Bryan wrote:
>> Well, of course. This is like discovering that Marxism doesn't provide one
>> with strategies for eliminating class conflict under capitalism. Not much
>> of a discovery, and not much of a criticism.
> It wasn't meant to be clever. If anything it is sad. Reminds me of
> something my mother used to say, if its going to be critical, make it
> constructive.
What do you mean by "constructive"? That it should give you prescriptions
on how to improve liberal Western democracy? I am trying to ask you why,
if this is your goal, you are looking for advice amongst people who are
essentially _against_ liberal Western democracy and its "improvements",
and who think that the so-called "humanism" of this system is basically
anti-human -- if I, too, may profit from the appaling muddledness with which
everybody is throwing these concepts around just to jerk themselves off, as
it seems. If one insists on speaking in terms of historical political
movements, Foucault's thought probably has the most kinship with various
forms of anarchism. There is nothing "sad" about this. There is nothing
"sad" in thinking that we need something radically different than what
we have now. You may disagree, and think that what we have now can be
hacked; but if you want to argue that it can be hacked so as to "fix"
what the poststructs are against, then you should at least do your homework
and understand _what_ they are against and why they argue what they argue.
-malgosia
------------------
>> Well, of course. This is like discovering that Marxism doesn't provide one
>> with strategies for eliminating class conflict under capitalism. Not much
>> of a discovery, and not much of a criticism.
> It wasn't meant to be clever. If anything it is sad. Reminds me of
> something my mother used to say, if its going to be critical, make it
> constructive.
What do you mean by "constructive"? That it should give you prescriptions
on how to improve liberal Western democracy? I am trying to ask you why,
if this is your goal, you are looking for advice amongst people who are
essentially _against_ liberal Western democracy and its "improvements",
and who think that the so-called "humanism" of this system is basically
anti-human -- if I, too, may profit from the appaling muddledness with which
everybody is throwing these concepts around just to jerk themselves off, as
it seems. If one insists on speaking in terms of historical political
movements, Foucault's thought probably has the most kinship with various
forms of anarchism. There is nothing "sad" about this. There is nothing
"sad" in thinking that we need something radically different than what
we have now. You may disagree, and think that what we have now can be
hacked; but if you want to argue that it can be hacked so as to "fix"
what the poststructs are against, then you should at least do your homework
and understand _what_ they are against and why they argue what they argue.
-malgosia
------------------