First of all, the caricatured conspiracy theory that someone proposed was
simply an exagerration of my position is *not* Chomskyism - and second,
even if it were, what would be wrong with that? I'm very interested in
Foucault as a theorist of "conspiracies without conspirators" - just
because no conspiracy can hope to unilaterally determine the outcome of
things doesn't mean that there are no conspiracies.
Also, I never said that history was little more than a dominant group's
attempts to shore up its power. Quite the contrary, actually. I said that
competing forms of history, in the process of their discursive
elaboration, come to function as tactics within political struggles. Now,
a political struggle implies at least two sides, and either side will
have its form of history. Only certain histories function as attempts to
shore up dominant regimes (and this very notion has certain problems) -
other histories have liberatory aims and effects. And this is the
criteria I think one should use to decide between histories - not their
more or less skillful use of a certain set of historiographic criteria -
since every such set is already irretrievably ideologically laden.
Vis-a-vis the "meanings" of events - of course events have meaning, but
only as part of a certain narrative that relates it to other events in
certain ways. Now to postulate an event as a cause of another event
implies a certain notion of causality, a mechanism of causation, a
certain notion of historical time (this is by no means an easy or
self-evident concept), etc. etc. In _The Archaeology of Knowledge_,
Foucault begins by questioning the validity of all these easy categories
one makes use of to make sense of history: cause, influence, etc. He
calls them all rather magical. The writing of history is always a
"making" of meaning, and this operation on traces of events really has to
do with the present. It is, after all, "making meaning" - so who makes
it? Not the events themselves. In whose interests? Mine or theirs? This
must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Different, even contradictory
histories can serve my interests at different moments, and at the same
time, the same history can serve contradictory interests. See the section
on the "tactical polyvalence of discourses" in _The History of Sexuality:
Volume I_ (around page 110, I think).
Finally, why do you need an "objective" reason to care more about
yourself than about obscure 19th century European sex-guys? Of course you
don't have an "objective" reason - but you don't need one. You don't have
an objective reason to do anything, but that doesn't stop you.
bye bye.
malcolm
simply an exagerration of my position is *not* Chomskyism - and second,
even if it were, what would be wrong with that? I'm very interested in
Foucault as a theorist of "conspiracies without conspirators" - just
because no conspiracy can hope to unilaterally determine the outcome of
things doesn't mean that there are no conspiracies.
Also, I never said that history was little more than a dominant group's
attempts to shore up its power. Quite the contrary, actually. I said that
competing forms of history, in the process of their discursive
elaboration, come to function as tactics within political struggles. Now,
a political struggle implies at least two sides, and either side will
have its form of history. Only certain histories function as attempts to
shore up dominant regimes (and this very notion has certain problems) -
other histories have liberatory aims and effects. And this is the
criteria I think one should use to decide between histories - not their
more or less skillful use of a certain set of historiographic criteria -
since every such set is already irretrievably ideologically laden.
Vis-a-vis the "meanings" of events - of course events have meaning, but
only as part of a certain narrative that relates it to other events in
certain ways. Now to postulate an event as a cause of another event
implies a certain notion of causality, a mechanism of causation, a
certain notion of historical time (this is by no means an easy or
self-evident concept), etc. etc. In _The Archaeology of Knowledge_,
Foucault begins by questioning the validity of all these easy categories
one makes use of to make sense of history: cause, influence, etc. He
calls them all rather magical. The writing of history is always a
"making" of meaning, and this operation on traces of events really has to
do with the present. It is, after all, "making meaning" - so who makes
it? Not the events themselves. In whose interests? Mine or theirs? This
must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Different, even contradictory
histories can serve my interests at different moments, and at the same
time, the same history can serve contradictory interests. See the section
on the "tactical polyvalence of discourses" in _The History of Sexuality:
Volume I_ (around page 110, I think).
Finally, why do you need an "objective" reason to care more about
yourself than about obscure 19th century European sex-guys? Of course you
don't have an "objective" reason - but you don't need one. You don't have
an objective reason to do anything, but that doesn't stop you.
bye bye.
malcolm