Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifications Since 1984 (review)

Michel Foucault goes from strength to strength. That is, if we are to believe the stats. Of all the twentieth-century French philosophers, he continues to be the most frequently cited and discussed with his popularity growing steadily rather than waning over the twenty-five years which have passed since his death. Yet, according to Nealon, the Foucault so fervently talked about today is not the Foucault of the 1980s whose name was virtually synonymous with his theory of power. Today, a different Foucault is being read, one whose interest is no longer taken up with institutional forms of power but focused instead on an ethics or aesthetics of the self and in particular the question of how it is possible for one to construct a truth of the self in contradistinction to other discourses of truth operating within society. For Nealon, this shift of interest towards the later Foucault, while hardly surprising, is all too hasty in its abandonment of power. This book is his attempt to redress the balance. His call for a reappraisal of power since Foucault’s death has two main objectives: to reassess the relationship between power and subjectivity emphasising that Foucault’s later work on ethics of the self does not constitute a rejection of power but indicates one of the ways in which power relations have developed and mutated in recent decades and to reintroduce the question of economics into a discussion of Foucauldian power. Nealon’s claim is that over the past two decades, power has intensified with individuality replacing normalization as its primary target. He identifies, in particular, how artistic self-creation and care of the self described by Foucault are themselves practices which are caught up in a discourse of consumerism which constructing us as subjects who desire individuality above all else, offers us consumption as the means of fulfilling this desire. In his delineation of the relationship between power, consumerism and economics, Nealon succeeds in putting to bed the misconception that Foucault’s understanding of power precludes a discussion of economics. This misconception is largely due to Foucault’s heavy criticism of Marxist ideology despite the fact that Foucault himself frequently refers to capitalism and economic development in relation to power. Consequently, Nealon’s clear discussion of this relationship with specific reference to late capitalism is refreshing and certainly paves the way for future work in this area. However, aside from his discussion of economics, Nealon does not really tell us anything new about Foucault and power making his claims for writing this book somewhat spurious. A large part of the book is taken up with the rehashing of old commentaries and fails to take into account the impact that the recent and ongoing publication of Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France has had on current scholarship. Moreover, Nealon’s naive assumptions that power is no longer of central importance to many of those working on Foucault and that he is the first to have made a connection between power and subjectivity make this potentially exciting project a wasted opportunity.