>Gabriel Ashes comments on semiotics are very interesting for a critique of
>reductionist linguistic determinations (I recently read an essay by
Raymond
>williams who made a marxist critique of Saussure as the bourgeois
linguist.
> Williams' insistence on language as a process of social production seems
>to open the door a little on an easy vulgar po-mo model that simply posits
>language as the as the overriding producer of subjectivities) GA's
comments
>also shed some much needed light on the general topic of
>post-structuralist/postmodernist stuff. If anything, I think a discussion
>on any of these issues, and on Foucault in particular, must emphasize the
>context in which the issues is being posed, that is, one's disciplinary
>adversaries and general project. Pomo lit-crit is of quite a different
>sort than that of the social sciences, etc.
>
>post-structuralist/postmodernist is a sort of a misnomer, but it does
>successfully mark out a site of confrontation. I study in a place where
>habermassianism is a very pervasive influence, and I constantly find
myself
>on the same well travelled paths, carrying a "post modern" banner which
has
>somehow been attatched to some aspect of my argumnent. In any case, if
>anything, Foucault is a good strategist, and I for one am just as
>interested in hearing how list participants develop "foucauldian content"
>out of their specific strategies and confrontations as I am in the
>exigetical side.
>
>(I have studied Foucault with an analytic philosopher who taught it as a
>pretty straight foreward historical sociology of knowledge and made polite
>excuses for his sloppier excesses).
>
>sam
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