Gabriel Ash in the quote below seems to read some causal story into
Foucault: It seems to me that in such a reading, disciplinary techniques
_cause_ better performance, e.g. This may be a misreading of Gabriel, but it
brings me to a thought I am currently struggling with (although I know it's
been discussed a thousand times before...) -
Foucault seems to reject the concept of causality, as one can see from the
following and other quotes:
"I would like to substitute the study of this whole play of
interdependencies for the uniform, simple activity of allocating causality;
and by suspending the indefinitely renewd privileges of cause, to render
apparent the polymorphous interweaving of correlations." (Politics and the
Study of Discourse, in Burchell/Gordon/Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect, p.58)
However, it seems to me that one may well argue for some causal story in
Foucault's text. It seems, for instance, that madness is produced, is caused
by something, and that something is a discursive practice.
I ran into that when I presented a paper yesterday about the discursive
production of images of European integration. My first idea was that there
is something like an European discourse that intertwines with other
discourses, but it turned out while I was working on that that it rather
seems that European discourse is the product of the "interweaving" of other
discourses. People (most of them not very much familiar with F.) asked
whether I do not in fact have some causality in there, and in some way I had
to admit it, I guess, and an article by Albert S. Yee in International
Organization ("the causal effect of ideas on policy") dropped into my mind,
in which Yee claims that although poststructuralist IR people deny
causality, they have an implicit story of causality.
Yee's article is not the best, I know, and the point has been made before.
But since I am currently struggling with it, I wonder what other listmembers
think about this and whether they had the same problem in their work.
tschuess,
Thomas
-------------------------
>The copy not being in hand, of my memory I would say the F. locates the
purpose of
>disciplinary techniques on a lower scale of goals. It aimes at getting a
better performance
>out of bodies in quite limited ways, a higher work output, a better
coordinated military
>operation, a better schooling of children etc.
>-------------
>Gabriel Ash
>Notre-Dame
>-------------
>
>
>
>
************************************************************************
Thomas Diez
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research
Mannheimer Zentrum fuer Europaeische Sozialforschung
Steubenstrasse
D-68131 Mannheim
Tel. ++49-(0)621-292-8465
Fax. ++49-(0)621-292-8435
Thomas.Diez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
************************************************************************
Foucault: It seems to me that in such a reading, disciplinary techniques
_cause_ better performance, e.g. This may be a misreading of Gabriel, but it
brings me to a thought I am currently struggling with (although I know it's
been discussed a thousand times before...) -
Foucault seems to reject the concept of causality, as one can see from the
following and other quotes:
"I would like to substitute the study of this whole play of
interdependencies for the uniform, simple activity of allocating causality;
and by suspending the indefinitely renewd privileges of cause, to render
apparent the polymorphous interweaving of correlations." (Politics and the
Study of Discourse, in Burchell/Gordon/Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect, p.58)
However, it seems to me that one may well argue for some causal story in
Foucault's text. It seems, for instance, that madness is produced, is caused
by something, and that something is a discursive practice.
I ran into that when I presented a paper yesterday about the discursive
production of images of European integration. My first idea was that there
is something like an European discourse that intertwines with other
discourses, but it turned out while I was working on that that it rather
seems that European discourse is the product of the "interweaving" of other
discourses. People (most of them not very much familiar with F.) asked
whether I do not in fact have some causality in there, and in some way I had
to admit it, I guess, and an article by Albert S. Yee in International
Organization ("the causal effect of ideas on policy") dropped into my mind,
in which Yee claims that although poststructuralist IR people deny
causality, they have an implicit story of causality.
Yee's article is not the best, I know, and the point has been made before.
But since I am currently struggling with it, I wonder what other listmembers
think about this and whether they had the same problem in their work.
tschuess,
Thomas
-------------------------
>The copy not being in hand, of my memory I would say the F. locates the
purpose of
>disciplinary techniques on a lower scale of goals. It aimes at getting a
better performance
>out of bodies in quite limited ways, a higher work output, a better
coordinated military
>operation, a better schooling of children etc.
>-------------
>Gabriel Ash
>Notre-Dame
>-------------
>
>
>
>
************************************************************************
Thomas Diez
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research
Mannheimer Zentrum fuer Europaeische Sozialforschung
Steubenstrasse
D-68131 Mannheim
Tel. ++49-(0)621-292-8465
Fax. ++49-(0)621-292-8435
Thomas.Diez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
************************************************************************