Thread by @GJosephRoche

Does Foucault ♥️ racism?

This is the question that begins the fourth lecture in Society Must Be Defended, on January 28th 1976.

MF begins by deflecting a potential misinterpretation of his last lecture (see below). “You might have thought,” he says, “that I was trying to both trace the history of racist discourse AND PRAISE IT.”

https://twitter.com/GJosephRoche/status/1352189983906435076

So he offers us a useful distinction to show why this isn’t correct. It's a distinction he will explore throughout this lecture. It's the distinction between:

racism/ racist discourse on 1⃣✋

&

race war on the other 🤚

If we think of racism, roughly, as prejudice & discrimination based on supposed differences in biological type, MF argues, this sort of racism is just a passing moment in a longer history of race war discourses. He is not praising it at all. BUT…

But, he says, “I was indeed praising the discourse of race war.”

This lecture will trace the emergence of race war discourses to show why it was initially something positive & revolutionary… and how it was taken over by the state to become something truly terrible.

Before the emergence of race war as a historical discourse, what was history? MF argues that history was ritual. It served to enforce the power of the 👑. It did this in 3⃣ ways.

1⃣ History is genealogy. It transforms the present into the culmination of our ancestor’s heroic actions. History is a chain of great leaders, leading to our current great leader.

2⃣ History is memory. The actions of our great leader are important. They are worth remembering. Everything the 👑 does is significant because it will be remembered in the future. Nothing they do is insignificant. Nothing will be lost to history.

3⃣History is an example. In the sense of a legal example. A precedent. It empowers the law.

Genealogy, memory, example. In these ways, history serves the 👑

“Binding & dazzling… subjugating by imposing obligations & intensifying the luster of force… History was a ritual that reinforced sovereignty.”

Race war first appears as a historical discourse that opposes this relationship between history & sovereignty. It starts out as counter-history. It aims to challenge the 👑

History’s new role is not to dazzle, but to uncover. “The role of history… will be to show that the laws deceive, that kings wear masks, that power creates illusions & that historians tell lies.”

New characters appear. Great leaders are replaced by peoples. The Gauls, Celts, Saxons…

And instead of the great deeds of great leaders, history becomes obsessed with invasion: the Frankish invasion, the Norman invasion…

MF makes four comments about this discourse of race war.

1⃣Race war discourses are counter-histories. They oppose sovereignty. But that doesn’t mean they always serve the interests of the oppressed. For example, aristocrats very quickly adopted race war discourses.

2⃣ When these discourses appear, ‘race’ does not mean biological race. It has a much broader meaning. It refers to two groups united by conflict. Race is therefore originally a political category, not a biological one.

3⃣This discourse of race war does not completely replace the previous discourse of history and sovereignty. The two discourses of history overlap and interact. They continue to be recombined in new ways.

4⃣All revolutionary discourses have their origins in race war counter-histories. Race war discourses provide the first historical expressions of power asymmetry, injustice, oppressive violence, and so on.

This brings us back to MF’s original point, about the distinction between racism & race war. Race war is a much broader discourse than racism. It includes many different types of struggles, e.g. class struggle. Racism is just one ‘moment’ in the history of race war discourses.

But the appearance of biological racism also represents a crucial turning point. When biological racism appears:

1⃣ race war discourse gets taken over by the state
2⃣ race war discourse transforms

How does race war discourse change? It stops being a war between two races. It becomes a war of purification within a single population. Purification replaces struggle.

And it is no longer a war against the state or sovereign. It is a war by the sovereign, for the people.

If race war was originally revolutionary, then racism is revolution “in inverted form.”

Coming towards the end of the lecture, MF gives us two examples of modern state racism: Nazi & Soviet state racism. They both appear after these changes ⬆️ took place. Both examples show how state racism combines counter-history with history, and revolution with sovereignty.

Nazism combined state racism with the epic character of race war discourse. It spoke of the glorious past, the return of heroes & the great leader, the coming empire that would last until the end of days… And it sought racial purity.

Soviet state racism was “just the opposite” of Nazism. It was scientific rather than epic. It was managerial and orderly. It focused on class enemies rather than racial enemies. It sought class purification, rather than racial purification.

MF is bending more than one horse shoe here. He now brings his narrative back to the start of the lecture. He has aimed, he says, to balance the scales, and show both the “glory and the infamy” of race war discourses.

And having once again made lengthy digressions & clarifications, he will, in the next lecture, he claims, start to look at the early history of race war discourses.