ABSTRACT
The ambivalence that many feminists have felt towards Foucault’s work is brought out strikingly in the following passage, written by Toril Moi in 1985.
What could be more seductive for feminists than a discourse which, like that of Michel Foucault in La Volonté de Savoir (The History of Sexuality), focuses on the complex interaction of power and sexuality?… Alluring as they may seem, however, the apparent parallels between Foucault’s work and feminism ought not to deceive us. Feminists ought to resist his seductive ploys since, as I shall argue in this essay, the price for giving in to his powerful discourse is nothing less than the depoliticisation of feminism. If we capitulate to Foucault’s analysis, we will find ourselves caught up in a sado-masochistic spiral of power and resistance which, circling endlessly in heterogeneous movement, creates a space in which it will be quite impossible to argue that women under patriarchy constitute an oppressed group, let alone develop a theory of their liberation.
