982

Institutions and Objections

:h can definitively resolve critique of political economl', which alone is radica the problem ofreligion by bringing out the true contmdictions. Tldq/ pe &re e tctll ul the same point with respect to Marx. For rrs, the critique of political econom.y is basicall.l completed, The materialist dialectic has exhausted its content in reproducing its form. At this level, the situation is no longer that ofa critique: it is inextricable. And lollorving thc same revolutionary movement as Marx did, we must move to a radically different level that, beyond its critique, permits the definitive resolution of political economy. This level is that ofsymbolic exchange and its theorl'. And just as Marx thought it necessary to clear the path to the critique ofpolitical economy with a critique ofthe philosophy oflau. the preliminarl to this radical change of terrain is the critique ofthe metaphysic ofthc signifier and the code, in all its current ideological extent. For lack ofa better term, \\'e call this the critique ofthe political economy ofthe sign.

I I

H- M".cus., 'On the Concept of Lxbor', Ielos, 16, Summer 1973 pp. ll-12. Engels, alwals a naturalist, goes so far as to exalt the role plaled by rvork in the transition from ape to
ke1 $hich turns Marlism toward Social Democrrcl, to its prcscnt relisionism, xnd to its total positi\ist decx)'(which inc|.rdcs bureaucratic Stalinism as $ell xs Social Democratic liberalism).

i But this autonomizatjon is the

10
In

Laura Mulvey (b. 1941) frorn'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinerna'

the 1970s the British journal Screen did much to introduce an English'speaking audience to French theories of culture and, in particular, to those theories of film which were rooted in
structuralism and semiology. Laura lvlulvey's influential study linked types of looking, and the pleasures to be derived lrom them, to gender differences in society. Not merely'differ' ences', one should add, nor yet merely 'society'. Rather, it was emphasized that these differences took the form of inequality and oppression within a capitalist, but more particularly, patriarchal, society. Mulvey linked the pleasures of film and, by extension, of much modern art, to an essentially repressive social structure. Her article set out, as she said, t0 destroy these pleasures. Initially delivered as a paper at the University of Wisconsin in Spring 1973, the essay was Tirst published in Screen,16, no. 3, London, Autumn 1975, pp. 6-18, from which the present extracts are taken. (Reprinted in Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, London. 1989.)

Introduction

,1. A Politi;dl Use of Ps.ythonnnlyrs

This paper intends to use psychoanall'sis to discover where and how the fascination of

film is reinforced by preexisting patterns of fascination already at nork within the individual subject and the social formations that have molded him. It takes as starting
point the way film reflects, reveals, and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference that controls images, erotic ways of looking, and spectacle. It is helpful to understand rvhat the cinema has been, how its magic has worked in the past, while attempting a theory and a practice that will challenge this cinema of the past. Psychoanalytic theory is thus appropriated here as a political

VllD

Critical Rev

sions 983

weapon, demonstrating the lvay the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured

film form. The paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea of woman stands as linchpin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies. Recent writing in Screen abort psychoanalysis and the cinema has not sufficiently brought out the importance of the representation of the female form in a s,vmbolic order in which, in the last resort, it speaks castration and nothing else. To summarize briefly: the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is twofold; she
hrst symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and second thereb-v raises her child into the symbolic. Once rhis has been achieved, her meaning in the process is at an end, it does not last into the world of law and language except as a memory that oscillates between memory of maternal plenitude and memory of lack.

Both are posited on nature (or on'anatomy'in Freud's famous phrase). Woman's desire is subjected to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound: she can exist onlv in relation to castration and cannot transcend it. She turns her child into the signifier of her own desire to possess a penis (the condition, she imagines, of entry into the symbolic). Either she must gracefully giye way to the \rord, the Name of the Father and the Lau', or else struggle to keep her child down u'ith her in the haltlight of the
imaginary. Woman, then, stands in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of rvoman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.

There is an obi'ious interest in this analrsis for feminists, a beautl in its exact
rendering ofthe frustration experienced under the phallocentric order. It gets us nearer to the roots ofour oppression, it brings an articulation of the problem closer, it faces us with the ultimate challenge: how to fight the unconscious structured like a language (forrned critically at the moment of arrival of language) rvhile still caught within the language ofthe patlialchy. There is no way in which we can produce an alternative out ofthe blue, but we can begin to make a break by examining partriarchy u,ith the tools it provides, of which ps]'choanalysis is not the only but an important one. We are still separated by a great gap from important issues for the female unconscious that are scarcely relevant to phallocentric theorJ': the sexing of the female infant and her lelationship to the symbolic, the sexually mature woman as nonmother, maternity outside the signification of the phallus, the vagina . . . But, at this point, psychoanalytic theory as it now stands can at least advance our understanding of the status quo, of the patriarchal order in rvhich u,e are caught.

B.

Destructinn ofPleasure as a Radical Weapon

As an advanced representation system, the cinema poses questions of the rvays the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking. Cinema has changed over the last few decades. It is no longer the monolithic system based on large capital investment exemplified at its best by Hollyrvood in the 1930s, l9{0s, and 1950s. Technological advances (16mm, etc.) have changed the economic conditions of cinematic Droduction. rvhich can now be artisanal as well as

984

lnstitutions and Objections

capitalist. Thus it has been possible for an altemative cinema to develop. However seltconscious and ironic Holll'wood managed to bc, it ahvays rcstricted itsclf to a fornr: mise-en-scdne reflecting the dominant ideological concept ofthe cinema. The altcrnrtivc cinema provides a space for a cinema to be born that is radical in both a political an. an aesthetic scnse and challengcs thc basic assumptions of the mainstream film. Thjs r. not to reject the latter moralisticalll, but to highlight the ways in which its form: preoccupations reflect the psychical obsessions of the societl' that produced it, anLi further, to stress that the alternative cinema must start specifically by reacting again. these obsessions and assumptions. A politically and aesthetically al ant-garde cinema r. nor possible. but it crn still onlr crist a\ a counlerpoinl. Thc magic ofthe Holll*ood style at its best (and ofall the cinema that fell u.ithin ir. sphcre of influence) arose, not exclusively but in one important aspect! from its skillc.: and satisff ing manipulation of visual pleasure. Unchallenged, mainstream film codc.: the erotic into the Ianguage ofthe dominant patiarchal order. In the highl,v developt,: Hollyu'ood cinema it was only through these codes that the alienated subject, torn rn his imaginary memor-v by a sense of loss, by the te[or ofpotentixl lack in fantasy, cnm( near to hnding a glimpse of satisfaction: through its formal beauty rnd its plav on hr. ou,n formative obsessions. This essay rvill discuss the inter\reaving of that erotr.

plcasure
woman.

in film, its meaning, and in particular the central place of the image r': It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intentior

of this essay. The satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego that represent the higl: point of film histor_v. hitherto must be attacked; not in favor of a reconstructed ner pleasure, r'hich cannot exist in the abstract, or of intellcctualized unpleasurc, but t, make u'ay for a total ncgation ofthe ease and plenitude ofthe nalrative fiction film. Th. alternative is the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without rejecting it. transcending outlorn or oppressive forms, or daring to brcak u,ith normal pleasurabl. expectations in order to conceive a nerv language of desire.

II

Pleasure in Looking

Fascination with the Human Form

A. The cinema offers a number ofpossible pleasures. One is scopophilia. There arc circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverst formation, there is pleasure in being looked at. Originalll-, in his Three Essqts ,t; Se"-uality, Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexualitr that exist as drives quite independentl-v of the erotogenic zones. At this point h,: associated scopophilia rvith taking other people as objects, subjecting them to l controlling and curious gaze. His particular examples center around the voy-euristic actiyities ofchildren, their desire to see and make sure ofthc private and thc forbidden (curiositl' about other people's genital and bodily functions, about the presence (n' abscncc of the penis and, retrospectivell', about the primal scene). In this analrsis scopophilia is essentially- active. (Later, in Irxrtincts and Their Vicissitudes, Frcucl developed his theorl' of scopophilia further, attaching it initialll' to pregenital autoeroticism, after rvhich the pleasure ofthe look is transferred to others by analogy. Ther e is a close working here of the relationship betlveen the active instinct and its furthcr development in a narcissistic form.) Although the instinct is modified bl'othcr factors. in particular the constitution of the ego, it continues to erist as the elotic basis fbr' plcasure in looking at anothcr person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixatecl

VllD

Critical Revisions 985

into a pervclsion, producing obsessite voleurs and Peeping Ton-rs, llhosc onh.sexual satisfaction can cotre frorn latching, in an active controlling- scnsc! :ln objectilied
other.

At fir'st glance, the cinema rvould sccm to bc lemote fi'om the undelcover

rvor'ld

of

the surrcptitious observation of an unknowing and unrvilling r.ictim. \\rhat is seen of the screen is so mirnifestll shorvn. But thc mass of mainstream film, and the conventions within rvhich it has consciousl-r elolr,ed, portral a helmeticallt sealed rvorld that unuinds magicalll-, indiffclent to the presence of the audicncc, producing for them a sense of sparation and plaling on thcil roycuristic fantasl. Moreovel, the extreme contrast between the darkncss in thc auditorium (rhich also isolates the spcctators liom onc :rnother) and the brilliance of the shifting patterns of light and shade on the screen helps to promote the illusion of rrrvcuristic separation. Although the film is reallt' being shotn, is thcrc to be seen, conditions of screening and nrrrctive conrentions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private rvorld. Among other things, the position ofthc spcctators in thc cinema is blatantll- one ofrepression ofthcir exhibitionism and projcction of the repressed desire onto the performer.

B. The cinema satisfies I primordial s,ish for pleasurable looking, but it rlso piocs further, dcvcloping scopophilia in its narcissistic xspect. The conrentions of mainstream film focus attcntion on the human form. Scalc, spacc, stories are all anthropomorphic. Ilere, curiositl- and thc s,ish to look intelmingle sith a fascination n'ith Iikeness and rccognition: thc human face, the human bodl', the relationshi) bcrween thc human form and its surroundines, the visible presencc of thc person in the rvorld. Jacques Lacan has described hou' the moment rrhcn a child recognizes its orr n image in the mirror is clucial for thc constitlrtion ofthe ego [see \iB8]. Several aspects ofthis analysis are relelant here.'l'he milror ph:rse occurs rt a timc t.hcn thc child's phlsical ambitions outstrip his motor capacitl , l ith thc rcsult that his recognition of himself is
jo1'ous in that hc imagincs his

crpcricnces his oln recognized is conceived as the reflected body of thc self, but its misrccognirion rs supeliol projects this bodr outside itsclf as an ideal ego, the ilienated subjecr, \\'hich, reintrojectcd as an ego ideal, gives rise to the iuture generation of idcntification nith othcrs. This mirror momcnt predates language for the child. lmportant for this essay is the fact that it is an image that constitures the matrix of the imr,rginary, of lccognition/misrecopinition and identification, and hencc of thc first articulation of the 'I' of subjectivitv. This is a moment *hcn an olclcr fascinrrtion lr ith looking (at thc mother's face, for an obvious cramplc) collides u,ith the initial inklings of self-arvareness. I-lence it is thc birth of the long lole afflir/despair benvecn imagc and self-image that has found such intensitl. of erpression in film and such jo1'ous rccognition in the cinema audience. Qrite apalt fiom thc crrrancous similarities betleen scleen and miror (the framing of thc human fbmr in its surroundings, fbr instance), the cinemir has structures of lascination stlong enough to allo$ temporxly loss of cgio u hilc simultaneouslv reinfbrcing the cgo. The sense of for gctting thc s,orld as the ego has subsequentll- come to percei\e it (I forgot lrho I am and uhere I las) is nostalgicallv reminiscent of that prcsubjcctivc moment of image rccognition. At thc same time the cincma has distinguished itself in the production of ego idcals as crprcsscd in particulal in the stal sl stcm, the st:us centering both screen presence

image to be more complete, more pcrfcct than he bodl'. Recognition is thus orerhid rvith misrccognition: the image

rrirlol

986

Institutions and Objections

and screen story as they act out a complex process of likeness and differencc ::. glamorous impersonates the ordinary).

III

Woman as Image) Man as Bearer of the Look

A. In a world ordered bv sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been:r. between actiye/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projecr\ fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional erhr-itionist role \vomen are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearrn.. coded for strong lisual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connorc l be-loabetl-at-ness. woman displayed as sexual object is the leitmotiv of erotic spectaciL from pinups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holcls the loli, plays to, and signifies male desire. Mainstream film neatly combined spectacle an.: narrative. (Note, however, how in the musical song-and-dance numbers break rh. flow of the diegesis.) The presence of woman is an indispensable elmenr of spectaclr in normal narrative filmr \.et her visual presence tends to work against the develop_ t story line, to freeze the flolr' of action in moments of erotic conremplation
:

l:l],

"

B. An active,/passive heterosexual division oflabor has similarly controlled narratir. structure. According to the principles of the ruling ideologl, and the psvchical struc_ tures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification Man is reluctant to gaze ar his exhibitionist like. Hence the split between spectacle an.: narratlve supports the man's role as the active one of forwarding the story, making things happen. The man controls the film fantasy and also emerges as the representr_ tive ofpower in a further sense: as the bearer ofthe look ofthe spectator, transferringl ir behind the scleen to neutralize the extradiegetic tendencies represented by woman a. spectacle. This is made possible through the processes set in motion by structuring thr film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identifv. As thc spectator identifies nith the main male protagonist, he projects his look onro that ofhi: like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls er-ents coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sensc ofomnipotence. A male movie star's glamorous characteristics are thus not those ofthe erotic object ofthe gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original momenr of recognition in front of the mirror. Thc character in the story can make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator, iust as the image in the mirror more in control of moto' '.as coordination. In contrast to woman as icon, the acdve male figure (the ego ideal of the identification process) demands a three-dimensional space corresponding to that of the mirror recognition in lvhich the alienated subject inter.nalized his,r*n representa_ tion ofthis imaginary existence. He is a figure in a landscape. Here the function of film rs to reproduce as accurately as possible the so-called natural conditions of human perception. Camera technology (as exemplified bv deep focus in particular) and camera movements (determined by the action of the protagonist), combined with invisible editing (demanded by realism), all tend to blur the limits of screen space. The male protagonist is free to command rhe stage, a stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the ac on.

VllD

Critical Revisions 987

C l. Sections III A and B have set out a tension between a mode ofrepresentation of woman in film and conventions surrounding the diegesis. Each is associated with a look: that of the spectator in direct scopophilic contact with the female form displayed for his enjol,ment (connoting male fantasy) and that ofthe spectator fascinated rvith the image ofhis like set in an illusion ofnatural space, and through him gaining control and possession ofthe woman within the diegesis. (This tension and the shift from one pole to the other can structure a single text. Thus both rn Only Angeh Hate Wings antl To Hoae and Haae Nar the film opens with the woman as object of the combined gaze of spectator and all the male protagonists in the film. She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualized. But as the narrative progresses, she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalized sexualitl', her showgirl connotations; her eroticism is subjected to the male star alone. By means of identification with him, through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too.) But in psychoanall'tic terms, the female figure poses a deeper problem. She also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavorvs: her lack of a penis, implying a threat ofcastation and hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the meaningi of woman is sexual difference, the absence ofthe penis is visually ascertainable, the material eyidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organization of entrance to the symbolic order and the Law of the Father. Thus the $'oman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment ofmen, the active controllers ofthe look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified. The male unconscious has two avenues ofescape from this castrntion amiety: preoccupation with the reenactment ofthe original traurna (investigating the woman, demystifying her m).stery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment, or saving ofthe guilty object (an avenue typihed by the concerns of theflm zoir); or else complete disavoral ofcastration by the substitution ofa fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous (hence overvaluation, the cult ofthe female star). This second avenue, fetishistic scopophilia, builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisf.ving in itself. The first avenue, voveurism, on the contrary, has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt (immediatell' associated with castration), asserting control, and subjecting the guilt-v person through punishment or forgiveness. This sadistic side hts in l,ell with narratire. Sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, lorcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, r'ictory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time rvith a beginning and an end. Fetishistic scopophilia, on the other hand, can exist outside linear time as the erotic instinct is focused on the look alone. These contradictions and ambiguities can be illustrated more simply by using works by Hitchcock and von Sternberg, both ofwhom take the look almost as the content or subject matter ofmanv oftheir films. Hitchcock is the more complex, as he uses both mechanisms. Von Sternberg's work on the other hand, provides many pure examples offetishistic scopophilia.

IV

Summary

The psychoanalytic background that

has been discussed in this essay is relevant to the pleasure and unpleasure offered by traditional narrative film. The scopophilic instinct

988

Institutions and Obiections

(pleasure in looking at anothcr pcrson as an elotic object) and, in contradistinction, ego Iibirlo (forming identification processcs) act as formations, mechanisms, rvhich this cinema has plalcd on. The image of lon.ran as (passive) raw material fol thc (active)

of men takcs thc algument a step iurther into thc structure of leplesentation, adding a further laler demandcd bl the ideologl ofthe patriarchal order as it is lorked out in its favorite cinematic lbrm illusionistic narrativc film. The argument retulns again to thc pslchoanall.tic background in that $oman as representation signifies castrirtion, inducing vovcuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to cil'cumvent her threat. None of these interacting la1'ers is intrinsic to hlm, but it is onlr in the film form that the!' can rcxch a perlect and beautiful contradiction, thanks to thc possibilitv in the cinema of shifting the emphasis of the look. It is the place of the look that defines cinema, the possibilit-r' of varf ing it and exposing it. This is what maLes cinema quitc
gaze

diffcrent in its voyeuristic potential from, say, stlipte:rse, theater) sho\'!s, etc. Going fhr' belond highlighting a rvomrn's to-be-lookcd-at-ncss, cinema builds the ray she is to be lookcd at into the spcctacle itself. Plafing on thc tcnsion betrveen film as controlling the dimension of time (editing, narati\e) and lllm as controllingi the dimension of space (changcs in distance, editing), cincmatic codes crelte a gazc, a world, and an object, theleby producing an illusion cut to the mcasure of desire. It is thesc cincmatic codes and their lelationship to formative ertelnal structut'cs thaL must be broken dosn bcforc mainstream hlm and the pleasurc it provides can be challcngcd. 'I'o begin rith (:rs an ending), the r o"r euristic-scopophilic look that is a crucial part o1' traditional filn.ric pleasurc can itself be broken dot'n. Thcre are thrce diffelent looks associated rvith cinema: that of thc camcra as it records the profilmic event, that of the audiencc as it $atches the final product, ancl that of the characters at cach othcr tithin the screen illusion. Thc conventions ofnarratiYe film dcnv the first trvo and subordinatc
them to the third, the conscious aim being ahra)-s to eliminatc intrusi!e camera presence and plc\cnt a clistancing awaleness in thc audicnce. With<tut these tuo abscnces (the matelial existence ofthc lccording process, the critical rcadin!iofthe spectator), fictional drama cannot achieve realitl', obviousness, and tluth. Nelerthclcss, as this essar has argued, the structurc of looking in narrative fiction film contains a contradiction in its orr,n premises: the female imagc as a castration threaf constantly endangers the unitl-of thc tliegesis and bursts through thc rrrrld of illusion as an intrusi\c, stiltic! ontdimensional fetish. Thus the trvo looks, materialll present in time ancl space are obsessirel-v subordinatcd to the nel. erotic needs of thc male ego. The camera becomcs thc mcchanism for ploducing an illusion of Renaissance space, florring mulements compatible with thc human eve, :rn ideologv of rcplcscntation that relolves around the pclccption ofthe subjcct; the camcra's look is disavoned in order to crexle a conrincing rrorld in u'hich thc spectator's surrogate can pcrform rvith verisimilitude. Simultaneousll, the look of thc audicnce is denicd an intrinsic ftrrcc: as soon as fetishistic rcpresenlation ofthe female imagc thr eatens to break the spcll ofillusion, and the erotic image on thc sclccn rppeius directll (r'ithout mcdialion) to the spectator, thc fact of fetishization, concealing as it docs castration-fcar, fi'eezcs thc ltxrk, firates the spectator, ancl prcvcnts him fron.r :rchicr-ingJ anl' distancc from the image in front of him. This complex interaction of looks is spccific to film. Thc first bloq against the monolithic accumulation of traditional film contentions (alreadl undcrtaken b1' radical filmmakcrs) is to free the look ofthe cameru into its materialitl in time ancl spacc and the look of the audiencc into dialectics. passionate detachmcnt. There is no doubt that this

VllD

Critical Revisions 989

destroys the satisfaction, pleasure, and privilege of the 'invisible guest,' and highlights horv film has dcpcndcd on voyeuristic active/passive mcchanisms. Women, whose image has continually been stolen and used for this end, cannot view the decline of thc tladitional film lbrm rvith irnl'thing much more than sentimental regret.

11

Michel Foucault (1926

1984)

A Lecture

This lecture does not specifically address problems oJ art and culture, but the argument represented has been central to thought about culture and the practice of art in the present
period. F0ucault proposes a radical departure from the governing norms of traditi0nal avant-

garde practice, playing on the passages between certain forms of cultural and political 'vanguardism'which are connected if far from isomorphic. The lecture is informed by his
own work on controi and punishment, and by his findings regarding the forms of'knowledge'

which are typically controlled and punished. He draws attention to a widespread modern refusal to accept global criteria 0f rationality, and hence of emancipation and freedom, as these criteria had become enshrined both in the official Communist movement ard in Western liberalism. Contrary to the methods of both liberal and Marxist analysis, he proposes a'non-economic analysis o{ power'. To this end he makes a tactical connection, under the term 'genealogy', betlveen 'erudite knowledge' and a disregarded, more or less plebeian cluster of rules o{ thumb for negotiatrng a hostile world. This new constellation of
knowledges is opposed, foundationally, to the assumptions o{ an avant-garde. The upshot is a heightened {ocus on the variant mechanisms of power: on the questions o1who exercises it, how, to what ends, and by what strategies it may be interrupted. The consequence of Foucault's work has been to affirm critical activity in the predominantly institutional nexuses

of 'power-knowledge' over ihe attractions of the 'universal inteliectual'. The ideas

here

articulated have come to constitute an agenda for radical cultural practice on the part of a generation as motivated by social concerns as it has been wary of global solutions to them. Delivered on 7 January 1976 in Paris, and transcribed and translated by Alessandro Fontana and Pasquale Pasquino in Colin Gordon led.), Michel Foucault. Power/Knowledge, London, 1980. The present version is taken from pp. 78-89 oi that edition. (For an earlier iext by Foucault see VllD2.)

f. . .1 It seems to me that the u'ork rve have done could be justified b1'the claim that it is adcquate to a restricted period, that of the last ten, fifteen, at most twent)' years, a period notable for two eyents which for all they rnay not be really important are nonetheless to my mind quite interesting. On the one hand, it has been a period characterized by what one might term the efhcacy of dispersed and discontinuous offensives. There are a numbel ofthings I have in mind here. I am thinking, for example, where it r.as a case of undermining thc function of psychiatric institutions, of that curious efficac,'- oflocalised anti-psychiatric discourses. These are discourses l'hich you are well alvare lacked and still lack any systematic principles of coordination of the kind that would have provided or might today provide a system of reference for them. I am thinking of the original reference

towards existential anallsis or of certain directions inspired in a general way by Nlarxism, such as Reichian theory. Again, I have in mind that strange efficacy of the attacks that have been directed against traditional morality and hierarchy, attacks which
again have no reference except perhaps in a vague and fairly distant way to Reich and Marcuse. On the other hand there is also the efficacy of the attacks upon the legal and