On Sun, May 19, 1996 12:10:51 AM, divakar goswami wrote:
> F was only interested in those discourses that
>in some way had the influence to establish "truth." Why would
>he be interested in marginal discouses ?
I think this is the thrust of DeCerteau's critique. Here's a passage:
"By showing, on one case, the heterogeneity and equivocal relations of
appartuses and ideologies, he [Foucault] constituted as a treatable
historical object this zone in which technological procedures have specific
effects of power, obey their own logical modes of functioning and can
produce a fundamental diversion within the institutions of order and
knowledge. It remains to be asked how we should consider other, equally
infinitesimal procedures, which have not been 'privileged' by history but
are nevertheless active in innumerable ways in the openings of established
technological networks. This is particularly the case of procedures that
do not enjoy the precondition, associated with all those studied by
Foucault, of having their own place (un lieu propre) on which the panoptic
machinery can opetate. These techniques, which are also operational, but
initially deprived of what gives the others their force, are the 'tactics'
which I have suggested might furnish a formal index of the ordinary
practices of consumption."
Practice of EverydayLife (Berkely: University of California Press, 1984)
trans. Steven Rendall, p. 49.
I think this is a succinct summary of DC's critique of F. However, I don't
really see the critique. HE seems to be complicit with much of what F says
about discursive operations, the establishmet of hegemony and the
establishment of marginality of various discursive operations. He takes
those marginal or "deposed" discourses, which F as early as archealogy of
knowledge sees operating at the margins or on the "exterior" of privileged
discourses (magic deposed by science, torture deposed by detainment and
correction) and gives them the name "tactics" (which he opposes to
"strategies of dominant discourses) and decides to make this a central
concern for his investigation.
This is not a critique. I don't think. He is just focusing on something
that F acknowledged and decided not to pay much attention to.
What might be criitcal is his insistence that such marginal
practices/discourses/tactics are more the product of a subjective
determination, however this might be explained. For F, these margins where
traces lodged in the body (nietzsche, genealogy history....) or ethics of
the self etc. He seems to really want to emphasize the oral tradition, or
some kind of history of locutionary acts, "story telling" as the site of
such resistances.
sb
> F was only interested in those discourses that
>in some way had the influence to establish "truth." Why would
>he be interested in marginal discouses ?
I think this is the thrust of DeCerteau's critique. Here's a passage:
"By showing, on one case, the heterogeneity and equivocal relations of
appartuses and ideologies, he [Foucault] constituted as a treatable
historical object this zone in which technological procedures have specific
effects of power, obey their own logical modes of functioning and can
produce a fundamental diversion within the institutions of order and
knowledge. It remains to be asked how we should consider other, equally
infinitesimal procedures, which have not been 'privileged' by history but
are nevertheless active in innumerable ways in the openings of established
technological networks. This is particularly the case of procedures that
do not enjoy the precondition, associated with all those studied by
Foucault, of having their own place (un lieu propre) on which the panoptic
machinery can opetate. These techniques, which are also operational, but
initially deprived of what gives the others their force, are the 'tactics'
which I have suggested might furnish a formal index of the ordinary
practices of consumption."
Practice of EverydayLife (Berkely: University of California Press, 1984)
trans. Steven Rendall, p. 49.
I think this is a succinct summary of DC's critique of F. However, I don't
really see the critique. HE seems to be complicit with much of what F says
about discursive operations, the establishmet of hegemony and the
establishment of marginality of various discursive operations. He takes
those marginal or "deposed" discourses, which F as early as archealogy of
knowledge sees operating at the margins or on the "exterior" of privileged
discourses (magic deposed by science, torture deposed by detainment and
correction) and gives them the name "tactics" (which he opposes to
"strategies of dominant discourses) and decides to make this a central
concern for his investigation.
This is not a critique. I don't think. He is just focusing on something
that F acknowledged and decided not to pay much attention to.
What might be criitcal is his insistence that such marginal
practices/discourses/tactics are more the product of a subjective
determination, however this might be explained. For F, these margins where
traces lodged in the body (nietzsche, genealogy history....) or ethics of
the self etc. He seems to really want to emphasize the oral tradition, or
some kind of history of locutionary acts, "story telling" as the site of
such resistances.
sb