Re: Judith Butler

At 08:42 AM 5/9/96 +0100, you wrote:

>I also still didn't get a reply about the bombi-ness of feathers. Still,
>this won't worry Quetzil, he's probably convinced himself I don't exist.

hm.

A
>sociological theory of Disneyworld Murphy has called it recently. Good ploy
>for those in power though, as anyone in Britain watching the debate on
>poverty will tell you. Did you know there is no such thing as poverty in
>Britain now. Why? because government ministers decreed it so. The 'speech
>act' has been uttered. We have made it go away. Good isn't it. Quetzil
>supplies the final nail in the coffin though when he uses as an example a
>piece of _science fiction_ to bolster his arguments (if this is the right
>word).


you confuse many things my dear colin. such as the difference between speech
itself and discourse and discourse and formations of discursive practices.
But, also you get VERY confused by WHAT YOU SAY and confused between WHAT I
SAY AND WHAT YOU THINK I SAID or would like me to have said. you have this
wonderful capacity for projection.; but see if you can try to listen to what
i say and not confuse my arguments with what you may have read in the
newspaper headlines.

a foucaultian approach depends upon understanding SOCIAL FORMS/CONTEXTS that
involve human agencies that are in conflict in multiple ways/forms. no one
has argued that reality gets constituted by some Adam who gives things names
and thus they become real, and what was not named is not real or existant.
your difficulty in grasping the sociological dimension of foucaultian
analysis might be simply your PROJECTION of a methodological individualism
or it may be your inability to grasp the complexities of sociological facets
of human collectivity which may be getting submerged in your predilection to
seek philosophic universalisms. a first premise for foucault/foucaultians
is that the world is social and the complex particularities of its
construction cannot be reduced to a single act of makine a single
statement, whether in a london newspaper or the miami herald.

As one of my colleagues is prone to remind us theorists and amateur
>philosophers: 'all this theory and the bodies keep piling up'.


> Again, won't worry Quetzil though. They aren't 'really there'.
>
>Colin Wight
>

colin, perhaps you can tell us what kind of philosophic argument it is that
you are making here?



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