Resistance beyond Foucault: from Counter Conduct to Resisting Collectively

The nature of political power has changed. The state is no longer the only, or even the main player in the complex mechanisms of power structures in the beginning of the 21 century. Foucault's oeuvre has a crucial role in analyzing these changes and emphasizing the productive element of power. However, the analysis of resistance has remained locked within the framework of strike and protest, both essentially practices of resistance to state power. What would be a resistance to a productive power, and what will be the relation between the two? In my PhD project I will argue that prior to his death, Foucault was in the process of developing a notion of resistance that can be as productive as power. A productive resistance, just as power, should be able to produce new knowledge, new practices and new subjectivities to compete with the dominant power mechanisms and challenge them. However, Foucault's unexpected death left this notion incomplete. I will thus propose a critical assessment of Foucault's unfinished work and show that Foucault's resistance, as it is expressed in the notion of counter-conduct, is both extremely individual and highly demanding hampering its relevance both as an analytical tool and as a normative possibility. I will then work out a conception of collective resistance, for although Foucault's notion of resistance is important to show what a 'resisting subjectivity' is, in order to alleviate its demands one must resist in and through a community.