I have a question for Michael Donnelly: I've read a few of
your articles on Foucault, and recently re-read your article
on Bio-power. You claim, in a nutshell (and please telll me
if I'm off the mark) - that Foucault should've stuck to his
nominalistic researches, and not gotten involved in general
concerns. If that's a workable summary, my question is
this: where did Foucault EVER conduct a "local" analysis?
Whatr is a local analysis? Is it an analysis of a scientific
practice? If so, we're already at a general level - the
level at whcih a "practice" is carried out. He never
concerned himself with the work, or thought, of one single
author, or one single problem. Question two is this: in
Remarks on Marx, Foucault responds to the question of
nominalism by saying something to teh effect that "what
could be more generla than a society's conception of
madness, or the hegemony of reason..."(bad paraphrase) - the
point is that he concerns himself with questions which are
inherently social, and therefore inherently general. If
one claims to be an empiricist, as Foucault does over and
over again, than how can one ignore general phenomena, on
the one hand, and the fact that many sciences have
developed in the past two hundred years by developiong an
understanding of societal generalities (such as the
cocneption o f"population" as a general, theortical set of
objects, in HS v.I)?
--Joe Cronin
your articles on Foucault, and recently re-read your article
on Bio-power. You claim, in a nutshell (and please telll me
if I'm off the mark) - that Foucault should've stuck to his
nominalistic researches, and not gotten involved in general
concerns. If that's a workable summary, my question is
this: where did Foucault EVER conduct a "local" analysis?
Whatr is a local analysis? Is it an analysis of a scientific
practice? If so, we're already at a general level - the
level at whcih a "practice" is carried out. He never
concerned himself with the work, or thought, of one single
author, or one single problem. Question two is this: in
Remarks on Marx, Foucault responds to the question of
nominalism by saying something to teh effect that "what
could be more generla than a society's conception of
madness, or the hegemony of reason..."(bad paraphrase) - the
point is that he concerns himself with questions which are
inherently social, and therefore inherently general. If
one claims to be an empiricist, as Foucault does over and
over again, than how can one ignore general phenomena, on
the one hand, and the fact that many sciences have
developed in the past two hundred years by developiong an
understanding of societal generalities (such as the
cocneption o f"population" as a general, theortical set of
objects, in HS v.I)?
--Joe Cronin