On Sat, 27 Apr 1996, Malcolm Dunnachie Thompson wrote:
> 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.
>
I'm interested in this. One of the criticisms made of Foucault in Hoy's
Foucault: A Critical Reader is precisely his theory of history
without the Hegelian (or even Marxian) subject, while his more empirical
works tend to produce overarching periodizations, simultaneous
transitions between modes of discourse etc. - all of which seem to imply
either a sort of virtual historical subject, or a 'hidden hand' type
mechanism by which unintended effects of actions build up into coherent
wholes. Any thoughts on how the contradiction could be approached, or
specifically how such a mechanism could operate in the field of, say,
discourse on madness?
Ex-lurker,
Dave Hugh-Jones
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'Yes, that's my mother all right, but my mother's the Virgin Mary, you know.'
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dash2@xxxxxxxxx
> 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.
>
I'm interested in this. One of the criticisms made of Foucault in Hoy's
Foucault: A Critical Reader is precisely his theory of history
without the Hegelian (or even Marxian) subject, while his more empirical
works tend to produce overarching periodizations, simultaneous
transitions between modes of discourse etc. - all of which seem to imply
either a sort of virtual historical subject, or a 'hidden hand' type
mechanism by which unintended effects of actions build up into coherent
wholes. Any thoughts on how the contradiction could be approached, or
specifically how such a mechanism could operate in the field of, say,
discourse on madness?
Ex-lurker,
Dave Hugh-Jones
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
'Yes, that's my mother all right, but my mother's the Virgin Mary, you know.'
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
dash2@xxxxxxxxx