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ARTICLE TITLE: Foucault and the Black Panthers

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City
analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action

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Foucault and the Black Panthers

Brady Thomas Heiner

To cite this article: Brady Thomas Heiner (2007) Foucault and the Black Panthers , City, 11:3,
313-356, DOI: 10.1080/13604810701668969
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CITY, VOL. 11, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2007

Foucault and the Black

Panthers1

Brady Thomas Heiner

Taylor and Francis

This paper unearths the relation between French philosopher Michel Foucault and the US
Black Panther Party (BPP). I argue that Foucault’s shift from archaeological inquiry to
genealogical critique is fundamentally motivated by his encounter with American-style
racism and class struggle, and by his engagement with the political philosophies and docu-
mented struggles of the BPP. The paper proceeds in four steps. First, I assess Foucault’s biog-
raphies and interviews from the transitional period of 1970–72 that indicate the fact and
nature of this formative encounter. Second, I turn to some of the writings of BPP leaders and
to the theme of politics and war as they articulated it. Third, I address this same theme of
politics as war as it gets taken up and rearticulated by Foucault between 1971 and 1976, with
an eye to the degree to which the philosophies and struggles of the Black Panthers silently,
yet profoundly, inform Foucault’s genealogical work. I conclude by raising some ethical and
political questions pertaining to the criteria of truthful speech in scholarly discourse.

‘[P]olitics is war without bloodshed while engaged in an excavation of the epistemo-

war is politics with bloodshed.’ logical foundations of the modern subject
—Mao Tse-Tung, 19382 of knowledge, moves toward Foucault the
political theorist of power relations and
‘Politics is war without bloodshed. War is
techniques of domination. In the course of
politics with bloodshed.’
this movement, concepts like ‘episteme’,
—Huey P. Newton, 19693
‘enunciation’ and ‘discursive formation’
‘Politics and war are inseparable in a fascist are displaced in favor of ‘discipline’, ‘tech-
state.’ nology’, ‘strategy’ and ‘biopower’.6
—George Jackson, 19714 This realignment has been treated exten-
sively by Foucault scholars in the fields of
‘[P]olitics is the continuation of war by other philosophy, political theory, cultural and
means.’ literary theory, and intellectual history.7
—Michel Foucault, 19765 However, in none of these studies is the
particular research constellation ‘Foucault

I
n the early 1970s, Foucault’s method and the Black Panthers’ broached or
and domain of critique undergo a explored, nor is the connection between
significant shift. The archaeological Foucault and the Black Panther Party
works, such as The Order of Things (1966) (BPP) even mentioned.8 Many of the schol-
and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), arly works on Foucault, whether philo-
give way to the more politicized genealo- sophical or historical, end up occasioning
gies of Discipline and Punish (1975) and the effects that resemble those of what
first volume of The History of Sexuality Foucault himself (by way of Nietzsche)
(1976). Foucault the intellectual historian, called ‘monumental history’. They serve to

ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/07/030313-44 © 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13604810701668969
314 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

memorialize Foucault as an intellectual inquiry to genealogical critique is motivated

‘monument’. more fundamentally by his encounter with
Nietzsche put forward a scathing criti- American-style racism and class struggle, and
cism of this form of monumental history by his engagement with the political philoso-
in his Untimely Meditations of 1874; phies and documented struggles of the Black
Foucault—largely inspired, I argue, by the Panther Party. The standard story given by
Black Panthers—rearticulated this criti- ‘monumentalist’ accounts is that Foucault
cism in 1971: ‘Nietzsche accused this arrived at the genealogical method through
history, one totally devoted to veneration, his reading of Nietzsche, which he is
of barring access to the actual intensities purported to have discovered through his
and creations of life.’9 On the present reading of Heidegger. Such a story is at worst
occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the distorted, at best one-sided. If Nietzsche
Black Panther Party, I too would like to features prominently in Foucault’s genealog-
undertake some, perhaps, untimely medi- ical turn, it is, I argue, because the philoso-
tations. I argue that Foucault’s genealogi- phies and struggles of the Black Panthers led
cal work of the 1970s, as well as the Foucault both to Nietzsche and to genealogy
majority of the existing scholarship on as a method of historico-political critique.
Foucault’s middle period (i.e. 1970–76)— The urban insurrection of US black
insofar as it is effectively devoted to the liberationists and black liberationist knowl-
veneration of Foucault as an intellectual edges during the 1960s and early 1970s
or genealogy as a philosophico-historical preceded and predelineated Foucault’s genea-
project—bar access to the actual historico- logical project of ‘desubjugating historical
political intensities and creations that in fact knowledges’.
motivated the genealogical project. Revealingly, though Foucault credits
The few published documents that make Nietzsche and Heidegger for their contribu-
passing reference to the connection tions to his approach to genealogy and
between Foucault and the Black Panthers power, he failed to ever publicly acknowl-
indiscriminately refer to ‘the writings of the edge the influence that the BPP had on his
Black Panthers’ as just one set among a thought. This influence can be recovered,
series of documents that passed before however, and its foundational character
Foucault’s eyes during the course of a life- appreciated through a comparative analysis
long reading practice. The relation between of Foucault’s published reflections during
the Black Panther Party’s political philoso- the period between 1970 and 1976 and the
phies and struggles and Foucault’s own literature of the Black Panther Party
genealogical project has never been pursued published between 1966 and 1972.
as a topic of substantive philosophical and In the course of his shift from archaeologi-
politico-historical significance. cal analysis to genealogical critique—the
This paper will attempt to trace the geneal- same period in which Foucault came into
ogy of that relation; in it I will suggest that contact with the writings of members of the
the lack of engagement with this theme in the Black Panther Party—Foucault formulated
scholarly literature itself bespeaks a silence the notion of the ‘will to truth’. The will to
and erasure of a methodological and disci- truth is a historical, modifiable, institution-
plinary, but also an explicitly political sort— ally constraining system of exclusion that
a sort of silence and erasure that pervades regulates what sorts of statements can appear
scholarly knowledge production, including, as truth-bearing events—what can and
as we shall see, that of Foucault himself. cannot be intelligibly said in any given social
Much more so than his return to the texts formation. This regulative principle,
of Nietzsche, Marx or Clausewitz, I argue Foucault argues, silently governs the accept-
that Foucault’s shift from archaeological able forms according to which knowledge is
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 315

produced, disclosed and circulated, and it and 1976. Looking at Foucault’s 1976
functions in such a way as to mask its ‘prodi- Lectures and a 1971 pamphlet that he co-
gious machinery’ and ‘vocation of exclusion’, wrote on the assassination of Black Panther
leaving subjects thematically unaware of its Party Field Marshall George Jackson,
operation. ‘This will to truth,’ Foucault L’Assassinat de George Jackson,12 and
writes, comparing them with Jackson’s and Angela
Y. Davis’s concurrent critical analyses of
‘like other systems of exclusion, rests on an American fascism and imprisonment prac-
institutional support: it is both reinforced and tice, I will investigate the degree to which the
renewed by a whole strata of practices, such philosophies and struggles of the Black
as pedagogy, of course; and the system of
Panthers silently, yet profoundly, inform
books, publishing, libraries; learned societies
Foucault’s genealogical work.
in the past and laboratories now. But it is also
renewed, no doubt, more profoundly, by the In conclusion, in Section IV, I will raise
way in which knowledge is put to work, some ethical and political questions pertain-
valorized, distributed, and in a sense ing to the criteria of truthful speech in schol-
attributed, in a society.’10 arly discourse. For instance: What kinds of
knowledge are excluded from or marginal-
What does the silence regarding the link ized within the domain of truth-bearing
between Foucault and the Black Panthers tell discourses, and how, if at all, do such
us about the will to truth that imperceptibly discourses relate to those marginal knowl-
regulates the contemporary production, edges? What sorts of delimitations, erasures,
disclosure and circulation of truth-bearing silences—what epistemic and social injus-
knowledge? tices—are necessary in order to consolidate
This paper attempts to break this silence and maintain the signifying coherence of
and, within the space of critical reflection truth-bearing discourse and the integrity and
opened up by such an undertaking, to proffer legitimacy of American governmental
an immanent critique of scholarly discourse authority? Given the formative role that
as such, and the disciplinary formations that black power plays in Foucault’s elaboration
govern it. I will proceed in the following way. of the concepts of power-knowledge, geneal-
In Section I, I will assess a series of ogy and biopower, why is it that the enuncia-
Foucault’s written and spoken statements tive force of black power is met with social,
from the transitional period of 1970–72, as civil and biological death while that of
well as historical and biographical texts deal- power-knowledge is subject to canonization
ing with that period, which indicate the fact in a host of academic disciplines? Why is
and nature of Foucault’s formative encounter Foucault’s brand of genealogical discourse
with the philosophies and documented strug- incorporated by the ‘will to truth’ of contem-
gles of the Black Panther Party. porary knowledge regimes, while the insur-
Then, in Section II, I will turn to some of gent knowledges of black power movements
the writings of Black Panther Party lead- remain largely unassimilable to these regimes
ers—Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge of knowledge?
Cleaver, George Jackson and Angela Y.
Davis11—stemming from the period of
1966–72. My analysis here will focus on the I. 1970–72: Foucault’s encounter with the
theme of politics and war (or politics as philosophies and documented struggles of
war) as it was articulated in the philosophies the Black Panther Party
and struggles of the Black Panthers.
In Section III, I will address this same ‘These are intolerable: courts, cops, hospitals,
theme of politics as war as it gets taken up asylums, school, military service, the press,
and rearticulated by Foucault between 1971 television, the State.’13
316 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

The preceding words appear on the back American class dynamics played upon his
cover of a 48-page pamphlet published in thought in an interview conducted during
Paris in May/June 1971;14 the pamphlet, this inaugural trip in the fall of 1970.
entitled Intolérable, was the first of a series
that would be created by a prison activist ‘[T]he more I travel, the more I remove
organization called the Groupe d’Informa- myself from my natural and habitual centers
tion sur les Prisons (GIP), an organization of gravity, the greater my chance of grasping
that Foucault founded in February 1971. The the foundations I am obviously standing on.
orientation and point of intervention of this […] A simple example: in New York I was
discursive act—largely contrived by struck, as any foreigner would be, by the
Foucault—marks a radical departure from immediate contrast between the “good
sections” [of town] and the poverty, even the
those of The Order of Things, the book for
misery, that surround them on the right and
which he rapidly acquired celebrity in 1966, left, North and South. I well know that one
and even from the text that he had published finds that same contrast in Europe, and that
only 2 years prior, The Archaeology of you too, when in Europe, are certainly
Knowledge (1969).15 In 1966, Foucault was shocked by the great misery in the poor
publishing an erudite book on the history of sections of Paris, Hamburg or London, it
the human sciences—aimed primarily at an doesn’t matter where. Having lived in Europe
academic audience—in which he called for for years, I had lost a sense of this contrast
the abolition of humanism. On May Day of and had ended up believing that there had
1971, he was arrested outside La Santé Prison been a general rise in the standard of living of
in Paris, alongside 13 other members of the the whole population; I wasn’t far from
imagining that the proletariat was becoming
GIP, for distributing a pamphlet that called
middle class, that there were really no more
for the abolition of the casier judiciaire (a poor people, that the social struggle, the
system of keeping criminal records, which struggle between classes, consequently, was
makes such records available upon request to coming to an end. Well, seeing New York,
employers or potential employers, aiding perceiving again suddenly this vivid contrast
recidivism by confining the formerly incar- that exists everywhere but which was blotted
cerated to unemployment or underpaid out of my eyes by familiar forms of it, that
employment).16 was for me a kind of second revelation; the
How does one account for such a rapid class struggle still exists, it exists more
and radical reformulation? In an interview intensely.’18
published in July 1971, Foucault accounts for
it by saying the following: In a certain respect, this passage resembles
Foucault’s preface to The Order of Things, in
‘In the past, I have focused on subjects that which he reflects upon the kind of limit-
are somewhat abstract and far-removed from experience or epoché elicited by reading a
us, like the history of the sciences. Now I
certain passage in Borges. The passage, a
would like to really move away from that.
Particular circumstances and events have
taxonomy of animals quoted from a fictional
displaced my interest onto the prison encyclopedia, ‘shattered […] all the familiar
problem.’17 landmarks of my thought—our thought, the
thought that bears the stamp of our age and
It is precisely these circumstances and events our geography’. Such an experience, he goes
that are of interest to us. on, provides access to ‘the exotic charm of
One event in particular had a pronounced another system of thought’, which in turn
effect on Foucault’s reorientation: his first reveals ‘the limitations of our own
exposure to the USA and, more specifically, [system]’.19
to American-style racism. Foucault indicated Whereas the exotic charm of Foucault’s
the transformative role that his perception of literary limit-experience prompted him to
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 317

undertake an archaeological excavation of the anti-authoritarian struggles that students and

epistemological foundations of the human employees of the French university system
sciences. The characteristic system of social waged against the State in the wake of the
taxonomy that Foucault witnessed in the spring of 1968.22 Eribon goes so far as to
streets of New York prompted a very differ- remark that it was Foucault’s two turbulent
ent type of engagement. On 8 February 1971, years (1968–70) at the University of Vincennes
less than 3 months after the above-cited that constituted his ‘entrance into politics’,
interview, Foucault appeared at a press during which ‘a whole new Foucault was born
conference in the Chapelle Saint-Bernard, […] the Foucault of demonstrations and mani-
where he exclaimed: festations; the Foucault of “struggles” and
“critique”’.23 But Eribon also points out that
‘None of us can be sure of avoiding prison. this initial period of political engagement,
Less so than ever, today. Police control over
our day-to-day lives is becoming tighter: in ‘did not for the moment make a deep
the streets and on the roads; over foreigners impression on the strictly intellectual register.
and young people; it is once more an offense At Vincennes Foucault gave a course on
to express an opinion; anti-drug measures are Nietzsche, and the ideas expressed in his
leading to increasingly arbitrary arrests. We inaugural lecture at the Collège de France in
are living under the sign of la garde à vue.20 December 1970 were closer to the
They tell us that the courts are swamped. We preoccupations of The Archeology of
can see that. But what if it were the police Knowledge than to his later ideas on power.
who had swamped them? They tell us that His articles and lectures from this period still
the prisons are overpopulated. But what if it bear surprising marks of his earlier
were the population that were being over- theoretical preoccupations and style.’24
imprisoned?
Regardless what one takes to be a ‘strictly
Little information is published about prisons; intellectual register’, the fact remains that the
this is one of the hidden regions of our social
wave of political struggles that took place in
system, one of the black spaces (cases noires)
France between 1968 and 1970, in which
of our lives. We have the right to know, we
want to know. This is why, together with a Foucault was an active participant, failed to
number of magistrates, lawyers, journalists, elicit a radical reorientation in his written
doctors and psychologists, we have formed a intellectual production. It was only after he
Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons.’21 had witnessed evidence of the racially fash-
ioned class warfare transpiring in the USA
Having gone about his academic career until during that time, and had begun to inform
this period without a sense of class himself about the radical anti-racist struggles
contrast—indeed, ‘not far from imagining being undertaken in the context of that war,
[…] that the social struggle, the struggle that Foucault began to theorize power rela-
between classes, […] was coming to an tions in any kind of explicit way. It wasn’t
end’—Foucault asserts in the first months of until he had read the writings of the Black
1971, on the heels of the ‘second revelation’ Panthers that Foucault began to formulate
he had received upon perceiving American- the genealogical method of critique.
style racial and class segregation, that the After establishing the GIP in February
prison is a hidden region of class struggle at 1971, Foucault began to meet frequently with
the heart of the social system. Jean Genet, one of the most famous literary
One might question Foucault’s earnestness figures in France, who was also a homosexual
in characterizing himself as having been so and radical political activist. Having been a
politically naive. For instance, his biographers ward of the State as a youth, been in and out
and others have documented the public of prisons throughout his early life, and
role that Foucault had already played in the frequently experienced persecution for his
318 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

homosexuality, Genet had a radical critical

perspective on the very disciplinary institu-
tions that would come to occupy Foucault in
the coming years. Genet, who quickly
became a participant in GIP actions,
profoundly influenced Foucault’s own polit-
ical transition during this period. Perhaps the
most far-reaching dimension of this influence
stems from the fact that Genet brought to
Foucault’s attention the philosophies and
struggles of the US Black Panther Party. As
Genet’s biographer Edmund White claims,
Foucault and Genet were mutually attracted
for political reasons, they came together out
of a shared concern for the imprisoned
members of the Black Panther Party.25
In the spring of 1970, at the invitation of the
Black Panthers, Genet had spent 3 months in
the USA. During his time there, he met with
the Panthers and gave lectures and speeches in
support of the campaign to free BPP leaders
and political prisoners Huey P. Newton and
Bobby Seale (Figure 1).26 Genet was also a
supporter of then political prisoners Angela
Y. Davis (imprisoned from 1970 to 1972) and Figure 1 BPP leader and political prisoner Huey P.
George Jackson (imprisoned from 1960 to Newton, 1968. Photo by Jeffrey Blankfort.
1971). He had written the preface to Jackson’s
published prison letters entitled Soledad supplied him with further evidence—
Brother (1970)—the French edition of which evidence that no doubt underlined the role
was, in 1971, beginning to receive a great deal that race played in American class struggle.
of attention among the French left27—and Racism in America, Genet writes in his
between July 1970 and December 1971 he preface to Soledad Brother,
made at least 20 statements about Davis,
Jackson and the BPP in print, on the radio or ‘constitutes the basis of relations between
during demonstrations.28 white men [sic] and black […]. This racism is
According to Edmund White, Foucault scattered, diffused throughout the whole of
America, grim, underhanded, hypocritical,
and Genet first met at a demonstration in the
arrogant. There is one place where we might
summer of 1970, just after Genet’s visit with
think it would cease, but on the contrary, it is
the Panthers. Though I am unaware of any in this place that it reaches its cruelest pitch,
existing documentation of the encounter, it intensifying every second, preying upon
would not be unreasonable to assume that body and soul; it is in this place that racism
some mention of Genet’s recent trip was becomes a kind of concentration of racism: in
made, given that Foucault himself was sched- the American prisons […].’29
uled to visit the USA for the first time just a
few months later. Perhaps that encounter Genet assuredly put Davis’s and Jackson’s
with Genet oriented Foucault’s attention in prison writings in Foucault’s hands at this
his initial exposure to the USA. In any case, if time. A US political prisoner at the time,
Foucault required confirmation of his initial Angela Y. Davis was a prominent figure in
perception of American class struggle, Genet the black liberation movement. She studied
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 319

political philosophy with Marxist scholars ‘surplus’ labor detention center for American
Theodore Adorno and Herbert Marcuse capital; that American prisons overwhelm-
during the 1960s, was a member of the US ingly confine, at once, the radical political
Communist Party (in which she served as activists and the unemployed and disenfran-
Vice Presidential candidate in 1980 and 1984) chised people that live within US racialized
and organized with the Black Panther Party. communities.32
She also was an active member of the Soledad By exposing the racializing and colonizing
Brothers Defense Committee—an organiza- functions of the prison system, Davis and
tion working to free Soledad political prison- Jackson not only linked the genealogy of the
ers Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette and prison to the regime of chattel slavery,33 they
George Jackson.30 placed the issue of prison abolition at the
George Jackson was sentenced to ‘one year heart of the anti-racist and decolonization
to life’ at age 18 for his role in a convenience struggles of their time. While Davis’s past
store robbery. Politicized while imprisoned, and continued contributions to the move-
Jackson studied history, politics and political ments for prison abolition and black libera-
economy, reading such figures as Fanon, tion are more generally known, Jackson’s
Malcolm X, Marx, Mao and Guevara. contributions have been subject, along with
Renowned by his peers for his discipline and his life, to more concerted annihilation by the
strength, intellect and commitment, Jackson State. Writing from behind bars in 1971,
eventually became a Field Marshall of the Davis indicates the centrality of Jackson’s
Black Panther Party. He was as an incisive contributions to the third world liberation
spokesperson, strategist and activist in the struggles of the period.
American anti-racist struggles of the period,
and served as the principal BPP organizer ‘Soledad Brother […] perhaps more than any
and educator within the American prison other [volume], has given impetus and shaped
system. As we will discuss in further detail, the direction of the growing support
he was also assassinated by the State on movement outside the prisons. George, from
account of that service. behind the seemingly impenetrable walls, has
Davis and Jackson were among the first— placed the issue of the prison struggle
squarely on the agenda of the people’s
and, without a doubt, among the most inci-
movement for revolutionary change. […]
sive—to critically appraise the strategic role
Through George’s life and the lives of
that the prison system played in the govern- thousands of other brothers and sisters, the
ment of America’s colonized population. In absolute necessity for extending the struggle
the letters, notebooks and articles that they of Black and third world people into the
each wrote while imprisoned31—which were prison system itself becomes unmistakably
published (many in The Black Panther clear.’34
newspaper in 1970 and 1971) and circulated
internationally—Davis and Jackson exposed Largely inspired by Davis’s and Jackson’s
the relationship between the rising number analyses of and mobilization against
of political prisoners in the USA and the the prison system, and by the BPP’s role in
imprisonment of rapidly increasing numbers the American decolonization movement, the
of poor people of color. They created a Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons
vocabulary for understanding the reciprocal engaged in a series of political interventions
social process by which radical political between 1971 and 1972. To conclude the
activism was criminalized and crime present section of analysis, I would like to
politicized. They brought to light the fact simply point out some of the remaining facts
that, since its inception, the prison system of Foucault’s encounter with the works of
has served the dual, racially motivated func- the Black Panther Party, and indicate the way
tion of political weapon of the State and in which this encounter guides Foucault
320 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

toward the concerns that would preoccupy who were charged with murdering a prison
him during the first half of the 1970s. guard in retaliation for the murder of three
During the short period of their activity, black activists by a guard in California’s
the GIP published four pamphlets under the Soledad prison, became known as the
series title Intolérable.35 The first two were ‘Soledad Brothers’ and a campaign for their
issued by the anarchist press Champs Libre in liberation was organized that attained
June 1971, and included the results of a series international scope. The GIP wanted to
of investigations of the Parisian prison system contribute to this campaign and increase the
that the GIP had conducted in the spring of visibility of American political prisoners, and
1971.36 These pamphlets reproduced a few the American prison struggle more generally,
GIP-generated questionnaires that had been in France.
completed in-full by prisoners, first-hand After Jackson was assassinated in August
accounts of prison life written by prisoners 1971, the GIP decided to issue the third
and a selection of the ‘most characteristic’ pamphlet devoted to his life and assassina-
responses provided by prisoners to the ques- tion. As its back cover announced, this
tionnaires. The last two issues were published document sought to inform its audience that,
by Gallimard in November 1971 and Decem- ‘[i]n America, assassination was and today
ber 1972, respectively. The last issue, entitled remains a mode of political action’. Foucault
Suicides de prison,37 and published jointly et al. also argue, as the concluding line of the
with the Comité d’Action des Prisonniers and pamphlet reads, that ‘[t]he prison struggle
the Association pour la Défense des Droits has become a new front of the revolution’.
des Détenus, publicized and analyzed the 32 Before turning to the writings of the
suicides that occurred in French prisons in Panthers themselves and then to Foucault’s
1972. The pamphlet included a series of ‘case- appropriation of them, allow me to repro-
histories’ and prison letters of the prisoners duce part of the three-page introduction to
who had committed suicide, of which a the GIP’s first pamphlet, which published
quarter were immigrants and the majority the results of their investigations of the
were in their 20s. Parisian prison system. This introduction,
The third issue was devoted to the life and unsigned but written by Foucault, was
assassination of US political prisoner and composed at precisely the time when the
Black Panther Party Field Marshall George GIP made contact with the Black Panthers,
Jackson.38 The contents of this pamphlet will and in it one can clearly see the rudiments
feature prominently in my discussion in of the genealogical method coming into
Section III, devoted to the subject of the being.
Panthers’ influence on Foucault’s genealogi-
cal work. Here it must be mentioned that ‘1. These investigations are not designed to
the BPP’s influence on the GIP was such improve or soften an oppressive power, or
that the GIP decided to make contact with make it tolerable. They are designed to attack
the Panthers. In June of 1971, GIP activist it at those points where it is exercised under a
Catherine von Bülow went to California and different name—that of justice, technology,
met with Angela Y. Davis and George knowledge or objectivity. Each investigation
Jackson, each of whom was imprisoned at must therefore be a political act.
the time.39 She brought many documents
2. They are aimed at specific targets, at
back from her meetings, which she, Foucault
institutions which have names and places,
and Genet studied in depth.40 people in charge and governors—and which
Genet was eager to put together a book in claim victims and inspire revolts, even among
support of George Jackson, who was going those in charge of them. Each investigation
on trial in August alongside Fleeta Drumgo must therefore be the first episode in a
and John Clutchette. The three prisoners, struggle.
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 321

3. They bring together, around these specific regarding prisons. Prisons convinced me that
targets, different social strata which the ruling power should not be considered in terms of
class has kept apart thanks to the interplay of law but in terms of technology, in terms of
social hierarchies and divergent economic tactics and strategy, and it was this
interests. They must bring down barriers substitution of a technical and strategical
which are indispensable to power by uniting grid for a legal and negative grid that I tried
prisoners, lawyers and magistrates, or even to set up in Discipline and Punish, and then
doctors, patients and hospital personnel. use in History of Sexuality.’42
Each investigation must constitute a front—
an offensive front—at each important It is certainly true that Foucault’s concrete
strategic point. experience with the GIP (to which he here
refers) occasioned the theoretical and political
4. These investigations are not being made by reorientation he underwent during those
a group of technicians working from the years. There is also no doubt that this
outside; the investigators are those who are concrete experience motivated his later recon-
being investigated. It is up to them to take the
ceptualization of power relations. However,
word, to bring down the barriers, to express
what is intolerable, and to tolerate it no
the preceding account neglects to point out a
longer. It is up to them to take responsibility salient feature of the story: it was initially, if
for the struggle which will prevent oppression not primarily, the Black Panthers’ analyses of
from being exercised.’41 and mobilization against American racism
and, in particular, Angela Y. Davis’s and
It should be recalled that the above passage George Jackson’s analyses of the prison
was composed less than 1 year after Foucault system as a strategic mechanism in the consol-
had admitted to being ‘not far from imagin- idation of American governmental authority,
ing […] that the social struggle, the struggle that both directed Foucault’s regard toward
between classes, […] was coming to an end’. the institution of the prison and led Foucault
Just over 2 years prior to the writing of this to conceptualize power through the grid of
document Foucault was concerned with ‘the tactics and strategy, that is, through the
formation of enunciative modalities’, the analytic of war.
‘historical a priori’ and the history of ideas.
And yet, already in the summer of 1971,
Foucault has begun to consider the knowl- II. 1966–72: politics and war in the
edge-producing activity of investigation or philosophies and struggles of the Black
inquiry (enquête) as a political act, as an Panther Party
episode or front in a struggle.
In a 1976 interview, Foucault commented What follows does not aspire to be either an
on the shift that his work had undergone in exhaustive historical treatment of the forma-
the years since the publication of The Order tion and struggles of the Black Panther Party,
of Things (1966). or a comprehensive account of its foundational
philosophies and aims. Tasks such as these
‘I wrote [The Order of Things] at a moment warrant, and have received, volumes unto
of transition. Until then, it seems to me that
themselves.43 From an orthodox historio-
I accepted the traditional conception of
power, power as an essentially legal
graphical perspective, the analysis undertaken
mechanism, what the law says, that which in this section must restrict itself in two related
forbids, that which says no, with a whole dimensions: one empirical, one thematic. Inso-
string of negative effects: exclusion, far as it seeks to trace the as yet undisclosed
rejection, barriers, denial, dissimulation, etc. influence that the Black Panther Party exerted
Now I find that conception inadequate.… on Foucault’s genealogical method, the analy-
[T]his occurred to me in the course of a sis must primarily restrict itself to those texts
concrete experience I had around 1971–72, of and about the BPP which we know or can
322 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

reasonably assume that Foucault read, and to inseparable; and (4) the argument that the
the themes that Foucault appropriated from American prison system plays a strategically
those texts.44 From this perspective, the privileged role in the colonial oppression of
present section serves as the connecting thread black people.
between the initiatory documentary (Section One of the central features of the philoso-
I) and conceptual (Section III) facets of an phies of the Black Panther Party was the
historical inquiry that, in certain respects, does view that the black population within the
not depart significantly from the orthodox USA constituted an internal, racialized
method of the history of ideas. colony—one constantly threatened, impov-
However, the present investigation as a erished and criminalized by the occupying
whole also exceeds the restrictions of such an forces of American governmental authority.
orthodox historiographical approach. It not An argument at the heart of this critique was
only aims to expose the silenced and subju- the following: beneath the law and order of
gated genealogy of Foucault’s own genealog- American government, beneath the ostensi-
ical method, it also aspires to bring the local, ble peace of American civil society, a racially
discontinuous, and generally disqualified and fashioned war is being continuously and
delegitimized knowledges and struggles of permanently waged against the black
the Black Panthers into play in the strength community. The type of peace that American
that they possess in themselves—to enable governmental and civil institutions officially
them to oppose and struggle against the coer- prescribe, according to this argument, is not
cion of Foucault’s appropriation of them. In genuinely pacific at all but rather is itself a
accordance with this aim, my treatment of form of coded warfare.
the philosophies and struggles of the BPP The political strategies that emerged from
will also break the methodological restric- this assessment varied in tandem with the
tions mentioned above, in order to follow changing inner and outer circumstances of
some of the ways that the issues of politics, the Party. For example, in the early years of
war and survival are internally (and some- the Party’s existence, this philosophy fueled
times discontinuously) developed by the an agenda of black nationalism—a political
BPP itself, from within its own specific philosophy whose genealogical lineage
historico-political circumstances. Seen from extends back from Frantz Fanon and the pre-
this latter perspective, the present section can pilgrimage works of Malcolm X, to figures
be viewed as the setting-into-motion of a such as Marcus Garvey, Nat Turner and
critical current that courses through Sections Martin Delaney.45 As early as 1967, however,
II through IV and that gives rise to questions the Party had embraced a veritably interna-
about the politics of contemporary truth- tionalist, or what Newton in 1971 referred to
bearing discourses and the practices of subju- as an ‘intercommunalist’, perspective which
gation that silently undergird them. emphasized broad-based coalition-building
The primary features of the philosophies and viewed the liberation of the black colony
of the Black Panther Party that will orient in a functional relationship with revolution
this inquiry are: (1) the view that blacks in in the USA as a whole.46
the USA are an internally colonized popula- Despite such differences of strategy, at the
tion; (2) an understanding that the official root of the BPP’s philosophies, as well as
discursive and visible practices of law and those of many other organizations in the
order—including the constitutional docu- black power movement, was an assessment of
ments founding American sovereignty—are, the situation of African Americans as one of
in essence, tactical deployments within that internal colonization. Eldridge Cleaver
racist colonial war; (3) the position that, provides an articulation of this position in an
within that colonial context, politics and self- article published in Ramparts magazine in
defense—politics and war—are functionally May 1968 entitled ‘The Land Question and
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 323

Black Liberation’, where he argues against Two of the most salient components of
political analyses that ignore ‘the distinction black liberationist counter-history can be
and the contradiction between the white formulated as follows: (a) American sover-
mother country and the black colony’. He eignty was founded upon and continues to be
writes: underpinned by the economic enslavement
and political disenfranchisement of black
‘Black people are a stolen people held in a people, and (b) the American institution of
colonial status on stolen land, and any slavery was never comprehensively abol-
analysis which does not acknowledge the ished, but rather persists into the present in
colonial status of black people cannot hope altered forms. In other words, US sover-
to deal with the real problem […]. Black eignty does not and has never protected or
power must be viewed as the projection of guaranteed the freedom of black people;
sovereignty, an embryonic sovereignty that Black Reconstruction failed.
black people can focus on and through These counter-historical principles propel
which they can make distinctions between the revolutionary demands of the Black
themselves and others, between themselves
Panther Party from its inception. The BPP
and their enemies—in short, between the
declared rights for black people that the USA
white mother country of America and the
black colony dispersed throughout the had failed to recognize and, in so doing,
continent on absentee-owned land, making effectively declared war on the USA by
Afro-America a decentralized colony. Black declaring rights; or rather, by declaring
power says to black people that it is rights, the BPP rendered explicit the ongo-
possible for them to build a national ing, undeclared war being waged against
organization on somebody else’s land […]. black people in and by the USA.
In fact, when he moved to found the The ‘Ten-Point Platform and Program of
organization of Afro-American Unity, this the Black Panther Party’ of October 1966
is precisely what Malcolm X was doing, was precisely such a declaration of rights/
founding a government in exile for a people
war. Indeed, Point Ten of the Platform and
in exile.’47
Program employed the language of the US
Constitution itself to justify the revolution-
One of the features of this passage that is ary overthrow of the sovereignty founded
typical of the BPP revolutionary vocabulary therein:
is Cleaver’s employment of a counter-hege-
monic understanding of American history—
‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that
in this case, an historical knowledge of the all men [sic] are created equal; that they are
enslavement and displacement of black endowed by their Creator with certain
people—as simultaneously a description of unalienable rights; that among these are life,
the ongoing struggle for black liberation and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to
a weapon in that struggle. Throughout the secure these rights, governments are instituted
BPP’s activity, this kind of counter-historical among men [sic], deriving their just powers
knowledge was central to their mode of from the consent of the governed; that,
political critique and struggle. History, for whenever any form of government becomes
the BPP, was not only a knowledge of past destructive of these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
struggles, it was a vehicle for refashioning
a new government, laying its foundation on
African American identity, and a knowledge
such principles, and organizing its powers in
that was strategically deployed within a field such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
of present struggles. The political strategies effect their safety and happiness. […] [W]hen
of the black liberation movement were a long train of abuses and usurpations,
consistently articulated through this kind of pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a
counter-historical knowledge. design to reduce them under absolute
324 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

despotism, it is [the people’s] right, it is their and Democracy” to Korea, to Vietnam, to

duty, to throw off such government, and to Africa, Asia, and Latin America?
provide new guards for their future
security.’48 Is it the right to “political activity” when the
U.S.A. attempts to legally murder Bobby
The BPP called for the implementation of Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party,
Point Number Ten of the Black Panther for his political beliefs?
Party Platform and Program on 19 June 1970,
Where was that right when brother Malcolm
the 107th anniversary of the Emancipation
was murdered, when Martin Luther King was
Proclamation. The Panthers and their gunned down?
supporters gathered on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC where Where is Freedom when people’s right to
BPP Chief of Staff David Hilliard issued a call “Freedom of Speech” is denied to the point
for ‘a revolutionary people’s constitutional of murder? When attempts at “Freedom of
convention’ to be convened on 7 September, the Press” brings bombings and lynchings?
Labor Day, in Philadelphia.49 In this call, the
Where is Freedom when the right to
BPP referred to the USA as a ‘monster’ and
“peacefully assemble” brings on massacres?
‘barbaric organization’ characterized by
Where is our right to “keep and bear arms”
‘savage wars of aggression, mass murder, when Black People are attacked by the Racist
genocide, and shameless slaughter of the Gestapo of America? Where is “religious
people of the world; impudent, arrogant freedom” when places of worship become the
White Racism; and a naked, brazen attempt to scene of shoot-ins and bomb-ins? Where is
perpetuate White Supremacy on a world the right to vote “regardless of race or color”
scale’. The BPP then goes on to criticize the when murder takes place at the voting polls?
existing US Constitution and the Emancipa- Are we free when we are not even secure
tion Proclamation, making point-by-point from being savagely murdered in our sleep by
reference to the US Bill of Rights in order to policemen who stand blatantly before the
world but yet go unpunished? Is that “…
expose the permanent colonial war being
equal protection before the laws”? The
waged against black people by the State. The
empty promise of the Constitution to
call is an exemplar of black liberationist “establish justice” lies exposed to the world
counter-history, and is worth citing at length. by the reality of Black Peoples’ existence. For
over 400 years now, Black people have
‘The end result of the EMANCIPATION suffered an unbroken chain of abuse at the
PROCLAMATION was supposed to be the hands of White America. For 400 years we
freedom and liberation of Black people from have been treated as America’s footstool.
the cruel shackles of chattel slavery. And yet, This fact is so clear that it requires no
100 and 7 years later, today, Black people still argumentation.
are not free. Where is that freedom
supposedly granted to our people by THE The Constitution of the U.S.A. does not and
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION never has protected our people or guaranteed
and guaranteed to us by the Constitution of to us those lofty ideals enshrined within it.
the United States? When the Constitution was first adopted we
were held as slaves. We were held in slavery
Is it in the many “Civil Rights Bills” that have under the Constitution. We have suffered
been passed to try to hide the irrelevance of every form of indignity and imposition under
the Constitution for Black People? the Constitution, from economic
exploitation, political subjugation, to
Is it in the blood-shed and lives lost by Black physical extermination.
People when America brings “Law and
Order” to the ghetto in the same fashion and We need no further evidence that there is
by those same forces that export “Freedom something wrong with the Constitution of the
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 325

United States of America. We have had our EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN THE
Human Rights denied and violated perpetually INVIOLABLE HUMAN RIGHT TO
under this Constitution—for hundreds of LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF
years. As a people, we have received neither the HAPPINESS!’50
Equal Protection of the Laws nor Due Process
of Law. […] The Constitution of the United
From the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street
States does not guarantee and protect our
Economic Rights, or our Political Rights, nor Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama,
our Social Rights. It does not even guarantee which killed Carol McNair, Cynthia
and protect our most basic Human Right, the Wesley, Carole Roberts and Addie Mae
right to LIVE! […] Collins—all four of them black girls under
the age of 15—to the FBI’s assassination of
Black people can no longer either respect the the Chicago Chapter Field Marshall of the
U.S. Constitution, look to it with hope, or BPP Fred Hampton during his sleep, each
live under it. […] We repudiate, emphatically, and every charge issued in the BPP’s call
all documents, Laws, Conventions, and refers to distinct and isolatable instances of
Practices that allow this sorry state of affairs the recent history of black people in Amer-
to exist—including the Constitution of the
ica at that time. Considered together, this
United States. […]
long train of abuses and usurpations, invari-
ably pursuing the oppression of black
WE THEREFORE, CALL FOR A
REVOLUTIONARY PEOPLE’S
people, exposes the official documents, laws,
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, conventions and practices of American
TO BE CONVENED BY THE political authority as tactical deployments
AMERICAN PEOPLE, TO WRITE A within a permanent racist war against black
NEW CONSTITUTION THAT WILL people.
GUARANTEE AND DELIVER TO It is precisely on account of this perceived
failure of American sovereignty to guarantee
and protect black people’s very right to
live—moreover, on account of its persistent
and explicit attack on that right—that the
BPP conceived of politics and war as func-
tionally inseparable (Figure 2).
In Seize the Time: The Story of the Black
Figure 2 BPP Brooklyn, ‘Defend the Ghetto’ (The Black Panthers Speak, Da Capo Press).

Panther Party and Huey Newton, written in

prison in 1968, Black Panther Party Chair-
man Bobby Seale recounts a situation from
the early phases of growth of the BPP that
helps throw the issue of politics and war in
relief. In Seale’s account, BPP members
encountered a black nationalist faction that
went by the name of the Black Panther Party
of Northern California. Huey Newton,
Bobby Seale and other members of the BPP
met with the latter group in the planning of a
Malcolm X Memorial Day Conference
scheduled in San Francisco on the date
Malcolm X was assassinated. Kenny Free-
man, one of the members of the other group,
Figure 2 BPP Brooklyn, ‘Defend the Ghetto’ (The Black asked the members of the BPP if they wanted
Panthers Speak, Da Capo Press). to speak, and Newton agreed.
326 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

‘Vince Lynth said, “That’s good, because you not protected by American governmental
can get into the history of self-defense.” authority. In the case of the Black Panthers, a
simple glance at the history of repressive
Huey said, “I’ll be talking about politics.”
measures employed by the State to annihilate
Kenny Freeman popped up and said, “Do and discredit them—such as the FBI’s
you want to speak on self-defense or Counterintelligence Program (COINTEL-
politics?” PRO)52—only confirms Newton’s and
Seale’s prediction that activism aimed at black
Huey said, “It doesn’t make any difference, liberation will be met with attacks upon the
they’re both one and the same.” They went sovereignty and vitality of black people.53 As
through some intellectual changes, with a few Seale would argue just 1 year later in 1969:
statements here and there—Roy Ballard, ‘Because of [the Ten-Point Platform and
Kenny Freeman, and a couple other people—
Program of the Black Panther Party], we have
and came back to the same question that they
political prisoners. We have dead members.
had asked Huey about a minute before. “Do
you want to speak on self-defense or We have a war going on. The war started 400
politics?” Huey said that they’re both one years ago, and the war must be ended.’54
and the same thing. The BPP originally organized itself with
the objective of ending this colonial war.
“If I’m talking about self-defense, I’m talking Consider, for example, the action taken by
about politics; if I’m talking about politics, the Party in response to the death of Denzil
I’m talking about self-defense. You can’t Dowell in early 1967.55 Dowell, a young
separate them.” black youth living in Richmond, California,
had been shot and killed by police, whose
They didn’t understand Huey when he said,
“Politics is war without bloodshed, and war official account of the slaying explicitly
is politics with bloodshed, a continuation of contradicted dozens of black eyewitnesses.
politics with bloodshed.” They didn’t Having been called by the Dowell family to
understand antagonistic contradictions and investigate, the BPP decided to hold a rally in
non-antagonistic contradictions both being the neighborhood to expose the facts of the
lodged in the arena of politics. They didn’t killing and to exhibit the political importance
understand that the plight of black people’s of self-defense. Assuming the police would
struggle here in the confines of decadent attempt to stop the rally, the Panthers
America is a political-military whole, unified decided to demonstrate their point on site
within itself.
and set up armed guards to secure the event.
When hundreds of black people turned
[…] Huey said, very firmly to all of them,
that we would speak, and when we speak it out, many carrying their own guns, the
won’t make any difference if we’re talking police who came to stop the rally rapidly
about self-defense, or if we’re talking about retreated. Several Panthers addressed the
politics. If we’re talking about politics and crowd and explained the Party’s program.
the survival of black people, it’s the same Then Huey Newton spoke.
thing.’51
‘The masses of the people want peace. The
Black people’s struggle for survival in masses of the people do not want war. The
America, on Newton’s and Seale’s account, is Black Panther Party advocates the abolition
of war. But at the same time, we realize that
‘a political-military whole, unified within
the only way you can get rid of war, many
itself’. If black people are to organize them-
times, is through a process of war. Therefore,
selves in the effort to secure the economic and the only way you can get rid of guns is to get
political resources necessary to guarantee rid of the guns of the oppressor. The people
their freedom, they will need to defend them- must be able to pick up guns, to defend
selves militarily, because their livelihood is themselves.’56
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 327

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense for Children Program to try to intimidate the
initially came into existence for precisely the children and the Party. They come down
reason that its original name suggests: self- there with their guns, they draw a gun or
defense, that is, the autonomous defense of two, say a few words and walk all over the
place, with shotguns in their hands. Then the
the black community against the experienced
little kids go home and say, “Mama, the
threat of police brutality and other forms of
police came into the Breakfast for Children
State violence.57 Newton went to great Program.” This is the power structure’s
lengths to stress that arms were to serve a technique to try to destroy the program. It’s
political purpose and were not to be viewed in an attempt to scare the people away from
purely military terms. At the outset, that sending their children to the Breakfast
political purpose was primarily defensive in Program and at the same time, trying to
nature. The initial actions undertaken by the intimidate the Black Panther Party.
Party were to trail police cars through the Meanwhile, through the politicians and the
Oakland ghettos, equipped with guns and media they try to mislead the people about
law books, in order to ensure that whenever the value of such a program and the political
nature of such a program. […]
black men or women were stopped by the
police, their constitutional rights were not
The Black Panther Party is not stupid at all in
violated (Figure 3). understanding the politics of the situation.
As the Party gained admiration and
Figure 2 BPP Berkeley, organized petition for community control of police, summer 1970 (Billy X Jennings, www.itsabouttimebpp.com).

We understand that the avaricious,

support from the black community, and by demagogic, ruling class will use racist police
1967 when the Party had attained the level of departments and mass media to distort the
a national organization with myriad local real objectives of the Black Panther Party.
chapters, it dropped ‘for Self-Defense’ from The more we’re successful with the
its name and greatly expanded the nature of programs, the more we’ll be attacked. We
its community involvement. The political don’t take guns with us to implement these
purpose of the Party expanded to include the programs, but we understand and know from
our own history that we’re going to be
productive procurement of the social and
attacked, and that we have to be able to
economic resources necessary for the survival
defend ourselves. They’re going to attack us
of the black community. These revolutionary viciously and fascistically and try to say it
survival programs included not only the was all justifiable homicide, in the same
Campaign for Community Control of Police, manner they’ve always attacked black people
but the Free Breakfast for Children Program, in the black communities.
Free Health Clinics, Free Clothing Program,
Liberation Schools and the Free Busing to […] The power structure metes this violence
Prisons Program so that members of the black upon the Black Panther Party because we’ve
community could maintain affective ties with implemented programs that are actually
their loved ones in the prison system. exposing the government, and they’re being
The deepening of the BPP’s community implemented and put together by a
involvement and the implementation of its revolutionary political party.
many survival programs elicited even more
violence from the State. Seale discusses the The freeing of political prisoners is also on
the program of the Black Panther Party,
way in which the police force deliberately
because we have now, at this writing [1968],
attempted to attack and dismantle the
over 300 Black Panthers who have court cases
survival programs set up by the Black that are pending. In addition there have been
Panther Party through the related techniques hundreds of arrests, unjust arrests of Party
of intimidation and criminalization. members, who were exercising their
constitutional rights. We believe in exercising
‘The cops in Los Angeles and several other our constitutional rights of freedom of
places have walked in on the Free Breakfast assembly, of freedom of the press (the Black
328 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

Figure 3 BPP Berkeley, organized petition for community control of police, summer 1970 (Billy X Jennings,
www.itsabouttimebpp.com).
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 329

Panther Party newspaper), our constitutional political prisoners program’, was the criminal-
right to bear arms, to be able to defend ization of the BPP’s revolutionary survival
ourselves when attacked, and all the others programs along with the self-defense methods
[i.e. constitutional rights]. So we’ve been resorted to in order to protect them. Govern-
arrested.
ment programs such as the FBI’s Counterin-
telligence Program (COINTELPRO) were
What has to be understood is that they intend established for the express purpose of crimi-
to destroy our basic [survival] programs. This
nalizing, discrediting and ‘neutralizing’ black
is very important to understand. The fact that
liberation movements. As explicitly outlined
they murder Black Panther Party members,
conduct attacks and raids on our offices, by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in a 1968
arrest us and lie about us, is all an attempt to memorandum to FBI Field Offices: ‘The
stop these basic programs that we’re putting purpose of [COINTELPRO] is to expose,
together in the community. The people learn disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise
from these programs because they’re clear neutralize the activities of black nationalist,
examples, and the power structure wants to hate-type organizations and groupings, their
stop that learning.’58 leadership, spokesmen, membership, and
supporters, and to counter their propensity
The State’s attacks on the BPP’s survival for violence and civil disorder.’59
programs exemplify the way that the institu- A brief example drawn from the autobiog-
tions of US political authority systematically raphy of the late (and dearly missed) Safiya
produced and maintained the impoverish- Bukhari-Alston throws this governing
ment of black communities while simulta- tendency into relief. Bukhari-Alston was a
neously relying upon the power and support member of the Black Panther Party and a
of those communities for the authorization lifetime social justice activist. In ‘Coming of
and maintenance of its own sovereignty. The Age: A Black Revolutionary’, she describes
survival programs were clear examples of the the event that awakened her to political
black community’s power of autonomous consciousness and prompted her to join the
self-valorization and determination—a power BPP, an organization with whose revolution-
independent from (and in conflict with) US ary politics she previously disagreed. Sent by
governmental and civil institutions. This is her college sorority to help ‘disadvantaged’
one of the things that Seale is referring to children in Harlem as part of a service
when he writes of the educational function of project, she decided to volunteer for one of
the programs: they were vehicles through many of the Black Panther community
which members of the black community service enterprises: the Free Breakfast
could learn and experience their own power. Program for Children.
Given that US political authority relied upon
and was invested in fostering the perception ‘I couldn’t get into the politics of the Black
among members of the black community that Panther Party, but I could volunteer to feed
they were dependent upon the State for their some hungry children; you see, children
security and well-being, the education that deserve a good start and you have to feed
was taking place in the Black Panther Party’s them for them to live to learn. It’s hard to
survival programs about the autonomous think of reading and arithmetic when your
power of the black community was, as Seale stomach’s growling.…
critically points out, a kind of learning that
Every morning, at 5:00 my daughter and I
the power structure wanted to put a stop to.
would get ready and go to the Center where I
The primary technique by which American was working on the Breakfast Program—
institutions of political and civil governance cook and serve breakfast, sometimes talk to
attempted to accomplish this goal, as is children about problems they were
evidenced by the BPP’s need for a ‘free encountering and sometimes help them with
330 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

their homework. Everything was going along Black Liberation’. Written from behind bars
smoothly until the number of children in May 1971, just weeks before GIP member
coming began to fall off. Finally, I began to Catherine von Bülow’s visit, this essay is
question the children and found out that the what Joy James calls ‘perhaps the first essay
police had been telling the parents in the
authored by an African-American woman
neighborhood not to send their children to
within the genre of contemporary black
the Program because we were “feeding them
poisoned food.” protest and prison literature’.61 In this work,
Davis cites numerous extra-legal acts of resis-
It’s one thing to hear about underhanded tance to terror and oppression in black
things the police do—you can ignore it history, from the underground railroad and
then—but it’s totally different to experience it abolitionist opposition to the fugitive slave
for yourself—you either lie to yourself or laws, to the sit-ins of the civil rights era, to
face it. I chose to face it and find out why the the 11 members of the L.A. Chapter of the
police felt it was so important to keep Black
BPP who in the spring of 1970, ‘took up arms
children from being fed that they told lies. I
to defend themselves from an assault initiated
went back to the Black Panther Party and
started attending some of their Community by the local police force on their office and
Political Education Classes.’60 on their persons’.

As Bukhari-Alston’s testimony makes ‘All these historical instances involving the

quite explicit, the police felt it was so impor- overt violation of the laws of the land
tant to keep black children from being served converge around an unmistakable common
by the autonomous actions of their own denominator. At stake has been the collective
community that they explicitly fabricated a welfare and survival of a people. […]
narrative of criminality in order to obstruct Whenever blacks in struggle have recourse to
self-defense, particularly armed self-defense,
such action. ‘Don’t send your children to
it is twisted and distorted on official levels
participate in the Black Panther Party Free
and ultimately rendered synonymous with
Breakfast Program for Children, because the criminal aggression. On the other hand, when
Black Panthers are criminals trying to kill policemen are clearly indulging in acts of
your children.’ In this act, the police fashions criminal aggression, officially they are
the Party as criminals and the potential bene- defending themselves through “justifiable
ficiaries of the Party’s programs as victims assault” or “justifiable homicide.” […] The
who are in need of protection from the political act is defined as criminal in order to
State—the same State whose systemic discredit radical and revolutionary
oppression of black people motivated the movements. The political event is reduced to
autonomous organization of the BPP to a criminal event in order to affirm the
absolute invulnerability of the existing order.
begin with. The State executes acts of gover-
[…] As the black liberation movement and
nance such as this in order to dismantle the
other progressive struggles increase in
radical political movements that are ques- magnitude and intensity, the judicial system
tioning the very foundations of its political and its extension, the penal system,
authority. consequently become key weapons in the
The criminalization of black resistance to state’s fight to preserve the existing
oppression, as participants in the black liber- conditions of class domination, therefore
ation struggle have always well-understood, racism, poverty, and war.’62
is by no means a phenomenon that began
with the BPP. Angela Y. Davis, a BPP By exposing the reciprocal link between
member and political prisoner at the time, black survival and black resistance, and relat-
provided an incisive articulation of the ing them to the processes by which such
historical criminalization of black political survival and resistance are ritually attacked,
resistance in ‘Political Prisoners, Prisons, and distorted and criminalized on official levels,
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 331

Davis’s account gives us an indication of the our part, political, will have to be
historical experience that motivated the Black accompanied by a latent threat. And all the
Panther Party to posit politics and war as func- projects for survival that comrade Newton
tionally inseparable. Put simply, struggles for has started and developed, I think that they’re
going to have to be defended.’64
black survival and liberation have consistently
been compelled to openly make recourse to
Jackson shared Newton’s and Seale’s
extra-legal action, and they have just as consis-
assessment that black people’s struggle for
tently been met with State violence and terror.
survival in America was ‘a political-military
It is precisely the counter-revolutionary
whole, unified within itself’. Organizing and
violence and terror waged against the BPP’s
educating from within the prison, he
revolutionary survival programs that led BPP
attempted to transform the prison—what
Field Marshall George Jackson to assume the
Davis called ‘a key weapon in the state’s
role, from within the American prison
fight to preserve the existing conditions of
system, of preparing military protection for
class domination, racism, poverty, and
those programs; for, without such protection,
war’—into a tool for revolutionary mobiliza-
their continuation would have been incon-
tion (Figure 4). And it was his principled
ceivable. If the American prison system
commitment to the politico-military struggle
played a strategic role in the colonization of
for black liberation that ultimately magne-
the black community—not only as an appara-
tized the counter-revolutionary bullets of the
tus that criminalizes and detains the radical
State to his person. Jackson was assassinated
community activists of black liberationist
organizations, but also as a surrogate solution
to the social problems associated with
poverty and racism—Jackson transformed
the prison, granting it a strategic role in the
decolonization of the black community.63
In a 29 March 1971 interview transcribed
and published in The Black Panther, which the
GIP translated and published in L’Assassinat
de George Jackson later that year, Jackson
argues the following:

‘I feel that the building of revolutionary

consciousness of the prisoner class is
paramount in the overall development of a
hard left revolutionary cadre. And I repeat—
cadre. Of course, the revolution has to be
carried out by the masses. But we need a
cadre; we need a bodyguard; a political
worker needs a bodyguard. We [i.e. the
prisoner class] see ourselves as performing
that function. The terms of existence here in
the joint conditions [sic] the brothers for that
type of work. Although I have become more
political recently, from listening to Comrade
[Huey] Newton, and from reading the [Black
Panther] Party paper, I’ve gained a clear Figure 4 Cover page of The Black Panther newspa-
understanding of the tie-in between political per announcing the establishment of the San Quentin
and military activities. I still see my function Branch of the Black Panther Party, co-founded by
as military. […] I feel that any movement on George Jackson (The Black Panther, 27 February 1971).
332 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

by San Quentin prison guards on 21 August politics and warfare in the published works
1971. of 1975–76.67
The written and practical works of George The editors of the anthology on the GIP
Figure 4 San Quentin Branch of the BPP opens, February 1971 (The Black Panther, 27 February 1971).

Jackson and Angela Y. Davis played a funda- call attention to two events in particular that
mental role in galvanizing the international generated strong mobilization in both France
prison abolition movement of the 1970s. And and Italy. The first of these was the political
more than any other Black Panther intellec- assassination of George Jackson in August
tual, it was Davis and Jackson who exerted 1971. The second was the prisoner revolt that
the greatest influence on Foucault’s thinking took place at Attica State Correctional
about politics during this period.65 In the Facility in New York in September 1971.68
following section I will analyze their work in On 21 August 1971, a group of revolution-
further detail, and assess the manner in which ary prisoners, George Jackson among them,
Foucault appropriates it. took control of the first-floor tier of San
Quentin prison, taking four hostages and
releasing the other prisoners from their cells.
III. 1971–76: black power in the Collège de Jackson, who at a certain point exited the
France? ‘adjustment’ center door, was gunned down
in the yard by a sniper guard. Having been
The editors of the recently published anthol- shot in the back, Jackson bled to death on the
ogy Le Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons: asphalt. The some 30 minutes during which
Archive d’une lutte, 1970–1972 corroborate these events took place are shrouded in obscu-
the formative effect that the US black libera- rity.69 Fellow prisoners and companions of
tion movement had on the GIP and other Jackson, such as Luis Talamantez, have called
constituents of the radical political movement the event ‘the half-hour revolution’. San
in France during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Quentin prison authorities referred to it as a
‘riot’, a ‘massacre’ and a failed escape attempt
‘It is, above all, the GIP’s engagement with
lacking precise organization or objective. One
the American situation that is the most
thing about which there is rather widespread
important. […] The resistance movements in
the United States—and particularly the black agreement is that the account of the events
liberation movement—sustained the post- given by the San Quentin prison authorities is
May 1968 French movement and contributed internally inconsistent. The Groupe d’Infor-
to the redefinition of political action.’66 mation sur les Prisons scoured the accounts
published in the popular American press in
In this section, I will inquire further into the the weeks following the assassination. Having
sustaining contribution that the black libera- exposed the blatant inconsistencies among
tion movement made to the redefinition of them, they wrote the following.
political action and the manner in which that
contribution gets appropriated and rearticu- ‘A man who described the death of his
lated by Foucault and the GIP. Through this neighbor with only half the incongruities that
consideration it will become apparent that have been provided by the director of San
the events of revolutionary anti-racist strug- Quentin on the death of Jackson would be
immediately accused of the murder. […]
gle in the USA were the primary inspiration
Jackson’s murder will never be prosecuted by
for Foucault’s genealogical reorientation.
the American justice system. No court will
These events, coupled with the counter- seriously attempt to find out what took place;
revolutionary terror that the State unleashed it is an act of war. And what has been
in response to them, exposed American published by the established power, the
politics as a continuation of war, which then prison administration, reactionary
served as the (unacknowledged) model for newspapers, must be considered a series of
Foucault’s reflections on the continuity of “war bulletins.”’70
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 333

Angela Y. Davis, listening to radio broad-

castings about the events surrounding the
murder from her cell in Marin County Jail,
commented on the incredulity of the prison
administration’s account.
‘I listened to the radio talk shows. The
majority of the people who called in to the
shows suspected that something was very
wrong inside San Quentin; that whatever was
askew was not the fault of the prisoners, but
of the prison hierarchy. The most consistent
aspect of these responses was the belief that
the prison administration had taken them for
fools. Over and over again, people Figure 5 September 1971: Attica prisoners negotiat-
commented on the contempt the ing with New York State officials after taking control of
administration had shown by not even the prison facility (Liz Fink Attica Photographs File
constructing a sensible story. Who on earth Collection and www.talkinghistory.org).
would believe that the tale [the
administration told] justified all the violence
improve conditions, [and] years of false
unleashed on the prisoners?’71
promises of reform by the prison administra-
The night of the murder, Davis, who was tion’.73 ‘The Attica Liberation Faction Mani-
quite close to Jackson, reflected upon her festo of Demands and Anti-Depression
mourning and that of others. ‘Tonight men Platform’, included demands for such things
and women in every prison in the country as access to proper medical care, adequate
were probably awake, like me, mourning and visiting conditions, an end to political and
trying to channel their anger constructively. racial persecution and punishment, and the
People all over the world must be talking legal prosecution of correctional officers for
about vengeance—constructive organized acts of cruel and unusual punishment.
mass retaliation.’72 Despite the explicitly expressed will of the
Figure 5 Attica 1—prisoners negotiating, September 1971 (Liz Fink Attica Photographs File Collection and www.talkinghistory.org).

One such action of constructive organized prisoners to negotiate with State authori-
mass retaliation transpired at Attica prison. ties,74 New York State Governor Nelson
Spurred in part by Jackson’s murder at the Rockefeller ordered some 600 State Troopers
hand of San Quentin prison guards, and and National Guards to storm the prison.
acting in resistance to protracted abuse and Armed with high-powered rifles and shot-
neglect by prison authorities, over 1200 guns, the agents of the State fired some 4500
prisoners took control of Attica prison on 9 rounds of ammunition on the prisoners and
September 1971, in an occupation that hostages, shooting 150 people, killing 29
endured for 5 days. Referring to themselves prisoners and 10 hostages; they then
as the Attica Liberation Faction, they held 42 proceeded to torture 1289 prisoners (Figures
prison officials hostage, issued a list of 27 6 and 7).75 Following the event, the New
demands and requested that a select group of York State Special Commission on Attica
intermediaries—including black liberation wrote: ‘With the exception of Indian massa-
movement leaders and lawyers—facilitate cres in the late 19th century, the State Police
negotiations between them and the State in assault which ended the four day uprising
order that their demands be met (Figure 5). was the bloodiest one-day encounter
As stated in The Freedom Archives audio between Americans since the Civil War.’76
documentary Prisons on Fire, ‘[t]he Attica Jackson’s assassination and the events at
Figure 76 Attica 3—NY
2—NY State Trooper
Troopersand
anddead
prisoners,
prisoners,
September
September
19711971
(Liz (Liz
FinkFink
Attica
Attica
Photographs
Photographs
File File
Collection
Collection
and www.talkinghistory.org).
and www.talkinghistory.org).

rebellion was preceded by a long chain of Attica State Prison gained widespread interna-
abuses, years of petition and protest to tional attention, particularly in France where
334 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

Figures 6 & 7 September 1971: New York State Troopers in Attica prison yard following the violent seizure of the
prison by some 600 State Troopers and National Guards. Armed with high-powered rifles and shotguns, agents of the
State fired some 4,500 rounds of ammunition on the prisoners and hostages, shooting 150 people, killing twenty-nine
prisoners, and ten hostages. (Liz Fink Attica Photographs File Collection and www.talkinghistory.org)

there was a sizeable community of African after the prisoner revolt and State repression
Americans living in exile (both willed and at Attica, the GIP wrote:
forced). Consider, for instance, the following
statement by African American writer and ‘The prisoner confronts segregation,
social activist James Baldwin, speaking of abasement, and physical and mental
Jackson’s assassination in Paris in 1971: degradation every day. That’s racism: the
ready instrument of fascist terror. The
‘Beneath the political implications of this prisoners’ struggle is part of the general
bloody event there’s also an anguish, which struggle against racism and fascism. The life
has endured in my country for nearly 400 and death of [George] Jackson and the
years. I, myself, have lived through too many massacre at Attica revealed that amerikkkan
murders and too many assassinations to prisons (les prisons amerikkkaines) are
believe a word that [President Richard] centers for the formation of revolutionary
Nixon […] or any other of the American militants.’78
authorities say. […] I know very well that the
intention of the American Republic was to In addition to confirming the importance
keep black people slaves forever. And I know of these two events for the GIP and the
that now that black people have discovered in French prison abolition movement, the above
their own minds, in their own hearts, that passage has a number of features that warrant
they are not what they are told they were,
comment in this context. First, note the use of
that America is on the verge of panic—on the
the expression ‘amerikkkan’; this expression
verge of civil war.’77
is taken directly from the black liberationist
The GIP was among those of the radical vocabulary, in which it is employed in order
political movement in France during that to draw attention to the white supremacy (Ku
period who were galvanized by the events Klux Klan) perceived to exist at the heart of
within the US prison system. In ‘Le prison- the American polis. Secondly, the GIP takes
nier affronte chaque jour la ségrégation (The two positions that, while not exclusive to, are
prisoner confronts segregation every day)’, primarily drawn from—and, as we will see,
published in La Cause du peuple just days become formulated in terms quite similar
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 335

to—the political philosophies of the Black ‘the discourse of race struggle’, a discourse
Panthers: (1) racism is the primary instrument that he traces back to the 17th century. On
of fascist terror, and (2) the prison movement another level, however, Foucault is engaging
is a continuation of revolutionary struggles in a very different kind of self-assessment.
outside the prison. Foucault will later appro- Daniel Defert draws our attention to this
priate each of these theses in his political self-critical subtext in his discussion entitled
theory. He appropriates the first thesis in the ‘The “Mechanism of War” as an Analytic of
1976 Lectures, where he first publicly Power Relations’.80 In this presentation,
discusses the concept of biopower. The delivered in 1996 at a conference devoted to
second thesis fuels his critique of the Foucault’s 1976 Lectures, Defert argues that
orthodox Marxist conception of power.79 the 1976 Lectures constitute a turning point
Comparing Angela Y. Davis’s and George in Foucault’s work, but they do ‘not mark a
Jackson’s distinctive formulations of these rupture with the genealogical method of
ideas, arrived at in the context of revolution- approach, announced in 1970’. The course,
ary struggle, with Foucault’s theoretical he argues, ‘must be understood less as an
appropriation of them, I will advance the inaugural discourse’, that is, less as a discus-
following three arguments: (1) Foucault’s sion that inaugurates the approach to
method of genealogy, and the notion of biopower and governmentality that Foucault
biopolitics that was generated by that would pursue for the rest of the 1970s.
method, in many ways takes its cues from Rather, the course must be understood ‘as
Davis’s and Jackson’s analyses of the struggle the end of the line of the genealogical analy-
for black liberation, and the critique of ses inaugurated in 1970’. Foucault’s discus-
American State racism that was articulated in sion of the mechanism of war, Defert argues,
those analyses. (2) The sovereign power/ bears a ‘methodological continuity’ with
disciplinary power schematic that Foucault those prior analyses, and even though the
famously outlines in Discipline and Punish is analysis focuses on ‘a slightly new object’,
largely inspired by Jackson’s analysis of Defert claims, ‘it is really a course that is
American fascism and by Foucault’s inter- somewhat “in abyss” (en abîme)’.
pretation of the events surrounding Jackson’s With this last claim, Defert plays upon the
death. (3) Foucault’s critique of the orthodox French expression mise en abîme, which
Marxist conception of power in the 1976 refers to the containment of an entity within
Lectures is primarily motivated by the revo- another identical entity, or as an image of an
lutionary role that the US black liberation image.81 What does Defert intend by
struggle accorded to the unemployed and employing this expression to describe
imprisoned populations—a role that Davis Foucault’s discussion of the mechanism of
and Jackson explicated quite clearly. Each of warfare? To fully appreciate the claim, allow
these points indicates the formative role that me to reproduce parts of Defert’s subsequent
the revolutionary philosophies and struggles discussion.
of the Black Panther Party had on Foucault’s
genealogical work. ‘The years from 1970 to 1976 were all years
To uncover the hidden genealogy of of genealogical analysis. The discourse of war
constitutes a discourse that is typically
Foucault’s genealogical work, one must
genealogical, given that Foucault explains
begin with the 1976 Lectures at the Collège
that genealogical discourse is a discourse
de France, because those lectures contain an founded upon passion, violence,
important—though codified and, therefore, appropriation, and insufficiently elaborated
underappreciated—subtext, which supplies a rationality.82 It just so happens that he
leading clue to that hidden genealogy. On the takes up the same themes when
surface, the lectures present themselves as a characterizing the discourse of war. That is to
genealogical analysis of what Foucault calls say, the discourse of war is in effect a
336 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

“construction-into-an-abyss (une concepts of sex and the so-called ‘deploy-

construction en abîme)” of genealogical ment of sexuality’.84 The meaning of this
analysis. […] We should perhaps focus our erasure, as well as the genealogy thereby
attention less on the objects analyzed [in the effaced, must be interrogated.
1976 Lectures] than on the apparatus of
With our attention now attuned to the
analysis itself. […] [T]he vocabulary used to
self-reflexive subtext at work in the 1976
describe the genealogical pursuit itself shares
many features in common with the Lectures, let us begin this interrogation by
vocabulary that is used to describe the looking at what Foucault called the discourse
analyses that are produced by the discourse of race struggle. This will permit me to clar-
of war.’83 ify the argument I am putting forth regarding
the subjugated genealogy of Foucault’s gene-
By saying that the discourse of war is a alogical work. It will also permit us to assess
‘construction en abîme’ of genealogical analy- the filiations that exist between (a) the
sis, Defert means that the 1976 Lectures discourse of race struggle as Foucault
constitute a genealogical analysis of genea- construes it, (b) Foucault’s genealogical
logical analysis itself. In those lectures, discourse at large, and (c) the American
Foucault engages in a self-reflexive critique discourses of black liberation with which
of genealogical discourse that employs the Foucault was concurrently familiar.
tools of genealogical method while simulta- The historiographical merits of Foucault’s
neously calling into question (as we shall see account in the 1976 Lectures are debatable at
below) the necessarily possible ‘inverted’ best, especially considering both the paucity
meaning and direction toward which such a and the regional and ethnic homogeneity of
method can ultimately lead. his sources.85 My present objective is not to
Foucault signals this self-critical subtext to evaluate the historiographical merits of his
his audience in at least two ways. First, he account, in large part because, as with many
spends the first two lectures reflecting on the of his genealogical works, I would argue that
genealogical project and the various power the 1976 Lectures are first and foremost an
effects it had during the early 1970s; and, attempt to grapple with problems of power
secondly, he describes the 17th-century relations in the present rather than in the
method of ‘counter-history’ in terms similar past.86 My objective is to uncover the hidden
to the way he generally describes genealogi- genealogy of Foucault’s account of the
cal analysis. discourse of race struggle—a genealogy that
The 1976 Lectures also disclose two histor- must be traced to 20th-century race struggles
ical facts that it is important to point out. in the USA. In other words, I seek to expose
First, they demonstrate that Foucault the actual historico-political intensities and
initially developed his theory of biopolitics creations that motivated Foucault’s project
in the context of an analysis of ‘the discourse and to which his own work bars access.
of race struggle’ and a critique of State For the purposes of this inquiry, it is thus
racism—discussions which themselves arose sufficient to point out that the genealogy
within the horizon of a self-reflexive critique Foucault provides for the discourse of race
of genealogical discourse. Secondly, given struggle is exclusively European—one which
that the final lecture of the 1976 Lectures he traces back to 17th-century England, and
(delivered in March 1976) served as the basis follows through the France of Louis XIV to
from which Foucault produced the first its articulations in Nazi Germany and
published version of his account of Stalin’s Soviet Union. One of the most
biopolitics (published October 1976), the important formal features of Foucault’s argu-
former allows us to see that in the latter ment is that the discourse of race struggle
Foucault erases every reference to race and begins as a revolutionary form of discourse, a
racism, replacing them instead with the discourse that ‘was essentially an instrument
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 337

used in the struggles waged by decentered own discourse—a racism about which
camps’, but that it eventually becomes Foucault remains distressingly silent.
‘converted’ and ‘inverted’ into the counter- Allow me to clarify the argument I am
revolutionary discourse of biological racism. putting forth. I am not making any claims
As he puts it, race discourse is recentered and about the nature or validity of the 17th- or
becomes the discourse of the dominant 18th-century discourses that Foucault explic-
power itself, ‘the discourse of a centered, itly deals with in the 1976 Lectures (i.e.
centralized, and centralizing power’.87 Boulainvilliers, Thierry, etc.). The claim I’m
Thus, whereas Foucault begins the lectures making is this: before Foucault ever set eyes
by praising the discourse of race struggle as it upon those discourses, he was exposed to (1)
manifested itself in the form of revolutionary the revolutionary discourse of race struggle
‘counter-history’, he ends by criticizing the as it was variously articulated by Davis,
way that this same discourse undergoes a Jackson and other participants in the US
‘biological transcription’ and becomes the black liberation movement, and (2) the
kind of discourse that fuels State racism. The evidence of the racist, counter-revolutionary
details of Foucault’s account of how one and violence waged by the USA in response to
the same form of discourse can undergo such those revolutionary movements. It is only in
a radical inversion exceeds the scope of our virtue of this initial exposure that Foucault
analysis. Suffice it to say that the way begins to pursue the genealogical project in
Foucault describes race discourse is consis- the early 1970s, which culminates in the 1976
tent with the way he describes discourse in Lectures, in which he provides a genealogy of
general during his genealogical period, the genealogical project itself. In a word,
namely, as a practice or ‘tactical block’ that is American race struggle motivated Foucault-
intertwined with relations of power, that is ian genealogy. Had Foucault not been
intrinsically unstable, modifiable and exposed to that struggle, it is quite reasonable
‘tactically polyvalent’.88 It is precisely the to assume that there would be no ‘Nietzsche,
principle of ‘tactical polyvalence’ that Genealogy, History’, no Discipline and
accounts for the radical inversion that the Punish and no theory of biopolitics; he
discourse of race struggle undergoes. For, would not have set out to theorize the
what Foucault means by this principle is that institution of the prison, discourse as power-
the essence of discourse is such that any knowledge or sought after the historical
single type of discourse lends itself to being sources that he did in ‘writing a history of the
taken up and utilized for divergent, even present’.
contradictory strategical purposes, and thus The 1976 Lectures are characterized by the
can assume very different political meanings. structure of repression. The genealogy of the
I would like to suggest that both of the genealogical method that Foucault provides
forms of what Foucault calls the discourse of under the code word of ‘the discourse of
race struggle are primarily modeled after race struggle’ simultaneously acknowledges
discursive and visible practices of race struggle and disavows the foundational role that race
in the USA. What he calls ‘counter-history’ is struggle played in Foucault’s formulation of
modeled after the revolutionary discourse of genealogy. In the subtext of the 1976
the Black Panther Party. What he describes as Lectures, Foucault tacitly acknowledges the
the ‘biologico-social racism’ that fuels State discourse of race struggle as a harbinger of
racism, while he explicitly draws from the his genealogical method. However, at one
instances of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet and the same time, by failing to mention the
Union, is also—and, I would argue, more American context, Foucault symptomati-
fundamentally—inspired by the brand of cally denies the actually existing race strug-
racism that was being deployed by the US gle that in fact motivated his method to
government in concurrence with Foucault’s begin with.
338 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

We have already seen examples (in Section ‘What is this discourse saying? Well, I think it
II) of the sort of black liberationist counter- is saying this: […] Law is not pacification, for
history that was central to the Black beneath the law, war continues to rage in all
Panthers’ mode of political critique and the mechanisms of power, even the most
regular. War is the motor behind institutions
struggle. Allow me to further substantiate
and order. In the smallest of its cogs, peace is
my claims about the roots of Foucaultian
waging a secret war. To put it another way,
genealogy by comparing Foucault’s charac- we have to interpret the war that is going on
terization of the two inverted forms of the beneath peace; peace itself is a coded war.’92
discourse of race struggle with selected
excerpts of the concurrent political analyses This depiction of the discourse of counter-
of George Jackson and Angela Y. Davis— history could very well be a quotation of
analyses about which we can be certain that George Jackson, who argues from within the
Foucault was familiar. Maximum Security Unit of Soledad Prison in
The practice of ‘counter-history’, whose California that ‘the ultimate expression of
genealogy Foucault traces in the 1976 law is not order—it’s prison’.93 Between 1969
Lectures and which prefigures the genealogi- and 1971, Jackson argued that the USA was
cal method itself, radically breaks from and in the third stage of fascism.94 After a first
displaces the traditional practice of history. stage of monopoly capital, in which old
Within the critical disclosure space opened bourgeois democracy had already begun to
up by this counter-historical discourse, the diminish; and a second ‘spectacular stage’,
traditional practice of history appears not as during which American sovereignty gained a
neutral and universal, but as a ritual that rein- certain degree of security through the
forces established sovereignty, a discourse violently repressive tactics of the McCarthy
that reinforces the law by erasing the funda- era during which no dissent was permitted;
mental relations of domination that under- Jackson argued that American sovereignty
gird it. In short, counter-history exposes had reached a third, secured stage of fascism,
traditional history as a form of codified which he called ‘corporativism’. Corporative
warfare.89 ‘It is interested in rediscovering capitalism is characterized by what he calls a
the blood that has dried in the [legal] codes ‘prestige of power’, which he describes as
[…] in the battle cries that can be heard follows:
beneath the formulas of right, in the dissym-
‘The prestige of power at its maturity is a
metry of forces that lies beneath the equilib-
thing that will prevent people from acting
rium of justice.’90 Counter-history, as an against that power. This pig is a psychological
analysis of the State, describes State sover- thing, a state of being wherein the
eignty as founded upon real, historical rela- bourgeoisie[’s] reign of terror need not rely
tions of force. Contra Hobbes, who argues on violence to sustain itself. It’s relying on
that the modern State emerges from ‘the war something that happened in the past, or some
of all against all’—an abstract notion of war accomplishment, or some, let’s say, coup,
construed as a generalized ‘state of nature’— that went down in the past, where it secured
counter-history argues that the order and itself. And it’s drifting at this point, the
peace of the law is undergirded by an actual, prestige of power means that it’s drifting at
this point and living off its laurels. At this
historically specifiable battle. This founda-
stage, people just are not inclined to attack
tional battle also continues to well up after
that power. So, consequently, our first attack
the State has been constituted, as the State is on the prestige of power. That was
repeatedly attempts to secure its (always Jonathan’s95 job, to destroy the prestige of
tenuous) monopoly over the legitimized power, the iconoclastic act of crushing
means of violence.91 symbols. Once these symbols are crushed,
Foucault characterizes the discourse of and people see that they are vulnerable, then
counter-history in the following way: we can move on to the actual destruction of
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 339

the bases of power. Because […] after the the sedimentations of slavery and white
destruction of the prestige of power, power supremacy that, while disguised by the pres-
will be forced to revert back to its original tige of power, remain at the heart of the
force, raw brute force—violence.’96 American republic.98 The Panthers argued
Jackson’s is a discourse that reveals the laws that a fundamentally racist, repressive war
of the USA as having been ‘born in the blood continually seethed beneath the surface of
and mud of battles’ and as covering over that American politics, and that this war wells up
foundational violence with the prestige of in order to govern racialized populations,
power. Whether it be the colonial proprietary especially those who challenge the conditions
and criminal codes that justified the genocide of their continued oppression.
of Native Americans, the slave codes that Consider the following comment about the
justified the continued enslavement of expro- repressive and racist character of American
priated Africans, postbellum Jim Crow laws, law that Davis provides from Marin County
or the so-called ‘war on crime’ that began to Jail in May 1971, 1 year before she was acquit-
take root in the late 1960s—American law and ted of all charges:
order, Jackson argues, has consistently and
predominantly manifested itself to black and ‘Needless to say, the history of the United
other nationally oppressed people as a form States has been marred from its inception by
an enormous quantity of unjust laws, far too
of codified and institutionalized violence.
many expressly bolstering the oppression of
And when real challenge is made to that
black people. Particularized reflections of
violence in its codified and institutionalized existing social inequalities, these laws have
forms, power reverts back to its original repeatedly borne witness to the exploitative
force: raw brute force—violence. and racist core of the society itself. For
A reversion of this kind, Jackson contin- blacks, Chicanos, for all nationally oppressed
ues, is precisely what took place when the people, the problem of opposing unjust laws
Black Panther Party came into being and and the social conditions which nourish their
began to crush the symbolic prestige of growth, has always had immediate practical
American governmental authority. implications. Our very survival has
frequently been a direct function of our skill
‘[O]nce secure and in power, it was possible in forging effective channels of resistance. In
for them [i.e. those in power] then to allow resisting we have sometimes been compelled
some dissent. It was possible for them to have to openly violate those laws which directly or
a C.P. (Communist Party), just so long as indirectly buttress our oppression. But even
that C.P. didn’t have any teeth; it was when containing our resistance within the
possible, then, for them to allow us to form orbit of legality, we have been labeled
what appeared to be an opposition party. criminals and have been methodically
But, now, to make my point very clear, a real persecuted by a racist legal apparatus.’99
opposition party did come into existence.
The BPP, Black Panther Party. What To the extent that they expose the racialized
happened? What happened: they reverted violence and oppression that State sovereignty
back to the second stage, back to the second at once bolsters and obfuscates, the analyses
dimension [of fascism]. They were kicking of Davis and Jackson epitomize the form of
doors in and killing people. It’s pretty race discourse that Foucault later champions
obvious, it’s pretty obvious that a mature
under the name of counter-history.
fascism exists in this country, and it exists in
Furthermore, the other, ‘inverted’ form of
disguise, and the disguise takes the form of all
those idiotic, ridiculous statements about the discourse of race struggle that Foucault
[this being] a welfare state.’97 describes in the 1976 Lectures—the ‘biological
transcription’ that develops into the kinds of
The Black Panther Party was nailed to the biological racist discourses of degeneracy that
orbit of State repression because it exposed inform biopolitical State racism—also
340 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

features in the analyses of Davis and Jackson. Manifesto was published, the GIP issued a
Biologico-social racism features in their anal- pamphlet on the assassination of George
yses as it does in most of the anti-essentialist, Jackson, and the next day held a meeting at
anti-racist discourses that emerged from the which they projected two films on the
third world liberation movements of the American prisons in San Quentin and
period—namely, as an object of critique. Soledad, where Jackson had been incarcer-
Take, for example, Davis’s argument (in the ated. The pamphlet, which included transla-
self-same 1971 essay to which Foucault had tions of two interviews with Jackson, a
access) that American governmental authority preface by Jean Genet and a strategical analy-
ascribes an ‘a priori culpability’ to those it sis of the discourses issued by the American
deems social enemies. She cites US Judge prison authorities and popular press regard-
Webster Thayer’s comment upon sentencing ing Jackson’s death, was written by Foucault,
anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti to 15 years von Bülow and Defert. In the final words of
imprisonment in 1920 for an attempted his preface, Genet writes:
payroll robbery: ‘This man, although he may
not have actually committed the crime attrib- ‘We [i.e. the GIP] maintain the following:
uted to him, is nevertheless morally culpable, The word “criminal,” applied to blacks by
because he is the enemy of our existing insti- whites, has no meaning. For whites, all blacks
tutions.’ Associating this policy to the legal are criminals because they’re black. This
amounts to saying that in a white society, no
theory put forth by Nazi Germany’s foremost
black can be criminal.’102
constitutional lawyer Carl Schmitt—accord-
ing to which, ‘[a] thief, for example, was not
In the American context, of which Foucault
necessarily one who has committed an overt
was clearly aware, racism operated in a
act of theft, but rather one whose character
distinctly ‘biopolitical’ mode; it served as the
renders him a thief’—Davis attributes such a
‘indispensable precondition’ that allowed the
policy of a priori culpability to the existing
State to subject its own population to expul-
American governmental authority.
sion and rejection, and to social, civic and
‘[President Richard] Nixon’s and [FBI biological death.103 As Davis and Jackson
Director] J. Edgar Hoover’s pronouncements point out, the American judicial and penal
lead one to believe that they would readily systems are at the center of this racist function
accept Schmitt’s fascist legal theory. Anyone of the State, playing a strategic role in the
who seeks to overthrow oppressive State’s fight to preserve the existing conditions
institutions, whether or not he has engaged in of social domination.
an overt illegal act, is a priori a criminal who It is precisely in virtue of this strategic role
must be buried away in one of America’s that the Black Panthers ascribed an equally
dungeons.’100
strategic role to American prisoners in the
revolutionary movement. Davis and Jackson
Davis further indicates the way that this a
were, again, among the first to thematize and
priori culpability ultimately gets articulated
strategically organize this continuity between
in biological terms, inscribing itself, within
the prison movement and the revolutionary
the American context, upon the bodies of
movement at large. Consider the following
black and other racialized individuals. ‘For
exchange in an interview just before
the black individual, contact with the law-
Jackson’s death.
enforcement-judicial-penal network, directly
or through relatives and friends, is inevitable Jackson: ‘[…] [T]he prison movement was
because he or she is black.’101 started by Huey P. Newton and the black
This argument gets directly taken up by panther party. Huey and the rest of the
the GIP. On 10 November 1971, the same comrades around the country. We’re
day that a French translation of the Attica working with Ericka [Huggins] and Bobby
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 341

[Seale], the prison movement in general, the lumpenproletariat, in revolutionary struggle,

movement to prove to the establishment that must be given serious thought. […] In the
the concentration camp technique won’t context of class exploitation and national
work on us. We don’t have to contrive any oppression it should be clear that numerous
importance to our particular movement. It’s a individuals are compelled to resort to
very real, very, very real issue and I’m of the criminal acts, not as a result of conscious
opinion that, right along with the student choice—implying other alternatives—but
movement, right along with the old, familiar because society has objectively reduced their
workers’ movement, the prison movement is possibilities of subsistence and survival to
central to the process of revolution as a this level. This recognition should signal the
whole.’ urgent need to organize the unemployed and
lumpenproletariat, as indeed the Black
Karen Wald: ‘Many of the cadres of the Panther Party as well as activists in prison
revolutionary forces on the outside have been have already begun to do.’105
captured and imprisoned. Are you saying
that even though they’re in prison, these On this point as well, a direct genealogical
Figure 7 Huey P. Newton behind bars (Jeffrey Blankfort).

cadres can still function in a meaningful way line can be traced from the thought of Davis
for the revolution?’ and Jackson to that of Foucault and the GIP.
In the concluding section of their pamphlet
Jackson: ‘Well, we’re all familiar with the
on George Jackson, devoted to ‘Jackson’s
function of the prison as an institution serving
Position in the Prison Movement’, the GIP
the needs of the totalitarian state. We’ve got
to destroy that function; the function has to write that ‘the most notable aspect of
be no longer viable, in the end. It’s one of the [Jackson’s] reflections is that which regards
strongest institutions supporting the the relations between military action and
totalitarian state. We have to destroy its political action’—what they go on to call ‘a
effectiveness, and that’s what the prison fundamental problem’.106 Referring to the
movement is all about. What I’m saying is BPP’s many revolutionary survival programs,
that they put us in these concentration camps the GIP contend that:
here the same as they put people in tiger cages
or “strategic hamlets” in Vietnam. The idea is ‘[t]hese programs enable the black
to isolate, eliminate, liquidate the dynamic community to organize itself. However, they
sections of the overall movement, the will be increasingly threatened by fascist
protagonists of the movement. What we’ve repression. This is why Jackson wrote that
got to do is prove this won’t work. We’ve got these programs will quickly become
to organize our resistance once we’re inside, inconceivable without a military rampart.
give them no peace, turn the prison into just
another front of the struggle, tear it down For at least two years, Jackson had the task of
from the inside.’104 preparing this military protection, and of
preparing it from within the prisons, where
The Black Panthers not only conceived of disarmed and shackled men were trained for
the prison as a site of struggle for those war. This is Jackson’s grand initiative. Two
imprisoned for their involvement with the profoundly connected facts made this
revolutionary movement outside the prison possible: on the one hand, the entire black
walls. They also thought of the prison as a vanguard lives under the threat of prison, and
place to politicize the many unemployed, so- many of its leaders remain there for quite a
called ‘common law’ prisoners. long time; on the other hand, this presence, in
turn, moves other prisoners to become
‘Especially today when so many black, politicized. One of these prisoners, for
Chicano, and Puerto Rican men and women example, when asked what his plans are for
are jobless as a consequence of the internal when he is released, responded, “To help my
dynamic of the capitalist system, the role of people.” Hence, not only in the ghettos, in
the unemployed, which includes the the factories, in the rebellions in the military,
342 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

but also in the prisons, nuclei of resistance are kills, it is not as a glorification of its strength,
taking form, the elements of the but as an element of itself that it is obliged to
revolutionary army. tolerate, that it finds difficult to account
for.’108
These previsions overturn many traditional
ideas about the imprisoned in the history of This theory begins to take shape in the GIP’s
the working class movement. depiction of the official discourse of San
Quentin prison authorities in the wake of
From within the prisons, Jackson prepared Jackson’s assassination. The GIP claims that
the military protection necessary for political
the American prison administration launched
work; preparation that had not yet been
a series of ‘counteroffensive operations’ in
consolidated before it was threatened by the
authorities that systematically practice the form of communications, news and
homicide. That’s the reason why, outside the disclosures, in order to mold public opinion
walls of the prisons, political organizations and ‘prepare a certain number of repressive
launch military operations in order to rescue measures’. One of the aforementioned opera-
and liberate prisoners whose lives are daily tions, they claimed, was to represent the
threatened. Angela Davis became a heroic power of the prison guards as a lenient,
figure for black people, when she was accused peaceful—even defenseless—force.
(despite belonging to the pacifist and legalist
U.S. Communist Party) of contributing to ‘On the side of the prisoners [were] all of
the bold action of support, undertaken from the weapons, all of the cunning, and all of
the outside on August 7, 1970, to rescue the violence; opposite them [were] guards
Soledad prisoners. On both sides of the walls, who were empty-handed, impotent, and
the army of the prisoners and the army of the absent-minded. The blacks are the ones
people are preparing themselves for the same waging permanent war; the whites are
war of liberation.’107 attempting to maintain a lenient order. If
the guards don’t want to be the first and
The juxtaposition of Davis’s and Jackson’s only victims, they will be forced to return,
writings and the GIP’s engagement with them as Jim Park [the assistant warden of San
further evidences the degree to which the Quentin] said, “to old correctional
events of revolutionary anti-racist struggle in methods.” One day, they too will be forced
to be armed.’109
the USA motivated Foucault’s turn to the
method of genealogy, to the institution of the
This reversion to ‘old correctional methods’,
prison, and to the concepts of carcerality,
to which the assistant warden of San Quentin
discipline and biopower. The writings of the
alludes, is precisely what in Foucault’s
Black Panthers served as the model for
vocabulary would later be cast as a reversion
Foucault’s reflections on the continuity of
from the ‘faceless gaze’ or ‘empty-handed’
politics and warfare in the published works of
force of disciplinary power to the explicitly
1975–76. They also in many ways function as
bellicose violence of spectacular power.
precursors to Foucault’s theory of the spec-
Racialized communities in the USA have
tacular power/disciplinary power schematic.
continually experienced and observed just
Foucault argues that in the historical tran-
such a reversion. Before his death, Jackson
sition from the spectacular power regime to
brought it to theoretical articulation in his
that of disciplinary power, punishment
analysis of American fascism and ‘the pres-
‘tend[s] to become the most hidden part of
tige of power’. Where power’s prestige wears
the penal process’.
thin, where the ‘empty-handed’ force of
‘As a result, justice no longer takes public disciplinary power fails in its effort to manu-
responsibility for the violence that is bound facture docile bodies, the State brings to bear
up with its practice. If it too strikes, if it too the sovereign weight of spectacular violence
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 343

upon its own subjects. In Jackson’s words, ‘a mechanism that allows biopower to work.
power ‘reverts back to its original force, raw [It] is bound up with the workings of a State
brute force—violence’. This is precisely what that is obliged to use race, the elimination of
happened when the Black Panther Party races and the purification of the race, to
exercise its sovereign power. […] Biopower
came into existence. ‘What happened: they
functions through the old sovereign power of
reverted back to the second stage, back to the
life and death’
second dimension [of fascism]. They were
kicking doors in and killing people.’
Foucault was aware of the coexistence in and the way that it does so ‘implies the
the USA of spectacular and disciplinary workings, the introduction and activation, of
modalities of power, and he was cognizant, racism’.112
from afar, of the dimensions of race that regu- It is beyond doubt that Foucault knew of
lated the dissymmetrical deployment of spec- the Black Panthers and their revolutionary
tacular violence upon the American people. struggles. He knew about a real ‘race war’
Indeed, he wrote about it—in a political being waged by the government of the USA
pamphlet that had very limited circulation, against its racialized populations; he knew
but which was formative for his own thinking about the State racism that existed contem-
about power. The question must be asked: poraneously with his discourse. Not only did
Why, then, in his characterization of disci- Foucault elaborate his theories of biopower
pline and the ‘panoptic’ power regime in his and politics-as-war, as well as his genealogi-
widely distributed book Discipline and cal method as a whole, in concurrence with
Punish, did Foucault erase the spectacle of these events; he drew heavily from the theo-
racialized State violence?110 How, after know- retical writings of the Black Panthers in the
ing what he knew of the race struggle in the course of elaborating his theories. And yet,
USA, could he pen the following claim? Foucault makes not a single citation or
explicit reference to the BPP in his published
‘Our society is one not of spectacle, but of writings or lectures.
surveillance […]. We are neither in the We must ask ourselves two sets of ques-
amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the tions, the fundamental answer to which is, I
panoptic machine, invested by its effects of think, largely the same. The first stream of
power, which we bring to [bear upon] questions is the following: Why did Foucault
ourselves since we are part of its neglect to treat American State racism in his
mechanism. […] [T]he pomp of analysis of biopolitics and State racism in the
sovereignty, the necessarily spectacular
1976 Lectures? Why did he instead focus on
manifestations of power, were extinguished
the instances of Nazi Germany and the
one by one in the daily exercise of
surveillance […].’111 Stalinist Soviet Union, which were, in a
sense, more ‘safely’ implanted in the histori-
When forced by the phenomena of power cal past? Moreover, why did Foucault neglect
relations themselves to include the theme of to mention black power and the ways in
race in his analysis, as he does in the 1976 which his own analysis of power was
Lectures, Foucault is forced to very different inspired by the analyses and struggles of the
conclusions. He is compelled to formulate Black Panthers? Why, in the Collège de
the concept of biopower, in which race oper- France, was black power contorted into a
ates as the conduit through which the power European mold and suppressed from speak-
of normalization and the spectacular power ing? Finally, why did Foucault jettison any
of life and death commingle. ‘If the power of and all discussion of race or State racism
normalization wished to exercise the old from his first published writings on
sovereign right to kill, it must become racist.’ biopower in the initial volume of The
Modern racism is History of Sexuality?
344 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

The second stream of questions issues from constitutes one’s ‘epistemic “second
the silence that has until now followed in the nature”’.114
wake of Foucault, that is, the silence among ‘Our normal unreflective reception of
his variously disciplined commentators. Why what people tell us’, Fricker argues, ‘is
has the topic of Foucault and the Black conditioned by a great range of collateral
Panthers been ignored for so long? Why is it experience.’ Just as our actions toward others
that Foucault scholars and intellectual histori- are in many ways learned and internalized
ans have not only failed to propose possible through social processes of normalization,
answers to this question, but failed, for the ‘our responses to the testimony of others are
past 40 years, to even ask it? learned and internalized through processes of
The answers to these questions are simul- epistemic socialization—a social training of
taneously clear and obscure. One way of the interpretative and affective attitudes in
answering them might be simply to say that play when we are told things by other
the discourse and commitments of black people’.115 Importantly, this sensibility is not
power magnetize bullets; Malcolm X, Bobby immutable, it is not ‘a dead-weight social
Hutton, Alprentice ‘Bunchy’ Carter, Fred conditioning’, but rather is characterized by
Hampton, Mark Clark, Brenda Harris, an essential adaptability—hence, its claim to
Jonathan Jackson, James McClain, William be a capacity of reason.116 One’s testimonial
Christmas, George Jackson and many others sensibility is thus an habitual (i.e. adaptable)
have been killed precisely for having structure of response that shapes what sorts
deployed them. The discourses of disciplin- of people one takes to be trustworthy in
ary power, biopower and governmentality, what sorts of circumstances. Epistemic injus-
by contrast, have received widespread tice occurs when ‘a speaker receives the
acclaim and attention in the American and wrong degree of credibility from his hearer
European academies; they have been incor- owing to a certain sort of unintended preju-
porated into numerous and variously disci- dice on the hearer’s part’, for example, when
plined academic narratives. a person or group of people are ritually
For all its truth, however, this response excluded from participating in truth-bearing
remains unsatisfactorily terse. In my discourse.117
concluding remarks, I would like to briefly Although not an instance of the verbal
consider two possible avenues of response to testimonial sort of epistemic injustice that
the questions posed here. The first response Fricker treats, the erasure of and silence
is posed within the horizon of ethics, the about the link between Foucault and the
second within the horizon of politics. Black Panthers, I argue, is a form of
epistemic injustice. Given Foucault’s
suppression of the link between his thought
IV. Epistemic injustice and disciplinary and that of the Black Panthers, given the
silence in truth-bearing discourse painstaking ethnocentrism with which he
casts the genealogy of the discourse of race
In an emerging debate on the ethics of testi- struggle in an exclusively European frame,
mony and the politics of knowing, feminist and given his silence about the State racism
philosopher Miranda Fricker has put forth of his time, I argue that Foucault is culpa-
the idea of epistemic injustice.113 She suggests ble of epistemic injustice. The philosopher
that individuals in unreflective testimonial who claimed to ‘desubjugate’ local, disqual-
exchanges exercise a ‘testimonial sensibility’ ified, marginalized or non-legitimized
that regulates the nature and degree of their knowledges through the practice of geneal-
receptivity to a speaker’s testimony. She ogy now appears, vis-à-vis the Black
describes this sensibility as ‘in the first Panthers, not only to have himself subju-
instance a passive social inheritance’ that gated just such a body of knowledges, but
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 345

to have subjugated the very knowledges

from which he largely culled his method of
genealogy.
One can only assume that Foucault takes
the so-called ‘counter-historical’ discourses
of Boulainvilliers and Thierry to be more
credible than those of Cleaver, Davis, Jack-
son, Newton, Seale, etc.—or, at the very
least, that he takes them to be more appropri-
ate or legitimate types of knowledge for
discussion in lectures and writings published
in such widely circulating, ‘truth-bearing’
institutions like the Collège de France and
major academic presses. (His one acknowl-
edgement of the philosophies and struggles
of the Black Panthers has until now remained
muted in a pamphlet in a Parisian archive
devoted to the documentation of Foucault’s
‘monument’.) The most generous reading of
the epistemic injustice that Foucault inflicted
upon the Black Panthers is perhaps to say
(speculatively) that he thought it ‘safer’ to Figure 8 The faulty charges currently being brought
cite revolutionary discourse from 17th- against the San Francisco 8 are the most recent attempt
century Europe and to critique instances of by the United States government to destroy and distort
State racism in Europe’s recent past than to the legacy of the Black Panther Party.
challenge the global institutions of authority
as the Black Panthers were doing in their follow Fricker in espousing an ethical virtue
philosophies and struggles. Such a reading, of of ‘reflexive critical openness’. By safeguard-
course, only serves to clarify the fact that ing against the kind of pre-propositional prej-
Foucault, by virtue of the position of his udicial attitudes that result in epistemic
discourse, enjoyed a kind of safety and injustice, such a virtue would play an impor-
distance from potential fire that the Black tant role in combating this ‘distinctively
Panthers did not. In any event, Foucault’s epistemic kind of oppression’. But Fricker
ethical culpability seems quite clear. herself acknowledges the restrictions placed
Assessing the ethical culpability of the on ethical action by the social and political
epistemic injustice inflicted in the wake of horizon within which that action takes place.
Foucault, however, is not quite as clear-cut a
task. Commentators who lacked access to the ‘[T]here are circumstances under which the
resources that evidence the link between virtue [of reflexive critical openness] cannot
Foucault and the Black Panthers—and which be achieved. […] As something possessed
[by] mere individuals whose social-historical
thereby disclose Foucault’s own suppression
situation can deprive them of the very
of that connection—cannot in good faith be
resources they need in order to attain the
judged responsible and culpable on ethical virtue, its anti-oppressive power remains
grounds for reinstantiating that erasure hostage to the broader social structures in
through their silence about it. The limitation which our testimonial practices must take
of an ethical framework for understanding place.’118
and evaluating the infliction of epistemic
injustice at this level is evident. Were an ethical One must pose the question, then, not
framework not limited in this way, we might within the horizon of the ethics of interper-
346 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 347

Figure 9 Information sheet from the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights.
348 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

sonal exchange, but rather within the horizon safeguarded against only after the social and
of the social and political formations within political injustices inflicted upon them have
which such interpersonal exchange takes been rectified. Epistemic and social justice
place. A shift of this sort moves us from remain impossible so long as these prisoners
Fricker’s ‘testimonial sensibility’, which have not been freed from confinement, and
operates at the individual level, to Foucault’s so long as others are not free from the threat
own analysis of the ‘will to truth’, which of being confined for struggling for their
operates at the level of the assemblage of freedom (Figures 8 and 9).
normalizing social institutions.
Figure 98 Information
The faculty charges
sheet from
currently
the Committee
being brought
for the
against
Defense
theof
San
Human
Francisco
Rights.
8 are the most recent attempt by the United States government to destroy and distort the legacy of the Black Panther Party.

‘[The] will to truth, like other systems of Notes

exclusion, rests on an institutional support: it
1 A shorter and otherwise modified version of this
1

is both reinforced and renewed by a whole

paper is appearing in Biopolitics and Racism:
strata of practices, such as pedagogy, of Foucauldian Genealogies, eds Jeffrey Paris and
course; and the system of books, publishing, Eduardo Mendieta (Albany: SUNY Press,
libraries; learned societies in the past and 2007).
laboratories now. But it is also renewed, no 2

2 Mao Tse-Tung, ‘On Protracted War’, Selected

doubt, more profoundly, by the way in Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol. II (Peking: Foreign
which knowledge is put to work, valorized, Language Press, 1965), p. 153.
3 Huey P. Newton, ‘Functional Definition of
3

distributed, and in a sense attributed, in a

society.’119 Politics’, The Black Panther, 17 January 1969;
reprinted in The Black Panthers Speak, ed. Philip
S. Foner (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1995
What does the silence regarding the link [1970]), p. 47.
between Foucault and the Black Panthers tell 4

4 George Jackson, ‘George Jackson: P.S., On

us about the will to truth that imperceptibly Discipline’, The Black Panther, 27 March
regulates the contemporary production, 1971.
5 This claim derives from Foucault’s 1976 lectures
5

disclosure and circulation of truth-bearing

at the Collège de France. Foucault foreshadows
knowledge? What is it about existing disci- this claim in 1975 in Discipline and Punish, and
plinary formations (both academic and he reiterates it in the 1976 publication of the first
social) that makes possible the kind of ethical volume of The History of Sexuality. Cf. Foucault,
and political deficiency that is evidenced by ‘Society Must Be Defended’: Lectures at the
Collège de France 1975–1976, trans. David
such a silence?
Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), p. 15
I am unequipped to answer such far-reach- (hereafter referred to as 1976 Lectures);
ing questions; in part, because their answer Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New
must ultimately be given by the temporally York: Vintage, 1999), p. 168; The History of
protracted domain of collective social practice. Sexuality, Vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:
Vintage, 1990), p. 93.
In the present paper, I can only hope to clarify
6 It is important not to overstate the radicality of
6

some of the questions involved. But I will say this change of orientation; for instance, there
this: according to information compiled by the exist several crucial elements of continuity
Prison Activist Resource Center and the between Foucault’s work of the 1960s and that
National Jericho Movement, there are over of the 1970s, namely, a concern with the role of
knowledge in processes of subjectivation. In
100 political prisoners and prisoners of war
addition, one can surely locate certain
currently confined in American detention components of Foucault’s analysis of power
centers, many of whom were incarcerated or relations and techniques of domination in the
have been maintained in prison because of earlier books Madness and Civilization (1961)
their activism within the Black Panther Party and Birth of the Clinic (1963). Nevertheless, the
shift that Foucault’s work undergoes in the early
or other third world liberation movements.120
1970s does lead to the displacement of certain
The epistemic injustice inflicted upon the concepts and the formulation of new ones. For
Black Panthers and other third world libera- example, ‘episteme’, a concept that pervades
tion movements can be rectified and the earlier texts, appears only once in Discipline
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 349

and Punish (p. 305), and the concept of ‘the 10 L’ordre du discourse (Paris: Gallimard, 1971),
historical a priori’ is abandoned entirely. As for p. 55; translated as ‘The Discourse on Language’
the methodological concept of ‘archaeology’, it and published as an appendix to The
is neither mentioned in Discipline and Punish nor Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 219. I have
‘The Discourse on Language’—a text written just modified the translation.
1 year after Foucault had so meticulously 11 It is important to note that Angela Y. Davis opted
11

defined the concept in The Archaeology of not to assume an explicit position within the BPP’s
Knowledge. leadership structure. In her introduction to The
7 See, for example, Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Angela Y. Davis Reader, Joy James reports the
7

Rabinow, Michel Foucault, Beyond Structuralism following:

and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 104–117; Béatrice ‘[Davis] describes her affiliation with the Panther
Han, Foucault’s Critical Project: Between the organization as a “permanently ambiguous
Transcendental and the Historical, trans.
status” that fluctuated between “‘member’ and
Edward Pile (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
‘fellow-traveler’.” Active in community
Press, 2002), pp. 73–108; Gilles Deleuze,
Foucault, trans. Seán Hand (Minneapolis: organizing, temporarily in charge of political
University of Minnesota Press, 1988) and education in the West Side office […] and
‘What is a Dispositif?’, in Michel Foucault: formulating political education for the Los
Philosopher, trans. Timothy Armstrong (New Angeles Chapter, Davis remained on the fringes
York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 159–168; of the Panthers’ internal contestations. Years
Beatrice Hanssen, Critique of Violence (New later, she recalls her doubts about the Party’s
York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 30–96; Jeffrey militarist posturing: “I thoroughly respected the
Minson, Genealogies of Morals: Nietzsche, BPP’s visible defiance and principally supported
Foucault, Donzelot, and the Eccentricity of
the right to self-defense.… I also found myself
Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 40–78;
using funerals and shootings as the most obvious
Peter Miller, Graham Burchell and Colin
Gordon (eds), The Foucault Effect (New York: signposts of the passage of time. However,
Harvester, 1991); Jeremy Moss (ed.), The Later sensing ways in which this danger and chaos
Foucault (New York: Sage, 1998); Gary emanated not only from the enemy outside, but
Gutting, Foucault and Literature: Towards a from the very core of the Black Panther Party, I
Genealogy of Writing (London: Routledge, preferred to remain uninformed about the
1992), pp. 119–146. organization’s inner operations.”’
8 As will be discussed below, the three published
8

documents, to my knowledge, where a Despite the distance she retained with respect to
connection between Foucault and the BPP is the BPP’s inner operations, Davis maintained her
mentioned are (1) the brief notes included in affiliation with the Party and remained a
Daniel Defert’s ‘Chronology’, Dits et écrits, Vol. 1 prominent figure in the black liberation movements
(Paris: Gallimard, 1994), pp. 33, 38, 39; (2) of the time. Cf. The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed.
Alessandro Fontana and Mauro Bertani’s editors’ Joy James (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), pp.
postscript to the 1976 Lectures, ‘Situating the 6–7.
Lectures’, where they cite Defert’s notes on the 12

12 I have translated part of this pamphlet into

connection (1976 Lectures, p. 282); and (3) English. See ‘The Assassination of George
Edmund White’s biography of Jean Genet, where Jackson’, in Biopolitics and Racism, op. cit.
he documents Foucault’s association with Genet, Original Fr. pub. Groupe d’Information sur
who was a prominent French literary figure, a les Prisons, L’Assassinat de George Jackson,
contemporary of Foucault, and a BPP supporter. «Intolérable», No. 3 (Paris: Gallimard,
See Genet: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1971).
1993), pp. 567, 570, 697 n. 43 (hereafter cited 13

13 Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons, Enquête

as Genet). The influence that the US black dans vingt prisons, «Intolérable», No. 1 (Paris:
liberation struggle had on the Groupe Champ Libre, 1971).
d’Information sur les Prisons, of which Foucault 14

14 According to Eribon, it was published in May,

was a founding member, is mentioned in Le according to Macey, it was published in June.
Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons: Archives Cf. Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault, trans. Betsy
d’une lutte, 1970–1972, eds Philippe Artières Wing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
et al. (Paris: IMEC, 2003), pp. 91–132. Press, 1991), p. 224; David Macey, The Lives
9 Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, of Michel Foucault (New York: Vintage, 1993),
9

Essential Works, Vol. 2, p. 386. p. 268.

10 15
350 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

15 Reflecting upon this break, Eribon writes: ‘How favorite toy. He did not fear us. Strangely, he
distant this text founding the GIP seems from the seemed to feel as one with us. His Yale
inaugural lecture at the Collège de France given [University] speech certainly showed a deep
just two months before!’ (p. 225). support for the significance of the [Black
16 ‘Outside La Santé’, Macey reports, ‘Foucault and
16

Panther] Party in American life. Perhaps, as

others were arrested on the grounds that their
an outsider, he perceived these other outsiders
leaflets had not been duly registered for
copyright’ (p. 270). as insiders?’
17 Foucault, ‘Je perçois l’intolérable’, interview with
17

Geneviève Armedler, Journal de Génève: Samedi Former BPP Chief of Staff David Hilliard shares
littéraire, Cahier 135, 24 July 1971. similar reflections of Genet:
18 Foucault, ‘Rituals of Exclusion’, in Foucault
18

Live: Collected Interviews, 1961–1984, ed. ‘Jean Genet, the French novelist and playwright,
Sylvère Lotringer (New York: Semiotexte, has come over to help mobilize support for us.
1989), p. 73. Genet’s an ex-inmate himself, a rebel and
19 Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: homosexual; although I don’t understand a word
19

Routledge, 1966/1994), p. xv. he says—and he claims not to know English—I

20 La garde à vue, as Macey describes it, ‘refers to feel we are completely and easily accepted by
20

the common police practice of holding people him, that this world-famous writer is a comrade in
without charge for a period of up to twenty-four arms.’
hours. […] The usual pretext for taking people
into custody is the alleged need to check their Cf. Mumia Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom: A Life
identity’ (p. 515 n. 1). in the Black Panther Party (Cambridge, MA:
21 ‘Création d’un Groupe d’Information sur les Southend Press, 2004), pp. 202–204; David
21

Prisons’, Esprit, March 1971, p. 531 (quoted in Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glory: The
Macey, p. 258). Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of
22 See Macey, pp. 209–236; Eribon, pp. 201–211. the Black Panther Party (Boston: Little, Brown,
22

23 Eribon, pp. 209–210. 1993), pp. 260, 285, 294.

23

24 Eribon, p. 210. 27 In a letter to Marianne de Pur in the summer of

24
27

25 White, Genet, p. 570. 1971, Genet wrote that George Jackson’s book
25

26 A number of BPP members have published Soledad Brother ‘has received a lot of attention
26

mention of their encounters with Genet during his here [in France]’ (cited in White, Genet, p. 562).
visit in the spring of 1970. Here is former BPP See George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison
member and current US political prisoner and Letters of George Jackson (New York: Bantom,
death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal recalling his 1970); the French edition was published in
encounter with Genet at the BPP national office in 1971, cf. George Jackson, Les Frères de
Oakland, California: Soledad. Lettres de prison, Paris, Gallimard,
1971.
28 A number of these statements have been
28

‘[Genet] seemed more honored to be in the

translated and published in Jean Genet, The
company of the Black Panthers than if he
Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, ed. Albert
were accorded an honor guard by the Dichy, trans. Jeff Port (Stanford, CA: Stanford
president of the United States. […] I often University Press, 2004).
wonder why his wordless visit stands so stark 29

29 Jean Genet, Preface to George Jackson’s

in my memory. It is not because he was the Soledad Brother (New York: Bantom, 1970),
only white visitor to the office. He wasn’t. p. 4.
30 For more on Davis’s life during this period, see
30

Several white radicals came by, some fairly

often, but almost all of them radiated fear Angela Y. Davis, An Autobiography (New York:
and discomfiture in the office. Genet seemed International Publishers, 1974).
31 Davis, as is generally well known, continues to be
31

oddly at home and at ease around the office.

a prominent leader and spokesperson in the
As a former prisoner, and a homosexual,
prison abolition movement.
perhaps he saw himself as the perennial 32

32 For further elaboration of this dual function of the

outsider, the consummate outlaw. I could tell American prison system, see Brady Heiner, ‘The
by his body language, by the openness of his American Archipelago: The Global Circuit of
face, by his vibration, that he really dug Carcerality and Torture’, in Colonial and Global
being in the office. It gave him a kick. He Interfacings, ed. Gary Backhaus (Cambridge
looked like a little boy who had found his Scholars Press, 2007).
33
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 351

33 In an essay written while incarcerated in May 42 Foucault, ‘Power Affects the Body’, in
1971, Davis explains that: Foucault Live, op. cit., pp. 207–208 (my
emphasis).
‘[a]fter the Civil War, the Black Codes, 43 For primary sources, see many of the published
43

successors to the Slave Codes, legalized convict writings and memoirs of members of the BPP, a
labor, prohibited social intercourse between by no means exhaustive list of which includes:
blacks and whites, gave white employers an Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row (New
York: Avon Books, 1995); All Things Censored
excessive degree of control over the private lives
(New York: Seven Stories, 2000); We Want
of black workers, and generally codified racism
Freedom, op. cit.; Safiya Bukhari-Alston,
and terror’. ‘Coming of Age: A Black Revolutionary’, in
Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political
Jackson writes in a July 1965 letter to his father: Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and
Rebellion, ed. Joy James (New York: Rowman
‘The forms of slavery merely changed at the and Littlefield, 2003); Philip S. Foner (ed.), The
signing of the Emancipation Proclamation Black Panthers Speak, op. cit.; David Hilliard
from chattel slavery to economic slavery. If and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glory, op. cit.;
you could see and talk to some of the George Jackson, Soledad Brother, op. cit., and
blacks I meet in here [i.e. prison] you would Blood In My Eye (Baltimore, MD: Black Classics
immediately understand what I mean, and Press, 1990 [1972]); Huey P. Newton, To Die
see that I’m right. They are all average, all for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton
with the same backgrounds, and in [prison] (New York: Writers and Readers, 1995 [1972]);
Huey P. Newton, The Huey P. Newton Reader,
for the same thing, some form of food
eds David Hilliard and Donald Weise (New
getting.’
York: Seven Stories Press, 2002); Bobby Seale,
Seize the Time (New York: Vintage, 1970
Cf. The Angela Y. Davis Reader, op. cit.,
[1968]); Assata Shakur, Assata: An
pp. 40–41; and Jackson, Soledad Brother, op.
Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1987);
cit., pp. 61–62.
Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Mumia Abu Jamal and
34 Angela Y. Davis, ‘A Statement on our Fallen
34

Assata Shakur, Still Black, Still Strong: Survivors

Comrade, George Jackson’, The Black Panther,
of the War Against Black Revolutionaries, eds
28 August 1971, p. 18.
Jim Fletcher et al. (New York: Semiotext(e),
35 For a more in-depth historical treatment of
35

1993).
the GIP than can be provided here, I
An orientational list of secondary sources
direct the reader to Le Groupe d’Information
includes: Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall,
sur les Prisons: Archives d’une lutte, 1970–
Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars
1972, eds Philippe Artières et al. (Paris:
Against the Black Panther Party and the
IMEC, 2003).
American Indian Movement (Boston: South End
36 GIP, Enquête dans vingt prisons, «Intolérable»,
36

Press, 1990); Kathleen Cleaver and George

No. 1 (Paris: Champ Libre, 1971). GIP, Enquête
Katsiaficas (eds), Liberation, Imagination, and
dans une prison-modèle: Leury-Méroqis,
the Black Panther Party (New York: Routledge,
«Intolérable», No. 2 (Paris: Champ Libre,
2001); Charles E. Jones, The Black Panther
1971).
Party Reconsidered (Baltimore, MD: Black
37 GIP, Suicides de prison, «Intolérable», No. 4
37

Classics Press, 1998); Jack Olson, Last Man

(Paris: Gallimard, 1972). As Foucault
Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of
biographer David Macey points out, the title of
Geronimo Pratt (New York: Doubleday, 2000);
the pamphlet Suicides de prison ‘makes telling
Nkechi Taifa et al., ‘Human Rights: U.S.
use of the conjunction de: these are not suicides
Political Prisoners and COINTELPRO Victims’, in
which simply happen to occur in prison. They
States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and
are caused by the prison system: the prison’s
Prisons, ed. Joy James (New York: Palgrave,
suicides’ (p. 287).
2002).
38 See GIP, ‘The Assassination of George Jackson’,
38

44 Among the primary texts from the American black

44

in Biopolitics and Racism, op. cit. Fr. pub.

power movement that had been translated and
L’Assassinat de George Jackson, «Intolérable»,
were circulating in France during this period were
No. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).
(1) Eldridge Cleaver’s early memoir Soul on Ice
39 White, Genet, p. 697 n. 43.
39

(New York: Dell, 1968), Fr. pub. Panthère noire,

40 White, Genet, p. 567.
40

Paris, Seuil, coll. «Combats», 1970; (2) a small

41 GIP, Enquête dans vingt prisons (quoted in
41

95-page transcription of a series of interviews

Macey, pp. 268–269).
42
352 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

with Angela Y. Davis recorded while she was through the lens of what is generally considered
awaiting trial in 1970, entitled Angela Davis to be identity politics today. But as a matter of
parle, Paris, Éditions Sociales, 1971; (3) a fact, the black power movement per se was not
translation of Davis and Bettina Aptheker’s If They an exclusive movement. There were people of
Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance (New
all racial/ethnic backgrounds involved in that
York: Third Press, 1971), Fr. pub. S’ils frappent à
movement. There was a connection with global
l’aube, Paris, Gallimard, 1972; (4) Davis’ An
Autobiography, op. cit., Fr. pub. Autobiographie, movements. […] We were part of a global
Paris, Albin Michel, 1975; (5) George Jackson’s revolution. There was no question about the
Soledad Brother, op. cit., Fr. pub. Les Frères de importance of making those connections and
Soledad. Lettres de prison, Paris, Gallimard, building those bridges.’
1971; (6) Jackson’s posthumously published book
Blood In My Eye, op. cit., Fr. pub. Devant mes The above quotation is transcribed from an
yeux, la mort, Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Témoins», interview recorded on the documentary CD
1972; (7) Huey P. Newton’s ‘Declaration at the Prisons on Fire: George Jackson, Attica & Black
Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention’ Liberation, produced by the Freedom Archives,
(delivered Nov. 1970), Fr. pub. ‘Declaration and available at www.freedomarchives.org. On
à la Convention constitutionelle des peuples the internationalist character of the Black Panther
révolutionnaires’, La Taupe bretonne, No. 2, Party, see also Eldridge Cleaver, ‘The Land
decembre 1971; (8) a tract by Huey P. Newton Question and Black Liberation’ (April/May
translated as ‘Mouvement noire et lutte 1968), in Post-Prison Writings and Speeches,
révolutionnaire’, Partisans, No. 44, octobre– ed. Robert Scheer (New York: Ramparts, 1969);
novembre 1968; (9) Bobby Seale’s Seize the Lee Lockwood, Conversation with Eldridge
Time, op. cit., Fr. pub. À l’affût. Histoire du parti Cleaver (New York: Delta, 1970); Huey P.
des Panthères noires, Paris, Gallimard, 1972; Newton, To Die for the People, op. cit.; The
(10) Philip Foner’s anthology The Black Panthers Huey P. Newton Reader, pp. 181–293 (esp.
Speak, op. cit., Fr. pub. Les panthers noires pp. 181–199); and Abu-Jamal, We Want
parlent, Paris, François Maspero, coll. «Cahiers Freedom, pp. 80–88.
47 Cleaver, ‘The Land Question and Black
47

libres 224–225», 1971; and (11) an anthology

of BPP writings edited by Yves Loyer entitled Black Liberation’, op. cit., pp. 123–124.
48 Point Ten of ‘The Ten-Point Platform and Program
48

Power (Études et documents), Paris, EDI, 1968.

45

45 Mumia Abu-Jamal provides the following of the Black Panther Party’ (October 1966),
characterization of the early ideological original emphasis.
49 Cf. Foner, ‘Introduction’, The Black Panthers
49

formation of the BPP:

Speak, p. xxxvii.
50 ‘Call for Revolutionary People’s Constitutional
50

‘In the beginning, the Black Panther Party for

Convention’, reprinted in The Black Panthers
Self-Defense was, for want of a better term, a
Speak, pp. 268–271.
Malcolmist party. […] The influence of Malcolm
51 Bobby Seale, Seize the Time, op. cit.,
51

X permeated early BPP thought, rhetoric, and pp. 116–117 (my emphasis).
self-perception. In this formative period, the BPP 52

52 Dhoruba Bin Wahad (formerly Richard Moore)

used language and themes that did not was a former Black Panther leader who was
significantly differentiate it from other Black wrongly convicted on evidence that was falsely
nationalist groups of the period […]. This meant, concocted by the FBI. Falsely imprisoned for
in practical terms, that whites were anathema to 19 years, he argues that America’s COINTELPRO
any organizational or political work.’ (We Want enacted a civil war against its colonial interior in
Freedom, op. cit., pp. 80–81) the late 1960s and early 1970s.

‘The implementation of the Counterintelligence

See also The Huey P. Newton Reader, op. cit.,
Program transcended mere investigation. It was
pp. 1–180.
46

46 Angela Y. Davis speaks of the international and in effect a domestic war program, a program
multi-racial character of the liberation movements aimed at countering the rise of Black militancy,
of the 1960s and 1970s: Black independent political thought, and at
repressing the freedoms of Black people in the
‘Today people tend to think about the United States. The Counterintelligence program
movements of the 60s as movements that were can be seen as a program of war waged by a
very separate, nationalist, [and] racially- government against a people, against its own
defined, because they’re looking at them citizens. It was a program of domestic warfare.’
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 353

Dhoruba Bin Wahad, ‘War Within’, in Still Black, defcon1/davisinterview.html, consulted 7

Still Strong: Survivors of the War Against Black October 2006. See also Angela Y. Davis,
Revolutionaries, eds Jim Fletcher et al. (New York: Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons,
Semiotext(e), 1993), p. 18. Bin Wahad was and Torture (New York: Seven Stories Press,
released in 1990 after a New York State judge 2005).
found that the FBI had suppressed crucial 64 ‘Interview with George Jackson 3-29-71’, The
64

evidence from his defense. Black Panther, 3 April 1971, p. 6.

53 See Churchill and Vander Wall, Agents of 65 A separate work would be required to assess
53 65

Repression, op. cit.; Nkechi Taifa et al., ‘Human the points of disagreement that exist between the
Rights: U.S. Political Prisoners and COINTELPRO works of Davis and Jackson during this period.
Victims’, in States of Confinement, ed. Joy James Divergences between their respective political
(New York: Palgrave, 2002). analyses, as well as their respective strategic
54 Bobby Seale, ‘The Ten-Point Platform and assessments of effective political action at the
54

Program of the Black Panther Party’, The Black time, are quite evident. This is partly evidenced
Panther, 18 October 1969 (reprinted in The by the somewhat removed stance Davis
Black Panthers Speak, p. 80). maintained in relation to the internal leadership
55 My account of this action closely follows, of the BPP (cf. note 11). By no means does the
55

sometimes to the letter, that of Foner in his present work intend to represent Davis and
Introduction to The Black Panthers Speak. Cf. Jackson as homophonous figures; for they are
p. xxviii. not. However, there are salient points of
56 Quoted in Foner, ‘Introduction’, The Black continuity between their respective analyses of
56

Panthers Speak, p. xxviii. the prison, as being both a repressive and

57 Seale and Newton originally chose the name of ideological State apparatus, and of prisoners, as
57

the Black Panther Party because the panther is being political agents in more global struggles.
reputed never to make an unprovoked attack but These dimensions of their thought continue to
to defend itself ferociously whenever it is influence prison abolitionism in the present day;
attacked. Cf. Foner, ‘Introduction’, The Black they also greatly informed the French prison
Panthers Speak, p. xv. abolition movement of the 1970s, and
58 Bobby Seale, Seize the Time, pp. 412, 418–419. Foucault’s political philosophy of the same
58

59 See Churchill and Vander Wall, Agents of period.

59

Repression, op. cit., and The COINTELPRO 66 Le Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons:
66

Papers (Boston: South End Press, 1990); Archives d’une lutte, 1970–1972, eds Philippe
Nkechi Taifa et al., ‘Human Rights: U.S. Artières et al. (Paris: IMEC, 2003), pp. 92–93.
Political Prisoners and COINTELPRO Victims’, This and all subsequent translations of this work
op. cit. are my own.
60 Safiya Bukhari-Alston, ‘Coming of Age: A Black 67 Discipline and Punish (1975), the 1976 Lectures
60 67

Revolutionary’, in Imprisoned Intellectuals: and the first volume of The History of Sexuality
America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, (1976).
Liberation, and Rebellion, ed. Joy James (New 68 The Freedom Archives has produced an extremely
68

York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), p. 126 (my informative documentary audio CD on the Attica
emphasis). rebellion and the assassination of George
61 Joy James, ‘Introduction’, The Angela Y. Davis Jackson, entitled Prisons on Fire: George Jackson,
61

Reader, p. 14. Attica & Black Liberation, available at

62 Angela Y. Davis, ‘Political Prisoners, Prisons, and www.freedomarchives.org. For more information
62

Black Liberation’, The Angela Y. Davis Reader, on the Attica rebellion, see the ‘Attica Revisited’
pp. 41, 43–44. Also available online in the e- web resources at www.talkinghistory.org/attica.
book History is a Weapon, A copy of ‘The Attica Liberation Faction
www.historyisaweapon.org. Hereafter referred to Manifesto of Demands and Anti-Depression
as PP. Platform’, drafted by the resisting prisoners, can
63
63 For an analysis that demonstrates the continued also be found online at The Harriet Tubman
relevance of Jackson’s critique of the American Literary Circle website: http://www.brown.edu/
prison system, see Brady Heiner, ‘The American Departments/African_American_Studies/JJames/
Archipelago: The Global Circuit of Carcerality incarceration/attica_manifesto.pdf (accessed 27
and Torture’, op. cit.; see also the discussion January 2007).
between Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez 69

69 For secondary (and sometimes contradictory)

published in ‘The Challenge of Prison Abolition: sources on George Jackson’s life and the
A Conversation’, History is a Weapon, circumstances of his assassination, see Churchill
available at http://www.historyisaweapon.com/ and Vander Wall, Agents of Repression, op. cit.;
354 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

Angela Y. Davis, An Autobiography, op. cit.; Jo Manifesto, 11 May 2004. My English

Durden-Smith, Who Killed George Jackson? translation, ‘The United States Underground’,
(New York: Knopf, 1976); Joy James (ed.), is available on the Prison Activist Resource
Imprisoned Intellectuals (New York: Rowman and Center website: http://www.prisonactivist.org/
Littlefield, 2003), pp. 84–87; Paul Liberatore, The pipermail/prisonact-list/2004-May/
Road to Hell: The True Story of George Jackson, 008991.html
Stephen Bingham, and the San Quentin 76 In 2000, after 25 years of delays by the State,
76

Massacre (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, New York State was forced to settle for $12
1996); Eric Mann, Comrade George: An million in a civil suit that was originally filed in
Investigation into the Life, Political Thought and 1974 and in which juries ruled that the State
Assassination of George Jackson (New York: had engaged in cruel and unusual punishment,
Harper and Row, 1974). violating human and civil rights. Cf. The
70 GIP, ‘The Assassination of George Jackson’, Freedom Archives, Prisons on Fire, op. cit.; and
70

trans. Brady Heiner, in Paris and Mendieta (eds), the ‘Attica Revisited’ web resources at
Biopolitics and Racism, op. cit. www.talkinghistory.org/attica. The quotation
71 Davis, An Autobiography, op. cit., p. 319. from the NY State Special Commission on Attica
71

72 Ibid., p. 317. is cited in Voices of Freedom: An Oral History

72

73 Transcribed from archival audio, The Freedom of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s
73

Archives, Prisons on Fire, op. cit. through the 1980s, eds Henry Hampton and
74 On the morning prior to the massacre on 13 Steve Fayer (New York: Bantam, 1991), p.
74

September 1971, William Kunsler, a lawyer 561.

who was serving as an intermediary in 77 Transcribed from archival audio, The Freedom
77

negotiations between the prisoners and the Archives, Prisons on Fire, op. cit.
State, made the following prophetic statement to 78 Le Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons, op. cit.,
78

the press: p. 124.

79 It is on precisely this point that Foucault makes his
79

‘We implore [the Commissioner], we implore only mention of the Black Panthers, aside from that
him now, to have no force in there [i.e. inside made in the GIP’s pamphlet L’Assassinat de
the prison]. They [i.e. the prisoners] want to George Jackson. In a letter to Daniel Defert he
continue to talk. If they [i.e. the agents of the writes that the Black Panthers ‘are developing a
State] go in there, it’s going to be a massacre in strategic analysis that has emancipated itself from
Marxist theory’. See Daniel Defert, ‘Chronologie’,
this prison, and it’s on the heads of the
Dits et écrits, Vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1994),
authorities if it takes place. […] [Governor
pp. 33, 38, 39. Also see Alessandro Fontana and
Rockefeller’s] refusal to come here is a Mauro Bertani’s editors’ postscript to the 1976
monstrosity, because what he is saying is: “Kill Lectures, ‘Situating the Lectures’, where they cite
these men, I have no concern. All I want to do is Defert’s notes on the connection (1976 Lectures,
restore law and order.” And I think that’s a p. 282).
rotten exchange for lives.’ (Transcribed from 80 Daniel Defert, ‘The “Mechanism of War” as an
80

archival audio, The Freedom Archives, Prisons Analytic of Power Relations’, trans. Brady Heiner,
on Fire, op. cit.) in Paris and Mendieta (eds), Biopolitics and
Racism, op. cit.
75 Immediately after the exposure of the torture 81 Literally translated, mise en abîme (also mise
75 81

that was organized and carried out by CIA en abyme), means ‘placing into an abyss’
and US military personnel at Abu Ghraib or ‘placing into infinity’. The expression is
prison in Iraq, Silvia Baraldini wrote an op- used to describe a formal technique
ed piece describing the torture that New employed in painting, film and literature in
York Sate Troopers and National Guards which a frame-structure is constructed whose
had enacted against Attica prisoners in the internal structure reiterates the frame-structure
violent counter-revolutionary aftermath of the ad infinitum, effecting a kind of recursion.
Attica prisoner revolt. The State’s treatment of My thanks to Sam Butler for calling my
Attica prisoners in 1971 belies, over against attention to some of the nuances of this
official State rhetoric to the contrary, that the expression.
systematic use of torture has remained a 82 Cf. Foucault, 1976 Lectures, pp. 7–9.
82

hallmark of the State’s official and de facto 83 Defert, ‘The “Mechanism of War” as an Analytic
83

procedure for the treatment of racialized of Power Relations’, op. cit.

subjects deemed ‘resistant’. See Silvia 84 Cf. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Part
84

Baraldini, ‘Nei sotterranei degli States’, Il Five.

85
HEINER: FOUCAULT AND THE BLACK PANTHERS 355

85 Numerous commentators, particularly in the 87 ‘Racism is, quite literally, revolutionary discourse
area of postcolonial studies, have critically in an inverted form.’ Cf. Foucault, 1976 Lectures,
pointed out how Foucault remained, as James pp. 61 and 81.
Clifford put it, ‘scrupulously ethnocentric’. 88 Cf. 1976 Lectures, pp. 76–77, and the
88

Gayatri Spivak and Ann Laura Stoler have first volume of The History of Sexuality,
each rightly dismissed Foucault’s genealogies of pp. 92–102.
power as self-contained versions of history that 89 Cf. Foucault, 1976 Lectures, pp. 49–51.
89

remain only about the West. For instance, 90 Ibid., p. 56.

90

Stoler writes: 91 Cf. ibid., pp. 87–114.

91

92 Foucault, 1976 Lectures, pp. 50–51.

92

‘In both the [1976] lectures and [The History of 93 Jackson, Blood In My Eye, op. cit., p. 99.
93

94 In addition to Soledad Brother and Blood In My

94

Sexuality] volume one, the focus is on the

internal dynamics of European states and their Eye, see ‘Comrade George Jackson on Angela
disciplinary biopolitical strategies. Contiguous Davis’, The Black Panther, 13 March 1971; and
‘Field Marshal George Jackson Analyzes the
empires figure in Foucault’s genealogy of racism
Correct Method in Combating American
in his lectures, but imperial expansion outside
Fascism’, The Black Panther, 4 September 1971.
Europe does not. In short, the genealogy of The latter of these was posthumously transcribed
racist discourse is sui generis to Europe: colonial from an audio recording that was played at
genocide is subsumed, dependent, accounted Jackson’s funeral.
for, and explained in absentia.’ 95

95 On 7 August 1970, Jackson’s 17-year-old

brother, Jonathan, entered the Marin County
See Clifford, The Predicament of Culture Courthouse during the trial of prisoner James
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, McClain, who was charged with the attempted
1988), p. 265; Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern stabbing of a Soledad prison guard.
Speak?’, in Marxism and the Interpretation
of Culture, eds Cary Nelson and Lawrence ‘Jonathan Jackson armed McClain and, with
Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois prisoner witnesses Ruchell Magee and William
Press, 1988); and Stoler, Race and the Christmas, herded the assistant district attorney,
Education of Desire (Durham, NC: Duke
Judge Harold Haley, and three jurors into a van
University Press, 1995). Stoler citation from
parked outside. Law enforcement officers fired
pp. 28–29.
86

86 Paolo Napoli makes a similar argument in a upon the parked van without regard for the
debate on the 1976 Lectures: hostages, as was prison policy, killing
Christmas, McClain, and Jackson; wounding
‘At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Magee; and killing Haley and wounding other
when Boulainvilliers affirms that “the Gauls hostages.’ (George Jackson bio in James,
were invaded by the Franks,” he expresses Imprisoned Intellectuals, op. cit., p. 85)
something that probably doesn’t correspond to
The GIP wrote about their understanding of
the actual truth. But if one gives up that
Jonathan Jackson’s actions.
empirical and descriptive approach and
places oneself on the terrain of the very ‘Sequestering a judge in a full courtroom,
construction of historical events, as is Jonathan Jackson denounced justice as an
Foucault’s intention, it is less a matter of evident instrument of the fascist repression of the
saying what occurred than of releasing a new U.S.—the justice that, with its white judges and its
possibility for speaking, of taking a position in white juries, consigned hundreds of thousands of
the present, and thus of producing reality. In African Americans to the blood-thirsty slave-
short, what is at stake is a veritable historical drivers of concentration camps. He demonstrated
practice: saying and doing history fall within that the act of supporting prisoners is one of the
the province of the same act.’ forms of war.’ (‘The Assassination of George
Jackson’, in Biopolitics and Racism, op. cit.)
Foucault’s own discourse in the 1976 Lectures, I
argue, is just such an attempt at historical 96

96 ‘Field Marshal George Jackson Analyzes the

practice, at taking a position in the present. Correct Method in Combating American
Napoli’s intervention appears in Defert, ‘The Fascism’, The Black Panther, 4 September 1971,
“Mechanism of War” as an Analytic of Power p. 3.
Relations’, op. cit. 97
97 Ibid., p. 5.
87
356 CITY VOL. 11, NO. 3

98 Angela Y. Davis articulates a similar position at 110 For a critique of this erasure in Foucault’s analysis
98

this time: in Discipline and Punish, see Joy James, ‘Erasing

the Spectacle of Racialized State Violence’, in
‘Although the most unbridled expressions of the Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender,
fascist menace are still tied to the racist and Race in U.S. Culture (Minneapolis:
domination of blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Minnesota University Press, 1996), pp. 24–43.
[and] Indians, it lurks under the surface wherever Ariana Mangual and I wage a similar critique of
there is potential resistance to the power of Foucault in the context of an analysis of the
monopoly capital, the parasitic interests which function of schools in racialized communities. See
control this society.’ (PP, p. 51) ‘The Repressive Social Function of Schools in
Racialized Communities’, in States of
99 Davis, PP, p. 40.
99

Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons,

100 Ibid., p. 42 (my emphasis).
100

ed. Joy James (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp.

101 Frantz Fanon famously advances a similar
101

222–230.
argument in his analysis of the colonial situation: 111 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 217.
111

‘The native is a being hemmed in […]. 112 Foucault, 1976 Lectures, pp. 256, 258.
112

Confronted with a world ruled by the settler, the 113 Miranda Fricker, ‘Epistemic Injustice and a Role
113

native is always presumed guilty.’ See Wretched for Virtue in the Politics of Knowing’,
of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New Metaphilosophy, 34(1/2) (January 2003),
York: Grove, 1963), pp. 52, 53. The Davis quote pp. 154–173. Fricker’s analysis is developed
above comes from PP, p. 50 (my emphasis). further in Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics
102 GIP, L’Assassinat de George Jackson,
102

of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

«Intolérable», No. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 2007).
p. 11. 114 Fricker, ‘Epistemic Injustice and a Role for Virtue
114

103 Cf. Foucault, 1976 Lectures, p. 256.

103

in the Politics of Knowing’, p. 161.

104 Published online: ‘Remembering the Real
104

115 Ibid.
115

Dragon—An Interview with George Jackson, May 116 Ibid., p. 163.

116

16 and June 29, 1971’, History is a Weapon, 117 Ibid., p. 153.

117

www.historyisaweapon.org. Also: 118 Ibid., pp. 170, 172.

118

www.brown.edu/Departments/ 119 Cf. note 10.

119

African_American_Studies/ 120 The Prison Activist Resource Center: http://

120

wayland_fac_seminar/interview/ www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows. The Jericho

george_jackson.html Movement: http://www.thejerichomovement.com
105 Angela Y. Davis, PP, p. 46.
105

106 GIP, ‘The Assassination of George Jackson’, in

106

Biopolitics and Racism, op. cit.

107 Ibid.
107

108 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 9.

108

Brady Thomas Heiner is in the Department

109 GIP, ‘The Assassination of George Jackson’, in of Philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook, New
109

Biopolitics and Racism, op. cit.

110
York, USA. E-mail: [email protected]