Blaine,
Perhaps what is original in Foucault's work is that he sees "enlightenment
blackmail" as a trap. Unlike, say, Horkheimer and Adorno who try to think
against the enlightenment and encounter difficulties, Foucault recognizes
that the attempt to flee the enlightenment as myth through more
enlightenment is doomed to failure. His concern is more sober in that he
doesn't think the present is necessarily significant; that it could be "a
time just like any other." Enlightenment thinkers considered themselves to
be living in a time of great transition, and perhaps they were. What we
today inherit from them, the promise of free-thinking individuals from the
constsraints of religious dogma, has largely conditioned the ways in which
we think of ourselves. In other words, it is part of our modern
consciousness to think of ourselves as free-thinking subjects. Foucault
agrees with this, except that he sees this subjectivity as the interior of
a more complex and pervasive objectivity constituted historically (through
networks of power/knowledge). The interiorized modern subject is largely
unaware of itself as historical object. This historical limitation is
perhaps the limit of the phenomenological subject Foucault criticizes: the
phenom. subject as privileged knower is displaced on F's account by the
historical awareness of itself as object. So there is this hidden
dimension to modern subjectivity which the genealogist finds as the
constitution of subjectivity as object. this is what I think is the point
of the "history of the present", that the subject takes a
critical/historical distance on itself and finds itself as an
historically-produced object.
I'd like to know your thoughts on this, if you think I have it right or
wrong, or don't make any sense at all. I also know there is much more to
be added here, for instance, resistance to objectifying power, etc. But
what I'd like to know more of is what you are considering the two questions
of subjectivity. Could you elaborate more on the "ontological" one you
emphasize? Also I'd like to know what you consider in relation to the
epistemological question the difference(s) between F and Marx.
Thanks
Sean
Perhaps what is original in Foucault's work is that he sees "enlightenment
blackmail" as a trap. Unlike, say, Horkheimer and Adorno who try to think
against the enlightenment and encounter difficulties, Foucault recognizes
that the attempt to flee the enlightenment as myth through more
enlightenment is doomed to failure. His concern is more sober in that he
doesn't think the present is necessarily significant; that it could be "a
time just like any other." Enlightenment thinkers considered themselves to
be living in a time of great transition, and perhaps they were. What we
today inherit from them, the promise of free-thinking individuals from the
constsraints of religious dogma, has largely conditioned the ways in which
we think of ourselves. In other words, it is part of our modern
consciousness to think of ourselves as free-thinking subjects. Foucault
agrees with this, except that he sees this subjectivity as the interior of
a more complex and pervasive objectivity constituted historically (through
networks of power/knowledge). The interiorized modern subject is largely
unaware of itself as historical object. This historical limitation is
perhaps the limit of the phenomenological subject Foucault criticizes: the
phenom. subject as privileged knower is displaced on F's account by the
historical awareness of itself as object. So there is this hidden
dimension to modern subjectivity which the genealogist finds as the
constitution of subjectivity as object. this is what I think is the point
of the "history of the present", that the subject takes a
critical/historical distance on itself and finds itself as an
historically-produced object.
I'd like to know your thoughts on this, if you think I have it right or
wrong, or don't make any sense at all. I also know there is much more to
be added here, for instance, resistance to objectifying power, etc. But
what I'd like to know more of is what you are considering the two questions
of subjectivity. Could you elaborate more on the "ontological" one you
emphasize? Also I'd like to know what you consider in relation to the
epistemological question the difference(s) between F and Marx.
Thanks
Sean