Thinking with Foucault about Outcaste Buddhism Asceticisms as a Challenge to Panoptic/Carceral Brahmanisms

In his essay, “Pedagogy and Pederasty,” Leo Bersani suggested that Foucault’s oeuvre could be split into two distinct conceptions of power. The first was a conception of panoptic power most clearly articulated in Foucault’s poststructuralist masterpiece, _Birth of the Prison_. On this model, the individual body has no freedom—the body is an instrument of the governmental structure which exercises absolute domination. The second was the conception of power found in Foucault’s histories of asceticism. Bersani was extraordinarily critical of these volumes on ancient asceticism, accusing Foucault of abandoning the theoretical rigor of _Birth of the Prison_ and instead buying into the fantasy that one might be made more free through the ascetic process of intensification of one’s relationship to one’s desires. In this paper, I will explore how Foucault’s two seemingly irreconcilable models (explaining how the self negotiates power) help us to articulate a history of “untouchable” Buddhist asceticism.