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26 Int'l J. Semiotics L. 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/intjsemi26 and id is 1 raw text is: Int J Semiot Law (2013) 26:1-4 DOI 10.1007/si 1196-012-9269-6 A Note on Electric Dogs, by Way of an Introduction to Foucault, Semiotics and (the Biopolitics of) Justice Ronnie Lippens Published online: 20 April 2012 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 In 1973 Foucault published a short paper on La Force de Fuir, or the force of evasion, the force to flee. Flight requires force. And force is, always and already, evasion, if not flight. The paper was later included in Dits et kcrits (on pp. 401-405). The paper was written in 1972, on the occasion of an exhibition of Paul Rebeyrolle's (1926-2005) series The Prisoners at Galerie Maeght in Paris. Rebeyrolle had painted a series of ten works which, each, depicted dogs (the prisoners) in cages. Some of the dogs in the series are lying down, others seem to be very agitated, tugging frantically at the ramshackle walls, boards and wire mesh of their prisons, until, finally, some make their escape, with an intense joy, or an electric shiver, as Foucault writes (all translations in this introduction: RL). The dogs are only vaguely recognisable as dogs. On Rebeyrolle's canvases, that which is supposed to represent a dog is a mere collection of broad brush-strokes. Granted, the brush-strokes suggest furry texture, or better still, straw-like twigs that stretch out perpendicularly. But, Foucault writes, they are actually more like a kind of shiver, a sombre electric presence in the night. Rebeyrolle's dogs are not so much form, as energy. Less a presence, more like an intensity. They are less like a movement, or attitude, but are, rather, akin to an agitation or to a trembling, hardly contained. Spinoza seems to be looming large here and indeed Foucault does use the Dutchman's name in the paper. And Foucault, always an admirer of Gilles Deleuze's work, must have been reading Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipe at about the time of the Rebeyrolle exhibition. That which flees, that which evades, that which escapes from cages and prisons, that which creeps horizontally around and through the verticality of cages, grids and walls, or that which ultimately, and triumphantly, makes walls crumble (Foucault's words), is sheer electrical energy, sheer force. It is an earthy shiver, a trembling from and in matter. The signs of this shiver, this tremble, are everywhere: dogs scratching, howling, fleeing and leaving tracks on surfaces; a series of paintings hanging in a room; prisoners R. Lippens (E) Keele University, Keele, UK e-mail: r.lippens@keele.ac.uk I Springer

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