Power and Difference: A Derrida and Foucault Encounter
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published 08/08/2007
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Summary
The works of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault discussed here explore relationships of power in Western language and social structures. These relationships can be difficult to detect and are thus often overlooked, even when one searches rigorously. We will find that such relationships are relationships of presumed order, of hierarchy, and that such hierarchies are neither always justifiable nor always desirable.
In Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason, author Roy Boyne explores the points at which the ideas of these two philosophers converge and the points at which they depart. Boyne writes that in general, for Derrida, Foucault’s approach to thinking would always lead to the idea of a false utopia, and for Foucault, Derrida’s approach to thinking would always lead to the false god of Reason (4). The problem in their misunderstanding, this knocking of heads, is a problem of difference and power—the power of reason has supplanted god, and the power of utopia has supplanted reason. Similar problems of difference and power appear in varying forms in Lydie Salvayre’s The Company of Ghosts and Michel Houellebecq’s Platform. With the help of ideas presented by Foucault and Derrida, I will examine the roles of power and difference in these two novels—how each novel narratively resembles the philosophical issues that Derrida and Foucault present, and what, if any, conclusions we might take from such power relationships.
In Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason, author Roy Boyne explores the points at which the ideas of these two philosophers converge and the points at which they depart. Boyne writes that in general, for Derrida, Foucault’s approach to thinking would always lead to the idea of a false utopia, and for Foucault, Derrida’s approach to thinking would always lead to the false god of Reason (4). The problem in their misunderstanding, this knocking of heads, is a problem of difference and power—the power of reason has supplanted god, and the power of utopia has supplanted reason. Similar problems of difference and power appear in varying forms in Lydie Salvayre’s The Company of Ghosts and Michel Houellebecq’s Platform. With the help of ideas presented by Foucault and Derrida, I will examine the roles of power and difference in these two novels—how each novel narratively resembles the philosophical issues that Derrida and Foucault present, and what, if any, conclusions we might take from such power relationships.
Table of Contents
- The Company of Ghosts and the Reason solution
- In Madness and Civilization, Foucault attempts to reconstruct what he calls an archaeology of silence in order to get at the history of madness in civilization
- Rose's daughter is a fledgling example of reason's controlling tendencies while the Process-Server (and the Collaboration) is a prime example of such control
- The relationship between Rose and the Process-Server might at first glance seem to turn Foucault's history of silence on its head, for if we take Foucault's words literally
- Foucault would find fault with such language of reason in that it assures power to those who already hold positions of power
- Platform and the Eros solution
- In Houellebecq's Platform, protagonist Michel is presented as a somewhat misanthropic character similar to Camus's character Meursault in The Stranger
- In the chapter 'Philosophical Interlude' in Eros and Civilization, Marcuse visualizes an ideal society
- Marcuse offers a somewhat hedonistic solution to life's problems
- Foucault would say such an Eros venture is always one that limits the freedoms of the participants
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