Sociology of Sport Journal, 1993, 10, 148-167 O 1993 Human Kinetics Publishers. Inc.

Desperately Seeking Michel: Foucault's Genealogy, the Body, and Critical Sport Sociology

David L. Andrews University of Illinois

This paper focuses on the theoretical and substantive innovations developed by Michel Foucault, and specifically his understanding of the disciplined nature of bodily existence. Foucault's understanding of the human body is then linked to the critical discourse within sport sociology. This illustrates how his research has been appropriated by critical scholars in the past and briefly outlines how his work could be used to develop innovative research agendas. The paper concludes by putting the onus on the critical element within sport sociology to confront poststructuralist and postmodernist theorizing, such as Foucault's genealogy. This is the only way to ensure the intellectual development of a critical, and legitimate, sport sociology.

Cette ttude est centrte sur les innovations thtoriques et substantielles apporttes par Michel Foucault et plus particuliPrement sur son apprthension de la nature disciplinte de I'existence corporelle. L'interpre'tation du corps humain selon Foucault est ensuite relie'e au discours critique existant en sociologie du sport. L'ttude traite de la f a ~ o n dont les recherches de Foucault ont t t t approprie'es par les critiques duns Ie passt et, plus britvement, de la facon dont son oeuvre pourrait 2tre utiliste pour de'velopper des pro- grammes de recherche innovateurs. La conclusion de I'e'tude est en fait un appel aux critiques en sociologie du sport a confronter les thtorisations post-structuralistes et post- modernistes telles que la gtne'alogie de Foucault. La rtponse cet appel constitue le seul moyen d'assurer le dtveloppement intellectuel d'une sociologie du sport critique et ltgitime.

Power is incorporated or invested in the body through meticulous, insistent work on people's bodies--on children in families and schools; on soldiers, prisoners and hospital patients; in the gym, at the dinner table, and in the bathroom (Foucault, 1976). (Hargreaves, 1987, p. 140)

Michel Foucault's genealogical explorations represent an original strategy for critical' social research relating to almost every conceivable aspect of bodily existence. From varied thematic positions he sketched the dynamic relationships between power, knowledge, and the human body.' In doing so, Foucault developed

David L. Andrews is with the Department of Kinesiology, University of Illinois, Room 219 Freer Hall, S. Goodwin Ave., Urbana, IL 61801.

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a radical approach to sociohistorical understanding that gave prominence to the discursive processes through which the body becomes disciplined and controlled.

With such an unusual focus on the human body,3 Foucault's work has the potential of being an extremely useful tool for studying the significance of sport within a social context. As David Whitson clearly enunciated, "The work of Foucault . . . on the discourses of discipline and pleasure that surround the body in modern societies has much to offer students of sport" (1989, p. 62). This becomes particularly evident when one is considering that the body is the primary focus of sport; after all "it is the body that constitutes the most striking symbol, as well as constituting the material core of sporting activity" (Hargreaves, 1987, p. 141). Sport is also a subject that lends itself to a Foucaultian analysis. The modern sporting system is potentially of singular importance to the understanding of the way power is structured and exerted within contemporary society. This is because sports are "uniquely endowed with the capacity for deploying the body in such a way as to represent and reproduce social relationships in a preferred way" (Hargreaves, 1987, p. 142).

Despite the manifest relevance of Foucault's radical contributions, sport sociology's purportedly critical element has shown a disturbing reluctance to address Foucault's challenging and thought-provoking work. Indeed, only in very recent times has Foucault's research begun to generate the type of internal debate within sport sociology that has punctuated the development of numerous areas of the humanities and social sciences over the last 2 decades. Although many disciplines have already discussed and in some cases discarded Foucault, sport sociology has only just begun to evaluate the relevance of his work.

This examination is not intended as an uncritical endorsement of Foucault's analysis, for his work is littered with readily apparent weaknesses and vagaries, which have been the focus of lengthy deliberations by an array of critical thinker^.^ In specific terms Baudrillard's (1987) advice to the academic world is to "forget Foucault." And yet, Foucault's work can only be justifiably discarded once it has been exhaustively discussed. This paper is intended as a contribution to this dialogue within sport sociology. Hence, I first locate Foucault's oppositional philosophy upon the marbled landscape of contemporary sociohistorical method and inquiry. Second, I trace the theoretical evolution, and provide an extended exposition, of his genealogical method. Finally, I demonstrate that by offering a unique approach that identifies the biopolitical constitution of the human experi- ence, Foucault's genealogy has considerable relevance for the theoretical and substantive development of critical sport-oriented scholarship.

Notes on Deconstructing the Foucaultian Project

The tradition of French structuralism initiated and developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude LCvi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, and Louis Althusser, and built upon by Michel Foucault, has been largely responsible for the increased interest in language and discourse analysis shown by students of the humanities and social sciences. However, Foucault's intellectual radicalism produced texts of an unapologetically disconcerting nature, which represent a challenging read to even those well versed in both structuralist and poststructuralist thought. Despite the demanding disposition of his writing, anyone with more than a passing involve- ment in sociohistorical inquiry needs to become cognizant of the discordant

travail of the late5 " 'superstar' of the Coll6ge de France" (Kurzweil, 1986a, p. 647).

An Antidisciplinary Scholar

During the course of his oppositional philosophic odyssey, Foucault offered a compelling alternative strategy for discerning the complexities of the modem human condition. As the "theorist of the disciplined body" (Franks, 1991, p. 56), Foucault advanced an innovative agenda that was attentive to critically excavating the disciplined experience of the human body. Foucault's genealogical analyses of the human experience revolved around an interpretive strategy that countered the rational objectivity of conventional academic disciplines. In order to isolate and conceptualize the importance of the body within modem society, Foucault explored such customarily marginal themes as punishment, madness, medicine, and sexuality. As Smart pointed out, Foucault's genealogical approach revealed the historicity of "qualities and properties which have formerly been considered ahistorical (e.g., feelings, sentiment, morality, ideals, the physiology of the body)" (1983, p. 77). In doing so, Foucault turned his back on epistemological orthodoxy, preferring to borrow from traditional structures of knowledge only what was required of his idiosyncratic and antidisciplinary agenda.

O'Hara (1988) asked, "What was Foucault?" Foucault would have prob- ably replied, in typically uncommitted fashion, with pronouncements of what he was not. And yet O'Hara's question does unearth an uncommonly trenchant dilemma, for Foucault's cerebral complexities do not easily lend themselves to conventional classification. There is little agreement as to exactly what Foucault was: structuralist or poststructuralist, modernist or postmodernist, Marxist or anti-Marxist (Hoy, 1988). Even the historical aspect of his work has not been articulated with any widespread consensus; Poster (1984) asserted that Foucault was primarily a historian of discourse whereas O'Brien (1986) preferred to view him as a discursive historian.

Edward Said made a valiant and worthy attempt at depicting the multi- faceted nature of Foucault's intellectual odyssey:

He was neither simply a historian, nor a philosopher, nor a literary critic, but all of those things together, and then more still. . . . Foucault was a hybrid writer, dependent upon-but in his writing going beyond-the genres of fiction, history, sociology, political science, and philosophy. (1988, p. 3)

Care should be taken not to interpret Foucault's intellectual individuality as a unique synthesis of orthodox academic disciplines. As a radical, neo-anarchic critic of modem society and specifically contemporary structures of knowledge, Foucault did not conform to the interpretive and organizational protocols of traditional disciplines. Indeed, Foucault, like Nietzsche, carried out his research in opposition to existing epistemological structures (Sheridan, 1980, p. 208). He plainly refused to adhere to or even acknowledge "social conventions in general and . . . the social conventions of science in particular" (Megill, 1987, p. 133). As a consequence, Foucault could never be described as an interdisciplinary researcher,

standing between and happily drawing from existing disciplines. Rather, he is antidisciplinary, standing outside all disciplines and drawing from them only in the hope of undermining them. (Megill, 1987, pp. 133-134)

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Farge (1984, p. 42) noticed the "espace blanc" between Foucault and conven- tional history; however, a comparable vacuum distanced him from sociology, philosophy, psychology, and every other disciplinary formation. In eschewing these traditional disciplines, Foucault emphasized his firm sense of belonging to the ambiguous cleavages between disciplines.

Following Nietzsche, Foucault developed a radically different conception of history founded upon the antithesis of the idea of progress in and through history (Smart, 1985). This was a radical reading of social history "in which the forms of both subjectivity and knowledge are to be explained by reference to social practice" (Paden, 1987, p. 138). According to O'Brien (1986), Foucault did not perceive history as

the continuous evolution of a truth underpinned by reason. History is, rather, discontinuous, comprising a series of breaks and estrangements; instead of a linear sequence of unfolding determinations Foucault finds a fragmented pattern of transformations which manifest the distance of previ- ous modes of knowledge from our contemporary epistemological configura- tions. (p. 119)

By viewing history as comprising elements of both continuity and disconti- nuity, Foucault avoided the perils of histories articulated as totalizing continuities, which "legitimize the present as the culmination of the past" (Poster, 1989, p. 70).

Although Marx, Freud, and Heidegger influenced his intellectual develop- ment, Foucault was most fundamentally directed by Nietzsche's philosophy (Lasch, 1984). It was Nietzsche who "condemned the optimism of evolutionary Darwinism and positivistic science which took social and moral progress for granted, subjecting such philosophical systems to the aphoristic critique of the 'gay science' " (Kaufmann, 1974, quoted in Turner, 1982, p. 23). Through discursive archaeology and genealogy Foucault developed a comparable pessimis- tic and skeptical inclination toward modem scientific rationality.

Nietzsche's antagonistic reasoning favored a radical individualism that did not lend itself to the collective enterprise of disciplinary involvement (Megill, 1985). Consequently, it is little surprise that Foucault, as "perhaps the greatest of Nietzsche's modem disciples" (Said, 1988, p. I), should have adopted such a radical and solitary intellectual stance. Through a damning appraisal of traditional historiography, Foucault assembled a critical contemporary understanding: a history of the present through an incisive understanding of the past.

Foucault's Discourse-Based Analysis

Foucault (1985, p. 15) maintained that his works were studies of history, but he was not a historian. Although he shied away from history, his endeavors possessed an acceptable historical lineage as they were grounded in the "history of mentalitC' ' of the early Annales school. This interpretive movement, originally led by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, was resurrected by Foucault following the economic and demographic prognostications that swamped the Annales d'histoire e'conomique et sociale after 1945. Febvre had pleaded for an alliance between history and linguistics before the first World War, and in the second volume of the Annales a section entitled "Words and things" (Les mots et les choses) was

152 Andrews

established (Febvre, 1930). However, in the early 1960s it was Foucault who led thelrtnnales back to its discursive beginnings.

Following the second World War Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse led the Annales away from "mentalit6" to more economic pastures. However, by the late 1950s the sociolinguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure had been appro- priated by Claude L6vi-Strauss (1963) and used as a theoretical strategy for the study of myths. This interpretive development caught the imagination of many Annales scholars. As a result, a structuralist history began to emerge that rejected "post-war existentialist historicism and subjectivism" and aligned itself with "the findings of structural linguistics and the theory of signs" (Schottler, 1989, p. 39).

The pioneering works of French structuralist history emanated from the writings of Algirdas Greimas and Roland Barthes; both of which appeared in the Annale~.~ Although not mentioning discourse, the work of Greimas and especially Barthes paved the way for the emergence of discourse analysis within the Annales movement. This theoretical turn was initiated and guided by Foucault, for as a result of his work " 'discours' . . . achieved its special epistemological status" (Schottler, 1989, p. 41).

Foucault attempted to determine the parameters of knowledge that defined the understanding of various aspects of the human experience in a given time period. Of fundamental importance to his interpretive stratagem was the notion of discourse, by which he specifically meant the "socially institutionalized mode of speechlwriting with effects of power and/or assistance" (Schottler, 1989, p. 55). A discourse-based technique of identifying historical systems of thought was not aimed at

trying to seek beneath discourse for how human beings think, but rather to take discourse in its manifest existence as a practice that obeys certain definite rules. . . . And it is precisely this practice, in its consistency and its virtual materiality, that I describe. (Foucault, 1969, p. 23)

This discursive design was a development of Febvre and Bloch's concern with "mentalite" as it unraveled a "history of conscious and unconscious forms of thought that was not simply a history of ideas" (Schottler, 1989, p. 42). It was closer to a history of knowledge, a historical epistemology.

According to Foucault, discourse was the "primary datum of history" (Blair, 1987, p. 366). It was the unifying or connecting of similarities between discursive forms that Foucault sought to unearth in his archaeological under- takings. This brings to light the three-dimensional goal of Foucault's discursive analysis: the interrelated understanding of knowledge, power, and ethics (Foucault, 1984a). This "epistemologico-political" (Foucault, 1984b, p. 376) inquiry exhumed distinct strata within the periodization of history, each of which possessed "its own unique power relations, its particular conception of the subject, and its peculiar view of what counts as knowledge" (Blair, 1987, p. 367). By analyzing specific historical discourses, Foucault sought to identify the con- juncturally specific episteme, or "practice of knowledge" (Blair, 1987, p. 367), through which he was able to produce maps of discursive formation and transfor- mation that explored human experience and understanding in the diverse realms of human existence, be it punishment, sexuality, medicine, or madness.

Foucault's Genealogy 153

The primary tool of analysis used by Foucault in his discursive method was the &nonce', or statement, which embraced "uttered and/or transcribed sets of signs or symbols to which a status of knowledge may be ascribed, which establish or maintain unique relationships among individuals and groups, and which enact a particular view of the self' (Blair, 1987, pp. 368-369). By viewing statements as representing more than spoken or written symbols Foucault ex- panded upon Saussurian structural linguistics. Statements were human construc- tions that could only be understood in relation to each other within a particular, and hence unique, temporal context.

It would be remiss to think of Foucault's theorizing as being a coherent constancy. Instinctively the conceptualizing within his early work differed mark- edly from that within his latter, more developed project^.^ The most dynamic aspect of Foucault's intellectual development was his changing epistemic under- standing. Indeed, his increasingly complex and ambivalent attitude toward knowl- edge provided the basis for three distinct phases of scholarly output.

The first stage in Foucault's cognitive development was characterized by Madness and Civilization (1961/1973), and The Order of Things (196611973). In these early works Foucault displayed the trappings of an "enthusiastic, relent- lessly erudite researcher, digging up documents, raiding archives, rereading and demystifying canonical texts" (Said, 1988, p. 4). Evidently his critical edge had yet to come to the surface.

In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969/1972), Foucault theoretically artic- ulated an awakening hostility toward knowledge as a "transparent mental prison" (Said, 1988, p. 5). This phase of his academic wanderings represented a middle ground between the generally descriptive narratives that preceded it and the cheerless diagnoses that were to follow.

With the publication of Discipline andpunish (197511977a) and The History o f Sexuality; Vol. 1 (1976/1978), Foucault reached a disheartened and cynical i~tellectual maturity. As the main focus of his pessimistic antagonism, knowledge was connected to "power, as well as ceaseless, but regularly defeated, resistance to which it gives rise" (Said, 1988, p. 5). The metamorphosis of his nihilism could almost be seen as a return to-~ietzschean fundamentalism, knowledge being viewed as a tool of power that increases with every increase of power (Smart, 1983).

From Archaeology to Genealogy

Central to Foucault's change of emphasis-with regard to his understanding of discourse-was a sophistication of his interpretive method. In terms of nomen- clature this move involved a shift from archaeological to genealogical analysis. Foucault's early undertakings were founded upon archaeology, "a way of doing historical analysis of systems of ideas" (Smart, 1985, p. 48). This stratagem explicitly invdlved the^ description of archives, the term used by ~oucault to describe "the general system of the formation and transformation of statements" (Smart, 1985, p. 48) in existence at any given moment in the history of a particular society. This discursive archaeology focused on the understanding of statements used in discourse, the conditions and object of their existence, and the interpretive domains in which they were deployed (Hacking, 1986).

The primary task of archaeological analysis was not to isolate discursive unities; rather its aim was to expose~discursive changes and transformations:

Rather than refer to the living force of change (as if it were its own principle), rather than seek its causes (as if it were no more than a mere effect), archaeology tries to establish the system of transformations that constitute "change"; it tries to develop this empty, abstract notion, with a view to according it the analyzable status of transformation. (Foucault, 1972, p. 173)

Abandoning the restrictions imposed by the more traditional history of ideas approach, archaeology represented "an attempt to practice a quite different history of what men have said" (Foucault, 1972, p. 8).

The archaeological phase of Foucault's research went up to and included The Archaeology of Knowledge (196911972). However Discipline and Punish (197511977a) and The History of Sexuality: Vol. 1 (197611978) both incorporate a genealogical method that displaced archaeological analysis? Archaeology did not disappear from the discursive agenda as Kurzweil (1986b) would have us believe. Rather it retained a secondary role and continued to provide the methodol- ogy for separating and scrutinizing local discursivities in a fashion complementary to genealogy (Foucault, 1980).

The notion of genealogy was appropriated from Nietzsche's attempts to appreciate the "age of man" (Kurzweil, 1986a, p. 647). Foucault's primary concerns were the origins of "specific claims to the truth" (Davidson, 1986, p. 224), especially those concerned with the human sciences. His genealogical method focused on "the mutual relations between systems of truth and modalities of power, the way in which there is a 'political regime' of the production of truth" (Davidson, 1986, p. 224). This enabled Foucault to discover the social origins of contemporary existence, and "to cultivate the details and accidents that accompany every beginning" (Kurzweil, 1986a, p. 647).

Foucault highlighted two strands of the genealogical method: the examina- tion of descent and the analysis of emergence. Both of these interpretive strategies highlighted the stark contrast between genealogy and traditional history. Rather than conjuring up a "history of uninterrupted continuity" (Smart, 1983, p. 76), the scrutiny of descent attempted to "identify the accidents, the minute deviations . . . the errors . . . that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us" (Foucault, 1977b, p. 146). The examination of emergence involves the conceptualizing of the contemporary historical condition, not as the most current stages of historical development, but as the "transitory manifestations of relationships of domination-subordination'' (Smart, 1983, p. 76). The develop- ment of genealogy represented a sophistication of Foucault's archaeological stance coupled with a rearticulation of humanism. Within his ap- proach humanism was no longer an exaggerated theory of human agency but was a central aspect of social existence that needed to be deciphered. The ideological function of humanism became an important aspect of the social construction of a normalizing discipline that helped to produce human nature and the human subject (Paden, 1987, p. 139).

Refuting humanist ideology, Foucault's genealogy was established on the premise that human nature is a social construction that possesses no essential features, "the individual subject is neither the real atomistic basis of society nor the ideological illusion of liberal economic theory, but an effective artifact of a very long and complicated historical process" (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982,

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p. 130). According to Foucault, knowledge itself is not organically grounded in the human subject but is a secular product of social intercourse between human agents; it is the human by-product of powerful social forces. Similarly, genealogy is also attentive to the conjunctural specificity of knowledge, that is "what is known is grounded in a time and place, and more controversially, in the historians preferences and passions" (Smart, 1985, p. 58).

Genealogy stands as a distinct and critical counterpoise to orthodox histori- ography. It refutes any notion of historical constancies and the presence of uninterrupted continuities that have effectively structured the past and are actively defining the present. Foucault also repudiated historians' obsession with the search for theoretical and methodological canons, prefemng to ''record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality" (Foucault, 1977b, p. 139). He found no comfort or relevance in universalizing or totalizing histories, for "nothing in man-not even his body-is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self- recognition or for understanding other men" (Foucault, 1977b, p. 153).

Genealogy also opposes traditional historiography because

whereas the interpreter is obliged to go to the depth of things, like an excavator, the moment of interpretation [genealogy] is like an overview, from higher and higher up, which allows the depth to be laid out in front of him in a more and more profound visibility; depth is resituated as an absolutely superficial secret. (Foucault, 1976, p. 187)

Foucault's basic premise was that the most profound disclosures of social exis- tence could be discerned from surface practices, as opposed to being clouded by the fixation with interpretive depth. Dreyfus and Rabinow eloquently summarized Foucault's interpretive agenda: "Genealogy's coat of arms might read: Oppose depth, finality, and interiority. Its banner: Mistrust identities in history; they are only masks, appeals to unity" (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 107).

Genealogy and the Disciplined Body

The constant locus of Foucault's genealogical researchi0 centered around the assumption that the growth of systematic knowledge coincided with the expansion of power relations into the realm of controlling bodily practices and existence (Tumer, 1982, p. 23). As Dreyfus and Rabinow insist, "The genealogist is a diagnostician who concentrates on the relations of power, knowledge, and the body in modem society" (1982, p. 105). Foucault focused upon specific forms of knowledge, different levels of power relations, and emergent methods of objectification through which individuals become conscious of themselves and are thus able to constitute themselves as social subjects.

For Foucault, it is the body that has come to represent the contested terrain over which political and personal struggles are fought:

The body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to cany out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs. (Foucault, 1977a, P. 25)

In effect, the body has become "an essential component for the operation of power relations in modem society" (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 26). The

political investment in the body attempts to discipline and control it in order that it may be put to economic use: "The body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body" (Foucault, 1977a, p. 26).

Foucault (1977a) identified political technologies of the body that link power relations, knowledge, and the body, and through which the human body is understood, is mastered, and becomes disciplined. According to Foucault, discipline is a physics, anatomy, or technology of power, which incorporates definite instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, and targets, through which and over which power is exercised (Foucault, 1977a, p. 215). The strategic disciplinary interventions precipitated by the emergence of bodily focused political technologies help define the tenor of power relations and conse- quently structure the parameters and possibilities of social existence.

The technologies related to the human body had their roots in the new strategies of power that emerged during the 18th century. Within this period, disciplinary power became a "fundamental instrument in the constitution of industrial capitalism and the type of society that is its accompaniment" (Foucault, 1980, p. 105). According to Foucault, the ascendance of the capitalist mode of production would have been impossible were it not for the appearance of disciplin- ary power, which engineered "the controlled insertion of bodies into the machin- ery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic process" (Foucault, 1978, p. 140).

The demographic and economic processes associated with concerted indus- trialization provided the impetus for the development of a network of disciplinary power. This initiative revolved around the emergence of a cluster of disciplinary institutions which, in terms of structure and ideology, promoted the ethos of discipline. Institutions such as prisons, hospitals, and schools increasingly came to the fore, augmented by complementary structures of knowledge and related human sciences that rationalized and legitimated the agenda of social discipline. According to Dreyfus and Rabinow,

Foucault asserts that the very self-definition of the human sciences as scholarly "disciplines" . . . is closely linked to the spread of disciplinary technologies. . . . The social sciences (psychology, demography, statistics, criminology, social hygiene, and so on) were first situated within particular institutions of power (hospitals, prisons, administrations) where their role became one of specialization. These institutions needed new, more refined and operationalized discourses and practices. These discourses, these pseudo-sciences, these social disciplines developed their own rules of evi- dence, their own modes of recruitment and exclusion, their own disciplinary compartmentalizations, but they did so within the large context of disciplin- ary technologies. (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 160)

Clearly, the emergence of coercive and disciplinary discourses within disciplinary institutions significantly contributed to the birth and consolidation of a coercive and disciplinary society.

Foucault's goal was to "write the effective history of the appearance, the articulation, and the spread" of political technologies of the body (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 113). To this end he rejected the notion of the advances made in the terrain of scientific knowledge as being "rational and progressive," prefemng to advocate that "scientific advances do not liberate the body from

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external control, but rather intensify the means of social regulation" (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 113). The social body has been regulated and subjugated by these pseudoscientific discursive structures, or disciplines, which chastise the human body into the acceptance of the socioeconomic order.

Foucault's analysis is unusual because it focuses on a microlevel of inter- action in which the strategies and techniques of power are enacted. Although influenced by Marx, Foucault's writings abound with scathing critiques of funda- mental Marxist philosophy, particularly the fact that Marxist doctrine "reduces all domination to the level of labor" (Poster, 1987, p. 107). His approach rejects this blind commitment to analyses of the mode of production, preferring a discur- sive schema focusing upon the mode of information. This interpretive agenda unearths systems of domination that are wholly divorced from the labor structure.

Foucault does not conceptualize power as being exerted by a particular system, be it political or economic (Chang, 1986, p. 75). Rather he views power as being everywhere; "Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society" (Foucault, 1978, p. 93). The final point is arguably Foucault's most profound statement regarding his conception of power. He refutes the view that power is the possession or property of a dominant group, preferring to view it as a social strategy or tactic. Foucault contends that "no one, strictly speaking, has an official right to power; and yet it is always exerted in a particular direction, with some people on one side and some on the other" (Foucault, 1977c, p. 213). Returning to his discursive origins, Foucault asserted that power relations are evident within any social context, and they are created, maintained, and exerted by the production and circulation of discourse (Smart, 1985).

From such a microlevel of analysis Foucault (1977a) derives the notion of a microphysics of power. The technologies of the body, through which power is exerted, are both temporally and spatially localized, and hence individuals continually experience the mechanisms of power during the course of their network of social relations (Chang, 1986, p. 76). As Harvey and Sparks stated, according to Foucault,

power is neither hierarchical (imposed from the top) nor foundational (arising from determinate social relations such as class relations). Rather, it arises in a capillary-like fashion from below, expressed in people's concrete knowledges, dispositions, interactions and relations. (1991, p. 166)

Foucault's understanding rests on the notion of biotechnico-power, or more simply biopower, through which the body is objectified and individuals become involved in their own subjectification.

According to Foucault, biopower was a distinct technology of power cen- tered on the body that came to prominence during the 19th century. Within this era, Foucault discerned how knowledge of the body became focused on two interrelated strands of biopower. First, Foucault identified the development of specific technologies of the body that manipulated and controlled the human form and created docile bodies. This "new science, or more accurately technology of the body as an object of power, gradually formed in disparate peripheral

158 Andrezus

locations" (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 134). The human form became con- trolled by the disciplinary regimes practiced within specific institutional spaces, which rendered the body socially constrained, politically neutered, but economi- cally productive.

Although disciplinary power appeared in an institutional context, it should be stressed that it worked on a microlevel of power relations. It is the individual subject that is created by the disciplinary regimen; "instead of bending all its subjects into a single uniform mass, it separates, analyses, differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point of necessary and sufficient single units" (Foucault, 1977a, p. 170). The microphysics of Foucault's understanding of power should not be overlooked, for in the prison, the hospital, the school, and the workhouse, "discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of power that regards individuals as objects and instruments of its exercise" (Foucault, 1977a, p. 170).

Although disciplinary power emerged within the disciplinary institutions, this constraining mechanism soon spread its influence into "non-institutional spaces and populations" (Smart, 1985, p. 89). Here, Foucault identified a second level of biopower through which the body is more explicitly controlled and disciplined by itself. This level of biopower focused on the politicizing of the human body as a reproductive force (Foucault, 1977a). This deinstitutionalization and individual appropriation of disciplinary regimes was largely attributable to the growth of coherent disciplines relating to the body. These normalizing pseudoscientific discourses disseminated from an institutionally framed level of power relations and began to act at a subjective level of influence. Herein the human subject, as defined by the multifarious discourses that normalize bodily existence, is formed and recognized by himself or herself in relation to the discourses that confront the body. In effect human subjectivity and identity became dependent upon and controlled by a "conscience of self-knowledge" (Foucault, 1982, p. 212).

In the first volume of The History of Sexuality (1976/1978), Foucault presented critiques of domination by deconstructing the history of specific sexual practices and discourses. He unmasked "the rules of propriety that had been encoded in bourgeois society" (Kurzweil, 1986a, p. 650) and analyzed "the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexu- ality'' (Foucault, 1978, p. 11). In this way, Foucault highlighted how the common understanding of sexuality, and of very definite sexual identities, emerged as both an instrument and an effect of the spread of biopower. The discourse of sexuality clearly illustrates Foucault's understanding of biopolitics; the assertion of particular structures of knowledge results in the creation and policing of sexual identities and desires, through which sexual bodies are effectively self-disciplined.

Genealogy and the Sporting Body

Having excavated the derivation, method, and bodily focus of Foucault's research, I would contend that genealogy has much to contribute toward the critical understanding of the sporting body. Foucault's genealogical narratives challenged the understanding of the discourses surrounding discipline and sexual- ity. By reordering and reinterpreting the discursive actualities of the past, geneal- ogy has enhanced the comprehension of the way contemporary disciplined and

Foucault's Genealogy 159

sexual identities are subjectively created. By embracing a Foucaultian analysis, the sport sociology community would significantly increase its awareness of how traditional sporting identities are created within contemporary society.

In all probability advocating Foucault's approach to sociohistorical analysis would not be viewed as an unreasonable stratagem by the majority of critical sport sociologists. However, very few have actually committed themselves to the production of research that appropriates Foucault's social philosophy to direct and substantiate their sport-oriented critiques. Herein, I outline some of the rare number of sport studies that focus on the human body as a key location for critical sociological analysis and suggest some further avenues for genealogical inquiry in the sporting domain.

Theberge (1991) recently recounted exactly the type of interactive dialogue with Foucault's work that is required if the true importance of the genealogical method to sport sociology is ever to be assessed. Theberge encountered the ' 'ground-breaking formulations of Michel Foucault" (Theberge, 199 1, p. 25) during her cumulative discussion of Bryan Turner's (1984) stratagem for a sociol- ogy of the body, and the growing literature from feminist poststructuralist research relating to the sociocultural construction of gender and femininity (see Bordo, 1989; Diamond & Quinby, 1988).

It is among the work of poststructuralist feminists that most can be learned about appropriating Foucault's oppositional treatise. Poststructuralist feminists realized Foucault's theorizing was hampered by a virtual disregard for the gender issue, which resulted in his ignoring "the experiences and condition of women" (Theberge, 1991, p. 125). This weakness was compounded by Foucault's nihilistic and self-defeating conception of resistance, which questioned the very existence of combative projects epitomized by the feminist movement. Despite these starkly apparent deficiencies, many of the critical and incisive feminist scholars saw much within Foucault's work that was of relevance to the feminist project. Consequently, Foucault's analysis has been manipulated and extended to suit the requirements of the emancipatory goals of feminism. To all intents and purposes this has meant infusing Foucaultian conceptualizing with a feminist agenda, which embraces a coherent strategy of resistance focused on the body as "the control locus of the constitution of femininity and gender" (Theberge, 1991, p. 125).

Theberge recognized that the emergence of a poststructuralist feminism influenced by Foucault has significant implications for the inventory of questions being asked by feminist spok sociologi~ts and that this emergence contributes to the way these problems are addressed. Theberge identified three major areas of research that have emerged and that certainly warrant further investigative study. First, she highlighteda "growing and increasingly sophisticated analysis of disciplinary practices and subjugation in contemporary sport and physical activity" (Theberge, 1991, p. 128). This body of knowledge pinpointed the female domination, oppression, and exploitation resulting from the promotion of a physically weak and frail feminine body within sporting contexts (Atkinson, 1978; Lenskyj, 1986; MacKinnon, 1987; McNeill, 1988; Theberge, 1987).

A related research theme is the analysis of the capacity of sports to reproduce traditionally gendered power relations and identities as taken for granted and wholly natural aspects of social existence. Within mainstream sport, any deviance from the norms of masculinity or femininity is viewed as entirely deviant and

160 Andrews

wholly unnatural (Connell, 1987, 1990; Messner, 1992). However, there is evi- dence of women resisting oppression and attempting to become empowered through sport (Schulze, 1990). Finally, Theberge pointed to research that demon- strated how social institutions, specifically education and the mass media, act as structural bases of the patriarchal disciplinary power that pervades sporting culture (Dewar, 1987; Hargreaves, 1986, 1987; Klein, 1988; McNeill, 1988; Messner, 1988).

Within each of the topics identified by Theberge it is clear that distinct traces of Foucaultian social philosophy have played an important role in rewriting the feminist agenda within sport sociology. It is hoped that feminist sport scholars will continue to produce excellent research and the ultimate goal of developing a successful strategy for intervention and resistance to the patriarchal structure of sport will be realized. Then it would be reasonable to claim that Foucault's project not only has been adopted by feminist sport sociologists but will have been enhanced by them.

One of the areas of research unearthed by Theberge relates to the analysis of educational institutions as harbingers of a patriarchal disciplinary power that promote particular sporting ideologies and practices. The work in this area that most explicitly utilizes Foucault's conceptions of disciplinary power and knowl- edge has been carried out by John Hargreaves (1986,1987). Although Hargreaves discusses the relationship between the body, sport, and gender identities, he does open his discussion up to include other issues of equal importance:

The body then, constitutes a major site of social struggles and it is in the battle for control over the body that types of social relation of particular significance for the way power is structured--class, gender, age, and race- are to a great extent constituted. (Hargreaves, 1987, p. 140)

In true Foucaultian fashion, Hargreaves identified physical education as a discipline in that it incorporates "strategies of control which involve the training and coercion of bodies into complying with and hence integrating into a particular hierarchical power structure" (Smart, 1985, p. 85). Consequently, Hargreaves engaged in an in-depth genealogical analysis of the practices and ideologies surrounding the discourse of physical education. He concluded,

PE theory, its objectives and recommended practices, constitute a pro- gramme of control through sustained work on the body. . . . The aims and objectives of physical education, as annunciated in official publications and by leading members of the profession in texts and journals, not only encode, but in many cases are explicitly committed to, views concerning the nature of the social order, which find ready agreement among dominant groups. (Hargreaves, 1986, pp. 164-165)

Hargreaves discovered that the disciplinary regime of physical education schools the body into the acceptance of very definite class, gender, and ethnic divisions and identities (Hargreaves, 1986).

Hargreaves's research on the sporting body is not confined to the genealogi- cal scrutiny of the discourse of physical education. In his seminal essay "The Body, Sport and Power Relations," Hargreaves (1987) suggested a shift in emphasis that is reminiscent of Foucault's move from the analysis of coercive structures and institutions of discipline (Discipline and Punish) to the examination

Foucault's Genealogy 161

of discourses surrounding the body that create and inhibit bodily pleasures and desires and result in the effective self-disciplining of the human body (The History of Sexuality). In Hargreaves's terms this constituted a change of direction away from the analysis of the disciplinary function of physical education to the critical dissection of the importance of sport in shaping bodily existence within the context of contemporary consumer culture.

Hargreaves explicitly borrows from Foucault's theorizing (Foucault, 1980) in his depiction of the relationship between power and the body within consumer society:

The dominant form of control now is an expansive system of discipline and surveillance based on stimulation and satisfaction of desire. The trend is most evident in the way the body is deployed in consumer culture, a culture which, above all, thematizes the primacy of the personal and satisfac- tion of individual desires (Featherstone, 1982). (Hargreaves, 1987, p. 141)

The ideology of consumer culture is dominated by the icons of youth, health, beauty, excitement, and personal freedom (Hargreaves, 1987, p. 150). As a result, the body becomes little more than a self-expression of personal worth as defined by the hierarchical manifestations of bodily consumption.

Manipulated by the hedonistic iconography of consumer culture, the dis- courses of sport, leisure, and health are clearly directed at the body. We are dominated by the desire to look young, healthy, and beautiful and to be exciting. Hargreaves pointed out that the discourses surrounding the sporting body are articulated with this ideology of consumerism. As a direct consequence, sporting practices become an integral part of a

system of expansive discipline and surveillance [which] produces normal persons by making each individual as visible as possible to each other, and by meticulous work on persons' bodies at the instigation of subjects themselves. (Hargreaves, 1987, p. 151)

In a vein reminiscent of Foucault's chronological narration of the constraining discourse of sexuality, Hargreaves points toward an understanding of contempo- rary sport that mediates "individual desires so that individuals enthusiastically discipline themselves" (Hargreaves, 1987, p. 141).

Jean Harvey and Robert Sparks have also brought Foucault's work to the attention of critically inclined sport sociologists. They demonstrated how the work of both Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu can be used to sketch a framework for studying the modern body (Harvey & Sparks, 1991). Harvey and Sparks adopted Foucault's theorizing in order to analyze the sociocultural importance of gymnastics in 19th century France. They focused on a particular historical moment in the emergence of "modernism and modernist politics of the body" (Harvey & Sparks, 1991, p. 176)" and discovered that the disciplines of the body centered around the discourse of gymnastics acted as an emergent form "of domination and integration to the social order within modernism" (Harvey & Sparks, 1991, p. 183).

In a more profound vein Harvey and Sparks contended that

bodily practices such as physical education and sport are linked to political forces and indeed to the building of the modern state. It may now become

clearer, that our understanding of the history of these practices will remain very limited unless their study becomes integrated into a more general approach to the understanding of the body, and especially its political status, in the context of modernity. (1991, p. 186)

From this conclusion it is evident that Harvey and Sparks believe the socio- historical understanding of sport, as a prominent bodily practice, can only be fully realized if it is related to a conjunctural understanding of the contemporary political positioning of the body-a clear vindication of and call to arms for Foucault's theorizing.

Undoubtedly, poststructuralist feminist research has led the way in terms of appropriating Foucault's social philosophy and enhancing the interpretive powers and sophistication of sport sociology research. However, both Hargreaves (1986, 1987) and Harvey and Sparks (1991) have shown that feminism does not monopolize Foucault's analytical tools, and his work can be appropriated to excavate other equally pressing problems. Genealogy opens up new avenues of inquiry for sport researchers, because it enables sport to be viewed as an object of discourse. The discursive formations that surround sport define and create individual subjectivities based on such diverse classifications as gender, age, ethnicity, class, and nationality. The way forward would seem to be obvious; we need to continue the work on gender and extend the Foucaultian critique of the discourses of sport, physical education, health, leisure, and the exercise sciences into the realms of age, ethnic, class, and national power relations.

From a more epistemological standpoint, Foucault's incisive critiques of the structure and implications of disciplinary knowledge have some interesting implications for the discipline of sport sociology. The engaging dialogue between Deem (1988), Sparks (1988), and Whitson (1989) relating to the critical project of sport-related studies would have been enhanced by more explicit referral to Foucault's declarations. Similarly, the rather barbed debate between advocates of an applied (Yiannakis, 1989, 1990) and a practical (Ingham & Donnelly, 1990) sport sociology lends itself to some kind of Foucaultian input regarding the analysis of "whose knowledge counts" (Ingham & Donnelly, 1990). Last, the debates recently initiated on the scientization of physical education (Whitson & Macintosh, 1990), technocratic physical education (McKay, Gore, & Kirk, 1990), and kinesiology in higher education (Newell, 1990a, 1990b) could all be taken to a higher level of interpretive understanding if a Foucaultian stance is adopted when these issues are addressed.

More than 8 years after Foucault's death, the majority within the critical sport sociology community have failed to explore Foucault's theorizing with any sort of critical or substantive depth. Apart from the incisive scholarship generated by poststructuralist feminists and a handful of other progressive researchers, the cutting edges of sport sociology presently appear blunted by a malaise of compla- cent self-satisfaction that has been generated by the (long overdue) discovery of Antonio Grarnsci, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, and others. Without doubt the scholarship emanating from what Moms (1988) described as the cultural studies boom has greatly contributed to our understanding of the pivotal position of sport within contemporary culture. However, as Stuart Hall himself would undoubtedly testify, critical sociocultural analysis does not begin and end with an increasingly institutionalized cultural studies that is "quickly becoming too

Foucault's Genealogy 163

tame . . . losing its political impetus, its transformative agenda" (Elbert, quoted in Heller, 1990, p. A10).

In tandem with cultural studies, critical sporting analysis must evolve by responding to the particular conditions of its "intellectual, social and historical context" (Grossberg, 1989, p. 1 14). Committed cultural critics have an obligation to push the boundaries of knowledge even wider and to probe incisive and strategic interventions even deeper. Such an agenda requires that dialogues are initiated between the contemporaneous champions of critical thinking and the theorists who challenge and may ultimately enhance current interpretive under- standing. For this reason, the work of Michel Foucault should be considered as a locus of external contestation through which the present sociocultural compre- hension of sport may be reevaluated. Only through repeatedly engaging in such open-ended and ongoing struggles over definition and meaning will sociologists be able to discern and successfully "intervene into the existing organizations of active domination and subordination" within the formations of contemporary sporting culture (Grossberg, 1989, pp. 1 14-1 15).

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Notes

'By critical social research 1 am referring to studies that are motivated by a hostile disdain for the unequal status quo within contemporary society and are thus underpinned by a commitment to societal change.

Foucault's Genealogy 167

2Foucault's various works chart the changing social understanding of madness from the middle ages to the 19th century and illustrate the attendant alterations made in the provision of the insane; investigate the evolution of criminal and penal codes which resulted in the punishment of the scaffold being replaced by the structured discipline of the prison; and engage the notion of biopolitics by focusing upon the social regulation of bodily existence over recent centuries.

jAlthough Foucault's focus on the body is unusual it is by no means unique. Social commentators as diverse as Jean Baudrillard, Norbert Elias, and Pierre Bourdieu have all been concerned with the human body.

4Various aspects of Foucault's poststructuralism have been critiqued by, among others, Anderson (1987), Baudrillard (1987), Callinicos (1990), de Certeau (1984), Dews (1987), Gane (1986), and Habermas (1987).

5Michel Foucault died in Paris on June 25, 1984. 6Barthes was clearly indebted to de Saussure and L6vi-Strauss, as can be evidenced

from the focus and method of his seminal text Mythologies (1973). 'For example see Algirdas Greimas (1958) and Roland Barthes (1960). 'For a complete list of Foucault's work see J. Bemauer and T. Keenan (1987). %is paper will focus on Foucault's work up to and including The History of

Sexuality: Vol. I . An Introduction (197611978). However, it would be negligent to totally disregard the later volumes of this project, which were published after Foucault's death (see Foucault, 1984a, 1984c, 1984d, 1985, and 1986).

''As noted it is Foucault's later works, specifically Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality: Vol. I , which represent the culmination and maturity of his genealogi- cal endeavors.

"Modernism is defined by the authors as the "social program of liberal democratic politics and rational reforms of society and culture that emerged with the Enlightenment in the 18th century and to the particular ways of life and constellations of ideas, beliefs and social practices that accompanied these historical changes" (Harvey & Sparks, 1991, p. 189).

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Susan L. Greendorfer, John W. Loy, and Robert E. Rinehart for their expertise and patient guidance, and Lisa A. Jaracz for creating the perfect research environment. I would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers, as well as the journal editor, for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.