Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice by Clare Chambers

autonomous subject, which would leave him no normative resources with which to condemn pernicious forms of power or domination, and no basis on which to distinguish influence from coercion. On the other hand, liberals appear to view all choices as free, autonomy as a matter of noninterference, and power as extremely limited in its effects, which leaves them with no normative resources to criticize choices that are the outcome of unjust influence. Neither caricature is entirely accurate. As I pointed out in the introduc-
Greer, Whole Woman, 19.
Janet Radcliffe Richards, The Sceptical Feminist , 115.

    tion, some liberals, such as Martha Nussbaum, recognize the impor- tance of social norms in forming preferences. Will Kymlicka claims that ‘‘liberal egalitarians rightly insist that society can only legitimately hold people responsible for their choices if their preferences and capac- ities have been formed under conditions of justice.’’ 21 However, Kym- licka makes it fairly clear that his statement is more wishful thinking than statement of fact, and remarks that ‘‘liberals need to think seri- ously about adopting more radical politics.’’ 22
    Foucault’s position is also not quite so clear-cut. As Nancy Fraser argues, Foucault’s position on normative values is ambiguous. At times it seems that Foucault rejects all normative argument and values, but elsewhere he appears to reject only liberal normative argument and values, and in some places he in fact relies on liberal normative argu- ment and values. Fraser concludes that ‘‘Foucault’s work ends up, in effect, inviting [normative] questions which it is structurally unequip- ped to answer.’’ 23 As an example, consider his arguments about the relationship between power and freedom. Although Discipline and Pun- ish depicts power as ‘‘a centralized, monolithic force with an inexorable grip on its subjects,’’ 24 Foucault insists in a later article that ‘‘power is exercised only over free individuals, and only insofar as they are free.’’ 25 With the latter statement, Foucault wants to distinguish a situation characterized by power, which is fluid and retains the possibility for resistance, from a situation of slavery or victory, in which the dominant has won the battle and the victim has no chance to resist. This distinc- tion is similar to Hannah Arendt’s distinction between power and vio- lence. For Arendt, power always operates with the consent of those who submit to it. The president of the United States, for example, is powerful only insofar as the citizens of the United States do not revolt and remove him from office: they consent, in their inaction, to his power. If they were to revolt, so that the president could maintain his role only through use of the armed forces, the president would have no power over them, but merely (resources of) violence. 26 Similarly, what
Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, 93.
    22. Ibid., 96.
Nancy Fraser, ‘‘Foucault on Modern Power,’’ 142.
McNay, Foucault and Feminism, 38.
Michel Foucault, ‘‘The Subject and Power,’’ 221.
Hannah Arendt, ‘‘Communicative Power.’’ Note that, on Arendt’s view, the president would still need the consent of the army in order to undertake such action, and so would still have to rely on power rather than on violence alone.

    is distinctive about power for Foucault is the room it leaves for resis- tance, its indeterminate nature—an indeterminacy that results in part from the fact that power is creative and not (merely) repressive. As power operates by suggesting forms for human subjectivity, it can al- ways be overruled by alternative forms. Thus we could understand Fou- cault not as ruling out the notion of the autonomous subject, but rather as examining the ways in which the autonomous subject submits to power. The rejection of the autonomous subject should be understood in the sense that, for Foucault, the subject can, at most,