1. Let me quote Foucault (PK 132):
"There is a battle 'for truth,' or at least 'around truth'--
...by truth I do not mean 'the ensemble of truths which are
to be discovered and accepted,' but rather 'the ensemble of
rules according to which the true and the false are separated
and specific effects of power attached to the true'..."
For Foucault there is no truth that allows for theories to be true
or even propositions to be true, since there is no universal
truth, no universal constants that allows for a correspondence
between brute facts and value-laden, interpretive analyses...
Everything is always already an interpretation. Of course that
does not mean that we cannot do propositional logic or scienti-
fic enterprises (because we actually do), they only belong to
different levels of discursive games, if you will, since each
field of discursivity implies different sets of rules and
different knowledge/power relations, different regimes of
veridiction and jurisdiction... For F it is simply impossible
thus to separate theory from practice, although he strategically
conceives of both discursive and nondiscursive practices. That
is why Habermas fails to understand F when he says that F's
genealogy is grounded in a theory of power (PDM). There is no
theory of power (or history, for that matter) in F. His analyses
seek only to establish the historical a priori that allows for
regimes of truth, power relations and modes of subjectivation to
produce, at different times and places, knowledges (savoirs),
mechanisms of power (the Ancient polis, the modern state, etc) and
moral subjects and their codes of conduct.
2. That is why F uses the word "dispositif" to mark himself off
from Althusser, who uses the word "appareil" (apparatus) to maintain
that there are no ideological apparatuses that are not at the same
time State apparatuses. F's analyses of concrete devices of power
(analyses des dispositifs concrets de pouvoir) displace does the foci
and agency of power --from the State, macrolevel towards the excluded
elements of a microphysics that is still being inscribed as subjects of
truth, power and ethics --history in the making (and writing). Thus
although I find the rapprochement w/ Gramsci very interesting, I still
find it difficult to be reconciled w/ F's nonteleological, nonhomogeneous
regimes of truth. (cf. Remarks on Marx; Deleuze's and Balibar's essays
in Michel Foucault Philosopher)
to be discovered and accepted
"There is a battle 'for truth,' or at least 'around truth'--
...by truth I do not mean 'the ensemble of truths which are
to be discovered and accepted,' but rather 'the ensemble of
rules according to which the true and the false are separated
and specific effects of power attached to the true'..."
For Foucault there is no truth that allows for theories to be true
or even propositions to be true, since there is no universal
truth, no universal constants that allows for a correspondence
between brute facts and value-laden, interpretive analyses...
Everything is always already an interpretation. Of course that
does not mean that we cannot do propositional logic or scienti-
fic enterprises (because we actually do), they only belong to
different levels of discursive games, if you will, since each
field of discursivity implies different sets of rules and
different knowledge/power relations, different regimes of
veridiction and jurisdiction... For F it is simply impossible
thus to separate theory from practice, although he strategically
conceives of both discursive and nondiscursive practices. That
is why Habermas fails to understand F when he says that F's
genealogy is grounded in a theory of power (PDM). There is no
theory of power (or history, for that matter) in F. His analyses
seek only to establish the historical a priori that allows for
regimes of truth, power relations and modes of subjectivation to
produce, at different times and places, knowledges (savoirs),
mechanisms of power (the Ancient polis, the modern state, etc) and
moral subjects and their codes of conduct.
2. That is why F uses the word "dispositif" to mark himself off
from Althusser, who uses the word "appareil" (apparatus) to maintain
that there are no ideological apparatuses that are not at the same
time State apparatuses. F's analyses of concrete devices of power
(analyses des dispositifs concrets de pouvoir) displace does the foci
and agency of power --from the State, macrolevel towards the excluded
elements of a microphysics that is still being inscribed as subjects of
truth, power and ethics --history in the making (and writing). Thus
although I find the rapprochement w/ Gramsci very interesting, I still
find it difficult to be reconciled w/ F's nonteleological, nonhomogeneous
regimes of truth. (cf. Remarks on Marx; Deleuze's and Balibar's essays
in Michel Foucault Philosopher)
to be discovered and accepted