Tuesday, July 29, 2008

COPS dust, avalanches into.

"It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished- and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school, the colonized, over those who are stuck at a machine and supervised for the rest of their lives... This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance; it is the element in which is articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, conciousness, ect; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philisophical reflection of technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of the theologians. The man described for us, who we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body."

-Michel Foucault



"Escape not. Accept that the escape is not an escape from escape, up to now, having things to say in a pretend way, even under a pretend name, which is Samuel, even if it is the real name, Samuel."

-Richard Foreman

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