On Mon, 9 Sep 1996 sbinkley@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> MF writes: "..... [democracy] is perhaps a critical idea
> to maintain at all times: to ask oneself what proportion of
> nonconsensuality is implied in such a power relation, and whether that
> degree of nonconsensuality is necessary or not, and then one may question
> every power relation to that extent. The farthest I would go is to say
> that perhaps one must not be for consensuality, but one must be against
> nonconsensuality." (Foucault reader, 379)
>
> Hmmm... this seems to open up two difficult questions. 1. does the
> critique of power on the basis of nonconsensuality have ANYTHING to do with
> everything F has writen about power thus far? Is it possible for him to
> talk about nonconsensuality without violating the very (anti) foundations
> of his earlier projects? and 2. as a political theorist, or democratic
> theorist, how does foucault stand as a critic of nonconsentuality who stops
> short of being an advocate for consentuality?
>
> (and 3rd: why do I feel that this position perfectly describes my own
> attitude towards democratic politics...... am I the only one? )
>
> sb
>
I certainly don't think that you (or Foucault) are the only one who
feels--and sometimes tries to maintain--this tension between being
against nonconsensuality yet not necessarily for consensuality. It seems
to me that this is the same tension that recent political theorists in the
burgeoning sub-field of "radical democracy" have attempted to put to
productive use--I'm thinking here of people like Shapiro, Kirstie McClure,
and especially Laclau and Mouffe. Mouffe says that democracy must be
taken as a goal that can never be fully realized (for its very
realization would destroy its conditions of possibility), and this seems
very parallel to Foucault's notion of it as a quasi-regulative ideal.
This sort of position does not necessarily contradict Foucault's
"anti-foundationalism," but the specificaction of this relation is
obviously quite complex. [student came in, completely lost my train of
thought, so I'll leave things here.]
Sam Chambers