Re: The Nature of Power.

In responding to James, SB wrote:
>
> My (very general) point is only that we shouldn't feel as if we have to
> choose between Marx's teleological view of world history as a total system
> and Foucault's approach to a genealogical history full of ruptures and
> discontinuities. Why can't Capitalism be understood as a fragment with
> it's own logics and structure, which Karl very cunningly uncovers?
>
> Can you be more specific about which aspects of Marx you feel most
> inadequate with regards to Foucault's analysis of power?
>

I think Derrida's recent work "Specters of Marx," provides one line of thinking
Foucault's relation to Marxism. Derrida argues that at this period in history
when so many continue to write about "the end of history" (and Derrida spends
perhaps too many pages taking apart Fukuyama) we have a responsibility to the
legacy of Marx that we all inherit. He insists that Marxism be pluaralized;
there are many marx(s) and we must carefully decide to which spirit of marx we
will respond. Derrida's own choice is to delineate a spirit of Marxism that's
quite in line with his own thinking of deconstruction as justice itself (a sort
of messianic eschatology that still seems to me to be in its infancy in
Derrida's thinking). Along these lines, Derrida attempts to articulate a
non-metaphysical "historicality" that can only come "after" "the end of
history." To skip quite a bit, this "historicality" owes a lot to a
Nietzschean/Foucaultian history of effects.

My point is that if one follows Derrida through in this thinking of a certain
spirit of Marxism, then one certainly needs to re-consider Foucault's relation
to Marxism. No doubt, a Foucaultian thinking must reject a scientific marxism,
a telelogical conception of history, and (as Foucault puts it) any Marxist
"economism." However, this is not to say that one rejects Marx when one takes
Foucault seriously. Indeed, one may reject "Marxism," but (to repeat an
oft-quoted phrase) even Marx said he was not a "Marxist."


Sam Chambers
University of Minnesota


Sam Chambers
University of Minnesota




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