On Tue, 11 Feb 1997 01:27:20 -0500 (EST), John Ransom wrote:
> It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace
>Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always
>that power could be undermined by truth ...Once you read Foucault as
>saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you've had it. ...But
>American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large
>numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about
>objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. [end Sokal
>quoting Ryan]
I read the piece. I would like first to say that although I do not agree with
his description, it has at least a grain of truth that should be recognised.
Foucault and many other radical thinkers are not immune for reapropriation
by conservative politics, and such reapropriation is bound to be taking place.
In fact, reading Foucault as offering a radical doubt on objectivity, reading him
in other words as a 'philosopher' a la Rorty seems to me precisely the work
of such reapropriation.
Second, I agree that truth has been a minority politics (though adding that it has been
also a majority politics.) And that desires to 'stop talking about truth' should be
suspicious. However, I understood Foucault as having worked all his life about truth.
and as having produced statements (that are either true or false) about truth, the way
it is produced, circulated and used. I think therefore that a politic of truth need to ask
whether what Foucault says about truth is true, or at least, whether it opens up new
paths of investigating truth, as every true scientific statement should.
Those who judge the truth of Foucault's work on the basis of its immediate suitability
to this or that political organisation are in no position to argue in general against an
epistemology that seeks to investigate relations between truth and power, for, having
said that a theory of truth should be discarded because it doesn't serve the appropriate
power, they have just proved that such relations interfere with their judgement.
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------
> It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace
>Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always
>that power could be undermined by truth ...Once you read Foucault as
>saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you've had it. ...But
>American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large
>numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about
>objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. [end Sokal
>quoting Ryan]
I read the piece. I would like first to say that although I do not agree with
his description, it has at least a grain of truth that should be recognised.
Foucault and many other radical thinkers are not immune for reapropriation
by conservative politics, and such reapropriation is bound to be taking place.
In fact, reading Foucault as offering a radical doubt on objectivity, reading him
in other words as a 'philosopher' a la Rorty seems to me precisely the work
of such reapropriation.
Second, I agree that truth has been a minority politics (though adding that it has been
also a majority politics.) And that desires to 'stop talking about truth' should be
suspicious. However, I understood Foucault as having worked all his life about truth.
and as having produced statements (that are either true or false) about truth, the way
it is produced, circulated and used. I think therefore that a politic of truth need to ask
whether what Foucault says about truth is true, or at least, whether it opens up new
paths of investigating truth, as every true scientific statement should.
Those who judge the truth of Foucault's work on the basis of its immediate suitability
to this or that political organisation are in no position to argue in general against an
epistemology that seeks to investigate relations between truth and power, for, having
said that a theory of truth should be discarded because it doesn't serve the appropriate
power, they have just proved that such relations interfere with their judgement.
-------------
Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
-------------