On Foucault and the environment...
I'mo not sure exactly how one is to read F's discussion of
'bio-power', but if it's looked at as a "power over life,"
the environment (and here's where I have trouble ---should
we be talking about discursive environments?) is included in
bio-technical strategies.
An interesting road to travel, it seems to me, would be to
take Marcuse's notion of the developnment of capitalism
as the history of the domination and exploitation of
nature,including human nature, (especially in One
Dimenasional Man), and then to develop a Foucauldian
criticism of this view along the lines of his criticism of
the "Repressive Hypothesis" (HS,V.I) and see where things
end up. My inclination is that, in this debate, the
Marcuseans win out this time, because it's very difficult to
speak of any kind of "disciplining" of nature, or the
creation of a positive set of habits, behaviors, ways of
thinking, the creative capacity of discourses of nature,
etc., because it seems to me to be more accurate to say that
we have dominated, repressed, and said "no" to nearly every
eco-system in this part of the world, largely for profit,
control, private gain, etc. (in short, all of the
traditional Marxian explanations still work best).
I'mo not sure exactly how one is to read F's discussion of
'bio-power', but if it's looked at as a "power over life,"
the environment (and here's where I have trouble ---should
we be talking about discursive environments?) is included in
bio-technical strategies.
An interesting road to travel, it seems to me, would be to
take Marcuse's notion of the developnment of capitalism
as the history of the domination and exploitation of
nature,including human nature, (especially in One
Dimenasional Man), and then to develop a Foucauldian
criticism of this view along the lines of his criticism of
the "Repressive Hypothesis" (HS,V.I) and see where things
end up. My inclination is that, in this debate, the
Marcuseans win out this time, because it's very difficult to
speak of any kind of "disciplining" of nature, or the
creation of a positive set of habits, behaviors, ways of
thinking, the creative capacity of discourses of nature,
etc., because it seems to me to be more accurate to say that
we have dominated, repressed, and said "no" to nearly every
eco-system in this part of the world, largely for profit,
control, private gain, etc. (in short, all of the
traditional Marxian explanations still work best).