THE IDENTITY OF THE BODY
Gert Biesta
Leiden University
In the current “postmodern climate,”1 traditional ideas about the human subject — such as the idea of the autonomous, pre-social, trans-historical subject as the source of truth, rationality and identity — have come under heavy pressure. In postmodern discourse the human subject no longer figures as a point from which the universe can be moved. Postmodernism shows us the human subject as a position,2 as something “produced in a whole range of discursive practices — economic, social and political — the meanings of which are a constant site of struggle over power.”3
The identity of this subject is no longer considered to be a pre-existent identity to which the subject has a privileged access. In postmodernism, identity is a dialogical concept,4 a social-communicative construction, something that comes about on the instable meeting point of countless stories of subjectivity and the stories of history and culture.5 Identity no longer is something to be discovered; identity has become an invention.6
Initially, the postmodern “death of the subject” (Barthes) and the proclaimed “end of man” (Foucault) came as quite a shock. Now that the first shockwaves have faded away, the idea wins ground that the discourse of postmodernism has not produced something radically new, but is a recognition of that with which identity has always been concerned.7 To a certain extent, this also holds for education. One of the dimensions of the self-image of modern pedagogy is the idea of a close connection between educational action and the genesis of subjective identity. According to Oelkers,
[m]odern pedagogy starts with Rousseau and not with Descartes. Its fundamental idea is the dependence of individual identity upon its pedagogical constitution. The bourgeois subject is educated consciously, i.e. its later identity is dependent upon previous pedagogical influences.8This does not imply, however, that the way in which modern pedagogical thought captures the genesis of subjectivity is by necessity square to the postmodern view. Maybe the position of Rousseau itself is the most viable for postmodern critique. After all, Rousseau’s idea of “negative education” implies that the cultural environment is a threat to the development of individual identity, which suggests that identity only needs to be discovered. But theorists after Rousseau — such as Pestalozzi and Sleiermacher — show a growing awareness of the fact that the genesis of individual identity is a process in which both the child and the cultural environment take part. The same holds for Dewey, who defines “the ultimate problem of education” in terms of the coordination of the individual and the social factors.9
It seems justifiable to assume that, for the greater part, modern pedagogy is not founded upon the idea of the pre-social, trans-historical unchangeable identity of the human subject. Postmodern “problems with identity,”10 therefore, do not automatically lead to problems concerning the identity of pedagogy itself. The postmodern idea that identity is an interpretation and, as such, always provisional and revisable is not incompatible with the way in which modern pedagogy deals with this issue. The question is, however, whether all postmodern “problems with identity” are covered by this conclusion. In my opinion, this is not the case. The postmodern shoe does not pinch with regard to the question of whether identity is fixed and given or floating and outcome. The crucial question is whether identity is autonomously or heteronomously constituted.11
This is an important issue, because if it should be the case that the identity of the subject is for one hundred percent heteronomous, then it seems as if there no longer exists an impediment to propagate and to practice a purebred “pedagogy of adaptation.” In that case one of the crucial components of the (disciplinary) identity of modern pedagogy — viz., the idea that the child contributes something of its own, and with an irreducible value, to the process of education — might be lost.
In the discussion so far one idea has been beyond all doubt. This is the idea that autonomy and heteronomy preclude each other and that real subjectivity is autonomous subjectivity. The dichotomy autonomy-heteronomy and the ideal of subjectivity implied in it is, to my understanding, foundational for an important part of modern educational thought and practice. This can, for example, be inferred from the fact that in traditional educational theories the aim of education is often stated in terms of autonomy. But also “modern” theories such as Kohlberg’s are made or broken by the possibility of making an intelligible distinction between autonomy and heteronomy.12
From a historical point of view it is, of course, impossible to identify the author of the autonomy-heteronomy distinction. However, if there is one philosopher who has tried both to disentangle autonomy and heteronomy and keep them apart, it is, of course, Kant. For Kant, the victory of autonomy over heteronomy is the central issue in the project of Enlightenment.
Enlightenment is the abandonment of man from a state of immaturity for which he only has himself to blame. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s own mind without the lead of others.13A central issue in Kant’s philosophy is the question of how causality and morality can be reconciled.14 One option has been precluded from the outset: the suggestion that morality is thinkable within causality. Morality presupposes freedom and is therefore, according to Kant, incompatible with causality. It is for this reason that Kant has called an “empirical-transcendental doublecreature”15 into existence — a creature who acts morally to the extent that it willingly follows the (moral) laws created by its own reason. It is also Kant who has given us the educational paradox: the idea that there exists “an unbridgeable tension between subjective autonomy and pedagogical heteronomy.”16
Assuming that the separation between autonomy and heteronomy forms an important, or even a constitutive, element of the frame of reference of modern pedagogy,17 it is understandable that the postmodern stress upon the heteronomous origin of subjectivity is perceived as a threat to both the practice and the theory of education. The possibility should be kept open, however, that postmodernism (or at least part of it) does not aim at wiping the human subject off the face of the earth, but is after new ways of conceiving and developing subjectivity,18 ways that lead beyond the traditional Kantian dichotomy. It might be, that discussions about the educational virtues and vices of postmodernism are being hampered by the fact that a frame of reference is used which is exactly the frame that is under dispute in postmodernism. It might therefore be the case that the productivity of postmodernism for the practice and theory of education can only come into view when, amongst others, the unassailability of the Kantian dichotomy is itself put under scrutiny.
In this paper I want to argue that if we think through the consequences of the postmodern idea of the heteronomous origin of subjectivity in a consistent way, this can lead us to an understanding of subjectivity that should not beforehand be set aside as unfruitful for pedagogical theory and practice. To articulate some relevant dimensions of a postmodern understanding of subjectivity, I shall draw from two sources: critical pedagogy (McLaren) and postmodern philosophy (Foucault). Both sources have in common that they link subjectivity with something that, from a Kantian perspective, is, by definition, excluded as a locus of subjectivity, namely: the body.
According to McLaren, one of the most problematic aspects of postmodernism is the radical textualization of reality. In postmodernism the tie between representation and represented has been cut through. Postmodernism shows us the world as a one-dimensional semiotic space. The world is text; nothing exists outside of it (Derrida). McLaren does not consider it a serious problem that postmodernism has fragmented the (once) sovereign subject. In his opinion, it was about time to do away with this “mythical construction of Enlightenment-rationality.”19 The main problem lies in a different sphere. It has to do with the fact that the subject itself has been textualized.
The consequence of the postmodern localization of the subject into the “surface of meanings” is that the subject has become de-politicized. The subject has been reduced to a contingent position in a probably equally contingent meaning-configuration. This has far reaching consequences. For example:
[I]f one adopts...the view that everything is discourse or text or fiction, the realia are trivialized. Real people who really died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz or Treblinka become so much discourse.20The textualization of the subject results in a loss of power, a loss that manifests itself at the level of the body. The subject becomes powerless because her body no longer exists as a referent; the body is reduced to a sign of itself. It is important to note that this does not concern loss of physical power; at stake is a loss of agency, that is, of political power.
Rarely do we discover body/subjects who bleed, who suffer, who feel pain, who possess the critical capacity to make political choices, and who have the moral courage to carry these choices out.21In order to regain political and pedagogical power, McLaren seeks whether — and if so, how — the “absent body”22 can be put back upon the political and pedagogical agenda.
Although McLaren wants to liberate the body from the iron grip of the text, he acknowledges that it is not possible to put the body over against the text. Bodies always already are cultural artifacts, the product of the interaction of “flesh and meaning.” The body — or to use McLaren’s expression: the body/subject23 — is “a terrain of the flesh in which meaning is inscribed, constructed, and reconstituted.”24 Meaning itself has a bodily character.25 Our body is as much constituted by (our) flesh as by (our) words and symbols. Therefore, language should not be understood as an immaterial way of communication; language intensifies and enlarges the possibilities of the body/flesh. The interaction of meaning and flesh — an interaction that McLaren calls “enfleshment” — is a dialectical relationship.26 This means that enfleshment is not only a matter of the insertion of the body/flesh into the “order of discourse”; it is also a matter of the investment of the body/flesh into discourse.27 In this process the body/subject is produced.
The production of the body/subject does not take place in a social vacuum. Following Turner, McLaren argues that the constitution of the body/subject should be understood as the interrelationship between what Turner calls “modes of desire,” “modes of production” and “modes of subjectivity.” The expression “modes of desire” refers to the contribution of the body/flesh to the constitution of the body/subject. The word “desire” — and not the word “need” — is used to make clear that the intentionality of the body/flesh is always already socially and historically constructed. In modern western society, it is especially the capitalistic mode of production which leaves its mark upon this process. According to Turner, the mode of production of late capitalism has produced a hedonistic mode of desire, exactly that mode of desire needed to maintain the mode of production of late capitalism.28
When we go back to the question in what way the “turn to the body” can contribute to the recovery of agency and the political power of the subject, we have the following clues. What catches the eye mostly, is the fact that “enfleshment” is a dialectical relationship. The body/subject is not exclusively the product of a discourse; it also invests in it. This does not mean, however, that our problems are solved. After all, that which refers to the investment of the body/subject — that is, the mode of desire — is itself seen as produced. Therefore, the “turn to the body” can only make sense if it is possible to escape this dilemma. Otherwise, the whole enterprise leads to nothing more than a different formulation of the same problem. Let us see how far McLaren gets.
The crucial step in McLaren’s argument is the conclusion that there exists a margin between the subject positions provided by the discourse and the way in which the body/flesh is inserted into the discourse.29 This margin is the effect of the impossibility of the exhaustion of the body/flesh in its representations. This margin expresses itself as resistance of the body/flesh, resistance against the insertion into the discourse. McLaren stresses that this resistance does not happen outside the body but operates as a tension within the body. This implies that the body/subject is not simply the product of a homogeneous totality of discourses “but rather a terrain of struggle, conflict, and contradictions.”30
The mode of subjectivity that is at stake in this discussion is not a traditional “positive” subjectivity; it is not a subjectivity that can pose itself. We are dealing with a subjectivity that can only be posed and that can only express itself in a negative way, as resistance, as opposition. Characteristic for this resistance is that it occurs outside the will and the consciousness of the subject itself. The question “Who or what resists?” can never be answered with “the body/subject,” because the body/subject always is the outcome of the process in which resistance plays a decisive role.31 Therefore, the resistance of the body is the resistance — or to follow the suggestion of Oosterling, the insurrection — of the body/flesh. To avoid any suggestion of consciousness or intentionality, Oosterling proposes to talk about “subversion” instead of “resistance.” Subversion refers to the “revolting activities of intensities beyond the intentions of the subject.”32
This is the core of a postmodern understanding of subjectivity. It becomes evident that this conception differs decisively from the way in which subjectivity is treated traditionally, because it starts from the heteronomy of subjectivity. Nevertheless, it remains possible, according to McLaren, to reveal
how conflictual social relations...are actively inscribed in human intentionality and agency without reducing individuals to simply the static outcomes of social determinations.33Exactly here, McLaren situates the pedagogical importance of the whole maneuver. The most important challenge for a critical pedagogy that wants to take postmodernism seriously lies, according to McLaren, in bringing this dialectics into view.
A critical pedagogy must grapple with the ways in which youth resist the dominant culture at the level of their bodies because in so doing the utopian moments to which such resistance points can be transformed pedagogically into strategies of empowerment.34The question to what extent postmodern heteronomous subjectivity can be put into practical use is, however, a very difficult one to answer. After all, the postmodern conception of subjectivity articulated above is, in a sense, intangible and uncontrollable. It is therefore not surprising, that exactly at this point in his argumentation, McLaren abandons the postmodern track. While he agrees with the postmodernists that we cannot speak of the self “as an essence or unmediated object of reflection,” McLaren disagrees that the self is constituted “only through background beliefs...engendered though enfleshment.”35 McLaren wants to uphold against postmodernism that the fact that human beings do not constitute themselves, does not rule out that human beings can be self-conscious.36 For McLaren self-consciousness and repression both play important roles in the constitution of the subject and it is exactly “the capacity of individuals to at least partially recognize the constitution of the self” that makes liberation possible.37 McLaren even holds that this self-consciousness makes it possible to (consciously) intervene in the process of the constitution of the subject. This he calls refleshment, that is,
forming a space of desire where we can assume self-consciously and critically new modes of subjectivity hospitable to a praxis of self and social empowerment.38McLaren’s proposal sounds plausible, not in the least because he links up with a deep common experience of self-consciousness and reflexivity. Part of its plausibility also derives from the fact that McLaren consistently links reflection with subversion and therefore does not understand self-conscious reflection as the free-floating, “self-liberating” reflection of the Enlightenment. Besides this comes the fact that McLaren consistently speaks of refleshment instead of defleshment, which shows that he stays “within” history. This does not alter the fact, however, that McLaren’s solution feels uncomfortable, not in the least because he makes use of a common-sense interpretation of the problem at hand.
It is my opinion that with respect to this issue, we can make progress if we turn to Foucault. In Volume I of his History of Sexuality39 Foucault understands subjectivity as the product of the “disposition of power” of sexuality. However, in Volumes II and III,40 in which he inquires into the eroticism of Greeks and Romans, Foucault introduces a different conception of subjectivity, a conception in which the fact that the subject constitutes itself is acknowledged.41 Karskens analyses this new conception of subjectivity in four steps.42
1. First of all it is acknowledged that every individual has alternatives for actions, alternatives that can never be exhausted in a relation of domination. Foucault calls this “resistance.” In contrast with earlier use of this term, Foucault now also includes human individuals as “points of resistance.”According to Foucault, the external, practical reflexivity mentioned above entails a dimension of originality and uniqueness that cannot be reduced to the process of the constitution of the subject itself, and that has to do something with the way in which we deal with truth. It is this dimension that I have identified as the subversion of the body. Karskens calls this dimension “free man.” The characteristics of “free man” — that is, individuality, power and reflexivity — show that Foucault really talks about subjectivity in the way of self-determination.43 However,2. However, Foucault persists in the understanding of the constitution of the subject as an external, reflexive relationship; external, because forces do not have an inner side; reflexive because the activity of forces reflects back to the subject.
3. Foucault often identifies this process of the constitution of the subject as “thinking.” The active force can therefore be understood as “thinking-force.” However — and here lies the difference between the road taken by McLaren and, in my understanding, more consequent road taken by Foucault — this is neither a theoretical process of knowledge-acquisition, nor a matter of self-consciousness. Foucault sees it as a praxis, as practical exercises, as “technologies of the self.” Foucault is concerned with a certain type of action (such as self-inquiry, ascetic exercise, confession, meditation) by which the subject makes itself into a subject.
4. Karskens notes that Foucault does not make clear in what way these activities differ from other types of activities. He suggests that “thinking” — to be understood as knowing or “truth-telling” — is the discriminatory criterion. This places the process of the constitution of the subject into a normative perspective which revolves round the question how one should behave oneself.
since Foucault explicitly denies self-consciousness to these characteristics, free man never is a known entity or a definite identity. Such knowledge or identity only exists as a product. Free man can only appear as critique, resistance or madness.44Therefore, the subject remains a product, albeit that the subject is itself a factor in its production. Contrary to McLaren, Foucault denies that the process of production can be understood as a self-conscious process. According to Foucault, self-determination escapes the control of the subject. Self-determination exists, but only becomes apparent after it has taken place. The relationship between free man and himself always remains a contingent, practical relationship.45
This brings us close to the practical suggestions made by McLaren, because nothing prevents us from attempting to cultivate certain practices. It is only mistaken to put self-consciousness in between. Besides this, it also should not be forgotten that there is no guarantee whatsoever that the cultivation of a certain practice will have the same consequences in the future as it has now or had in the past. With respect to this, we always act within history.
In this paper I have tried to show that a consistent elaboration of the postmodern idea that subjectivity is a product does not necessarily have to be understood as the end of subjectivity. Within certain limits, it remains possible to talk about subjectivity and the subject. There can even be given substance to the idea of self-determination, albeit with one important difference. The self-determination of the subject does not have its origin in the self-conscious and self-intended activities of the subject; the self-determination is completely heteronomous. The intensities of the process of the constitution of the subject are not constituted by the intentions of the subject. It is precisely the other way around: the heteronomous intensities are the foundation for the intentions of the subject.46 The implications of this turn can only be rated at their true value if we are willing to unsettle the Kantian dichotomy between autonomy and heteronomy. The conception of subjectivity presented in this paper presupposes a dynamic that is unthinkable within a Kantian framework, because Kant wards off the heteronomous determination from “the voice of God that sounds from the deep inside.”47 It is for this reason that Oosterling calls Foucault the anti-Kant.
With respect to the question of what all this implies for the theory and practice of education, I can only make two short remarks. The main theoretical outcome is, that the Kantian dichotomy between autonomy and heteronomy should at least be placed between brackets. Given the fact that this dichotomy has accompanied the theory and practice of education for such a long time, it can be expected that this will not occur without striking a blow. The main practical outcome is that the conception of subjectivity explored in this paper focuses our attention upon forms of resistance and subversion in education. This not only may lead us to a different understanding and a different valuation of certain phenomena in education. It may even result in seeing different phenomena. What this implies, in a positive sense, is something that has to be dealt with in a different place. The Foucauldian ideas of “cultivation of lifestyles” and “counter-practices” may be important leads to follow.
To conclude this paper, I want to cite a question that Jurgen Habermas posed with reference to the final chapter of Foucault’s The Order of Things,48 but which, to my understanding, can easily be transposed to the later works of Foucault.49 The question is, whether it might be the case that Foucault’s search for the last vestige of subjectivity should not be understood as an attempt to resolve the problems generated by the Kantian philosophy of consciousness, but should be seen as the last death spasms of precisely that philosophical discourse. To put it differently: it is not inconceivable that the marginal, heteronomous postmodern subject will appear to be the last stop before the border of intersubjectivity.50 But even if that were the case, it still is worthwhile to have been traveling on both sides of this border.
For a
response to this essay, see Gregoriou.
1. “Postmodernism” is a controversial concept. See Peter Brooker, ed., Modernism/Postmodernism (London: Longman, 1991), xi; Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991); Carlo Mongardini, “The Ideology of Postmodernity,” Theory, Culture & Society 9 (1992): 55-65.
2. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
3. Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (London: Blackwell, 1987), 21.
4. See Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
5. Cf. Stuart Hall, “Minimal Selves,” ICA-Documents 6. The Real Me (1988): 44-6.
6. See Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 32-50; and Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
7. Stuart Hall, “Minimal Selves.”
8. Juergen Oelkers, “Pädagogische Anmerkungen zu Habermas’ Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns [Pedagogical comments on Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action],” Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 30, no. 2 (1983): 272.
9. John Dewey, “Plan of Organization of the University Primary School,” in John Dewey: The Early Works, vol. 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972), 224.
10. Klaus Mollenhauer, Vergessene Zusammenhänge. über Kultur und Erziehung [Forgotten Relationships. On Culture and Education] (München: Juventa, 1983).
11. Adalbert Rang, Pedagogiek en Moderniteit [Education and Modernity] (Nijmegen: Sun, 1988).
12. Rang, Pedagogiek, 14.
13. Immanuel Kant et al., Was ist Aufklärung?, ed. Ehrard Bahr (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1974[1784]).
14. See, for example, the way in which Kant formulates the third antinomy in The critique of Pure Reason. Cf. Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1983), 310-29.
15. This expression is from Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1970).
16. Ludwig Pongratz, “Pädagogik und Subjektivität [Education and Subjectivity],” Pädagogische Rundschau 40, no. 3 (1986): 342.
1717. Cf. Jan Masschelein, Kommunikatives Handels und pädagogisches Handeln [Communicative Action and Pedagogical Action] (Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag, 1991).
18. Cf. Michel Foucault, “Afterword. The Subject and Power,” in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2d ed., ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 216.
19. Peter McLaren, “Schooling the Postmodern Body,” in Postmodernism, Feminism, and Cultural Politics, ed. Henry A. Giroux (Albany: SUNY, 1991), 147.
20. Allan Megill, Prophets of Extremity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 345; quoted in McLaren, “Schooling the Postmodern Body,” 151.
21. McLaren, “Schooling the Postmodern Body,” 149.
22. Cf. Brian S. Turner, The Body and Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 30-59.
23. In the remaining part of this text I will use the expression “body/subject” to refer to the body as a cultural artifact and the expression “body/flesh” to refer to that which is being cultivated. The distinction is meant as an analytical one.
24. McLaren, “Schooling the Postmodern Body,” 150.
25. See also Peter McLaren, Schooling as a Ritual Performance (London, Boston and Hendley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).
26. Cf. McLaren, “Schooling the Postmodern Body,” 154.
27. McLaren sometimes uses “enfleshment” to refer to the dialectical interaction of meaning and flesh and sometimes to refer to the (forced) concurrence of subject-position and actual subjectivity. Besides this, “resistance” is also referred to as a form of enfleshment (McLaren, “Schooling the Postmodern Body,” 154, 155). I will use the expression to refer to the encompassing dialectical process.
28. Turner, The Body and Society, 250-51.
29. McLaren, “Schooling the Postmodern Body,” 155.
30. Ibid., 161.
31. Henk Oosterling, De opstand van het lichaam. Over verzet en zelfervaring bij Foucault and Bataille [The Insurrection of the Body: On Resistance and Self Experience in the Works of Foucault and Bataille] (Amsterdam: SUA, 1989), 134.
32. See ibid., 134-35.
33. McLaren, “Schooling the Postmodern,” 161.
34. Ibid., 165.
35. Ibid., 161.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., 162.
38. Ibid.
39. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
40. Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 2: L’Usage des plaisirs (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); Histoire de la sexualité, 3: Le Souci de soi (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).
41. Cf. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucaul: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2d ed, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 253-64.
42. See Machiel Karskens, “Subjectiviteit en seksualiteit, een historische vergissing [Subjectivity and Sexuality, a Historical Mistake],” Krisis 9, no. 2 (1989): 60-62.
43. Ibid., 63.
44. Ibid.
45. Cf. ibid., 64.
46. Oosterling, De opstand, 166.
47. Ibid.
48. Foucault, The Order of Things.
49. Juergen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne [The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), 345.
50. Cf. Gert Biesta, “Education as Practical Intersubjectivity: Towards a Critical-Pragmatic Understanding of Education, Educational Theory 44, no. 3 (1994): 299-317.