>Discussion on this list has to be provoked. There is a simple
>technique. You begin with a controversial claim, like "Foucault is a
>Marxist," or "Foucault is a conservative," or "Foucault is a liberal."
>Then you supply an argument, or a quotation, to justify your claim.
>And then you encourage people who disagree to try to convince you that
>you are mistaken.
>
>Speaking of controversial interpretations of Foucault: I think
>Foucault is so far from being a "post-modernist" that he has much more
>in common with Immanuel Kant than he does with, say, Lyotard or
>Derrida (not that I would admit that Derrida is a postmodernist).
>
>I don't have time to justify this, but perhaps those who have read
>Foucault's "What is Enlightenment?," or, say, Ian Hacking's
>"Self-improvement" (in FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER), can anticipate
>the sort of justification I would give.
>
>I'm really curious: what is it about Foucault that makes him something
>other than a characteristically "modern" thinker?
>
I completely agree that Foucault is not "postmodern"..
As a matter of fact, in "What is Enlightenment" he describes his
attitude as the attitude of modernity, very much in the fashion of
Baudelaire and, to a certain extent, of Kant.
I think this point can be substantiated by looking at how the
the limit attitude he mentions in "What is E." fits in the general
account Foucault gives of his work in the Introduction to The Use
of Pleasure ( a slightly different earlier version of that account
can also be found in The Foucault Reader, pp.33-339).
>technique. You begin with a controversial claim, like "Foucault is a
>Marxist," or "Foucault is a conservative," or "Foucault is a liberal."
>Then you supply an argument, or a quotation, to justify your claim.
>And then you encourage people who disagree to try to convince you that
>you are mistaken.
>
>Speaking of controversial interpretations of Foucault: I think
>Foucault is so far from being a "post-modernist" that he has much more
>in common with Immanuel Kant than he does with, say, Lyotard or
>Derrida (not that I would admit that Derrida is a postmodernist).
>
>I don't have time to justify this, but perhaps those who have read
>Foucault's "What is Enlightenment?," or, say, Ian Hacking's
>"Self-improvement" (in FOUCAULT: A CRITICAL READER), can anticipate
>the sort of justification I would give.
>
>I'm really curious: what is it about Foucault that makes him something
>other than a characteristically "modern" thinker?
>
I completely agree that Foucault is not "postmodern"..
As a matter of fact, in "What is Enlightenment" he describes his
attitude as the attitude of modernity, very much in the fashion of
Baudelaire and, to a certain extent, of Kant.
I think this point can be substantiated by looking at how the
the limit attitude he mentions in "What is E." fits in the general
account Foucault gives of his work in the Introduction to The Use
of Pleasure ( a slightly different earlier version of that account
can also be found in The Foucault Reader, pp.33-339).