1. re:
> Foucualt would not call this change "progress", as in better, but he
>would certainly call it a drastic change. By progressive I only mean a
>drastic change, and that such change continued in its transformation in
>liberal societies ( I am putting no normative value on the term progressive).
language does indeed effect our reality and affect our receptions of
realities; thus, my pedantic lingering on "progress": you may not be
putting a normative value but the word insists upon a teleological value, as
it were. there is no progress without an endpoint, which is indeed often
enough explicitly the beginning/origin point. to judge a beginning or end
requires a perspective/a framework of value or assumptions. its precisely
such a perspective that allows endpoint/origin points to be asserted that
F.'s philosophical works allows and urges us to throw out. this is one
reason why f. was never a "good" historian in the normative sense: he never
sought causal explanations that had beginnings and endings! you can
understand then why if you had used the word "progress/progressive" in
regard to what f. "tells us" i got a little nervous. the concept is foreign
to his thinking:every event of change was not a moment of progress but a
complex contestations of heterogenous vectors, thus progress i suspect
occlouds ones vision of this understanding.
2. re:
>By "first and foremost" I am suggesting that Foucault's motivation
>for his works was an obvious sympathy for the human condition in
contemporary >liberal societies.
I wonder what the point is in proclaiming him to be first and foremost
anything. I imagine f. responding to such assertions as he did in the intro
to the archeology: "let the police keep my papers in order" my suspicion
or question when i hear you wanting to categorically categorize him is that
there is some lingering hope for a humanist resolution of domination -- some
kind of "theoretical policy" statement from F. that stems from his "obvious"
sympathy to HUMAN condition in LIBERAL SOCIETY that leads OUT of domination.
[ps, many feminists in fact did not find what you found to be so
"obvious"-- his "sympathy" for "humans"! they actually found him to be
obviously misogynist and so on.; not that i agree or disagree, but that it
makes me question your authority to speak with truth about "F." and his
texts and makes me wonder if there is other motivation in your insistence on
asserting him to be first and foremost was this or that or the other thing.]
3. re:
> Foucualt finds such power,>responsible for the destruction of
individuality and freedom, as indicative of > the human condition in liberal
society, particularly for such individuals as> gays, lesbians, people of
color, the insane, those on the margins of social
> acceptability.
this i would suggest is an erroneous reading/understanding of Foucault,
whether the archeological, or genealogical or technological (of the self)
Foucault. why? because, he is arguing that the RISE of a mode of
individuality/individualism is only possible in the condition of precisely
the mode of power that you are state above is "destroying" it! if one were
to reread the intro to discipline, i think it is nicely stated there around
page 32-34 when he contrasts durkheimian approach to his. he state that how
can we analyze the UNDERBELLY of the rise of the individuality/ism
associated generally with modernity/capitalism in terms of power; and
further that it is this more subtle, elastic, invisible, objectivist power
that creates the necessary conditions for there to come into existence the
individualism of capitalism/modernity. the power that you assert is
destroying individuality is the power that ENABLES that individuality --
this thesis is clearly elaborated and explained in the history of sex vol.
1. Thus, also, In previous organizations of power (different "regimes of
truth") there were DIFFERENT modalities of individualism/ity, thus it is
only possible to argue that the disciplinary mode of power DESTROYED those
previous modes of individual, if you are going to assert that there is an
ESSENTIAL nature to individuality. you may do so, but it would be erroneous
to attach Foucault's name to that idea!
Foucault is not a humanist -- the list has already seen the song and dance
debating this point, so i will only invoke it. But the idea that foucault
analyzes how a true individuality/ism is "destroyed" oppressed/repressed,
etc. by the mode of power that came into existence with modernity and
capitalism is to read Foucault as a humanist who is trying to reveal somehow
the lock to the chain that enslaves our true human individualities. I think
not; i think you are imposing this reading.
4. RE:
>There is no doubt, despite your claims to the contrary, that
> Foucualt's political project was designed to find ways in which
individuals > can become, in some small way, human beings who create aspects
of their own > subjectivities as free, autonomous human beings, even as it
is admitted that > such a task is unlikely given the pervasive nature of
power (see Foucault on > resistance, transgression, aestheics of the self).
please tell me why your assertions are more valid than mine? is it because
yours are yours and mine are not yours? or is there some other Reason your
assertions are more True?
I think you are doing a tremendous violence to Foucault's texts (his social
science studies/analyses). you are reading him as a humanist. if he had
actually written this way, then all of the feminists, marxists, and liberal
rightists and leftists would not have gotten so upset at his antihumanism!
the history of sex. vol. 1 is explicit on this point, at the end of the book
he says that those who argue that individual "liberation" (here in terms of
sexuality/sex) is a RUSE! it IS NOT an escape from power, or an opening into
freedom or autonomy. if pervasive it would simply be another mode of the
organization of power. Foucault' does not give us ways however small to
create our own subjectivities as free autonomous human beings. this i am
afraid is a gross misreading: instead, he constantly tells us how specific
modes of power pervade any form of individuality and both., simultaneously
constrain, regulate and ENABLE that individuality.
5. RE:
> Foucualt, I would argue, is first and foremost a philosopher of the human
condition (not the only one to
> be sure), and he is secondly an historian, who uses historical evidence
as >the > tools to illuminate his larger philosophical critique of
contemporary liberal societies (his philosophical/political stance on
liberalism is the binding > force of his works).
so, now you return to your assertion of what Foucault is "first and
foremost." And, it seems that your return to this issue after it seems to
me that you misread Foucualt as a humanist, my suspicion that i had
confessed to above seems justified.
6. RE:
>My motivation for writing the initial post was to suggest that there is a
large degree of coherence in Foucualt's work, if one accepts that Foucualt's
>project was primarily philosophical and political, rather than as an
historian >offering discrete and disconnected accounts of history.
>Greg Coolidge
>Univ, Cal., Riverside
>
>
LEt me get this straight, then, you are suggesting that if one overlooks the
DISCONTINUITIES then one can discover the CONTINUITIES?
If, in other words, you fill the gaps, the gaps disappear?
if you fill in the potholes with enough words, you can smoothe the road, eh?!
my view is that focault was not into repairing roads, but rather he sought
to uncover and enlagre all the potholes and the ditches concealiing the
discarded bodies lost in the paving of the humanist road of progress. Nor
was he into designing or building new roads to Humanity, but he did point
out the bumps and gulleys in the road we are on and that indeed the "road"
leds not to Nowhere (utopia) but to anywhere.
[I will avoid my "poetic" (or perverse?) urge to expand this metaphor by
populating the scene with a policemen overseeing a car wreck {imagine
Walter Benjamin with a badge asking for the drivers' license...} while to
the side we see other policemen and policewomen beating up various aliens
and illegals of multiple sexual orientations, colors, and genders with
copies of Rousseau, Kant, Das Kapital, Betty Friedan, ok ! ok! i am getting
caried away:) soory. foregive me... oouch! somebody just hit me with a
flying piece of discarded truck siding!]
please don't ban me from the list after this. i promise i will
autodiscipline my comments better.)
beast witches,
quetzil:)