ABSTRACT
Foucault’s analysis of the limits of humanism suggests that they are unbearably heavy. In contrast, there are moments at which Foucault responds to the overwhelming limitations of humanism with unconstrained abandon. At others, he suggests that there are privileged sites of transgressive thought and action that guarantee possibilities of resistance in all regimes. The richness of Foucault’s work lies in the tension between these two poles of heaviness and lightness. Thus, although Foucault adopts contradictory positions, my intention is not to establish which are most appropriate to the essence of his work, but to illustrate how his thought is constituted in the space between the two poles. This chapter will examine how, in spite of the temptation to lightness, Foucault’s unstable positions on issues of power, resistance, subjectivity, truth, knowledge, thought and aesthetics of existence oscillate between lightness and heaviness. I also argue that Foucault’s transgressive middle course in relation to power and resistance implies regulative principles for the assessment of regimes, alluding to an ethic of permanent resistance.
