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.
>
> Any conspiracy worth the name has conspirators. The only conspirator
>that's not human is the invisible hand.
I actually very much like the idea and phrase of conspiracy witohut
conspirators and was going to applaud it when it first hit the list. in
this context of the foucault list, it is inddeed a clever spin on one of
Focuault's lines somewhere in those 8-10 pps. defiining power in
his.sex.vol.1 (and elsewhere of course) regarding power strategies as not
having have a subject (subjectless will to power, eh?) -- but on the
contrary defining power as multple contesting subjects and wills and forces..
thus, it is in fact NOT an "invisibile hand" theory, but a theory of the
visible forces engaged in heterogenous struggles -- they are there, those
subjects in stuggle, just look --
but, one must actually make the foucaultian leap/turn/jump/2step to buy into
that notion of power. otherwise, one would in fact argue that this is
absurd and that that would imply some kind of hegelian or related
spirt/subject that moves the social -- here the invisible hand invokes adam
smith, no? invisible hand versus invisible spirit. but in either case that
kind of reading into foucault is misplaced. foucault is precisely trying to
conceptualize an analytical framework that does not fall into those traps of
theoretical superstitions -- superstitions because as theories of the social
we postulate some kind of "magical" "ether" that hides behind, beyond,
within the apparent social relations and take this as our object of study.
[i am taking from christopher herbert, CULTURE AND ANOMIE, chicago 1991, for
this argument; not mine, wish it were]. thus, from one angle f.s power
theory seeks to eliminate such idealist premises of the social by trying to
make power a very tangible entity that is spatial arrangments,
orchestrations of bodies, gestural systems, temporalities, architectures,
discourses, words....
thats all.
put another way,
>
>> 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.
>
> If a particular event in the past served the present interests of no one,
would
>the epistemic status of that event differ from that of a past event which
is a point of
>political conflict?
>
>> 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?
>
>But are all events the object of present interests?
>
>> 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.
>
> Two things. First, "Pavarotti is not a famous car racer." Second and
naturally,
>I care more about myself than I do about most everyone I've never met --
they are
>abstractions in my mind (Altantan, Jew, microbiologist) but they are also real.
>
> But what about these obscure sex-guys? I don't inderstand.
>
> Also what about there being an objective reason not to do something?
>
>********************************************************
>Nicholas Dronen
>Carpe Ya-ya.
>http://w3.servint.com/cognigen/f/fci.cgi?dr2864423
>********************************************************
>