John Ransom <RANSOM@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
So if I may rephrase your question to say, "Please explain
>how a Fascist Foucaultian can exist?" I would like to try a
>brief answer.
Thanks you.
>But first I have a question: What is it about a fascist
>Foucaultian that gives you pause? What is it in Foucault's
>theory, books, arguments--as distinct from his personal
>life and personal political commitments--that makes you
>wonder about this particular possibility?
"It's not a matter of emancipating truth from every sytem of power (which
would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching the power
of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within
which it operates at the present time (Power & Knowledge/ed. Colin Gordon,
p. 133)."
This and hundreds of other similar quotes, I think, justify my skepticism
about Foucaultian fascism.
>And so for instance a fascist could read _Discipline and
>Punish_ and come away saying: Some great ideas here! I
>should try some of this stuff!
There is a unceasing debate about whether Heidegger was a Nazi on the
Heidegger list. Are you saying there is such a thing as a Nazi Foucault,
whoops, I mean a Nazi Foucaultian?
(By the way, I'm not sure there can be a Foucaultian or a Nietzschean, for
the reasons you raise.)
So if I may rephrase your question to say, "Please explain
>how a Fascist Foucaultian can exist?" I would like to try a
>brief answer.
Thanks you.
>But first I have a question: What is it about a fascist
>Foucaultian that gives you pause? What is it in Foucault's
>theory, books, arguments--as distinct from his personal
>life and personal political commitments--that makes you
>wonder about this particular possibility?
"It's not a matter of emancipating truth from every sytem of power (which
would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching the power
of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within
which it operates at the present time (Power & Knowledge/ed. Colin Gordon,
p. 133)."
This and hundreds of other similar quotes, I think, justify my skepticism
about Foucaultian fascism.
>And so for instance a fascist could read _Discipline and
>Punish_ and come away saying: Some great ideas here! I
>should try some of this stuff!
There is a unceasing debate about whether Heidegger was a Nazi on the
Heidegger list. Are you saying there is such a thing as a Nazi Foucault,
whoops, I mean a Nazi Foucaultian?
(By the way, I'm not sure there can be a Foucaultian or a Nietzschean, for
the reasons you raise.)