>Replying to your question of what is at stake when we're talking about the
>application or the use of Foucault, couldn't one take one step back to
>Foucault's own questioning about what he called the "pratiques discursives"?
>It seems to me that he's trying to conceptualize (and to practise) a kind of
>"theory" which deconstructs the opposition between what is traditionally
>called theory and application. So, if we use Foucault as a "model", couldn't
>we, instead of searching in his writings "tools" for immediate action, try
>to practise - by analogy - his way of using existing discursive practices in
>order to construct a new one?
>
>Joerg
Thank you for your interesting and inciteful questions. I suppose I raised
my own questions out of a concern about the ways in which application was
being posed not as a means but as an end in itself in the earlier discussion
of "use." I also use Foucault, as you say, in a "discursive way." And yet,
and yet... after several years of engaging with Foucault's work, I only now
find my self asking the question(s) of what is at stake. Part of this has
been the result of Foucault's beautiful rhetorical style in which possible
reservations about his projects are addressed before they even come to mind.
Another part, however, is the way in which Foucault's work seems to have
been institutionalized around me, that is to say, the ways in which
Foucault's work is presented as a template for critical analysis in the
university system (at least here in Canada). Problematization, while the
basis of the oeuvre in so many ways, has been and will continue to be (I
suspect) frowned upon. In other words, the "mastery" that Foucault goes out
of his way to deny in many places, is assumed to be (brace yourself for it)
"natural" and "given" and does not require further reflection. And so, in
partial answer to the what is at stake question I posed earlier, is
"mastery" what is at stake in using Foucault?
Penelope Ironstone-Catterall
School of Social & Political Thought
York University
North York (Toronto), ON