution, for example, and for providing informers, strike-breakers, lackeys, agents- provocateurs, and even bodyguards for electoral, and even presidential candidates. In short, there is a historical conflict between political and non-political offenders--^in so far as those in power have always sought to implicate both groups in the same base, selfish, and savage criminality.
? I do not mean to imply that non-political criminals are the faithful handmaidens of the Soviet regime. But given the extreme difficulty of the dissidents' struggle, I wonder whether it is not necessary for them to distinguish themselves from the others, to show that their cause is not that of the "thieves and murderers" with which the regime tries to iden- tify them. This may be only a tactical maneuver on the part of the dissidents. In any case, I find it difficult to condemn the attitude of the Soviet dissenters who are careful not to be confused with the "ordinary" criminals. I believe there were many members of the French resistance who when arrested refused--for political reasons--^to be taken for black-market-
? 126 Politics of Soviet Crime
? eers, even though the latter could expect a far less cruel fate.
? However, if you were to ask me about a country like France, my answer would be different. Here must point out the existence of a broad spectrum of illegalities that extends from the sometimes honored, always tolerated wheelings and deal- ings of politicians and the merchant princes of drugs and mu- nitions (who all use the law), to the prosecuted and punished offenses of the small-time thief who rebels against the law, is ignorant of it, or even baited by it. And we must also point out the unequal treatment handed out by our penal system. The important distinction here is not between political and non- political offenders, but between the profitable illegalities per- petrated with impunity by those who use the law, and the simple illegalities that the penal system uses to create a stand- ing army of criminals.
? Q: But it is also true that in the Soviet Union, just as in France, there is a profound rupture between the ordinary people and those found guilty of petty crimes. I recently saw a program on Italian television that ended with scenes of a prison cemetery where those who died while serving their sen- tences are buried in tombs hardly worthy of the name. The prisoners' families almost never claim their dead--undoubt- edly because transportation is too expensive, but also because they are ashamed. For me, the scene had profound social im- plications.
? MF: The break between public opinion and criminals has the same origin as the prison system itself. Or, rather, it is one of the great benefits that the power structure has reaped from that system. In fact, the hostile relationship that we see today between criminals and the lower strata of society did not exist until the eighteenth century--and in some parts of Eu- rope not until the nineteenth or even early twentieth century.
? Politics of Soviet Crime 127
? The gap between rich and poor was so wide that the thief--the redistributor of wealth--was welcome among the poor. Until the seventeenth century, thieves and bandits were popular he- roes, some of whom remain as shadowy but positive figures in our mythology. The same is true of the bandits of Corsica and Sicily and the thieves of Naples. But in an urban industrial setting, pilfering and petty theft became too costly, and these infractions tolerated by the masses began to be seen as a seri- ous threat. At that point, a new form of economic discipline calling for honesty, accuracy, punctuality, thrift, and an abso- lute respect for property was imposed at all levels of society. It became necessary on the one hand to assure more efficient protection of wealth, and on the other to create in the popular mind an openly hostile attitude toward illegality. Thus with the aid of prisons, those in power created a hard core of crimi- nals who had no real communication with the masses and were no longer tolerated by them. This isolation facilitated both the infiltration of the criminal element by the police and the development, in the course of the nineteenth century, of an underworld ideology. The contempt, suspicion, and hatred aroused by criminals should not come as any surprise: it is the result of 150 years of effort on the part of politicians, ideo- logues, and the poUce. One should not be surprised either by the fact that the same phenomenon is found in the USSR.
? Q: One month after the Riga documentary was shown on French television, the release of the mathematician Leonid Plyushch focused attention on another all too famihar aspect of Soviet repression: the imprisonment of dissidents in psychiatric hospitals.
? MF: The internment of dissidents in mental hospitals constitutes an extraordinary paradox in a country that calls itself socialist. In the case of a murderer or child molester, a
? 128 Politics of Soviet Crime
? search for the psychological roots of the crime and an attempt to cure the perpetrator can be justified; the procedure in any case is not illogical. But the dissenter--I mean the one who does not accept the regime, repudiates it, or does not under- stand it--^is of all Soviet citizens the one who should not be considered mentally ill. Instead, he should be the object of political instruction designed to make him open his eyes, to raise his level of consciousness, to make him understand in what way Soviet reality is intelligible and necessary, desirable and pleasant. However, dissidents are subjected to psychiatric treatment more frequently than anybody else. Does this not mean that it is not possible, to convince someone in rational terms, that his opposition is unfounded? Does it not mean that the only way that Soviet reality can be made acceptable to those who don't like it is by authoritarian methods--^through the use of drugs that affect hormones and neurons? The para- dox is a revealing one: Soviet reality is only pleasant under the effects of Thorazine. And if only tranquilizers can make it acceptable, then perhaps there is a real cause for anxiety. Haven't the Soviet leaders renounced the rationality of their revolution, worrying only about maintaining docility? The pu- nitive techniques employed in the Soviet Union reveal this renunciation of all that is basic to a socialist project.
? Q: But there has been a certain amount of change in the Soviet Union. There is less repression now. In Stalin's time, everyone was terrified; one day you were the head of a factory, the next day you found yourself in a prison camp. Now, a certain element can act with impunity. If you are an academician, you no longer go to prison. Not only is Sakharov still fi-ee, but out of a total of 600 Soviet academicians, only seventy signed the denunciation of him. This means that the others felt free to refuse to sign. Twenty years ago this would have been unthinkable.
? Politics of Soviet Crime 129
? MF: I agree that the reign of terror has abated some- what. However, terror is not the apogee of discipline, but rather its failure. Under Stalin, the head of the NKVD himself could be executed as he left a cabinet meeting. (In fact, no head of the NKVD ever died of natural causes. ) Change and upheaval were inherent in the system itself. Fear is circular: those who unleash terror inevitably become its victims. But once the ministers, police officials, academicians, and other party leaders become entrenched and no longer fear for them- selves, discipline in the ranks below them will function effec- tively without even the sUghtest risk of upheaval.
I would like to retum to the issue of punishment in a more general sense. The questions of what to punish and how to punish have been debated for a long time. Now, however, we are beginning to ask ourselves some strange new ques- tions. "Is punishment necessary? " "What do we mean by pun- ishment? " "Why is there a connection--^until now taken for granted--^between crime and punishment? " The idea that crime must be punished is so familiar, so necessary to us, and yet, there is something somewhere that makes us doubt. Con- sider the cowardly relief of judge, jury, journalists, spectators, etc. , when a psychiatrist or psychologist tells them not to be afraid to find a defendant guilty, that they will not be punish- ing the offender, but merely providing for his/her rehabilita- tion and cure. The defendant is found guilty, sentenced, im- prisoned. The court is acquitted.
? To suggest an alternative to punishment is to avoid the issue, which is not the judicial context of punishment, nor its techniques, but the power structure that punishes. This is why I find the problem of criminal justice in the Soviet Union so interesting. It is easy to mock the theoretical contradictions that characterize the Soviet penal system, but these are theo- ries that kill, and blood-stained contradictions. One can also be surprised that they weren't able to come up with new ways of
? 130 Politics of Soviet Crime
? dealing with crime and political opposition; one must be indig- nant that they adopted the method of the bourgeoisie in its most rigid period, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that they pushed it to a degree of meticulousness that is overwhelming.
? Their dimensions unknown, the mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union--systems of control, of surveil- lance, punishment--are versions of those used on a smaller scale and with less consistency by the bourgeoisie as it struggled to consolidate its power. One can say to many so- cialisms, real or dreamt: Between the analysis of power in the bourgeois state and the idea of its future withering away, there is a missing term--the analysis, criticism, destruction, and overthrow of the power mechanism itself. Socialism and so- cialist societies have no need for new declarations of human rights and freedoms: simple, thus unnecessary. But if they want to be worthy of love and no longer rejected, they must address themselves to the question of power and its exercise. Their task is to invent a way in which power can be exercised without instilling fear. That would be a true innovation. A
? Translated by Mollie Horwitz
? 12
? I, Pierre Rivie`re
Q: If you like, we can begin by discussing your inter- est in the publication of the dossier on Pierre Rivie`re, and in particular your interest in the fact that at least in part it has been made into a film.
MF; For me the book was a trap. You know how much people are talking now about delinquents, their psychol- ogy, their drives and desires, etc. The discourse of psychia- trists, psychologists and criminologists is inexhaustible on the phenomenon of delinquency. Yet it's a discourse that dates back about 150 years, to the 1830s. Well, there you had a magnificent case: in 1836 a triple murder, and then not only all the aspects of the trial but also an absolutely unique wit- ness, the criminal himself, who left a memoir of more than a hundred pages. So, to publish this book was for me a way of saying to the shrinks in general (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists): well, you've been around for 150 years, and here is a case contemporary with your birth. What do you have to say about it? Are you better prepared to discuss it than your
19th century colleagues?
In a sense I can say I won; I won or I lost, I don't
know, for my secret desire of course was to hear criminolo- gists, psychologists, and psychiatrists discuss the case of
? 130 Politics of Soviet Crime
? dealing with crime and political opposition; one must be indig- nant that they adopted the method of the bourgeoisie in its most rigid period, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that they pushed it to a degree of meticulousness that is overwhelming.
? Their dimensions unknown, the mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union--systems of control, of surveil- lance, punishment--are versions of those used on a smaller scale and with less consistency by the bourgeoisie as it struggled to consolidate its power. One can say to many so- cialisms, real or dreamt; Between the analysis of power in the bourgeois state and the idea of its future withering away, there is a missing term--the analysis, criticism, destruction, and overthrow of the power mechanism itself. Socialism and so- cialist societies have no need for new declarations of human rights and freedoms: simple, thus unnecessary. But if they want to be worthy of love and no longer rejected, they must address themselves to the question of power and its exercise. Their task is to invent a way in which power can be exercised without instilling fear. That would be a true innovation. A
? Translated by Mollie Horwitz
? 12
? I, Pierre Rivie`re
Q: If you like, we can begin by discussing your inter- est in the publication of the dossier on Pierre Rivie`re, and in particular your interest in the fact that at least in part it has been made into a film.
? MF: For me the book was a trap. You know how much people are talking now about delinquents, their psychol- ogy, their drives and desires, etc. The discourse of psychia- trists, psychologists and criminologists is inexhaustible on the phenomenon of delinquency. Yet it's a discourse that dates back about 150 years, to the 1830s. Well, there you had a magnificent case: in 1836 a triple murder, and then not only all the aspects of the trial but also an absolutely unique wit- ness, the criminal himself, who left a memoir of more than a hundred pages. So, to publish this book was for me a way of saying to the shrinks in general (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists): well, you've been around for 150 years, and here is a case contemporary with your birth. What do you have to say about it? Are you better prepared to discuss it than your
19th century colleagues?
? In a sense I can say I won; I won or I lost, I don't know, for my secret desire of course was to hear criminolo- gists, psychologists, and psychiatrists discuss the case of
? 132 I, Pierre Rivie`re
? Rivie`re in their usual insipid language. Yet they were literally reduced to silence: not a single one spoke up and said: "Here is what Rivie`re was in reality. And I can tell you now what couldn't be said in the 19th century. " Except for one fool, a psychoanalyst, who claimed that Rivie`re was an illustration of paranoia as defined by Lacan. With this exception no one had anything to say. But I must congratulate them for the prudence and lucidity with which they have renounced discussion of Rivie`re. So it was a bet won or lost, as you like. . .
? Q: But more generally, it's difficult to discuss the event itself, both its central point which is the murder and also the character who instigates it.
? MF: Yes, because I believe that Rivie`re's own dis- course on his act so dominates, or in any case so escapes from every possible handle, that there is nothing to be said about this central point, this crime or act, that is not a step back in relation to it. We see there nevertheless a phenomenon without equivalent in either the history of crime or discourse: that is to say, a crime accompanied by a discourse so strong and so strange that the crime ends up not existing anymore; it escapes through the very fact of this discourse held about it by the one who committed it.
? Q: Well how do you situate yourself in relation to the impossibility of this discourse?
? Nff: I have said nothing about Rivie`re's crime itself and once more, I don't believe anyone can say anything about it. No, I think that one must compare Rivie`re with Lacenaire, who was his exact contemporary and who committed a whole heap of minor and shoddy crimes, mostly failures, hardly glo- rious at all, but who succeeded through his very intelligent
? I, Pierre Rivie`re 133
? discourse in making these crimes exist as real works of art, and in making the criminal, that is, Lacenaire himself, the very artist of criminality. It's another tour de force if you like: he managed to give an intense reality, for dozens of years, for more than a century, to acts that were finally very shoddy and ignoble. As a criminal he was a rather poor type, but the splendor and intelligence of his writing gave a consistency to it all. Rivie`re is something altogether different: a really ex- traordinary crime which was revived by such an even more extraordinary discourse that the crime ended up ceasing to exist, and I think moreover that this is what happened in the minds of the judges.
? Q: Well then, do you agree with the project of Rene? Allio's film, which was centered on the idea of a peasant seizing the opportunity for speech? Or had you already thought about that?
? MF: No, it's to AUio's credit to have thought of that, but I subscribe to the idea completely. For by reconstituting the crime from the outside, with actors, as if it were an event and nothing but a criminal event, the essential would be lost. It was necessary that one be situated, on the one hand, at the interior of Riviere's discourse, that the film be a film of mem- ory and not the film of a crime, and on the other hand that this discourse of a litde Normand peasant of 1835 be taken up in what could be the peasant discourse of that period. Yet, what is the closest to that form of discourse, if not the same one that is spoken today, in the same voice, by the peasants Uving in the same place.
And finally, across 150 years, it's the same voices, the same accents, the same maladroit and raucous speech that recounts the same thing with almost nothing trans- posed. In fact Alho chose to commemorate this act at the same place and almost with the same characters who were there 150
? 134 I, Pierre Rivie`re
? years ago; these are the same peasants who in the same place repeat the same act. It was difficult to reduce the whole cine- matic apparatus, the whole filmic apparatus, to such a thin- ness, and that is really extraordinary, rather unique I think in the history of the cinema.
? What's also important in Allio's film is that he gives the peasants their tragedy. Basically, the tragedy of the peasant until the end of the 18th century was still hunger. But, begin- ning in the 19th century and perhaps still today, it was, like every great tragedy, the tragedy of the law, of the law and the land. Greek tragedy is a tragedy that recounts the birth of the law and the mortal effects of the law on men. The Rivie`re affair occurred in 1836, that is, twenty years after the Code Civil was set into place: a new law is imposed on the daily life of the peasant and he struggles in this new juridical universe. The whole drama of Rivie`re is a drama about the law, the code, legality, marriage, possessions, and so forth. Yet, it's always within this tragedy that the peasant world moves. And what is important therefore is to show peasants today this old drama which is at the same time the one of their lives: just as Greek citizens saw the representation of their own city on the stage.
? Q: What role can this fact play, the fact that the Nor- mand peasants of today can keep the spirit, thanks to the film, of this event, of this period?
? MF: You know that there is a great deal of literature about the peasants, but very little peasant literature, or peasant expression. Yet, here we have a text written in 1835 by a peasant, in his own language, that is, in one that is barely literate. And here is the possibility for these peasants today to play themselves, with their own means, in a drama which is of their generation, basically. And by looking at the way Allio
? I, Pierre Rivie`re 135
? made his actors work you could easily see that in a sense he was very close to them, that he gave them a lot of explanations in setting them up, but that on the other side, he allowed them great latitude, in the manner of their language, their pronuncia- tion, their gestures. And, if you like, I think it's politically important to give the peasants the possibility of acting this peasant text. Hence the importance also of actors from outside to represent the world of the law, the jurors, the lawyers, etc. , all those people from the city who are basically outside of this very direct communication between the peasant of the 19th century and the one of the 20th that Allio has known how to visualize, and, to a certain point, let these peasant actors visu- alize.
? Q: But isn't there a danger in the fact that they begin to speak only through such a monstrous story?
? MF: It's something one could fear. And Allio, when he began to speak to them about the possibility of making the film, didn't dare tell them what was really involved. And when he told them, he was very surprised to see that they accepted it very easily; the crime posed no problem for them. On the contrary, instead of becoming an obstacle, it was a kind of space where they could meet, talk and do a whole lot of things which were actually those of their daily hves. In fact, instead of blocking them, the crime liberated them. And if one had asked them to play something closer to their daily lives and their activity, they would have perhaps felt more theatrical and stagey than in playing this kind of crime, a little far away and mythic, under the shelter of which they could go all out with their own reality.
? Q: I was thinking rather of a somewhat unfortunate symmetry; right now it's very fashionable to make films about
? 136 I, Pierre Rivie`re
? the turpitudes and monstrosities of the bourgeoisie. So in this film was there the risk of falling into the trap of the indiscreet violence of the peasantry?
? MF; And link up again finally with this tradition of an atrocious representation of the peasant world, as in Balzac and Zola. . . I don't think so. Perhaps just because this vio- lence is never present there in a plastic or theatrical way. What exists are intensities, rumblings, muffled things, thicknesses, repetitions, things hardly spoken, but not violence. . . There is none of that lyricism of violence and peasant abjection that you seem to fear. Moreover, it's like that in Allio's film, but it's also like that in the documents, in history. Of course there are some firenetic scenes, fights among children that their par- ents argue about, but after all, these scenes are not very fi-e- quent, and above all, running through them there is always a great finesse and acuity of feehng, a subtlety even in the wick- edness, often a dehcacy. Because of this, none of the charac- ters have that touch of uivrestrained savagery of brute beasts that one finds at a certain level in the literature on the peas- antry. Everyone is terribly intelligent in this film, terribly deli- cate, and, to a certain point, terribly reserved. A
? Translated by John Johnston
? I? !
? 13
? The End of the Monarchy of Sex
? Q: You inaugurate with The History of Sexuality a study of monumental proportions. How do you justify today, Michel Foucault, an enterprise of such magnitude?
MF: Of such magnitude? No, no, rather of such ex- iguity. I don't wish to write the chronicle of sexual behaviors throughout so many ages and civilizations. I want to follow a much finer thread: the one which has linked in our societies for so many centuries sex and the search for truth.
Q: In precisely what sense?
? MF; The problem is in fact the following: how is it that in a society such as ours, sexuality is not simply that which permits us to reproduce the species, the family, and the individual? Not simply something which procures pleasure and enjoyment? How is it that sexuality has been considered
? 138 End of the Monarchy of Sex
? the privileged place where our deepest "truth" is read and expressed? For this is the essential fact: that since Christianity, Western civilization has not stopped saying, "To know who you are, know what your sexuality is about. " Sex has always been the center where our "truth" of the human subject has been tied up along with the development of our species.
? Confession, the examination of conscience, all of the insistence on the secrets and the importance of the flesh, was not simply a means of forbidding sex or of pushing it as far as possible from consciousness, it was a way of placing sexuality at the heart of existence and of connecting salvation to the mastery of sexuality's obscure movements. Sex was, in Chris- tian societies, that which had to be examined, watched over, confessed and transformed into discourse.
? Q: Hence the paradoxical thesis which supports the first volume: far fi-om making sexuality their taboo, their ma- jor interdiction, our societies have not ceased to speak about sexuality, to make it speak. . .
MF: They could speak well and often about it, but only to forbid it.
? But I wished to underline two important things. First, that the bringing to light, the "clarification" of sexuality, did not happen only in discussions, but in the reality of institutions and practices.
? Secondly, that numerous strict prohibitions exist. But they are part of an economic complex where they might mingle with incitements, manifestations and valorizations. These are the prohibitions that we always insist upon. I would like to refocus the perspective somewhat: seizing in any case the entire complex of operative mechanisms.
? And then, you know all too well, that they've made me into the melancholy historian of prohibitions and repres-
? End of the Monarchy of Sex 139
? sive power, someone who recounts history according to two categories: insanity and its incarceration, anomaly and its ex- clusion, delinquence and its imprisonment. But my problem has always been on the side of another category: truth. How did the power unfolding in insanity produce psychiatry's "true" discourse? The same thing appUes to sexuality: how to recapture the will to know how power exerted itself on sex? I don't want to write the sociological history of a prohibition but rather the political history of a production of "truth. "
Q: A new revolution in the concept of history? The dawn of another "new history? "
MF: A few years ago, historians were very proud to have discovered that they could write not only the history of batties, of kings and institutions, but also of the economy. Now they're all dumbfounded because the shrewdest among them learned that it was also possible to write the history of feelings, of behaviors and of bodies. Soon they'll understand that the history of the West cannot be disassociated from the way in which "truth" is produced and inscribes its effects.
We live in a society which is marching to a great extent "towards truth"--mean a society which produces and circulates discourse which has truth as its function, passing itself off as such and thus obtaining specific powers. The es- tablishment of "true" discourses (which however are inces- santly changing) is one of the fundamental problems of the West. The history of "truth"--of the power proper to dis- courses accepted as true--has yet to be written.
What are the positive mechanisms which, producing sexuality in this or that fashion, bring with them misery?
In any case, what I would like to study for my part, are all of these mechanisms in our society which invite, incite and force us to speak about sex.
? 140 End of the Monarchy of Sex
Q: Some would respond that, despite such discourse, repression and sexual misery still exist. . .
MF: Yes, that objection has been made. You're right; we live more or less in this state of sexual misery. With this said, it's true that this objection is never treated in my book.
Q: Why? Is that a deliberate choice?
? MF: When I undertake concrete studies in subse- quent volumes on women, children and perverts, I will try to analyze the forms and conditions of misery. But for the mo- ment, it is a question of establishing a method. The problem is to know whether this mystery should be explained negatively by fundamental interdiction or by a prohibition relative to an economic situation ("Work, don't make love"), or whether this misery is the effect of procedures which are much more com- plex and positive.
Q: What could a "positive" explanation be in this case?
MF: I'm going to make a presumptuous comparison. What did Marx do when in his analysis of capital he encoun- tered the problem of working-class misery? He refused the usual explanation which regarded this misery as the effect of a rare natural cause or of a concerted theft. And he said in ef- fect: given what capitalist production is in its fundamental laws, it can't help but to produce misery. Capitalism's raison d'etre is not to starve the workers but it cannot develop with- out starving them. Marx substituted the analysis of production for the denunciation of theft.
? Other things being equal, that's approximately what I
? ? End of the Monarchy of Sex 141
? wanted to say. It's not a question of denying sexual misery, but it's also not a question of explaining it negatively by re- pression. The whole problem is to understand which are the positive mechanisms that, producing sexuality in such or such a fashion, result in misery.
Here is one example that I will treat in a future vol- ume: at the beginning of the eighteenth century enormous im- portance was suddenly accorded to childhood masturbation, which was persecuted everywhere as a sudden terrible epi- demic threatening to compromise the whole human race.
? Must we admit that childhood masturbation had sud- denly become unacceptable for a capitalist society in the proc- ess of development? This is the position of certain recent "Reichians. " It does not appear to me to be a satisfying one.
? On the contrary, what was important at the time was the reorganization of the relations between children and adults, parents and educators: it was an intensification of intra-famil- ial relationships, it was childhood which was at stake for the parents, the educational institutions, for the public health au- thorities; it was childhood as the breeding ground for the gen- erations to come. At the crossroads of body and soul, of health and morality, of education and training, children's sexuality became at the same time a target and an instrument of power. A specific "children's sexuality" was established: it was pre- carious, dangerous, to be watched over constantly.
? From this resulted a sexual misery of childhood and adolesence fi'om which our generations have still not recov- ered. The objective was not to forbid. It was to constitute, through childhood sexuality suddenly become important and mysterious, a network of power over children.
Q: This idea that sexual misery arises from repres- sion, and that in order to be happy we must liberate our sexu-
alities, is a fundamental one for sexologists, doctors, and vice squads. . .
? 142 End of the Monarchy of Sex
? MF: Yes, and that is why they set a fearsome trap for us. They basically tell us: "You have a sexuality, this sexuality is both frustrated and mute, hypocritical prohibitions repress it. So, come to us, show us, confide in us your unhappy se- crets. . . "
? This type of discourse is in fact a formidable tool of control and power. As always, it uses what people say, feel and hope for. It exploits their temptation to believe that to be happy, it suffices to cross the threshhold of discourse and re- move a few prohibitions. It ends up in fact repressing and controlling movements of revolt and liberation.
Q: From this I suppose comes the misunderstanding of certain commentators: "According to Foucault, the repres- sion and liberation of sexuality amounts to the same thing. . . " Or elsewhere: "Pro-abortion and pro-life movements employ basically the same discourse. . . . "
? MF: Yes! These matters have yet to be cleared up. They've had me saying in effect that there is no real difference between the language of condemnation and that of contra- condemnation, between the discourse of prudish movements and that of sexual liberation. They claimed that I was putting them all in the same bag to drown them like a litter of kittens. Completely false: that's not what I wanted to say. The impor- tant thing is, however, I didn't say it at all.
? Q: But you agree all the same that there are some common standards and components. . .
MF: But a statement is one thing, discourse another. There are common tactics and opposing strategies.
? ? Q: For example?
? End of the Monarchy of Sex 143
? MF: I believe the so-called "sexual liberation" mov( merits must be understood as movements of affirmation "b< ginning with" sexuality. Which means two things: these ai movements which take off from sexuality, from the apparatt of sexuality within which we're trapped, which make it func tion to the limit; but at the same time, these movements ai displaced in relation to sexuality, disengaging themselvt from it and going beyond it.
Q: What do these outbursts resemble?
MF: Take the case of homosexuality. In the 187( psychiatrists began to make it into a medical analysis: ce tainly a point of departure for a whole series of new intervei tions and controls.
? They began either to incarcerate homosexuals in as; lums or attempted to cure them. They were formerly perceive as libertines and sometimes as delinquents (from this resulte condenmations which could be very severe--with burning ; the stake still occurring in the eighteenth century, althoug very rarely). In the future we'll all see them in a global kinshi with the insane, suffering from sickness of the sexual instinc But taking such discourses literally, and thereby even tumiii them around, we see responses appearing in the form of def ance: "All right, we are what you say we are, whether b nature or sickness or perversion, as you wish. And so if w are, let it be, and if you want to know what we are, we can te you better than you can. " An entire hterature of homosexua ity, very different from libertine narratives, appeared at tl end of the nineteenth century: think of Oscar Wilde and Gid It is the strategic return of a "same" will to truth.
? Q: I think the explanation of these paradoxes lies in the fact that the Soviet Union claims to be a sociaUst state but is in reality not at all socialist. The hypocrisy of Soviet leaders and the incoherence of their official statements follows logi- cally from this fact. It has been evident for some time now that if the Soviet Union has been unable to evolve along lines that the Twentieth Congress seemed to suggest, it is because the weaknesses of the Soviet society are structural and lie in the mode of production, and not simply in a more-or-less bureau- cratized leadership.
? 124 Politics of Soviet Crime
? MF: It is undoubtedly true that although the Soviets indeed changed the distribution of property and the role of the state in the control of production, they merely adopted certain power and management techniques perfected by nineteenth- century European capitalism. The particular morality, esthetic forms, and disciplinary methods that already functioned effec- tively by 1850 in European bourgeois society--^its forms of social control--^were adopted wholesale by the Soviets. I think the system of imprisonment was invented as a generalized penal system during the eighteenth century and consolidated in the nineteenth century in connection with the development of capitalist societies and states. Moreover, the prison system was only one of the techniques of power necessary to the development and control of the forces of production. The dis- ciplined life--disciphne in school, at work, in the army-- is also a technical innovation of that period. And techniques are easily transplanted. Just as the Soviets adopted the principles of scientific management and other related management tech- niques developed in the West, they also adopted our discipli- nary techniques, adding one new weapon--^party discipline-- to the arsenal we had perfected.
? Q: It seems to me that Soviet citizens have even more difficulty than Europeans in understanding the political significance of these mechanisms. I see proof of this in the unfortunate prejudice of Soviet dissidents against non-political prisoners. Solzhenitsyn's descriptions of the latter are abso- lutely chilling. His "ordinary" criminals are subhuman crea- tures incapable of expressing themselves in any known lan- guage. The least we can say about his attitude is that he shows them no compassion.
? MF: The hostility shown toward "ordinary" crimi- nals by those who consider themselves political prisoners can
? Politics of Soviet Crime 125
? seem shocking to those of us who think that poverty, rebellion, and the rejection of exploitation and humiliation are at the root of delinquency. But we must try to look at things in terms of their tactical relevance. We must take into account the fact that in the Soviet Union, just as in France or elsewhere, the crimi- nal element is controlled, infiltrated, and manipulated by those in power. Among criminals as among non-criminals, rebels are a minority and conformists a majority. Do you think that a system of punishment that provides recidivism could have been maintained if criminal behavior did not serve some fiinc- tion? Early in the nineteenth century it became obvious that in most cases imprisonment tumed the condemned into lifetime offenders. Other methods of punishment would certainly have been invented, were it not for the fact that the professionaliza- tion of crime created a kind of reserve army useful to those in power for providing services such as prostitution, for example, and for providing informers, strike-breakers, lackeys, agents- provocateurs, and even bodyguards for electoral, and even presidential candidates. In short, there is a historical conflict between political and non-political offenders--^in so far as those in power have always sought to implicate both groups in the same base, selfish, and savage criminality.
? I do not mean to imply that non-political criminals are the faithful handmaidens of the Soviet regime. But given the extreme difficulty of the dissidents' struggle, I wonder whether it is not necessary for them to distinguish themselves from the others, to show that their cause is not that of the "thieves and murderers" with which the regime tries to iden- tify them. This may be only a tactical maneuver on the part of the dissidents. In any case, I find it difficult to condemn the attitude of the Soviet dissenters who are careful not to be confused with the "ordinary" criminals. I believe there were many members of the French resistance who when arrested refused--for political reasons--^to be taken for black-market-
? 126 Politics of Soviet Crime
? eers, even though the latter could expect a far less cruel fate.
? However, if you were to ask me about a country like France, my answer would be different. Here must point out the existence of a broad spectrum of illegalities that extends from the sometimes honored, always tolerated wheelings and deal- ings of politicians and the merchant princes of drugs and mu- nitions (who all use the law), to the prosecuted and punished offenses of the small-time thief who rebels against the law, is ignorant of it, or even baited by it. And we must also point out the unequal treatment handed out by our penal system. The important distinction here is not between political and non- political offenders, but between the profitable illegalities per- petrated with impunity by those who use the law, and the simple illegalities that the penal system uses to create a stand- ing army of criminals.
? Q: But it is also true that in the Soviet Union, just as in France, there is a profound rupture between the ordinary people and those found guilty of petty crimes. I recently saw a program on Italian television that ended with scenes of a prison cemetery where those who died while serving their sen- tences are buried in tombs hardly worthy of the name. The prisoners' families almost never claim their dead--undoubt- edly because transportation is too expensive, but also because they are ashamed. For me, the scene had profound social im- plications.
? MF: The break between public opinion and criminals has the same origin as the prison system itself. Or, rather, it is one of the great benefits that the power structure has reaped from that system. In fact, the hostile relationship that we see today between criminals and the lower strata of society did not exist until the eighteenth century--and in some parts of Eu- rope not until the nineteenth or even early twentieth century.
? Politics of Soviet Crime 127
? The gap between rich and poor was so wide that the thief--the redistributor of wealth--was welcome among the poor. Until the seventeenth century, thieves and bandits were popular he- roes, some of whom remain as shadowy but positive figures in our mythology. The same is true of the bandits of Corsica and Sicily and the thieves of Naples. But in an urban industrial setting, pilfering and petty theft became too costly, and these infractions tolerated by the masses began to be seen as a seri- ous threat. At that point, a new form of economic discipline calling for honesty, accuracy, punctuality, thrift, and an abso- lute respect for property was imposed at all levels of society. It became necessary on the one hand to assure more efficient protection of wealth, and on the other to create in the popular mind an openly hostile attitude toward illegality. Thus with the aid of prisons, those in power created a hard core of crimi- nals who had no real communication with the masses and were no longer tolerated by them. This isolation facilitated both the infiltration of the criminal element by the police and the development, in the course of the nineteenth century, of an underworld ideology. The contempt, suspicion, and hatred aroused by criminals should not come as any surprise: it is the result of 150 years of effort on the part of politicians, ideo- logues, and the poUce. One should not be surprised either by the fact that the same phenomenon is found in the USSR.
? Q: One month after the Riga documentary was shown on French television, the release of the mathematician Leonid Plyushch focused attention on another all too famihar aspect of Soviet repression: the imprisonment of dissidents in psychiatric hospitals.
? MF: The internment of dissidents in mental hospitals constitutes an extraordinary paradox in a country that calls itself socialist. In the case of a murderer or child molester, a
? 128 Politics of Soviet Crime
? search for the psychological roots of the crime and an attempt to cure the perpetrator can be justified; the procedure in any case is not illogical. But the dissenter--I mean the one who does not accept the regime, repudiates it, or does not under- stand it--^is of all Soviet citizens the one who should not be considered mentally ill. Instead, he should be the object of political instruction designed to make him open his eyes, to raise his level of consciousness, to make him understand in what way Soviet reality is intelligible and necessary, desirable and pleasant. However, dissidents are subjected to psychiatric treatment more frequently than anybody else. Does this not mean that it is not possible, to convince someone in rational terms, that his opposition is unfounded? Does it not mean that the only way that Soviet reality can be made acceptable to those who don't like it is by authoritarian methods--^through the use of drugs that affect hormones and neurons? The para- dox is a revealing one: Soviet reality is only pleasant under the effects of Thorazine. And if only tranquilizers can make it acceptable, then perhaps there is a real cause for anxiety. Haven't the Soviet leaders renounced the rationality of their revolution, worrying only about maintaining docility? The pu- nitive techniques employed in the Soviet Union reveal this renunciation of all that is basic to a socialist project.
? Q: But there has been a certain amount of change in the Soviet Union. There is less repression now. In Stalin's time, everyone was terrified; one day you were the head of a factory, the next day you found yourself in a prison camp. Now, a certain element can act with impunity. If you are an academician, you no longer go to prison. Not only is Sakharov still fi-ee, but out of a total of 600 Soviet academicians, only seventy signed the denunciation of him. This means that the others felt free to refuse to sign. Twenty years ago this would have been unthinkable.
? Politics of Soviet Crime 129
? MF: I agree that the reign of terror has abated some- what. However, terror is not the apogee of discipline, but rather its failure. Under Stalin, the head of the NKVD himself could be executed as he left a cabinet meeting. (In fact, no head of the NKVD ever died of natural causes. ) Change and upheaval were inherent in the system itself. Fear is circular: those who unleash terror inevitably become its victims. But once the ministers, police officials, academicians, and other party leaders become entrenched and no longer fear for them- selves, discipline in the ranks below them will function effec- tively without even the sUghtest risk of upheaval.
I would like to retum to the issue of punishment in a more general sense. The questions of what to punish and how to punish have been debated for a long time. Now, however, we are beginning to ask ourselves some strange new ques- tions. "Is punishment necessary? " "What do we mean by pun- ishment? " "Why is there a connection--^until now taken for granted--^between crime and punishment? " The idea that crime must be punished is so familiar, so necessary to us, and yet, there is something somewhere that makes us doubt. Con- sider the cowardly relief of judge, jury, journalists, spectators, etc. , when a psychiatrist or psychologist tells them not to be afraid to find a defendant guilty, that they will not be punish- ing the offender, but merely providing for his/her rehabilita- tion and cure. The defendant is found guilty, sentenced, im- prisoned. The court is acquitted.
? To suggest an alternative to punishment is to avoid the issue, which is not the judicial context of punishment, nor its techniques, but the power structure that punishes. This is why I find the problem of criminal justice in the Soviet Union so interesting. It is easy to mock the theoretical contradictions that characterize the Soviet penal system, but these are theo- ries that kill, and blood-stained contradictions. One can also be surprised that they weren't able to come up with new ways of
? 130 Politics of Soviet Crime
? dealing with crime and political opposition; one must be indig- nant that they adopted the method of the bourgeoisie in its most rigid period, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that they pushed it to a degree of meticulousness that is overwhelming.
? Their dimensions unknown, the mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union--systems of control, of surveil- lance, punishment--are versions of those used on a smaller scale and with less consistency by the bourgeoisie as it struggled to consolidate its power. One can say to many so- cialisms, real or dreamt: Between the analysis of power in the bourgeois state and the idea of its future withering away, there is a missing term--the analysis, criticism, destruction, and overthrow of the power mechanism itself. Socialism and so- cialist societies have no need for new declarations of human rights and freedoms: simple, thus unnecessary. But if they want to be worthy of love and no longer rejected, they must address themselves to the question of power and its exercise. Their task is to invent a way in which power can be exercised without instilling fear. That would be a true innovation. A
? Translated by Mollie Horwitz
? 12
? I, Pierre Rivie`re
Q: If you like, we can begin by discussing your inter- est in the publication of the dossier on Pierre Rivie`re, and in particular your interest in the fact that at least in part it has been made into a film.
MF; For me the book was a trap. You know how much people are talking now about delinquents, their psychol- ogy, their drives and desires, etc. The discourse of psychia- trists, psychologists and criminologists is inexhaustible on the phenomenon of delinquency. Yet it's a discourse that dates back about 150 years, to the 1830s. Well, there you had a magnificent case: in 1836 a triple murder, and then not only all the aspects of the trial but also an absolutely unique wit- ness, the criminal himself, who left a memoir of more than a hundred pages. So, to publish this book was for me a way of saying to the shrinks in general (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists): well, you've been around for 150 years, and here is a case contemporary with your birth. What do you have to say about it? Are you better prepared to discuss it than your
19th century colleagues?
In a sense I can say I won; I won or I lost, I don't
know, for my secret desire of course was to hear criminolo- gists, psychologists, and psychiatrists discuss the case of
? 130 Politics of Soviet Crime
? dealing with crime and political opposition; one must be indig- nant that they adopted the method of the bourgeoisie in its most rigid period, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that they pushed it to a degree of meticulousness that is overwhelming.
? Their dimensions unknown, the mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union--systems of control, of surveil- lance, punishment--are versions of those used on a smaller scale and with less consistency by the bourgeoisie as it struggled to consolidate its power. One can say to many so- cialisms, real or dreamt; Between the analysis of power in the bourgeois state and the idea of its future withering away, there is a missing term--the analysis, criticism, destruction, and overthrow of the power mechanism itself. Socialism and so- cialist societies have no need for new declarations of human rights and freedoms: simple, thus unnecessary. But if they want to be worthy of love and no longer rejected, they must address themselves to the question of power and its exercise. Their task is to invent a way in which power can be exercised without instilling fear. That would be a true innovation. A
? Translated by Mollie Horwitz
? 12
? I, Pierre Rivie`re
Q: If you like, we can begin by discussing your inter- est in the publication of the dossier on Pierre Rivie`re, and in particular your interest in the fact that at least in part it has been made into a film.
? MF: For me the book was a trap. You know how much people are talking now about delinquents, their psychol- ogy, their drives and desires, etc. The discourse of psychia- trists, psychologists and criminologists is inexhaustible on the phenomenon of delinquency. Yet it's a discourse that dates back about 150 years, to the 1830s. Well, there you had a magnificent case: in 1836 a triple murder, and then not only all the aspects of the trial but also an absolutely unique wit- ness, the criminal himself, who left a memoir of more than a hundred pages. So, to publish this book was for me a way of saying to the shrinks in general (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists): well, you've been around for 150 years, and here is a case contemporary with your birth. What do you have to say about it? Are you better prepared to discuss it than your
19th century colleagues?
? In a sense I can say I won; I won or I lost, I don't know, for my secret desire of course was to hear criminolo- gists, psychologists, and psychiatrists discuss the case of
? 132 I, Pierre Rivie`re
? Rivie`re in their usual insipid language. Yet they were literally reduced to silence: not a single one spoke up and said: "Here is what Rivie`re was in reality. And I can tell you now what couldn't be said in the 19th century. " Except for one fool, a psychoanalyst, who claimed that Rivie`re was an illustration of paranoia as defined by Lacan. With this exception no one had anything to say. But I must congratulate them for the prudence and lucidity with which they have renounced discussion of Rivie`re. So it was a bet won or lost, as you like. . .
? Q: But more generally, it's difficult to discuss the event itself, both its central point which is the murder and also the character who instigates it.
? MF: Yes, because I believe that Rivie`re's own dis- course on his act so dominates, or in any case so escapes from every possible handle, that there is nothing to be said about this central point, this crime or act, that is not a step back in relation to it. We see there nevertheless a phenomenon without equivalent in either the history of crime or discourse: that is to say, a crime accompanied by a discourse so strong and so strange that the crime ends up not existing anymore; it escapes through the very fact of this discourse held about it by the one who committed it.
? Q: Well how do you situate yourself in relation to the impossibility of this discourse?
? Nff: I have said nothing about Rivie`re's crime itself and once more, I don't believe anyone can say anything about it. No, I think that one must compare Rivie`re with Lacenaire, who was his exact contemporary and who committed a whole heap of minor and shoddy crimes, mostly failures, hardly glo- rious at all, but who succeeded through his very intelligent
? I, Pierre Rivie`re 133
? discourse in making these crimes exist as real works of art, and in making the criminal, that is, Lacenaire himself, the very artist of criminality. It's another tour de force if you like: he managed to give an intense reality, for dozens of years, for more than a century, to acts that were finally very shoddy and ignoble. As a criminal he was a rather poor type, but the splendor and intelligence of his writing gave a consistency to it all. Rivie`re is something altogether different: a really ex- traordinary crime which was revived by such an even more extraordinary discourse that the crime ended up ceasing to exist, and I think moreover that this is what happened in the minds of the judges.
? Q: Well then, do you agree with the project of Rene? Allio's film, which was centered on the idea of a peasant seizing the opportunity for speech? Or had you already thought about that?
? MF: No, it's to AUio's credit to have thought of that, but I subscribe to the idea completely. For by reconstituting the crime from the outside, with actors, as if it were an event and nothing but a criminal event, the essential would be lost. It was necessary that one be situated, on the one hand, at the interior of Riviere's discourse, that the film be a film of mem- ory and not the film of a crime, and on the other hand that this discourse of a litde Normand peasant of 1835 be taken up in what could be the peasant discourse of that period. Yet, what is the closest to that form of discourse, if not the same one that is spoken today, in the same voice, by the peasants Uving in the same place.
And finally, across 150 years, it's the same voices, the same accents, the same maladroit and raucous speech that recounts the same thing with almost nothing trans- posed. In fact Alho chose to commemorate this act at the same place and almost with the same characters who were there 150
? 134 I, Pierre Rivie`re
? years ago; these are the same peasants who in the same place repeat the same act. It was difficult to reduce the whole cine- matic apparatus, the whole filmic apparatus, to such a thin- ness, and that is really extraordinary, rather unique I think in the history of the cinema.
? What's also important in Allio's film is that he gives the peasants their tragedy. Basically, the tragedy of the peasant until the end of the 18th century was still hunger. But, begin- ning in the 19th century and perhaps still today, it was, like every great tragedy, the tragedy of the law, of the law and the land. Greek tragedy is a tragedy that recounts the birth of the law and the mortal effects of the law on men. The Rivie`re affair occurred in 1836, that is, twenty years after the Code Civil was set into place: a new law is imposed on the daily life of the peasant and he struggles in this new juridical universe. The whole drama of Rivie`re is a drama about the law, the code, legality, marriage, possessions, and so forth. Yet, it's always within this tragedy that the peasant world moves. And what is important therefore is to show peasants today this old drama which is at the same time the one of their lives: just as Greek citizens saw the representation of their own city on the stage.
? Q: What role can this fact play, the fact that the Nor- mand peasants of today can keep the spirit, thanks to the film, of this event, of this period?
? MF: You know that there is a great deal of literature about the peasants, but very little peasant literature, or peasant expression. Yet, here we have a text written in 1835 by a peasant, in his own language, that is, in one that is barely literate. And here is the possibility for these peasants today to play themselves, with their own means, in a drama which is of their generation, basically. And by looking at the way Allio
? I, Pierre Rivie`re 135
? made his actors work you could easily see that in a sense he was very close to them, that he gave them a lot of explanations in setting them up, but that on the other side, he allowed them great latitude, in the manner of their language, their pronuncia- tion, their gestures. And, if you like, I think it's politically important to give the peasants the possibility of acting this peasant text. Hence the importance also of actors from outside to represent the world of the law, the jurors, the lawyers, etc. , all those people from the city who are basically outside of this very direct communication between the peasant of the 19th century and the one of the 20th that Allio has known how to visualize, and, to a certain point, let these peasant actors visu- alize.
? Q: But isn't there a danger in the fact that they begin to speak only through such a monstrous story?
? MF: It's something one could fear. And Allio, when he began to speak to them about the possibility of making the film, didn't dare tell them what was really involved. And when he told them, he was very surprised to see that they accepted it very easily; the crime posed no problem for them. On the contrary, instead of becoming an obstacle, it was a kind of space where they could meet, talk and do a whole lot of things which were actually those of their daily hves. In fact, instead of blocking them, the crime liberated them. And if one had asked them to play something closer to their daily lives and their activity, they would have perhaps felt more theatrical and stagey than in playing this kind of crime, a little far away and mythic, under the shelter of which they could go all out with their own reality.
? Q: I was thinking rather of a somewhat unfortunate symmetry; right now it's very fashionable to make films about
? 136 I, Pierre Rivie`re
? the turpitudes and monstrosities of the bourgeoisie. So in this film was there the risk of falling into the trap of the indiscreet violence of the peasantry?
? MF; And link up again finally with this tradition of an atrocious representation of the peasant world, as in Balzac and Zola. . . I don't think so. Perhaps just because this vio- lence is never present there in a plastic or theatrical way. What exists are intensities, rumblings, muffled things, thicknesses, repetitions, things hardly spoken, but not violence. . . There is none of that lyricism of violence and peasant abjection that you seem to fear. Moreover, it's like that in Allio's film, but it's also like that in the documents, in history. Of course there are some firenetic scenes, fights among children that their par- ents argue about, but after all, these scenes are not very fi-e- quent, and above all, running through them there is always a great finesse and acuity of feehng, a subtlety even in the wick- edness, often a dehcacy. Because of this, none of the charac- ters have that touch of uivrestrained savagery of brute beasts that one finds at a certain level in the literature on the peas- antry. Everyone is terribly intelligent in this film, terribly deli- cate, and, to a certain point, terribly reserved. A
? Translated by John Johnston
? I? !
? 13
? The End of the Monarchy of Sex
? Q: You inaugurate with The History of Sexuality a study of monumental proportions. How do you justify today, Michel Foucault, an enterprise of such magnitude?
MF: Of such magnitude? No, no, rather of such ex- iguity. I don't wish to write the chronicle of sexual behaviors throughout so many ages and civilizations. I want to follow a much finer thread: the one which has linked in our societies for so many centuries sex and the search for truth.
Q: In precisely what sense?
? MF; The problem is in fact the following: how is it that in a society such as ours, sexuality is not simply that which permits us to reproduce the species, the family, and the individual? Not simply something which procures pleasure and enjoyment? How is it that sexuality has been considered
? 138 End of the Monarchy of Sex
? the privileged place where our deepest "truth" is read and expressed? For this is the essential fact: that since Christianity, Western civilization has not stopped saying, "To know who you are, know what your sexuality is about. " Sex has always been the center where our "truth" of the human subject has been tied up along with the development of our species.
? Confession, the examination of conscience, all of the insistence on the secrets and the importance of the flesh, was not simply a means of forbidding sex or of pushing it as far as possible from consciousness, it was a way of placing sexuality at the heart of existence and of connecting salvation to the mastery of sexuality's obscure movements. Sex was, in Chris- tian societies, that which had to be examined, watched over, confessed and transformed into discourse.
? Q: Hence the paradoxical thesis which supports the first volume: far fi-om making sexuality their taboo, their ma- jor interdiction, our societies have not ceased to speak about sexuality, to make it speak. . .
MF: They could speak well and often about it, but only to forbid it.
? But I wished to underline two important things. First, that the bringing to light, the "clarification" of sexuality, did not happen only in discussions, but in the reality of institutions and practices.
? Secondly, that numerous strict prohibitions exist. But they are part of an economic complex where they might mingle with incitements, manifestations and valorizations. These are the prohibitions that we always insist upon. I would like to refocus the perspective somewhat: seizing in any case the entire complex of operative mechanisms.
? And then, you know all too well, that they've made me into the melancholy historian of prohibitions and repres-
? End of the Monarchy of Sex 139
? sive power, someone who recounts history according to two categories: insanity and its incarceration, anomaly and its ex- clusion, delinquence and its imprisonment. But my problem has always been on the side of another category: truth. How did the power unfolding in insanity produce psychiatry's "true" discourse? The same thing appUes to sexuality: how to recapture the will to know how power exerted itself on sex? I don't want to write the sociological history of a prohibition but rather the political history of a production of "truth. "
Q: A new revolution in the concept of history? The dawn of another "new history? "
MF: A few years ago, historians were very proud to have discovered that they could write not only the history of batties, of kings and institutions, but also of the economy. Now they're all dumbfounded because the shrewdest among them learned that it was also possible to write the history of feelings, of behaviors and of bodies. Soon they'll understand that the history of the West cannot be disassociated from the way in which "truth" is produced and inscribes its effects.
We live in a society which is marching to a great extent "towards truth"--mean a society which produces and circulates discourse which has truth as its function, passing itself off as such and thus obtaining specific powers. The es- tablishment of "true" discourses (which however are inces- santly changing) is one of the fundamental problems of the West. The history of "truth"--of the power proper to dis- courses accepted as true--has yet to be written.
What are the positive mechanisms which, producing sexuality in this or that fashion, bring with them misery?
In any case, what I would like to study for my part, are all of these mechanisms in our society which invite, incite and force us to speak about sex.
? 140 End of the Monarchy of Sex
Q: Some would respond that, despite such discourse, repression and sexual misery still exist. . .
MF: Yes, that objection has been made. You're right; we live more or less in this state of sexual misery. With this said, it's true that this objection is never treated in my book.
Q: Why? Is that a deliberate choice?
? MF: When I undertake concrete studies in subse- quent volumes on women, children and perverts, I will try to analyze the forms and conditions of misery. But for the mo- ment, it is a question of establishing a method. The problem is to know whether this mystery should be explained negatively by fundamental interdiction or by a prohibition relative to an economic situation ("Work, don't make love"), or whether this misery is the effect of procedures which are much more com- plex and positive.
Q: What could a "positive" explanation be in this case?
MF: I'm going to make a presumptuous comparison. What did Marx do when in his analysis of capital he encoun- tered the problem of working-class misery? He refused the usual explanation which regarded this misery as the effect of a rare natural cause or of a concerted theft. And he said in ef- fect: given what capitalist production is in its fundamental laws, it can't help but to produce misery. Capitalism's raison d'etre is not to starve the workers but it cannot develop with- out starving them. Marx substituted the analysis of production for the denunciation of theft.
? Other things being equal, that's approximately what I
? ? End of the Monarchy of Sex 141
? wanted to say. It's not a question of denying sexual misery, but it's also not a question of explaining it negatively by re- pression. The whole problem is to understand which are the positive mechanisms that, producing sexuality in such or such a fashion, result in misery.
Here is one example that I will treat in a future vol- ume: at the beginning of the eighteenth century enormous im- portance was suddenly accorded to childhood masturbation, which was persecuted everywhere as a sudden terrible epi- demic threatening to compromise the whole human race.
? Must we admit that childhood masturbation had sud- denly become unacceptable for a capitalist society in the proc- ess of development? This is the position of certain recent "Reichians. " It does not appear to me to be a satisfying one.
? On the contrary, what was important at the time was the reorganization of the relations between children and adults, parents and educators: it was an intensification of intra-famil- ial relationships, it was childhood which was at stake for the parents, the educational institutions, for the public health au- thorities; it was childhood as the breeding ground for the gen- erations to come. At the crossroads of body and soul, of health and morality, of education and training, children's sexuality became at the same time a target and an instrument of power. A specific "children's sexuality" was established: it was pre- carious, dangerous, to be watched over constantly.
? From this resulted a sexual misery of childhood and adolesence fi'om which our generations have still not recov- ered. The objective was not to forbid. It was to constitute, through childhood sexuality suddenly become important and mysterious, a network of power over children.
Q: This idea that sexual misery arises from repres- sion, and that in order to be happy we must liberate our sexu-
alities, is a fundamental one for sexologists, doctors, and vice squads. . .
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? MF: Yes, and that is why they set a fearsome trap for us. They basically tell us: "You have a sexuality, this sexuality is both frustrated and mute, hypocritical prohibitions repress it. So, come to us, show us, confide in us your unhappy se- crets. . . "
? This type of discourse is in fact a formidable tool of control and power. As always, it uses what people say, feel and hope for. It exploits their temptation to believe that to be happy, it suffices to cross the threshhold of discourse and re- move a few prohibitions. It ends up in fact repressing and controlling movements of revolt and liberation.
Q: From this I suppose comes the misunderstanding of certain commentators: "According to Foucault, the repres- sion and liberation of sexuality amounts to the same thing. . . " Or elsewhere: "Pro-abortion and pro-life movements employ basically the same discourse. . . . "
? MF: Yes! These matters have yet to be cleared up. They've had me saying in effect that there is no real difference between the language of condemnation and that of contra- condemnation, between the discourse of prudish movements and that of sexual liberation. They claimed that I was putting them all in the same bag to drown them like a litter of kittens. Completely false: that's not what I wanted to say. The impor- tant thing is, however, I didn't say it at all.
? Q: But you agree all the same that there are some common standards and components. . .
MF: But a statement is one thing, discourse another. There are common tactics and opposing strategies.
? ? Q: For example?
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? MF: I believe the so-called "sexual liberation" mov( merits must be understood as movements of affirmation "b< ginning with" sexuality. Which means two things: these ai movements which take off from sexuality, from the apparatt of sexuality within which we're trapped, which make it func tion to the limit; but at the same time, these movements ai displaced in relation to sexuality, disengaging themselvt from it and going beyond it.
Q: What do these outbursts resemble?
MF: Take the case of homosexuality. In the 187( psychiatrists began to make it into a medical analysis: ce tainly a point of departure for a whole series of new intervei tions and controls.
? They began either to incarcerate homosexuals in as; lums or attempted to cure them. They were formerly perceive as libertines and sometimes as delinquents (from this resulte condenmations which could be very severe--with burning ; the stake still occurring in the eighteenth century, althoug very rarely). In the future we'll all see them in a global kinshi with the insane, suffering from sickness of the sexual instinc But taking such discourses literally, and thereby even tumiii them around, we see responses appearing in the form of def ance: "All right, we are what you say we are, whether b nature or sickness or perversion, as you wish. And so if w are, let it be, and if you want to know what we are, we can te you better than you can. " An entire hterature of homosexua ity, very different from libertine narratives, appeared at tl end of the nineteenth century: think of Oscar Wilde and Gid It is the strategic return of a "same" will to truth.
