Sangren - Psychoanalysis and Its Resistances in Michel Foucault's the History of Sexuality

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Psychoanalysis and Its Resistances in Michel Foucault's "The History of Sexuality": Lessons for

AnthropologyAuthor(s): P. Steven SangrenReviewed work(s):Source: Ethos, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 110-122Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3651889 .

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Psychoanalysisn d t s Resistances

i n M i c h e l Foucault's T h e H i s t o r y o f

S e x u a l i t y : L e s s o n s f o r Anthropology

P. STEVEN SANGREN

ABSTRACT This article argues that Foucault's influential The

History of Sexuality, Volume 1 embodies a tension between an

explicit theory of the discursive production of "the subject" and

an implicit resistance to the reality of this same revelation. This

tension is shown to parallel the organization of desire under-

stood in psychoanalytic terms-that is to say, desire is an emer-

gent effect linked to our resistances to the social worlds thatproduce us. Consequently, despite The History of Sexuality's an-

tipathy to psychoanalysis, its most redeeming interpretation

may be a psychoanalytic one. Anthropological interest in the

"cultural construction" of personhood, emotions, and similar

categories bears important affinities to Foucault's discursive

productivity. Consequently, the concept of culture manifest in

such notions requires incorporating desire's resistances. More-

over, complicating our understanding of culture in these terms

facilitates understanding both human commonalities and thecharacter of cultural differences.

nthropologistswho draw nspiration rompsychoanalytictra-ditions (and I number myself among them) are compelled to

address the discipline's pervasive skepticism with respect to

"psychologizing"culture. Obeyesekere's disputation of Leach's

distinction between "public" and "private" symbols epito-mizes the discipline's long-standing divergence of opinion in this regard

(Leach 1958; Obeyesekere 1981).1 Voicing a widely shared skepticism,Leach argues that "public" symbols cannot be explained with reference to

individual psychological meanings; Obeyesekere, in contrast, insists that

Ethos32(1):110-122.opyright2004,Americannthropologicalssociation.



The History of Sexuality * 111

culture must be conceived in terms that accommodate individual motive

and desire.2

Since the publication of Obeyesekere's argument it has become in-

creasingly clear that kindred issues transcend the disciplinary boundaries

of anthropology. In the humanities and cognate social sciences, there is a

wide-ranging, almost ubiquitous obsession revolving around the nature of

the human "subject" and how, in the context of various and relentless

attacks upon "humanism," to restore a sense of individual and collective

efficacy, power, or control-often glossed as "agency"-to social and his-

torical process. From the vantage of psychoanalysis, intellectual trends

rangingfrom

Marxism,to

structuralism,and

post-structuralismseem to

share at least a penchant to diminish the role of individuals, "agents," or

"subjects" in their variously materially or symbolically conceived systems.

People or "subjects," we learn, are to be understood as ephemeral effects,neurotic delusions, or mere reproducers of the needs or the logic of "dis-

courses," "modes of production," or even of language (langue) in the ab-

stract.3 Despite its promises to restore individual agency in a more

dialectical understanding of social process, even "practice theory"-most

prominently exemplified in the massive theoretical writings of Pierre

Bourdieu-founders in itspenchant

to dissolve"agency"

into "habitus"-

itself an effect or product of "objective structures" (Bourdieu 1990).In the midst of this transdisciplinary ferment, no figure looms larger

than that of Michel Foucault, and in the midst of Foucault's substantial

oeuvre, no work looms larger than does The History of Sexuality, Volume

1. Arguably, it is The History of Sexuality that constitutes the clearest

delineation of Foucault's long-developing interest in connections among

discourses, power, and "the subject." My intention here, however, is not

to assess either Foucault's contributions more generally or The History of

Sexuality,in

particular,with reference to Foucault's contributions to the

theoretical, historical, or philosophical issues per se. Instead, I propose a

reading of The History of Sexuality as revealing tensions precisely in Fou-

cault's own aims-tensions that, in turn, can be turned toward illuminat-

ing anthropology's object of disciplinary identity-that is to say,

"culture"-my own object of critique.4 Although Foucault is famously and

effectively a critic of psychoanalysis, my aim, paradoxically, is to recruit

a reading of his indictment of psychoanalysis toward building an argumentfor incorporating insights drawn from psychoanalysis into anthropology's

understandingof culture.

THEISTORYF EXUALTY

One can distinguish two intriguing ideas regarding the nature or con-

stitution of "the subject" in Foucault's History of Sexuality. Most famously



112 ? ETHOS

and explicitly, Foucault argues that modernity is characterized by an odd

conviction, bordering on obsession, to the effect that there exists a "truth"

to our (especially) sexual being that must be uncovered beneath the de-

fensive layers of social and psychological repression.5 Against this mod-

ernist discourse, this scientia sexualis, Foucault insists that it is the

discourse itself-most of all its "repressive hypothesis"-that producesrather than reveals the truth of the subject. As an anthropologist, I read

this argument as bearing important affinities to our discipline's longstand-

ing concern surrounding what is sometimes glossed as "the cultural con-

struction of the person."Intertwined with this

argument, however,one can discern

another,less explicit, notion of personhood-a notion that congeals most explicitlyaround Foucault's discussions of ars erotica as an archaic procedure for

"producing the truth of sex"-an alternative to modernity's scientia

sexualis. "In the erotic art," Foucault writes,

truth is drawn from pleasure itself, understood as a practice and accumulated as expe-

rience; pleasure is not considered in relation to an absolute law of the permitted and

the forbidden, nor by reference to a criterion of utility, but first and foremost in relation

to itself; it is experienced as pleasure, evaluated in terms of its intensity, its specific

quality, its duration, its reverberations in the body and the soul. [Foucault 1970:57]

In contrast,

our civilization possesses no ars erotica. In return, it is undoubtedly the only civiliza-

tion to practice a scientia sexualis; or rather, the only civilization to have developedover the centuries procedures for telling the truth of sex which are geared to a form of

knowledge-power strictly opposed to the art of initiations and the masterful secret: I

have in mind the confession.

What I have in mind here, however, is conveyed less in Foucault's

specific arguments than by the general tenor of his language-a diffuse but

pervasive anger directed against the consequences of the repressive hy-pothesis conceived as a discourse. One senses (at least I do) that Foucault

intends his writings to be critical interventions in the interest of individual

freedom and that the oddly productive effects of the "repressive hypothe-sis" (which Foucault indicts for entrapping us by promising a phony sort

of "emancipation") are themselves perverse and ought to inspire resis-

tance. The possibility of a tension between these two ideas comes from the

fact that, on the one hand, "the subject" is viewed as an effect or productof a discourse while, on the other, Foucault imagines an alternative regime

in which "pure pleasure" might be implemented for its own sake.Of course, I am not the first to note this tension in Foucault's writ-

ing-critics range famously from Jacques Derrida and Jiirgen Habermas to

Judith Butler (Butler 1997; Derrida 1978; Habermas 1987). One might, as

I have done in the past, point it out as a logical contradiction that dimin-

ishes Foucault's legacy as a theorist of "the subject" (Sangren 1995).6




Instead, I shall argue that Foucault's notions regarding, let us term it, "dis-

cursiveproductivity"

constitute animportant insight

into modern forms

of subjectivity. But by the same token, the resistances to this productivityevident in the tonality of his writings can be viewed as symptomatic of

some of the limits associated with conceiving "the subject" solely in these

terms.

In brief, I believe that one can defend both Foucault's insights regard-

ing discursive productivity, on the one hand, and what I take to be his

manifest rage against the repressive hypothesis, on the other. But to do so

one must also recognize the limitations of some of Foucault's more explicittheoretical claims. To this end I

employ understandingsof the constitution

of "the subject" inspired, broadly speaking, by psychoanalysis. The His-

tory of Sexuality's antipathy to psychoanalysis, which Foucault viewed as

carrying into the present the procedures of inquisitorial confession, lends

a telling irony to this argument. Yet it is possible to understand crucial

insights drawn from psychoanalytic theory as providing a rationale for a

dialectical or complex understanding of "the subject" as both a product or

effect of discursive procedures, on the one hand, and as a producer (or

"agent") of its own discourse or intentions, on the other. Indeed, read in

thisway,

it ispossible

even to discern affinities between Foucault's own

discourse and that of psychoanalysis.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

I should be a bit more specific as to what I mean by "psychoanalysis,"

granting that perhaps my references may be somewhat idiosyncratic. First

and foremost, I understand psychoanalysis to revolve around the ontologyof

desire,its central

insight beingthat desire

emergesas an effect or

prod-uct of an infant's engagement with a socially constituted world.7 The "in-

fant" here can be construed as something along the lines of pure biologicalor embodied potentiality; the "socially constituted world" encompasses all

that we take to be culturally or discursively constituted along with the

material or phenomenal realities complexly integrated with such con-

structions. Following Levi-Strauss, via Freud and Lacan, I believe that de-

sire, like the incest tabu, marks the border between nature and culture

both in evolutionary terms, and in the emergence and on-going phenome-

nologyof the

subjector individual

(Freud 1950;Lacan

1977, 1983;Levi-

Strauss 1969; Rubin 1975). That is to say, unlike an "instinct" (such as

breathing) that might be assumed to bypass culturally constituted con-

sciousness altogether, desire is always mediated through individual expe-rience that includes cultural realities.

But in another sense, to locate desire at a border is misleading; one

can no more abstract that which is solely an effect of discourse or culture



114 ? ETHOS

from our being than one can identify that which is solely a manifestation

of our biological natures.8 The conundrum I have in mind here is similar

to that Butler addresses in The Psychic Life of Power with reference to

desire, resistance, and power (Butler 1997). I take one of Butler's central

points to be that there is in the nature of our subjectivity and desire a kind

of double-bind complexity-and that this complexity is of a form unassim-

milable to any simple assertion of dialectical synthesis transcending natu-

ral or essential and discursive or cultural constituents. "Desire" seems

designed both logically and existentially to resist precisely the circum-

stances or realities-phenomenal and social-that produce it.

From such ageneral

and abstract(or

"lowest commondenominator")understanding of psychoanalysis, of course, one can trace crucial diver-

gences. Lacan, for example, is widely understood to have effected a "dees-

sentializing" of Freud's vision of libido from a problematic grounding in

"instincts" by focusing on the lack or "split" occasioned by the "mirror

stage" (briefly, the notion that we form an image of our self only insofar as

it is reflected back to us from the point of view of others) and the subject's

entry into language (Mitchell 1983; Rose 1983). It is probably this move

away from biology toward language that most recommends Lacan to an-

thropologists; we anthropologists are, after all, deeply invested in the no-tion that culture can make a difference-that personhood, encompassingeven desire and gender, are cultural constructions.

But this move is not also without some costs to anthropology, two of

which come to mind: First, Lacan's employments of language derive from

general properties of symbolization that characterize language in general,rather any than language in particular. In other words, the Lacanian vision

is unclear as to how cultural differences might impinge on the productionof persons. For anthropologists interested in what is commonly glossed as

"the cultural construction of the person," of course, this is a serious con-cern.9

Whatever might be said about Freud's residual essentialism, his focus

on the triad of infant, mother, father as material actors-a kind of proto-

typical "social"-leaves open the possibility of imagining different kinds

of "social"-although Freud is often and fairly criticized for not havingdone so. (I have in mind, for example, Malinowski's famous attempt to

define a "matrilineal complex" [1927]).10 For Lacan, in contrast, mothers

and (especially) fathers are treated more abstractly as what amount to

stand-ins or embodiments of qualities like "the other," Law, and lan-guage-qualities, by implication, that manifest in all cultures. The prob-lem for anthropology consequent upon Lacan's deessentializing or makingabstract the figures of the mother and father, whatever the attractions with

respect to disarticulating desire from biology, is that the same abstract

operations would seem to characterize all possible cultures.



The History of Sexuality ? 115

Second, as many have noted regarding structuralism and (to bring the

discussion back toFoucault)

notions of "discursiveproductivity,"

under-

standing the subject primarily as an effect of language raises difficulties

surrounding what is often glossed as "agency." Is it a delusion to supposethat people possess coherence over time as individuals possessed of

authentic intentions and motives?

In its initial appearance in this article I bracket "the subject" with

quotation marks. My intention in doing so is to index the ambiguity sur-

rounding the term. There is, of course, a vast discussion in literary studies,

philosophy, and allied academic disciplines surrounding "the subject," its

varioussocial, linguistic,

andideological determinations,

and itsepistemo-logical status with respect to personhood, individuality, or agency. It

seems reasonable to suppose that this proliferation of attention is sympto-matic of wider social and cultural forces, perhaps registering (as some have

argued) an epistemic shift toward postmodernity.11 In less historical, but

more philosophical, terms this proliferating interest also might be viewed

as a symptom of the same sort of tension that we have been discussing in

Foucault-a tension between an apprehension that even our intentions

and deepest desires are products of external social or linguistic realities,on the one

hand,and a conviction or need to believe that we are authentic

authors of our own activities-that is to say, "agents"-on the other.

DISCURSIVERODUCTIVITY

Allow me to employ Foucault's own eloquence to epitomize what I am

glossing as "discursive productivity." Foucault writes of confession, for ex-

ample, that

the obligation to confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeplyingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that constrains

us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, "de-

mands" only to surface; that if it fails to do so, this is because a constraint holds it in

place, the violence of a power weighs it down, and it can finally be articulated only at

the price of a kind of liberation. Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence;truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom:

traditional themes in philosophy, which a "political history of truth" would have to

overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free-nor error servile-but that its

production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an exampleof this. [Foucault 1978:60]

The "truth of the subject" is thus not an autonomous or essential qualityto be discovered but is, rather, an effect or product of power's imperativeto apply its discursive tactics in uncovering it. Note, however, that the

same passage calls for a "politics" that would require "overthrowing"

power's ability to produce "truth"-which is to say, to produce "the sub-

ject." Such a call implies, it seems to me, another sort of truth of the



116 ? ETHOS

subject-one that must come from somewhere other than "power's" abil-

ity to produce it.12

But can we imagine a "truth of the subject" that would not, in some

sense, be produced by "power," "discourse," or "culture"? Anthropology'sstake in this question hinges, of course, on the conviction that culture

plays an important role in constituting personhood, and as I noted earlier,Foucault's elaborations on the productive force of discourse align with an

anthropological commitment to notions of cultural construction. Conse-

quently, insofar as anthropology takes culture in all of its variant and par-ticular manifestations to define human life, the answer to my rhetorically

posed question would have to be a resounding "No!" That is to say, it is

inconceivable to anthropology that a human subject could be other thana product of culture.

But having made such an assertion, how then does one make sense of

Foucault's endorsement, here and more broadly, of resistance to what

might be construed as, in effect, the power of culture?

THEESISTANTUBJECTF PLEASURE"

Obviously, I have organized my discussion here to produce an open-

ing for psychoanalysis: If psychoanalysis understands desire to be an

emergent effect of precisely the confrontation between "nature" and "cul-

ture," desire and personhood possess a complexity that cannot be under-

stood as a pure effect or product of either. Bearing this thought in mind,allow me to digress momentarily by quoting Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-

Claude Passeron who describe the culture of French academia in the

1960s in the following terms:

The sometimes assiduous and methodical will to achieve full studenthood does notpresuppose unanimous recognition of an image of the ideal student, since the image of

what one seeks to actualize may amount to no more than the imperative urge to actu-

alize an image. To want to be, and to want to choose one's identity, is, first of all, to

refuse to be what one has not chosen to be. The first necessity that is refused or trans-

figured is that of being rooted in a social milieu. Students generally evade the simple

naming of their parents' occupation, whatever it may be. Their embarrassed silence,

half-truths, or declared dissociation are all ways of distancing themselves from the

unacceptable idea that such an unchosen determination could determine the choices

of someone entirely occupied in choosing what he is to be. The aspiration to create and

choose oneself does not impose a determinate behavior, but only a symbolic use of

behavior intended to signify that this behavior has been chosen. [Bourdieu and Passe-ron 1979:38]13

Bourdieu and Passeron link this characterization to an ideology of privi-

lege in the academic culture of 1960s France, and one might plausibly

argue that Foucault's implicit resistances manifest sentiments similar to

those that Bourdieu and Passeron attribute to bourgeois Parisian students.




(Note, for example, Foucault's interest in construing the life of the individ-

ual as a work ofart.)

Yet I believe that the desire to which Bourdieu and

Passeron draw our attention here transcends the particularities of French

elitist ideology. In Chinese myth, ritual, and gender, for example, I believe

one can discern a recurrent figuring of desire oriented toward similar fan-

tasies of radical, self-fashioning autonomy (Sangren 2000, n.d.). Psycho-

analysis has had much to say about such fantasies, but (I am convinced)does not foreground them sufficiently. Without delving into this topic here,I venture that such fantasies may organize our sexuality more than our

sexuality (in some solely biologically construed sense of the term) drives

or produces such fantasies.Be that as it may, all of this suggests to me that Foucault's appeals to

a subjectivity purified of power's disciplining interpellations (although

they appear romantic, as Derrida argues [1998:103], and non sequitur to

the general tenor of discursive productivity) are essential to an implicit

integrity embodied in The History of Sexuality, even though they remain

external to its more explicit theorizing impulses. The implicit integrity to

which I refer might be said to model that of desire itself. That is to say, justas Foucault seems torn between the realization that subjectivity is an ef-

fect of power (or discourse, or culture), on the one hand, and anger at thisvery realization, on the other; so, too, one might say that desire is an

emergent product of our realization of our dependencies on the (especially

social) world that has produced us, on the one hand, and our resistances

to the implications of this same realization for our self-fashioning auton-

omy, on the other.14Concretely speaking, this realization manifests (amongother loci) in the ambivalent feelings toward parents to which psycho-

analysis draws our attention.

CONCLUSIONND FTERWORD

Where does this leave anthropology? One need not suppose, indeed

it would be a mistake to do so, that one must choose between discursive

productivity or romantic subjectivism, between biological or individualist

reductionism and hopelessly decentered subject-positionality, between

"the subject" and "agency," when it comes to understanding individualityand desire. Our personhood, desire, or "subjectivity," in other words, is a

complex process, not so much "split" or "shifting" as simultaneously both

authentic and inauthentic, encompassing contradictory and paradoxical

tendencies, perhaps most fundamentally revolving around an existential

imperative that insists on resisting that which might define us as pureeffects or objects, a resistance put into motion by the same discipliningconstraints against whose limitations we rebel.



118 ? ETHOS

In conclusion, I would like to comment briefly upon some implica-tions that I have left unaddressed up to this point-in particular regarding

discipline, constraint, and production-terms that appeared in the title of

this paper when I first proposed to write it. By juxtaposing these terms, I

intended to suggest that Foucault's employment of terms like discipline

(along with tactics, machineries, procedures, strategies, among others)

registers a negative sense of how power, the state, or culture limit and

constrain us. Yet the "discursive productivity" I alluded to earlier-alongwith the kindred anthropological notion of "culturalconstruction"-seems to

register something similar in more positive terms.

In thisregard,

Clifford Geertzeloquently conveys

a point that is all

but dogma in our discipline when he insists that "men unmodified by the

customs of particular places do not in fact exist, have never existed, and

most important, could not in the very nature of the case exist" (1966:35).In the same essay, Geertz adds that "One of the most significant facts

about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live

a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one"

(1966:45). What Geertz is driving at, of course, is that it is in our nature

to be culturally constructed. But, more importantly, it is in the nature of

the cultural construction of our individuality that the range of human po-tential narrows as a consequence of the constructive or productive processitself.

Unfortunately, at least in my view, anthropology seems largely con-

tent to let things rest with this truism. But here we might take some inspi-ration from Foucault, and, even more, from psychoanalysis, both of which

suggest that what is blandly glossed in anthropology as "cultural construc-

tion" is, in reality, also disciplining (as Foucault's work demonstrates) and

entails psychic costs (as psychoanalysis reveals). And it is in the resis-

tances inspired by these costs that one expects to find not only the genesisof desire necessary to energize social reproduction, but also the spark of

creative agency to which we might look for change.

My final thought is thus to link this reading of Foucault to a challengefor anthropology. In my opinion the complacency surrounding notions of

cultural construction in anthropology has resulted in a discipline so fo-

cused on public representations in what amounts to a "textualizing" of

both social and psychodynamic processes, that working toward theorizing

culture in ways capable of encompassing both difference and (at some

level of abstraction) our common humanity is rare. Foucault's reading of"modernity" as an instance of cultural specificity, on the one hand, and,even more importantly, his own apparently resistant response to it, on the

other, suggest that resistance is intrinsic not only to desire's response to

a culturally constituted world but is also intrinsic to the genesis of desire

itself as a response to that world. In ways that vary both across cultures



The History of Sexuality ? 119

and in individual experience, we are-as anthropology has long insisted-

productsof culture. But-as

psychoanalysisinsists-we resist this truth in

ways that manifest in fantasy and desire, registering how we might wish

things to be as opposed to how they are. And this fact, too, must be incor-

porate into our understanding of the avowed object of our discipline, cul-

ture.

P. STEVENANDGRENs ProfessorfAnthropologyndAsian tudies, epartmentfAnthropology,ornell

University,cGrawall,thaca,Y 4853.

NOTES

1. This article wasoriginally ntitled,"Discipline,Constraint,Production: mplicationsofthe Ars Erotica/ScientiaSexualis Contrast n Foucault'sHistoryof Sexuality [Or,'The Re-turn of the Repressed']," repared or conference:"ForgetFoucault?A CornellSymposiumon TheHistoryof Sexuality, March8, 2003, CornellUniversity.I thank the coparticipantsand,particularlyts organizer,NeilSacamano, orprovidingnspirationandencouragement.

2. Among he manywho havechampioned he relevanceof psychoanalysis oranthropol-ogy areCrapanzano 992;Ewing1997;Johnson and Price-Williams 996;Paul1982, 1989;

Spiro1982.3. The magnitudeof academic effortdefies ready summaryor critique,I have found An-

derson1983, Smith 1988, Moore1994, and Butler1997 to provideparticularlyuseful over-views.

4. Myprocedureshere are looselysimilarto Derrida'sn his readingof Freud.For exam-

ple, Derridadiscerns in Freud"on the one side, an Enlightenmentprogressivism,which

hopes for an analysisthat will continue to gain groundon initialobscurityto the degreethatit removes resistancesand liberates,unbinds,emancipates,as does every analysis,and,onthe otherside, a sort of fatalismorpessimismof desire that reckonswith a portionof dark-ness and situates the unanalysableas its veryresource" Derrida1998:16).Deconstruction,of course,resistsany Hegeliansynthesisof these tensions, a synthesis that both Freudand

anthropology,ordiffering easons,areobligedto seek.5. Criticsof modernitylike Foucault maginebelief in the unity of a "transcendental"

subject-a belief sometimesglossed by its detractorsas "humanism"-to define not only"modernity" ut also "the West."Although here is massive evidence for the pervasivenessof humanistvalues andassumptions n ourculture,Ibelievethat criticslargelyoverlook hecoexistence of pragmaticaccommodations o the complexityor shiftingnature of our "sub-

jectivity."By the same token, although"humanism" s regardedby its critics as a set ofdiscursive or epistemic assumptions-assumptions viewed as problematicallyperpetuatedat an implicit or taken-for-grantedevel of discourse and action (by what Foucault wouldterm "power"),t is importantto note the existence of explicit philosophicaldefenders of

modernityor "the Enlightenmentproject"againstsuch criticisms. Habermas's"theoryofcommunicativeaction,"forexample,hypothesizesthat all speech acts implicitlysupposea

"subject" ossessedof a "truth"; communication"s thuspremisedon the notionthat, ide-

ally speaking,subjectsaspireto convey aspects of this truth to other subjects.All that ob-structs such communication might thus be viewed as objects of political and ethical

critique-continuations of an Enlightenmentproject (Bernstein1985;Habermas1972).6. Althoughprofessingan admiration or Foucault'swork,PaulSmith'ssurveyof philo-

sophical approaches o subjectivity, orexample,concludes that Foucaultreallyhas little to



120 ? ETHOS

say on the issue of the "subject," generally shifting attention to the subject's subjugation to

"power" (Smith 1988:168 n. 1).

7. I do not propose that desire is forged once and for all in the "mirror stage" or Oedipalcrisis, but instead that the confrontation between primal narcissism and the imperative to

accommodate the "desire of the other" or "the law" is a constant in life. The mirror stageand accompanying Oedipal crisis might thus be viewed as modeling a sort of continuous

process-more along the lines of Piaget's dialectics of assimilation and accommodation in

the production of "schemas"-as much as instituting a permanent structure of desire (Piaget

1962). (I write about how a more developmental approach inspired, broadly speaking, by

Piaget's notions of accommodation and assimilation might be adapted to a psychoanalytic

understanding of desire elsewhere [Sangren 1997].) Thus, the "infant" here might be ren-

dered the "individual" where it not for the fact that a "pure"individual (that is to say, one

stripped of her/his cultural attainments and qualities) does not and cannot exist.

8. Such an assertion might find broad agreement among critical theorists interested inthe philosophical problems surrounding "subjectivity." Unfortunately, this observation is

often invoked to justify what I view as essentially idealist elisions of the difficulties incum-

bent upon theorizing desire. What I have in mind, broadly speaking, is the notion that since

all human experience is mediated by and constituted through language, therefore analysis of

language's operations suffices to provide all that can be known of the body and experience.9. Anthropologists who have drawn attention to this problem include Ewing (1997) and

Godelier (1999).10. Spiro's critique of Malinowski succeeds in unraveling many of Malinowski's claims

with respect to the alleged absence of an Oedipus complex in the Trobriand islands (Spiro

1982). Malinowski certainly overstated his claim to have disproved Freud; indeed, his "ma-

trilineal complex" owes a good deal to Freudian insights. Yet Spiro himself may overstate hisclaim to have definitely disproved Malinowski with respect to the latter's aim to show that

different family arrangements and distributions of authority might open the possibility that

there are, in fact, cultural differences in what I would term the social production of desire.

11. Some view this perceived change in positive terms (e.g., Baudrillard 1988; Lyotard

1984); others are more critical (e.g., Eagleton 1990; Harvey 1989; Jameson 1984).12. It is on essentially these grounds that Derrida accuses Foucault of producing a "tragic

and romantic discourse on the essence of madness and the birth of tragedy" (Derrida

1998:103).13. Note that one might make an argument paralleling that which I make here with re-

spect to Foucault, but directed toward Bourdieu and Passeron's The Inheritors and toward

Bourdieu's work more generally. Everything in Bourdieu's explicit theoretical framework

points to the reproduction of the system (conceived as a synthesis of objective structures

and subjective intentions) independent of any actor's intentions to do so. Yet his manifest

anger that the system should operate in the way that he reveals conveys a hope that this

very revelation might succeed in changing it. Indeed, from time to time he claims that it can

(by delegitimizing it), but little in his theory would support such a hope.14. Some broadly practice-oriented ethnographic investigations of exchange and reci-

procity draw attention to the classic problem of the "gift" n terms that hint at this endemic

tension between preserving one's autonomy and engaging others in social interaction (Gode-lier 1999; Munn 1986; Myers 1986; Weiner 1976).

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Sangren - Psychoanalysis and Its Resistances in Michel Foucault's the History of Sexuality

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