Hi Sean (et al):
Thanks for your interesting thoughts on the "history of the present"
thing. Looks like we agree that the subject is highlighted within
Foucault's work - its *givenness*, as it were, thrown into question.
There are, perhaps, two aspects of that heretofore apparently given
subject that might be called into question. For the purposes of this
discussion I might call them the ontological aspect and the
epistemological aspect (only for rough identification; I wouldn't claim
these words capture precisely what Foucault is concerned with). I'd
stress that these are two sides of the same coin of subjectivity.
The ontological question: what the subject is and - what I'm suggesting
was the intent of the genealogical analyses - how it, i.e. "we", got to
be that way? Recall that Foucaut stated near the end of his work ("The
Subject and Power," in Dreyfus and Rabinow's _Michel Foucault: Beyond
Structuralism and Hermeneutics_, 1982) that his objective had "been to
create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human
beings are made subjects." (208)
Never the less, he goes on to clarify that the reason for this emphasis
is, ultimately, that "We have to know the historical conditions
which motivate our conceptualization. We need a historical awareness of
our present circumstance." (208, 209)
And that leads us to the second question concerning the subject:
The epistemological question: how does "the historical awareness of
our present circumstance" affect what and how we know and can know?
My suspicion is that you take Foucault to be focusing on this second set
of questions, and I would agree with you that it was, as you suggest, the
"consistent theme" throughout his work.
But given that we agree on this, maybe it's worth getting a bit picky.
(It's in my nature as an aspiring philosopher to pick an argument
wherever possible!) Implicit in your response is that you take this
theme to differentiate or characterize as distinct Foucault's work
vis-a-vis his predecessors and contemporaries. (I may be making too
much of a stretch in imputing this to you, of course; your point was
that it is the most *consistent* theme in his work, not necessarily the
most distinctive or original. Maybe you can clarify that for me.)
The reason I choose to emphasise the ontological question, as I've
called it, rather than the epistemological one, is that the latter theme
is fairly widely accepted, and was, largely following Marx's classic
historicist formula of dialectical materialism. The fact that Foucault
sought to distinguish himself from Marx suggests, to me anyway, that
Foucault understood his own work to be significantly distinct from
*that* important centrality within Marx.
If history determines the way we can think now, then that already says
something about the inadequacy of privileging the subject and its ways
of knowing as somehow *exceptional* to reality. But that critique of
the subject's ability to mirror reality is captured within much work
prior to Foucault's own, beginning in the late 1800s/early 1900s. In
fact, that critique characterized much of what was taken to be
particularly modernist about art, architecture, and theory at that time
(and even now).
I won't drag this on endlessly. But I'd be interested in your take on
all this. In summary, while I agree with what I understand you to be
saying is a *consistent* theme in Foucault, nevertheless I would suggest
that it isn't the most *distinctive* aspect of his work. (Of course, you
can either tell me why I'm wrong about the epistemological question, or
you can tell my why I'm imputing the wrong interpretation to your use of
the word "consistent" with respect to Foucault's work. I'm sure there's
lots of other stuff problematic about my thoughts, so go ahead and let
me have it!)
I think we share an interest in Foucault's focus on the subject, and in
calling into question the apparently necessary. I think we need to
maintain a focus on Foucault's supposition that the subject might have
been and (in his most optimistic moments) always *can be* something
other than what it is. And that focus is distinct from (though related
to) the phenomenological limitations of the subject as knower. My point
is that those two themes are too often elided in discussions about
Foucault's work.
Thanks for your thoughts, Sean.
Blaine Rehkopf
Philosophy
York University
CANADA
In your message of 10:18 Dec 18 1996, you write:
> Blaine,
>
> I agree with what what you say about the task of genealogy as a history of
> the present, telling us what we are because of what came before. But I'd
> also add that these concerns of F come from his suspiscion about the
> dominance of the phenomenological subject, thinking itself to be the
> privileged "knower" (or the privileged moment) of the world. Foucault's
> history of the present in the form of genealogy is designed to tell us
> something about what we are today that we couldn't immediately tell
> ourselves within our historical present. If there is a consistant theme
> throughout his work I think it is this attempt from a critical distance to
> analyze those present practices that go on beyond the conscious awareness
> of the people who practice them. So the history of the present would be
> the effort to say something about what we are that we couldn't otherwise
> say as constituted subjects. Through this our subjectivities are
> transformed. Of course there is so much more that can be said that I can't
> possibly say in these few sentences, but in general, it is this permanent
> reactivation of a critical attitude towards what the present takes as
> necessary that I find fascinating.
>
> sean
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