I'm far too lazy to go into detail, but it would seem that Foucault's
"Discourse on Language" in _The Archeology of Language_ has a decidedly
postmodern feel to it, in that it privileges language over the modernist
individual (at least in my reading of it). And he seems to be saying in
a lot of his work that most of the structures that have been
traditionally read as being "universal" and apriori are really historical
constructs. Does that count as being pomo? Was Foucault a Pomosexual?
Mark Crane
U. of Louisville
Lowly Grad. student
On Sun, 20 Oct 1996, Ferda Keskin wrote:
> >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).
>
>
Mark Crane
University of Louisville
http://www.louisville.edu/~mecran01
mecran01@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx