Responding to the message of <MAILQUEUE-102.960627234027.512@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>from foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>
> Joe writes:
>
> In Nietzsche's
> > case, a geenalogy is a waging of war against Western
> > religion, sceicne, rationality, and language (any quest for
> > "being" in general). EvenNietzsche conducts his
> > genealogical work on a braod level, seeking to root out the
> > moral impulse which lies beneath Western science and
> > rationality. The thrust of Nietzschean genealogy is to
> > throw off certain consumptive mechanisms of power. what is
> > the critical bent of Foucautldian genealogy? It's certainly
> > not Nietzschean, because Nietzsche was a romantic
> > naturalist, searching for a primordial "return to Life,"
> > where life can only be defined as the Romantiocs defined it
> > - as immediacy, as aesthesis, as raw experience that is not
> > mediated by "modern" rationality, thought, language,
> > "truth," culture, morality, etc. It seeks to "throw off"
> > certain schemes. In Foucault's case, in his writings on the
> > "specific intellectual," which Barry Smart discusses, the
> > critical aim is not directed toward a global conception or
> > theory, but his "genealogies" of the discipliens are
> > tactics which can only be deployed on a general level, by
> > "the masses" themselves.
>
> Joe, I don't understand part of this passage. Doesn't F seek to
> wage war against, at least, Western "dubious" sciences? And what about the
> turn to aesthetics in the later F, is this an outgrowth of what came before
> or is it a whole different F?
> Perhpas if you could explain more how F's genealogies are not
> Nietzschean. Doesn't F seekt o throw off certain schemes: in SP he holds
> that we must find new subjectivities to throw off the old ones. And then,
> here is the trick question: if F is not Nietzschean, then he must differ
> from Rorty and Lyotard: do you think his solutions better? It seems to
> me,. at least in SP, that F can be read in the same mold as L and R.
>
> Marx, in fact, makes teh saem
> > types of claims - only the proletariat can "presribe
> > history's task," it is not the work of the "intellectual to
> > "presribe," but to describe.
>
> Okay, I understand this is what F beleived: but what happens when
> the intellectual is part of the proletariat or whatever group is being
> repressed. For example, F himself was an intellectual and a homosexual:
> could he not then prescribe solutions to problems or means to vote? F's
> whole strategy here seems to be one of not admitting that he has no idea of
> what to do. The Frankfort School beleived one had to be part of the
> oppressed or at least part of their situation to prescribe: how can/does F
> reply to this?
>
> Jeff
>
I just wanted to add one quick extra layer to this thread that Joe and Jeff have
started to weave. First, with respect to this last point about the role of the
intellectual it might be useful to consider Gayatri Spivak's criticisms of
Foucault on precisely this point. She argues, to oversimplify, that allowing
the masses "to do it on their own" can result in a sort of backhanded lack of
engagement akin to positivism.
Also, even putting aside the complex question of the relation of Foucault to
Nietzsche and the intersection of genealogy (on this, cf. Mahon, "Foucault's
Nietzschean Genealogy") I would have to question Joe's characterization of
Nietzsche as a romantic wanting to return to make some final turn to "primordial
life." This description sounds a lot like Habermas' reading of Nietzche in the
"Philosophical Discourses of Modernity," but Habermas fails to back up the
caricature with much textual support. I just don't see how a careful reading of
Nietzsche can take eternal recurrence and the will to power as "simply"
naturalist romantic aspirations. It seems, at the least, necessary to
complicate this picture by taking seriously the remarks Nietzsche directs to
both the "free spirits" and his "new philosophers" (In "Beyond Good and Evil"),
and to also consider the role of both eternal recurrence and the will to power
in the crucial process of self-overcoming. To put it far too schematically, I
would find it very difficult to read self-overcoming as any sort of a return to
an originary status or condition. Self-overcoming is simultaneously a process
of destruction (the "throwing off") AND a movement of creation.
Sam Chambers
University of Minnesota
>from foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>
> Joe writes:
>
> In Nietzsche's
> > case, a geenalogy is a waging of war against Western
> > religion, sceicne, rationality, and language (any quest for
> > "being" in general). EvenNietzsche conducts his
> > genealogical work on a braod level, seeking to root out the
> > moral impulse which lies beneath Western science and
> > rationality. The thrust of Nietzschean genealogy is to
> > throw off certain consumptive mechanisms of power. what is
> > the critical bent of Foucautldian genealogy? It's certainly
> > not Nietzschean, because Nietzsche was a romantic
> > naturalist, searching for a primordial "return to Life,"
> > where life can only be defined as the Romantiocs defined it
> > - as immediacy, as aesthesis, as raw experience that is not
> > mediated by "modern" rationality, thought, language,
> > "truth," culture, morality, etc. It seeks to "throw off"
> > certain schemes. In Foucault's case, in his writings on the
> > "specific intellectual," which Barry Smart discusses, the
> > critical aim is not directed toward a global conception or
> > theory, but his "genealogies" of the discipliens are
> > tactics which can only be deployed on a general level, by
> > "the masses" themselves.
>
> Joe, I don't understand part of this passage. Doesn't F seek to
> wage war against, at least, Western "dubious" sciences? And what about the
> turn to aesthetics in the later F, is this an outgrowth of what came before
> or is it a whole different F?
> Perhpas if you could explain more how F's genealogies are not
> Nietzschean. Doesn't F seekt o throw off certain schemes: in SP he holds
> that we must find new subjectivities to throw off the old ones. And then,
> here is the trick question: if F is not Nietzschean, then he must differ
> from Rorty and Lyotard: do you think his solutions better? It seems to
> me,. at least in SP, that F can be read in the same mold as L and R.
>
> Marx, in fact, makes teh saem
> > types of claims - only the proletariat can "presribe
> > history's task," it is not the work of the "intellectual to
> > "presribe," but to describe.
>
> Okay, I understand this is what F beleived: but what happens when
> the intellectual is part of the proletariat or whatever group is being
> repressed. For example, F himself was an intellectual and a homosexual:
> could he not then prescribe solutions to problems or means to vote? F's
> whole strategy here seems to be one of not admitting that he has no idea of
> what to do. The Frankfort School beleived one had to be part of the
> oppressed or at least part of their situation to prescribe: how can/does F
> reply to this?
>
> Jeff
>
I just wanted to add one quick extra layer to this thread that Joe and Jeff have
started to weave. First, with respect to this last point about the role of the
intellectual it might be useful to consider Gayatri Spivak's criticisms of
Foucault on precisely this point. She argues, to oversimplify, that allowing
the masses "to do it on their own" can result in a sort of backhanded lack of
engagement akin to positivism.
Also, even putting aside the complex question of the relation of Foucault to
Nietzsche and the intersection of genealogy (on this, cf. Mahon, "Foucault's
Nietzschean Genealogy") I would have to question Joe's characterization of
Nietzsche as a romantic wanting to return to make some final turn to "primordial
life." This description sounds a lot like Habermas' reading of Nietzche in the
"Philosophical Discourses of Modernity," but Habermas fails to back up the
caricature with much textual support. I just don't see how a careful reading of
Nietzsche can take eternal recurrence and the will to power as "simply"
naturalist romantic aspirations. It seems, at the least, necessary to
complicate this picture by taking seriously the remarks Nietzsche directs to
both the "free spirits" and his "new philosophers" (In "Beyond Good and Evil"),
and to also consider the role of both eternal recurrence and the will to power
in the crucial process of self-overcoming. To put it far too schematically, I
would find it very difficult to read self-overcoming as any sort of a return to
an originary status or condition. Self-overcoming is simultaneously a process
of destruction (the "throwing off") AND a movement of creation.
Sam Chambers
University of Minnesota