Eric writes:
>Sean said:
>
>"Basically, his...conditioning human subjects as a sort
>of impotent residue undermined his own theory."
>
>See, this is the odd thing about Foucault. There is soooo
>much room to disagree.
>
>I don't get this "impotent" reading out of Foucault anymore.
>This was my first reading, but after reading broadly amongst
>his works, I think it is obvious that his method was to
>restrict certain terms since they were dustbins for ambiguity,
>such as humanism, ideology, free will, phenomenology, etc.
>I think he associated these types of words with a masking
>of power. It is clear in many of his interviews that his goal
>was to set us on a path towards action, not to declare that
>the human is impotent.
>
>As Deleuze put it:
>
>=93Spinoza said that there was no telling what the human
>body might achieve, once freed from human discipline.
>To which Foucault replies that there is no telling what
>man might achieve as a living being, as the set of forces
>that resist=94. (Deleuze, p.93)
>
>Deleuze, Gilles. (1988) Foucault. Translated by Sean Hand,
>Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
I fully agree with you here. Perhaps I was too ambiguous in that post. I
was trying to emphasize that in his archaeological period he sees language
as autonomous, and therefore as determining human subjectivity. I
understand that this autonomy leads to methodological difficulties. It
left out any account of how human subjects can act freely: subjects could
never influence the determining mechanisms of language, they could never
get complete access to its autonomy. The point of his books in this period
would seem empty and certainly would be without political effect. The
introduction of the genealogies of power was an attempt to correct the
methodological difficulties of his archaeology: he needed an account of how
it is possible for human agents to act freely. What I mean by "free" is:
subjects recognizing (and acting on) those possibilities that are typically
concealed by the reproducing effects of the social status quo.
>I
>whince whenever I read about how he boffed his own intent
>by describing humans as docile bodies, and such.
>
I would say that there are two moments to this analysis. 1) The attempt to
show how human subjects are objectified through social practices, so that
such processes seem to human subejcts as indispensible and necessary.
Subjects would consider themselves acting freely, despite, as Foucault
shows, their possibilities having been objectively internalized and defined
for them by and through the effects of social power. 2) The subjective
awareness of this process of historical and social objectification can lead
to greater awareness of possibilities for acting. I agree with you that
this is what he has been after all along, only that the archaeology led to
difficulties in this respect. The awareness how we are made docile should
lead to greater subjective possibilities because it reveals this process of
objectification as contingent upon social and historical effects which
could be changed.
>It should be given that Foucault is really looking towards
>the death of man in the sense that he's looking for the
>appearance of a type of the ubermensch/"super" man.
Perhaps. But I don't think Foucault shares Nietzsche's elitism.
>More from Sean:
>
>"The introduction of "power" in his thought is more like an
>interpretive tool which he uses to reveal that the human
>subject is never entirely trapped within power relations so
>it is never able to act."
>
>This is a bit ambiguous. I'm not sure which you meant.
>However, on the topic of his conceptualization of power,
>it's a philosophical use of the term. It is very similar to
>a semiotic idea of action as a relation. No doubt he takes
>this from Saussure. I was recently reading some Peirce
>and noted that this was the same type of relational idea.
Sorry, that was horribly written. What I mean is power becomes a
methodological tool enabling the subject not only to see itself objectified
but to resist those objectification practices that are possibly dangerous.
Though I read Foucault as also showing how it is perhaps impossible for the
subject to reveal the entire complex of objectifying social practices. So
there is always something for us to do.
>Sean:
>
>"I agree that he never could tell us what power is, but I
>don't think that was his concern."
>
>Power in Foucault is a functional relationship. I don't think he
>needs to tell us much more than that. What else would there
>be to define it? It is actually a very elegant and scientifically
>minimal description from which he then examines the
>way this balances out, becoming many different effects,
>producing truth, etc. Since we normally like to think
>of power as a thing or essence, the biggest mistakes in
>reading Foucault are centered on a misunderstanding of
>this key concept in his works. The force of it lies at the heart
>of most everything he has to say about the body, really.
Right. Power is not a substance to be affirmed or denied. It is however
necessary to recognize its effects and how we are objectified by them, how
power determines what is subjectively possible, including rejection of some
objectifying practices.
>Sean:
>
>"In any case, he is more concerned with notions such as
>'power', 'discourse', 'subjectivity', etc., and how they function for
>
>us, upon us, and through us today, rather than reveal their
>hidden ontological truth, which he would leave for others to do."
>
>I'm very unclear on what would be a hidden ontological truth
>for these things. In fact, I'm kind of mystified by this thought.
>Could you explain it for me, because I'm thinking that Foucault's
>ontology is considerable rather than substantial. I don't think
>that he thought that there was a larger sense of being which
>he had left out of the picture, or one that lies beneath. After
>all, his intent was to reveal what is masked by discipline.
>
I read Foucault as conceiving his analysis of power, subjectivity, etc., as
one form of analysis among others. He is not interested in usurping all
other forms of analysis. He never tries to tell what human nature is, or
give us accounts of ourselves that would be unhistorical. He restricts his
analyses to histories because he wants to show that how we come to think of
ourselves is largely historically determined, and not ontologically
transparent. He does not show that all attempts to do ontologies are
false. Only that they are made far more difficult by the historical
embeddedness of the analysis itself. In other words, ontological analyses
are made from specific historical perspectives that they deny, which makes
them far more problematic.
sean
>Sean said:
>
>"Basically, his...conditioning human subjects as a sort
>of impotent residue undermined his own theory."
>
>See, this is the odd thing about Foucault. There is soooo
>much room to disagree.
>
>I don't get this "impotent" reading out of Foucault anymore.
>This was my first reading, but after reading broadly amongst
>his works, I think it is obvious that his method was to
>restrict certain terms since they were dustbins for ambiguity,
>such as humanism, ideology, free will, phenomenology, etc.
>I think he associated these types of words with a masking
>of power. It is clear in many of his interviews that his goal
>was to set us on a path towards action, not to declare that
>the human is impotent.
>
>As Deleuze put it:
>
>=93Spinoza said that there was no telling what the human
>body might achieve, once freed from human discipline.
>To which Foucault replies that there is no telling what
>man might achieve as a living being, as the set of forces
>that resist=94. (Deleuze, p.93)
>
>Deleuze, Gilles. (1988) Foucault. Translated by Sean Hand,
>Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
I fully agree with you here. Perhaps I was too ambiguous in that post. I
was trying to emphasize that in his archaeological period he sees language
as autonomous, and therefore as determining human subjectivity. I
understand that this autonomy leads to methodological difficulties. It
left out any account of how human subjects can act freely: subjects could
never influence the determining mechanisms of language, they could never
get complete access to its autonomy. The point of his books in this period
would seem empty and certainly would be without political effect. The
introduction of the genealogies of power was an attempt to correct the
methodological difficulties of his archaeology: he needed an account of how
it is possible for human agents to act freely. What I mean by "free" is:
subjects recognizing (and acting on) those possibilities that are typically
concealed by the reproducing effects of the social status quo.
>I
>whince whenever I read about how he boffed his own intent
>by describing humans as docile bodies, and such.
>
I would say that there are two moments to this analysis. 1) The attempt to
show how human subjects are objectified through social practices, so that
such processes seem to human subejcts as indispensible and necessary.
Subjects would consider themselves acting freely, despite, as Foucault
shows, their possibilities having been objectively internalized and defined
for them by and through the effects of social power. 2) The subjective
awareness of this process of historical and social objectification can lead
to greater awareness of possibilities for acting. I agree with you that
this is what he has been after all along, only that the archaeology led to
difficulties in this respect. The awareness how we are made docile should
lead to greater subjective possibilities because it reveals this process of
objectification as contingent upon social and historical effects which
could be changed.
>It should be given that Foucault is really looking towards
>the death of man in the sense that he's looking for the
>appearance of a type of the ubermensch/"super" man.
Perhaps. But I don't think Foucault shares Nietzsche's elitism.
>More from Sean:
>
>"The introduction of "power" in his thought is more like an
>interpretive tool which he uses to reveal that the human
>subject is never entirely trapped within power relations so
>it is never able to act."
>
>This is a bit ambiguous. I'm not sure which you meant.
>However, on the topic of his conceptualization of power,
>it's a philosophical use of the term. It is very similar to
>a semiotic idea of action as a relation. No doubt he takes
>this from Saussure. I was recently reading some Peirce
>and noted that this was the same type of relational idea.
Sorry, that was horribly written. What I mean is power becomes a
methodological tool enabling the subject not only to see itself objectified
but to resist those objectification practices that are possibly dangerous.
Though I read Foucault as also showing how it is perhaps impossible for the
subject to reveal the entire complex of objectifying social practices. So
there is always something for us to do.
>Sean:
>
>"I agree that he never could tell us what power is, but I
>don't think that was his concern."
>
>Power in Foucault is a functional relationship. I don't think he
>needs to tell us much more than that. What else would there
>be to define it? It is actually a very elegant and scientifically
>minimal description from which he then examines the
>way this balances out, becoming many different effects,
>producing truth, etc. Since we normally like to think
>of power as a thing or essence, the biggest mistakes in
>reading Foucault are centered on a misunderstanding of
>this key concept in his works. The force of it lies at the heart
>of most everything he has to say about the body, really.
Right. Power is not a substance to be affirmed or denied. It is however
necessary to recognize its effects and how we are objectified by them, how
power determines what is subjectively possible, including rejection of some
objectifying practices.
>Sean:
>
>"In any case, he is more concerned with notions such as
>'power', 'discourse', 'subjectivity', etc., and how they function for
>
>us, upon us, and through us today, rather than reveal their
>hidden ontological truth, which he would leave for others to do."
>
>I'm very unclear on what would be a hidden ontological truth
>for these things. In fact, I'm kind of mystified by this thought.
>Could you explain it for me, because I'm thinking that Foucault's
>ontology is considerable rather than substantial. I don't think
>that he thought that there was a larger sense of being which
>he had left out of the picture, or one that lies beneath. After
>all, his intent was to reveal what is masked by discipline.
>
I read Foucault as conceiving his analysis of power, subjectivity, etc., as
one form of analysis among others. He is not interested in usurping all
other forms of analysis. He never tries to tell what human nature is, or
give us accounts of ourselves that would be unhistorical. He restricts his
analyses to histories because he wants to show that how we come to think of
ourselves is largely historically determined, and not ontologically
transparent. He does not show that all attempts to do ontologies are
false. Only that they are made far more difficult by the historical
embeddedness of the analysis itself. In other words, ontological analyses
are made from specific historical perspectives that they deny, which makes
them far more problematic.
sean