On Thu, 27 Jun 1996, Joe Cronin wrote:
> To Michael DonnellY:
>
> I see your point, and I'm sorry I used terms that you don't,
> however I didnt have the texts i had in mind at my disposal
> when I brought up the last question. Nevertheless, who says
> that the "grey meticulous" work of genealogy has to stay at
> the level of particularity? In "The Eye of Power," Foucault
> claims that he stumbled uponm Bentham while researching
> early-mid nineteenth century architecture manuals;
> references to Bentham's Panopticon are found almost
> universally in those texts, and they all refelct a similar,
> utilitarian, or as Foucault calls it throughout Discipline
> and Punish, an "economistic" rationality. The disciplines
> develop out of this rationality - they produce signs which
> achieve a maximum of representation with a minimum of cost.
> In other words, in accounting for the development of the
> disciplines, one must also account for the fact that they
> developed in response to a growing conception of the social
> whole. It's true that Bentham's device was not universally
> implemented, but it appears that(Foucault holdsthat)his
> rationality was. This kind of analysis is not new for him,
> of course. For instance, in his earlier work (The Order of
> Things especially) he claims that what makes evolutionary
> biology so fundamentally different from the "life sciences"
> of the eighteenth century was the use of "historical
> development" as part of the argument for how a species
> achives its design. History has an ontological presence in
> the principle of natural selection. In adddition to the use
> of history, Darwin used certain principles from political
> economy, such as overproduction, and the principle of
> scarcity, to voercome the argument from design, which rests
> on an exteranl prinicple to explain the design of a species;
> "Design" for Darwin is an effect of natural selection. The
> basic poiont is that a certain kind of rationality was in
> place before this sceicne developed; so why can't teh same
> kind of analysis be applied to the human sciences?
> You may claim that genelaogy is fundamentally different
> from, or even opposed to, archeology; I persoanlly don't
> think it has to be - in fact, Foucault claims in a number of
> places that one cannot study power relations without a prior
> analysis of the rationalities of the mechanisms through
> which power achieves its effects. (eg. in "Two Lectures")
> This "prior analysis" is archeological. What, then, is
> unique about genealogy? First of all, "genelaogy" does not
> represent a method, but a critical stance. 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. 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.
> The "jump" that you find problematic is so only if you have
> a nominalist reading of Foucault. The "jump" is warrantedd
> if one seeks to understand a geneal phenomena from the
> outset - such as the "Western" conception of madness, or of
> the state as "rational," or as "rationality embodied," as
> Foucault claims in Remarks on Marx.
> Perhaps I missed your point entirely, and I will go back
> this weekend and re-read your articles, but I would be
> intrerested in your commentary on what I just said.
> __Joe Cronin
>
>
Joe, I have the impression that we are still talking past each other.
What I objected to were formulations such as "the panoptic schema . . .
was destined to spread through the social body"; "It programmes, at the
level of an elementary and easily transferable mechanism, the basic
functioning of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary
mechanisms" (see Discipline and Punish, 205-7). Perhaps by way of a
shorthand such characterisations are apt. My point was that what carries
Foucault to them is no longer a genealogical analysis. There is a story
to be told about how the disciplines developed; or, if you will, how it
came to be that "prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks,
hospitals, which all resemble prisons." That would indeed be a proper
task for genealogy, and others have tried to follow Foucault's lead by
delving into the development of the disciplines. Foucault for his part
made an exemplary start; he didn't, however, in my view earn his
conclusion in Discipline and Punish that the Panopticon "was destined" to
develop into panopticism.
In sum, I still agree with what I argued in the Economy and Society piece
(vol. 11, no. 4 (1982), pp. 363ff.).
Michael Donnelly