>My question to Jeff concerning all these talks about the "True Self" is
>just exactly what is a true self ? How do you define it ? It's all fine
>to talk about the lack of the normative term in Foucault and how that is
>problematic - but it is quite another to go from there to the
>confirmation of such a thing as true self. A simple question is if "true"
>self exists, what does it look it ? Does it have a content ? If so,
>please specify for me what it is. Is there one true self or numerous
>(that is, can my true self differ from your true self -
>if so, then what does "true" mean here and if not, how does one judge
>which self is truer) ?
I wish I knew. As I said in my last post, I am not completely happy with
my position and have a lot of doubts about it. The greatest manure for
doubt centers around these kinds of questions: what is a true self, or what
do we mean by that. My best answer at the moment is that we can only see
it as the picture within the "Magic Eye" pictures: you know, the ones in
which one must be unfocused to see it.
Take for example, the oft cited example of Gary, IN. in which the residents
did not protest the air pollution until much later (decades) after other
cities of similar backgrounds had protested. How can we understand the
power at work here? Surely they had their desires and interests defined by
the controlling steel factory. This follows perfectly well from a
foucaultian analysis. But why should I care about this insatnce of power.
The only reason for me to care is if it causes me some harm or subvverts
some real interests that I might have: for example, the interest in working
in a clean environment.
>From this paltry example, we could, on a first account, define the true
self as a conglomeration of real interests which can be subverted by power
configurations. It seems to me that everyone has such interest which might
change slgithly in a cultural network (for example, an interest in working
in a pollution free environement was not known by pre-industrial peoples).
I am not sure how to answer your last question. If we say that the true
self is a composite of real interests, then pretty much, everyone's
interests would fall into the same general categories: though individually
this would be expressed differently. What do you mean which self is truer?
Do you mean between different individual true selves? Then that question
does not apply.
Sfelma continues:
I'm also a little confused about the repeated
>references to Marcuse and the Frankfurt School - While Marcuse was one
>member of the Frankfurt school he was surely not the only one and -
>leaving aside the question of whether Marcuse did or did not hold such a
>strict Feurebachian view, this "true self" business surely would find
>less much support in the work of Adorno and Benjamin.
Granted. I have been too totalizing in my representation of a school of
thought which is quite diversified; though, in defense, I have been using
them as foils for my points against Foucault and not analysing them as I
should....
>As for Foucault's concept of becoming other :
>
>>>"For me what must be produced is not the man identical with himself, such
>as
>>>nature has designated him, or according to his essence...It is a question,
>>>rather, of the destruction of what we are, and of the creation of something
>>>totally other--a total innovation" ("Remarks on Marx," pp121-122).
>
>and the comment on being the same is boring, etc. I don't think F is
>talking necessarily
>about becoming another person - but rather the words "Other" and "Same"
>must be read here in a Levinasian way. To use the
>non-foucauldian-and-by-now-very-dated-terminologies, Foucault is really
>speaking here of the ontological Other (or the Big Other if you will) and
>not the ontic one.
Okay, I always get condfused by big words: what is the ontological versus
the ontic other?
And besides, even if we were speaking of the ontic
>level, F has a point ... how boring it is to always be the same, to be
>happy about the way we are with our "true" self - why not try, in the
>various games that we play in life, to be a little different, to little
>inventive, to take some risk once in awhile.
But this plays into a false dichotomy (as I suggested before): why does
realizing or admitting a true self mean that I have to be the same all the
time. This is a static view of self. I think we should view the self as
dynamic, as in potens, such as Aristotle or the Medievals did. My problem
with Foucault and other postmoderns that I have read is that the ignore
anything between Kant and PLato...
>More than anything else theoretical ("postmodernism", power
>configuration, etc. etc.), this need to constantly be different from
>what one was before (or what one was saying, writing before- most
>clearly expressed in the mock dialogue in Arch. of Knowledge) points to a
>kind of intellectual ethos that was Foucault's
>
>J.Lin
>
>
>Jason Lin
>SFELMA@xxxxxxx
And still I ask, why should I be different from before?
JLN "The architectonic structure of the Kantian
jlnich1@xxxxxxxxxxx system, like the gymnastic pyramids of
Sade's orgies and the schematized
principles of the early bourgeois
freemasonry reveals an organization of
life as a whole which is deprived of
any substantial goal."
from _The Dialectic of Enlightenment_
>just exactly what is a true self ? How do you define it ? It's all fine
>to talk about the lack of the normative term in Foucault and how that is
>problematic - but it is quite another to go from there to the
>confirmation of such a thing as true self. A simple question is if "true"
>self exists, what does it look it ? Does it have a content ? If so,
>please specify for me what it is. Is there one true self or numerous
>(that is, can my true self differ from your true self -
>if so, then what does "true" mean here and if not, how does one judge
>which self is truer) ?
I wish I knew. As I said in my last post, I am not completely happy with
my position and have a lot of doubts about it. The greatest manure for
doubt centers around these kinds of questions: what is a true self, or what
do we mean by that. My best answer at the moment is that we can only see
it as the picture within the "Magic Eye" pictures: you know, the ones in
which one must be unfocused to see it.
Take for example, the oft cited example of Gary, IN. in which the residents
did not protest the air pollution until much later (decades) after other
cities of similar backgrounds had protested. How can we understand the
power at work here? Surely they had their desires and interests defined by
the controlling steel factory. This follows perfectly well from a
foucaultian analysis. But why should I care about this insatnce of power.
The only reason for me to care is if it causes me some harm or subvverts
some real interests that I might have: for example, the interest in working
in a clean environment.
>From this paltry example, we could, on a first account, define the true
self as a conglomeration of real interests which can be subverted by power
configurations. It seems to me that everyone has such interest which might
change slgithly in a cultural network (for example, an interest in working
in a pollution free environement was not known by pre-industrial peoples).
I am not sure how to answer your last question. If we say that the true
self is a composite of real interests, then pretty much, everyone's
interests would fall into the same general categories: though individually
this would be expressed differently. What do you mean which self is truer?
Do you mean between different individual true selves? Then that question
does not apply.
Sfelma continues:
I'm also a little confused about the repeated
>references to Marcuse and the Frankfurt School - While Marcuse was one
>member of the Frankfurt school he was surely not the only one and -
>leaving aside the question of whether Marcuse did or did not hold such a
>strict Feurebachian view, this "true self" business surely would find
>less much support in the work of Adorno and Benjamin.
Granted. I have been too totalizing in my representation of a school of
thought which is quite diversified; though, in defense, I have been using
them as foils for my points against Foucault and not analysing them as I
should....
>As for Foucault's concept of becoming other :
>
>>>"For me what must be produced is not the man identical with himself, such
>as
>>>nature has designated him, or according to his essence...It is a question,
>>>rather, of the destruction of what we are, and of the creation of something
>>>totally other--a total innovation" ("Remarks on Marx," pp121-122).
>
>and the comment on being the same is boring, etc. I don't think F is
>talking necessarily
>about becoming another person - but rather the words "Other" and "Same"
>must be read here in a Levinasian way. To use the
>non-foucauldian-and-by-now-very-dated-terminologies, Foucault is really
>speaking here of the ontological Other (or the Big Other if you will) and
>not the ontic one.
Okay, I always get condfused by big words: what is the ontological versus
the ontic other?
And besides, even if we were speaking of the ontic
>level, F has a point ... how boring it is to always be the same, to be
>happy about the way we are with our "true" self - why not try, in the
>various games that we play in life, to be a little different, to little
>inventive, to take some risk once in awhile.
But this plays into a false dichotomy (as I suggested before): why does
realizing or admitting a true self mean that I have to be the same all the
time. This is a static view of self. I think we should view the self as
dynamic, as in potens, such as Aristotle or the Medievals did. My problem
with Foucault and other postmoderns that I have read is that the ignore
anything between Kant and PLato...
>More than anything else theoretical ("postmodernism", power
>configuration, etc. etc.), this need to constantly be different from
>what one was before (or what one was saying, writing before- most
>clearly expressed in the mock dialogue in Arch. of Knowledge) points to a
>kind of intellectual ethos that was Foucault's
>
>J.Lin
>
>
>Jason Lin
>SFELMA@xxxxxxx
And still I ask, why should I be different from before?
JLN "The architectonic structure of the Kantian
jlnich1@xxxxxxxxxxx system, like the gymnastic pyramids of
Sade's orgies and the schematized
principles of the early bourgeois
freemasonry reveals an organization of
life as a whole which is deprived of
any substantial goal."
from _The Dialectic of Enlightenment_