“Foucault continually
submits interiority to a radical critique…the inside…is merely the fold of the
outside” (Muckelbauer 76).
I think our exploratory is, in many ways, an attempt to
perform this sort of “radical critique,” this inside as a folding of the
outside. Foucault identifies external and internal factors that influence,
constrain, and reinforce discourse. (And, reciprocally, discourse influences,
constrains, and reinforces reality.) From the outside, in, we attempted to show
the layers of discourse as they operate through—and are operated on by—language
and culture/ideology. Working through the exploratory, using Bella Abzug’s
plenary speech as a grounding, revealed, at least for me, a number of
connections and nuances that I am still struggling to grasp:
Power as Multiple
Muckelbauer’s unpacking of Foucault’s work on resistance
helped me see that “because power is multiple, one must pay precise attention
to the specificity of actions and practices in order to delineate their forces
and effects” (Muckelbauer 78). I now see “action” as a connecting thread that
works with, through, and between discourse/language and the powers of
culture/ideology. Building a flow from language to action to culture (and back
again, as I will go into more detail in a moment) forced me to look more
closely at specific “actions and practices” as we deconstructed and
reconstructed our understanding of Abzug’s speech. By tracing patterns of her
words, we were able to see the tension between the actions and culture she (and
the women of the conference) were pushing against, and the actions they were
taking to manifest a new culture. I could see the tension between Abzug’s
description of dominant ideological and cultural forces that created
restriction and the power that she and the other women were exercising in
resistance. Through these tensions, I could better grasp that “Resistance,
then, is simply the convergence of multiple and conflicting powers”
(Muckelbauer 79). I’m not sure about “simply,” but I can see the way multiple
powers are building, clashing, restricting, and resisting across and through
our visualization.