Koray wrote:
> So the question follows. Always bearing Foucault's comments on
> "humanism" in our minds, how is it possible to support those people in the
> prison. Is there an immanent, inalienable right to live? Are there "human"
> rights? I am sure that there is nobody in this list who will refuse the
> concept "human rights" without offering an alternative. BUT, how is it
> possible to construct inalienable and non-transcendental conception of human
> rights when we think of Foucault.
> (The crucial point is that there are some concepts
> that cannot be easily criticised because of their political content that are
> very useful in activating people in resisting.)
Dear Koray,
I haven t got a very deep knowledge of F, but, due to the 'silence' of the
other listmembers, I would try answer your question as follows:
It makes a difference either to use concepts as a strategy in political aims
or as a tools to build your thoughts with. Using the concept >Human Rights<
strategically is maybe a good thing to do, for it may be part of just the right
code to activate public media and therethrough other participiciants. This
usage is somehow 'locally', it just takes effect in a surrounding like
the 'pool' of significants of public opinion. Apart from this, it doesn t
have to be consistant in any way. The concept >Human Rights< just works like,
let's say, the construct 'fetus' in anti-abortion-discussions; it activates a
lot of people linking itself into their table of values (mostly cultural
traded, unreflected values). In no way this is meant cynically - but in both cases
you got a moral argumentation, which is to help reaching special practical aims - not
more, not less.
Straining concepts further (what means: to think, using them), leads to another
sphere, which hardly can be called 'local'. A philosophical discourse easily
tends to turn ideological, especially if it claims to carry 'truth'. Now both
words of the term 'Human Rights' are of this quality, for both tend to say
the 'truth' of what they are signifying. Like F showed (_Le mots e le
choses_), the concept 'human' is a construction which lead to, emphatically
said, inhumanity (sorry, I don't manage to strip of Adorno totally). I think
it's similar for the concept of 'right'. This shows that these concepts, as
constructions of power-knowledge (or of a special kind of rationality), have
to be criticised to break the circle of expanding power/knowledge.
Reading F's thoughts, would you say the resisting prisoners (and
sympathisants) are intending to force this
power/knowledge/(in)justice-complex? Sure you won t.
On the other hand, would you be accusing them using this effective words, which
most people haven't even got an idea about which complicated discussions and
relations they are correlated with? Neither, I think.
Anyway, the fact that it is ideological (and mostly contraproductive) to install
such concepts 'from above' doesn't mean that each individual had to renounce
to *take* him/herself a right, not asking for their philosophical
benediction. This is (I think) what F meant polemizing against the
'general-intellectual' which tells from a central position what other people
should think and be. In opposite, the decentralized version may lead
(concerning resistance) to kinds of guerilla-tactics, spinning a net of subversive
informations and actions - which one of could be to force a public discussion of
the status of human rights in turkey, aiming to make prisoner's suppression public.
Hope this was helpful. Bye,
Benjamin
p.s.: any answers should be sent to me directly, too, for i just subbed
the digest
___________________________
Netzadresse:
joeriben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> So the question follows. Always bearing Foucault's comments on
> "humanism" in our minds, how is it possible to support those people in the
> prison. Is there an immanent, inalienable right to live? Are there "human"
> rights? I am sure that there is nobody in this list who will refuse the
> concept "human rights" without offering an alternative. BUT, how is it
> possible to construct inalienable and non-transcendental conception of human
> rights when we think of Foucault.
> (The crucial point is that there are some concepts
> that cannot be easily criticised because of their political content that are
> very useful in activating people in resisting.)
Dear Koray,
I haven t got a very deep knowledge of F, but, due to the 'silence' of the
other listmembers, I would try answer your question as follows:
It makes a difference either to use concepts as a strategy in political aims
or as a tools to build your thoughts with. Using the concept >Human Rights<
strategically is maybe a good thing to do, for it may be part of just the right
code to activate public media and therethrough other participiciants. This
usage is somehow 'locally', it just takes effect in a surrounding like
the 'pool' of significants of public opinion. Apart from this, it doesn t
have to be consistant in any way. The concept >Human Rights< just works like,
let's say, the construct 'fetus' in anti-abortion-discussions; it activates a
lot of people linking itself into their table of values (mostly cultural
traded, unreflected values). In no way this is meant cynically - but in both cases
you got a moral argumentation, which is to help reaching special practical aims - not
more, not less.
Straining concepts further (what means: to think, using them), leads to another
sphere, which hardly can be called 'local'. A philosophical discourse easily
tends to turn ideological, especially if it claims to carry 'truth'. Now both
words of the term 'Human Rights' are of this quality, for both tend to say
the 'truth' of what they are signifying. Like F showed (_Le mots e le
choses_), the concept 'human' is a construction which lead to, emphatically
said, inhumanity (sorry, I don't manage to strip of Adorno totally). I think
it's similar for the concept of 'right'. This shows that these concepts, as
constructions of power-knowledge (or of a special kind of rationality), have
to be criticised to break the circle of expanding power/knowledge.
Reading F's thoughts, would you say the resisting prisoners (and
sympathisants) are intending to force this
power/knowledge/(in)justice-complex? Sure you won t.
On the other hand, would you be accusing them using this effective words, which
most people haven't even got an idea about which complicated discussions and
relations they are correlated with? Neither, I think.
Anyway, the fact that it is ideological (and mostly contraproductive) to install
such concepts 'from above' doesn't mean that each individual had to renounce
to *take* him/herself a right, not asking for their philosophical
benediction. This is (I think) what F meant polemizing against the
'general-intellectual' which tells from a central position what other people
should think and be. In opposite, the decentralized version may lead
(concerning resistance) to kinds of guerilla-tactics, spinning a net of subversive
informations and actions - which one of could be to force a public discussion of
the status of human rights in turkey, aiming to make prisoner's suppression public.
Hope this was helpful. Bye,
Benjamin
p.s.: any answers should be sent to me directly, too, for i just subbed
the digest
___________________________
Netzadresse:
joeriben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx